Author: D. Oreck

We humans have a natural tendency to seek out our own. There’s a great comfort in being surrounded by people similar to ourselves: conversations flow more easily, empathy takes less effort. One could make the case that there’s actual virtue in racial and ethnic separatism.

Fortunately, nature has played a funny trick on us: Running parallel to our desire to exclude is an absolute imperative to co-mingle: we need genetic diversity to survive. What a beautiful conundrum – inspiration for countless legends and love stories. Our mind tells us one thing, while our biology strongly disagrees.

We all understand that marrying one’s cousin can lead to genetic problems in one’s offspring. Science might in fact suggest that we marry as far away from our cousin as possible – that those forbidden crossings of ethnic and racial boundaries are actually our genetic best bet. Biology is trying to tell us something important: that hybridization sets the stage for unexpected synergies, and is not just healthy, but downright groovy.

From this perspective, America’s secret sauce for success may actually be the degree to which, as the “melting pot of the world”, it has enabled human cross-pollination on an unprecedented scale. At no time in history have so many cultures, languages, and genes co-mingled so freely.

It’s curious how, from the outset, we’ve both celebrated and discouraged this blending. Humans seem deeply programmed to fear “others”, and this habit seems hard to shake. Of course a scapegoat is always handy, and vilifying others has the added benefit of strengthening group cohesion. But will the day finally arrive when humankind acknowledges this inherent contradiction between what we think we want and what we need?

Throughout history, political leaders have exploited our tribal inclinations. One of the promises of the Internet is that such manipulation will become increasingly difficult, anyone with a smartphone now able to broadcast a dissenting view to the world. Of course the Internet has also become a platform for polarizing propaganda campaigns of unprecedented scale, but this is probably a necessary step in the right direction. Confronted with so much noise, people are, hopefully, learning the value of healthy skepticism, and becoming more sensitive to the smell of bias and deception. No one likes to be lied to, and we all, deep down, hunger for truth.

Meanwhile, through all the noise, people may be noticing a truth: that across humanity, despite apparent differences, we’re all basically the same: we like to laugh, we enjoy good food, good company, a comfortable home. Without too much effort, it’s actually possible to empathize with anyone, anywhere, regardless of their cultural identity or appearance. With each passing year, our walls of separatism grow more illusory.

The Family of Man, a 1955 collection of photos from around the world, powerfully illustrated this truth, and now an hour spent on YouTube or TikTok can illustrate it in granular detail. The “other” may be strange, but, we find, is also strangely familiar – and strangely beautiful.

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The 60s were a heady time for women. Even as a kid, I sensed a transformation going on, women suddenly being revealed as fundamentally equal – and in fact, often superior – to men. I realize that many people were, and still are, unaware of this seismic shift in consciousness, but its effects continue to permeate the world and its affairs, and I still watch in wonder.

There was a time in my spiritual seeking when I concluded that concepts of “male” and “female” were illusory – that we are all essentially just “images of God”. I later became enamored with the concept of “soulmates”, coming to believe that each of our souls is fundamentally either male or female. These days, I just don’t know. Perhaps someday someone will enlighten me, and I can update this paragraph. But for now, I’ll say that I feel like a “man”, and am actually pretty happy with that. And I’ve known women who were very happy to be women. So maybe this gender stuff is actually okay.

As to why males sometimes accidentally incarnate into a female body, or vice versa, I have no idea; but if someone is sure this has happened to them, I’m not going to argue. Or if we eventually conclude that gender is in fact a mere roll of the biological dice, we’ll be able to consider someone’s sexual identity as a simple matter of personality and personal choice. But through all these questions and conversations, a new paradigm presents itself: that between the two poles of male and female, there’s no inherent inferiority or superiority. We’re all gods.

Of course powerful women have existed throughout history, but a dramatic shift seems to have begun around the turn of the last century, coinciding with the suffragette movement, the rarity becoming more the norm. And then, with the advent of motion pictures, we had faces to attach to the concept of equality. The goddesses of the silver screen were every bit as much stars as their male counterparts. Was this part of some communist Hollywood conspiracy? No, it was a statement of fact.

My earliest experience of a pop culture goddess was, I think, a technicolor Doris Day; then there was Elizabeth Taylor, radiant even on a TV screen. But then in the late 60s something changed: the goddesses started speaking for themselves, and claiming their personal power. From my perspective as a budding musician in LA, the epicenter of this explosion seemed to have been Joni Mitchell. Not that she actually started it all, but that she personified it all: a brilliantly creative woman, quite happy with her femininity, choosing to tell her story on her own terms, willing to get rich and famous doing so, and unwilling to be a martyr to the patriarchy.

But of course she wasn’t alone: Odetta, Aretha, Dolly, Grace, and Carole each sparked their own revolutions, followed by a long line of successive goddesses who may not have achieved actual equality in show biz, but who nonetheless more firmly planted a flag in our consciousness, upon which was delicately embroidered, “We are not your chattel”.

Fast-forward 50 years and a lot has changed, at least in some parts of the world. True, women are still “chattel” in many places, and women’s financial power is still sorely unequal, but there’s now an army of female artists, writers, and influencers nurturing the seeds of a truth: that this entire universe is an exquisitely balanced dance of yin and yang – of expansion and contraction, attraction and repulsion, force and stillness – and that it follows that the God of such a universe must be as much “female” as “male”. Perhaps, as this seed takes hold, we will begin to break free of some of the logjams that keep us separate from God.

To be clear, this isn’t something that merely benefits women. Put bluntly, the harmony of the universe requires a balance of male and female. Viewed from this perspective, gender equality isn’t a matter of politics or religion, nor is it a battle of biology; it’s a simple recognition of metaphysical truth: God didn’t make a lopsided universe.

If nothing else, Joni taught me that I need to listen to women. I’m still trying to learn to do that, and see I’m not alone, so am happy that Beyoncé, Rihanna, Taylor, Maggie, and (your favorite artist) are continuing to give eloquent voice to a woman’s wisdom. It’s a wisdom that might, for instance, make clear that war is stupid. Why would you want to bomb someone’s home? Why would you want to take away someone’s son or daughter? It isn’t rocket science, but sometimes we men just don’t get it.

My intent here isn’t to reduce things to a boys vs. girls caricature, but to point out that, if any of us are to be truly happy, the yang impulse to control and the yin power of harmonization need to be in balance. These women (and many men, too!) are, in their own way, working to establish this balance. They aren’t mere cheerleaders on the sidelines: they’re pointing to and personifying a different approach to life, where sometimes gentle is stronger than tough, and sometimes the loudest voice in the room isn’t the one to listen to.

