Injustice Is

Ancillary Exegesis: an example of injustice.

or

If it happened it could not have been otherwise.

          When considering the circumstances surrounding an unfortunate event the opening statement, “You could have prevented this.” with its companion admonishment, “You are at fault and will be punished,” drives me nuts.  If you want to begin with, “In the future, can we prevent this from happening again?”, I have no quibble.

          It is fitting to begin your questioning with, “Did you let this happen?” or “Is this the outcome you expected?” or “Do you feel responsible for what happened?”  These questions are an attempt to determine if the person being questioned believes that they had options and made choices and whether or not what happened is what they expected or intended.  By asking these questions you are trying to determine if they believe they were in control and feel justice was done.

          Once something happens it is necessarily in the past and happened for whatever reasons, and was not and could not and would not have been prevented or done differently by the people involved, because it wasn’t.  The past can only have one outcome.  Maybe you think it should have had a different outcome but it didn’t.  End of story.

If you don’t like the outcome you may believe the participants were evil and wanted an unfortunate event to happen or if you do not believe they are evil or do not want to state publicly that you think they are evil, you may assert that they are incompetent and because of their incompetence they did not see the unfortunate event coming or did not see options that could have prevented it or you can say that because they are incompetent they were incapable of carrying out the necessary steps to stop said unfortunate event.  But you should not have the first thing that comes out of your mouth be that they could have done other than they did and judge them without a trial or at least an investigation.

          The offensive statements I mentioned in the beginning of this piece are an effort to judge, convict and punish the participants by assuming that they had choices known to them that would have prevented the unfortunate event from happening and that they had the ability to carry them out and they still let the unfortunate event happen.  The aforementioned judgmental statements assert the participants had nefarious intentions without giving them the benefit of doubt or opportunity to provide their side of the story.  The judgmental statements indicate a prejudice of, “I don’t trust you and I think you are either incompetent or evil.  You could have and should have prevented this.  And I will get justice for the injured parties by punishing you.”  I consider this abuse of power an injustice.  If you think these judgmental statements are true, fine.  But keep it to yourself until you are proven correct.  Then you can say “I knew it all the time, the evil bastards!”

Justice Is

       Whether or not you acknowledge that something is just depends upon your expectations and your perceived fulfillment of what you think should be.  If you have no concept of what should be then you cannot determine whether or not something is just.  Justice can only be determined after the fact, by someone or a group of people who have an intimate knowledge of what is being judged.  You can attempt to arrange conditions where justice may prevail but until your expectations have had an opportunity to be fulfilled the extent to which you were able to vouchsafe justice cannot be determined.

Justice is the belief that an act or set of actions have happened as they should have or a physical thing is as it should be.  If you believe that an object fulfills its function then as far as you are concerned, it is a just object and it does justice to the group it belongs to.  If you believe that what has happened is what should have happened then, as far as you are concerned, the action is just and justice has been done.

Unless you believe in an afterlife with differentiated outcomes, dependent upon history, that are adjudicated after death by an absolute power that was here before time, will exist throughout time and will continue after time stops, unchanged and unchanging, knowing all that was, is and will be, then there can be no absolute justice, no final justice, no justice for you that prevails after you die.

As we live our lives there is no justice but that which we define.  You may be lucky enough to live in a family or group that you consider just.  But you cannot live in a just world; justice is personal and pliable, temporal and local.  The best you can hope for is to be a just person in your own eyes and to surround yourself with people who generally agree with you on what justice is.

Should we fear the afterlife believers?

When life becomes a burden,

death takes longer than imagined.

Infinity : 1 :: 1 : Infinity

Belief is a fact, beliefs are not.

Your opinion is neither knowledge

Or the lack there of

It is just your opinion.

Is

Ego Sum Qui Sum

If I want to feel safe when I’m with someone I don’t know, there are things I need to find out about them, such as; 1. Do they believe; in a soul, an afterlife and a time of judgment that terminates in their soul either ascending to the light or descending into darkness?  And 2. What will they have to do to ascend?  Without this information I have no way of even attempting to figure out what they are capable of.  And I am sure that if I get in the way of their ascension they will get rid of me rather than choosing to descend into eternal darkness.

Those of us who do not believe in an afterlife may fear death and the total loss of conscious self, so long as we have something to live for.  When we have lived a long and fulfilling life and come to the time when; our organs are barely functioning, our mind no longer fully comprehends our surroundings, we find ourselves lost either literally or figuratively, and the future holds no prospect for getting better, death can be welcomed as a viable and sought after opportunity.

A young, healthy person, and those who love them, ‘should’ fear that they may die young.  But belief in a soul that will live on in an afterlife, removes the normal fear of their premature demise.  This belief encourages martyr wannabes, as well as other zealots, to fulfill the terror they imagine and are encouraged to carry out.  Their belief in a soul and its path to a better life to come, devalues my life.

Although I am considered old by some I do not want to die today or any time soon.  I try to live safely and I worry about accidents and serious illnesses that have the potential to leave me crippled or even end my life before I become incompetent and or infirmed by the normal decline in wellbeing that I expect with the passage of time.  What I fear more than then these natural events are the intentional actions of the religious that believe they will be granted a better life in the hereafter by harming others. They are delusional and think that the violent, belief based actions they commit here on earth will gain them a greater reward.  I fear what these people are capable of doing because of their beliefs.  I do not trust them to treat their life or mine as precious.  I do not think the way they do and have no reason to believe that I can protect myself from their violent acts by stopping them before they succeed.

I don’t mind looking forward to a future filled with, what others perceive as, tragedies; no life after death, no god, no ultimate justice.  Living with these assumed, and what are for them negative, possibilities is not frightening to me but enduring the actual tragedies that the religious thrust upon the world every day is.  They force others to live by their dogma and punish people who violate the beliefs they do not share.  The religious feel that they can even take the life of someone that they see as; possessed, controlled by evil powers, believing in the wrong religion, believing in an untrue religion, or believing in a false almighty or no god at all.  If you do something that is contrary to their dogma they believe they have the right, or it may even be their duty, to take your life.

