Raising Your Children in the Age of Rapid Climate Change

It's a comin' and there ain't no stoppin' it -- the times they are a changin'.

Read this:

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job: Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can't really talk about it.

So, given that we're going to be living in a very stressed out globe, how do we raise our children in such a way that they're good to go throughout the very real potential for major economic and social upheaval?

Well, I'm glad I'm thinking about it now, and I believe the more people who go this way, the better we'll all be because for every well-suited survivor, that's one less desperate (and therefore dangerous) helpmate.

• Comfortable migrating
• Living small, but with all you need to make it big.
• Psychologically fluent -- getting along with troubled people is going to be really important, so every skill you can muster to have people not want to kill you is going to work in your favor.
• Skilled at how the world works, physically, socially, politically and economically.
• Indefatigable sense of humor!  How important will this be to maintaining a positive attitude when the shit hits the fan.
• Multi-lingual.
• Survivalist practice
• Medical training?
• Adaptable
• Comfortable with their own mortality.

I'll explain these next time I have a minute, but I'm going to bed because I'm getting up early tomorrow.

NOTE: not only are these good for the environmental apocalypse, but for any major life-threatening challenge we face, like life-threatening illness, relationship nightmares, any manner of natural disaster, zombie scenarios, deadly viral pandemic, etc.

Big Eating, Let's Retire This Abomination Already

Whether it's the 125 ounce steak at Ward's Steakhouse in Milwaukee or Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest, there is no purpose for seeing how much a person can eat.  As we move toward conservation of energy and resources (still, after starting 40 years ago), and as we work to combat obesity in America, and as we would, naturally, want to work toward a more perfect union, could we ditch the glorification of wasteful, unhealthy practices?

I have an idea: instead of encouraging these, let's put our excess energy literally and figuratively not where our mouth is.  There are a hundred possible alternatives -- many of which would give us a deep satisfaction to the cores of our souls.  In direct opposition to throwing away good food, how about helping with any of the anti-hunger initiatives from soup kitchens to food drives to school lunch programs for needy children to helping homeless people find the means to get off the street to mentoring young people on healthy life-affirming habits to donating day old baked goods and unused produce and expired food to those who need it.

In any event, if you would please pick something that serves your soul and your fellow travelers, you'll be be on the winning side of your deathbed reflections.  I know that's not for everybody -- it's easy to convince yourself that you did what you could, but when it comes to seriously facing your mortality and the honest legacy you left to mankind, you'll be giving up the sublime peace that comes from a life well lived.  If you're the religious, afterlife type, then you know there's no escaping the selfishness, Pontius Pilot-esque self delusion you go for when you're meeting your Maker.  If you're the humanistic, secular type, you've got nothing to work for except the to-the-core integrity that frees your conscience of stress.  OK, that's a little touch-feely, but it's also true.

Happy Birthday, United States

Let's celebrate the Declaration of Independence.  Let's read it.  Let's think about it, have an opinion about it, try for a minute to forget who we are and join the frame of mind of the desperate state of the men who had "had it up to here" about the way they were being treated by their authority figures.  Certainly we can relate.  With few exceptions, we've all worked for (or been subject to) an authority who was having a hard time hearing and acting on problems you're having.  And when that's the case, you either continue to suffer to your own detriment, or you step up and make a stand.

And the nascent states did that.  We admire that because we would like to think we had the same level of courage -- to stand up to wrong.  When the wrong is great enough, meaning when it becomes a matter of life and death for some, or a matter of thriving or withering of great swaths of people, then the stand we're willing to take has to be proportional.  For a people who had the audacity to come to early America and brave the wild, it was maybe of their nature to take care of themselves doing whatever it takes to survive and own their existence without compromise.

After a hundred years of struggle to make it work, an existential civil war, a couple all-out efforts to help the rest of the world and protect ourselves against the forces of tyranny in WWI an II, we've been able to settle into the comfort of the greater part of a century of relative prosperity for most, or if not actual leisure, then enough of it to get a little soft.  We want our children to have it a little soft, easier than ourselves.  Should we?  I guess the question I want to ask of myself is, "Do we have it in us anymore to do what it takes to preserve our integrity as a nation?"

