Inception

My wife and I for the first time since our son was born went last night to see a movie. We settled on the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception.

The movie was about a group of agents that get into people's dreams and steal information. The special plot of the movie was that they were going to try to get into a person's mind and rather than mind it for data, they wanted to plant a new idea in it.

At one point, the lead dream agent is talking about how ideas work. He said that once an idea takes root in a person's mind it is nearly impossible it is to unseat that idea. Once it has taken hold it is hard to counter it.

In this case, the movie was describing an idea as coming from outside and being planted in a person as opposed to something that a person thinks up himself.

Is this how our minds work? Do we sit around like empty vessels while others pour ideas into our head? I think sometimes that is the case, but often it is more complicated. An idea has to either fit into your preconceived notion of the universe, or you have to rearrange your mental contents to accommodate the new information. Maybe some people can jam discordant pieces of information in a jumble in their heads, but it seems to be a difficult proposition at best. Maybe that's why contradictions are sometimes so interesting. I pessimistically believe that most people with a head packed full of wrong information, will jealously guard the integrity of their own reality against assault and reject incoming information that conflicts with their own previously held beliefs. There are too many examples of willful ignorance for this to be a rare or casual observation. New ideas, even when truthful, correct, and useful, are often challenged and resisted.

I can understand why this is. If the mind is like a building, put together brick by brick, there are times when accepting a new concept is like asking someone to tear down a wall of their house and rebuild it from scratch from the bottom up.

An obvious example is religion versus science. If a person believes that Earth is 6,000 years old and was whisked into existence all at once by a supreme being, what are they to make of dinosaur fossils, geological records, astronomical observations, and a raft of other sciences that point to a much older world? The reactions fall into many categories. Some completely and vehemently reject all new information that conflicts with their previously held beliefs. Others simply ignore the new information, adopting a posture of deliberate ignorance or disinterest in the conflicting concepts - sometimes not even grasping the point of the new input sufficiently to see that there is a conflict. Others recognize and understand that there is a disagreement, but maintain a serene acceptance of their own beliefs and a faith that this additional information will be reorganized and resubmitted later more in accordance to what they already know to be true. Some people embrace contradictions. They might accept that two opposing things can both be simultaneously true, and enjoy the challenge of maintaining the logic of the two separate ideas without letting them actually fight it out to the death in their mental arena. A small amount of people will see conflicts and take the time to sort them out, with equal weight to the ideas that got to their head first and the new ones that came later. Knowing that you could be wrong in what you believe and being willing to tear into your memories, dredge them up and discard the rotten or unsound fragments embedded in your head is not always an easy task, especially if done properly. There are some individuals out there that are gullible, seem to have no convictions and simply believe the last thing that was told to them, but those people are rare.

There are many examples of organizations that are excellent at implanting ideas. While the obvious first example is a school, you have to realize that their task is not so difficult. They are taking blank canvases and painting fresh scenes on them. I was thinking first of talk radio. In many ways it is extremely successful at implanting ideas in people's minds, regardless of whether those ideas make any sense or not. While propaganda is simply biased misinformation, the adept use of propaganda to sway groups of people is a skill sometimes employed as a high art form. "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth." People attribute this quote to Lenin, and it has been used as an example of the how Communism subverts truth for its own ends. This is just a form of trying to insert ideas into masses of people and can truly be called brainwashing. It's another logical fallacy called proof by assertion, where you repeat something often enough until all challenges to it dry up and it is accepted as fact. It's an interesting Wikipedia entry, talking about how modern political parties use this in the form of talking points to hijack the national debate.

In any case, once an idea has taken root in a person's mind, it is difficult to displace, and really can only successfully be countered with the help of the person from within.

A Stitch in Time

Memory is subjective.

It's easy to see in other people, when they seem to forget things or remember them differently than you do. When confronted with an individual with a different version of a shared piece of reality, most people have a reaction somewhere between irritation and rage. You may have experienced the kind of individual that seems to revise your personal shared history to their liking. The kind of incident where you're asked the equivalent of "Remember when you admitted what an idiot you were about...." First, you experience confusion because you don't know what they are talking about. Then you may react with indignant denial because you don't like the way it sounds and you can't imagine you would have ever behaved that way. Later, you may wonder if something like what you were told actually happened.