Religion is for the delusional, week and lazy, who cannot be moral without something looking over their shoulder, judging them and readying their place in an imagined afterlife, and for the fearful who are scared of a world where there is no ultimate power to make sure everything comes out OK, to make sure they receive their just reward.  These people will not make the effort and do not have the strength to generate their own moral doctrine or make their own moral choices or take responsibility for their actions.  As a guide for moral action they merely use views they find in a book or hear from a trusted source.  They don’t even take the time to compare religions!  For these people, choosing a religion has nothing to do with facts or research.  The best predictor of their religious choice is geography and the second best predictor is the religion of their parents.

Every afterlife believer has their own religion.  No two afterlife believers worship in exactly the same way, believe in exactly the same morality, or the exactly the same dogma.  Even the closest of; friends, family members, parishioners, argue about the ‘true’ interpretation of what they say is their shared, holy, unassailable text.  They take what is written for everyone and make up their own interpretation of it even though they say their religion cannot be questioned, is the word of an unerring almighty and cannot be revised.  If religion were unassailable there would be one Supreme Being and there would be one dogma.

 To gain support afterlife believers will argue their personal belief passionately; on a street corner, on your front porch or from behind pulpits until someone gives in and says they agree with them. 

Religion is an attempt to use an ancient belief system to explain what they cannot understand (and that which is or was at one time unexplainable); “Where did we come from?”, “Where will we go?”, “Why are we here?”, “What can and can’t I do?”, without taking the time to make the changes necessary to adjust for what science and social evolution have taught us about the answers to some of these questions.

If there is just a single external power that ‘created’; what is now, what existed before change began and what will be when change ceases, there should be only one Supreme Being for all humans to believe in.  Just like the single, correct answers to questions about the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology, there can be only one correct answer to the god/creation/afterlife question, if there is only one Supreme Being who created everything.  But the basis for religion is belief, not fact, and belief cannot be proved or tested so their belief based claims cannot be proven or disproved.

Religious groups around the world have come up with a host of belief systems that do no more than describe cultural and personal fears and the ancient, fanciful stories that were made up by delusional or persuasive or insightful individuals for the purpose of calming their own fears and the fears of the uneducated masses they lead.

If from the very beginning one of the fundamental aspects of all religions had been that they could not be written down they would all be gone by now or at least relegated to the fringes of society and culture.  If religion had been forced to be an oral tradition it would have changed, almost imperceptibly, day by day, as people learned the answers to the previously unanswered and unanswerable.  But because religious beliefs are written down in unassailable texts, religion has not adjusted to advances in social evolution and scientific knowledge that have provided us with solutions to some old problems, like the spoilage of food and illness from disease and its remedies.  So far we have been unable to marginalize religion, because religious dogma has been cast in stone and is regarded as the indisputable word of an infallible being.  And unfortunately, religion will continue to plague the world with its fear, hate, violence and misinformation until it is forced to conform to the world as it is, today.

Whether or not....

It is a waste of time to try to answer many questions.  Like attempting to answer the question as to whether or not there are multiple infinite universes.  It can’t be proven and the best you can hope for is consensus on an opinion or belief.  Another unanswerable question is whether or not there is a creator/god/supreme being.  This question is not only unanswerable it is irrelevant.  But asking someone to answer the questions as to whether or not they believe there is; an afterlife, an ultimate reward/punishment for actions, divine intervention in answer to prayer, a soul, absolute good and evil, free will or is everything preordained, now someone’s answers to these questions is  worth knowing.  The answers to these questions have impact on everyday life.   Beliefs in regard to these questions motivate action and form personalities.  If someone answers ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, preordained’ to these questions you do not want to be between them and their ascension.  They will not choose to stay and help you.  And my answers are; no, no, no, no, no and free will.  “Can I help you?”

The Question of Eternal Bliss

           I see no logical ambiguity in the idea of an all-powerful, supreme being or multiple, infinite, universes.  The concept of a presence that is greater than I can comprehend is logically possible.  In a two dimensional world three dimensional objects/beings are nonsensical. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott, made that clear.

           In our three dimensional world spread over the fourth dimension of time a four dimensional being spread over a, so far unseen/unproven ‘fifth’ dimension is impossible for me to comprehend.  But why couldn't there be something; that was here before change, that could know the entire universe over its entire life, all at one time, that would be here when change stops?  This ‘being’ is unknowable to me so I won’t deign the possibility of its existence.

           But there is something that I cannot see the logic of, eternal bliss.  As humans, on this earth, in this form; we are conceived, we change, we die.  If there is a next world, in it the Supreme Being; has always been, never changes, is all knowing and will exist for ever.  If humans were to exit this world and end up in the supreme being world, without changing to a supreme being state of all-knowing, never-changing-ness, the option of another ‘death’ would have to be one of the logical outcomes of a life after death, if this life after death includes change.  Simply stated, if you can change, you can die.  If you don’t know everything then you can learn something and that is change, so if you don’t know everything you will change and you can change by ceasing to exist.

           But for me the really big question is; if life after death here on earth does exist, how could eternal existence be considered bliss?  Is there anyone that can honestly say that they want to be an eternal/all-knowing consciousness? Have you thought about what that would mean?  You would never sleep.  There would be nothing to do or learn.  Nothing would ever change.  Anyone that says they want eternal bliss is a liar or at the very least, they have not given it much thought.  And I think they fear death way more than they enjoy life.

Precious

I look round and see,

Life’s not precious.

People are murdered, tortured, abandoned,

Every day.

Treated as objects,

Treated as interchangeable parts of the machine

That produces,

Someone else’s wealth.

“I do not need you;

“To do this job“,

“To take care of our children“,

“To look after me when I am old“,

“To hold me when I am in pain.”

“There are replacements waiting on queue,

To take your place.”

“I do not need you;

“I can find someone else“,

“I can make more.”

“You have no more value than a random log,

In a pile of wood.”

“You are replaceable.”

“I don’t need you.”

“You are not of value.”

“You are expendable.”

“Your death is just,

Collateral damage.”

“Your death is justice,

For what you believe.”

Every day people experience these words,

These feelings,

These lies,

These ends,

Because there are so many people.

Because some people believe

In life after death.

You will go without work,

Without companionship,

Without support,

Without sustenance,

Without shelter.

