Everyone Wants to be Rich

The impoverished Of America 

are not just those lacking money,

but include those with

poverty of the imagination.

In a war on the new other

house after house 

and building after building

has been abandoned

rural areas are armed and

inner cities are battle zones

beauty is lost.

We have A disaster like no other

For In our quest for gold

We have obliterated distinctions

The land of individual liberty

Has destroyed our differences.

To create identical things

with replaceable workers 

who go home 

on our pocked streets

bloated with cars 

that all look the same 

staying within the lines looking  for

gas stations, restaurants and motels 

made out of ticky tacky.

Screens with 

with hundreds of channels, 

are unable to show us 

anything to help 

build Our dreams 

instead they manipulate us

to be a part of the collective.

slaves to the whims of those who

control all so that they can live like kings

and we their modern vassals.

Education and Politics

I keep hearing politicians in New Mexico talk about a need for vocational training and the limitations of a college education. One candidate even spoke about universities restricting the majors that are available based upon the ability to pay high enough wages to pay back their loans.  There was an indication that vocational education would cut costs for universities.

These are certainly wrong headed notions about the purpose of universities and the cost of vocational training. All majors can produce enough money to pay back student loans. No one needs to start at the top of a pay scale. They are also wrong headed notions about freedom of choice.  Each person needs to learn to create their own plan for their future, not fulfill somebody else's plan.

What we need to do for education is stop preparing children for college or work. We need to prepare them for life. How to establish relationships and how to manage a household. People should know how machines and things like water systems work. In this way they will learn what they need to know for their future, not the society's past.

To accomplish this, mandatory education should be complete after 10 years of schooling. Students should know enough academic skills at this point to choose a direction to explore. Secondary education should allow them to explore the world of work and academia to learn what is possible and make choices about their future that suits their needs.

The best thing politicians can do is promise to fund an education system that allows for personal growth and development, not one that fits children into boxes and determine their future. Margaret Mead once famously said, "children learn what they need to know for the future." Let us accommodate that idea, not one that determines their future

What did we learn in school? Socialism

I know the textbook I used as a teacher of World History included a section on different economic theories. We compared communism, capitalism, socialism. We talked about who owned the means of production and why that mattered. We also discussed the various governmental philosophies. So why do people not understand these basic concepts today?

I was following a thread about socialism and one of the participants was dead set against socialism because of Jamestown, "and we all know how that ended", he wrote. First of all, Jamestown was a corporate charter exploratory colony and I would say that the outcome was ok. I smoked cigarettes, the outcome of that colony, for many years. Other comments on that thread and others I have read demonstrated a misunderstanding of the terms.

Socialism advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods should be controlled or owned by the community as a whole.  Whereas, communism as espoused by Marx is achieved by class war, eventually all property is publicly owned, and each person is paid according to their abilities and needs. In a capitalist system the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned by private entities to make a profit. I would add here that today, the capitalists are well on their way to own and control the government.

Another ism that gets bandied about quite bit is fascism and nazis. I am including the definition for that because I believe it too is misunderstood.  Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader. who controls the economy, and a strong demagogic approach. Some think that this is the turn the U.S. economy and government are taking.

Communism and socialism were 19th century responses to capitalist overreach. The robber barons set the mode of operation for the capitalist system. That was to disregard the needs of the workers and the workings of nature. The expectations of early capitalists for their labor force seemed to have been based upon the feudal system and some form of forced labor, such as slavery or indentured servitude. They have built their wealth using the nation's resources while disregarding the beauty and functions of the earth. Clean air and water are not the price we should have to pay for capitalists to create their wealth.

Communism and socialism have been demonized by capitalists because their ability to create as much wealth as they desire would be curtailed. If corporations have to pay the total cost of doing business their overhead would be much higher, less profit. Cooperative economic systems want their taxes to go for building and maintaining infrastructure, including schools, public spaces and services. That would mean that the capitalists would have to pay to clean up the toxic waste some of their businesses leave behind. They would have to pay their workers at least enough that anyone working would not need to use public welfare services, like food stamps. 