I recently heard a report about memory that seems to confirm some of this. We tend to "rework" memories in our heads, equivalent to the way you retell a story, inserting details that make you more honorable and intelligent and less petty or selfish. With enough mental retelling of the story, there tends to be an "adjustment" to a version more to your liking. People tend to try to forget their own stupidities and mistakes and amplify the slights of others into outrages. I think most people are guilty of this revisionist history, and it's very hard to catch yourself at it.

There is another type of memory that I've recently realized is unreliable. I'm currently listening to The Civil War, A Narrative by Shelby Foote for about the 4th or 5th time. I do it about every three years. It's such a dense and rich broth of information that I find myself dipping into it again and again. Each time I listen to it (you have to love audiobooks) I hear something new, or find that there is fresh enjoyment even in the parts I remember the broad outline of. There are many parts of the story that seem new and I wonder if I've forgotten or didn't pay attention to the narrative the other times I listened.

I find it interesting to listen when I know how the story is going to end. I do remember many of the events that occur along the way in detail. However, some parts I don't seem to remember at all and others have many of the key details blurry or missing. I seldom hear something that is the exact opposite from what I remember, so that gives me hope that I have the story correct, just incomplete in my memory.

I described this sensation of fresh discovery of familiar material to my wife. Groping for an appropriate metaphor, I said it was as if the information is a series of stitches, where you see the general track and some of the pieces, but the rest are hidden below the surface.

I like the imagery of the metaphor, because we are in fact following the thread of information, and it is in fact sporadic and sketchy in its details.

This is the way most memories are. I sometimes find myself comparing personal history with my brothers, and I find that their recollections sometimes include things that I cannot recall at all, while other times the details vary from what I remember. There are many things that we agree on perfectly, but I tend to think that these incidents are often the more iconic or outstanding events that we have discussed over and over since the original occurrence.

I don't believe that what I am describing is necessarily faulty memory, I think this is simply how memory works. You experience shared events differently because of the physical, intellectual, and emotional state you are in when they are going on. Some of this is perception bias, and some is distraction and inattention.

How often have you been listening to a person tell a story, and you realize that you lost the thread of the story right in the middle of the telling? Some times, when this happens to me, I realize that the cause is that something that was said made me think of a related or tangent subject that my mind immediately and automatically followed. Since true multitasking is virtually impossible, this is the point where you stop paying attention to the narrative, and follow your own internal one. The speaker might as well be saying "blah blah blah". Sometimes, I can snap myself out of distractions and "play back" the last few seconds and recover what was said. It's like I have a short term audible memory loop in my head. Try it sometime, maybe it's a natural part of the human mind. I can't be the only one that can do this.

It does make me wonder how we ever get through learning in a classroom situation. Really, a teacher has to be fresh and compelling all the time in order to prevent the naturally wandering attentions of a room full of students. It truly is like herding cats, all those minds skittering in all directions.

It's a wonder we get anything done. But it's also wonderful that these distractions may have some true value in them. In another context, we would call these mental wanderings inspiration.

Touchstone of Knowledge

I think about teaching sometimes. I think about being lucky to have had some good teachers that helped me understand the world and sparked my thirst for knowledge. I've often wondered what makes some people better teachers than others, and I've often considered teaching. My teaching fantasies are just that, scenes where you transform young minds and catch them on fire with a yearning to learn.

I was thinking that the idea of teaching children in a classroom was similar to the teacher pouring knowledge from a container into the smaller containers of the children. I envisioned the teacher with a big urn of liquid and the children each with their little cups, the teacher walking around pouring the knowledge into the children's containers. The more I thought about this, them more I realized that it is a bad analogy. This makes knowledge to be a finite resource and students to be passive vessels. It breaks down when you consider that the teacher is not expending or giving away their knowledge, but sharing and multiplying it.

A better analogy would be to visualize a teacher with a glowing stone and when it touches student's dark stones, they light up. I like the magical flavor of the image. This is more like an ignition of knowledge inside children's minds, where they always had the potential for this knowledge. In this case, knowledge multiplies through education. It spreads out and takes root in a broader audience. In many ways this is what makes us human. When we look at animals, we marvel that they know how to hunt or care for their young through instinct. A certain amount of skills are probably a result of having a body and being hungry and following its natural urges. Culture and other useful skills are taught to the younger members of the species. For humans, this includes written language and such intangibles as ideas, which may not have a direct physical representation in the world.

I also thought of another analogy of the spreading of human knowledge. It is kind of like a brush fire spreading, as ideas ignite and spread. The direct example of this is how early man learned about making fire and taught this skill to other men. This wildfire analogy has an interesting contradiction in it, because fire is destructive and we think of knowledge as constructive. Fire used by man made life easier and gave them control over their environment.

