In the late 1940's President Harry Truman first proposed the idea of a single-payer government sponsored universal health care system - think of where we would be if he had been successful. Perhaps our nation's health would be up there with the Scandinavians or at least the Canadians or maybe the British. and we would be a hell of a lot richer if we had invested the money we would have saved.
But wait! you say. Think of all the drugs and surgical techniques we would not have - all of them obviously developed because the MDs who thought them up would looking at the fortunes they would accrue. Just think we might not have Gatorade - or maybe Viagra - or the multiple med mixtures the pharmas use to keep their patents current.
Of course its the "American Way" for a few to get rich on the misery of the many - especially if the richest are those who have nothing directly to do with medical care - AIG, The Hartford, and other medical insurance offerers, for example.
With the ridiculously high cost of health insurance and health care, the business community has found itself paying so much for its employees that many of its members cannot compete in the Global Market and the decades-long obvious success of the Medicare system (The MEDICARE part is supposed to be and mostly is self-financed) has shown how successful a single-payer ystem can be. If the entire population of the US (young. old, healthy, and sick) were covered - the per-capita cost should be somewhat lower than that of Medicare - which only covers those older Americans, who are also incidentally, the group in the poorest health.
So far as I can see, nothing would prohibit the rich from paying for the extra care they are accustomed to.
The idea of "competition" is another absurdity - How many people do you know who shop around before they get their kidney stone removed or their broken leg re-set? Many of us "shop around" for our primary physician- but I never heard of cost being a major factor

Time for a more-or-less personal update.
My wife and I are financing her Grand niece's venture into Organic Farming.
The niece's grandfather's family has owned a small farm in southern NH since 1940. It was used as a summer home and never farmed - but the high-bush blueberries, pear, and apple trees were rather casually maintained and the maples were sugared out every winter by the next door farmer who looked after the place for most of the year. After my sister-in-law died six years ago, the place has not been visited for more than a week or so (twice) and been allowed to fall into disrepair. The next-door farmer died but neighbors have keep the fields cut (and the blueberries, pears and apples eaten). The 160 year-old barn collapsed a couple of winters ago.
My G-niece has been interested enough in organic farming to take it very seriously since her graduation from college in '06, she has has interned on a OR organic farm, worked for the SW Conservation Corps and acted as foreman at a successful organic farm here in FL.
She and her BF drove his '62 pickup and her '98 mini-van up last month, have settled in, gotten seeds in the ground, and are hard at work - using a borrowed tractor. They are constructing a greenhouse (The BF is an expert woodworker) and applying for space in this coming summer's local farmer's markets. He is starting a woodworking shop.
Their 160 year-old farmhouse is in good repair, so she can concentrate on the farming part. I'll post an update from time to time.
We will stop by and see how they are doing when we drive to ME at the end of next month.

This week Socrates_Cafe asks:
1. Who am I?
2. What interests me?
3. What do I know? Where have I been?
4. What is the most Important/Dramatic/Horrible/Best/ thing that ever happened to me?
5. What will happen to me?

If you've checked my profile here you know I've briefly answered most of these questions. I think I'll elaborate on a few and perhaps concentrate on on the best thing(s) that ever happened to me.

Who am I and what interests me?
Well, first off, I'm a sort of polymath. I've been a lot more interested in learning than I have been driven to accomplish. I've attended and studied at schools ranging from the USMMA to Harvard. I managed to meet and talk with high government officials (one-on-one with a Sec. of State long ago) Presidential advisers, religious leaders (I was once the Director of Religious Education for my local church) communists, mass murderers, military heros, the very rich and the very poor. In short, In my long life, I've been around.
I'm a member of AHA, Phi Alpha theta, TNS, and Mensa. My college fraternity was TKE. I was a member of the NRA until they went all strange (pretty good shot - mostly pistols)
I'm mostly fascinated by society, politics, religion, and the frontiers of science. I liked to sail when I was physically able, and I still like to paint.
As a sailor, later as a teacher, and since, I've had to opportunity to visit most of the world - and took advantage of every opportunity. I've been to Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia many times, but still find North America the most beautiful part of the world.

What's the best thing(s) that ever happened to me?
The first happened when I was a lowly private in the Army. I was on orders to go to Iceland (not my first choice).
I actually went AWOL for the afternoon, took a bus to the Pentagon, found someone to complain to and within 24 hours was on my way to Ft. Eustice, VA. There I found my way to the faculty of the Army Transportation School. There I taught Seamanship and Navigation for the next two years. This introduced me to teaching - a vocation I loved, still love, and one I have a natural flair for. After my enlistment was up, I left the Army (they wanted me to stay - offered me a Warrant or a civilian GS-5) and went back to college on the GI Bill.
I stayed for a couple of degrees and than began to teach. I taught for the next thirty years and retired. My wife and I have studied, traveled, and played ever since, as in fact, we did when we were teaching.
Which brings me to the other best thing; My wife and I met in our thirties and quickly discovered we were Socrates' perfect halves (Plato's Symposium- look it up) We've lived happily ever after.

That's me - or at least as much as you need to know right now

When is the use of deadly force justified? is the question currently asked at Socrates Cafe.

Some thought brings to mind several circumstances when a moral person might , however reluctantly, take the life of another human:
a. When it's his life or mine - most of us feel self-protection justifies killing another.
b. To protect my loved ones - another case where tradition justifies such killing.
c. It's my patriotic duty - a member of the armed forces must obey a lawful order to use deadly force.
d. To protect society - A policeman or deputized citizen is authorized to use such force under certain circumstances.
e. The "Rabid Dog" concept - A sort of sub-set of (a.) above. The person killed is so dangerous they must be killed.
f. The idea of shooting to protect property after warning the trespasser - This, in the American legal system, only applies if the home-owner feels they are in imminent danger.
g. Another area of this question is the definition of "life". Can a person who is not alive be killed?
h. Yet another is the expansion of "deadly force" to include action against non-humans. Should humans be allowed to kill other species? Under what conditions other than those mentioned above?

Should the use of deadly force be further limited - if so which of those conditions mentioned above would you limit?

Fulfillment is not, IMHO a label dependent on other's opinions. A person can be perfectly content and fulfilled even when others question: "Why didn't you accomplish more?", or "How can you live with that on your conscience?", or "How can you base your life on that superstitious nonsense?"

This raises the question: How much should society's expectations influence your sense of personal fulfillment - How much is satisfaction and personal fulfillment based on what you have been told it should be?

Are there any Social, Moral, or Religious necessities for anyone's fulfillment? What are they?

For me - A fulfilled life is purely subjective - A life I am satisfied with; one in which my goals have been or are being accomplished. A life with which I am happy and a future I look forward to. How about you?

I've been watching a lot of political TV lately - CSpan, CNN, CNBC, Fox-News, Bloomberg, that sort of thing. Beyond all the shouting, I've noticed a rising mention of the International aspect of this financial fiasco. In the 1920's there was a European financial collapse - made worse by our collapse in 1929. That economic unrest was a major factor in the rise of totalitarian states that led to WW2 and managed to cause the death of 70-100M people and a generation of horror for most of the rest of us.

