Example of myopia

Battling the spread of anti-biotic resistant bugs

definition of Myopia - see #2

I laud the American Centers for Disease Control for all they do protecting us from the ravages of all the illnesses that tend to attack humans.

However, the news story on CNN illustrates what I mean by cultural myopia. All too often we tend to think that the cultural environment we live in is shared by all … bad news … it isn’t.

That is why all the wonderful things that the CDC tries sometimes doesn’t even make progress in the US. It would be nice if everybody would, as Pappy used to tell me when it was really important that I get his message, listen, hear and attend to what it is saying. Unfortunately, that is not happening and it is somewhat silly to think that it will happen.

Even worse, it leads to the “experts” trying to impose their vision on the less informed people so that they can be protected against themselves, their own follies and foibles.

We are seeing that in the US with the new health care financing regime popularly known as Obamacare (but really entitled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). All those silly people who didn’t have enough sense to get the health care insurance plan that these experts deemed adequate are now being forced to do so, whether they want to or not; or they will face a new tax (it is not a fine, the Supreme Court said it was a tax), because it is the right of every person within the US borders to get health care regardless if they want it or not.

Oh, and employers will face the new tax in a year or so, unless they get with the program.

Now, it seems that a lot of Americans were happy with their lot and pretty well understood the value they were getting for their premiums. Unfortunately for a lot of them (now numbering in the millions), their insurance carrier was forced by federal law to drop the policy that they had because they had changed some of its wording or the pricing schedules to reflect new realities.

I have no doubt that there will be winners and losers in this situation and the winners will be tickled pink at how much they will save. They ought to be … but at the same time, they need to acknowledge that someone else is picking up the tab for them.

I am not necessarily saying that is wrong, because that is how insurance works. Normally, however, it is a matter of choice for both the carrier and the insured. Removing the element of choice – and essentially that is what Obamacare does by setting its vision of what should be covered and what should not be covered – is what I disagree with.  But then, nobody asked me.

You see, I have a problem with the government/society protecting me from my own foibles. Granted, there are those who will argue that we have to be protected from vagaries of life that can inflict so much damage on us. I suppose they have a point, especially when they can’t get someone else to share the burden or risk with them. But then, I disagree. I see life as being basically unfair and our test is to see how we cope with reality. Getting others to carry our burdens without their consent is a little beyond me.

My fear, you see, is that when we do that, we surrender our freedoms and liberty to make choices. To me, that is more important … but then I have to admit I invested a lot in making sure I had health care insurance coverage as I got older.

I have paid and am paying a pretty penny for that coverage – in more than one currency – so, I don’t have to worry about the medical care that I or my wife have to pay for. It may not cost as much now as others, but then I made different choices … and one of those choices always kept one eye on the necessity of providing myself with health insurance at a certain age.

Unfortunately although I keep getting reassured that the federal government is not going to muck with it too much, I fear that the federal government in its good intent is going to change all the rules, negate all the planning and effort I put into setting up my coverage and basically mucking it all up.

You see the U.S. federal government has a long track record of mucking things up … and with me, going back on its word.

So, while I hope that the CDC folks can get their way, sort of, I look at the US and shake my head in doubt.

As for changing the habits in other places? Not a chance that is going to happen. That is what I mean by myopia. These experts can’t see past the borders and realize that things in other cultures and social environments just ain’t the same as they are down in Atlanta.

Anyway, I suspect that regardless of what happens, the human race will endure.

Philosophy 101–Essay 1

First in a series

I have been challenging myself, of late; challenging my own world views by trying to answer questions about them. Given the state of politics in my native United States, it probably should be understandable. Well, it has been an interesting experience.

Those who know me know that I am an inveterate, voracious and somewhat eclectic reader. As I say, it broadens one’s horizons.

Well, between reading articles on the internet and from my again-growing personal library (both physical and e-book), I find myself asking questions about the world as we see it today. I am trying to challenge my assumptions and compare them to more than six decades of observation of the human condition.

Who is right? Am I wrong? Heck, I think I am a big enough person that I can admit that I can be wrong or that I even have made a mistake (or two – or a whole bunch, because I have and still do). I even have admitted when problems are bigger than I am and asked for help. However, having said that, I wonder if my perceptions of the world are indeed correct. I am beginning to suspect that I have been more prescient than I have ever realized. So, I decided I would compose a series of essays on my philosophy, my beliefs, and my assumptions. I will leave it to you, my reader, to judge whether my views have any merit or not. I am merely sharing them.

The problem, I fear, is where to start and that is the most difficult question to answer because anywhere I start, I feel as if I am jumping in mid-stream of my thought processes and trying to decide which bank I want to swim for. However, I guess a good place to start is to start with a series of definitions. I do this, so that we all are on the same sheet of music when I delve into my digressions and views on philosophy.

When you are talking about humans and their world, what is the basic element? To me it is the role of the individual human in that world. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about a family, a clan, a tribe, a community, a city, a state, a nation or any other subdivision of human activity, the basic element in each is the activities and choices of the individual.

So, what makes up an individual human being? Philosophically or biologically? The challenge already is laid down.

What is a human being? Is it merely a collection of protoplasmic cells that through some mysterious process has developed the ability to rationalize its existence? Is it that ability to synthesize perceptions into a belief structure and the bag of bones and water that carry that ability irrelevant? Who was the philosopher who posed “I think, therefore I am.” (It was the French philosopher, René Descartes.)

Ok, let me define the individual as a human being who has the ability to think, rationalize, essentially to think abstractly, to imagine things that aren’t and to solve problems. An individual is capable of making choices that can affect not only the individual’s life but others around them.