I’m also not suggesting that women are our saviors – but then, they haven’t yet been given the chance to try. Being a guy, I am, of course, clueless; but even I can understand that women should, in every sphere, at every level, be 50% of the equation. 50% of all legislatures. 50% of all relationships. Every other pope should be a woman. From that point of equality, men and women, straight and LGBTQIA+, might be able to really start a conversation. Which could be really good.

The whole topic of gender, of how the duality of the universe expresses itself in human form, leaves me intrigued, enchanted, and bewildered. But then, understanding it all might entail understanding the nature of the universe itself; so perhaps we can forgive our ignorance, and get on with our happy conversation.

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The present pandemonium in the US over abortion rights is shining a light on one of the central mysteries of our existence: we really have no idea how or when we got here. We sense that we are a “person”, but don’t know how or when that person came to be. No one has a memory of their beginning.

Though we’ve been pondering it since the time of Plato, neither science nor religion can definitively say when a person “starts”. We struggle to answer a maybe unanswerable question, and everyone gets frustrated. Scientists or theologians might choose from a succession of events to mark the beginning of a person: conception, a heartbeat, a nervous system, signs of movement, viability, breathing – but it’s all guesswork, clouded by emotion. So should we take caution to ridiculous extremes, or should we try to gloss over the whole problem?

In a “soul hypothesis”, we each are a non-physical entity that at some point incarnates into a human body for the purpose of experiencing a human life. But when? The new soul may well be around at the time of conception, but it would likely at least wait until the embryo was well-established before “moving in” – early miscarriages are far too common, so it would be more sensible to wait. And if this hypothesis is true, we can assume that the intelligence that designed the process is “sensible”.

Another theory would be that the soul somehow comes into being at some point in gestation. Another would be that there is no “soul”, but that nonetheless a “person” at some point comes to exist. But none of these theories, even if we agreed on it, solve the problem at hand: we don’t know when. We’d hopefully all agree, though, that a person should be treated like a person – even if they’re living in someone else’s womb.

Trying to merge scientific and religious concepts only heightens the confusion. For centuries, religious thinkers had marked the subjective event of “quickening” as the beginning of a fetus’ personhood; but as science was able to describe the process of conception, and as fetal heartbeats could be measured, these events were seized upon as a person’s “logical” starting moment. But this “scientific”approach is still entirely subjective, while also losing sight of the religious understanding of a soul – a spiritual entity not entirely governed by material events.

I’m not asking legal questions here, but physical and moral ones. In a dispute that not even King Solomon could resolve, I think the mother should be the one to decide about an abortion – if anyone’s qualified, it would be her. The rest of us can, at best, only ponder how to make that a more informed decision.

If a corporal person really begins with their first breath, there’s little moral quandary at all, but unfortunately it’s probably not that simple. Many mothers sense the presence of a person long before that breath, so the medieval demarcation of “quickening” might actually be accurate. If so, it’s still the mother who should discern whether this quickening has occurred; but in the absence of empirical guidance, her decision may be fraught.

So basically, big problem, no solution. Science barely seems to know what a person is, so isn’t much good for advice; and the proclamations of religious authorities are so archaic and arbitrary as to be useless. But both science and religion understand ethics, so should, one would think, be able to collaborate on seeking ethical solutions.

One would think science and religion could agree that a fertilized egg is no more a person than an unfertilized egg or sperm – there’s clearly no one there to have an opinion, or to be offended. We might mourn a miscarriage, or even a late period, but don’t usually consider it a death. The soul, if there be such a thing, will presumably simply wait for the appearance of a suitable vehicle – souls have all the time in the world. But even if all this is disputed, surely no one can seriously advocate for the personal rights of a sperm or egg.

So one would think both science and religion could easily agree that birth control should be an invaluable strategy in our attempt to avoid the profound ethical dilemma of abortion. Whether or not someone uses birth control is a personal choice, but there’s nothing inherently immoral about it.

Of course the real question here is about the morality of sex, and here I can only observe that there seem to be an insanely wide variety of sexual moralities. I would not even attempt to define “normal” human sexuality, much less try to enforce it on others – because maybe there is no such thing. It seems that some percentage of humans desire sex more often than is strictly necessary, or even advisable. Humans are also uniquely adroit at modifying and adapting our desires; but it does sometimes seem that God intended sex to be a problem. I understand how clergy would sense a responsibility for solving the problem, but their cookie-cutter solutions have proven to be tragically inappropriate. I would only hope that we each find what works for us, respectfully allowing others to do the same.

There are good arguments against using birth control, but I discount any argument based on superstitious theology. If God said, thousands of years ago, “be fruitful and multiply”, he certainly didn’t add: “and do so forever, exponentially”. By using our God-given brains, and by listening to our hearts, where his spirit hopefully resides, we can respond with love to our present reality. Superstition ain’t the way.

I have to give a special callout to the Catholic Church here. Guys, wake up – you are presently not part of the solution. Your misogyny is so vast that it can’t be hidden. Of course you share that trait with most other major religions, but your particular brand of silliness is exceptional. Stop treating women as things, and this problem might start to sort itself out.

This shouldn’t be controversial to say: in matters pertaining to childbearing, a woman’s voice should be the first and the last one heard. A man might have an opinion, but any man should recognize that women are inherently more qualified to address these questions. Starting with questions of sexual consent, all the way to questions of fetus’ rights, men might do well to become better listeners.

I went through a few abortions myself, when I was younger and dumber, and though I was only the perspective father, they still haunt me. Was I a party to the killing my own kid? I hope (and think) not, but if I did, I can only apologize. This really is about more than sexuality or freedom or autonomy: at some point, someone’s life is on the line. We’re each free to choose our reproductive strategy, but there definitely should be one. Choose abstinence, sobriety, birth control, or a large family – whatever you want. If your heart tells you that an abortion is okay – that the person isn’t there yet – go ahead; but in the real world this may be no easy decision. And obviously, governments and religions shouldn’t be making it harder, or more frequently encountered.

Whatever our “reproductive strategy”, there will be those heartrending situations where a medical condition calls for or necessitates a late abortion; but what pains me is the fact that much of the controversy around abortion is in truth a controversy over promiscuity – birth control and abortion being made intentionally unavailable in order to discourage “frivolous” sex. The potential unborn child is being held hostage in a dispute about human sexuality.

However we define or perceive healthy or appropriate human sexuality, it is inherently abusive to enforce this definition on others. Most of us, over time, conclude that loveless sex is, at best, unfulfilling. Perhaps parents should trust that their children will eventually figure this out, because this whole hostagetaking strategy is itself loveless to the extreme.

Since the entire topic of abortion is shrouded in scientific unclarity and ethical dilemma, our first aim should be to, as far as possible, avoid it altogether. Every pregnancy should be a wanted pregnancy. Rulers have always had good reason to encourage fertility, to increase their stock of laborers and soldiers, but their “authority” was feigned to begin with. God wants us to be smart, and to be able to choose the size and timing of our family as we see fit. Our desire for sex and romance is a wondrous and powerful thing, and we each must decide how to manifest that desire. Bringing a child into this world – allowing a person to incarnate – should be a joyous event for all concerned, and no loving God would want it any other way.

