Path to Enlightened Insanity

So this will send anyone who is an objectivist into a seizure or at minimum a small fit.

Since I wrote Skipping along the glitches I have been thinking about the responsibility we have for one and other. Jon mentioned something about this at last Sunday’s church service.

I’m responsible for the well being of the other 6,673,409,088 people on the planet. This isn’t to say I’m responsible for making sure everyone is happy or is living what they consider is a meaningful life. No, it would be naive for me to think that I had that much influence and power. But, I am responsible for using what we share responsibly and rendering aid when there is an immediate, acute, and individual need.

On the other end of the spectrum there is family, which I am extremely responsible for and they are responsible for me.

One of the things I love(d) about Speakeasy, Chiquita, University Unitarian Church, South Hills Presbyterian, my biological family, Jenni’s family, Miami Valley, Lambda Union, and theatre is that they are communities where people understand and care about each other.

There has been a societal discussion about the isolation and division in our society. This may be true, but it is only true because people allow it to be true. Community does take effort and work, but it returns more than you put into it.

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At this point I’ve probably lost the objectivists but who cares?

Some of you might say that it logically follows from capitalism that this is not a capitalistic idea, and instead of reeks of socialism or communism. The dirty little secret for those people is that capitalism already has codified that we all have responsibility for each other, via the insurance system. Somehow it becomes more palatable when a profit motive and a brand gets applied but all insurance is, is a set of contracts that state “We’ll take care of you if x happens.” On a fundamental level how is that any different taking care of your community?

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Of course our responsibility to take care of those in our communities scales, the smaller the community the more specific responsibilities we each bear for each other, and the larger the community the less specific responsibilities we each bear for each other, but we each bear more general responsibilities for each other.

We our our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

One of the things I try to do is to stay out of the closet about as much as possible. Keeping secrets about who I am from others isn’t healthy or helpful. Those of you who have read the Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings for a while realize that I’ve written about huge swaths of my life, including being gay, my long battle with depression, and my suicide attempt.

I’ve been seeing ads for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk around Seattle for a while. I kept thinking I should look into it, but I procrastinated about it for the longest time.

Recently, in the young adult newsletter from UUC there was a note that two of my fellow young adults, Katie Bishop and Shannon Parker would be participating. I looked into participating as well, but the fundraising goals were a bit more than I thought that I’d be able to make happen, so I opted to volunteer on the crew instead. So I’ll be bringing up the rear of the walk, as one of the team leaders for the trail sweep team.

Please consider supporting Katie and Shannon by making a donation via the links above.

I’m a member of MyPoints, its one of those ways I can get paid for receiving marketing, although I know the actual amount I make per transaction is pretty small.

But I got an advertisement from MyPoints for the USO that really annoyed me. It was dovetailing into Memorial Day and stated that “They don’t do this in Bagdad” take a peek:

I unsubscribed from USO’s emails and sent MyPoints this email:

I received an Bonusmail for the USO. The tagline was “They don’t do this in Bagdad.” While I understand MyPoints does not completely control the content of advertisements, I believe this ad is racist and contrary to the American value that individuals are valuable. Denigrating any one person for who they are or where they live is morally repugnant and MyPoints as a publisher should not allow such advertising, even if it is from a reputable organization like the USO.

Respectfully,

Nicholas Barnard

This is hatred pure and simple. Its subtle and insidious, but the message is that Iraqis and by extension Muslims do not honor their dead or those who have serviced their country and community. Another way of stating this is that the email fosters the creation of a second class of world citizen. This line of thinking is harmful for both groups that are being created; I doubt division will be healed by a series of protests similar to the ones that were brought on by a bus boycott.

What I didn’t get into with MyPoints is that allowing this subtle insidious form of hate it makes it more acceptable for people to practice overt forms of hate. Here is the thing about the Koran shooting, that soldier is going to get all sorts of crap for it. But the blame lies at the feet of the leaders of society.

The blame lies at the feet of the USO.

The blame lies at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld.

