The Gods May Not Be Crazy

The Gods May Not Be Crazy

A recent sophomoric prank at Davidson College has given me a new religious perspective. It seems that a small group of fraternity brothers, with time on their hands between keggers, decided, on a dare, that it would be a good idea to go to the local pond and kill a goose with a golf club. In the ranks of frat boy hijinks, this is pretty small potatoes, even though these guys got into relatively big trouble. After all, they did kill a member of a federally protected species. Apparently, geese need more protection than hungry children, or the sick, aged, or homeless. But that’s an issue that I can elevate my blood pressure over some other time.

I am admittedly a bit of a cynical agnostic. I have tended to believe that if there is a God at all, he is as Mark Twain envisioned him in The Mysterious Stranger: Detached and aloof, taking an interest in us only in an often maliciously whimsical way. But now I see that I was wrong. It seems that the Greeks and Romans had is right. There is not one God, but instead, a big old celestial frat house full of fun loving elitist snob Gods. Picture this, what pleasure would a single God get out of stirring the stick of misery into the human anthill if he didn’t have other gods to share in the mirth. It must be true that we are all made in God’s image, because the basic human pleasures of humor and laughter are based on cruelty to others. If you don’t believe this, try to think of a single joke that doesn’t fit these criteria.

Okay, so here we’ve got this frat house full of fun loving all-powerful beings, bent on having a good time at our expense. I guess it’s like interactive TV. Picture this; A group of Gods are sitting around in the rec room, maybe drinking beer and eating Doritos. One God is flipping stations from one human scenario to another. “Watch this,” he says, as he fiddles with the remote, and a bus full of children plunges off a cliff. (Big laugh from the others.) In the spirit of one-upmanship, another God grabs the remote and causes a drought over Africa, which kills thousands. Remember, being immortal, these Gods have lots of time on there hands.

I suspect that it is also possible to achieve God status. As you might expect, the college fraternity provides a good template for how this might happen. Every year, the Gods invite a few worthy humans to join their pledge class. Potential pledges go through a rigorous selection process. No mere psychopath need apply. They would be chosen based on their earthly achievements in areas such as war, genocide, oppression, etc., but mostly for their potential for the continuing entertainment of their fellow Gods, at the expense of the human race. Some pledges don’t make the cut; Men Like Hitler, Stalin, or Dick Cheney are just too mean to become Gods. Their potential to destroy the whole world is just too great.

The pledges are carefully groomed, here on earth, in the ways of Godliness, but the hapless freshman pledges are subject to a lot of hazing by the upper class Gods. They get sent out on celestial Snipe hunts like George W Bush’s mission to invade Iraq. Imagine their laughter when he announced “Mission accomplished” all dressed in his aviator jacket aboard the USS Lincoln. They must have been rolling on the floor when they put him in front of those elementary children with his goofy deer in the headlights expression, while the men in charge decided what to do in response to 9/11.

There may even be some benevolent Gods. How they get by the vetting process, I don’t know. Maybe they are in something like the service fraternities. These Gods, considered nerd and dork Gods by the Other Gods, although well intentioned, achieve little good because they are not well connected like the frat Gods. After all, there’s no humor in good deeds.

I know this idea will seem crazy, and even blasphemous to most people, but it makes about as much sense as any other organized religion.

What to do about the homeless

What to do about the homeless? I ride through town about ten times a day, and I always notice the homeless people that congregate around the library, on the curb in front of Central Methodist, on just hanging around downtown. I think they need some place that they can go during the day.

I know that I’m putting myself out there among my conservative friends who think that I’m a bleeding heart liberal at best, or a commie pinko Marxist at worst, but that’s okay, I’m used to it.

It’s very comfortable for my right wing friends to think that the homeless are just a bunch of deadbeats, or drunks, or drug addicts, and certainly there are some out there that have one or more of those qualities. Classifying all of the homeless as such, makes it very easy to dismiss any moral obligation to help them. There are a lot of reasons for being homeless; here are the most common reasons.