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Of all the elephants collecting lately in our living room, there’s one that just keeps getting bigger: overpopulation. Small wonder we don’t want to talk about it – even the word is offensive, as if humans were coyotes or feral cats. You might as well just say “We need to cull the herd!”

Back in the 60s, in the wake of the first baby boom, everyone was talking about it. Famines were a common occurrence, and, as population growth began to resemble an exponential curve, the future was looking scary. It was also becoming apparent that the entire planetary ecosystem couldn’t comfortably support 3 billion people. Now there are 8 billion.

By the 80s, discussions had become more nuanced, incorporating an understanding that overpopulation is largely driven by poverty, because subsistence farmers with little health care and no social safety net are motivated to have as many children as possible. But it was also becoming clear that the entire topic was a minefield, filled with intimations of racism, eugenics, and eco-fascism. Religions, for various reasons, decided to strongly oppose any form of birth control, discussion closed. Meanwhile, advances in agricultural technology were dramatically boosting food production, which, it was hoped, might finally end the specter of mass starvation. And so the world collectively decided to talk about something else.

The good news is that the entire problem seems to be sorting itself out – slowly. After reaching a certain level of economic security, people do tend to opt for smaller families, and Catholics have become more comfortable ignoring the dictates of the Vatican. Amazingly, people are now fretting about shrinking population. Oh gosh, I wouldn’t do that.

Of course, it’s complicated. Then again, it’s pretty simple: the planet struggled to support 3 billion people, and as we approach three times that number, it’s being crushed. Climate change is like a big bill coming due, one that we have no choice but to pay. This is perhaps not the time to run up more debt.

Again, I’m optimistic, and can see this whole problem working itself out. Alternately, I can see things ending in disaster, which seems to be where we’re currently heading. Amidst all the talk about carbon footprints, no one wants to consider the most likely scenario: the poor of the world, thanks to the Internet, now have a clear view of how the 1% lives – and definitely want in. A family that was content without even a refrigerator now aspires to a designer kitchen. Dad’s bicycle needs to be replaced by an SUV. And yes, they deserve these things as much as anyone.

I know it’s all relative, but it seems there are some things everybody needs to live comfortably in this world. Growing up in Los Angeles, I took these things for granted: we had electricity, hot and cold running water, a roof that didn’t leak, and plenty of food on the table. At a minimum, everyone in the world should have these; but an optimum baseline would include plenty more – Internet, transportation infrastructure, affordable healthcare, etc.. If we aspire to provide these things for every person on the planet, the scope of our challenge becomes apparent. Then if you add in all the comforts and conveniences that we modern folk have come to expect, the planetary carbon footprint goes off the charts.

Some visionaries try to describe a world where all this works – where technology solves every problem – but this isn’t our current trajectory. Even if Westerners learned to dial back their extravagant overconsumption (which we show absolutely no signs of doing), if the rest of the world attains even a fraction of our affluence, we’re cooked. Even providing food and clean drinking water for 8 billion people is overwhelming our ingenuity; how will we possibly provide everyone with a shiny car in the driveway of their air conditioned home?

One proposed solution involves concentrating everyone into high-rise apartments, which, speaking for myself, might be a description of hell. Part of our problem, it seems, is that an increasing portion of humanity is so detached from the natural world that they no longer particularly care about its health and welfare. To them, people and relationships and communication devices are the primary source of life’s joys and pleasures, and adoration of nature a possible sign of misanthropy. I guess there’s no crime in being an “indoor person”, but I think most people, given the choice, would prefer a home where nature is close at hand, where they can enjoy not only people, but also the beauties and wonder of our planet.

I don’t mean to denigrate the utility or even desirability of living in a well-designed high-rise; but when, in our desperation, we start building cities of warehouses for people, there is clearly a problem.

These are the facts of the matter: water supplies and tables are dwindling rapidly in many parts of the world – soon growing crops for ethanol may seem like a silly idea – and modern agricultural practices are unsustainable in multiple other ways. Our growing population is forcing increasing numbers of people to live in harsh and unhealthy environments. The impacts of human civilization are overwhelming the ecosystems we depend upon to survive. And even if scientists are only halfway correct, it seems that climate change is about to take a big bite out of all of us, necessitating a major retooling of human life support systems, all over the planet, all at once.

I don’t claim to know the exact number of people this planet could comfortably support – but I know that only a small percentage of present humanity would use the word “comfortable” to describe their life. One can point to many causes – consumerism and materialism here, political corruption and social instability there – but the simple fact is that we’re miles from our goal. When people in the US and Europe fret over the influx of immigrants at their border, they should realize that this is but a symptom of larger problems: these people are fleeing crushing poverty and hardship, while at the same time being lured by the unsustainable “good life” promoted by Western culture. No tall fence would or should fix this – major changes on many fronts will be needed if we’re to provide all humanity with the basic necessities while avoiding global environmental collapse.

Among the many needed transformations, it might be okay to consider a world with fewer people – where we wouldn’t need to be so worried about cows belching, or the methane production of rice paddies. Again, the good news is that population reduction needn’t even be a goal – we simply need to focus on economic development and equitable wealth distribution, aimed to provide the world’s poor with the conditions that have already led to lower birthrates in the developed world.

The wealthy of the world are perhaps slowly coming to understand that spreading the wealth around benefits even themselves, creating stable societies, a healthier planet, and sustainable birthrates. We can argue about how this redistribution should be accomplished, but there should be no argument about the need.

And to those who worry about insufficient replacement rates in developed countries, I’d say, don’t. Our plan for a functioning society shouldn’t resemble a Ponzi scheme, where never-ending population growth is a requirement. Eldercare is a hard problem – I know, having helped both my parents at the end of their lives – but the solution isn’t an endlessly ballooning supply of underpaid young people. With some planning and effort, we could survive a population replacement rate of 100%, or even less. Would there be a shortage of cheap labor? Yes – and good! Maybe someday even dishwashers will be able to earn a living wage. There would be abundant wealth and technology to solve the problems posed by an aging population, if it wasn’t being spent on battleships and trips to Mars.

Raising a family is one of the most fulfilling of all human experiences, encompassing many of our deepest joys and pleasures; but one doesn’t necessarily need twelve children to experience this fulfillment. If someone truly wants a large family, more power to them; many people, though, find it sufficiently challenging to properly raise even two kids. The churches and governments of the world could stop obsessing over people’s reproductive lives, and start paying attention to the problems they’re actually in a position to solve – first and foremost being the prevalence of war and violence in the world. We can’t address our other pressing problems when our resources are consumed battling each other. Major changes and investments are going to be required to divert us from our present charted course, and if those changes aren’t made, Mother Nature herself may be forced to “cull the herd”.