But then that begs the question that when does the individual become capable of doing all those things and what do we do with the individual prior to that point? So, maybe my definition isn’t so good after all.

My beautiful wife makes a very compelling argument that a human individual is created at conception and implantation in the mother’s womb. I won’t delve into all her points, but the basic one is that once the embryo begins to divide and grow there is, and can be, only one result and that is a human being that will – with the passage of time – meet all the requisites of my definition. Now, I know that one could digress into viability, the obligations of one individual to another, from parent to child, and all the other issues that surround the debate about the rectitude of permitting abortions, but I choose not to go that route right now.

So, if we take that individual, what else can we say about him or her? Well, for one thing, each one is practically unique. Yes, twins do have identical DNA but they are burdened with different life experiences and exposures and hence there are differences between them.

Next, does that individual have a free will? In other words, does the individual have the capability and ability to make choices? Then we have to answer how much responsibility can be laid to the individual over the choices they make? That is a more difficult question, it seems.

It revolves around the issue, it seems, that which controls a person more: Their nature or how they were nurtured? Neither, it seems to me is adequate to account for the diversity of people and what they do. Yes, genetics does play a major role in what a person will become, how they view the world and how they make their way in the world.

We all are born with different physical and mental attributes, talents and abilities. We see that every day, so to deny it is to deny reality.

By the same token we see that the environment people are raised in, the expectations and values that are taught to them from the time they are born make a tremendous impact on each and every individual. Often we can see incredible changes in individuals when, for whatever reason, they change their values or their expectations about whom they are or what they can accomplish.

So, we have to accept and admit that nurturing, or the lack thereof, plays a very important role in the development of a human individual. It is that realization that leads me to want to write this series of essays. If words and individual acts can make a difference, then I chose to try to make a difference.

We are all individuals. We are all different. We are all free, in my mind, to chart our own path through the world and our lives. It is the choices that we make and the expectations we have of others in the choices that they make that ultimately determine our fates – so to speak – in a world that truly is chaotic and without boundaries.

I hope this gives you food for thought before we progress on.

Nuff said.

Missed opportunity

Romney on Detroit auto industry bailout

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that General Motors and Chrysler should have gone through the bankruptcy process without the injection of $60 billion in taxpayer money that didn’t keep the companies out of bankruptcy court in the end.

Well, in this case, back in 2009, I was siding with Romney, but I understood the stakes. Yes, the American economy was going to go through a really rough shakeout, but I had foreseen that 30 years earlier, but I am not going to go back over what I was saying editorially back in the 1970s and 1980s.

No, something President Barack Obama said during the debate set off a cascade of thoughts in my head in relationship to the U.S. auto industry.

First, President Obama wasn’t talking about how he saved Detroit; he was talking about how the country had changed since 1916. Romney had pointed out that the U.S. Navy is smaller than it was before World War I and the president was saying a lot had changed, from bayonets (which are still used, Mr. President) and horses to aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

It was the horses’ thing that triggered my thoughts. Even though Special Forces guys rode to victory in Afghanistan (proving that even horses are not quite obsolete yet), it was the image of horse drawn carts that leapt into my mind.

In 1916, the U.S. (along with the rest of the world) was on the cusp of shifting from a horse-drawn world to a internal combustion engine-powered one, something like the world is facing now.

Ok, this is a stretch, but think about it. Detroit is heavily invested in internal combustion engines that run on things that burn, right? That is a no-brainer. Of course it is. I can think of more than one movie plot that has the “auto industry” in conjunction with the “oil companies” conspiring to suppress breakthrough technologies that revolutionize the auto industry.

Now, stop and think a moment. Why were GM and Chrysler doing so badly? Might it be that not only that they were stuck with union contracts that were sucking the life’s blood out of the industry but also because they were stuck with an old business model? Are they not still trying to sell horse-and-buggies to a world that needs Mr. Ford’s Model Ts.

What would have happened if the fossil-fuel based auto industry had been forced into bankruptcy? It might have had to reinvent itself. That is what the buggy makers did 100 years ago. Some made the transition to cars, but a lot didn’t. That is what happens in a truly progressive world where the world progresses and inspires innovations and new industries.

President Obama talks a big line when he talks about turning to alternative energies in the future, but when he had a chance to really change things, did he do it?

But no, our government was more concerned about doing the bidding of the auto unions. Don’t believe me? Then why did the unions get rescued, while those bond investors – who by law came first on the list of creditors – basically got the shaft and the door?

You see, one of the great things about the United States is that we used to be a nation of laws. Those laws applied to everybody and the president wasn’t busy waiving their application against this group or another.

You want to know why I have a problem with President Obama and his administration. The answer is right there: Its refusal to apply the laws of the nation equally, regardless of social status, economic status, racial status, religious status, etc.

Don’t complain about the wealthy not paying their share when 1 percent pay something like 40 percent of the federal income tax. Sorry, but that dog just doesn’t hunt.

Don’t grant states waivers to unpopular laws, while suing other states for trying to apply federal laws within their jurisdiction.

Don’t tell defense contractors they don’t have to abide by federal law and that the federal government will reimburse them for their violations if they get sued because they didn’t.

The U.S. missed a huge opportunity three years ago when it could have stood up and taken the body blow that would have hit the auto industry in Detroit. That auto industry could have taken that opportunity, as provided under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, to reorganize itself, reconfigure the industry and come out with a more forward looking product.

Nope, we missed out chance, because we were too afraid that the unions might take a hit and some people might get hurt.

Well, getting hurt is part of life. What marks the type of person you are is what you do when you get hurt, get knocked down, and then get up again. What you do then is the true indicator of the type of person and type of nation you are. What are you? What are we?