A Few Thoughts on How to Fix our Sagging Economy

So this month, I am going far more political in the post than I normally would. I admit that I have not studied economics very much, nor am I an expert in politics. But one cannot ignore the state of our country both economically and politically. Our economy has recovered a bit from the crash in 2008, but it has become stagnant and in fact is threatening to fail again if measures are not taken. In this post, I will lay out a few suggestions for fixing the economy that I will direct at our political leaders, sort of an open letter to them, if you will.


After much work and toil, you managed at the last second to create a deal which would raise our debt ceiling, thereby putting off any immediate economic collapse. Unfortunately, this deal will not do much in the long or short term to help our economic state as everything has been left undefined and ambiguous; for example, the $2 trillion or so in cuts is to be decided by a committee as soon as Congress gets back from their vacation. We've tried leaving big decisions like this to committees before and nothing ever gets done. We'll instead see the same bickering and political bias that got us into this mess in the first place. In the meantime, our economy is still floundering. Many states are more in debt than the federal government. In the last few weeks, the stock market has dropped like a rock. Unemployment continues to rise. Yet the debt deal was held up as a victory. For who? Surely not the American people.

But this essay is not about bashing politicians, it's about suggestions for getting our economy back on track. However, in order to do this, you need to open your minds and stop with the political bias and greed. Stop letting decisions be made by your party or the corporation that paid for your campaign (for that matter, tell corporations to stay the hell out of the government and its affairs. They have no right to be there whatsoever.). Instead, do the job we elected you to do. That being said, I would like to propose a three point plan for fixing this mess. I will again admit that I am no expert on economics, but my position as a rational, sane human being lets me look at this from the vantage point of common sense.

Step 1 – Go through Budget

I know this one seems way too obvious and I know that the federal government and many state and local governments have already started this, but we need to go far deeper. We spend far, far more than we bring in and this cannot continue without drastic and dire consequences. Instead, we must examine every part of the budget at all levels, determining exactly how much revenue is brought in and how much we are spending. Once we have documented this, we need to look at what could be trimmed from the budget without posing detrimental short or long term ramifications. There are likely many programs that could be either cut completely or be reorganized in a way that would cut the cost; I would however suggest that, at least at first, we don't even look at social security, veteran's benefits or medicare. Those are programs that are vital to tens of millions and while I fully agree that they need to be revamped, now is not the time for that. But until we get our budget back on track, they are taboo.

In addition to looking at the ebb and flow of money from all our various programs, we also need to to look at every agency that receives any kind of funding from the government. We have so many agencies now that we cannot keep track of them and, as our president pointed out in this year's State of the Union address, we also have many instances where we have multiple agencies for doing the same thing. We need to eliminate duplicate agencies unless they actually serve a purpose and all other agencies need to go through their entire budget in the same manner as the government, determining every single penny of revenue and spending and trimming any fat that could be trimmed. This applies applies to both private agencies funded by the government and agencies that are actually run by the government. This does not, however, mean that we should just slash their budgets. Their budgets must be treated like all others in that they need to be balanced; in essence, find the fat and trim it out or find a way to boost revenues. The first place to look will be in wasteful spending, such as when congress spend weeks trying to repeal ObamaCare.

But there is one other aspect of the budget that needs to be examined, and that is the pay and benefits of elected officials. While I am certainly not suggesting that any of them work for a pittance, I do feel that many of them are overpaid. Surely they can live more like their constituents, many of whom can currently barely keep food on their tables and a roof over their heads. I constantly hear politicians claiming that they know how painful various budget cuts are, but this couldn't be further from the truth; I have never once seen congress make a cut that actually affected any of them. They have $4,000 suits, luxury cars and expensive houses while their constituents are going broke. I challenge all politicians to be willing to take cuts in pay or benefits and to stop taking contributions from lobbyists and corporations (more on that in the section directed at corporations). Stop being so hardheaded, arrogant and selfish and walk a mile in our shoes.

There has been talk recently of a constitutional amendment that would require congress to pass a balanced budget; this is not only brilliant, it's about 200 years overdue. Under no normal circumstances should we ever have a budget where our spending achieves our revenue because this will only set us up for failure down the line. I fervently hope that this amendment will pass because it is just one step of many to fixing the mess we're in and preventing it from happening again.

Step 2 – Revamp the Tax Code

This is a big one, and Obama has already pointed out that it needs to be done; frankly, I think everyone has known this for several decades, so it's not exactly new news. Unfortunately, as the years have gone by, instead of tackling the problem, our tax code has become bloated and convoluted to the point that even the government has difficulty understanding it. Small businesses and consumers are losing many tens of thousands of dollars a year due to outdated and undecipherable codes while big corporations exploit loopholes and ridiculous tax breaks to rob the government of millions (why the hell do we give a tax break for owning a corporate jet anyway?). It has been estimated that just fixing the business tax code could save tens of billions of dollars.

The individual tax code is just as bad. Most people (myself included) pay someone else to do their taxes or just punch them into Turbo Tax because they can't figure out how to do them. Federal law requires that individual and family taxes be easy enough for just about anyone to do, yet most people have no clue how to do them. To make matters worse, big companies like H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt take complete advantage of people by charging them hundreds of dollars to essentially punch the data into Turbo Tax; however, I am pleased to note that at least this is soon to become a thing of the past due to recent regulations put in place that require anyone doing taxes for profit to have certain credentials. But my point still stands. It's not only wasteful tax breaks and wide open loopholes losing us billions of dollars a year, it's the fact that we have a completely incomprehensible tax code on all levels.

The federal government is already working to close come of the loopholes and eliminate the more wasteful tax breaks, such as those for corporate jets, oil companies and companies that outsource their labor to other countries. I think within the next five years, we are likely to see major progress on this front. But the revamping of the tax code will likely take at least a decade, as congress will need to work closely with the IRS and top economists in order to rewrite it. This will be a long and arduous ordeal, but look at the long term repercussions: we will save billions, possibly even trillions of dollars a year by making the tax code easier to understand and eliminating loopholes and pointless tax breaks without having to raise anyone's taxes; in fact, if we can write a more sensible tax code, we may be able to make a more fair system of tax brackets without hurting our revenue.