In any case, knowledge should spread like wildfire, but care must be taken that it does not burn us.

Reasons for War

Human history is thick with wars. Some people say that humans beings are an inherently violent species - that this may in fact be why we survived and became predominant. The cycle of war, while constant throughout human history, has been one which many people wished to escape. Everyone has heard the famous maxim that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. However, as General William Tecumseh Sherman often spoke about after the Civil War, those that have not experienced the horrors of war cannot fully appreciate it as something to be avoided.

The entire prelude to the American Civil War seems to me to be a great suction into the conflict. It's as if war was out there as this irresistible force and men were drawn to it like moths to a flame.

I've often wondered if there is not something latent in men that does desire war. It would explain much, because when you look at history, the majority of wars were fought for entirely stupid reasons. I'm not saying that once some country becomes aggressive that the target nations should not defend themselves. I'm just pointing out that many conflicts, when viewed in retrospect, appear to be events that should have been avoided rather than embraced. Once the idea of war is openly discussed in a country, there seems to be no shortage of people stirring up fear or hatred to support that war. A fever seems to overtake men, subverting their higher reasoning, and making war inevitable.

There was an ancient Greek called Thucydides who wrote a famous history of the Greek Civil War between Sparta and Athens. This was 420BC, almost 2500 years ago. He describes the events leading to war and at one point touches on the motives that drive a state into War. He said they were fear, honor, and interests. Usually a combination of these interests will convince a group of people that they need to wag a war against another group. Fear of what the other group will do if they are not stopped is the first element of building up a war frenzy. If we don't stop them, they will surely hurt us. Honor is the form of pride that requires a group defend themselves or respond to a slight or offense. Interests are the greed that motivate men to think that there are gains to be had to going to war. Sometimes this interest is simply plunder, the other guys have a lot of nice things that we can simply take from them in a war. Many wars in history end with the victors enslaving the vanquished. Often, troops would simply take whatever they wanted after a victory. Often, the defeated land was absorbed or exploited for its resources or geographically advantageous position. In ancient times, going into battle for spoils was a more open motivation. The Romans would often seek out wars so that the soldiers could be properly compensated and would not be tempted to revolt against their leaders or the state. In modern conflicts, this may be a motive, but the aggressors usually deny it, and it is impossible to prove. Recently, many Iraq War opponents stated that the U.S. went to war for oil. Who can determine how much this played into the conscious or subconscious motivations for the war. Many people reject the premise offhand, because they tell themselves that it would be a dishonorable thing to do. On its face, it is an entirely stupid reason to fight, because war disrupts oil production and distribution.

However, history has often shown people to be overly optimistic about their chances in a conflict. History is thick with examples of people stating how quick and easy a war will be, partly as a preventative to those reluctant to start the war, and partly because people often believe the war will be quick and decisive. General Sherman was judged to be insane early in the Civil War when he said it would take 60,000 men to drive the rebels from Kentucky and 200,000 to win the war. These numbers ended up being very low, but were so far in excess of the estimates at the time that no one believed them. Consider the Iraq War again. This was a war we were supposed to be able to win very quickly, and it was supposed to pay for itself with oil revenue. Instead, it dragged on for 6 years and cost a fortune. The Iraq War is not unique in this respect, the only thing that would ever be unique about a war is if people were honest about it or came up with accurate estimates of the cost in time, money, and manpower at the onset of war.

No one ever expects what the eventual truth about a war will be when the war is just beginning. Before the Greek Civil War, the Spartans did not believe the war would be fought the way the Athenians said they would fight it. The Athenians were no match for the Spartans on an even battle field, foot soldiers against foot soldiers. They had an impressive navy, and had never developed large land forces that were strong and skilled. Their plan when they elected to go to war, put forth by Pericles, was to stay in their walled city, let the Spartans do what they wanted to the countryside, and outlast them with their wealth and huge navy. Neither the Spartans or the Athenians believed the war would be costly or long. Athens, goaded by honor and no longer persuaded by Pericles, abandoned their strategy later in the war, insuring that it would be a long drawn out affair which left both sides so weakened that they would eventually be ripe for takeover by other forces.

So, despite the lessons of history, people seem to forget that war often leaves them weakened and fails to achieve the goals they strive for at the beginning of the conflict. This does not mean that sanity should prevail and war will end any time soon, it just means that the voice of reason is often drowned out during the march to war.

