The War on [fill in the blank]

America is a country perpetually at war. If we aren’t actually engaged in a military sense (which we have been almost continually since 1941), we are making war on something: booze, poverty, drugs, liberals—you name it. Whenever politicians notice that people are upset about something, they declare war on it. Often, as in the case of Prohibition and the War on Drugs, this takes the form of aggressive, military-like offensives that result in jailing offenders and sometimes just killing them. It almost always involves suspension of civil rights under certain circumstances.

Just how effective is making war on perceived social problems? I think effectiveness in this case should be defined by the cost of the “war” (both the financial and the social cost) versus the prevalence of the problem. How much does it cost to gain what percentage of perceived improvement? Is the cost worth it? Well, let’s just take a look at that.

Prohibition

The temperance movement of the 19^th Century culminated in the passing of the Volstead Act in 1919, prohibiting the sale or drinking of alcoholic beverages in every state of the union. Sadly, the earnest ladies (and some gents) of the Temperance Union did not understand economics terribly well—specifically, the law of supply and demand. By making alcohol difficult to obtain, they increased the amount people were willing to pay for it, and also increased the actual demand—when you tell people they can’t have something, they immediately want it more than ever before. This meant that it was highly lucrative for people to break the law by providing the commodity for which everyone thirsted. According to an academic paper by Conor Doyle published in the Student Economic Review in 2005, “…members of one New York gang reported themselves as earning a basic wage of $200 per week (Sifakis 1987: 266). This represented an increase of roughly 700% over the standard manufacturing wage.” Pretty tempting stuff for a working man.

The government responded by creating an elite corps of law enforcement agents: the “Untouchables,” headed by Elliot Ness. This militarized corps waged war on the gangsters, who waged war on them, the police, other gangsters, and anybody who blundered into the cross-fire.

The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA) claimed that Prohibition had totaled more than $300 million in enforcement expenses and $11 billion in lost tax revenues by 1931. (That’s about $153 billion in today’s dollars. Wait until we get to the War on Drugs!) Enforcing the law increased police costs, jammed federal and state courts, and dramatically expanded the prison population. During the 1920s, federal criminal cases more than quadrupled, to more than 85,000 per year; most involved Volstead Act violations. By 1930, two-thirds of those found guilty received only fines, but federal prisons housed twice the number of inmates for which they were designed, and the overflow was farmed out to state and local jails. The AAPA maintained that taxpayers bore prohibition's considerable direct costs, and outlawing the liquor trade also eliminated many legitimate jobs and did away with liquor taxes, an important source of government revenue. (More on this topic here.)

In 1933, the “Noble Experiment” was repealed. By that time, there were more than 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago alone. Organized crime, which previous to the Volstead Act had limited its activities to a little gambling and theft, came into its own, and began to take over prostitution, drugs, and anything else illegal and profitable. While numbers are hard to come by, alcohol consumption apparently skyrocketed. In Cook County, IL, deaths from alcohol rose dramatically, starting in 1920 (more here). According to the same Conor Doyle referenced above, during Prohibition there were 703 gang deaths in Chicago alone. I don’t know how many others died elsewhere in the country due to gang violence, and there were certainly a lot of folks who died from imbibing contaminated “bathtub gin.”

So we expended a great deal of blood and treasure on Prohibition, and it failed utterly. But we learned our lesson, didn’t we?

The War on Poverty

Well, maybe we didn’t. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, another well-intentioned war was launched in 1964 to eradicate poverty in the United States. Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, forming the Office of Economic Opportunity to administer federal funds allocated to relieve poverty. Donald Rumsfeld (yes, he of the so-successful War on Iraq) was an early director of the OEO.

A number of excellent programs were born under this effort, including Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, and Job Corps, all of which are operating today. But did the War on Poverty, begun when unemployment was at 19%, lower the percentage of poor people in the U.S.?

As we can see from the graph above (courtesy of the Census, http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf) the poverty rate in 1964 dipped sharply, then continued to bounce back and forth between 12 and 15 percent until our present day. So we did make something of an impact, though poverty is far from eliminated.

But there were—as usual in these matters—unintended consequences. One of these was a backlash against social services to the poor, resulting in a fairly constant reduction in welfare funding and services since about 1975 (see graph below).