1 Poverty: This is the big reason pure and simple. It can, however, take a lot of different forms. There are the working poor, who cannot make enough to pay for housing, food, and clothing. There are people who have lost their jobs, and in turn, have lost their housing. Increasingly, there are people who are no longer eligible for welfare or unemployment benefits. There are victims of marital abuse, or divorce. There are people whose medical conditions have lead them to become bankrupt.

2 Mental illness: It’s commonly estimated that 20 to 25% of homeless people are suffering from some form of mental illness. Our country has a shameful history of not properly caring for it’s mentally ill, but that’s another story.

3 Drug or Alcohol dependency: This is the tough one, and it tends to queer the deal for all of the other reasons I have mentioned. We tend to consider drunkenness and drug addictions as character flaws instead of diseases, even though almost all of us have seen evidence to the contrary. I challenge you to name one person who as a child aspired to become a drunk. I also challenge you to name one person who walked away from his addiction without help.

The one thing that all of the homeless categories I mentioned above often have in common, is a lack of friend or family support. Consider yourself transported to any city in America, put out on the street, broke and friendless, and try to imagine what you would do if you were a victim of life’s circumstances. I hope I have put you in a more compassionate frame of mind, and now you will appreciate my idea for them.

The Salvation Army runs a night shelter for the homeless in town, and I think it’s a great service to the community. The problem is that the homeless have to be out of the shelter early in the morning, and can’t return until late in the afternoon. Surly our town can provide them with a place to go during the day. A place where they can come in out of the cold, have telephone access, Internet access, a place to sit and talk, and have a cup of coffee. I suspect that before this recession is over, there may even be a need for soup kitchens in town, so I’ll include that in my wish list as well.

I’m proposing that the homeless can be given something that they can take advantage of, not proposing that we be taken advantage of. I don’t want our town to be a homeless haven, known far and wide for its’ munificence. I think that every town in America should be more considerate of its’ homeless population.

The Prodigy

Below is my first and probably only attempt at a short story. I admit that the plot is stolen from a short story my class was required to read in sophomore English. I don’t remember the author, name of the story, or any of the dialogue. I’ve cast about for years trying to find a copy of the story. I’ve even asked if English teachers of that generation, and classmates of mine remember the story, but no one does. If anyone remembers the story, I would like to know its name and author. I apologize to the author for my crude attempt to re-create it.

The Prodigy

Mary tried to wait for Tom to get home, but the news was too good. Finally she called him at the office. “Tom, Jimmy got his ninth grade PE test scores today. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell you.” “So, how did we do?” Tom asked. Mary could hardly contain her excitement. “An overall 97^th percentile, with a 95^th percentile on the IQ, and a 98^th percentile on the ambition quotient. His persuasive and manipulative skills were at the very top.”

“This calls for a celebration, I’ll be home about six, we can try the new Italian restaurant, I’ve heard they have veal. Put a frozen pizza in the oven for Jimmy, and make sure he has enough schoolwork to keep him busy. If he gets finished, he can watch that motivational DVD again. We’ve got to stay on top of the situation.”

“Tom, do you think we can stop by the Best Buy and look at a new HDTV for the bedroom?”“I don’t see why not, Jimmy’s scores will automatically up our card limit. Maybe on Saturday we can go to Bass Pro Shop, and look at a new fishing boat.” “I don’t know about that, Tom, You know I want to remodel our kitchen, and there is a PE cap that doesn’t change until his senior year.” “I know, but with his scores, I’m sure the bank will give us a bridge loan until then.” “Okay, we’ll talk about it tonight.”