The Best, Not the Brightest

I've been listening to an audiobook of the Civil War lately, and there is a theme running throughout the narrative. The smartest man does not always win and intelligence does not guarantee success.

I was thinking about it in particular when they went over General Hood's part in the battle of Atlanta. General Hood was not all that intelligent, but he was bold. This had served him well earlier in the conflict, where boldness and aggressiveness were more important than sound tactics, but fell apart when he reached Atlanta and was put in charge of the Confederate forces after General Johnston was relieved.

However, often, other Civil War leaders prevailed despite their low academic standing at West Point. Shelby Foote often noted in his book The Civil War, A Narrative, what the class ranking at West Point was. If the person was near the bottom of his class, he typically did poorly, but often, those at the top of their class didn't do very well (the premier exception being General Robert E. Lee). Those that were in the middle or lower third tended to do better.

When you look at General Ulysses S. Grant, he was not great in his class and not noted as a particularly spit-polished soldier during peace time. However, he was persistent and dogged, and not much given to fear. In contrast, General McClellan was touted as a brilliant leader, visionary and adored by his soldiers. But, with the exception of his Antietem victory (which, to be fair, he had a copy of the enemy's battle plan) did not reflect his record as a commander. In fact, he was quite reluctant to commit his troops to battle and often would not move forward even under intense prodding from President Lincoln. Some considered him a coward, but you have to wonder if sometimes too much awareness is a bad thing. The more you know about what might go wrong, the more freaked out going into battle should make you.

I believe that this illustrates that deep thinkers do not always lead or succeed. Often, over thinking a situation can be harmful, because it can confuse the issue or bog down the simple process of quickly acting when the need arises.

When you look at our recent past Presidents, it seems to me that the smart ones are the less successful ones. Carter, Clinton, and Obama are not short of intelligence, but they were unable to work together or get the public to understand and agree when they were doing something correctly. On the other hand George W. Bush, who few would argue is an extremely intelligent man or a deep thinker, had a single minded unity of purpose and a dogged persistence that worked very well for him. Few should argue that his Presidency was not successful, despite the shortcomings in his mental abilities.

Greek Heritage

I always got confused by Greek and Roman history.

You learn about these great and amazing civilizations that were powerful and predominant thousands of years ago, but you don't think about the timeline. I started thinking about the timing of the civilizations and wondering what order things happened.

The cultures overlapped, as it turns out.

Greeks were not exactly conquered and subjugated by Romans all at once. The Greeks weakened themselves through Civil War and continuous internal squabbling, which allowed the Romans to take them over. Greeks were not usually a single unified entity, except briefly under Alexander. Years after he was gone, the Greek world was a series of separately ruled areas, always in revolt internally, and competing between the regions.

Rather than being completely defeated and overrun, then killed and enslaved, they suffered a different fate than many areas subjugated by the Romans. They ended up with a deal where their surrender allowed them to have some autonomy. The Romans admired Greek culture and learning, and since is was part of Roman scholarly culture, they did not want to wipe it out entirely. While the Romans understood that the Greeks were completely subjugated, just allowed more freedom, the Greeks continued for a while as if they actually had these freedoms. By the time they figured out that they were not really free, the Roman Republic was huge, controlling most of the known world. Their special status as a relatively free province came to an end under Sulla, and the Greeks were reorganized into the Province of Achaea.

Throughout their long ancient history, the Greeks were amazing historians and scientists. They figured out a great deal of the basic sciences simply by reasoning it out. They were meticulous at record keeping, and preserved much of their accumulated knowledge in writing.

So the Greeks, while not as successfully savage as the Romans, in some ways persisted longer than the Romans. Their ideas and ways of thinking continued to predominate long after they were just a part of the Roman Empire.

I never really thought about "Greek Society" as it is applies to modern college students. We have fraternities and sororities, and I never understood the actual connection to the Greeks. I just knew that they used Greek letters for their names. I think that using Greek culture as a template for modern university groups is an acknowledgement to the fact that the Greeks were true lovers of knowledge. Any person going to college is expected to embrace learning for learning's sake, as the ancient Greeks did.

Later, they still valued pure scholarship at a time when the Romans had set up a system of education that guaranteed that most Romans would disdain learning. As a result, the Greeks were often brought in to run the day to day administration of the Roman Empire. There were many more qualified literate Greeks than Romans. In a way, the Greeks were in charge of the Romans rather than completely subjugated. Their control of the Roman bureaucracy was almost complete, and while they were nominally the servants, there is no doubt that they had considerable influence in the way the Roman Empire was run on a day to day basis.