The capitalist system has painted all systems of government, control, and economic development as either good or bad, but just like all of life, it's systems are nuanced. Each government exists somewhere on a spectrum of each of the economic and governmental organization. The United States uses some of it's tax money to build roads, bridges and assist in the overall transportation systems of the country. Helping those in need is another example of using our resources to give a lift to those who need it. The pentagon is funded to protect us and the workers in that system live in a socialist economy where their food, housing and other benefits are subsidized or provided.

Economics is concerned with studying and influencing the economy. Politics is the theory and practice of influencing people through the exercise of power, e.g. governments, elections and political parties. These two systems  work together and often are conflated. Socialism and communism appear to us as bad systems because they have been adopted by authoritarian leaders. In essence those leaders make great promise to the average working man, making them easy to manipulate and use to gain power. Just because communism was used by Stalin in a brutal manner does not mean a more enlightened country with democratic principles can't benefit from the system. Likewise, Putin uses democracy as a tool to rule today's Russia and that does not mean the people of Russia have the same freedoms as people in the United States. 

The promise of socialism and communism is the use of cooperation versus individual enterprise. Individual enterprise allows the greedy to rise to the top while cooperation appears to them to deaden the roots of ambition. If the past is any guide these two principles will be blended to create a better world. Just as feudalism and mercantilism set the stage for capitalism, communism and socialism have set the stage to give the working man and woman the dignity individual enterprise has denied them.

Things That Divide Us-Pro-Choice/Life

This divisive topic pits life against death. What could be more inflammatory? I think this is the heart of the pro-life narrative. Most people would choose life if that is the choice. However, there are competing narratives that do use such stirring language. I would argue that the more nuanced narratives have less emotional appeal and are not heard the same way.

How do you pack the same punch into the argument that "they do it anyway". How can that be framed to compete with "life vs death". It seems to me that argument is a more understanding reason and deserves more thought. As long as families and society are intolerant of "unwanted pregnancies" that is exactly what will happen. The woman who has sperm and eggs uniting inside her will feel rejected and if the child is born, there is a chance it may feel the same.

A number of woman make the choice to abort the pregnancy. They are not killing a child, they are stopping a pregnancy.  So, in a sense, the narrative becomes "stopping a pregnancy or allowing it to continue".  At that point the argument becomes softer, less stark. In addition, many people feel that life begins when egg is fertilized. That, however is not the only thought on when life begins.

From an evolutionary point of view it is the purpose of human beings is to reproduce themselves. This is true for all types of life.  We are biologically capable of reproducing prolifically. Men have unlimited sperm and women unlimited eggs during their reproductive cycles.  If a sperm does not make it to an egg nothing is lost because there are so many sperm that one will surely make it eventually. If not right now, probably later.  Sometimes the egg and sperm create a zygote that does not make it. No worries it can happen later. My point is that there are numerous opportunities to create life and if that process is aborted nature/creator/God has provided for that possibility.

Does life begin with conception, or when the heart beats begin, or as many maintain, when the first breath is taken? This question has been debated for ages and there is no consensus.  Judaism Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religious and cultural groups have differing ideas about when life begins. The stance of the pro-life supporters, that life begins at conception, is a minority view. They have taken the science of life beyond the ideas of scientists, who do not all agree that the beginning is at conception.

Wherever life begins, it is access to a woman's body that is being debated. It would appear that those who abhor a "nanny" government have no compunction about controlling what a woman can or can not do with her body. The patriarchy inherent in societies around the world have believed for centuries that it is a male right to control their women.

Over time women have asserted their rights as individuals who not only control their own lives, but also their say in public debate and governance. This has been a difficult war in which the right to birth control and the final say over their pregnancy has been fought battle by battle. Pro-choice adherents believe they are the only ones who should have access to what happens to their bodies, while pro-life supporters believe the government has the right to decide what happens to a woman's body.