“I don’t care if you disappear because”;

“You can be replaced.”

“When you die

You will reap a greater reward.”

“I will be a martyr.”

 “You do not believe in my

Life after death.”

“You are damned.”

“You are evil incarnate,

A tool of the devil.”

When the cupboard is full

Pull out a new box of crackers,

And if one falls on the floor

Throw it away.

When the cupboard is bare

Pull out the last box of crackers,

And if one falls on the floor

Retrieve it,

Eat it.

Be glad you have food.

As long as humans reproduce

As if the cupboard is bare

And hard to fill,

People will be thrown away

As if they are expendable,

As if life is cheap,

As if life is not precious.

Can I Wait?

I want time to become me.

I have obligations,

That I carry out

Because they are the

Right thing to do.

I have duties,

That I fulfill

Because I feel

Responsible for my debts,

Responsible for my needs.

Responsible for what I want,

For myself and others.

And this does not leave me time,

To breath,

To rattle around in my world and wonder,

What do I want to do

When I have nothing to do?

I am over booked.

I am unable to relax.

I am failing to be me.

I do not have the time or energy

To explore me,

To look to my imagination and wonder,

What if….

It is just, next, next, next……

I’m sorry I didn't get that done,

Next, next, next……

There is no time to explore.

There is no time to fail.

There is no time to imagine,

There is no time to dream,

There is no time to find me.

There is no time to work on what I could be.

I Am Alone

I am alone.

I do not fear this, if I did, it will paralyze me.

My thoughts are entirely my own.

I am responsible for my actions and words.

My beliefs are mine and mine alone.

I was born alone and I will die alone.

Moreover, this is all good.

Some people are not alone.  Their heads are filled with multiple ‘people’.

I do not want to be one of them.

I do not want to fear waking up and not knowing which ‘me’ I will be that day.

It is good to be alone and the only me there is.

I accept it.

By accepting my singularity, I have the power to unapologetically be who I am.

When someone discounts who I am it is their problem.

When someone tries to change me, I may consider it, I may try it on.

Then either make the change part of whom I am or let it go.

If I change, I am not carrying a part of them inside me.  I am a different me.

I am the ever changing me.

I am the me, I have chosen to be.

I am never alone.

Every where I go I carry them with me

The voices, thoughts, words and images

Of people, poets, actors, friends and family.

They advise me,

They remind me,

They are here to support me in all that I do.

They make me strong,

The make me calm,

They fortify me against my doubts

And those who doubt my ability to succeed,

My desire to do good.

They free me to move forward.

They free me to act

When my impulse is to turn back

When I would rather not go on.

They give me the patients to choose

Then see what happens.

They help me be me.

No Protestant Majority in US

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with noreligious affiliation is on the rise.

     The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S.           Supreme Court and the Republicans have their first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees.

     Among the reasons for the change a spike in the number of American adults who say they have no religion. The Pew study, released Tuesday, found that about 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last five years.

     Scholars have long debated whether people who say they no longer belong to a religious group should be considered secular. While the category as defined by Pew researchers includes atheists, it also encompasses majorities of people who say they believe in God, and a notable minority who pray daily or consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious." Still, Pew found overall that most of the unaffiliated aren't actively seeking another religious home, indicating that their ties with organized religion are permanently broken.

     Growth among those with no religion has been a major preoccupation of American faith leaders who worry that the United States, a highly religious country, would go the way of Western Europe, where church attendance has plummeted. Pope Benedict XVI has partly dedicated his pontificate to combating secularism in the West. This week in Rome, he is convening a three-week synod, or assembly, of bishops from around the world aimed at bringing back Roman Catholics who have left the church.

     The trend also has political implications. American voters who describe themselves as having no religion vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Pew found Americans with no religion support abortion rights and gay marriage at a much higher-rate than the U.S. public at large. These "nones" are an increasing segment of voters who are registered as Democrats or lean toward the party, growing from 17 percent to 24 percent over the last five years. The religiously unaffiliated are becoming as important a constituency to Democrats as evangelicals are to Republicans, Pew said.

     The Pew analysis, conducted with PBS' "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly," is based on several surveys, including a poll of nearly 3,000 adults conducted June 28-July 9, 2012. The finding on the Protestant majority is based on responses from a larger group of more than 17,000 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, Pew researchers said.

     Pew said it had also previously calculated a drop slightly below 50 percent among U.S. Protestants, but those findings had fallen within the margin of error; the General Social Survey, which is conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, reported for 2010 that the percentage of U.S. Protestants was around 46.7 percent. Analysts disagree on whether the increasing numbers of nondenominational Christians should be counted as Protestant. Pew researchers do include independent Christians in their Protestant figure.

     Researchers have been struggling for decades to find a definitive reason for the steady rise in those with no religion.' The spread of secularism in Western Europe was often viewed as a byproduct of growing wealth in the region. Yet among industrialized nations, the United States stood out for its deep religiosity in the face of increasing wealth.

     Now, religion scholars say the decreased religiosity in the United States could reflect a change in how Americans describe their religious lives. In 2007, 60 percent of people who said they seldom or never attend religious services still identified themselves as part of a particular religious tradition. In 2012, that statistic fell to 50 percent, according to the Pew report.

     "Part of what's going on here is that the stigma associated with not being part of any religious community has declined," said John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at the University of Akron, who advised Pew on the survey. "In some parts of the country, there is still a stigma. But overall, it's not the way it used to be."

     The Pew study has found the growth in unaffiliated Americans spans a broad range of groups: men and women, college graduates and those without a college degree, people earning less than $30,000 annually and those earning $75,000 or more. However, along ethnic lines, the largest jump in "nones" has been among whites. One-fifth of whites describe themselves as having no religion.

More growth in "nones" is expected. One-third of adults under age 30 have no religious affiliation, compared to 9 percent of people 65 and older. Pew researchers wrote that "young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives," and aren't expected to become more religiously active as they age.

____

Online: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx

Standing up against new voter suppression tactics

December 14th, 2011


By Benjamin Todd Jealous


Our voting rights are under attack. In legislatures across the county, misguided state politicians have proposed, and in too many cases have passed, laws that create obstacles to voting. That is why, in honor of International Human Rights Day, we are taking a principled stand for freedom to let the world know that we will not sit back and let our right to vote be taken away.