The tax brackets themselves have long been a quagmire of difficulty and they often seem rather lopsided as the middle class often seems to have to pay a larger percentage of their income than any other class. We are currently enjoying some the lowest taxes in decades but I tend to agree with Obama that raising taxes just a bit for the richest of the rich could prove beneficial. However, this wouldn't solve everything as so many believe. The simple fact is that even if we took every penny of everyone who had over a billion dollars, we'd still hardly put a dent in the national debt. But when you look at the actual tax percentages, middle class pays a far larger percentage of their income than most wealthy do, so how can we call that fair? Obama is absolutely right in this instance that taxes for the super wealthy should be raised a few notches.

Step 3 – Invest in Long Term as well as Short Term

We have a remarkable lack of foresight when it comes to planning for the long term and this is largely the reason for the current economic crisis. We pass bills and grant funds as knee-jerk reactions without any thought of long term consequences, which in many cases are financially and legally dire. For so many decades we have tried to give band-aid fixes to enormous problems such as revamping medicare and social security while not realizing that that very action was not only putting off the inevitable, it was losing us billions of dollars. This kind of mentality must stop now because it will only further decimate our economy.

Instead of simply passing a bill, we need to take our time and have an outside party read and research the bill to ensure that it makes sense and is actually legal. Without this system, we run into issues such as ObamaCare, which is unconstitutional and wasn't even made available to read to most people until after it was passed. Congress then wasted weeks of time trying to repeal it that could have been used to fix pressing economic problems.

Now, I will recognize that no matter how much we research the possible repercussions of any given bill, there will always be unforeseen complications, but we can still prevent a great deal of grief down the line if we think before we act. Let's use the analogy of buying a car. You go to different dealers, looking at different makes and models so that you can find one you like that fits your needs at a reasonable price. Once you've selected a car, you sit down with the salesman and discuss payment. For the sake of argument, we'll assume paying cash is not an option, so the salesman checks your credit and presents you with interest rates. Now, no sane, rational human being is just going to sign the paper without considering the interest rate because a high rate could easily have you paying two or three times what the car is worth. You consider the interest rate and, if it seems reasonable, you buy the car. We can apply this exact same logic as a double entendre to our debt crisis; our debt has skyrocket because we act without thinking and if we don't pay attention to the interest rate, we could lose billions in the long term.

In addition to taking long term consequences of our action into consideration, we also need to actively invest in the long term. Our economic problems are severe and will sure as hell not disappear overnight; we weren't out of the Great Depression until the '50s. But we can start building a better future today by making investments into education and mass transit.

President Obama has talked a bit about investing in education this year, wanting to train more teachers to replace the drones of baby boomers getting ready to retire. However, we need far more than to just train new teachers. We need to overhaul our education system to offer a far better and more accessible education because the current state is not good. There are many good schools on all levels throughout the country, but so many people are either too poor to afford them or live too far away to attend them. Many people also are unable to get financial aid or grants to attend school because we have made the application process long and difficult and in some cases have slashed the amount of funds granted in a feeble attempt to save money.

But it is not only this that is affecting our educational system. While in office, President Clinton signed into law the No Child Left Behind act, an act which was in principle a wonderful idea. The problem was in the implementation. It laid out a system in which a school's funding was directly tied to its student's performance, meaning if the school's performance was low, it lost funding. Again, this is not necessarily a bad idea, but the problem was the the law gave no methods for improving performance and did not take into consideration the fact that you cannot judge every school with the same criteria. Because of this, we have instances like the recent cheating scandal in Georgia where it was discovered that teachers in many different schools were intentionally changing answers on standardized tests so that the school average would improve thereby preventing the loss of funding. This in itself actually brought to light a problem that teachers have complained about for years: that standardized tests are a waste of time, money and resources because they don't accurately show what a student is learning due to the fact that much of the material in these tests are not what would normally be in a standard curriculum. I am not, however, condoning the actions taken by the teachers in Georgia and other places to change answers. That to me says that they are lazy teachers who don't want to take the time to make sure students are learning.

In addition to standardized tests being tied directly to a school's funding, these tests are also tied to a students academic placement. In the state of Ohio, for example, all high school seniors are required to take a test that will determine whether or not they graduate, so even if a student has a 4.0 GPA with honors, failing the tests will prevent them from graduating. Such a thing is terrible and could destroy a good student's chances of getting into college. I understand and agree with the intent behind these tests, as the Department of Education wants to ensure that students at various points of their academic career have at least some base skill sets, but these tests do not reflect what is in a school's curriculum. So many teachers are forced to alter their plans so that they reflect standardized tests that they hardly teach any of the actual course material. I could go on and on about this, suffice to say that we need to overhaul this now. Already the students of many foreign countries are beating us soundly in areas such as math and science. I fear that we are actually losing intelligence while most of the rest of the world seems to be gaining it. If we improve our educational system, we can improve our performance and productivity both as a country and on a more individual basis, meaning we can find better and cheaper ways to achieve tasks and constantly be on the cutting edge of innovation


While improving education is imperative, so also is the need to invest in mass transit. Most of the roadways in the United States are already becoming clogged with traffic, and with the hundreds of thousands of cars being added to the road every year, it is projected to increase to complete gridlock within about fifteen or twenty years. Now consider the costs of shipping freight and passengers through our congested roadways; the cost is already high, but when the time it takes to get to a destination doubles, triples or more on a consistent basis, it spells trouble. Traditionally, we transported much of our freight by water or rail because the costs are very low and we can transport very large quantities at one time. Granted, water transport is limited to places where you have access to waterways, but what about our once mighty rail network? Before the advent of the automobile and for some time concurrent with it, virtually all of our long distance freight transport was done by rail. With cars and airplanes, few companies turn to rails anymore because they can get their cargo to its destination far quicker even if it does mean paying more. Because of this, most existing railroad tracks lay rusting in the dirt, unused for years and even decades.