The blame lies at the feet of General Petraeus.

The blame lies at the feet of John Kerry.

The blame lies at the feet of Hiliary Clinton.

The blame lies at the feet of George W. Bush.

The blame lies at your feet.

The blame lies at my feet.

I’ve been faced with an unwanted but generally desirable problem: which job should I take?

I was unexpectedly catapulted into the job market back at the beginning of March. I spent a week licking my wounds, a week shining my resume up, then four weeks running through the interview gauntlet.

I came out of this with two job offers: one for a position that wasn’t quite what I wanted, but was at an awesome internet company. The other one was at an airline training company and the position was closer to what I wanted and was closer to what I’ve done in the past at Chiquita. It was quite likely that the offer from the training company would pay significantly more than the internet company.

There was one snag with this, the position at the airline training company had not technically been offered to me yet, but I had information that it would be offered to me. However, the position at the internet company had to start before the training company could give me an offer. I had already delayed the internet company once, and I needed to start a job, so I started at the internet company with the intention of quitting when I received an offer from the training company.

So, I waited for an offer from the training company.

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited for almost three weeks, which actually got me to the end of the training class at the internet company, when I received an offer from the airline training company.

The offer was far less than I thought it would be.

During my period of waiting, I had grown to like the work environment at the internet company and I became conflicted about leaving there. So I put together a decision tool of pros and cons for each position and visually weighted them. When I got the job offer from the training company I tinkered with the decision tool a bit and adjusted it.

I still felt uneasy about the state of the tool, so I put in some harder numbers as to cost savings that I’d have at the internet company but not at the training company. I also did some research inquiring about promotion opportunities at both employers and doing some first hand research on the commute to the training company. (I am quite decided that my main commutes will be by public transit for all of my future positions. Cars are just too expensive.)

The purely financial considerations of the positions clearly pointed towards accepting the position at the training company, with a net gain over the internet company as large as $9,000 per year. (The internet company has a performance based bonus program, so my compensation there can vary.)

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I cannot lucidly cover all of the considerations that came into play, but it honestly came down to a decision of how much money would it take for me to sacrifice following my values. Some of this comes back to why I think I decided to move to Seattle:

• I wanted to live in a dense area where work, home and shopping were close together.
• I wanted to work at a company that was a leader in its field, and able to move aggressively, but not recklessly.
• I wanted to work somewhere with a very diverse employee population.
• I wanted work somewhere where the quality of my work was judged, not the fact that I had bleached my hair.

I really fiddled with the decision tool to find a way I could make the financials come out to be clearly positive for the internet company, and under the best case scenario that would happen. But everything has to fall perfectly for that to happen, and while I think it can happen, I wouldn’t place a bet on it.

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So my gradebook, the decision tool, pointed toward the training company. Then I remembered something one my favorite professors in college would often say, “Sometimes I like to tell my gradebook to go to hell.”

I took several classes from that professor and he would give the same speech on the first day of every term. The example he usually gave was the student who had a high B (we didn’t do plusses or minuses) and had put significant effort into the class, in these cases he would tell his gradebook to go to hell and give the student an A; the intangibles can and should override cold hard facts.

Leaders who do not understand that are not worth their weight in lead. The decision that is most cost effective is not always the right one, it takes courage and vision to realize this and follow through on it.

So I told my gradebook to go to hell and I’m staying at the internet company. Its a leap, but one that I feel comfortable with, and I believe I’m making the right decision for the long term, even if in the short term doesn’t appear that way.

My relationship with my Upper School (and Middle School for that matter) Alma Mater has been through many phases. It got started out on a really poor note when my they refused to enroll my sister for her senior year for reasons were perhaps a minor disciplinary matter.

So I wrote a letter to the Headmaster. Its long, goes on about a bunch of stuff and isn’t anywhere near my best writing. But it is reproduced below for posterity and whatnot. I’ll get onto the other pieces of this tortured relationship after the break.