Over the last 12 months, 34 states have introduced voter suppression legislation, with laws passing in 14 of those states and bills pending in eight. These suppressive laws take many forms, but in each case they disproportionately impact people of color, working women, blue-collar workers, students, seniors, and immigrants.


In some states like Wisconsin and Ohio, lawmakers are limiting access to the polls by cutting or even eliminating early and Sunday voting opportunities. These significant cuts force parents, blue-collar workers, students and seniors who do not have the luxury of a flexible schedule to stand in polling lines for as many as eight hours.


In states like South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Texas, politicians have used the threat of voting fraud to move bills requiring voters to acquire government-issued photo identification before they cast a ballot. However, studies show that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate someone in the polling booth. Moreover, while states are required to provide photo identification for free, the underlying instruments needed to obtain the identifications, like a certified copy of a birth certificate, can in fact be very expensive. In this way, the new laws become a sort of poll tax for certain individuals.


Other creative voter suppression measures are making their way into law across the country. They include bills stripping voting rights from rehabilitated criminal offenders, eliminating same-day voter registration or voting, and targeted purging of African Americans and Latinos on registered voter rolls.


These attacks on voter participation mimic those used nearly a century ago in the lead up to the Jim Crow era. The lesson we learned then surely applies today - that an attack on voting rights is merely a gateway to further restrictions on our rights, including our right to organize, our right to clean air, our right to negotiate, and even our right to privacy.


Our democracy is too important to allow self-serving politicians to suppress the vote. We must defend our rights. We must have our voices heard.


Benjamin Todd Jealous is President and CEO of the NAACP.

Copyright 2006-2011 The Hudson Valley Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

VOTE

The People who vote win. Vote suppression can change who votes. Zealots vote, do you, do your friends? Fight for automatic voter registration at the age of 18. Fight against voter apathy. Any one who thinks that the religious, conservative voters are winning or gone is commenting on the extent to which they think these people are going to vote as a cohesive group. T-vangelists live in fear and ignorance and they fight with fear and ignorance. Don't be afraid and don't be stupid. VOTE!

Dear Ms Vowell

Ms Vowell, I think you are amazing (I bet you’ve never heard that before). I have watched you on TV and the shit you say cracks me up. I’m just finishing The Partly Cloudy Patriot and I came across something that may explain why I find your writing so comforting.

I doubt that I would have ever bought one of your books. I’m more of a Michener, Tolkien, tome, the more volumes the better, kind of guy. I pick my reading by weight as much as anything else (I got through most of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and I’ll finish it some day). And I like unusual authors, I am waiting for the last three volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come out in paperback.

While I am waiting for paperbacks to be published and then sold to and resold at Powel’s, I picked up The Partly Cloudy Patriot from my wife’s reading pile. She is waiting to read it on our next airport excursion. I’ll probably go with something non fiction but not one of her American presidents, early American history biographies.

If you have read this far I hope you don’t stop now. Some years back, maybe seven or eight years ago, on or about the 4th of July I came home to find a flag stuck in my lawn, sound familiar? Someone had put flags in every lawn along the street. Most were still standing but some were listing dramatically. Over time, some most were taken in but a few ended up in the gutter. I picked up some but didn’t make it a mission to police the entire street. I should have. The next year it happened again. Disrespect of the flag really increases my blood pressure. The people at the mall, who give out those little flags, on oversized toothpicks, to passing children who then unceremoniously drop them on the ground to be trampled on and then eventually thrown in the garbage, should be jailed!

On the stick holding flag, that I pulled from my front yard, was a business card from a local real-estate agent. I called them and informed them that I thought that not only were they disrespecting the flag by using it as an advertising tool, they were also contributing to the desecration of the flag by treating it as a lawn ornament. And they had no right to believe said lawn ornament would be respected as the symbol of our nation. I also let them know that I would do everything I could to make sure they never represented a household in my neighborhood unless they came and retrieved every flag they had placed. And they better do it before the flags were soiled.

They were taken aback by my outrage and assured me that they had gotten a ‘very positive response’ from every one else. And to this day they have not advertised their company in my neighborhood by abusing the flag.

Obviously I am not the wonderful writer you are. Thank you for, in part, telling my story with much more depth and clarity then even I have lived. God I wish I could just think your thoughts even if I could never communicate them to another living being. Reading your words helps me think thoughts I didn’t know existed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you,

PS I just found out that you were born on my 11th birthday, sorry.

Home is . . . . . . .....

There is something true and mildly disturbing about your statement ‘country I call home’.  Aren’t you actually European?  You may call this home but whose home is it really?  North America is the original home of an indigenousness people that arrived here, as the first humans to live in North America, thousands of years before our ancestors re-appropriated it.  If any group has the right to call North America home and dictate the customs used here it seems only fair that it be them.  Just like the countries you sited, I think it should be the indigenous people who get to say what’s what.  So I guess you should think about going home, to Europe, but be careful.  Denmark has one of the lowest percentages of professed Christians of all of the European countries (so do Britain and Switzerland).  You could try Poland or Portugal or maybe Italy as they are the countries with the highest rates of people reporting to be Christian but there again you may have a problem, they’re mostly Catholic and that might not work out so well for you.  And of course the country that has the highest rate of professed religiosity, Turkey, wouldn’t work out so well either.  You would be in danger of loosing your life in any Muslim country, you being an Evangelical Christian and all.  They don’t take to kindly to being evangelicaled.  But then it isn’t just the Muslims and Jews and Hindi and, and well it’s just about everybody (over 66% of the world) that you have trouble with.  You can’t even agree with the majority of Christians!  There are the reformed groups and, well there are over 33,000 denominations and then they fight among them selves and strike out to make new congregations (over 3 million at last count) when they can’t resolve their differences.  Bitch and moan all you want but don’t expect sympathy.  Religious people believe they have the right to impose their faith based beliefs upon everyone.  In your case it’s actually part of your calling.  You kinda fail at being evangelical if you don’t.  It ain’t the will of gravity you are trying to enforce, it is something you believe, which is different for each person and like I said originally, I wish personal, faith based belief systems were kept just that, personal and not made public, and defiantly not forced upon others.  Who set you up as the one that gets to tell others how to behave?  Oh yeah, you, based upon what you believe.  Unfortunately you act as if your rules apply to everyone but you.  You whine about others not respecting your personal beliefs but you trample on everyone else’s.  It don’t seem fair Daniel, it just don’t seem fair.  Enjoy………….