I believe that it is time to revisit rail technology. One only needs to look at Europe and China to see what potential a good high speed rail network has. The average high speed train goes around 100 mph now, meaning that a train could go from Cincinnati to Washington DC in about five hours as opposed to the ten to twelve hours it takes a trucker to drive. We could move many times the cargo in half the time for not much difference in price. There is also the fact that studies and statistics continually prove that rail is one of the safest ways to travel as well as being very inexpensive to build and maintain.

In addition to looking at rail technology on a national scale, I believe we also need to look at implementing it into more of our big cities. Here in Cincinnati, seemingly constant road construction and the sheer volume of traffic make driving downtown difficult at best (not to mention the outrageous parking rates). We do not have a rail system here and our Metro Bus system, though quite good, can only do so much due to budget issues of their own. For years we have fought back and forth on the issue of putting in a light rail system but we've never managed to make any headway. Instead we continue fighting down degrading and congested roads to get where we need to go.

But there is an added benefit to investing in a high speed country-wide rail system: once in place, we can begin redesigning the rest of the transportation infrastructure starting with our highways. For a long time, we have needed a better layout for our highways as they too quickly become congested and difficult to navigate; this is a result of the fact that we are still engineering them in the same way they were originally designed. True, when Eisenhower first created the highway system, it was a work of genius, but it can't continue to hold up to growing needs. We can't just keep adding lanes to try and even out the traffic flow because it really doesn't end up helping much when you have an enormous volume of vehicles and people constantly merging and changing lanes in order to get where they need to go.

There are already many ideas for how to update the system on the table and I have many myself, such as creating a high tech roadway that could interface with onboard computers in vehicles as they drive, feeding information such as traffic delays and upcoming exits and rest areas. A roadway like this could even charge electric vehicles while they drive. In turn, the roadway could easily collect data on road and traffic conditions, making the road easier to maintain. I would also suggest that we greatly reduce the number of exits on highways as they create labyrinthine interchanges and massive backups . Instead of having exits for every crossroad, we should have follow the same system that the Ohio and Pennsylvania Turnpikes, among many others, use: there are only exits for other highways and major cities and there are rest areas with gas and food about every thirty or so miles. Traffic on the turnpikes flows very smoothly most of the time, barring accidents or bad weather. We should use them as a model in redesigning the rest of our highway system.

Clearly, there is a great deal of work to be done on mass transit and it will not be easy. But that cannot deter us. It is imperative that we invest in it because it could help our economy by saving billions of dollars that are otherwise wasted. But as I have noted above, there is also a great deal of work that needs to be done now in addition to these investments in our future. My three step plan is not foolproof nor is it heavily researched, but I say again that if we look at this through the eyes of common sense instead of the eyes of political bias and idiocy, it's not as complex a problem as we want it to be. There will certainly be more than three steps, and this will not be done overnight, but it can be done if we can put aside our feelings and work together instead of bickering about how to get something done.

The Other Side of the Bullying Coin

So I've noticed that this blog has somewhat departed from its original purpose of self-discovery, though that is not necessarily a bad thing, and in a way, it really hasn't. It has helped me to find a voice that I never really had before. And now I am bringing it full circle and writing somewhat of an extension of my very first post.

If you recall (and if you don't, feel free to look back), my first post was about how being bullied caused me to retreat inwards and lose my individuality. But I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to find a way through it with the help of loved ones and a good creative outlet. I too frequently see news stories about bullying, and the stories are getting worse. No longer is it simply a kid being pushed into a locker or having their books stolen. Now we have worse things like cyberbullying or the kid that had his hair set on fire a few months ago.

As the brutal treatment escalates, so does the response from the victims. Over the last few months, there have been what seems like dozens of reports of victims taking their own lives. Two girls committed suicide at a sleepover a couple of weeks ago. A young man took his life after classmates posted a video of him having sex with another man online. Even adults partake in bullying, such as the case of the mother who cyberbullied a classmate of her daughter until she too committed suicide. Even one such report is too much, but there are so many now who resort to such actions.

I have already spoken and written to great lengths about looking for the signs of bullying and doing what we can to help the victims; while I will never tire of it, I would like to switch viewpoints for a moment. This month, I'd like to examine the flip side of that coin because we need to help the perpetrators as much as we do the victims.

Bullying is born almost universally from two sources: insecurity and ignorance. Now frankly, everyone is insecure about something or other and we all have different ways of coping with that. Some people hide these perceived vulnerabilities by not only picking on someone else , but by also projecting their own insecurity onto their victim. In fact, most victims actually have the same vulnerability as their abuser; take, for example, homophobes. Homophobic people relentlessly pick on homosexual people usually because they themselves are gay and don't know how to deal with it (thus ignorance enters the picture, but I'll get to that in a minute). This applies to virtually all acts of bullying.

While the bully tries to hide their insecurity by picking on someone else, they in fact tend to make it painfully obvious that they too feel vulnerable. I know this is vastly oversimplifying it, but instead of letting yourself be the victim, help them. They will likely recoil and abuse you even more at first but if you keep pushing and trying to help them. It always gets worse before it gets better, but it will get better. You just have to break through the second source of their behavior, ignorance.

In this instance, ignorance and insecurity are thoroughly intertwined, with one constantly amplifying the other. But ignorance is not something we are born with. Look at a young child. They are innately filled with curiosity and their minds could not be more open. They feel no ill will or malice towards something that is different from them; rather they accept it. But at some point, that behavior slows down and in some cases even stops. Somewhere along the way, they learn to close their minds. They become ignorant and mock any viewpoint contrary to their own.