More Logical Fallacies

My brother had an online chat room or comments section argument with a guy he thought was a moron. He was frustrated by the exchange and described to me what the other guy said that he thought was shutting down the argument and playing the winning card, which was "You just don't like anything that Obama does, so no wonder you don't like health care."

He told me he accused the guy of circular logic, then went online to find support for his accusation and could not find any references to it. He asked for my help finding it.

Here's what I wrote back:

What you are describing is not circular logic, it's called an ad hominem attack, and embedded in it is a ad hominem attack.

Ad Hominem is when you attack the person, not what the person said or did, "You can't trust Obama because he's a socialist muslim" as opposed to: "You can't trust this health care reform because it is a giveaway to the insurance companies and doesn't protect the little guy"

Actually, that second one is my argument. A conservative would say that it hurts business, doesn't limit lawsuits, doesn't pay for itself, or is due to expand the deficit.

Circular reasoning may be what you have in mind. That's supporting a premise with a premise, and it's a logical fallacy too. For example, "You can't trust Obama because he's untrustworthy (someone would probably actually say a liar - but mine is an over obvious example)." This is not exactly what the person attacking the right winger by saying "you just don't like anything they do" is doing.

What is actually happening here is called a fallacy of relevance. In other words, so what if you don't like Obama? If you emotionally tend to hate everything Obama says, you might still rationally have valid reasons for not liking something specific that he did. Just like strong Obama supporters who are actually paying attention to the issues will occasionally find things he's doing that they don't support. We just lived through 8 years of this under Bush, and now that the leadership has turned over, people are using the same tired arguments that were used against them to the same effect.

Specifically, what you have addressed is probably more of a genetic fallacy. This is where someone would argue, "You're prejudiced against Obama, so everything you say is BS. This is in contrast to the opposite of an appeal to popularity (everyone likes it: so it must be true - the opposite is: everyone hates it, so it must be false).

In a way, the example you site is an accusation of biased authority. That's where you don't argue whether or not the person is knowledgeable, you just say they are biased, so the opinion they express is incorrect. Bias is enough to suspect the conclusions a person makes and double check them, but it's not enough to outright reject any opinion they express on a subject that they oppose.

None of this can be put into a chat room. Any argument with any hope of expressing the truth will be too long for the character limitations and minuscule attention spans of the twittering masses.

In reality, it's what always happens in chat rooms, people questioning each other's veracity and motives rather than arguing the issues. In my opinion, it is what right wing talk radio and Fox News are built on. Short on facts, long on emotion. It's a smoke screen that many of our elected officials try to get people lost in while they corruptly pilfer our pockets and mismanage the affairs of the country to enrich themselves.

The problem is, our elected officials rarely try to fix what is wrong with our country, regardless of whether it's popular or not. They usually try to win the next election, regardless of whether their actions are good for the country that elected them. They mistakenly (actually, it's only a mistake in ideal terms, in reality it works perfectly) believe that they must cater to their party machinery and big well-financed special interests in order to win elections. If we only voted based on a rational clear analysis of what officials did or say they are going to do, we would eventually get good professional politicians that would usher the country into a position of strong security where people were free, fulfilled, and prosperous. Good luck with that.

Drawn to Carnage

What is it about human nature and violence?

You often hear people talk about war being inevitable or how humans are inherently violent. People that clamor or peace on some level seem ridiculous because they are advocating a position that would make them defenseless against anyone that disagrees.

People definitely like violent movies. The more gore, the better the box office appeal. Sitting safely in an air conditioned theater, it's fun to watch a bang-'em-up beat-'em-up flick while munching popcorn. When it's over, you go home or go get something to eat and pretty much forget about it. Real violence that inflicts real injuries is very different, and there's no "let's go get a burger" moment afterwards. Physical injuries take a long time to heal, and often include some kind of loss of ability or at least integrity of your body. Mental injuries are even more insidious because they are not obvious or readily apparent. The recent wars have a high percentage of post traumatic stress victims, which we are finding out is just a normal response to experiencing combat. It is possible to survive this affliction without treatment, as most combat veterans throughout history have, but you wonder how many walking wounded have woven their way through the aftermath of war with complete turmoil in their heads as they attempt to behave normally in serene social situations.