I do apologize for being depressing. But humankind, having now seen what a global crisis looks like, still seems unable to see the need for thoughtful discussion and collective action – to understand that now is not the time for bickering. Difficult conversations need to be had, and battles of words might result – but these battles must be fought fairly. Nonviolent communication and conflict resolution are skills that can be taught and learned – skills that will ultimately determine the fate of humanity.

So here we are, all in the same little boat. If God left us with instructions to “be fruitful and multiply”, we long ago made him very happy in that regard. We now need to learn to be good stewards of the Earth – and to be our brothers’ keepers, and good Samaritans, and blessed peacemakers. All that stuff. If we really want to be doing God’s will, our work has just begun.

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Pharmaceuticals, injestables, herbs and spices, amino acids and a million other compounds – as I see it, everything we consume is a “drug” of some sort. We categorize them differently, depending on potency, popularity, and possible unwanted effects; but we’re all on drugs, all the time. And the drugs we ingest are only complementing the ones already being made by our own bodies.

We alternately give way too much attention, and not nearly enough attention to these various drugs. Concentrated crystalline sugar could be considered an addictive and potentially lethal drug, but no one thinks twice about the sugar bowl on the table. Cigarettes used to be the same way, and in much of the world, alcohol still is.

My favorite drug is probably coffee. Thank the gods coffee isn’t illegal. Still, I do sometimes abuse it. Perhaps they should establish a maximum legal blood caffeine level.

I’ve been pretty down on alcohol my entire life, perhaps because both my parents were alcoholics, and alcoholism seemed to factor prominently in my family history. Then I encountered a charming article explaining how alcohol might actually be one of the best things ever to happen to humans. The irony.

As a child of the sixties, I’ve tried a lot of different drugs. But, aside from the obvious ones – cannabis, mescaline, LSD – I came to realize that even the oregano on my pizza was a drug. And the cheese? Definitely a drug.

Since we’re all drug users, I probably don’t need to belabor the dictum: “The poison is in the dose”. We all understand that a spoonful of sugar in your tea might be fun, while twelve spoonfuls might make you sick. It’s inherently difficult to legislate responsible use of substances, because safe dosage is hard to gauge, and because “responsible” depends largely on the intent of the user. So which is worse – obliterating myself with five slices of pizza, or obliterating myself with five beers, or obliterating myself with a spliff? I know, someone’s thinking, “All three at once!”, but my point is that there are a lot of different ways to medicate oneself, and that, in sufficient dosage, any of them can cause harm.

Visiting a utopian dreamland, imagine a world where everyone took full responsibility for their bodies. Actually, much of the world already does – and not just the affluent, with their yoga mats and essential oils, but also the humble who faithfully follow the traditions of their cultures. But throughout the world we see people who seem quite disconnected from their bodies; who, through ignorance or distraction, don’t seem to accept personal responsibility for the health of their own person. A world where self-care is the norm – taught in every grade, like math – would be free of many of our intractable healthcare and substance abuse problems.

Legislation to force people to care about themselves is a bit silly from the start. We could write laws requiring big rubber bumpers around everyone’s cars, and lower the speed limit to 20 MPH, but the smarter approach might be to help people become better drivers.

“Better driving” here would aim for not only physical health, but also mental and emotional wellness; and this is where it gets challenging. Happy people don’t generally get strung out on pizza or gambling or vodka or meth. But happiness is the most elusive of human conditions. If I could open a school that successfully taught happiness, I’d be rich as heck.

Meanwhile, we go chasing after symptoms of symptoms of symptoms – fighting the influx of immigrants at our border, caused by drug war violence back home, caused by our drug addictions, caused by our unhappiness and misdirected efforts to feel better.

So how might we untangle this web – where to even start? With little steps, all over the place, I’m guessing. But near the top of the list: Stop the drug wars. From the hills of Bolivia to the prisons of Chicago, the war on drugs devastates every community it touches. The problem is, there’s only one way to really stop the war, and that’s by reducing or eliminating people’s pathological hunger for dangerous drugs, to a point where these substances could be treated like whisky or tobacco. And that, by comparison, seems the most challenging solution of all.

A rat might take cocaine until it dies, but we’re not rats. Every human is capable of having the awareness and agency to intelligently regulate the substances they ingest. Many already do, and those who don’t could learn. Our drug laws treat people as if they were rodents.

I understand that some people seem biologically predisposed to crave certain drugs, and that, in the case of addictive drugs, some truly are “powerless over their addictions”. But even for these people – especially for these people – criminalization isn’t the best solution. If someone’s strung out on drugs, the first question shouldn’t be, “Where did he get them?” It should be, “How can we help him?”

Of course, we can also care where he got them. And we can care about the conditions in the countries where these drugs originated. If we had healthier relationships with these countries, we might find many creative methods to impede the production of these drugs. I’m not actually advocating for a world awash in meth and fentanyl; a substance can still be illegal and scarce, even if decriminalized.

The idea of decriminalizing opiates or meth may sound crazy, but if they were giving away free samples at Costco, I wouldn’t be tempted to try either, simply based on the abundant cautionary tales. I’m only moderately smart, and moderately happy, but would have no trouble making this decision. But if I was a little more neurotic, and/or living in conditions of misery, who knows? A plan to decriminalize drugs will necessarily entail the reduction of all forms of misery, and a greater focus societywide on the fine art of happiness.

Daunting task, for sure, but look at the alternative: Entire countries south of our border brought to their knees. Innocent bystanders forced to flee their ancestral homeland. Prisons full of people whose essential crime was a desire to be happy.

There are ways to intelligently unwind this situation. The legalization of cannabis is a start. Yes, one can definitely abuse cannabis, but no one gets a prison sentence for possession of Marlborough or Budweiser. Cannabis is a non-addictive, nonlethal drug that should never have been classified with lethal substances in the first place.

Given room to experiment with cannabis and other similar substances, many have found benefit, even in micro-doses. As with alcohol, and even table salt, a small dose of these compounds can produce an entirely different effect from a large one. I drink alcohol until I’ve had enough, not until the bottle’s empty.

I also don’t take a drug just because a doctor or pharmaceutical company told me to. Different problem, same idea. Like it or not, this body is my responsibility, and I need to be actively involved in its upkeep. (And, for the record, I definitely got vaccinated.)

And happiness? If I ever figure that out, I’ll open that school promptly. But for now, I’ll suggest that no ingestible substance is inherently good or bad – they can all be used or abused. My morning cup of coffee seems, on balance, to be a good thing. Research is showing that, under proper conditions, psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine can aid in recovery from PTSD and a host of other maladies. As always, it’s a question of dosage, and intent.