Mr. Brereton:

I am disappointed that I feel the need to write this letter, but I hope it
is the beginning of a meaningful dialogue.

I was angered when I learned of the disciplinary committee’s decision not to
allow my sister, Lauren, attend Miami Valley for the 2000-2001 school year.

My disenchantment is shared with others at the school. You yourself felt the
need to hint at it in the 1998-99 Annual Report mentioning that
“…others [have] expressed their desire for our school to maintain
the core values that guided it through its early years.” The shift of
MVS’s core values was exemplified during the 1997-1998 school year.

The 1997-1998 school year was a time of many changes, the enrollment
increased, but more importantly, students who attended MVS in the previous
years noticed a difference in the new students. As a group we felt that the new
students were not as well prepared, and in some cases did not care as much
about learning as we did. Trying to detail all the ideas and feelings that were
presented and argued fervently during hours of discussions over lunch and
classroom tables would tax even the most cognizant of participants, but one
statement sticks in my head. A trusted faculty member told me, “Its not
then number of students, but the quality of students…” that has caused
a change in atmosphere. The end product of these intense discussions is a
Squiers inspired belief that continuity and change are constants, in varying
proportions. Evaluating the result of a change in midstream is a futile
effort.

Now that I am free of the stream of change, I must assert what my colleagues
and I originally believed: MVS has changed for the worse, losing a significant
portion of its intimate and supportive atmosphere.

The change my colleagues and I felt is best expressed in an obfuscated
version of MVS’s mission, instead of presenting “…to students of
demonstrated ability a challenging program in a supportive and caring
community”, MVS now apparently seeks to first, present a challenging
program to students of demonstrated financial reserves, and second present a
challenging program to students with exceptional demonstrated ability. This
double standard does exist within MVS’s administrative actions.

My sister was expelled for being, “mentally unstable” or more to
the point, the school falsely suspected her of abusing illegal substances, but
could not prove it. According to well-respected research, which MVS was
surveyed for, 55% of students have used an illegal substance before graduating
high school. By this standard over half of MVS’s students should be expelled
each year.

My sister was singled out for several reasons, first she is outspoken in her
beliefs, and she utilizes and embodies the MVS Philosophy of striving to
“academic excellence and freedom while [discovering] and fulfilling [her]
potential.” Unfortunately the first amendment allusion in this school
policy does not apply when it comes to Laura Mack. Second, my sister has felt
held down and singled out by Laura Mack, forcing her to endure unreasonable
treatments, and criticisms. These unfair treatments have brought my sister to
tears on several occasions. Laura Mack has done this by attacking my family as
being dysfunctional, upon the grounds that my parents are divorced (like half
of all marriages) and my immediate family is dispersed over several thousand
miles, a normal situation, considering the fact that thirteen years separates
the oldest from the youngest sibling. None of these situations is an acceptable
basis for criticism of an individual or a family. Finally, my family has fallen
on economic misfortune that has changed the amount of money that is available
for school tuition.

Money unfortunately talks, and MVS tolerates the behavioral and substance
abuse extremes of students whose parents have the financial ability to pay
tuition in full, it does not tolerate lesser behavioral abnormalities of
students whose parent do not have the financial ability to pay tuition in
full.

Money is the only thing that MVS appears to listen to; as a result I am
forced to speak with my checkbook. To this end, I will not fulfil my five-year
pledge beyond my most recent donation. This pains me, because I feel a personal
need to support the school that supported and nurtured me.

In painful sincerity,

Nicholas Barnard

MVS Class of 1999

Johnston, L.D., O’Malley, P.M., & Bachman, J.G. [book on-line] The
Monitoring the Future National survey results on adolescent drug use: Overview
of key findings, 1999 (Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse,
2000, accessed 21 June 2000); available from http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/keyfindings.pdf Internet, 10.

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I never received a response from Mr. Brereton.

Things eventually thawed and a new alumni coordinator, Jill Hanning, did wonderful things engaging the alumni community which allowed me to allow water under the bridge to be water under the bridge. I even considered participating in the alumni book club of sorts, which is funny if you realized how much I despised MVS’s English program.