All around the world there seems to be a rising disconnect between the actions and policies of national governments and the needs and demands of their citizens. This is the classic situation leading to the rise of demagogues and this type of leader is most likely the be both aggressive, chauvinistic, and eager to dominate their country and area of the world.
We already have several on-going examples ranging from Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela to Osama Bin Laden.
these and their ilk seek to overthrow the existing order in the name of "the people", Religion, National Pride, or whatever gains them their desired following. When the people of an area feel that they are not served by their existing government - they are ready to follow the New Leader.

The U.S. is one of the few national governments with a built-in framework for political revolution (every four years) and thus is able to discourage the rise of radical demagogues while providing for fairly quick institutional change - that is perhaps how we have been able to have the most "progressively stable" government and economic systems in the world. Unfortunately we are now so powerful with so many world-wide comittments that we are vulnerable to attack in most of the world's regions and thus must take the lead in stabilizing world-wide economic systems.
Should we accept that responsibility?

In our modern society, probably nothing is as divisive as the gap between those who live in the digital online world and those who either ignore modern communications or regard computers, cellphones, blackberries, etc. as simply tools to make life a little easier and things move a little faster.

The Digital Natives literally live in a very different world. Their world is one of constant information over-load, instant self-assertion, and bombardment of conflicting opinions. They are subject to continual assaults of malicious intent, an almost total lack of real privacy, the fact that their on-line activities are almost always permanently recorded for posterity, and where "All opinions are created equal" with little oversight or protection.

Digital Natives realize the almost unlimited expansion of creativity possible in their world and also tend to be fairly uncritical of information posted on their world's websites. This attitude coupled with a woeful lack of understanding of the boundaries, pitfalls, and possibilities of the digital world by teachers and other supervising adults (These Digital Natives tend to be born since 1980 and most are probably still in school) has led to confusion, conflict, and rejection of any supervision.

The digital Natives are suspicious of authority not their own, very aggressive in demanding "digital freedom" and contemptuous of all attempts to constrain their world.

We have the beginnings of a world of perfect Anarchy right in the midst of a "real" world which is becoming more and more regimented and regulated - at least I hope we have.

Should we bail out banks that have over-extended themselves or made stupid financial decisions?

First off, what do we mean by "Bank Bailout? The word Bank covers a number of very different kinds of financial institutions. Most of the banks covered in the "Bailout" which is currently making so much news are Investment Banks or very large Commercial/investment hybrids who have lost capitalization through poor mortgage derivative investments or guarantees.
The Great Depression (1929-40) led to pretty strict US banking laws which strictly prohibited Commercial Banks from engaging in investing or backing investments but starting in the 1980's investment and commercial banks were allowed to more-or-less combine and large hybrids were encouraged to absorb smaller institutions until we have the Bank Americas and Citi-Banks of today which have been deemed "To big to be allowed to fail" as has the strange AIG insurance, bank, investment conglomerate. In addition we have a couple of quasi-government institutions: Fanny May (The Federal National Mortgage Corp.) and Freddie Mac (The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.) These two stock-holder owned but federally guaranteed corporations are supposed to purchase mortgages from banks so as to free the bank's funds to make more mortgages. Of course Fanny and Freddie can't be allowed to go under either.
We are left with a dilemma: If the giant institutions that underwrite our financial activity - or at least the major part of it, are allowed to fail, how do we manage to rebuild the economy without entirely disrupting our citizens' lives and causing much hardship to people whose only fault is that they tended to believe the "experts" and give them too free a use of their money?
We more-or-less have to bail out these "malefactors of great wealth" whose main goal seems to have been to lend as much as possible no matter what the risk and then try to pass the risk on before the inevitable collapse. The institutions asking for the bailout are those who got stuck with the bad paper.
Any "Bail-out" must come with strict and enforced regulation and supervision. Most of the profits lost were only on paper but that paper will eventually have to be redeemed sometime in the future.
As for those who got us in this mess or who jumped to take advantage of our stupidity - Off with their heads!

The existence of some kind of supernatural force - God, Goddess, Gods, Great Spirits, etc. seems to be an almost universal belief of Humans.
I have in my hand a reproduction of one of the earliest known representations of such a being. The original is a figure of a very fat woman with exaggerated sexual characteristics and wearing an elaborate braided or woven headdress. It's about four inches long and the original was probably made of mammoth ivory. My cast reproduction is old-ivory colored plastic. The original was found in East-Central Europe and dates from the "reindeer age" 15,000 -30,000 years ago.
Next to it on my desk is an Ancient Egyptian "Ushtabi figure". It is about 1.75 inches high made of green fired fiance (sand glass) and was buried with a mummy perhaps 2500-2800 years ago. In appearance it is moulded to represent the deceased in the shape of Osirus . It was supposed to be a home for the Ka spirit of the deceased until its final awakening.
These artifacts are physical proof in ancient belief in the supernatural. We can use this evidence of such long-standing belief to rationally argue in favor of the real existence of such forces and also find a clue about their relationship to humanity.
Since each human seems to envision the supernatural in their own terms, there seems to be some psychological imperative at work here. A rationalist might say that "Man creates God in his own image". A theologian might suggest that this universal need is the best proof that God resides within each of us. This religious concept is an aspect of religious philosophical explanation. Its formal name is "Personalism" and the idea's origins are as old as the concept of philosophy itself.
Summary:
1. Archeological evidence seems to show some sort of belief in supernatural power is as old as humanity.
2. The nature of these beliefs are as varied as humanity. Each of us has their own definition of the supernatural.
3. Each human culture seems to have organized the beliefs in the supernatural in such as way as to be the most practical or helpful to their culture.
4. Logically, this seems to indicate that the supernatural is a basic part of human nature.
5. The God we envision is as real as, for example, the number four. We individual humans are the creators of and proof of the reality of our Gods.

I suppose its time for some kind of personal report - Of which I don't do very many.
We drove back down from our summer/fall cabin in Down-East Maine last October, enjoying the Fall colors as we drove down through the mountains. (Did you know you can avoid heavy traffic and hassles most of the way? Just stay off inter-states and away from the cities.)
Traveling when one of you is wheel-chair bound is somewhat of a challenge, but we manage pretty well - hint: check out so-called handicapped rooms before you sign in- they are often foolishly awkward and insufficient. The best bet is generally to book the largest room available - more room for the w/chair.
Our place here somehow managed to grow a hardwood floor - carpet was very hard going with the afore mentioned w/chair. Our local relatives (nephew & grand nephew) carefully supervised the installation and we are delighted with the result.
As usual, late Fall and Winter have meant medical stuff - mostly ophthalmologic this year. My wife had to have her cataract surgery re-YAG lasered (pretty common - so did I before we left) and the MD discovered that her Fouk's disease was acting up so I do a lot of eye-drop applying.
We had our family over for a lobster feast on Christmas Eve - a family tradition. I boiled them on the deck and everyone got delightfully messy doing battle with the results. Strangely enough, the cost of live lobsters here in Florida isn't much higher than it was last summer in Maine.
We often drive down to the Gulf - they are leading the annual flight of Whooping Cranes in this weekend, but we won't go down to see them - to large a crowd. A couple of years ago we were on the beach at St. George Island and a juvenile whooper landed only a few yards from us - he hung around for an hour until another whooper flapped in and collected him. They are huge birds - can you imagine, he stood over five feet high. Seemed interested in watching the fishermen (who ignored him) I think he wanted a handout.
When they fly the young Whoopers down, the ultra-light pilots who lead the way, have to dress up in a sort of whooper costume so the birds won't imprint on them as humans. The ultra-light planes are painted white with whooping crane markings.
The one we saw close-up was certainly not afraid of humans
It's cold today and a troop of much smaller birds just cleaned out our feeder.