Welfare Benefits Payments

(Source: http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators08/apa.shtml#ftanf2)

This decline in welfare has continued despite the fact that the OEO was dismantled in 1973 under President Nixon. So we have pretty much the same percentage of people living in poverty, but they are receiving fewer benefits and services every year. This is less of a war on poverty than it is a war on poor people.

How much did the War on Poverty cost to implement? This is difficult to determine. Right-wing bloggers maintain that it is still going on so long as we continue to fund programs aimed at relieving poverty. I think it is fair to measure expenditures during the time the OEO was in operation, 1964 to 1973. Unfortunately, this information isn’t easy to come by. We know it’s billions, but at present, I can’t find a precise figure.

I guess it all comes down to a personal judgment, then, and while I think many of the programs spawned by the War on Poverty (such as Head Start) are worthy and have value to society as a whole, I don’t think we really made much headway, overall. We still have a lot of people living in poverty, and far too many children who are growing up with little or no access to good food, education, and adequate medical care.

The War on Drugs

Okay, we really didn’t learn anything from Prohibition. As George Santayana said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” and boy, are we repeating it.

A quick Google search on “war on drugs” yielded among many treasures a website that offers a page entitled “The War on Drugs: Your Guide to Making Money in the Multi-billion Dollar Marijuana Industry.” As with Prohibition, the more difficult it becomes to obtain drugs, the more money there is to be made by people willing to break the law. And it is money that is not taxed.

President Nixon (he of the so-successful War on Vietnam) launched the War on Drugs in 1970 with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. This was more or less a continuation of drug-prevention and containment policies the country had pursued for most of the 20^th century, and shared its puritanical roots with Prohibition. (“If it feels good, don’t do it.”) But the War on Drugs attacked the issue aggressively, pouring money into drug enforcement agencies and personnel. Before long, the incarceration rate in the United States soared to unprecedented levels.

We expanded the effort in an attempt to nip the problem in the bud at its sources, such as Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan, where we funded militaries for the purpose of defeating and jailing (or killing, why not?) the producers. Along the way, we also got involved in funding drug production and actually introducing new drugs into the U.S. market, such as crack cocaine. (For more fun reading about this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking.)

Has the War on Drugs been effective in reducing drug use in the U.S.? Please take a few minutes to absorb the data in the table below.

(Sadly, the table proved impossible to upload completely. I will email it to anyone who really wants to see it if you contact me through Comments. In essence, there wasn't a whole lot of change from from 1979 to 2001.)

Hmmm, looks like a couple of percentage points gained here, a couple lost there. Not evidence of stunning progress, at least up to 2001. Maybe it’s gotten better in recent years?

According to a study done in 2008 by Louisa Degenhardt (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) and colleagues, based on the World Health Organization’s Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), among the 17 developed nations surveyed, the United States had the most punitive drug policies—and the highest percentage of drug use. (For more details, see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080630201007.htm)

Oh. Then how much did it cost to raise illicit drug consumption to such heights in America? According to the Drug Policy Alliance, in 2001 we were spending $40 billion a year. According to DrugSense (which is a non-profit organization dedicated to drug policy reform), we have spent more than $41 billion this year, and will continue spending at a rate of $600 a second. (The site says the figures are based on information from the Office of National Drug Control Policy).

This is even better than Prohibition. Criminals, subsidized by taxpayer money, are prospering. More taxpayers than ever are in prison on drug offenses (cost per prisoner per year was about $22,000 in 2006 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics; it must be higher now, and that doesn’t include the court costs). Drug use in the U.S. is higher than in most developed countries. Despite all the money being spent on drugs by users and providers, not a penny is taxable. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Ain’t Gonna Study War No More, No More

Maybe we should stop declaring war. It would be super if we could stop declaring all kinds of war, but for right now, maybe we could institute a moriatorium on declaring war on social ills, because we don’t seem to be very good at it. In fact, declaring war on a social problem seems to make it worse in a majority of cases. Let’s try pacifism—it worked for Gandhi.

