Category: personal observation

Infanticide!

There, that got your attention! And such is the real purpose of shock words these days – to condense a slur, rally a slogan, and sometimes promote a hidden message. I remember when students would shout “hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today .”

Some issues are tangled, mysterious, insoluble. Abortion and women’s rights _ or potentially crippled-child rights _ is one of the toughest. Definitions are almost impossible. The world refuses to be solved .

For the record, I am in favor of all children, everywhere, being born normal, healthy, and into circumstances where they are well cared for until their late teens. For the record, in our real world, even if babies are born normal and healthy, society often lets them die or suffer from neglect, starvation, war, disease, or other violence. And genetic luck guarantees that many embryos do not produce normally healthy babies. It used to be far worse – nature was never kind .

But “baby killer” is an effective slur. Nobody wants to be so labeled. The problem is that those who use it are – like those anti-war demonstrators – really pursuing a deeper agenda One in which it is the duty of women to produce and raise children and leave the rest of the stuff to men. 

I dislike such people and their agenda. Perhaps one day I too will have to find something simplistic to shout back. Isn’t that really the true problem with our civilization? Not stupidity, not evil, just fatigue at complex, seemingly insoluble, issues .

Business Visionary

We generally admire the extraordinary individuals who through intelligence, drive, or structured vision lead their companies to heights and influence. In the old days Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt. In modern times, Gates, Murdoch, Musk .

They are generally saluted as less evil embodiments of human ambition – helpful to society rather than disruptive politicians like Napoleon or Hitler .

No doubt there is some truth in that. Corporations are often a force for good, producing wealth which eventually trickles down to all. A cornerstone of our affluent modern world. Almost forgotten are the days when they were labeled (with some justification) “merchants of death.”

Remember, however, that all of those leaders were human. No matter how ruthless, they were constrained to mortal existence and secondary desires. I believe that, increasingly, AI driven business will become ruthless in ways we cannot imagine, completely morally bankrupt from a social point of view .

The dangers of treating employees like machines has long been luridly documented in literature. AI goes a step further, since it cannot understand any fundamental difference between flesh and metal, nor any obligation to consciousness versus obedience .

Today’s specialized titans of industry, unfortunately, are already well down the road to AI sterility. 

Pursuit of Money

Everyone says they want to be happy. The Declaration of Independence proclaims people have a right to pursue it. We say we want others to be happy, our children to be happy. And on and on . Unfortunately, in a competitive society, there are problems with happiness. It just doesn’t fit with the rest of the ethos .

For one thing it cannot be quantified. There is no “standard unit of happiness” as there is for money or distance. You cannot say a person with eight units of happiness is better off than one with two. How then, can you tell who is winning ?

We also prize property, which like other possessions, tends to be stable. Unfortunately happiness is a kind of transient illusion. It can appear for no apparent reason, and vanish just as quickly. We can’t store it in land holdings or a bank vault .

Worst of all, it is fickle. Clearly a person with more dollars is better off than a person with fewer. A clear winner (we like winners!) But somehow a beggar with the right attitude can actually be happier than those refusing to give him alms. Irrational! Yet we all want happiness. 

And we work really hard hoping and believing that more money will bestow more joy. I guess sometimes it does. But that “sometimes” is pretty annoying .

Exaggeration and Lies

Exaggeration is often welcome in conversation. We love to claim we caught the biggest fish, had the worst day of our lives. Casual talks with friends are lighter if we stretch the truth, or even invent things out of whole cloth .

But that is entertainment. Serious discussions are not aided by stretching facts to fit desires. Unless, I suppose, you are a lawyer … Seriously, using exaggeration to win an argument is a time honored practice .

The problem is when exaggeration turns to lies. If someone says the water tastes bad, fine. If they say it is dangerous to drink, that should require proof. Lies and truth require more than merely saying something is so .

Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment or when trying to achieve power, exaggerations slide easily to lies taken as facts, for exaggerated goals without foundation or nuance. So we get orations, such as “gypsies are ignorant dirty thieving people and should all be run off or shot on sight.” No proof, no nuance, but unfortunately effective especially when combined with other equally shaky statements like “we would all be better off if there were no gypsies.”

We used to think “lying” politicians were bad, but now we seem to believe “exaggerating” ones are merely cute .

The Good Life

A list of what constitutes a “good life” is almost infinite. Security, health, purpose, achievement and all kinds of immediate desires driven by situation and often stoked by envy. Constructing a comprehensive list would be impossible .

Nor does it help that our mercurial consciousness juggles the proportions all the time. If we are very secure, we may desire adventure. If we have all we could possibly want all the time we may be bored. As we age, the possibilities and strength of desires mutate deeply .