This newfound relationship came to a screeching halt when I received the following email from Jill on October 23, 2006.

MVS Alumni,

I want to update you on some changes that were made at school this
week. I was let go from my position as alumni and communications
coordinator. I was told by Peter Benedict that the advancement office
will be heading in a different direction and that my position will be
eliminated and replaced with one that focuses solely on publications.
Mr. Benedict will be honoring the 06-07 alumni calendar of events that
I put together and will be meeting up with you all around the country,
himself.

I am disappointed that I was not warned of this change or given the
opportunity to be a part of the redirection of the office. It is my
sincere hope that the alumni program is preserved and given the
attention and value from the administration that it deserves.

I have enjoyed the last three years spent getting to know many of you
and I am sad for the abrupt end to what has been a lovely job, serving
our school.

I will be
in the advancement office until November 10; after that time
it is my understanding that Mr. Benedict will be handling all
communications. I will be at the DC gathering on November 3. You can
still email me at this address for the remainder of the year; I will
fulfill my teaching commitments (teaching one English elective per
term) in the upper school.

Fondly,

Jill

At this point Peter Benedict had not yet been the headmaster for six months. Two days later I received an email from Mr. Benedict recapping what was left of the alumni program. I responded with the following email.

Peter,

I was saddened to hear of Jill Hanning’s dismissal from the alumni and communications coordinator position. I know Jill primarily through her position as the alumni coordinator, although I have fond memories working with Jill on the play the Diary of Anne Frank. Through all of these interactions I have always believed that Jill is a consummate communicator, both in her ability to listen and her convey information.

I do understand and support the logical necessity to achieve some synergies by utilizing travel for multiple purposes.

However one of the values that I cherished most in my time at MVS was the caring community. I have several relationships that are still ongoing from my years at MVS, and even when I run into friends who I have not seen in quite some time those relationships quickly rekindle. This sense of caring is not only between students and faculty and staff to student, but also between members of the faculty and staff. To this day I remember Mr. Graetz’s professional and caring guidance to Mr. Fisher, a young Algebra teacher who at the time was not any older than I am today. I remember Ms. Lash’s tireless efforts to keep Mrs. Kretzler on one topic for a full hour to gather the necessary information to reoutfit the art room. I also remember the longevity of many of the staff members and that they both were afforded generous notice from the school about the future of their employment and they also provided the school generous notice about the future of their employment. In all cases that I was aware notice of several months was provided, while this is much more than the standard required in business it is indicative of the caring environment that is a hallmark of The Miami Valley School.

Given these examples, I hope you can understand my dismay from the messages that I received last week from Jill and yourself. To alumni who do not have the benefit of other ties with the school the messages provide the impression that there was unacceptable, uncaring, and bureaucratic bungling involved in this decision. It is unfortunate that as an proud alumni member this is the first decision and first impression that you have made that affects my relationship with the school.

My relationship with MVS was tenuous during my senior year, and my first few years as an alumni. Both Aileen and Jill’s efforts have gone a long way to repair the rent that has existed between the school and I. Unfortunately some of their effort was unraveled last week.

Regards,

Nicholas Barnard ’99

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I just sat in the background receiving MVS’s communications to me but not really responding to them. The straw that almost broke the camel’s back was when I got the “MVS Magazine” in my mailbox. Simply this was the most masturbatory piece of collateral that I’ve seen in a long time, on top of that it was a step backward given the increasing trend toward internet delivered communication. I decided to recycle it and hope that it was a onetime faux pas.

It wasn’t. I finally decided to tell MVS off when I got another slightly less masturbatory email, but it also mentioned that I’d be getting the next issue of the MVS Magazine. I just wrote the following email

Julia,

Please take me off MVS’s email and postal mailing lists.