We have some long-range (relatively speaking) existential threats, and are enough of us ready to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."?*

Having grown up curious and literate, I've exposed myself to and studied no small proportion of the main ideas defining our lives as humans and Americans.  That's a luxury many of us don't get because of our socio-economic circumstances don't support.  A shame, since as a nation, we certainly have the wealth to erase that deficit.  Why don't we have the will?  Is it that the well-to-do, the accomplished, the wealthy don't have the breadth of vision to look deeper?  Or they've absorbed some of our ideals (individual rights, reaping the benefit of hard work), but not others (giving back to the community, strength of our nation arising from the collective ability to thrive), so the selfish side is overemphasized?  Are those that claim this is a Christian nation so consumed with the perceived threat to their ability to believe as they wish that they're blinded to the fundamental notion of Christianity: your purpose is to love (and serve), not horde and amass wealth?

The bottom line of the Declaration of Independence is pledging our lives, fortunes and sacred honor for the good of the people of America.  How far have we drifted from that ideal?  How far have I, personally, drifted?  Or have I ever EVER internalized that when I think of myself as an American?

Do we have it in us as a nation to face our threats with enough force to defeat them?

Our real threats, it seems, based on what I've been absorbing through the national rhetoric and information outlets are, in no particular order: Climate change, wage inequality/economic stability, globalization, mass human migration from war and unrest, splintering of our national culture.  Maybe you can think of more, but I have this irrational belief that together, with enough a sense of conscious agreement and cooperation, we could reduce the threat or find ways to effectively cope to the point where we felt it wasn't going to do us in.  How do we get there?  Ah, let's step up our game and figure that out.  Together.

Birthright

I was born a white boy of modest means, narcissistic and wanting to be pious.  Wanting to do good for some unconscious, or at least unexamined, motivation to make people respect the person I would be.

We all have different faculties, various levels of intelligence in different parts of our mental landscape, and my epigenically determined topography turned me into my particular brand of automaton.  And so it was until whenever it was when I started to get a hint of that the key to unlocking the mind, like unlocking the phone, involves hacking into the programming.  Until a person challenges the algorithms (fundamental belief systems) on which they operate, they remain zombies, of a sort.  The Matrix, as it were, is more real than people believe.  Unplugging requires both an act of courage and defiance.  But it's a very special brand of defiance, not against any legally recognized entity, but against the habits of a lifetime since mom and dad and authority and the social machine have imprinted on your one's life.  The courage comes in facing the unknown -- what has been a companion for years, a go-to set of values and rules, regardless of whether they've lead to any sort of tangible success or not (depending on the most basic idea of what success might be), and abandoning it for what?

When I was unlocked, I had had a few years, a few key life experiences under my belt, and a whole lot of learning to draw from -- exposure to such a wide variety of ideas from science, science fiction, literature, philosophy, human nature. . . making it a more seamless process than it is for most, perhaps.  It was catalyzed by some emotional trauma in the form of a near simultaneous divorce and consequent move, major career change, and etcetera, leaving me without the stability I'd had before and so the freedom(?) to embrace a fundamentally different ideology.  Not everybody gets that chance, and I suppose I wouldn't wish it on anybody, because that level of upheaval in one swell swoop is not necessarily what I'd call a pleasant experience.  But the sooner I stopped judging the new array of experiences, the sooner the pain ceased.  And the sooner the ineluctable and unique peace that comes only from substituting will to awareness.  Because will is an effective blinder to what they world is offering you.  And what the world offers is simply this: The opportunity to approach your circumstances with honesty and fearlessness.  Not recklessness, not brazenness or bravado, but the faith that there is no absolute imperative to meet any arbitrary expectation, yours or others'.  Your expectations have served their purpose (getting you here) and may now be retired, and theirs, you no longer need to heed because their expectations are for them to deal with, not you.  You've got a life to lead, and their boxes are no longer constraints (blinders, fetters, hand-cuffs, bars, thumb-screws) that need to be heeded).

All that stuff put me here, today, in 2015 San Diego, and to do what with in this tiny plot of world I inhabit.  So, what am I going to do?