The U.S. is very probably going to undergo drastic political, financial, and social changes in the next couple of years - and not necessarily those they would have preferred.
Barak Obama was elected to lead the country in a new direction but events have overtaken him and the best he will be able to do is hurry to get in front of the parade and perhaps try to influence it's course. Fortunately he seems to be a thoughtful type with some idea of where he wants to go. I wish him well.

Directions we should take:
1. Correct the oversight abuses and shortcomings that have contributed to the economic downturn. It is unlikely that much can be done to reverse the economy, but at least the government can act to keep it from getting worse.
2. Move toward a universal single-payer healthcare system. This will be very difficult but our children will thank us.
3. Renew the physical and intellectual infrastructure - from the power grid and roads to the educational system
4. Completely revise our foreign policy so as to correct as many of the blunders of the past decade as possible.
5. And most difficult of all: Try to calm the unreasoning suspicion and fear in the American people that has been so carefully encouraged so as to keep us compliant and docile.

Socrates Cafe has asked the question:
What will be the most important change be during this coming year:
1.In the World?
2.In the United States?
3.In your personal life?
I will comment on the first two; the third will naturally follow what happens in the World and US during the next year.

I think there will be a more positive World opinion regarding the U.S. - It would, after all, be difficult go much lower in world esteem. The World seems to have a certain concept of what the U.S. is and how it should act. Our actions during the past century were for the most part pretty positive; we generally abandoned colonialism, made a sincere effort to achieve "good neighbor" status with our western hemisphere neighbors, and after a slow start, became a world leader in espousing national self-rule and democracy. Because of our open society and self-developed wealth, the U.S. became one of the most desirable places to immigrate to.

Unfortunately, U.S. actions during the past decade have almost destroyed the favorable image and friendships we had so carefully built up, but this favorable image will be fairly easy to reestablish - simply stop doing all those things which so infuriate our friends and stop labeling all those who are not 100% with us as enemies.

A major change in internal attitudes will be necessary for these things to happen, and I see clear indications that our attitude is changing - especially one from paranoid fear (Which is unnatural for Americans and is probably politically induced by the paranoid attitudes of some of our resident politicians) to a more realistic view of the world and our place in it.
Twenty years ago, did you think you would be required to remove your shoes before boarding a plane? Is that common practice throughout the world?

I see a new more hopeful America emerging - and leading the world once again - by example, not force.

Why do we tend to define ourselves and others by their material possessions? What part does materialism play in your life?
I suspect our over-dependance on bling as a means of classifying a persons worth and social standing is in part because we are a very mobile society. Most of us Americans move to new locations or into new social circles fairly frequently - often with no links to the new situation. That and the lack of an established aristocracy lead us to identify the others we meet by the apparent social standing indicated by their possessions. Lower class people tend to look first at shoes as an indication of where their acquaintances fit, for example. The other social classes use shoes, clothing, car, house type and location, and so on. It's not surprising that "Keeping up with the Jones's" has become a national pastime and has become an almost universal habit. No doubt it is a major factor in the absurd levels of outstanding personal debt and the near collapse of our entire credit-based financial system - right down to the retail level.
Personally, I feel disgustingly virtuous regarding this attitude. My wife and I have always been under-clothed, under-housed, and under-autoed for our entire married life. This is, I suspect, in part because we were brought up during the Great Depression but it is mainly because we have always followed the "Measure the Pleasure" doctrine and cared little for other's attitudes and judgments.
An amusing example: My wife was looking for a new pair of comfortable shoes. the most comfortable she could find were Mephistos. We were amazed at the comments of her pretty well heeled (sic) friends - many of whom immediately noticed them. They (the shoes) wore out pretty quickly and she did not get another pair as she considered them of inferior quality.
Our rule for Christmas presents: "If you can't eat it, wear it, or Drink it, don't buy it. We have too much stuff already"

The recent and continuing world economic collapse and Barak Obama's recent election brings to the front questions about Laissez Faire Capitalism and America's economic future.
America's economic history is one where individual enterprise in the economic resources of our land has allowed us to build from a frontier-dominated agrarian society through a fully-developed industrialized country taking full use of our natural resources to become the world's industrial leader and become an industrial, political, and economic superpower.

After some struggle we have managed to balance the rights of the individual entrepreneur and those of his workers and society as a whole while still encouraging maximum capital and financial growth - growth unmatched in the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this has been achieved at the expense of massive resource consumption - so much that our basic industries and infrastructure now demand massive imports of resources (mainly oil) from sources we no longer control.

As industrial growth and manufacturing, the past mainstays of the capitalistic system, have become less competitive with other developing and industrializing nations, America has turned more and more to financial and information control to take the place of our declining industrial manufacturing base.

In the last great world-wide depression (1920s-30s), America was still a solidly industrial/manufacturing economy with an agricultural base. In the past eighty years the farm population has declined from about 38% of our population to less than 5%. Industrial worker population has also shown a significant reduction (from about 35% of the working population to less than 25%) During the same period employment in the Wholesale/retail trade, service,financial, and information areas has soared. The implication of this demographic change is that some of the "New Deal" programs and other economic "fixes" are no longer relevant and won't work.

Apparently the financial experts don't have a very good idea of what is needed to correct this apparent collapse of traditional laissez faire capitalism. How do you rebuild an economy that is focused on the manipulation of the finances and banking systems that have begun to fail? Is their failure because they no longer had a strong growing manufacturing and agricultural base; or is it the result of ever-expanding "patching" of the financial base designed to hide problems and make it seem as if our economy was growing when it really wasn't?

Perhaps we need to re-define what is meant by a "growing economy". Certainly the World economy is expanding but perhaps we need to look more closely at what Thomas Friedman calls the new Flat Earth Economics - an economic landscape where the developed areas - US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan - no longer have much advantage over the newly developing economies of Asia.

Can we, by tightening up our own economic base, maintain our own standards of living or must we resign ourselves to parity with your average Chinese or Korean worker? How?

Any suggestions for our new President?

The main purpose of any political campaign is obviously to get the candidate elected to political office. Why the candidate is running probably determines the tactics used. These tactics generally fall into one or more of the following:
Vote for me - I'm better/more qualified than those other guys.
Vote for me - My opponent is a much worse choice- he's not qualified.
Vote for me - You know me and know I'm just like you/ have the same interests you have
Vote for me - I have the best solutions to all your problems, and will solve them.

The reasons a candidate may run for a particular office may be because,
1. He's drafted by his supporters/ political party
2. This election is a stepping stone to other political office, or
3.He thinks he's the best person for this position.
The third reason is probably far and away the most common reason for running for office - I'm discounting running because of some illegal or selfish reason. The reason the candidate is running will have something to do with the political strategy but that strategy most often falls into one of two kinds:
1.I'm running on my own merits
2. I'm running because the terrible lack of qualifications of that other guy

When dealing directly with voters the campaign will probably stress the candidates competence - the other guy's incompetence or stress the "Just Like You" factor, or claim to have the voters' interests at heart and promise to solve their problems.
If the candidate decides to "go negative" he has the problem of voter alienation and must decide if his tearing down of the other guy will help his candidacy more than it will turn off possible supporters. Cleverly developed negative campaigning has been successful in the past several presidential elections and demonstrates just how fractured the modern American sense of morality has become. It will be interesting to see how far it will take the candidates in the present election

What have the current campaigns done that could be considered immoral during this election?