From a Darwinian perspective, we are violent because that's what helped us survive. But why are we so casually violent? Why are we fascinated and fixated by it? I would almost say that some people are in love with violence for violence's sake.

I know from my own experience that there is no denying that violence appeals to us, it calls to us somehow. I have been re-listening to the book The Civil War, A Narrative, by Shelby Foote, and there is something compelling about the battles and the scale of the carnage. I find myself very drawn to it. You hear about days where tens of thousands of people die, most in horrible ways, and in the back of your mind you're thinking, "I wonder what that was like to be there?". It's fine to be fascinated about this as long as it's in the abstract, if you actually had to experience it, it wouldn't be as good. However, each war or conflict has a strange romanticism about it, with no shortage or eager young men signing up and shipping out. The new soldier, the combat virgin is often full of zeal, ready for action, eager to experience "the elephant" as Shelby Foote calls it. Once experienced, they are not so eager. There is a scene in Band of Brothers where a replacement soldier shares guard duty with a grizzled veteran and is chewed out for his overzealousness. The man that has seen violence has had enough, the one that hasn't is itching for it.

Many cultures glorify violence, hold those that are good at it in high esteem, foster it in their young, and leap eagerly into the first situation that promises the chance to fight. Some of these cultures remain backward and stunted in their developement, but others produce violent young men from a cradle of privilege and comparative luxury. So there is no correlation between the degree of civilization and the willingness for violence. The violence is just inherent in the system.

Divided We Fight

Recently, some states, (my state of Missouri among them) have started movements to declare the recently passed federal health care initiative unconstitutional.

First, I want to say that my main objection to the bill is that it's too long. I realize that this is, in some ways, a ridiculous objection to a legislation, and violates one of my main ideals, which is that you make an argument on the merits and facts, not on inconsequential distractions from the main point. However, I make an exception in this case because the bill is too long for several practical reasons. First of all, most people will not read it. While this probably includes most of the Congressmen and Senators that voted for or against the bill, it is most certainly true of the general population. So the resultant problem is that people still don't know exactly what's in the bill. My other strong objection is that lengthy bills most likely have contradictory clauses in them, as well as hidden provisions crafted to give powerful groups major advantages. You can bet that special interests got little jewels inserted in the bill to help themselves out, most likely at the expense of someone else. You can also bet that the average small businessman won't have time to read and understand the bill or craft his own business procedures to take best advantage of the bill. In the absence of direct understanding of the bill, people will listen to the worst fears of other people commenting on the bill, who also don't have a clue what's in it. When it's too big to have an honest debate over, when it's too big to have a simple understanding of it, it's too big to be useful to most people that will be impacted by it.

Besides getting sidetracked on the length of the health care bill, the State-based protests against the bill remind me very much of lead up to the Civil War. The Civil War became about slavery, but at the time, it was always couched in the argument of states rights. Ultimately, southern seccessionists claimed that the rights of the state were paramount and they rejected federal oversight over their state. They wanted each State to be an independent sovereign entity, which begs the question of why you would ever need to be in a group of states in the first place. The question was answered quite soundly by the outcome of the Civil War. The south could not enforce even the simplest demands for unity in a group that broke away from the Union because they did not want to be told what to do. At times in the war, this caused problems of manpower and resource allocation that were fatal to the Southern cause. So it is fine to say that you do not want "Big Government", but unfortunately, the will of the majority will most generally supercede regional desires, and populist movements that do not also control the central government will be exercises in futility.

People forget that - ironically - individual rights flow from a strong central government which should be kept in check by the normal functions of a democratic society. Another strange irony of our form of government is that the central government is empowered to protect the rights of minorities from the will of a populist majority. While it is clear that we can't suddenly all vote that red haired persons of Irish decent will hence forth be slaves, in other words, you can't deliberately take away a basic right from someone, the health care debate doesn't actually fall into this category. You don't have a right to health care. You might say that the right to Life in the Declaration of Independence could be stretched to include health care, but I don't think anyone will be able to do that successfully.

This right is more along the line of taxes. The tax code, which everyone hates, is supposed to insure that we all contribute to the financial well being of the state. It's been corrupted with a tiered system on one hand, and massive loopholes on the other to the point where few would argue that it is fair to all citizens any more, but it is an example of a system where we are all expected to contribute and we are all expected to benefit. The health care initiative is supposed to work like that. Setting aside the argument of whether or not we have some moral obligation to provide health care for everyone, there are practical reasons to force everyone into some system of coverage. It's a little like the tax paying example. If you could opt out, many people would. However, you can't then exempt them from the benefits. You can't leave them out of defense and Homeland Security. You can't force them not to use the infrastructure. With Health Care, many people without insurance coverage still get treatment, they just don't pay for it. They pass it on to the people in the system that do pay for it.