What do You Believe?

Life for life’s sake;
     No matter how hopeless you feel.
     No matter how dismal the future looks.
     No one knows what the future will bring.
     Do what you need to do to stay alive.

The rules are made up;
     Rules are made up for a reason. At some point someone thought every rule would be helpful. Because a rule was once deemed to be useful does not mean that it has to be followed or that it is even still necessary. Evaluate rules to see if you agree with their intent and their expected effect and then decide if you will follow them. The problem with rules is that they are written. When rules are part of an oral tradition they can more easily change. They can fade away as they become nonviable.

Laws are always the same and are always obeyed;
     You will always obey the natural laws of time, physics, gravity, motion, chemistry, etc. You have no choice. If you have a choice then it is not a law of nature and it is a rule that was made up. It is a belief.
Beliefs are not laws and beliefs are not absolute.
And beliefs do not have to be obeyed;
     If you do not differentiate between what you believe, and laws that are absolutely true, you are one of the throngs of people who cause and perpetuate the vast majority of the strife, terror and pain that has been and continues to be part of our daily life.

Believing in absolute good includes believing in absolute evil;
     Acting on a belief in absolute evil violates rights. Behavior that does not exist in the hearts and minds does not exist in the real world.

You have a choice;     You can ‘Ohm-m-m’ and smile and proceed or
     You can ‘Gr-r-r-r’ and frown and see where it gets you.
Morality is personal;
     No two people use the same set of beliefs to define what is right and what is wrong. Individual as well as crowed behavior is controlled by a multi layered mechanism where right and wrong overlap.
In units of humanity;
     There is nothing a single individual can accomplish. You do not even exist if you do not interact with others. You only exists for a reason if what you do is acknowledged. You may be able to change yourself and that change may effect others but it is far more likely that you will remain the same and struggle to be the most compassionate person you can be with little or no effect on anyone. And that is all I ask.

Enjoy!

No! Murder is NOT OK.

     When is it OK to believe that someone must die and then take their life? There is the obvious example that all but the most committed pacifist will accept, in defense of ones own life. That is not what I want to comment on.      It bothers me that there are murders, who choose to end someone’s life because that person does not conform to their beliefs, and they do not want to have it be judged as murder. It is not OK to say ‘You don’t deserve to live any longer’ and with that, end someone’s life. But the death penalty can do this, when a person is judged, by a jury of their piers, to have acted unacceptably and is believed to be without any redeemable future. Neither is this what I want to comment on.
     I have my criteria for the appropriate time to end a life that I think has no redeemable qualities, as I believe most people do. But I have never given in to the desire to act on my belief. But I believe that I could end the life of a person who has committed a heinous act. Someone who has done to others such awful things that I choose not to reiterate them here because it makes me uncomfortable just to think of what they have done let alone describe it to you. Yes, I believe I could end the life of these miserable creatures. But I haven’t acted on this belief. Merely believing that it is OK to commit murder is not what I want to comment on.
     There must be at least one person that you have read about or heard of that has behaved in a way that makes you believe that their life no longer serves a viable purpose and that the world would be better off without them. I think most people can come up with at least one example that fits this description. Maybe you couldn’t kill the people you thought of but you can enumerate them. Your thinking of the uselessness of these people doesn’t bother me.
     What bothers me is when I hear that someone, I believe to be worthy of continued existence, is murdered. I want to know, when is it OK to end someone’s life when the person in question has a family and job, friends and is generally thought to be a fine, upstanding person by those that know them best? And It bothers me that not only can this life be taken, it is believed, by the murderer, that their ultimate authority should they believe in one, will give them an enthusiastic thumbs up once they have committed their crime. Now that sounds crazy doesn’t it? But it is done all of the time. And there are published accounts that would lead us to believe that it has been going on throughout recorded history.
     1st Samuel 18:7 “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands“. Don’t you think that at least one of those ’slain’ in this example might fit my description of ‘people who were thought to be generally worthy people by their family and friends’ etc and yet they were offenceably killed anyway, and it was OK! Actually it was more then OK. It was approved of by the All Mighty! And of course all of the infidels must die, that’s common knowledge. And their absolute authority says ‘Go for it, I’ll even reward you’! I find it impossible to believe that all of the infidels deserve to die and be damned for eternity.
     So who’s life can be justifiably ended and not have the act of killing them be deemed murder? Seems like just about everyone’s, if you look at it from the proper perspective.
     What I want to focus on here are the people who believe they have the right to kill because they believe in the concept of absolute correctness. What bothers me is that there are people that believe that there is an unquestionable right and an absolute wrong. It isn’t that there is, or is not, an absolutely correct set of rules, the problem I have is with the people who believe they can know absolute truths. There are no absolutely true beliefs.
     I’m not talking about natural phenomena like gravity, which I hope we all believe in as absolute. You don’t even need to believe in these laws, they‘ll still work even if you don‘t. Let’s just say that some things have to be givens. No one teaches you that gravity is. Gravity just is and every one agrees that it is and you learn to live with it. And all the laws of motion, they always work in the same way in our day to day lives and we come to depend on it. Every one who has ever stepped out in front of a moving vehicle has been hit. And every one that has jumped off a tall building has fallen and most have gone splat. It is nice when you have a human guide to teach you about the natural, absolute laws but you don’t need one. Their absoluteness will teach you about the laws of nature.
     The problem I’m talking about is the belief in the absolute truths that have been made up or, if you prefer, handed down. Absolute rules that were made up to prevent or support ideas and behavior that you would never know about if someone didn’t teach them to you. For every made up rule/law/belief that someone thinks is absolutely true there is someone else that says ‘Oh no you don’t, that ain‘t necessary so‘.
     Time, as we experience it in our day to day life, always goes forward, never backward and it never stops. Now that is absolute.
     If you want to prove me wrong don’t show me the laundry list of unsubstantiated miracles that you have in your coat pocket that say other wise. If you want me to believe that gravity and time are just good ideas and not absolutes in our every day life (we don’t generally travel near or beyond the speed of light) that have been violated again and again by miracles, then give me proof, verifiable, duplicatable proof. Show me the proof. Then do it again. Perform a miracle. Oh yea, you can’t.
     You can not know, absolutely, that the parent, spouse, hard working, devout worshiper, well respected (in their own circles) person you want to murder because they do not fit your definition of righteous, really deserves to be dead. And the voices in your head don’t count. Those voices are not real!
     Consider for a moment what it would mean if we could all agree that all of the questionable, made up beliefs (everything but time and gravity and their peer, absolute, natural laws, that are not disputed by sane people) are not absolute.
     What would it be like if we could agree that there was a time before ‘offenceably killing another human’ was murder. If this time existed and murder was not always against the law then, at some point, an individual decided that it wasn’t such a good idea to end a human life without just cause. And for what ever reason, others were swayed by the power of the logic and from that point on, human life was too important to snuff out per a personal belief, and from that time forward it was against the law and it was called murder. So from that time forward, just because the kid was not yours, you weren’t allowed to off him. ‘He’s not just an animal ya know, he’s human like you. He’s special. Leave him be and we’ll see what use can be made of his life‘.
     Ah, and now humans are special, not just animals to be killed or used for what ever. Not because humans have souls but because humans can makeup and agree to go by rules that don’t necessarily benefit them at the moment. Humans enjoy the rule of law. Humans seek to be self governed. Most humans have an evolved sense of time and an evolved form of symbolic thought. Oh, but you don’t believe in evolution now do you.
     I am not suggesting that all made up rules should be ignored. I am not an anarchist. There are some that should be adhered to, like those that keep you from killing people (not those that explain when it is OK for you to kill people).
     I know, what a concept, rules to protect rights not rules to take rights away!