There's no possible way to narrow down any one spot that such behavior is learned; rather, it is learned through exposure to different kinds of stimuli that come from everywhere. Some of it comes from parents. A good deal of it comes from television, movies and music. Some of it comes from books. Another good sized portion of it comes from school. I could go on and on with this list, suffice to say that this behavior is the result of societal viewpoints and expectations that we as members of society are almost constantly exposed to and feel obligated to follow.

At this point, I could easily turn this into some huge dissertation about how our society and culture control virtually everything we think, feel and believe, but I won't. I just want to make a point about it because bullying is but one of the many effects of such control, and this applies to every culture on the planet. This, however, is not a rationalization for ignorance or bullying; in fact, it is our ignorance that leads us to continue blindly following what society tells us. But don't get me wrong; I'm not saying society is always wrong either. We simply need to step back and look at things objectively from time to time.

This is where education comes in, and I'm not necessarily talking about booksmarts here. Yes, those are useful, but what I'm getting at is being educated to open your mind. By teaching bullies to open their minds, we can begin to lift their blinders, allowing them to grow and change. Most bullies stop tormenting other people in time, but I'm hesitant to say that they really got rid of their ignorance because, let's face it, as a whole, we're stupid.

This leads into somewhat of a paradox. We are more educated than ever before, as schools, libraries and other forms and repositories of knowledge are more accessible than ever, yet in some ways we seem to be gettign dumber. We're still just as arrogant and thickheaded as we've ever been. True, our minds seem to slowly be opening, but we still view the world through blinders.

There is no easy solution for this, but I would suggest we start in the schools. I'm not going to go off on schools here nor am I going to throw all the blame on them, but I have not been impressed with the way schools handle bullying. Most, if not all, have a “zero tolerance policy” towards such behavior but it is not enforced. The perpetrator is given a detention or made to write an essay/lines on the subject; both of these are akin to a slap on the hand. I knew many people who got detention in high school and they remained unfazed by it. Suspending them is not the answer either because that's essentially saying “hey, take a couple of days off school.” Sounds more like a reward than a punishment to me.

No, somehow, schools need to find a good method of disciplining these kids. But just disciplining them won't solve it either; if you keep yelling at them, they'll just rebel further. In addition to discipline (and arguably more important) they need to learn, to feel the weight of their actions and the repercussions they have. I don't have the magic answer here, but I know that at least some schools have found a way to implent this and it needs to be more widespread. I understand that in these tough economic times many schools are forced to lay off staff thereby heightening the risk of a student being bullied but they have to find a way to help them nonetheless. It is, after all, their job to ensure the safety of the students

I am not a child psychologist or teacher nor do I have kids of my own, so it is naturally a bit difficult for me to propose a way of dealing with this due to my lack of a frame of reference, but I would like to put forth a proposal nonetheless. There are, as I have pointed out, two sides to this coin. The discipline side of this is easy; I suggest a strict three strikes rule: first offense is a warning, second is detention/suspension and third is expulsion. I'm sure this seems ridiculously harsh, but we can't keep slapping them on the hand either.

The education side of this is the more difficult one. Schools already do a great deal in the classroom, but it is still not getting the message across, and I think I know why. People don't generally learn as well by listening to a lecture as they do by a hands on activity. We need to find a way to get the kids involved in the learning process instead of just telling them about it. Due to my lack of teaching experience, I don't really know a good way of doing this, but I do have one thought: require all students to see the school counselor once a month or so. I realize that the counselors are busy, but this could have a profound effect on bullying. I mean, think about it: all most kids really want to do is to talk about themselves and to have some attention; why don't we make this serve a constructive purpose? We could kill two birds with one stone, helping victims and educating bullies. This could even prevent a lot of aberrant behavior before it starts.

I've spoken with a few people who work in schools and they tell me that many schools already have strong anti-bullying programs such as these in place and that they have indeed led to a dramatic decline in bullying. Unfortunately, there are still few schools with such programs, largely due to the budget cutbacks most schools are enduring in the face of our economic woes. I certainly understand that we all need to tighten our belts in these tough times, but we can't do it at the expense of our children's safety and education. I won't get into that argument here, seeing as that is a post in itself; suffice to say we need to find a middle ground where we can trim the budget without taking away from the kids.

There is and will never be an easy solution to bullying. There will likely never be a universal solution either; what works in some schools will probably not work in others. But we can't just keep shuffling our feet and mumbling about these problems. We have to face them head on because otherwise they will only get worse. I urge parents to pay attention to their children for the signs of being a victim or a bully and to educate their child either way and I urge schools to stop waiting to deal with this until some tragedy occurs and they cannot possibly ignore it any more. We must educate and read the signs. All the answers are already there, we just have to find them.


I want to end this with a brief message to the victims of bullying: you are not alone. I speak from a lifetime of experience in that it does get better. I know this is what everyone says to you, but we wouldn't be saying it if it weren't the truth. I implore you, don't end your life. Endure the torment and you WILL come out on top. You will one day discover that this hell has made a stronger person than you can possibly imagine.

Violence, Part Two

Last month, I began our two-part look at violence with a look at what it is and what it can do to a person. This month, I will conclude by picking up where I left off and looking at what violence has done to society.


Violence is all around us, and it has regrettably become a part of the life of every single person on this planet (and anyone who denies it is either ignorant or full of shit). We can easily see what it does on an individual level, how it tears families apart, how it creates pain that could never be described in words. We watch as the innocent are forced to suffer and die because of the way our society has chosen to live. But why? Why has society accepted violence as a means to solve problems?

To answer this, we must first accept our violent and brutal nature. I spoke in the first post about the history of violence; indeed, violence has been part of this world since the dawn of time, and we humans have only exacerbated it. While it is true that all animals have the capacity for violence, it is only humans that conscientiously act on those tendencies. The “lesser” animals (and I put lesser in quotes because I don’t agree with the massive superiority complex that we suffer from, but more about that another time) act out of instinct, usually to protect young or a good food source.