This week Socrates_Cafe is discussing the amount of government regulation our Capitalistic economy should have.
Capitalism is an interesting concept. In its most basic form it simply refers to private ownership of the means of production (anything from a farm to a multinational bank).
In trying to explain and integrate economics and history, Karl Marx - an interesting social philosopher- saw it as the main driving force in society and history. He, being a poor man, an exile, and upset over the very repressive government actions toward people trying to organize more democratic governments and labor organizations, tended to see Capitalism as an evil and blame the world's troubles on capitalists.
While Marx and the communist governments and organizations he engendered are now mostly discredited and gone, the idea that somehow capitalism is a bad thing remains. This idea is exacerbated by the actions of some who take advantage of the relative inequality between bosses and workers, sellers and buyers, borrowers and lenders, etc.
When you add the competition we have seen between competing capitalists and the extremes they will go to part us from our share of wealth, you can see why most governments who feel responsible for their citizens make some effort to level the playing field by requiring certain  restraints on economic activity. Sometimes this is to protect the capitalists from themselves as well as controlling their unrestricted activities which impact the whole society.
Unfortunately, since about 1980 in the U.S., the idea of government restrictions on economic activity has been seen as undesirable and many sensible restrictions, such as capitalization requirements (A Bank should not lend out more money than it holds for its depositors, for example) have been weakened or discarded. In addition capitalists have been generally favored over their employees and government competition with private banks - such as Social Security - has been discouraged.
Too little regulation and supervision led to world-wide excesses and "Kiting (using owed debt as capital and borrowing against borrowed funds - thus turning one dollar into two, three, or ten, hoping that no one will ever demand payment - at least until you can sell the debt to some other poor sucker)
This probably some of the thinking behind the borrowing (and lending) of mortgages the borrower had no hope of ever repaying - he hoped to sell the house before his debt came due.
Since Capitalism is the name for a central part of every society's economy, it will certainly not fade away anytime soon - the alternatives such as communism and fascism have proved self-destructive.
I think most debt in America is currently credit card debt which has been allowed to build beyond belief. The collapse of that tower of cards is probably imminent, but I don't think you will hear any politicians talking about it. telling the voters they will have to give up their VISA card will not get you elected.

Senator McCain knows he is following the time-honored custom of "Reassuring the troops" with his claim that the U.S. economy is "Basically sound". Senator Obama will undoubtedly follow suit with the caveat that any problems are fixable.
Well, IMHO the problems are not easily fixable and we are in for a rocky ride - worldwide.

The recent problems in the U.S. have a fundamental philosophic base: How far can laissez faire be allowed to go in a modern complex economy? Should basic economic institutions be politically regulated or should entrepreneurs be allowed to operate freely without political restraint?
Most modern developed nations put some restraints on their economic institutions - often by regulating or administering the basic banking systems.
In recent years the U.S. has loosened its control over both the banking system and the stock markets, allowing both bankers and entrepreneurs much greater freedom to seek profits in risky areas.

This has had two effects: Much greater possible market fluctuations and much less protection for individual and institutional investors. The decades-long rise in market value has led economic institutions and individuals to make risker and risker investments and greatly inflated the perceived value of both stocks and, most notably, real estate.

Has this governmental attitude led to serious economic problems?
To what extent can the national government now act to correct and calm down the sudden negative changes in the economy?

Social Class
This concept is simply a sort of shorthand description of where each of us fits in or culture’s “pecking order”. As is the case with many species, it is partially self-determined, but mostly the result of the social judgments and attitudes of our friends and neighbors.

Traditionally, this is the result of centuries of sorting out. In Europe the class systems have been pretty clearly defined: An Upper, aristocratic class of land and title holders who pretty much dominated the lower classes.
A sort of Middle class of artisans and merchants who in Renaissance times became much more important with the rise of mercantile trade and the redefinition of wealth.
A much larger Lower Class of serfs and tenant farmers dependent upon and dominated by the landowning Upper class Aristocrats and landowning Gentry

In America, that system never really took hold for a number of reasons. One of the English Colonies (South Carolina) was actually founded upon the rigid class structure with certain colonists designated as titled Aristocrats who were allowed to import their own serfs who were to be tied to the land they were allotted. It was simply too easy to walk away to the unclaimed land to the North and West and the Aristocrats were neither rich enough nor powerful enough to enforce the system.
In the New England colonies, settlement was mostly based upon religious dissent and the colonists were mostly from the rising Middle Classes - what you believed and how you stood in your Church was more important than your ancestry.
In all the colonies and later in the new United States, it was fairly easy to develop your land and get ownership directly from the colonial proprietors (Or later the government) who were almost all absentee landlords only interested in their income (Which was seldom what they expected). More and more of the colonies became self-governing and finally broke away into a new independent country.
Class systems in those colonies were almost all based on the attitudes of the local inhabitants, with the Upper, middle, and lower Classes being much more fluid than in the homeland. During his trip to America in the 1830's, Alexis deTocqueville had difficulty describing American class structure, which to him seemed almost nonexistent

In twenty-first century America, The amazing patterns of individual movement and nationwide communications, awareness, and economics have made the old system pretty much obsolete, at least on the national level.
Nowadays, a person’s class still depends on the attitudes of the other members of the culture, but those attitudes are much more likely to be based on the individual’s accomplishments or particular current situation, not on their ancestry.
Today in America, the Classes are not as clearly defined. we seem to have a sort of Five-Class system separated into two general divisions:
The Upper Class:
The Real Uppers: Generally economic based, made up of those with inherited wealth who have also managed to accomplish notable deeds.
The Semi-Uppers: Made up of professionals and celebrities - This is a fairly large group sometimes based on education and self-determination, ranging from large business owners, Religious leaders, MDs, and college profs to public school teachers. Traditionally, a major key to entrance into the Semi-upper class has been a respectable college diploma. Recently, it is probably an advanced degree of some kind.
The Supporting Classes:
Middle: Small business owners, local managers, self-employed skilled artisans, etc.
Working: Mostly anyone who works full time for an hourly wage rather than a defined salary
Real Lower: Casual laborers, welfare recipients, the homeless.

Fifty years ago the classes were further divided along racial lines with, in many communities, a kind of parallel class structure among the African-American and white communities, but this parallel structure seems to be rapidly fading as race becomes less and less a factor in the American Class system.

This analysis of class is loosely based on the system described by Vance Packard about fifty years ago. In social class determinents, the factors are generally slow to change, but change they do.

Should Americans, prime believers in equality, have a class system, and if we do,what should be its basis; Moral, Ethical, Religious, Economic, all of the above?

How do you think such such concepts as patriotism and nationality will fare as this dramatic trend toward world fellowship continues?