We needn’t be quite so afraid of these powerful compounds – and maybe we need to be a little more afraid of some of the common substances we medicate ourselves with. But sometimes, when I’m reaching the bottom of that tub of ice cream, I might mostly just need a sense of humor. We do the best we can.

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I’m admittedly a weird person. I seem to have been born that way, for reasons unclear; but it seems certain that I got a lot weirder after taking psychedelics. And the question has always followed me: how can the one-time administration of a chemical compound produce such lasting effects? It’s weird.

Many others have reported similar experiences with psychedelics, so it’s not my imagination. In his essay, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley suggests that the brain is essentially a “reducing valve”, limiting our neural input to a manageable stream, and that these drugs work by disabling this throttle, causing us to temporarily experience the full magnitude of our existence. In addition to the direct value of this experience, there’s also the happy discovery that we can control this valve, closing it to a pinpoint aperture when we need to “focus”, or opening it wide when we desire to perceive.

Near as I can tell, we’re all born with this valve wide-open, but basic survival requires that we close the throttle to reduce this overwhelming information stream. Many of us eventually forget that the valve is even there; and the most joyous moment of my life was its rediscovery. Long after the effects of the drug dissipated, that knowledge remained.

While psychedelic use is still somewhat rare, alcohol actually has a similar, if messier, effect. And to be clear, these opening doors of perception pertain not only to physical senses, but also to psychic ones. It’s perhaps no coincidence that so many artists and writers are fond of alcohol: it helps them connect with their “muse”.

So who are these muses? Great question! We rarely know their names, but most artists will readily attest to their existence – as will athletes, mathematicians, and anyone else who has aspired to the spark of inspiration they provide. When we connect with our muse, we channel their vision, wisdom, and expertise into whatever we’re attempting. And, whoever they are, if we want their help, we may need to open that valve.

There are undoubtably many ways to learn about and manipulate the reducing valve that is our brain – various drugs, meditation techniques, fasting, therapies, etc. – but it seems many folks don’t even realize that their doors of perception have hinges. Psychedelics made me profoundly aware of this variable, and made me wish everyone knew about it. To go through life experiencing reality through a pinhole can lead to all sorts of sad outcomes.

In the past, I’d held back on full-throated praise of psychedelics, knowing that some would conclude I was a kook and/or drug addict; but I finally realized that this stigma was the result of brainwashing. From 1947 to 1968, LSD was regarded with enthused fascination by researchers, film stars, and even Time magazine, whose publishers had personally experienced its benefits. It’s probable that LSD was a contributing factor in the widespread refusal to fight in the Vietnam War, which, from the government’s view, made it a threat. The ensuing propaganda campaign was quite successful, and to this day most people see LSD as something dangerous and evil. It’s not.

Attitudes are changing, and not a moment too soon. We, as a race, often seem to be sleepwalking – running on habit, instinct, and societal programming, not really noticing where we’re going. We need to open our eyes as wide as we can, to think deeply about what we’re seeing, and to make some courageous decisions. “Mind-expanding” substances shouldn’t be used frivolously, but in the right settings, with the right intentions, can be truly revelatory. And if that results in a society where people are unwilling to march off to the next useless war, I say hallelujah.

Living is easy with eyes closed, they say; being weird is definitely harder, but there are rewards. More pixels on the screen, you might say. More confusion, but also more clarity. And, hopefully, more wise muses to help guide us through this elaborate mystery called life.

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Imagine there are two subsets of human beings – one that believes might makes right, and one that believes right makes might. I’d once assumed that everyone at least aspires to the latter category, but must have been naive: it seems a portion of humanity lives quite happily in the former. I’m not the first person to notice this, but the existence of these “mightyists” presently haunts me as a central conundrum of human existence.

In reality, most of us exist on a continuum between the two beliefs – I could in fact place my every thought and act on that continuum. We have our altruistic impulses, our commitment to truth, justice, and fairness; then we have our interest in self. To be clear, I think self-interest and self-care are and should be our first responsibility: as an incarnation of God, each of us are honored and called to play the lead role in the epic movie of our life. The challenge is to be a Main Character while allowing each other person on the planet to do the same.

For most of us, life is a delicate balancing act on the might-right spectrum, searching for that sweet spot where everybody wins; but for some, the scale seems permanently tipped in the direction of self – for them, there’s only one lead actor, and might is all that matters. These mightyists might be a minority, but they have a disproportionate influence on the human condition. They basically ruin things for everyone. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes these people tick, and how they got that way: is it genetics, or their childhood environment, or dumb luck of circumstance, or a combination of the three? Looking at the most extreme examples and their trails of carnage, I ponder: exactly what creates a human monster?

I suppose the simplest answer is “nature”: the law of the jungle states that the biggest, baddest animal will rule the pack. But some of us, at least, understand that we’re more than mere animals – that other laws apply to human behavior. The mightyists have somehow concluded that these laws don’t exist, or don’t apply to them. They’re behaving exactly as nature intended.

One could also suspect that we’re all latent monsters: the socialist freedom fighter ascends to the seat of power and becomes an authoritarian dictator. But many people wield great power without succumbing to temptation – they’re the ones who usually don’t make the headlines. What makes them tick?

Trying to reduce the entire human story to one of selfishness versus selflessness might seem a gross oversimplification, but, given present circumstances, might be helpful. As the pandemic in various ways upended our stasis, and as the contours of the climate change era become clearer, humanity seems to be more starkly sorting itself into the two camps: those who can care about the entire world, and those who can care only about themselves, and maybe their kin.

Countless books have been written attempting to understand even the meaning of “right”, but I’m trying to keep it simple: the golden rule can be understood by a five-year-old, and states that we should care about others as much as we care about ourselves. We can explain this rule scientifically – 1(person)=1(person) – or in psychological terms, calling it empathy and inclusiveness, or we can get metaphysical and talk about oneness and connection; by any route, we can all understand what it means to care, to “do the right thing”.

And we all struggle. Our mightyist tendencies seem to be encouraged by stressful conditions – given enough cortisol and adrenaline, most anyone will circle the wagons and start distrusting their neighbor. When feeling threatened, our fight-or-flight instincts encourage us to tolerate or even embrace authoritarian leaders whom we might otherwise find repulsive.

Neither our exposure nor our response to stress is uniform, though, and these disparities seem to be increasing the polarization between the mightys and the rightys. The political tension we’re presently experiencing in the US seems to flow not so much from a debate about conservative or liberal policies, but about whether we want a democracy at all. In stark terms, do we want the law of the jungle, or the law of love? It’s a simple question; the mystery is how we come up with such different answers.