Ever since the woefully fumbled dismissal of Jill Hanning by Peter Benedict MVS’s communications have been either to ask for money or to stroke the school’s ego. Miami Valley has abdicated any efforts to build a strong alumni community from which the school could then have cultivated donations.

I was appalled when I received the MVS magazine in the mail; I found it to communicate very little useful information, it was clearly produced with significant financial, staff, and environmental resources that could have been better deployed into other areas. I found it to be a self-congratulatory and aimed at showing off and not toward building and maintaining a community.

The alumni outreach program, as managed by Jill Hanning, had gone a long way toward healing embattled relationship I have had with MVS; since her dismissal I have found my relationship with MVS to be lackluster at best.

Regards,

Nicholas Barnard

Miami Valley School, Class of 1999

Thats where things stand.

Don’t even try the argument that I’m not a valuable alumni member with deep pockets. It is true that my pockets are rather shallow, but things may not always be that way…

NB1: This entry has spoilers for the movie Bent. You have been warned.
NB2: I’m in quite good mental health; this entry purely theorizing.

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I’ve been ruminating about people who make very logical, very defensible decisions to commit suicide. Categorically placing suicide as something immoral is as stupid as categorically placing eating meat as immoral. I’d gander most vegans and vegetarians would eat meat if faced with starvation; the percentage who would eat meat if the animal was already dead would probably be even higher.

So I have a few examples that I’m playing with at the moment.

The most recent one is at the end of Bent. Max is a German queer who is caught by the Nazis and sent to a Dachau, in a bid to survive he kills his lover on the way to the camp. Later at the camp he befriends another German queer who helped him survive initially, and since they’re not allowed to touch one another they become lovers by inventing an early antecedent of phone sex. A Nazi Captain engineers the death of his lover. Max is forced to watch then bury his lover. In an act of defiance and pride he switches his shirt bearing the Jewish star, which he falsely obtained, for the shirt of his now dead lover, then kills himself on the electric fence where his lover’s hat is hanging.

So another example, this one from real life. Esquire ruminated on The Falling Man. If you’re faced with certain death isn’t taking control admirable? Assuming that those who jumped from The Twin Towers knew they were potentially the victims of terrorism, isn’t denying the terrorists the satisfaction of killing you by killing yourself honorable? It’s giving the terrorists the finger. Another way to look at is that those who jumped chose not to be a direct victim.

What I’m driving at is it makes more sense to commit suicide than to be the victim of someone else’s slow resulting actions.

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One final idea to ruminate on is if you’re:

• Elderly
• An environmentalist
• Perhaps bored and miserable
• Not contributing to society
• Have no living relatives
• In okay, but not great health

It is rational, and even perhaps defensible from an environmental standpoint to commit suicide. If you’re near the end of life and not happy about it why continue to take up limited resources. This of course is an extreme case of the Tragedy of the Commons, and it was covered by Star Trek seventeen years ago.

I’m not sure exactly what I think about this case… Perhaps like a good Television series it is preferable to decide when to exit, than to jump the shark.

So I sent part of my last blog entry off to one of the staff members at church via email.

The situation is more complicated than knew.

The bottom line is that the young man I mentioned at the end of the entry had been offered help by the community on multiple occasions, but has refused, likely as a result of mental health issues… Not that that closes the door for me.

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I have another entry on responsibility that is percolating in my head that I’ll be hammering out here soon that’ll go into this in more detail…

I went wandering by the teacher’s webpages at Miami Valley School, my Upper School alma mater. Specifically, I took a quick look at Mr. Suiter’s page, Mr. Czarnota’s page, Brian Lakatos’s page (I know no Mr, but come on the kid is only like four years older than me!), and Kretz’s page (make sure to check out the halloween pictures).

But, it was Mr. Squiers’s page that struck me the most. Of course, there is that usual attraction of Squires being a rebel, in this case by hosting his webpage over at mac.com versus being like everyone else and hosting it on the MVS Teacher’s webserver. But, I was really struck by a statement on his homepage: someone asked why he was a teacher, and he said that “I teach because of a deep-seated, heartfelt, driving concern for the quality of individual lives.” I’m still a bit awestruck by that statement, even after mulling over it for a day or so. I’ve known Squires; I know that isn’t mission-speak bullshit.