Forgive the White Racist Shooters?

I saw a post today that asked if the black community should stop forgiving white racists (as victims' families did publicly in the wake of South Carolina).

We might first remember that forgiveness is not a selfless act that absolves someone of any wrongdoing.  It's a selfish act that allows the forgiver to love again.  Holding resentment, consternation, contempt, disapproval (judgment), or hatred in one's heart lessens, weakens, sickens the person with those feelings.  Forgiving, real forgiveness (not saying it or wanting to forgive, or saying "It's OK" or any other equivocation) allows a person to proceed with a clear, unfettered, or conflated agenda of rational action.  Forgiveness lets someone love again...not just the ability to love the person being forgiven, but to love at all.  Someone clouded with hatred, even a little, can no longer love unconditionally.  Try to love someone deeply while thinking about that which you hate.  Sort of tough, huh?  I can imagine the mental gymnastics someone would be able to perform and do it -- schizophrenia level.  Forgiveness, like contempt or hate, does nothing for they who wrong you.  It only works its magic (or poison) in you.

Anyone who's ever felt the palpable lifting of a burden when they've actually forgiven a major transgression against them knows what I'm talking about.  If you haven't, this might not resonate.  That's OK.  I wouldn't wish that sort of thing on anyone.

So my answer is, if a person can find a path to honest and complete forgiveness, take it.  It's not like you can forget the hurt or pain that was caused.  But if you're lucky, you can avoid multiplying it by finding a way to forgive.

War Death Perspective

If the same percentage of the population of the United States that were killed in the Civil War were compared with today's population, the death toll would be 5,500,000.

The number lost in 911 was around 3000, or 1/20th of 1 percent of the Civil War casualty rate.  If we add Iraq and Afghanistan, that's another 6700 (or another 1/10th of 1 percent of the Civil War rate).

So for all three, close to 1/5 of 1% of the Civil War.  One fifth of one percent.

And for all that, for those who lost a loved one, it's as bad as it could possibly be for those.  How many of us even KNOW a single person who was killed in one of the last wars.  Being a former military officer, I do know some of the dead casually, but no close friends during the last couple wars.

If each of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan was close to 50 unique people, then that brings the total close friends or relatives that have experienced war loss to 10%.  We're more connected that in the civil war, but if each of the dead were close to 20 people in the Civil War, 40% lost someone close to them. 1 in 10 versus 4/10 makes a big difference in the national sentiment.

Uploading Your Consciousness into a Computer: Alt-you

OK, so if it could be done, the problem would be that there would be 2 "yous."  The original -- you sitting there with all your memories and thoughts hooked up to some kind of brain-copy machine.  And then there would be Alt-you, on the computer.  Assuming you could copy but not just cut & paste.

So, as you sit there, the Alt-you could, for all intents and purposes, act and think as you do/would, and if it were then in a robot or somehow then reprogrammed into the Alt-you human brain, two people, you and him.

So, the one made immortal at that point would be the other one, and you'd be sitting here in with your individual unique consciousness, still watching this other person/entity, who may be very much like you, but is not you, because you're still there, in your head.  And you'd be seriously jealous, because as you continue to deteriorate and die, he/she'd be out there living their new and continued life!  They could even do your job and be the parent of your children and the excellent spouse you are to your life partner!  And you'd again, be watching as the outside person.  You'd have the peace of mind, I guess, that Alt-you would be the same as you to everyone else in the world, and could continue being you to everybody.  But again, it's the other you, and there's no way to get this current you outside your head and into any other consciousness, is there?  As intimately as you are connected to your own neurons, those are the ones that make  you feel like you with your own memories and consciousness.  And you'd still die, just like you would have had you not uploaded yourself into Alt-you.

And the new you that you had thought you would become would be Alt-you's (Alt-yours?).  To the world, you could almost be considered to become immortalized, but to you, yourself, sayonara!

But, brain transplant -- taking your brain and putting it into some healthy new body or fully hooked-up, robotic brain-vessel.  I suppose that's the better route, right?  Because then, it's still be the original you in there.  That'd be good.  Until you were finally ready to let go and surrender.