As a coda, I would like to point out that it was Republican Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 who said, “You can’t legislate morality.” (He was talking about the Civil Rights Act, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong on that particular point.) People will continue to behave in private as they please. I may not like what they do, but as long as it harms no one (or no one but themselves), and doesn’t harm other animals or the environment, I don’t actually care. It’s none of my business, and it’s none of your business, either.

Matters of Life and Death, Part 2

Abortion has been the ball on the playing field of politics for most of my life. With every election comes a resurgence of the national dogfight between “pro life” and “pro choice”.

The pro lifers contend that life –– and the birth of the soul –– initiates with conception. Therefore abortion at any stage of pregnancy is murder. The pro choicers don’t even deal with that issue, saying that the decision to abort or not is a personal and private choice, and therefore not subject to legislative intervention.

I have a third perspective on the abortion issue, and –– surprise! –– it is based on what works.

In the book “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors explore the question of why violent crime rates have fallen consistently since the 1970’s. They come to the conclusion that the decrease in violent crime came about as a direct result of legalizing abortion, starting with Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973.

Despite the fact that the United States Supreme Court decided that abortion should be legal, not all states immediately followed suit. Levitt and Dubner examine the state-level statistics on violent crime, and found that violent crime rates in each state began to drop around 18 years following each legalization ruling. Some states legalized abortion earlier -- and their drop-off in violent crime was the same: 18 years following legalization.

The ultimate conclusion is that when women are forced to bear a child they don’t want, their children are likely candidates to become criminals by the time they reach adolescence.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Unwanted children may well become scapegoats for their unhappy parents, and are more likely to be abused and neglected than wanted children. Abused and neglected children are far more likely to turn to gangs as family substitutes, and to engage in gang-related crime. Because they are angry, and violence is what they were raised with, their criminal activities are violent.

Then there is the issue of drug- and alcohol-addicted mothers. Fetuses exposed to drugs and excessive alcohol are far more likely to be mentally retarded or brain-damaged and to have birth defects of various sorts. Add to this an environment where they are neither loved nor cared for, and you have a dandy recipe for all kinds of trouble.

So I personally think that it doesn’t matter if life begins at conception. Spontaneous abortions happen all the time, naturally. If nothing happens without God’s will, then God apparently is an abortionist. And according to the statistics, abortion has a positive overall effect on civil society.

I say let every child born be a wanted child.

And for every baby born addicted or unloved, let there be a pro life activist to adopt it. It’s easy and fun to stalk righteously around Planned Parenthood with pictures of aborted fetuses. It’s a whole lot harder and not nearly as much fun to raise a child.

How about it, pro lifers?

Matters of Life and Death

As a nation, we’ve spent a lot of time and money and energy over the past couple of decades arguing over whether or not capital punishment should be allowed, and whether or not life begins at conception. So how do the injunctions (see first posting) of “Do not harm another human being, and cause no suffering to other living being, “ and “Do What Works” apply to these issues?

Oddly, the side that most strongly supports death penalty is the faction that condemns abortion, and the side that condemns capital punishment is the faction that supports the right to abortion. People are so strange and inconsistent that I wonder how we made it this far.

Let’s take the easy one first: capital punishment. I was once a supporter of capital punishment. It seemed to me that when someone commits certain crimes –– torture-killings, killing a child in the course of abusing or molesting it, etc. –– that the criminal has in effect surrendered his or her human membership card. People like this are a danger to others and have proven themselves less than human, so just get them off the planet.

My spouse’s point of view is that it is a greater punishment to keep someone in prison for life than to give him/her the easy way out, e.g., execution.

That perspective has its merits, but two things convinced me that capital punishment is wrong:

• We have executed many perfectly innocent people.
• It costs more to condemn someone to death than to keep them in prison for life, and we law-abiding citizens are paying for it.

Executing innocent people? How could that happen? I haven’t made a detailed study of it, but apparently some law enforcement officials are more interested in closing the books on cases and taking credit for catching the bad guys than they are in the actual pursuit of justice. In fact, this seems to be more common than I would have imagined possible. (I am still capable of being shocked, it seems.)

So, until there is a way to determine empirically beyond any shadow of any doubt whether or not someone is guilty of a crime, the possibility of snuffing out even one innocent life means to me that capital punishment is wrong.