Male control over women has weakened and they can no longer dictate what happens to a woman. It is my belief that most women desire a rational dialogue with their partners about ending a pregnancy, but believe the final choice is theirs to make.

Certainly it is noble and idealistic to wish that all pregnancies be carried to to birth. That should be the goal not a dictum. I think many humans agree that abortion should not be used as birth control. However, the most important ingredient to living a fulfilling life is love. Every child should be loved, valued, and nourished before they are conceived. That is how we end unwanted pregnancies.

Responsible Ownership of Weapons

It is amazing how our debate about the ownership of rifles and guns has devolved into such a heated partisan issue.  The weapon manufacturers have been working hard to arm everyone in the name of profits.  The moral issue of responsible ownership has become lost in the calls for "gun" control.  The most ludicrous part of the arguments is the fear of those who are not responsible owner of weapons causes the call for unregulated ownership of those same weapons.

The second amendment with its indirect language has provided fuel for both sides.  It reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." During the discussions after the Parkland shootings a representative of the NRA was defending their position on this topic and stated that all gun owners are the militia.  

I like this idea.  It makes the language clearer.  Gun owners belong to a "well regulated" militia to help provide security for a free state.  It is my opinion this gives the state the right to provide laws for responsible ownership. 

Educational Organization

Education is still mostly organized around control.  We have been operating on a 19th century philosophy developed by Prussians to teach cohorts of students, based on age teaching the same subjects each day.  We use a technique that pours information into their brains and those who can not keep up are rejected or shunned in some way by the establishment.  The twentieth century brought about Pavlov and his ideas of reward and punishment.  These became the established system for controlling students in their classrooms.  The primary example is grades, A for the hard worker and F for the lazy.  The rhetoric is straight our to Protestant orthodoxy.  Work hard, live a good life and you will go to heaven. This system fit neatly into an industrial society where creativity and critical thinking were not important for the average worker who basically shifted widgets around for the owners of industry.

These concepts and philosophies never worked because they are antithetical to learning.  Certainly those who were motivated to learn did so, but those who had no support and found the lessons difficult had no way to excel in this system.  There were many more drop outs than graduates of the system.

The end of the 20th century brought the technological revolution which required that education actually teach students knowledge they would need to work.  Not just basic skills and science but, retrieval of data that they would use in the workplace.  This includes creative and critical thinking,  research skills  and social emotional maturity necessary necessary to work cooperatively as teams to develop, plan and create. 

As Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigms shift slowly and much of what we know about learning has been discovered in the last thirty years.  Changes in our thinking has been shaped by neuroscientists who delve into the physical brain to discover how it works.  These discoveries have debunked the systems of reward and punishment we have used to control students in school.  There have also been many experiments in education to find out what is the best way to organize for learning and it is not large groups of children, sitting at desks listening to a teacher talk.

The primary finding is that when children are treated with respect and given individual support they do much better.  One of my favorite stories is about a free school in Massachusetts where students are not required to do any academic work.  There were no classrooms, no desks, no prescribed curriculum.  The students sit on committees that hire teachers and make decisions about the nature of the school.  They can learn anything they want, when they want and choose how they want to learn.  One girl, for whom this school was a last chance for education due to her behavior, decided that she would leave. There were no guards, no rules about attendance.  As she reached the street she had an epiphany.  Why am I leaving there are no reasons to do so.  She turned around and decided to pursue her education. We must have internal motivation to truly learn.

If we want school to be a place where learning is a center of organization rather than control we must rethink our schools.  To certain extent the charter movement has cut into traditional schools but they have not been embraced by the establishment.  We must decentralize our classrooms, understand how humans learn and treat all students with dignity and respect before our education system will be center on learning.

Religion is a Mythic Journey

Religion is a mythic journey through life that requires dependence upon a guide.  To make life's journey alone is frightening and requires the courage to destroy the objects of the myth by understanding they are projections and fantasies.  Then a new space is created that is reality and an individual can discover that those fantasies and projections are inside themselves. Now the journey of their life can continue as reality and experience.