With humans, this is different. We intentionally act violent towards one another, usually for no good reason. This goes back thousands of years, with greedy kings seizing land and killing the occupants at every opportunity; this continues to happen today. For some reason that I cannot fathom (this is a moot point, as I believe there IS no rationalization for such behavior) we insist on using violence as a method of getting what we want, as a means to solve a problem.

Take, for example, early European colonies in the Americas. European Kings sent men to these lands for two reasons: expansion of their empire and acquisition of wealth. Whenever the native peoples stood up against them, they were killed (and those who didn’t die in battle tended to die from the diseases introduced by the settlers). Even worse, the invaders were completely blind to the natural beauty and power of the lands they fought so violently to take. If a greater power wanted something, they simply took it, using any force necessary and showing how skewed their sense of values had become.

We like to pretend that we don’t act like that anymore, but we are just as brutal as ever. Industries and governments alike destroy lands and force people to relocate so that they can drill for oil or extract a few minerals because demand has deemed them valuable. But because our lust for blood has whittled our patience down to nothing, we don’t want to wait for diplomatic solutions to pan out. Instead, we simply take.

But this doesn’t only extend to foreign lands. For thousands of years, rulers have used violence and the threat of violence to keep their subjects in line, killing or maiming those who rebelled or disagreed (insert cry of “Off with his head!” here), and this is still used today. Look at all the protesting in the Middle East. People are being killed because they no longer wish to live under the greedy warlords who govern them. Twenty-two years ago, tanks rolled over students in Tianemen Square. During the Civil Rights Movement, demonstrators were often harassed, beaten, or worse; the abuse came not only from citizens, much of it came from law enforcement and even government officials (such as Alabama Governor George Wallace standing in front of the door to the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering; thankfully, that particular event did not result in violence); hell, even our own civil war comes down to the Union forcing the rebels back in line.

This opens the door on what I believe may be the most common reason for violence (aside from self-defense): failure to listen. Actually, I’d like to revise that statement to say that I believe the failure to listen is the root of all violence. This seems like a very outlandish claim, so let’s first look at a dictionary definition of “listen”. Dictionary.com gives four definitions:

Listen

1. to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing; give ear.

2. to pay attention; heed; obey (often followed by to ): Children don't always listen to their parents.

3. to wait attentively for a sound (usually followed by for ): to listen for sounds of their return.

4. Informal . to convey a particular impression to the hearer; sound: The new recording doesn't listen as well as the old one.

Most of these describe listening in the purely physical sense, but look closely at number two, especially at the first three words: to pay attention. We’re all told to pay attention, but how many of us truly do it? I mean, ignorance is bliss, right?

Wrong.

Ignorance leads only to trouble, and it is magnified about a thousand times over when you are in a position of power. People become convinced that their point of view is the only right one and that no one else’s matters, hence the saying “in one ear and out the other”. At the least, this leads people to act like jackasses (I’m sure we’ve all known a few of those) while at the extreme, violent and destructive behavior can emerge, along with a large degree of smugness; in a person of power, this also creates fear and paranoia.

But there is more to this than just ignorance. Part of listening is to have an open mind, and frankly, most people do not. We are a remarkably close-minded species, and this is not limited to any one culture or place or even time. Our minds are more open than they once were, yes, but when faced with something we don’t understand, we retreat like a turtle into his shell. If something doesn’t mesh with our beliefs, instead of trying to understand it, we become defensive (due in part to the aforementioned lack of patience). We become ignorant and derisive of all points of view contrary to our own. Can you see now how a simple failure to listen results in virtually all violence on this planet (excepting those acts that are part of nature i.e. killing for food)?

But this doesn’t just affect one side of the coin. When someone fails to listen to you, you also become irate and lose patience. When diplomatic communications break down, the results can often be disastrous. Countries can end up going to war, the ultimate illustration of what a failure to listen can do. Countless lives could be lost, and many more could suffer untold horrors and pain. It has happened thousands of times in our history, it is happening now, and if we don’t change, it will continue to happen.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Above all else, we must open our minds to other points of view. We continue behaving so arrogantly and pretending that we know everything, because, simply put, we are fucking stupid. In a previous entry, I compared the current state of the human race as being analogous to that of a teenager. Extending this analogy, we can see just why we are so violent to each other; we need only look at an average high school to see how cruel teenagers can be to each other. The human race is just like this, torturing one another out of ignorance, lack of patience and an inability to accept those who are different.

There is, regrettably, one other reason that we act with such violence and cruelty towards each other and that is that some people actually enjoy it; in the recent film “The Dark Knight”, Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred sums it up by saying “some men just want to watch the world burn.” In some people, the lust for violence has become so thoroughly ingrained that they no longer need any kind of reason for it, they just do it for entertainment. They enjoy watching people squirm. Such people are rare, but they can cause great damage nonetheless; think of brutal dictators like Hussein and Trujillo. Such people revel in destroying the world around them.

But now we are seeing a fascinating change. People are standing up to such dictators. They are sending a clear message that they no longer wish to live in a violent, oppressive society (ironically, through the use of violence, which in this instance I will neither condone nor condemn). As more and more peoples and nations begin to stand up for what is right, perhaps we will finally begin to usher in the era of peace we’ve looked for so many centuries. If we can continue down this path, we can finally begin to eliminate greed and corruption.

This will not be an easy path, nor will we be able to traverse it quickly; it is bound to be fraught with further horrors and will likely take several more generations in the least but it will all be worth it. The first step is to educate. Education will combat ignorance, which in turn will create acceptance, patience and understanding. If we can simply learn to listen, we can throw away the need for violence. Set an example for your friends and neighbors and for our children. Pass down a legacy of acceptance and kindness instead of one of ignorance and cruelty. Stop fighting over ridiculous things like resources and religion.

The greatest value is not in the ground, it is in life.

Violence, Part One

So I'm going to do something a bit different with this month's post. I have been meaning to post about this topic for some time, but there is a great deal I want to talk about, so I'm going to break it up into two posts. This month's topic is our obsession with violence.


“No one has the right to take the life of another.”