Enjoy, and have a nice day!

Requiem for a Rabid Bat

                                       Requiem for a Rabid Bat


     Most people believe in a personal existence that continues after the end of the one we all participate in day-to-day. And they say that if you follow their rules, you too can participate in their version of the after life, and it will be quite nice.
     But then who even wants to live forever? You can not conceive eternity. Your primitive human mind, as advanced as it is, (compared to the mind of a naked mole rat), is incapable of comprehending the never ending. Yes, I know, ‘once I'm in the presence of God all will be revealed to me and that which has been hidden during this life time will be known‘. Uh, then is it really me that goes on after death? Sounds like it would be something else that has all the eternal fun.
     I bemoan the fact that I will not live to see two hundred years. And I can easily imagine a three or four hundred year sentient span. But trying to imagine a life that exists for a thousand years or two; ten thousand, a million, I can't do it.
     No human can imagine staying sane while existing for a million years. And the impossible task of imagining a million year life span is infinitely more achievable then imagining the unbearable pain of eternal existence! I challenge you to think about it, (without shuddering) as best you can. If you dare.
     And who gets to enjoy eternal existence? (As if being sentient forever would be pleasant. Wouldn’t even the most creative essence get bored after while?) Who gets this prize? It depends upon who you ask.
     The more inclusive perspective is, “If you want to go to Heaven, where you will be very happy forever and ever, then avoid evil, repent from your sins, do good in your life on earth, and be sincere in your search for religious and moral truth. Otherwise, you will abide forever in the eternal death of Hell.” And, a more conservative, Christian point of view goes something like, “The people who get to go to heaven are the ones who ‘get right with God’ by beginning a relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ.” Or, or, it goes on and on. They don’t agree.
     There aren’t two dogmatists that promote the same definition of faith and the ever after. Each of them believes in a dogma of their own imagining. A fun exercise would be for you to choose the two most compatible dogmatists you can find, bring them together and see how long it takes for them to begin arguing over their differences. If you give this a try you will be surprised at how quickly they agree to disagree, if they don't come to blows first.
     Christians, and I have only picked this minority because it is the one I am most familiar with, think that at least two thirds of the people alive today (those that do not profess to be Christian) will suffer for eternity. And the other third, self proclaimed Christians, will have the quality of their Christianity judged. The ones that get the thumbs up will enjoy an eternity of unimaginable bliss and the rest will suffer with the non Christians. So it seems that the odds of average, yet to be born humans, enjoying an eternity of bliss, are not at all good. Which really doesn't seem fair, when the best predictor of a persons version of religiosity is the religion of one’s parents not a dogma's veracity.
     And when did this sorting of the 'are you good enough' begin? Two thousand years ago, four thousand maybe? Modern humans have been on Earth for maybe fifty thousand years! Did all of the pre Christians have souls? Is the judger going back before Christ, and what about the Neanderthals? Did they have souls? Did the Cro-Magnons have souls? I know, you don’t believe in evolution, your problem, not mine. I just have questions.
     If the humans that existed before the concept of salvation through the acceptance of Christ as Savior and Lord (or you can insert salvation through adherence to what ever dogma you prefer), were sent to either Heaven or Hell, did they all go to hell? Or maybe they were humans without souls, just toss away humans, like first waffles? Or were there different rules for people who lived before dogma? If before Christ, different rules were used to sort the worthy from the damned, why can’t we use the old rules today?
     There is no Hell. There is no Heaven. There is no happily or painfully ever after. There is no soul. You and the rabid bat are born, live and die the same, enjoy.

Scared Conservative

Liberals, Conservatives May Have Different Brain Structures


Latest Neurology News

FRIDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) -- Opposing political views may linked to differences in brain structures, a new study suggests.

Researchers at University College London found that liberals tend to have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, while conservatives have a larger amygdala.

Based on what's known about the roles of these two areas of the brain, the structural differences are consistent with previous studies that found liberals are better able to cope with conflicting information and are more open to new experiences, while conservatives are better able to recognize a threat and more anxious when faced with uncertainty, according to team leader Ryota Kanai and colleagues.

The study appears online April 7 in the journal Current Biology.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation. Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure," Kanai said in a journal news release.