The idea of a single unified world culture has been a dream for millennia - mostly in the dreams of would-be world conquerors: Alexander the Great went farthest first - and bemoaned the fact that he had no more worlds to conquer (even though his conquest was cut short by his home-sick Greek soldiers). Sometimes the "World view" included only the civilized world, as in the case of China's "First Emperor" (He's the one with all those terra-cotta soldiers around his tomb).
Rome was more conquest- minded and was careful to integrate the new territories by giving the inhabitants Roman Citizenship after they agreed to adopt Roman "civilization"
Some Religions (notably the Christian and Muslim) preached the brotherhood of man and accepted all believers equally - but you had to believe.

There were some attempts during the last 150 years or so to develop multi-national, multi-cultural unions. One of the first in Europe was the agreement to regulate and police the Danube River, another was the International Postal Union, which still exists and is the reason you can buy postage in your country and send your letter anyplace in the world.

Woodrow Wilson's dream of a "League of Nations" became a toothless reality in the 1920's though it did some good work in the areas of refugees and world health. World War II led to the creation of the first really serious attempt at developing some kind of world-wide political and social entity that would bring all of the world's cultures and governments together under one "world roof" with the creation of the United Nations which now has as members virtually all the nations of the world, and has led to world-wide agreement on a number of issues - such as a sort of vague agreement on what constitutes "human rights"

The beginning of a serious trend toward "world culture" was not political however, rather it was (and is) economic.
In 1949 I walked into a grass-thatched hut and bought a coke out of a kerosene-powered refrigerator. This was at Tanjong Penang on the island of BinTan - a fairly out-of-the-way part of an obscure new nation. I was not surprised, nor was I surprised that the proprietor spoke a little pigeon-english.

Arthur Clarke thought up the concept of the communications satellite in the 1940's, the first was launched less than two decades later and the world really began to become a "world village". With the development of the internet and the World Wide Web there was an enormous rise in the exchange of ideas and realization that we were all actually "In the Same Boat".

Vested political, religious, and economic interests have attempted to encourage the persistence of ethnocentricity, nationalism, and religious intolerance in many parts of the world - the Balkans, China, and the Arab world have been leaders in those struggles, but I think it's a losing fight. The world is changing and the changes are not reversible.

Where does this leave the love of our individual countries we call Patriotism? Can we be both patriotic and think of ourselves as citizens of the World? Of course we can. There is really no conflict unless we try to impose our rule on other countries and cultures.

This is a sort of open-ended Socrates Cafe question for this week.
There is no doubt that the world will continue its present direction of change and that these changes will impact us all.
I can make an educated guess about the nature of the changes:
1. As world-wide communication has so drastically improved, more and more of us know more and more of the entire world's condition faster and faster.
2. Part of this globalization of communication has led to a rising understanding and adoption of universal basic values.
3. These basic values tend to call for more and more global responsibility and closer associations among nations.
4. The UN and its agencies are, for example, much stronger and more active than any previous international association.
5. There seems to be rising concern about the collective future of the world and more willingness to try to direct changes in a number of areas such as environment, economics and to some extent national governments.
6. There is a rising group of objectors to these movements who will not give in to the inevitable globalization quietly - the Arab world is the obvious example here.
7. The direction and movement of change is inevitable but adjustable - it corrects itself continuously.

Is this a good thing?

Last summer and for the past three weeks, I have been using WildBlue Satellite service from up here in the North Woods. The service never has been satisfactory - I'm used to Cable broadband in Florida.
I could have lived with the slower speed - supposedly 1.5M as opposed to the 6-7M speed I'm used to, but the speed seldom reached 1.5M - mostly around a third or forth of that and the dish had trouble staying locked on the satellite - never mind it was aimed across a lake and that the Dish Network dish right beside it never has any trouble. Multiple Service calls with surly techs who tended to blame me never did resolve the problems. To add insult to injury, I had to pay for 12 consecutive months even though the system was not accessible for eight months of the year.

Well, now AT&T, Sprint and Verizon all offer cellular broadband at cheaper prices. To make the story short, today I signed up with Verizon, plugged the tiny modem into my MacBook Pro and am in business- at a true 1.4M - much faster than I ever got from the satellite. Also this works all over the country.

Does anyone want to buy a slightly used satellite modem and dish - complete with WildBlue software and a two-way horn? Cheap.

In his famous 1992 essay, Francis Fukuyama declared that mankind had reached the "end of History".
He didn't mean that nothing more would happen, but rather that there would be no more ideological evolution beyond liberal democracy which had become the final form of human government.

In other words, the Marxian idea of a world where everyone was equal and government had disappeared had been superseded just as the idea of totalitarian, religious, and monarchial governments had been. He saw all the world as gradually becoming more and more democratic with the old "World Order" giving way to the newer, kinder, more useful concept of democratic groups deciding the world's fate in concert.

There is some indication that this may be happening - the growing world concern over environmental change and the loss of resources with the rising importance of the UN and world-wide economic decisions as well as the fact that most of the countries of the world at least call themselves "Democracies" are evidence - but the "Old Order" of religious-based and totalitarian rule is putting up a pretty good fight. Fukuyama has many serious critics - but maybe he is right.

What do you think?

The current change in the U.S. economy has led many of us to fear the coming of another economic collapse such as happened about eighty years ago. The causes of that Great Depression were many, complex, and influenced by international economic problems to a large extent. Economists aren't very good historians as a general rule, tending to see their speciality as the over-riding social force. Karl Marx, for example, put all his eggs in that particular basket and doomed his communist followers to eventual collapse - but that's another story.
It's unlikely that the present World and American economic troubles will result in anything like that world-wide disaster but it does foretell the the coming of a dramatic change in our way of life and is already resulting in hardship for many of us.
a few years ago there was mass disruption among the U.S. labor force caused by the shift in heavy industry out of the country. Those displaced industrial workers has barely settled in to new jobs when the massive rise in energy costs has led to further disruption. There has been a net loss in jobs for all of 2008 and this will probably continue.

Many of my retired friends have had to drastically alter their life-style as the income from their retirement investments and company pensions has been drastically reduced. They drive less (or not at all), find themselves eating differently, and most significantly; are much more anxious about their ability to survive more drastic financial decline.

Personally, I never much trusted the over-heated stock market and based my retirement on non-stock related investments and savings. I suggest those of you who can still "feed the pig" do so - but not by investing your savings in a bear market. Try money market accounts - they pay less, but are more secure as are government bonds and tax-free munis.

Divination, Alchemy, Crystal power, Extra-terrestrial visitors. What's your opinion on any or all of these?

Various forms of the subjects mentioned above have all been the subject of serious scrutiny at one time or another. They tend to be lumped into a group of subjects most consider "unprovable" or superstition, despite some anecdotal evidence. One thing they seem to have in common is their propensity to draw con men and charlatans who use the attractive concept that "There is a new and easier way", or "There is hidden knowledge which will give you power" to draw in the gullible and make themselves a comfortable living. Let's take a look at some of these subjects:

Divination
The idea that certain people have the power to find hidden resources or objects is wide-spread. In New England, I know that people still use water diviners to determine water well drilling sites. When I drilled my well, I considered for a moment and said:"Drill here". The drillers hit a gusher at 85 feet. My next door neighbor said "Drill where it's convenient". They drilled 300 feet for a trickle. Their well was within 20 feet of mine. Maybe I should hire myself out

Alchemy
The search for the "Philosopher's stone" or the "Universal solvent" was the actual genesis of much of modern chemistry. Promises of the ability to turn "whatever" into gold or manipulate life (Think Mary Shelly's Frankenstein) was really the start of the scientific method. Read the works of early scientists - they really saw "Through a glass darkly" and are indistinguishable from alchemists.