This mystery involves questions of nature versus nurture– of how much our moral mindset is mutable, and by what means. Apparently some of us are born mightyists, and there’s presently nothing we can do about such genetic factors, but there are also many cultural influences and feedback loops that encourage either mightyist or moralist tendencies. These group behaviors are complex and fickle – like a flock of birds – but, like the flock, they boil down to many individual choices. Free will is at the heart of the matter, but here we find a wide range of beliefs, and fundamental disagreements.

At the one extreme is a deterministic view of reality: everything that’s happening has in fact already happened, and we’re just trains running down a track. A range of philosophies – from genetic predestination to cosmic predestination to divine predestination – seem to lead to this conclusion, but I remain stubbornly unconvinced.

Some choices I make seem very, very real. They carry moral significance, and I feel their weight as I make them. Is my decision predestined? In the moment, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Perhaps, as incarnations of God, we actually get to decide things.

So for now, maybe we can stipulate that we appear to be making choices. We each write the plot of our lives, struggle with questions of right and might, and make decisions that affect our future timelines. Some of the factors that go into our decision-making are influenceable, and, as part of the flock, our decisions in turn influence everyone else’s.

But what a strange flock we are – each of us morphing in real-time from ducks to hawks to hummingbirds to herons. Human life is crazy complicated because our free will allows us to actually decide what kind of creature we will be.

As you might’ve guessed, I’d prefer a flock of peaceful birds, whose members use their free will in a way that respects others’. This respect is one of the founding principles of democracy, so, however far we fall short of the ideal, I’m still all in on that project. Democracy will always be under siege by the mightyists, but perhaps the world is slowly awakening to the idea that peaceful coexistence is much more fun than war.

So what might we do to convince the mightys to join the party? Or at the least, how can we prevent them from ruining the party? We could work to make democracy an undisputedly superior system, for starters. Make it more efficient, representative, and honest. And in the larger picture, we could work to create a society where might isn’t so highly venerated, but rather placed among the many other virtues one might aspire to – a society based not on pecking order, but on a mutual respect of everyone’s unique personalities and gifts.

And those who consider themselves Christian could understand that true democracy – where the meek inherit the world – is the closest thing to a Christian government we can presently imagine. Even a casual reading of the New Testament makes clear that there’s no such thing as a Christian mightyist.

There’s no getting around it, though: we are animals, driven by biological impulses that pull us in the mightyist direction. We also struggle against millennia of learned behavior, and countless societal incentives. Saying “The devil made me do it” may seem like a poor excuse, but also seems entirely legitimate. But I believe that every human also possesses components and circuitry that run at higher voltages than these animal impulses, as well as “administrative access” capable of overriding these piles of precedent. When these circuits and systems are up and running, we are in a position to be fully human – that is, an incarnation of the divine.

In the Old Testament we find a lovely utopian image: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat”. In the animal kingdom, this probably isn’t going to happen. In the human kingdom, it could.

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Mightyist might just be another name for narcissistic personality disorder, but giving it a different title doesn’t bring us any closer to an understanding, or a cure. Researchers generally agree that there’s a spectrum of narcissism, ranging from healthy to criminal, so from the perspective of the soul, it all comes down to free will and our chosen location on the spectrum. But myriad factors of genetics, biology, sociology, and environment lead us to a place where free will seems anything but free.

A person deep in the grips of a narcissistic personality disorder is completely unaware of their disease, and will deny any need for a cure; but the rest of us would probably like some assurance that we’re on the saner side of the scale. We might try to objectively assess our thoughts and behaviors; but there’s no obvious line of demarcation between healthy and sick narcissism, and people have very different opinions about where it falls.

For me, simply becoming aware of the “mightyist spectrum”, and seeing it as a manifestation of the basic yin-yang duality of the universe, has been helpful. Yang seeks to impose itself on its environment, while yin seeks to harmonize with it. A wise person understands that different situations call for one response or the other – that perseverance sometimes furthers, and othertimes does not – and can fluidly move between the two. Perhaps this flexibility is in fact a key element of what we’d call “healthy narcissism”. I’m working on it.

If, observing our fluidity or stuckness, and our tendencies towards aggressiveness or passivity, we don’t like what we see, what can we change? If we find ourself in an environment plagued by unhealthy competition and self-aggrandizement, we can resolve to be neither perpetrator or victim, and find ways to either change the environment or remove ourself from it. If the problem seems to be centered in our own thoughts and feelings, a good therapist might help. Professionals might suggest any number of medications; but though many have found meds invaluable, they generally seem to address symptoms rather than causes. In the realm of medicines, I’d be more inclined to consider trying psychedelics or related compounds – substances intended to facilitate transformative journeys into awareness.

In the light of awareness, needed changes in behavior and environment often unfold naturally. But there’s a specific, often overlooked, realm of change, sitting at the crossroads of genetics, biology, and sociology, which might be worthy of special attention: our diets. It’s obvious that some things we ingest – alcohol, caffeine, etc. – can have a dramatic effect on our personalities, but we tend to overlook the effects of our everyday diets. Healers the world over have studied these effects for millennia, and they’ve even come up with a slogan: You are what you eat.

Traditional healers consider everything we eat as a medicine – our kitchen as pharmacy. Sometimes, either by habit or necessity, our food prescription simply reads: “whatever’s in front of you”. We’re also drawn to certain foods, which, depending on our clarity of judgment, may be helpful or harmful; but as we notice how our choices in diet are acts of creation, deeply ingrained habits may come up for review.

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and philosophy, foods, and everything else in the universe, can be classified by their yin and yang properties – yang being active, physical, “male” energy, yin denoting the receptive, reflective “feminine” principle. Ideally, we each would have a near-balance of these two energies, some of us manifesting a little more of one, some the other. An excess of either manifests as psychological (as well as physical) pathology, extreme yang leading to intrusive, impulsive behavior, extreme yin manifesting as paranoia and reclusiveness. Science has well-established that these tendencies are baked into our genes, and that a potential violent psychopath can be biologically identified by the age of three; but there are countless environmental variables at play as well, and it’s here that we at least sometimes get to choose.

There are ways in which yin and yang can balance each other out: salty cancels out sweet, and vice versa. But in other ways they don’t cancel – one can be excessively yin and yang at the same time, setting the stage for a “bipolar” mentality of aggressive paranoia. A classic example of a bipolar diet might be one centered on meat and alcohol – a food tradition deeply rooted in northern European and American cultures. I see a correlation between the Mighty Bunch and this very sort of diet. The Righty Bunch, by contrast, can be found dining on vegan quiche and chamomile tea. Is this silly talk? Correlation is not causation, of course, but the connection seems worth exploring.

My sense is that humans span such a wide gamut between yin and yang, and combinations of the two, that, down to our basic physiology and psychology, we’re effectively different creatures. At a cellular level, we’re not all the same; and, whether by causation or correlation, diet seems to play a role, creating a feedback loop between society, our values, and our biology. We eat what people around us are eating, and we eat to enhance aspects of our personality that we, and those around us, value. Our biology is in turn affected by these choices – and then our choices are affected by that biology. In this loop, diet is sometimes the one lever of influence one can readily pull.