While Jimmy’s mom dressed and primped for her night out, she thought about the implications of their good fortune. Tom made a good living as a design engineer, but she had chosen not to work. They had no trouble supporting themselves, but had tended to live beyond their means, and their debt burden had gotten out of hand. They were in the same boat as millions of American couples, their credit cards nearly maxed out, and their spending spree nearly over. The big three credit card companies, facing flat growth, and increasing defaults, had come up with a novel solution to the credit crunch. They combined their considerable lobbying force with that of the US Chamber of Commerce, and convinced congress to pass a bill labeled CPECA. The Child Potential Earnings Credit Act empowered parents to enter into a credit card agreement in which the Child, upon achieving adulthood, would become responsible for the debts and interest accrued by his parents for purchases placed on the CPECA credit card. To protect the issuing companies from parents that charged more on the cards, than the child, as an adult, could reasonably repay, a series of tests were mandated by the Department of Education, to measure the child’s adult income potential. The first battery of tests were performed when the child entered the seventh grade, and based upon the scores, a credit card was issued with a credit limit which reflected the child’s earning potential, and the actuarial potential of the child to live long enough to repay the debts. Because of the unpredictable vectors of a thirteen year olds’ future, the credit limit was initially low. Subsequent good test results in the ninth and twelfth grades increased the credit limit available to the parent. A high score in the twelfth grade also indicated that the child would go on to complete college, and although the parents could not continue to charge new purchases on the card after the child reached the age of eighteen, the college costs could be added to the total amount, and the initial payments by the child were deferred until completion of college, although interest was accrued on the balance.

Now, with Jimmy’s excellent ninth grade scores, they could afford some of the luxuries they had been wishing for. But she had some doubts. Mary thought to herself: “Is it really fair to Jimmy to run up all these debts that he will be responsible for? Will he be able to afford a wife and family, a house, car? Will he grow to hate us? But, all the sacrifices we’ve made for him, food, clothing, a home, why, most of the things we’ve bought, were for his benefit as well as ours. We’ve spent more on him than we will ever borrow on his credit line. Besides, his PE is so good; he won’t even miss the money we’ve spent. I’ll look for a new video game for Jimmy at Best Buy. He can play it in his spare time.”

By the time Tom came through the front door, she was in a much better frame of mind. Jimmy’s pizza was in the oven, a second glass of wine was on the table, and she was looking forward to a fine dinner, and perhaps a new TV. Tom poured himself bourbon, she sipped her wine, and they called Jimmy to the kitchen.

“Jimmy, Tom and I are going out for dinner. After you finish your pizza, you need to finish your homework, and if you have time, there’s the motivational DVD you can watch. By the way, congratulations on you PE scores, we are very pleased with you.”“Mom, since I’m doing so well in school, and my PE scores were so good, do you think I could have an increase in my allowance?”“Jimmy, we’ve sacrificed so that your mother would not have to work, money is tight, I don’t think we can afford to increase your allowance.”“Why don’t you just borrow the money from the CPECA account, you know I’m good for it.” Jimmy said in a surprisingly sarcastic tone.

Jimmy’s mom jumped up from the table and roughly slapped him. “You ungrateful little shit, I dare you to speak to your father like that. Go to your room and hit those books before I slap you again. Tom, lets go, we will be late for dinner.”

Mary and Tom came home from dinner very pleased with themselves. The dinner was excellent, and the 42-inch HDTV was on sale. Mary had convinced Tom that a new kitchen was more important than a new boat, and she had looked at new appliances while at Best Buy. Tomorrow she would call a cabinetmaker, and look at granite counter top samples. The house was quiet. She went upstairs to check on Jimmy. The light was off, but she could see his silhouette under the blanket. As she turned to leave the room, she noticed a faint metallic smell. Curious, she flipped on the light and turned around. The blood had oozed through the blanket, and stained the edges of the note of four words. No future money spent.

The End

The original story was written over forty years ago. To me, it is a prescient view of my generation’s squandering of our children’s and their children’s future. Our greed and short sightedness has saddled them with a tremendous national debt, wasted our natural resources, and arguably bequeathed to them an environment that may become inhospitable to human existence.

Separation of Church and State

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html



Above is a link to a rather long article about the Texas State Board of Education and its' influence on the nation's textbooks. It turns out that the TSBE produces a set of guidelines for it's textbooks that, because of the size of the Texas school system, are widely adopted by almost all of the other school systems around the country. The problem, at least to my way of thinking, is that the TSBE has been over represented by Conservative Christian members, who are pushing their agenda, particularly in the areas of science, political science, and history. Their number one goal is to undermine the concept of separation of church and state.