Crystal Power
This is really a more modern idea, Many primitive tribes believed in the mystical and healing power of all sorts of rocks and gems. This manifested itself in the use of such things as "poison-canceling" rhino or narwhal horn drinking cups and the use of pulverized gemstones as cures. Crystals had many unusual powers (You could "grow" some kinds in solutions, they acted as prisms , they could be found in perfectly ordinary rocks sometimes) and that was enough to make them mysterious and desirable.

Extra-terrestrial visitors
All those things in the sky. Sometimes they seem to be impossible and certainly not a more familiar flying machine.
If they are unidentified, they must have landed and disembarked someone from somewhere else, mustn't they?
I remember once standing in my rural back yard watching a very bright star -thing move across the sky at unbelievable speed while another star-thing raced to meet it. I was watching the Mir/ space-shuttle rendezvous, which- if you knew where to look - was easily visible to the naked eye.

Most manifestations of the "New Aeon" are the product of wishful thinking and vivid imaginations - but we can still hope can't we?

This review of Lovelock's book and the reviewer's comments were posted at a restricted blog-site; but I thought they were interesting and relevant to the discussion of our possible future. As I'm not sure the author would appreciate identification, I have deliberately withheld attribution info.
This is not particularly easy or happy reading - but it does introduce a chilling but possible future.
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The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity. By James Lovelock. Penguin Books. 222 pages. $15.95.

In the past thirty years, scientist James Lovelock, Fellow of the Royal Society in England and originator of the Gaia Theory, has published several books on Gaia. It was around 1970 that Lovelock first came up with the name "Gaia" for the Earth (he usually puts a capital E on Earth). In his latest outing, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, he assures us several times that he uses the name as a metaphor. But it turns out that for him a metaphor is not just a rhetorical device: He finds Gaia a "useful metaphor" because the present ecological crisis "requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system." Here the metaphor Gaia turns out to be the way to know the true nature of the planet. Then Lovelock invites us to a change of "heart and mind" so that we may "instinctively sense" Gaia as a living planet. How can we instinctively sense a metaphor? Evidently, Gaia is for him far more than a trope. While he admits that the name offends the "scientifically correct," he declares that he is "unrepentant" about using it because this metaphor is a "path to the primitive feelings of the unconscious part of our minds." That's the part he thinks we can use to contact Gaia.

Lovelock speaks of our planet's evolution as the story of a female who has grown "old and has not very long to live." In the last century, she was "enlightened" in her "seniority" when human beings let her see herself from outer space "while she was still beautiful." The implication here is that our planet is alive and self-aware, and that she sees herself through our eyes. Lovelock remarks that when New Agers first took up his concept of Gaia and applied it to the "mythic goddess" he was surprised, but now he thinks they were "more prescient than the scientists" who objected to the name. For Gaia behaves just like those goddesses "Khali and Nemesis" in that she can be both "nurturing" and "ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her progeny." Evidently, we are those transgressors, since Lovelock tells us that Gaia has turned into our "greatest enemy" and requires a "sacrifice" from us far greater than sustainable development and renewable energy -- "as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice." Rather, she now requires a huge drop in our population. This comes as no surprise, for whereas in antiquity the God of Israel accepted animal sacrifices, the so-called goddess Earth required human sacrifice, often on a large scale.

Lovelock admits he is Gaia's disciple: "There is a deep need in all of us for trust in something larger than ourselves, and I put my trust in Gaia." A metaphor, a verbal construct, is not something "larger" than us. Nor do we place "our trust" in a mere metaphor. Lovelock is disingenuous when he repeats that Gaia is a metaphor, for he treats her as his ultimate reality.

In the same way that a "metaphor" turns out to be the "true nature" of the planet, so Lovelock's "possibility" of ecological disaster turns out to be a horrifying "certainty." Here and there he repeats that as "a scientist," he thinks "in terms of probabilities, not certainties, " and cautiously hedges his statements. To wit: Even if "a tolerable future is probable, it is still unwise to ignore the possibility of disaster." He even concedes that the current scientific understanding of the "Earth system" is on a par with a "nineteenth- century physician's understanding of a patient." That's pretty low. He also warns that scientific forecasts of future calamities are only "provisional, " since there could be "sudden and wholly unpredicted discontinuities. " As a scientist he advises us not to over-interpret "unexpected warmth and cold as evidence for or against global heating." So far, this is reasonable. But then Lovelock turns into Gaia's prophet, and he pushes the panic button. He declares that we have found out "too late" that "the Earth system was fast approaching the critical state that puts all life on it in danger." Now there is "almost no time left" to opt for visionary solutions like renewable energy and sustainable development, because evidence is coming in from around the world that the imminent climate shift can only be "described as Hell: so hot, so deadly that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive." As Gaia's prophet, Lovelock sees us as passengers on a boat above Niagara Falls who don't have a clue that the "engines are about to fail," and as prisoners on a "cosmic death row" awaiting execution. The few who may survive will endure another Stone Age in which warlords battle endlessly in a torrid world. An ecological catastrophe is certain and irreversible in human time, for he tells us that 55 million years ago Gaia had a "fever" like this one, and it took her 200,000 years to recover.

As the "party goes on," Love lock laments, "how much longer before reality enters our minds?" Yes, reality, not a scientific probability. Throughout his work, Lovelock keeps switching between the calm, dispassionate tones of a scientist and the frenzied shrieks of a seer. But why does he need to act as Gaia's prophet? Because he has embraced Deep Ecology.

Deep Ecology is a world-view that rejects the Christian belief that man, made in the image of God and redeemed by Him, is the center of value in this world. Founded by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972, Deep Ecology claims to be a major paradigm shift in civilization, for it makes the ecosystem the new center of all value. Henceforth, morality is to be determined by what is good for the ecosystem, and man is to aim at "noninterference" with the Earth, even if we have to change our entire way of being -- economics, politics, education, morality, religion -- from top to bottom. In the platform Naess devised for Deep Ecology, we find this controversial statement in the fifth place -- a call for the "substantial decrease of the human population" because the "flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease." Yes, requires. Like the eugenics juggernaut of a century ago, there is now a deep ecological juggernaut facing us with the same evil program: population control.

One might be tempted to think that Deep Ecology is a relatively small movement, a fringe group. Think again. J.E. DeSteiguer, in The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought, observes that "since the 1970s, a number of national green political parties have been formed in the developed world with Arne Naess' Deep Ecology as their foundation." Such a party was formed first in Great Britain in 1973, and then in Belgium, Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the former West Germany. (Note that the legalization of abortion and the drop in Western population growth coincided with the spread of this mentality.) Even Greenpeace has adopted the philosophy of Arne Naess. This is a pretty large fringe.