So Health Care that forces collective coverage should be more fair and spread the cost out (and they claim it should also reduce overall costs, but I'm very uncertain how this could be true). Is this the role of a strong central government?

We have no problem spending large sums of money on Defense. This is supposed to keep us safe and healthy, ultimately. However, it's a vague benefit. Did fighting in Afghanistan keep terrorists from attacking us here? You can't prove it, and even if you could site a specific attack that was thwarted, how many lives were saved in the process? I think it's a very cost-ineffective way to save lives. In contrast, a health care system where the government stepped in and directly covered uninsured people would arguable provide a more concrete benefit in people saved per dollars spent. Our recently passed health care initiative does not claim to do that. It seems that it forces you to be insured, and for the most part, forces yourself or your employer to pay for it. Unfortunately, I did not read the bill, so that may not be entirely correct.

The other thing that the Health Care Debate makes me think about is how politically divided we are, and some of the stupidities that come from this division. For one thing, people in power immediately like to try to change the rules to try to help continue themselves in power. It's not until there is a leadership change away from the party one supports that you start to have an ideological shift to limit the power of government. People do not care about too much government control if they support the party in power. It's like watching a sport referee make a bad call. You should always be against bad calls and for fairness, not only when it benefits your team. Often, once you pick a side you never question that side but fight fanatically for it. This reminds me of Robert E. Lee. He opposed slavery, or rather he professed to, but married into a slave-owning family and didn't immediately release his slaves, so that's opposition in mind only. He did say that slavery was not a valid reason to secede from the Union. He also opposed secession, but then followed his state, once they chose to secede. Once he had picked a side, he seems never to have revisited his initial idealogical objections to the war, but fought fanatically for it. When you see someone on the other side do this, you tend to vilify them as idealogically inconsistent, but when they are on your own side, you take whatever help you can give. You rarely see people that oppose one side's ideas stand up and fight against the specific ideas they oppose while staying loyal to their side. People tend to shut up and swallow their objections and fight on blindly for a side that they don't completely agree with.

In general, I resist the notion of a state with strong central control. They tend to get fanatical or boneheaded leaders from time to time, and you can't always rein them in, even in a democracy. Often the states with central control exhibit suicidal fanaticism coupled with patriotic fervor, which is a horrible combination to have. Our own fanaticism waxes and wanes with political winds.

In the case of the United States, our initial idealism has bred a nation with increasing diversity and complexity. As we get more powerful this diversity becomes broader. On some level, I see this as either something that will have to self-limit, or something that could be an inherent fatal flaw in our form of democracy.

One of our chief fears today is terrorism. Some say that they should be ignored, as their impact is too tiny to justify large sums of money spent trying to eliminate small bands of fanatics. Then I think of the mongol hordes of Genghis Khan and the barbarian hordes in Roman times. It is scary to think how easy it was for these small but highly motivated bands to take down large organized states. They didn't take over, they just destroyed and looted. It seems to me that the forces of chaos have always won out in the end, and that the pen is ultimately not mightier than the sword.

Under the Dome

I was on vacation in Santa Barbara California, which is a very nice place. It was one of those times when the vacation really is working - you have time to unwind and relax and maybe read something. So we went into a Borders Books, and several really interesting books caught my eye, but the fat new Stephen King novel had something compelling about it.

It's a story about a mysterious dome that suddenly envelopes a small town in Maine. It's invisible, like a force field and it cuts the city off from the outside world. This is on the dust jacket, so I'm not giving up any secret information, yet. Spoiler alert: I intend to do just that shortly.

My quick and dirty overall emotional response to the book is that it is very good Stephen King. It is a quick read, enveloping, unafraid to get nasty very quickly, a typical good versus evil theme, and not very satisfying in the wishing-for-a-happy-ending sense. One thing you learn if you ever read Stephen King is that there is no happy ending.