America’s response to the pandemic highlighted the importance of meat in our culture – we seemed to have very strong feelings about keeping the meatpacking industry online, even as these facilities emerged as coronavirus hotspots. It’s been noted that we Americans eat a lot more of this very yang substance than many other cultures, and always have; and that we seem unwilling to modify a dietary practice with serious downsides. From my perspective, it’s quite plausible that there’s a link between our country’s extreme fondness for meat, and its long-standing tendency to value might over right.

No, I haven’t run any formal studies; but I’ve run plenty of experiments on myself – as can any meat eater. In popular culture, red meat and carnivore are terms commonly associated, as both the cart and the horse, with aggressiveness. I don’t know if science has a theory to explain this, but Ayurveda (the traditional Hindu system of medicine), classifies meat as rajasic and tamasic – a stimulant for the lower chakras, and depressant of the higher ones. Meat eating can enhance strength and stamina, but these may come with a cost: a numbing of the body, loss of perceptiveness, and blunting of mental clarity. Our choices in diet often involve tradeoffs.

Alcohol, meanwhile, provides a short yang kick, but its actual extreme yin effect becomes evident the next day, manifesting as excessive sensitivity and a desire to hide. TCM and Ayurveda would consider both meat and alcohol to be strong medicines, to be administered with awareness.

As I studied a recent US president strongly associated with hamburgers, something clicked: there appears to be a level of pathological “tamasic yangness” where a person altogether loses touch with questions of morality or rightness – believing that, with sufficient might, questions of right become irrelevant. In their worldview, the most aggressive top-of-the-food-chain creatures deserve to win, and the snowflake vegan pacifists were born to lose. It’s just Darwin, darling – T Rex doesn’t want or need a moral compass. While some struggle to understand why the ex-president enjoys such popularity with his base, one explanation might be that they’re simply drawn to this portrayal of pure yang toughness, even if their personal beliefs are more nuanced.

Of course, reality is more complicated than a single yin-yang continuum: there are gentle people who eat hamburgers, and Hitler was apparently a vegetarian. Meat is not the only consequential substance we ingest, one’s thoughts and intentions surely count for alot, and there are numerous other factors of nature and nurture to consider. But we’ve probably all encountered people who seem built for dominance, embodying aggression down to the cellular level, and had the sense we were dealing with a carnivore. Add in large amounts of alcohol – or diet soda – and you can end up with a person who careens between self-centered belligerence and a vivid persecution complex.

Our country, unfortunately, has a long tradition of over-venerating such people and attitudes. (Oh say can you see….) It seems the United States has been running, right from the start, down two separate tracks – one embracing lofty ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity; the other embracing the ethos of the venomous snake: I’m lawyered and gunned and missiled up, so don’t tread on me.

This second track is a bit foreign for me – possibly the result of ten years of strict vegetarianism as a young adult. While I certainly can be selfish and short-tempered, I’m often at the other end of the scale – worrying excessively about offending people (I wish I could make this blog less offensive!), and having a sometimes agonized concern about what is and isn’t “fair”. For me, “Love your neighbor as yourself” articulates a simple fact of life: that all humans have the same basic needs; and that, considered objectively, the goal of life should be to meet the most needs of the most people. It’s been hard for me to understand that, for some portion of humanity, that’s not the goal at all.

For the extreme mightyist, rule of law and justice are merely tools to be deployed in the pursuit of power – the king of virtues, the focus of ultimate allegiance. Their God is a mighty God – the inspiration and justification for their domineering ways. With circular logic and self-fulfilling prophecies, the mightyist portrays their often ill-gotten wealth as evidence of God’s favor, “manifest destiny” giving a cloak of respectability to animalistic behavior. The mighty take what they want, rewrite history to whitewash their misdeeds, and then build temples to honor a God created in their image.

I’ve never personally met a 100% pure mightyist – someone who’s truly “all me, all the time” – but have come to realize that they do exist – mostly in the upper echelons of society that I never visit. Not all mightyists are wealthy, but it’s at least an aspiration, so they’re often found feeding wherever money is concentrated. We glimpse them getting out of limousines.

An awareness of our mightiest tendencies is helping me understand how we’ve ended up with a country where lying is essentially normalized. A righty, by definition, seeks to know the facts; to the mightyist, a lie is only “bad” if it makes you lose. And so we lie, not just to others, but to ourselves. It’s as if the country’s long-standing habits of aggression and selfishness have been turned inward: the snake is devouring itself. And in the coming age of AI trickery, these lies will become voracious.

Perhaps this is our long-postponed moment of reckoning, when the country – actually, the planet – must collectively decide which track it’s going to continue on – the zero-sum pursuit of power and wealth, or an enlightened dedication to justice and the common good. It’s our choice: over the next few years, our elections will likely play out as passionately confused referendums on might vs. right. Will it be World War III, or would we like to try something different?

So… am I trying to suggest this would all sort itself out if we just became tee-totaling vegetarians? Not hardly. Questions about diet point to larger issues of values, balance, and choice. We, as individuals and as countries, could pay closer attention to our choices – to our reasons for making them, and to their downstream consequences. Through the thousands of choices we make each day, we create ourselves. With a little more awareness, we might start making choices that reflect a more mature and humane point of view: That kindness and fairness are ultimately more powerful than coercion and oppression. That humans are governed by moral verities higher and more fulfilling than the law of the jungle. That the highest human law, and power, is, actually, love.

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Politics are crazy. Crazymaking. A democracy, by definition, requires the participation of its citizens, but I’m torn between a desire to engage and a need to run away fast. Whether it’s local or international politics, I attempt to understand the endless elaborate dramedies, but suspect they may be beyond human comprehension. One can understand the allure of a simple authoritarian dictatorship, yet the quickest glance at history reveals the failings of that solution. So our democracies stumble along, their warmest endorsement being “It’s better than the alternative”.

At a highpoint of craziness, election night, USA, 2020, a sense of equanimity came over me. In the larger scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter, does it? If Greenland melts, if humankind regresses back to the Middle Ages – this too shall pass. This wasn’t a descent into nihilism, but more along the lines of the serenity prayer. I personally would have preferred a different movie, but it wasn’t my call.

A key cause of this craziness may be found in the way politics, particularly in the US, are treated as a sport. People can be insanely passionate about team sports – they tap in to a powerful part of our psyche, apparently, inspiring us to root for the home team no matter how many times they lose. When politics is reduced to a blue team and a red team, not much else seems to matter. Somehow, someway, people need to stop viewing politics as a sport.