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I was reading my grades and written evaluations from my teachers at MVS. I was frustrated by seeing the theme of someone who for the most part had checked out of school.

I know I probably got a quarter of what I should’ve gotten out of MVS.

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Those of you who have had the pleasure and honor of having had a class with Mr. Squires, please find the nearest chalkboard/whiteboard/Buddha Board and draw a triangle on it with one point facing up, circle that point, and draw several lines pointing at this circle, lecture for five minutes or so on self-actualizing. (Come on, you’ve sat through enough of Squires’s lectures you know you can do it, but for those of you a little rusty, take a quick refresher course.)

Now, are you there yet? Are you near that?

Yes?

Are you bullshitting yourself?

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Fifteen minutes ago I would have said I’m reaching through and around self-actualization.. Perhaps I am there, but there are still things to improve upon. Anyway once you say you’re there it isn’t as if magically you get to stay there and coast along, you have to work at staying there.

At the risk of sounding utterly cliché, I’ve been doing my best to live continual improvement. Let me illustrate this by example:

I’ve reasonably quickly picked up many of the Seattlite habits to lowering my environmental footprint.

1. I’m using public transportation, walking, and biking to get as many places as possible. It’s not uncommon for me to go a week or more without starting my car.
2. I live in an apartment and I’ve got a compost bin going. My waste stream is separated into glass recyclables, other recyclables, compostables, and garbage. Every waste collection basket in the apartment has specific items it can accept. This leads to some strange things, such as not being able to throw away garbage without leaving my bedroom, and ripping the used tea bags apart so it can be put into the three different waste streams that it fits into.
3. I’ve been moving toward non-caustic biodegradable cleaners. This includes not using flea pesticides for my cats, which necessitates the dangerous work of giving felines a bath.
4. I barely ever go shopping without taking my canvas shopping bags. No plastic bags here.

So spots that I have already identified where I can improve:

1. My car still gets used here and there, and well its emissions system is slightly unhappy. (e.g. It needs fixed, I’m a bit broke, and a bit lazy about getting it fixed.)
2. I have a nagging feeling that I’m still putting too much waste into the garbage. I don’t want to put everything into recycling and contaiminate that material stream.. (I just realized I don’t know why what goes into the recycling stream is supposed to go there, compared to other similar items that go into the garbage; I have a poor understanding of the decision matrix behind the separation of recycling from garbage.)
3. I’ve got favorite cleaning materials and personal hygiene items that aren’t biodegradable or natural. Its going to take some work to find acceptable replacements for them.
4. I’m still shopping and consuming. Plus, I know I’m not always making the purchase with the least packaging. I also haven’t really started putting a huge effort into buying locally.

After I address the areas for improvement of the second list, I will reevaluate and repopulate the second list.

Wash rinse repeat, ad naseum.

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Continual improvement goes for everything in my life. I’m still working on managing my procrastination, depression, motivation levels and time-management skills. I would cite these four things as being driving factors behind that teenager “who for the most part had checked out of school.”

I also trace my lack of engagement to being in the closet.

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Squires had this lecture he would deliver every so often, it would take different exact forms, but generally it was in the form of, “How does your _______ affect the self-actualization of ___________?” For example “How does your racism affect the self-actualization of African Americans?”

Or the uncomfortable edition for me: “How does your homophobia affect the self-actualization of a gay man?”

So one day, I decided try to answer him.

I remember asking him “What do you want to know?” It was one of those gutsy throw down all the cards, plus the ones I just borrowed from the other table moves. Ultimately, he gracefully shut down the conversation with as much class as one could expect. It isn’t every day a student comes out in the middle of class, so I’m sure it caught him off guard. He tracked me down afterwards and apologized for shutting the conversation down, but he wasn’t sure either of us was prepared to go there.