But it's not clear whether political preferences and other personality traits influence brain structure or vice versa. It's possible that a person's experiences can change brain structure over time and, of course, many people change their political views during their lifetime, Kanai noted.

He also warned against reading too much into these findings.

"It's very unlikely that actual political orientation is directly encoded in these brain regions," Kanai said. "More work is needed to determine how these brain structures mediate the formation of political attitude."

-- Robert Preidt

Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: Current Biology, news release, April 7, 2011

Work until you Die

I believe that this is a sad truth; if the rich conservatives have their way the majority of the youth of today will work until they die and the rich seem to be winning.  I'm sorry and I will do what I can for those closest to me. For the rest of you, good luck.  I hope someone is looking out for you too, because you can't depend upon the government to have your back if something goes wrong.

dF

You do not have the right to your own set of facts

I am a huge supporter in the belief that each individual has the right to their own beliefs, ideas, and feelings.  My personal belief is that no two people have the same set of these personal attributes.  I even believe that it is quite impossible for two people to fully embrace an identical set of beliefs, even identical twins.  Having our own set of beliefs is part of what makes us human, individuals.  We are not of one mind or one point of view.  We can interpret beliefs any way we like but when it comes to established facts that are generally agreed upon by the scientific community, it’s not up to interpretation. Gravity is not just a good idea that you interpret as you wish, even if it can not be fully explained.  Nor are the rest of the laws of physics and chemistry and you guessed it even evolution.  Plate tectonics, uh, it’s a fact, just ask the poor people of Haiti et all.  Only the out of touch fringe (or devious entrepreneurs of hidden agendas) decry facts.  Part of the base value of education is to help us to understand agreed upon facts.  It facilitates scientific endeavors of all kinds.  If we were allowed to hold mutually exclusive sets of facts it would be very dangerous to, let’s say, drive to the store.  You just can’t be allowed to have your own set of facts.  Facts are not up for interpretation, it’s too dangerous for the rest of us but beliefs, go for it.  It’s not just a good idea to formulate your own set of beliefs, you really shouldn’t be espousing someone else’s beleifs.  How could you possibly know who you are if you did?

When will it all end?

The true measure of how prejudice we are can be found here; what percentage of genetic material does a person have to have in them for them to be labeled black? There is no hope of true racial equality until there is only one race. A symbolic marker on the road will be the death of the last blue eyed person and the passing of their memory. It can not come too soon. And if it comes to pass that another race becomes dominant it will be interesting to see how the Chinese deal with it. I don’t expect it to go well.

Make having a pet illegal.

It should be against the law to own a pet. It is certainly immoral. Animals, birds, reptiles and the rest our not just toys for humans. And Zoos should be strictly for the support of animals that are endangered and have no where else to go.
Why do humans believe that they can just do what ever they want without regard to the morality of their actions?

Mother Earth

Human beings serve no purpose.  Even the most insignificant bug is food for something.

Minority rights

It is not just a moral imperative and a point of logic, it is one of the founding tenants of the United States Constitution, minority rights are not put to a vote.  Any one who disagrees is a selfish bully.

Are you Happy?

There are three kinds of people in the world.
Happy people.
Unhappy people.
And people that think they are happy but are not.

I think it is impossible to think you are unhappy but actually be happy.
There are people who appear to have every thing they need to be happy
but all we hear about is how unhappy they are
so I put them in the unhappy group.

I believe that the world is a dangerous place to live for so many people
because most people are unhappy.
It's sad.

A happy person can feel sad or anxious.
They can be afraid or angry.
Happy people feel other emotions, they just don't stay that way
and when they are asked they report being happy.

So what group are you in?

It's just a belief

In the beginning humans were life that struggled to survive. The strongest and most prolific (and luckiest to be in the most hospitable place at the right time) survived. Each individual was out for themselves. There was no family there was no group there was no future. There was only now. They struggled to survive then they multiplied.
     Then what is now known as human evolved into a being that understood the time line of family, my progeny, the loins from which I was begat, the bigger, stronger, smarter being that protects and feeds me and at this point offspring were no longer food. Offspring became your destiny. Offspring became what you left behind.
     As families banded together to prosper order had to be applied to the social unit. All procreation was not OK. And taboos and rules had to be applied to maintain order. ‘Thou shalt not’ came into being and a new goal was offered up to replace the procreation goal. ‘If you follow the rules you will live on after death.’ And so it has been to this day.’
     At some point the idea of life after death will become unnecessary. Death will be overcome by science and fear of it will free us from the fear of ‘thou shalt not’ and belief in life after death will go away along with it those who have controlled those that believed.

What Needs Fix'n...

So how can we fix our democracy?
     You suggest that our democracy is somehow broken or in disrepair. That is has failed and needs fixing. You do not give any examples of how our form of government has failed. I suggest that you are wrong. Our democracy does not need fixing. It is or is very nearly perfect. Keep your hands off of it.
     The problems I see in our great country come from the imbalance between capitalism (an amazing system to produce wealth and power) and the people needed to manage and support capitalism. Today capitalism has the upper hand and it is the legal system that has let the people down. Money has been given the rights that should be only given to the people. In a dispute capitalism can out last and out muscle most people.
     Educate the people so they can use our wonderful democracy and the amazing constitution it rest on, to elect people who will make and enforce a legal system for the people.
     What we need are laws that realign power so people have a chance against capitalism.
     If a person is punished we take away hours, days, weeks, months years (or dollars that represent hours of life) or even life itself. If capitalism is punished we take away pennies.
     Companies have grown so large that fines are nothing more than pocket change. It’s like a billionaire getting a $300 traffic fine. It doesn’t change their behavior. Businesses need to be afraid for their very lives, their very existence. And retribution has to be swift.
     So leave my democracy alone and repair undemocratic capitalism. Big business has sent us to war and ruined our economy. It kills people and the flora and fauna of mother earth every day. Stop the abuse and stop it now. Give the people back the power and make capitalism serve the people, all of the people not just the top 1%.

A good Capitalist

A good capitalist doesn't give a shit about you or your children.  But they always make money!  Your choice.

What do you value most?

Offence? Defence? Children? Are you more worried about staying alive, getting ahead or having successful offspring?

Or are you one of those who are most worried about the after life?