--Rem Saverem




Violence. We see it all around us, each and every day, in the forms of wars, crime and protests gone awry. We can't turn on our televisions without seeing it. Almost every news report has to do with it. Our TV shows and movies are filled with it. Even our great works of literature are filled with it. But why? Why do we have such an obsession with violence?

Firstly, this obsession is nothing new. For as long as humans have existed, we have been a violent and savage species. However, in the early days of humanity, violence actually served a legitimate purpose. We had to kill in order to survive, and to an extent, that is still true. We slaughter and butcher plants and animals for our food. But somewhere along the way, we started to slaughter and butcher for fun. We started to enjoy violence.

Some would say that it was only natural that we would grow to enjoy violence, seeing as the universe is an incredibly violent place. But I disagree, because the violence of the universe is a natural process, whereas the violence we obsess over is engineered for our entertainment; however, a hundred thousand years ago, it was a natural process, but that changed somewhere along the way.

Though it is difficult to determine precisely when violence made the jump from necessity to entertainment, it can be speculated that it occurred as tribal society began giving way to civilizations. There had already been a good amount of violence and warfare between tribes, but I consider that natural, akin to packs of animals fighting for hunting grounds. But as civilizations emerged, crime and violence also began to emerge. These two words are not quite synonymous, but they are symbiotic. To have one without the other is impossible, and one did not come before the other; rather, it's like the chicken and the egg.

However the two evolved, it was crime that was responsible for generating an interest in violence, thereby precipitating further crime. As crime became more prevalent, legal codes were created to aid in keeping order and to discipline offenders. Most codes prescribed various terms of imprisonment that were dependent on the crime committed, just like our legal codes in the United States. Many cultures instituted the famed “eye for an eye” policy, while virtually all codes, including religious ones, prescribed execution. Even in the earliest codes, capital punishment was highlighted, and as time wore on, many cultures began to exhibit such punishment in public, culminating in events such as the gladiator battles of ancient Rome.

But this was not the only thing that contributed to our bloodlust. There is another, arguably larger contributor: we are warmongers, and always have been. We have warred with one another since the dawn of time, but for reasons noted above, I believe that our true lust for war came with the dawn of civilization. As kings and pharaohs came to power, different cultures began to fight over the land, resources and religious beliefs. As time wore on, belief systems would become one of the most common excuses for war. Rulers believed that they had some god-given right to conquer new lands, not unlike Manifest Destiny in the 19th century. Even Popes used this as an excuse, sending European troops to take back the holy land during the crusades. Kings and Emperors alike would continue using this excuse for centuries and even in the present day. They fervently believe that they must unite the world under their “perfect” system of beliefs. Two world wars were fought over it. Countless lives have been lost because of rulers who are ignorant, selfish and fallacious.

But we cannot simply blame our governments for wars, because in many instances, people push them to declare war. Perhaps the finest example was the Spanish-American war, which only erupted as a result of newspaper owners such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst using their newspapers to push us into it. But sometimes, it is the government that pushes the people into revolting, such as our own revolution or the revolutions currently happening in the middle east.

While war is driven by our lust for violence and bad reactions over petty disagreements, it unfortunately also helps us develop new ways of killing each other. Virtually every war ever fought has seen new innovations in weaponry, from the longbow to the atomic bomb, each new invention being deadlier than the least. Current weaponry innovations focus on how to kill with precision so that innocent bystanders aren't injured. I suppose this is useful, but you're still trying to justify killing someone, and no one has the right to snuff out someone else's life.

We have lived with this savagery for thousands of years and now, inevitably, it has become a vital part of our entertainment. Our most popular video games and television shows are filled with horrific, brutal acts of violence. Many of the highly regarded films are based upon wars. Our entertainment industry makes the gladiator battles of Rome look like two kids roughhousing. We delight in watching people obliterate each other and even in causing it in video games. I may be lecturing against this, but I am by no means an exception to this rule. I thoroughly enjoy putting Grand Theft Auto IV into the Xbox and shooting up the town or initiating large police chases that end in death and destruction. I am by no means a violent person; anyone who knows me knows I'd never hurt a fly. But I am human, and I regrettably have the same taste for violence as the rest of society. But why have we developed such a taste for blood? At first glance, it seems to defy any sense of logic, but upon further reflection, answers can be found.

The most obvious answer to this question is that we have become desensitized to violence. Our video games, movies and television shows are centered around it, and so are books, radio plays and news reports. We routinely see huge explosions in movies that make us shout “Dude! That was awesome!” We even invest millions of dollars in special effects to make the violence more realistic, and we are left wanting more. And this desensitizing isn't limited to violence; it extends also to swearing, sex, immorality and destruction of common sense.

We are becoming an even stupider and more violent species than ever. What's worse, we don't seem to mind our children being exposed to violence. Parents do what they can to shield their children and obviously no one is perfect, but they still let their children watch violence on television and in the movies. I recently heard an anecdote about a father who called into a PR department to complain about two women that kissed each other on a TV show, saying that it was immoral and that he didn't want his children to watch that (likely out of homophobia, but I will save my opinions on homosexuality for another day). Now, that right there shows that parents need to take more responsibility for their children. If you don't like something on a TV show or in a movie, don't let your child watch it! But an even better point was made by the operator. She asked if having the two women shoot each other instead of kiss would be more appropriate, to which the father responded yes, it would be.

Wait . . . what?

If that doesn't show desensitization to violence, I don't know what does (again, I'll dissect the homophobic point at a later time). What the hell kind of parent would willingly expose their children to violence without even considering the possible ramifications. I'm not a parent and clearly I don't have any frame of reference, but it seems like common sense dictates that we think before we act. But this obsession with violence, death and destruction is destroying our common sense. One only needs to read the Darwin Awards to see how stupid we are becoming. Worse yet, I fear we may be developing a severe sense of apathy. So few people give a damn about anything other than themselves anymore, and I know that we are so much better, both as a society and on an individual basis, but I will go into more detail on what our obsession with violence is really doing to us in next month's post.