In cases where there is a confession or incontrovertible evidence of guilt, I maintain that the incredible expense of condemning a person to death makes capital punishment unworkable. There’s a short and sweet summary of this position here. Shorter and sweeter: capital trials cost more than non-capital trials, and the cost to the taxpayer of the endless appeals and re-trials that are the right of the condemned criminal far exceed the cost of life imprisonment.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has some detailed information about capital punishment here. Among other things, these statistics show that capital punishment does not work as a deterrent. For example, Southern states account for more than 80% of all executions. And yet, Southern states have the highest murder rates. Clearly, when people commit murder (at least in the South), they are not quaking in their boots over the possibility of being condemned to death.

So if capital punishment doesn’t act as a deterrent, and it costs more money, and we’re executing some innocent people, it doesn’t work. And if something doesn’t work, it causes harm.

I for one would like a tax reduction based on doing away with capital punishment and its attendant expenses, as opposed to tax reductions handed out like lollipops by politicians to tranquillize the population.

Since I had just too much fun with capital punishment, I guess abortion will have to wait until the next post.

Why Ideology Is Less than Ideal

Dictionary.com defines ideology as “the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.” Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. Until you see ideology being applied in the real world.

Most ideologies appear to be a mishmash of wishful thinking mixed in with some real wisdom. In most ideologies, some components seem to work, while other components do not. For example, Jesus’ injunction to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is a brilliant example of something that works.

However, from the Gospel of Mark: “And these signs shall follow them that believe…They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” There was a story in the news the other day about a woman in one of those Pentacostal snake-handling churches who died of a bite from a timber rattler. This component of the ideology didn’t work. The problem is that in the real world, snakes have their own agenda, and proving the purity of Christians isn’t even close to the top of their list.

[Forgive me for drawing most of my examples from Christianity. It happens to be the religion with which I am most intimately acquainted.]

At the core of most ideologies, there are kernels of truth, e.g. that which works. But as far as I know, there are no ideologies that work when applied wholesale.

Let’s take as an example the current (Bush II) war in Iraq. I am merely a humble private citizen of the U.S. I have no deeper insight into the machinations of the current administration than the next person. But here is what appeared to be the ideology fueling this adventure:

• Democracy is good, Saddam Hussein is bad.
• If we get rid of the bad, the good will naturally take over.
• Because we are doing a good thing, the Iraqis will throw flowers at our troops and embrace democracy.
• Once the rest of the bad (undemocratic) Middle Eastern countries see our great success in Iraq, democracy will flower everywhere, the Muslims will stop hating the Jews, and peace shall reign on Earth.

You think I am being too simplistic? Alas, I fear this is as complex and deep as the thinking went as we hastily prepared to invade. The powers that be were so sure of success that they clearly didn’t bother to plan for the occupation and rebuilding of the country –– they seem to have believed it would all go smoothly, with the cheerful assistance of all Iraqis.

I won’t go into much detail – most of us are aware of all this by now –– but here’s a few things they seem to have forgotten in the planning process. Even at the time these things seemed glaringly obvious:

• The Iraqis are divided into at least three major religious/ethnic groups –– Sunni, Shia and Kurds –– who mutually despise each other.
• The invasion of a Muslim country by “crusaders” from the West would be viewed as an ideal opportunity for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists to recruit and wreak havoc in the region.
• Iraq is a very large country bordered by six other Muslim countries –– Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. The longest border is between Iraq and Iran. The third longest border is with Syria. Neither Iran nor Syria is our friend, and their borders have proven to be extremely porous, allowing illicit arms and combatants through fairly freely. Its second longest border is with Saudi Arabia –– but that’s okay because they really like us.
• We never sent enough troops in the first place to be able to secure, organize and rebuild such a large country. (Never mind that we didn’t give our armed forces enough equipment and arms. I sure didn’t see that one coming.)

If I, a mere private citizen, saw very clearly in advance that the invasion would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions, why didn’t the people in the administration, with their experience and connections and the CIA, NSA, FBI, and all the rest of the Federal alphabet soup at their disposal?

They didn’t see it because they were blinded by their own ideology, which allowed them to ignore everything that didn’t fit into their distorted world view. And that’s why ideologies don’t work. We need to see things as they are, not as we would have them be.