Often in younger days there are immediate massive problems that overwhelm all others. Some are illusions, but they seem real at the time. At times the jumble is so chaotic that our wishes become simple, like just getting a decent meal or a good night’s sleep .

So for an elder to outline “a good life” to anyone else – especially someone less old – is malicious. One thing I think becomes clear wisdom is that conditions vary, and the past is rarely a reliable guide in matters of the soul. Anyway, there are enough puffed up guides out there to satisfy anyone’s curiosity. I wouldn’t trust them -, but then, I’m not you .

I adjust and remember and immerse myself in my own “good life” and wish you luck with yours .

Simple-Minded

In nostalgic eras past, unfortunate individuals with low mental capacity were known as “village idiots” or “simple-minded’” folks. Now we inhabit supposedly kinder times, but those “simple-minded” are still with us. However I refer tp people mentally constrained by their own choice. 

Some are intellectually lazy, and find it easier to accept or reject anything they hear without troubling to investigate further. Nevertheless, they hold their opinion – whatever it may be – arrogantly. Others reach the same condition simply because there is too much to know and life requires us to focus on what is relevant .

The harm in so many people willingly becoming simple-minded is that in the myth of our society, citizens are supposed to be well informed. About everything. Admitting that one is fully ignorant or confused or even unsure about anything is not rewarded. To admit ignorance (even to yourself) when you are ignorant is quite healthy. But many of the unthinking may label you as stupid .

We have a voting population certain of their shallow beliefs, too involved in other things to care much except when egged on by volatile wannabe leaders .

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. In the land of the simple-minded the wise person remains as unobtrusive as possible .

Knee Jerk Regulations

If “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, it is even more true that the road to lawyers’ paradise is paved with knee-jerk laws and regulations. These are well intentioned guidelines that become ever more encrusted with caution, which strangles actions, and which result in stupid wasted time and money _ except, of course, for the legal profession (who often make those rules.)

Playgrounds are a good example. Nobody wants children to be hurt and trying to keep equipment safe is a good idea. But in these times – well a scraped knee might become infected so the ground must be rubberized. Someone may fall so everything must be netted and roped. The kids end up having no fun at all, and the rare accident can cost a town or insurer millions .

The gripes of businesses are legendary. But the truth is that existing corporations and guilds will do everything in their power to build barriers to entry to stop competition. And the most effective barriers are esoteric legal requirements .

In the modern world, common sense regulations do make sense. Nobody wants to get poisoned by the water. But spare us all the do-gooders who fixate on bad “might happen” and try to eliminate all risk in life – which always has risk .

Magic

When I was a boy, “magic” had been confined to church. After world war II, everyone assumed “Yankee ingenuity” could fix anything, often with little more than “string and bailing wire”. Farm boys were all mechanical geniuses, City kids knew how to outfox anybody. All was – or would soon be – knowable and under control .

As examples, we fixed our own flat tires, changed oil. When a TV or radio didn’t function, I’d take vacuum tubes out to test and buy at Radio Shack. Even later, I knew how transistor “gates” worked and could program in binary (zeros and ones) or assembly. TV or newspaper news was limited, trustworthy, opinion confined to editorial pages .

Now? It’s all magic. Even mechanics can’t fix new cars, God himself couldn’t repair a broken circuit board. I have no idea how quantum computers work, nor how AI is programmed. And all sources of “news” are slanted and suspect .

In fact, once again, we inhabit a world of magic as profound and (possibly) as dark as anything in the Middle Ages. We know how to (mostly) talk and provide services for money, shop, consume, and be entertained. A few “experts” know a lot – or claim they know a lot – about increasingly tiny bits of esoterica .

That makes the residual child in me quite uneasy. Without understanding I still believe real control is impossible .

Face Blind

In an era of mass production and conformity, it may be easy to forget how different people actually are – both physically and mentally. And how that shapes their outlook on the world. Individuals are treated very much as if they are the proverbial “bricks in the wall,” identical in possibility and hope .

Of course when we think about it that is not true. Short people simply will not be basketball stars. And so on. Talents and handicaps vary. Much depends on the time and situation into which one is born. That is all common sense, easily agreed on. What it means and how much it is actually important is a whole other matter. 

As a trivial example I am face blind – I cannot recognize people from their visage. Not really much of a problem, but it tended to limit me to being comfortable only in small groups and otherwise treating everyone as anonymous strangers. Today, with virtual AI eyeglasses doing facial recognition, it would even be correctable, like lenses for 20/20 vision. But in my times, I realize it truly shaped my response to life .

I worry, then, that the iron homogenization of computerized capitalistic rule is ignoring such basic human facts. A society composed of people finds ways to deal with such diversity. Rigid “scientific” silicon-based laws may not .