This is the part of the post where I'm supposed to wrap things up and leave it with a nice moral at the end, but there are so many unknowns that there's really no clear cut path to an answer. I'm not trying to write an expose decrying the use of violence; rather I am trying to get an understanding of what it does to a person and to society and what we can change for the better.

Violence is indeed very damaging to a person, but just how damaging and in what context? Certainly witnessing a massive explosion or gunfight would be far worse than watching it on television. But does that mean we should stop showing violence completely? I don't think it does. I think that we need to gear it in a way that makes us learn from our past in order to prevent mistakes from being repeated because, at its core, violence shows us what happens when society breaks down and runs on primal instincts.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Ever. We have the potential to erase the need for violence and to be more than we are and more than we can possibly imagine. We only need to look inside ourselves to see it.


Stay tuned for next month's post, where I will delve into our brutal and violent nature, looking at our past, present and, if the trend continues, our future.

The Man With The Golden Voice

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard the news reports about Ted Williams, the homeless man from Columbus, Ohio. For anyone who hasn’t, I’ll summarize it here: A few months ago, a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch was driving on I-71 when saw a man panhandling on the side of the road. The reporter had a camera in his car that he kept running in the event that something of interest happened. He pulled over to talk to the man and to see what he was selling. Williams was simply speaking to people in exchange for money. His catch was that he has a voice unlike most; he has the kind of voice you expect from a radio personality or movie promo announcer.

After this strange meeting, the reporter went on his way, but the world didn’t find out about it until a few weeks ago, when he uploaded the video clip to the internet. Soon, job offers from all over the country, including Hollywood, started pouring in, and he was even reunited with his 90 year old mother on Dr. Phil (*cough* fraud *cough*). In the short course of a few weeks, his life completely turned around, and I’m happy for him. There have been some rumors as of late that he may have regressed into drinking again, but that’s not what I want to write about here.

No, the subject of this post is the reaction society has had towards him. People have been so accepting of him, so willing to give him a second chance, and frankly I applaud this and wish it happened more often. But why has society reacted this way to him? This is a man who has admitted to alcoholism and drug use; people like this are almost universally shunned. Our reasoning is that they committed such acts once, so they will certainly do it again, that people cannot change; to quote Inspector Javert from “Les Miserables”, “Once a thief, forever a thief”.

This is a dangerous and naïve point of view.

Firstly, this assumes that people are born a certain way, and that is the way that they will always be, that our morality is completely inherited. I must disagree. I believe that that is only partially what makes up our morality. The other factors are our upbringing, the people that raise us and the area we live in. I have a different point of view and a different set of morals from someone that lives in Europe, for example, but that is not to say either of us is wrong or bad. What I’m getting at is that who we are and how we react to things is dictated mostly by what the people that raised us taught us. If you were raised in a convent, you’d likely be a kind and benevolent person; on the other hand, if you were raised by a couple of Neo-Nazi skinheads, then . . . well, I would not ever want to be near you.

It is these teachings we receive in our formative years that really formulate our minds; however, that is not to say that it is a guarantee that we will turn out the way our elders want us to. But even if we completely rebel and become something worlds apart from those before us, we will still hold some of their ideals; this is why even though we disagree on things on an individual basis, people in general have the same basic ideals. One of these ideals has created the belief that a criminal must inherently be a bad person, and will always be this person. I would like to profess my belief in what Anne Frank also believed, that all people are inherently good. Some people say that good and evil are a point of view, but I must disagree. When someone says this, what they really mean is that anyone who’s against me must be bad. Frankly, we all aspire to be “good”; that is, we all want to live in a kind, peaceful and benevolent world. We all want an end to war and poverty and hunger and greed. The “evil” arises because we disagree on how to go about getting these things.

Now, this is where the breakdown occurs. We want to think that all people are good, but when presented with someone from a bad part of town or someone with a criminal record, we automatically assume the worst in them. We are just as racist and prejudiced as we have always been, and we can’t pretend otherwise. Mr. Williams is one lucky SOB in that society didn’t judge him as just another homeless drunk.

Unfortunately, Mr. Williams is in the minority that has escaped this auto-judgment. Most people in these kinds of situations are not so fortunate. The best contemporary example is the travesty that is the Sex Offender Registry. When someone is labeled a sex offender, society automatically deems them to be incorrigible monsters. They can’t find jobs, or even places to live. They are shunned worse than lepers. It is auto-judgment at its worst, and it’s very ironic in America, where the prominent religion is Christianity. Didn’t Christ say “do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”? (For the record, I am not religious, nor am I an atheist. I simply do not conform to organized religions.) So why do we disregard this teaching? Why can’t we see that the axe swings both ways? This childish judgment of things we don't know or understand is what divides us; instead of taking the time to learn and understand things, we simply assume that anyone not sharing our view is wrong and a threat. We simply label them as the enemy, thereby punishing the masses for the mistakes of only a few.

I say again, this point of view is dangerous and far too naïve.

We need to open our minds and be accepting of all our differences instead of bitching because we assume someone may wrong us. Society's reaction to Ted Williams made me feel hopeful that perhaps someday we can finally let go of these pointless prejudices and start to grow up. We need to learn to forgive people for their transgressions, and this is not an easy thing to do, especially on a large scale. It is easy to forgive one person, but hard to forgive a group; this is why we harp on not just criminals, but on many different cultural groups as well. As human beings, we live for holding grudges, but all this does is destroy who we really are. It makes us jump to conclusions instead of examining all the facts and making a well thought out and rational decision.

Now, some people would probably call me a hypocrite already because even I discredit certain beliefs and cultures (i.e. the Nazis) that I don’t claim to have a complete understanding of. I have always said that only you know what you need to believe, and I will not dispute your beliefs so long as they are legal and are not causing harm or forcing anyone to do things they do not wish to. In fact, I believe that every culture that has ever existed has wanted the same basic things: peace, safety and security. The difference is how they go about getting them.