Not surprisingly, then, Love lock urges us to turn to Deep Ecology for guidance on the environmental crisis: "If it should be that we have already passed the threshold of irreversible heating, then perhaps we should listen to the deep ecologists and let them be our guide." He reveres them as wise beyond all others: "This small band of deep ecologists," with their total "allegiance" to the ecosystem, fully grasps the "magnitude of the change of mind needed to bring us back to peace within Gaia, the living Earth." And he sees them as Gaia's saints: "Like the holy men and women who make their whole lives a testament to their faith, the deep ecologists try to live as a Gaian example for us all to follow." Lovelock fantasizes how these "brave deep ecologists with trust in Gaia" will someday keep civilization alive in the Stone Age to come. But wait -- what civilization? Surely not the one we know, since Deep Ecology repudiates Christianity for putting too much value on the individual person and for regarding us as stewards of creation. In a sentence that deep ecologists will applaud wildly, Lovelock declares, "We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners." What a low regard for human nature! Fortunately for us, God demonstrated a higher esteem for man with His Incarnation, and by opening for us the door of eternal life.

Lovelock notes that he learned from deep ecologist Edward Goldsmith that we should always "think of Gaia first," not of man, and that this will not make us "inhuman" since the "survival of our species" depends on our accepting Gaia's "discipline. " Not inhuman? Inhumanity in fact consists precisely in sacrificing individuals to a compelling ideology. It lies precisely in this kind of justifying the means by the end. In essays published in Deep Ecology and World Religions, Michael Zimmerman and Cecile Jackson point out that Americans generally ignore the Nazi connection with the radical green movement, yet Hitler was a vegetarian for whom animals had intrinsic value, so much so that he wanted to send to concentration camps anyone who mistreated them. Other leading Nazis, too, were committed to protecting the wilderness and embraced a neo-paganism much like that of Deep Ecology and Gaia Theory.

Echoing a long line of neo-Malthusians, Lovelock states that population growth is the "root of our problem." Just as Nietzsche once called man a "disease" on the Earth's "skin," so likewise Lovelock speaks of us as "Earth's disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people." We are not very "special," he says, as "individual animals," but are more like a "planetary disease." He yearns for the world of 1800 "when we were only one billion," and announces that our present numbers are "unsustainable" and require a "retreat" or drastic reduction. This is also the mindset of Deep Ecology, since Arne Naess saw the environmental crisis as chiefly one of overpopulation. At the heart of Naess's program, observed Jonathan Maskit in an essay published in Beneath the Surface, is the requirement for coercive collective action in the form of "policies that act as an externalized will" in bringing about the reduction of population. Note well that the Culture of Death offers us, on the one hand, unlimited recreational sex (since it does not recognize the capacity for moral restraint), and on the other, plans coercive measures to prevent children arising from sexual intercourse.

Lovelock assures us that he does not agree with the "totalitarian greens, sometimes called eco fascists, " who want to see most of the human race "eliminated" by genocide so as to leave a "perfect Earth for them alone." That's a relief. But wait -- he then tells us that if we survive the current crisis, our next goal must be to forcibly reduce our numbers: "If we are to continue as a civilization that successfully avoids natural catastrophes, we have to make our own constraints on growth and make them strong and make them now." As it is, we are unintentionally at war with Gaia and must agree to "wartime" rationing and temporary "loss of freedom." Strong constraints? Loss of freedom? What's the difference between this and ecofascism? And how far down will our population have to plummet to satisfy Gaia? Actually, Lovelock states that something like nine-tenths of our population must vanish: "Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of about half to one billion." To accomplish this goal, both the birth rate and death rate would have to be "regulated" as "part of population control." So we are to be bred, managed, and put down just like a herd of animals on a farm. If this isn't totalitarianism, what is?

Another feature of Deep Ecology found in Lovelock's Gaia Theory is hostility toward farming and the domestication of plants and animals. Deep ecologists, who love all things wild, trace our problems back to the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Like them, Lovelock wants us to stop seeing the Earth as the commons we "own and share," and to start realizing that farming "abrades the living tissue" of Gaia's "skin" and hampers her "ability to regulate the Earth's climate." It is our "duty" to "put Gaia first" and act "with the health of the Earth, not the health of people, in mind." He's not complaining here only about agribusiness, but also about organic farming, which he says has low productivity and represents a near "obsession with personal human problems." Our "primary obligation is to the living Earth. Humankind comes second."

So how are we to "stop using the land surface" without starving to death? Lovelock proposes two things: the increased use of nuclear energy and the synthesizing of food "by the chemical and biochemical industries from carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen." By eating such man-made food, we could release farmland "back to Gaia," uncouple ourselves from the "metabolism of the planet," and give Earth "a rest." Land would now be used once again for "its proper purpose, the regulation of the climate and chemistry of the Earth." Note that the proper purpose of land has nothing to do with us. Besides eating artificial food, we would be confined to "dense cities" to free the land. Lovelock concedes that the "rich" would still follow the "fashion" of "eating real food: vegetables grown in soil and cooked with meat and fish," but they too would be limited by biocentric laws: "Vigilance would be needed to constrain the growth of luxuries that threaten Gaia."

In suggesting that man should be fed on a large scale with synthesized food, Lovelock goes way beyond the radical philosopher Peter Singer, who merely wants to make vegetarianism "obligatory" on moral grounds and ban the use of animals for agriculture, science, and commerce. Such vegetarianism seems passé now, as Lovelock jests about how we once thought that plant life had been created "solely for us to eat."

In Deep Ecology a person is supposed to merge so completely with the Earth as his greater "Self" that the identification turns into a spontaneous self-defense whenever the environment is in danger. Lovelock sees a "need" for such "instinctive environmentalism. " He asks how one might acquire such an "instinct" and answers that we can "make Gaia an instinctive belief by exposing our children to the natural world, telling them how and why it is Gaia in action, and showing that they belong to it." This shows how ideology distorts one's sense of human nature. An "instinct" is by definition an inherited and unalterable natural impulse, yet Lovelock wants one to be inculcated into children by indoctrination -- not to mention that such children would be trained thereby to serve as Gaia's janissaries against the human race. One cannot help but recall De Steiguer's observation that Arne Naess thought "the best fit for 'green' was 'red,' that is, either communism or socialism." In other words, he realized the green movement needed a regime like that of Orwell's Animal Farm.

How could such a misanthropic ecofascism have spread so far, so fast? Very likely the decline of Christianity in the West has led to the rise of this neo-pagan abjection before the material world. Lovelock believes that all the traditional religions of the world are out of date, for they were all founded when we were few in number and when we "lived in a way that was no burden to the Earth." Past teachings on morality no longer apply now that we have become "six billion hungry and greedy individuals. " He reserves a special animus for Christianity, where man is seen as the steward of creation: "The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever." What Christians need, he sneers, is "a new Sermon on the Mount" to tell us how to live "decently with the Earth." He finds fault with "secular humanists," too, for he thinks they need to turn to Gaia and "recognize that human rights and needs are not enough."

Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology are two handmaids of the Culture of Death. Their precursor was the eugenics movement of a century ago that imposed birth control and forced sterilization on the supposedly "unfit." Today an artificially created panic about ecological catastrophe, derived from Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology, lies behind a seemingly unstoppable movement for sterile sex by way of birth control, sterilization, chemical and surgical abortions, homosexuality, and the infanticide of newborns (called "infant euthanasia") . Deep ecologists and Gaia theorists try to terrify us with environmental degradation in order to pursue their main program -- population control. For even when their prophecies of doom prove to be false or exaggerated, these zealots immediately point to another imminent disaster and call for man to reduce his numbers.