Sounds simple, but I guess that’s pretty hard to do, judging by results. And I suppose that “do what works” could also be called an ideology.

Touché! Except that if something actually works in the real world, who cares?

Is There a God?

I dunno. Maybe. Does it matter?

Either there is a god or there isn’t. Or maybe many gods. Or goddesses. My saying it doesn’t make it so or not so. Your saying it makes the same amount of difference.

The Bible or the Koran or the Lotus Sutra or the Talmud saying there is a God is not evidence of God. (Although in all honesty, I’m not sure the Lotus Sutra deals with the issue.) Anything that has been written by human beings or so thoroughly manipulated by human beings cannot be evidence of God, although it is evidence aplenty of the human need to believe in God.

I personally think if there is any evidence of God, it can be discerned in what works. What works is the mechanism of the deity –– if there is one.

I absolutely do not believe in the existence of a god that interferes or intercedes in the daily lives of humans. So many wars were fought by people who thought that God was on their side. But when they lost, what did that mean? That God was not on their side? Or that God was on the other folks’ side? What kind of petty god takes sides like that?

The news media appears to provide daily evidence that no god is interceding one way or the other. Recently, there was an article about a drug dealer who gave his two-year-old daughter a lethal dose of a date rape drug, then took an overdose himself. The baby died, but the murderer survived. A day or two after this incident, would-be rescuers found the corpse of a man who struggled for nine days in deep snow to save his wife and two daughters stuck in a car in the snow in the middle of nowhere. He was a bright, talented person who was known as a loving family man. Where was God in all this?

Religious people say that God works in mysterious ways, and we cannot know what His purposes are.

Could be. But if God is managing things in this world, that’s a very scary thought, really. I personally find it much more comforting to think that if God exists, he or she or it is not personally involved in what’s going on here.

In any case, I don’t think it matters. The point is to pay attention to what works. Not because we will go to hell after death if we do things that don’t work, but because we create hell on earth when we do things that don’t work.

Global warming is an example. Perhaps you don’t believe in global warming and think it is a mass delusion, as I heard recently. Or perhaps you believe in global warming, but do not believe that it is caused by human activity.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in global warming or not. And it doesn’t matter whether or not it is caused by human activity. If global warming is a reality, you and your descendents will suffer anyway, right along with me and my descendents. And even if global warming is a reality but not caused by people, does it not make good sense to do what we can to mitigate its effects, if we are able?

Of course, if it proves to be a mass delusion we can all take a big sigh of relief and go back to gas guzzling –– at least as long as we have gas, which apparently is not forever. Maybe we’ll find another planet out there that had lots of carbon life millions of years ago and it’s swimming in crude oil! That’s one I’d like to believe in.

But I think I’ll buy a hybrid or an electric car instead.

The Commandments

I have a dear friend who is a Christian. For a long time she assumed that because we were alike in so many ways, we were alike in her faith, too. It wasn’t hard for me to stay undercover, because I was raised as a Christian. (It turns out neither of my parents had the slightest belief in Christianity, but they thought it was important for me to understand the tenets of the faith because of how it has shaped the world we live in. Another story for another time.)

One evening in a restaurant, over a glass or two or three of wine, I confessed that I was not a Christian. I did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I did not believe in the existence of a personal god (a god who notices what you do or don’t do, or who intercedes in your life).

My friend was shocked. She continues to be puzzled. She keeps asking me how I know the right thing to do if I do not have a faith. I haven’t answered her questions yet, but she has set me to thinking about all this.

By the time I hit college I had shed any faith I once had, but I believed that religion was important in teaching people how to behave well. I believed that without religion, probably ethics and morals went to hell in a handbasket, as my Mom would say. (The hell in a handbasket part, not the ethics and morals part.)

In college, I met a young man named André. André grew up in Czechoslovakia under the Soviets. He had never heard of god as a child and had no concept whatsoever of religion. Yet André was a kind, good, decent human being who epitomized what I thought of as ethical and moral behavior. A revelation: religion is not required in the formation of ethics or morals.