Humanity has indeed begun to grow up, and I like to think that we are considerably far more mature than we once were, but we still have so far to go. Currently, I consider us to be the equivalent of a teenager. We are snot-nosed, arrogant little bastards who think we know everything and that everyone else is wrong. But I faith that one day, we will grow out of this behavior just as every teenager does.

To Censor, or Not to Censor? That is the Question.

So there’s a fairly big story in the news right now about a new edition of Mark Twain’s classic story “Huckleberry Finn” coming out. The reason it is such big news is that this edition is completely censored. The editor replaces every instance of the word “nigger” with the word “slave” and every “injun” with “Indian”, thereby avoiding offensive racial slurs; furthermore, it is being packaged with a new edition of “Tom Sawyer” which has been censored in the same way.

Now, I understand why the editor is doing this. This kind of language is completely unacceptable in this day and age; many schools refuse to use the book anymore because of it. I personally despise this kind of language and feel like smacking anyone who uses such terms. But this book was written in 1884, when such language was commonplace. Twain wasn’t condoning such language; rather, he was simply writing in the dialect of the day. The problem with this, and with countless other works, is that we don’t want to admit that we once thought or talked that way. We like to gloss over the darker parts of our history so that we still look good. But we cannot deny that these events happened, as doing so is far too dangerous.

Look at your own life. I guarantee that there are things in your past you are ashamed of and do not talk about. We all make mistakes and we all do stupid things, and believe me, I am sure as hell no exception to that. I have done some truly stupid shit in my life, but I don’t try to make myself believe that I didn’t. The fact is if you and I hadn’t made those mistakes, you and I wouldn’t be the people we are today. The same logic can be applied to every country, and even the entire world. For example, if we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed well over 100,000 innocent people, the United States might not even exist today. You might never have been born. It may have been a horrible thing to do, but it ended the bloodiest war in all of human history; who knows how much longer it might have gone on had we not dropped the bomb. Now, for the record, I am a pacifist and despise all war, but I will gladly admit that we would not be where we are today were it not for the countless wars humanity has raged through the centuries. I accept this as fact, and learn from the mistakes made in the past.

Bringing this back to the topic at hand, this is not the first instance of controversial censoring, but it may be one of the most egregious. Many parents fight to have books like this banned from schools due to their subject matter (I am particularly disturbed by the fact that they consider “To Kill a Mockingbird” too offensive for schools.). Disney and Warner Bros. both have old short cartoons that they do not show due to their subject matter being extremely racist or controversial. The two best known are “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips”, where Bugs Bunny spends the entire cartoon killing “Japs” and “Der Fuehrer’s Face”, where Donald Duck dreams he is a Nazi and is working in an ammunition factory. Today, these cartoons could never be made. But these were both made during World War II. That was how we viewed our enemies at that time. The same is true of many, if not all, of the books that parents are working so hard to ban. They feel that the content is too offensive or abrasive for their children to be exposed to (my favorite was the group that tried to ban Dr. Seuss for being too unrealistic).

Now, I am not a parent, but I certainly understand that we need to be careful of what we expose our children to, seeing as certain things presented too early could do a great deal of harm. But by pretending that racism, bigotry and hatred don’t exist today, aren’t we giving them an unrealistic and distorted view of the world anyway?

The best example I can offer of this is my own life. My brothers and I had a very sheltered upbringing, as our parents wished to protect us from harm; this is the job of a parent. But when I was finally exposed to the real world, I had a very rude awakening. Because I was sheltered from the coldness and cruelty this world is so full of, the beginnings of my adult life were very tumultuous, largely in part to my own naiveté and immaturity; my view of the world helped keep me from growing up. But because my parents also taught me how to learn from past mistakes and how to adapt to present circumstances, I have been able to eke out a fairly decent life, and I have also learned that the world is only as cold and cruel as we make it.

But this is about more than what may or may not damage a child’s view of the world; this is also about learning about and from our past. The lessons of history are vital on so many levels; not only is it intriguing to learn about where we come from, we also need to learn the lessons of the past so that we can ensure that mistakes will not be repeated. For example, when you’re first learning to ride a bike, you will likely fall several times. But after a half dozen or so scraped knees, you finally learn what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it. By using this same view on history, we can avoid repeating the atrocities we have committed in the past. Read “Huckleberry Finn” with this approach and it takes on a whole new context. It shows you the racism and views that permeated the country in the 19th century; by understanding this, we can make sure that we don’t act that way again.

I understand that many people are reluctant to expose children to this for fear that they could start using the language themselves or fear that it may damage them, but we can’t live by those fears (I would also like to note that parents need to stop putting all the blame for their screwed up kids on external stimuli; however, that is a debate for another day). You only need to look at what our world is today to see what being controlled by fear can do. We need to face that fear head on, and we need to face our past, no matter how ugly or horrific. We can’t just gloss over the bad things and pretend they didn’t happen. After all, we are what we are because of everything that has happened; besides, do we really want to teach our children that if something is bad or shameful, they can just twist or distort it so that it isn’t bad anymore? This is tantamount to running away when things get tough. If we want our children to be able to deal with things no matter how arduous or horrifying the situation may be, then we NEED to let them be exposed to the nightmares of our past. Learning to persevere is arguably one of the most important lessons a person can learn, and I speak from experience.

This is about so much more than freedom of speech. This is about the lessons we teach to the next generation. This is about making us deal with our eccentricities and insecurities. This is about making us deal with those actions we took that appall us. I implore you all: do not let this and other classic works be censored just so they can be more palatable. The artist creates the work so that they can express a point, and to censor it is to change that point entirely. Let these works be seen as they are meant to be seen. Let our children learn the horrors that we have and continue to inflict upon one another. Let our children learn about the past so that they can make the future the bright and wonderful place we all dream of.

A child can handle and understand so much more than we give them credit for; I believe in them is the true potential of the human race. Don’t destroy that potential by making all the choices for them.