We should understand that when the leaders of the Culture of Death look at us, they don't see so many individuals with immortal souls and eternal destinies, each one having an incalculable value in the eyes of God, since the divine Word saved us with His own blood. Rather they see a plague of alien creatures infesting an imagined divinity. History shows that none are more fanatical than those on the march to Utopia. The Gaia theorists and the Deep Ecology zealots are certainly marching lockstep right now toward their imagined paradise. The mirage they have in view is one with so few people left on the planet that their great goal will finally be achieved -- the total "noninterference" of man with the wilderness of the Earth. What a dismal, misanthropic idea of paradise!
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Any comments? Agreements? Disagreements? Why?

Socrates_Cafe asks What is the most desirable future of the world?
A utopian answer would, of course be one providing the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number and that probably would be attainable only under certain conditions:
1. A viable world human population. That is one where population pressures on food and resources is acceptable to the humans concerned. Everyone (or almost everyone) must find their basic quality of living acceptable.
2. A world where there is no psychological stress on the population. That is one where there is no struggle for space, resources, or dominance.
3. A world where there is little or no pressure on the "Natural" non-human part of the world - which is the vast majority of the planet (all those seas, oceans, rain forests, and arctic wastes).
Achieving these goals would be extremely difficult but is, I think, within the realm of possibility. Science, however, is divided on the relationship of the human psyche and the almost unending struggles of mankind against himself.
If man is not inherently the "Killer Ape", but yearns for peace and tranquility; perhaps we are gradually moving toward Utopia. If we are the "Killer Ape", than perhaps Homo Sapiens is wise enough to eventually correct the killer genes.
What would be the first steps toward Utopia? Have we, with our increased concerns about pollution and resource depletion, begun to take them?

Back in the mid-1970's the Club of Rome, an Italian-based think tank picked up on an MIT project started in 1970. This project tried to use a computer model to predict the future of humans on Earth based on economic changes, resource use, population growth, available food supply, and several other components.

With the rather primitive computer programs available to them they probably got only a glimmer of what was to happen but that was enough to cause a rather large political flap. The study was roundly denounced by just about all political leaders who did not like to be told that life as we then knew it could not be sustained much later than mid-twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the predictions are uncomfortably accurate so far, if a little conservative in some areas.

I'm not going to re-hash the findings, they are available in the three publications:
Meadows & Meadows Limits to Growth 1972
Mesarovic & Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point1974
Tinburgen et al RIO - Reshaping the International Order 1976
The conclusions reached basically suggested that unless the world mended its evil ways and started shaping up by the year 2000, we were pretty much on a downward path with no turning back.

We didn't do much shaping up, as you may have noticed, and signs of the beginnings of the down-turn are becoming more and more apparent. Among the first of these are pollution problems, a fall-off in food production, uncontrolled population growth and resource depletion.

I'm not going to discuss the first three of these but rather make some suggestions about a major resource problem -petroleum. As far as energy use goes, the U.S. is, as you know, the world's largest user (about 22% of all the worlds energy use) Other large energy users are China (14%), Russia (7%), Japan (5%) and Western Europe (8%)
Perhaps 40-50% of all that energy is petroleum - useful because it (has been) cheap. plentiful, and easily convertible into efficient mobile energy. Nowadays it's not so cheap or so plentiful and is so useful in non-energy uses (think plastics, et al) that it's past time for us to be rethinking our use of the stuff. We will also have to worry about international competition for this dwindling resource - which could turn very nasty. Come to think about it, it already has.

Energy is measured in BTUs basically units of heat and almost all energy production either uses or produces heat - not particularly good for the environment - the exceptions are hydrodynamic and wind; which can produce electricity directly with very efficient energy use. Such energy makes up less than 7% of U.S. energy production today - but this could be increased. Biomass energy and nuclear energy make up another 9-10% and present their own problems of pollution and are not particularly portable. How to replace all that gasoline in all those cars is the main obvious problem of today and the near future.

There is no doubt that we will use much less petroleum in the near future - the question is what will we replace it with and how will our lives be changed by this new world order? Perhaps we will really begin to work on the production of exotic new (well, not so new) energy sources like fuel cell-driven vehicles powered by hydrogen (there's plenty of that around) or perhaps use more mass transit powered by electricity - we've had that for over a century (think subways, trollies, maglev).

How are you coping with the high costs of the transition and where do we go from here?

What is the proper role of government? is the question this week at Socrates_Cafe.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them will seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Few nations have such a clear and concise statement of the purpose and role of government as exists in the American Declaration of Independence. For over 230 years we have tried to live up to Jefferson's ideals and have so far succeeded pretty well. Jefferson himself believed that government should be limited. He had great faith in the abilities of the common people to rule themselves and was suspicious of attempts to organize a strong central government, but even he, when he assumed the presidency, had to change his mind.
During its entire history as a nation, the United States has struggled with the notion of "more vs less" government.
What do you see as the minimum amount of government necessary to achieve those ideal goals set forth in the Declaration of Independence?

Should "legal ethics" override the rights of the community and others to achieve justice? How far should they go?
This philosophic question was triggered by the recent news about a pair of attorneys who revealed that their client had told them of a murder he committed and that another man was convicted for. They revealed this fact only after their client had died and the wrongly convicted man had served 26 years in prison. To reveal it earlier, they asserted, would violate legal ethics, specifically the attorney-client right of confidentiality.
That particular right has a long history in the British and American legal system. It is based on the right each individual has not to incriminate himself and the right of each individual to counsel. That right is specifically laid out in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It is assumed that matters told a counsel in confidence must be privileged. If they were divulged it would be the same as a person testifying against himself as well as undermining the public's confidence in all legal counsel. Exceptions to this rule do exist; if a person tells his lawyer of an on-going crime, or of a future crime he plans to commit, the privilege does not exist. Information about any past crimes seems to be privileged.
Nowhere is the concept of Truth and Justice mentioned or discussed except as the concept of "Fairness" is implied.
The British/American legal tradition seems to hold that Truth, Justice, and Fairness can best be obtained if the prosecution and defense have a "level playing field" and put their cases before a jury of citizens in an adversarial manner with the jury weighing the evidence and presentation and awarding their verdict to the best argument. The prosecution has the added burden of having to prove their case, the defense does not.
Other nations use somewhat different methods of obtaining justice. Many use a system of professional judges who weigh the evidence collected and decide the case. Others use a combination of judges and citizens sitting as judges, either engaged in the investigation or judging the results - sometimes with the prosecutor and defense attorney taking part in the deliberations.
In the case cited above, the rights of the innocent prisoner and basic justice seem to be of less value than the rights of each person to get a "fair" trial. Is there a better way?

I suppose philosophy is like most other things, it comes in many forms and flavors, some to your taste, some to mine.
I believe a life philosophy should contain both a rational view of the world and a moral viewpoint. That viewpoint should be both optimistic and positive in controlling our actions and dealings with our fellow humans and the natural world.
The best philosophies would call on humans to know their place in the natural order, strive to fully understand that order, and leave a "light footprint" on the beautiful world we call home.
The major operation of any good philosophy should be the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Any philosophy which attempts to direct or limit the search for knowledge is a bad one. The idea that "Humans are not meant to know", or "humans are not mature enough to handle this knowledge" is, to my mind an anti-philosophy.