I cringe to even use the words liberal or conservative, the labels seem so meaningless. They reduce our personalities to stoplights – with the yellow light missing – and nothing in the real world is that simple. I’m liberal about some things, conservative about others. I use my gas pedal, I use my brakes, and the two pedals don’t consider themselves enemies.

Fast-forward a few years from that surreal election, and it’s as if our team enmity has devolved into a soccer game riot – it scarcely seems to matter where or what the goal boxes are, or who’s pursuing which. If a primary function of democracy is to resolve differences without violence, its foundational requirement is a people who don’t relish violence.

A root cause of this slugfest mentality is surely the toxic symbiotic relationship between media producers and consumers: conflict is inherently exciting, and therefore entertaining, and therefore profitable. Media conglomerates are locked into an ever-escalating race to cater to our appetite for conflict and drama; and though people frequently decry this toxic spiral, no one has found a way to stop it – because stopping it will require a complete rewiring of our relationship with conflict. We may need to accept that adrenaline, like sugar, shouldn’t be the mainstay of our diet.

There are, of course, some who don’t approach politics as a game at all – and there are plenty of “public servants” who are just that. Perhaps the unsung heroes of politics are those who identify as Independents, who refuse to be drawn into the mindless adversarialism – joining those heroes of journalism whose primary loyalty is to facts.

This team/contest mentality, and the resulting damage, of course extends to international relations. We can continue to labor in this reality, battling foes both real and imagined, but the world will never really be a happy place as long as we do.

Am I suggesting this world could be a happy place? Well heck, yeah – or at least a lot happier. And I mean for everyone. It’s hard to party when someone nearby is suffering – and in this shrinking world, everybody is nearby. When the other team loses, you lose; and vice versa.

When we ditch the zero-sum contest mentality, endless possibility presents itself. Humans are often at their best when collaborating, which doesn’t happen between adversaries. All this requires trust, which makes trust a precious commodity indeed.

A shared reality seems to be a prerequisite for trust. Folks lately seem to have a hard time separating different spheres of their lives – fact and fantasy, authenticity and acting, sports, politics and religion all getting smeared together in an endless stream of entertainment. It might be helpful if we could be more aware of which “channel” we’re watching; they all have their place, but they’re not all the same.

And in the larger picture, it might be helpful to remember that we, individually and collectively, are making a movie with the working title “The Humans”. We’re the writers, producers, directors, and actors. If we want it to be a drama, or a comedy, or a military saga, or a horror story, so be it – it’s our movie. My vote? How about a feel-good rags-to-riches story, full of clever heroism, passionate romance, and laugh-out-loud humor. No villain required.

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From the data stream this week, two items are stuck in my brain. First, an article about cobalt mining in Congo, featuring barefoot children, toxic chemicals, and armed guards. Then, on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, the Biden administration released its proposed 2022 defense budget of $750,000,000 (update! 2023 budget: 847b). While perhaps forgettable individually, the two items, blended together, ignited, forming a red-hot conscience-searing ball of shame.

I’m writing on a computer powered by lithium batteries created from these cobalt mines. That’s crazy enough, but then I think about the electric vehicles I’m so excited about, each of which will use hundreds of laptops’ worth of batteries. I may choose to be barefoot while motoring in my Tesla, but shouldn’t the children in the cobalt mines have the option of wearing shoes?

I’ve always been taught to believe that America is a good country, and Americans good people, and then I’m confronted with this flaming affront to our humanity. People talk about the defense budget as an abstraction, but we can note that this amount of money could purchase 10 billion $75 shoes, or 100 billion $7.50 shoes. So our defense budget, if not otherwise allocated, could purchase 10 pair of flip-flops for every person on the planet. Yet these children have no shoes.

I get all worked up about the defense budget, and am puzzled why most Americans seem okay with it. It’s kind of a third rail of politics, but we must understand that its importance goes beyond the “mere” dollar amount. If the United States considers itself some kind of role model, how does it explain spending as much on its defense as almost the rest of the world combined? It’s like a raging alcoholic telling his kids not to drink.

Aside from promoting the idea that killing machines are good and useful, there’s the brutal fact that all this money could be spent elsewhere. I wonder if anyone’s formally compared the benefits of monetary diplomacy and militarism. I’m no social scientist, but there seems to be no contest: $750 billion per year could buy an awful lot of goodwill. No one would be interested in going to war with us.

Instead, we have a world that holds many valid grievances towards the United States, where we in turn seem to feel an inordinate need to protect ourselves. Perhaps we should at least consider “fewer enemies” as a possible defense strategy.

None of this is meant to depreciate the bravery and sacrifice of American service people, both past and present. But everyone involved, from the Commander in Chief on down, might agree that there could be, at least in theory, better ways to resolve our conflicts. As General Eisenhower warned, the military-industrial complex has become a runaway train, and no one knows how to stop it.

In our modern interconnected world, money is the ultimate weapon, and, right now, money is being squandered. It’s not being spent where it should be, and it’s being wasted on vanity and folly. Even if our military might is never deployed, we’ve already lost the monetary battle, through a thousand billion self-inflicted wounds.

Of course, the military isn’t the only culprit here. The manufacturers of our treasured electronic devices also deal in trillion-dollar budgets, and here again we, the proud people of America, come out looking pretty bad. The biggest of these companies, for some reason, are American, which means we have legal and legislative jurisdiction over them – they pillage and plunder with our blessings.

It’s a big country, and I’m just one person. I write my Congressman, and contribute a few words to the digital torrent, and wonder what I could possibly do to induce someone living comfortably near a military base in Georgia to care that five-year-old laborers in Conga are sloshing around toxic cobalt mines with no shoes. Or to encourage civilized people everywhere to rise up against Apple and demand that they immediately divert $50 billion (lunch money) to improving conditions in their supply chains.

The amazing – and encouraging – thing is that the money’s already there, in the US treasury, and on these huge corporations’ balance sheets. It just needs to be directed somewhere smart. Think different, as they say.

So why are Americans – so many professing to be Christians – seemingly so unable to care about the world outside their backyard? They read their Bible, yet somehow fail to grasp its most basic message. Love, charity, forgiveness – I’m sure many Christians work hard to apply these precepts in some areas of their lives. But these things aren’t just for your family and friends; in fact, in Jesus’ view, that kind of love barely counts as love at all. Real love would be expressed towards a person in Congo or Columbia or Cambodia that you’ve never met, who will never be able to repay you.

And to the secular Americans who follow their own moral map, I have to ask, Is this really what you want? Money talks loudly in the secular world, and in the defense industry we have a case of trillions of misspent dollars. Pandemics, climate disasters, mass migration, war: all these things come with hefty price tags – prices that, if we were smart, we wouldn’t have to pay. Ounces of prevention could save us tons of cure. And then, as an added benefit, we could someday stop having to pretend we don’t see or feel these cauldrons of suffering and injustice burning around the world. We could at least buy the kids some shoes.

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