Over the years, I have felt the pull of religious community. I would really love to be able to believe in a religion. I adore ritual. I read about religions and wish I had the certainty that religion seems to bring to people. I came to believe that what I really yearned for is community; shared values that bind people together and creates brother/sisterhood. I explored many different religious communities, but found that doctrine and dogma prevented me from embracing any of them. What kind of god cares whether you attend services on a specific day or refrain from eating shrimp? What kind of god demands that women sequester themselves from society (thereby depriving society of the participation and benefit of 50% of the population)?

Eventually, I joined the Universal Unitarians. Unitarianism was originally an offshoot of Christian Protestantism. However, in the U.S., Unitarians are not necessarily Christian. You can be Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, atheist or anything, and still be a Unitarian. I still believe in the basic tenets of Unitarianism, and I guess I always did. (For the principles of Unitarianism, click here .) And I am still sort of involved with the local Unitarian Fellowship. But the politics seemed toxic, and I distanced myself. (I am referring to a specific group and do not mean to paint all Unitarians as politically toxic. All I know is the Fellowship down the street from me.)

So the whole community thing didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. Which led me to ask myself what I DO believe in, as opposed to what I do not believe in. I believe in what WORKS. What works, not only in the context of being in the best interests of all human beings, but also what works in the best interests of all life on Earth. (Not what I think works, but what can actually be observed by anyone as working in real life.) Because life on Earth is all that we currently have. Until we open other worlds for colonization (and let’s not hold our breaths in anticipation of that), Earth is it for us. We either make a go of it here. Or cease to exist.

Here are the Commandments of the First Church of Pragmatism:

• Do not harm another human being, and cause no suffering to other living beings.
• “Harm” means causing any injury or suffering, whether physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or psychological. If someone comes up with another dimension of harm, that’s covered, too.
• “Other living beings” means, plants, animals (including people), and living things that don’t fall into either category, like fungus. This includes insects, scorpions, poison oak, snakes and anything else living that you don’t happen to like. Now it seems clear that all us animals evolved to eat plants, eat animals, or eat both. So for an animal to live, something has to die. But that doesn’t mean that we need to make the food suffer in the process. So factory farming, where animals stand in their own feces or they cut the beaks off chickens, is right out. Carving your puny little initials in tree bark is right out. Using a magnifying glass to scorch ants and pulling the wings off flies – out.
• If another living being is directly threatening your life or wellbeing – smallpox, a grizzly bear, a junkie or a black mamba – your first duty is to protect your life and the lives of others you care about. This is a biological imperative, so that’s the way it works.
• “Harm” and “suffering” and “human being” also apply to YOU. Going around putting yourself down, making yourself miserable with envy and insecurity is out. Cutting yourself is out. Making your family suffer by committing suicide is out. That doesn’t mean that suicide is out; just suicide intended to wreak revenge on others.
• “Harm” also refers to causing damage to the complex system that nourishes all living beings, not just humans. We have been abusive to the earth and its creatures and we are about to reap the rewards of this abuse in the form of global warming and its attendant ills. In my opinion, we have already experienced some of the consequences in the form of increased cancers, immunodeficiency diseases and other plagues that we have brought upon ourselves and other living things as the result of pollution, depredation of natural resources and upsetting the natural balance of the Earth’s ecosystem. The point is not that you refrain from being mean to dumb animals because you will go to Hell otherwise. The point is that when you cause harm to other living beings, you damage yourself and everybody and everything that you care about.

• Do what works.
• This doesn’t mean do what works in the next 10 minutes, or in a specific situation. It means do what works in the best interests of the planet, the species, and other species. In the long run, what works to the benefit of the planetary ecosystem is also in our personal best interests. If we fail to do what works, we cause damage to ourselves and everything else. Example: DDT was supposed to be the solution to the problem of insects and insect-borne diseases. It turned out that DDT was pretty much toxic to EVERYTHING, including human beings. It doesn’t work when we commit to actions that are based on a narrow and unconsidered point of view.

That’s it. Two commandments pretty much covers it. In future posts, I will cover some of the specifics. Because people, being people, always want to know how rules apply to very specific situations. By the way, I don’t think these are my rules or God’s rules. They are just the way things work. They’re not even rules. The problem is, when we don’t do what works, things stop working. Why? I dunno.