Defence - Offence - Reproduction!

To stay alive is to defend against forces trying to end yours.
To stay alive is to get what you need to continue to live.
If you are successful in these things you have the opportunity to reproduce.

This is true for all life, including yours.

Defence - Offence - Reproduction!

Is Radical Religious Conservatism a form of Psychopathology?

Conservatism is a political and social term whose meaning has changed in different countries and time periods, but which usually indicates support for the status quo or the status quo ante. Cultural conservatism is a philosophy that supports preservation of the heritage of a nation or culture.
The political term conservative was coined by French politician Chateaubriand in 1819. In Western politics, the term conservatism often refers to the school of thought started by Edmund Burke and similar thinkers. Scholar R.J. White wrote: “To put conservatism in a bottle with a label is like trying to liquefy the atmosphere … The difficulty arises from the nature of the thing. For conservatism is less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living." Russell Kirk considered conservatism "the negation of ideology".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservativism

Psychopathology as a descriptive term
The term psychopathology may also be used to denote behaviors or experiences which are indicative of mental illness, even if they do not constitute a formal diagnosis. For example, the presence of a hallucination may be considered as a psychopathological sign, even if there are not enough symptoms present to fulfill the criteria for one of the disorders listed in the DSM.
In a more general sense, any behavior or experience which causes impairment, distress or disability, particularly if it is thought to arise from a functional breakdown in either the cognitive and neurocognitive systems in the brain, may be classified as psychopathology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathology#Psychopathology_as_a_descriptive_term
Religious conservatism
Religious conservatives seek to apply the teachings of particular ideologies to politics, sometimes by proclaiming the value of those teachings, at other times seeking to have those teachings influence laws. Religious conservatism may support, or be supported by, secular customs. In other places or at other times, religious conservatism may find itself at odds with the culture in which the believers reside. In some cultures, there is conflict between two or more different groups of religious conservatives, each claiming both that their view is correct, and that opposing views are wrong.
Because many religions preserve a founding text, or at least a set of well-established traditions, the possibility of radical religious conservatism arises. These are radical both in the sense of abolishing the status quo and of a perceived return to the radix or root of a belief. They are ante conservative in their claim to be preserving the belief in its original or pristine form. Radical religious conservatism generally sees the status quo as corrupted by abuses, corruption, or heresy. One example of such a movement was the Radical Reformation within the Protestant Reformation and the later Restorationists of the 1800s. Similar phenomena have arisen in practically all the world's religions, in many cases triggered by the violent cultural collision between the traditional society in question and the modern Western society that has developed throughout the world over the past 500 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Conservatism#Religious_Conservatism

The inability to change over time usually leads to extinction. There are rare examples of organisms that have found an environmental niche that has remained unchanged for tens or even thousands of thousands of years and there by they have remained on this planet an unchanged life form.

Written religious texts or well-established traditions tend to be static as apposed to living documents. The conservation of the behaviors and beliefs that are based upon ideologies that were formed in the past promotes conflict. The disability that comes from irresolvable conflict is a social impairment that can lead to the death of the participants, without remorse on the radical conservatives’ part. This sounds like psychopathology to me.

Small Government

We only need one rule, this my Dad got correct, 'Treat others as you want to be treated'. And in a perfect world there wouldn't need to be any one to enforce the Golden Rule. But in the real world small government can not be just one rule to live by. It must be a plethora of laws and rules to enforce this one small rule.

In addition to the new rules the constitution is there to be the bassis upon which we built the rules to protect you from those that will not treat you as they want to be treated. Beyond the rules to enforce the small rule we also need a way to deal with the infrastructure and defence of our nation. So we need a lot of rules.

It is a big world and we would not be comfortable in it with small government.

Mercenaries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessian_(soldiers)

During the American Revolutionary War, Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel (a principality in northern Hesse) and other German leaders hired out thousands of conscripted subjects as auxiliaries to Great Britain to fight against the American revolutionaries. About 30,000 of these soldiers were sold into service, and they came to be called Hessians, because 16,992 of the total 30,067 men came from Hesse-Kassel. Some were direct subjects of King George III; he ruled them as the Elector of Hanover. Other soldiers were sent by Count William of Hesse-Hanau; Duke Charles I of Brunswick-Lüneburg; Prince Frederick of Waldeck; Margrave Karl Alexander of Ansbach-Bayreuth; and Prince Frederick Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst.

The troops were not mercenaries in the modern sense of military professionals who voluntarily hire out their own services for money. As in most armies of the eighteenth century, the men were mainly conscripts, debtors, or the victims of impressment; some were also petty criminals. Pay was low; some soldiers apparently received nothing but their daily food. The officer corps usually consisted of career officers who had served in earlier European wars. The revenues realized from their service went back to the German royalty. Nevertheless, some Hessian units were respected for their discipline and excellent military skills.

http://member.tripod.com/~Silvie/Hessian.html

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

You deside.

Economic Stimulus

The basis of our economy is the worker. The majority of the buying power comes from the 40k to 110k job. If these jobs are more prevalent and secure with every reason to expect them to gain at a rate greater then the rate of inflation then money can be saved and spent.

If more jobs, starting around 15 to 20k, with good benefits (retirement, insurance, vacation) and opportunities for advancement, can be produced in an effort to build and repair our country (infrastructure), financed by the government, we can start to buy homes again and stuff to put in them. Now that would be a economic stimulus plan I can believe in.

World Leaders

The Chinese are coming up against some hard realities. Probably the worst hurdle they have to cross is their own corruption. They are so corrupt that they will even poison their own children for a profit. They send their relatives overseas for education, vacation or their health and then they take what they can until they are about to be caught then they flee the authorities. They don’t float their currency so we can’t compete with their production costs. They pollute their water and air. They defile the land. Their only motive is to gain a short term advantage. And it is coming back to bite them. Their people are rioting and have the numbers to demand fair treatment.

We support them with our greed. We need to make moral choices not easy choices. We need to take care of our people and the environment that they depend upon.

If we can become a moral nation that cherishes the earth and the people that live on it then we can be the example that the rest of the world once again turns to. We can be the world leader that we once were. We can be the 21st century world leader that is missing and so desperately needed.