I wonder how this lesson was absorbed by my classmates. It wasn’t something that we talked about in any depth, for the most part they just acknowledged that I had come out.

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I’ve been belaboring this entry a little bit more than the usual entry so I have come across a whole collection of thoughts that dovetail in here, but a quote by a Colorado State Legislator really resonated:

Discrimination is a practice that has gone on in this country too long. It is the birth defect of this country. And I think it’s time we deal with that. -Colorado Senate President Peter Groff (“Lawmaker uses short people to question gay-bias bill” in the Denver Post)

While I guess Groff was specifically referring to his fellow Coloradan legislators, but the wider implication is for all Americans.

One of the first plays I ran into at college was Spinning Into Butter and the strangest lesson I learned from it is its better to be a racist bastard and be public about it, than to be a racist bastard who is in the closet to everyone, including yourself.

In the climax of the play Sarah Daniels, a cacausian dean of the college who is working through the aftermath of a series of hate crimes against an African American freshman, explodes “… Just use what you know. Public transportation? Scary! Toni Morrison? I hate her! So what if she won the Nobel Prize? So did Pearl S. Buck! La la la. [Beat] Satisfied?” This where Sarah gets really honest with herself and everyone else and acknowled
ges her racist feelings and thoughts. It’s a turning point where she can start to make progress on her own racism.

Its odd, but one of the people I am thankful for is Fred Phelps. He’s upfront about his bigotries. He brings them to the forefront and allows us to examine them. Sure, it would be best if everyone really examined their bigotries and worked on them, but if you can criticize Phelps’s actions then reconcile your own beliefs and actions with your criticism of Phelps’s actions you’ve made similar progress.

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So I’ve been struggling with my own question which would fit right into a Squires lecture: How do my actions affect the self-actualization of the homeless and the poor?

Honestly, I’m not sure I have a framework of knowledge in which to answer this question. So, let me make this personal:

There is a young man I know from church, he is in his early 20s. He’s a self admitted stoner. He was living in an apartment with something like nine other guys and got evicted. I know he was homeless, and I think he still is.

I’ve done practically nothing to help him out. I’m not sure what, if anything the church has done to help.

I feel like I did back in Chicago, but more consistently and intensely.

I play the same argument out that Sarah plays out in Spinning into Butter, “He’s a stoner, he was more focused on drugs than taking care of himself, etc, etc.” But people fuck up. I fuck up. Mistakes must be forgiven, less the world becomes a place of perpetual grudges that is impossible to navigate.

So yeah, I have no clue how do actions or lack thereof affect the self-actualization of the homeless and the poor, and it isn’t an abstract concept.

I don’t know where to go from here, but I’ve got work to do on a birth defect of my country.

• Fully electronic tax returns. Not just the filing part with the IRS/State part of things, I think there should be a legal requirement to provide tax forms (1099, W2, etc) as electronic forms. It should have to be provided not just as a PDF or HTML page, they legally should have to be provided in a standardized XML format so you can just upload it into your tax program. Think of the environmental benefit not to mention the cost and time savings.
• Energy consumption labeling. I want to be able to make an informed decision as to how much energy is used in producing a product and how much is used in transporting it. I know how much Vitamin C is in my Orange Juice, but what about knowing how much petroleum went into making it and getting it to me? This ideally should be split out into two parts pre-retailer delivery energy use, and post retailer delivery use. Two reasons for this split:
  1. Operationally the manufacturing and delivery functions tend to be different operations under different groups.
  2. Many retailers pickup their the products they sell at the manufacture’s warehouse, but not all do. So ultimately this would necessitate some coding on the store’s label to let you know if they picked up the product at the manufacturer’s facility or not.

  Ultimately this whole damn thing is getting down to labeling for efficiency. That tropicana or florida natural orange juice you like, yeah it isn’t as efficient as Minute Maid. (or maybe it is, but I don’t know because it isn’t labeled..)