I would rank the best Stephen King to be the Gunslinger series closely followed by The Stand. But besides that I've only read Cujo, Firestarter, Riding The Bullet. As far as his movies, I've watched The Shining, Cujo, and The Stand, possibly most of Christine. I'm not impressed with the idea for Pet Cemetary, but I'm vaguely aware of that plot. Of the Gunslinger series, the first couple of stories and the way he tied it all together in the end were the best parts of that

In Under The Dome, he quickly divides the cast of characters into factions, as he did in the Stand, and to a lesser extent, the Gunslinger series (there are obvious sides, we just don't get into the heads of the bad guys in that one). As in the other novels, one faction is ignorant and only interested in exercising ultimately destructive power, the other faction is good but powerless and gets abused before ultimately triumphing, but only at great personal loss.

King likes to show that concentrating only on short term profit and doing anything to gain control of others end up being destructive to the well-being of everyone involved. While the moves of the bad people are obvious and obviously wrong, only a few people seem to a) realize how nasty the nasty people are or b) have the courage to stand up to them. This mirrors some of the frustrations of real life, where we often see liars, cheaters, or thieves win everything they could hope for and go unpunished for their misdeeds.

One of King's tired sayings in this book is "We all support the team", which is meant to say that in a small town, everyone in town supports the high school sports team, but also means that everyone should unquestioningly support whoever is in power. The coming of the dome isolates the town, making the petty power mongers in the town free from interference from the outside world. The death early in the story of the only good person in a position of power that is aware of the misdeeds of the power hungry character leaves him free to seize power and do whatever he wants.

I can't tell whether I am projecting my feelings of politics on the story, or whether my own bias makes me see things that support my bias, but I found myself thinking of the good guys as those with the same political and philosophical beliefs as myself, and the bad guys as right in line with the people I consider to be incompetent power mongers in real life.

I found that the idea of the dome was an intriguing one. Early on, you discover that the dome does not let solid objects pass, and only lets water and air pass slowly. The dome, while not a physical substance, but more of a force field, gets dirty, like a giant dome of glass would. I found that it symbolizes the greater atmosphere that we live in. You quickly see a parallel to the area under the dome and the planet as a whole. At first, they don't think anything of the fact that their little bubble could get filled with the products of combustion. People are burning propane in generators, running vehicles, and talking about burning fires. You start wondering if and when they will befoul the atmosphere within the dome. The fact that they so quickly poisoned their air made me think of the atmosphere of the planet as a whole. Whether King intended it or not, I believe he has written a veiled green advocacy book with a visceral support for those that are concerned about global warning. I'm probably reading too much into King's intent, but the story has strong and obvious parallels to the greater human population's fouling of the atmosphere, the dome just emphasizes the danger.

There was also a nesting of more powerful people not caring about the fate of people below them. When someone considers others to be so insignificant and beneath them, below the threshold above which you care about them, the actions become so incredibly cruel, callous, and inexcusable, that I really wonder if this isn't the strongest theme the book contains.

First Help Yourself

I was listening to a Science Friday podcast where the host was talking about people that were watching too much coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf. They were reporting being very depressed, and some mental health expert guest basically told them to stop watching the coverage. She said that you have to take care of yourself or you will break down and you'll be incapable of helping others.

Not many of us in the country are going to be working on the oil spill, so it's kind of hollow advice to say that we have to somehow preserve our stregth or mental stamina by staying away from the oil spill coverage. But it is fair to say that if you let yourself get preoccupied or depressed by events that you will not be able to handle your personal life as well.

So the mandate is to take care of yourself first. The podcast guest expert made the analogy to being on a plane during an emergency and putting your own oxygen mask on first before helping your children put theirs on. The story is often told to caution people from being to selfless and altruistic and as a result rendering themselves worthless to help anyone.

It's something you have to tell yourself if you are a parent. It starts as simple things like making sure you go to the bathroom in the morning before responding to the crying baby. You can't make much soothing noises when you are dancing around with an urgent need to pee. You can't change a diaper very easily when you are squirming.

The problem is that there are less alarming situations where it's very easy to forget this premise. You forgo exercise because you are busy caring for a child, and pretty soon you're a candidate for a cardiac because you're so overweight and out of shape. This doesn't do the child any good if you're not around.

Sometimes it happens with work. You neglect your personal life, or your personal duties when you get absorbed in work, and then you are in such a rush to get your life together that work suffers.

I suppose this is inevitable for people that tend to look out for those around them. And a good reason why selfish bastards sleep so easy at night without a care in the world. We all know people who always go out of their way to take care of themselves and spend little or no time caring about anyone else. So there must be a way to have the best of both worlds, but I haven't figured that out yet.