• A grocery store that I feel okay shopping at that is within walking distance from my apartment, so I don’t have to feel guilty for adding to my VMTs.
• Someone to do my laundry, seriously this just gets annoying. Mom, Dad, I never brought my laundry home from college… What do you say about some catchup?
• Pay as you drive automobile insurance.

Put my standard blog entry disclaimer in here, that this entry has spoilers from Battlestar Galactica, season three. I might as well just drop it into the template for every blog entry from here on out, since that is all I seem to write about now adays.

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The episode, “A Measure of Salvation”, takes a real close look at genocide of the Cylon species using a biological weapon. In the internal debates between the Admiral of the Military, William Adama; The President of the Colonies, Roslin; and their other military advisors, Lee Adama and Karl Agathon; a very strong line is drawn between those advocating the use of the biological weapon and those advocating against its use. In this case Agathon is the only one advocating against its use, and arguably his position is derived from the fact that he is married to a Cylon woman.

Here is the thing, I cannot clearly say which side of the line was right and which side was wrong. Both have completely compelling and rational arguments for their position.

Sure from a purely detached perspective I’ll say, “genocide is always wrong.” But in this case you have the Cylons, ruthless and potentially overpowering enemies, who are insistent on following you, killing your people, and want to settle on the same planet as you do. I’ll leave out the question as to who started the war, but generally at this point in the series most believe that the Cylon’s preemptively started the war against the humans.

I’m stuck rehashing pieces of the class, The Nature of Evil, led by Jon Luopa. Specifically, I’m drawn toward the idea espoused by Jon that evil is a response to the human condition. It is rational and justifiable to kill your enemy when they are threatening to kill you.

But, genocide is different. Admittedly, in this specific case it is less different, because as far as we can tell, every Cylon is engaged in warfare against humans. But, genocide generally includes non-combatants. So, the ethical choice to wipe out the Cylons is clearer and more justifiable than the rationales espoused for genocide in our world.

I remember arguing in an essay on a social studies test in ninth or tenth grade that the Catholic Church was indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jewish people in WWII, because at one point they made it illegal for their followers to make money from interest. This left banking and lending generally to the Jewish people, which made them a perfect target for a power hungry dictator leading a people who had been devastated economically and financially after WWI. The genocide of the Jewish people by the German government, as led by Hitler can be argued as an borderline rational response to the human condition of the German people in the period between WWI and WWII.

I know myself well enough to admit, had if I been in the position of the leadership of the colonies in Battlestar Galactica faced with the decision to commit genocide, I would have.

Thats not something I am proud of, but I am not naive enough to think that I am that much of an idealist.

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Biting off an issue a little closer to home: Torture.

I read an article where Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, argues for torture. He said:

[But] is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?

It would be absurd to say you couldn’t do that. And once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?

I’m generally against torture. But, I’m not categorically against torture. In the instance given by Scalia of a bomb in Los Angeles, his suggestion about “smacking someone in the face” is rational. I’m also fully aware of the need for advances in intelligence interviewing, to identify “…the most effective, humane ways of questioning terrorist suspects.” As the article about intelligence interviewing illuminates, we don’t know what works and what does not.

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Going back to the Battlestar Galactica episode, “A Measure of Salvation” there are two important lessons to note.

In a conversation with President Roslin, Admiral Adama notes that colonial law requires a direct presidential order to use biological weapons. What is most appalling about the United States’s recent escapade through the the muddy moral waters of torture is how, as illustrated by the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, judgement about when to use torture was left to the most incapable of making that decision. In my view torture should be allowed, only after a torture warrant has been provisionally issued by the President and approved in due time by the Supreme Court. The decision to torture someone should rest at the highest level, nowhere else.

I’m mindful through all of this discussion of Mahatma Ghandi’s statement that “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” In “A Measure of Salvation” ultimately one of the officers of the Galactica commits treason and prevents the biological weapon from being used. Admiral Adama chooses not to pursue an investigation as to who prevented the deployment of the biological weapon.

He chooses to stop blinding the world.