Granted, we are, and have always been a predominately Christian nation, and our founding fathers who wrote the constitution were also Christian. That's all well and good, but the founding fathers also recognized that that religion and government should remain apart. The First Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" The founding fathers recognized the danger of the tyranny of the majority in this instance, just as they did by establishing a republic instead of a democracy.

What people in this country need to understand, particularly Christians, is that there are thousands of powerful and vocal Conservative Christians out there, who are intent upon turning our country into a theocracy, with the Conservative Christians in control. What better way to achieve this, than to control what our children are taught in school.

The article linked above goes into this in great detail, and I urge you to read it.

Intellectual apartheid.doc

Intellectual apartheid

In Huxley’s Brave New World, class was predetermined by the needs of society and based upon the genetically engineered intellect of the population. Alphas ruled the world, Betas managed it, and Epsilons operated the elevators. Today’s technology driven society has created a similar, yet even more sinister class structure. The work performed by the less than intellectually gifted is increasingly devalued, and the workers are reduced to the status of the populations of third world nations.

Historically, a worker in the United States could earn a living based solely on his willingness to perform a hard day’s work. Plow the fields, work in the factories, clean the streets, generally, the worker earned living wages. Not that the intellectually blessed worker did not fare better. The best jobs and most responsible positions generally went to the most qualified individuals. These higher status, and higher demand jobs also provided higher pay for the intellectually superior worker. Although a premium was placed upon these exceptional workers, the creation of a strong manufacturing base created a huge and relatively affluent middle class unlike any other in the world. Now our advancing technology is about to demote at least half of America’s workforce to third world status.

The technocrats needed to run our increasingly advanced society are not coming from the left half of the intelligence bell curve. In fact, our advancing technology is becoming beyond the reach of an increasing larger percentage of the population. If it takes a person with an IQ of 110 to perform the average technology based job today, then it may require a person with an IQ of 120 to take this technology to the next level. The higher the IQ required, the smaller the pool of perspective employees. By way of example note how our country’s immigration policy favors foreigners with special skills (intellectual skill) such as engineering and computer science. Our increased focus on education may enlarge our intellectual pool slightly, but the best of schooling can only make people less ignorant, not smarter. In fact, performance based testing in the schools has lead to an increased dropout rate among the less gifted.

Meanwhile, thanks to a globalized economy, the manufacturing base which created America’s vast and affluent middle class is slipping away, and being replaced by a technology based economy in which, for reasons stated above, the majority of our citizens will not be able to participate. We have seen average real wages decline in this country over the last 30 years. Increased affluence has come only to the intellectual elite. As this trend continues, our economy will not evolve to the “service economy” espoused by former president George H. Bush. Instead, our economy will devolve to a servant economy preferred by our current leaders. Under this economy, the intellectually underprivileged will compete for fewer and fewer available menial jobs at what will become increasingly third world wages.

Unfortunately the intellectual “masters of the Universe” don’t for the most part, seem to give a whit what happens to their intellectually inferior country men. They can hire out the making of their shoes, towels, shirts, TV’s, and almost every other consumer item to some third world peasant who does not have enough clout to demand a decent wage. Then they can use their own domestic peasants to flip their burgers, mow their grass, and park their cars. And, if their fellow citizens are not willing to do their fetch and carry at bargain basement wages, then there are over a hundred million Latin Americans waiting just over the border to do their bidding.

The catch 22 in all of this is that the half of the population that is becoming obsolete is not smart enough to even know what’s happening to them. The ones that still have decent jobs are taken in by the availability of cheap consumer goods, and even cheaper political rhetoric. They hear that America has the best health care system in the world. They don’t realize that more and more people can’t afford to participate in it. They hear the politicians espouse changing welfare to workfare, but how well will they be when there is no work. They hear tax cuts for economic stimulus, but whose economy is stimulated.

Notes from the Common Man

News flash! I am abandoning the blog site Concord Coffee Talk, but I'm not going to quit blogging. Here's the story. When I started the blog, I made two incorrect assumptions. One was that my coffee klatch members would be interested enough to contribute, and comment. This has not been the case; everyone has his own personal interests, and writing blog posts are not high on the priority list of any of my friends. Secondly, I believed that our day to day discussions would be enough to fuel the blog. Although we continue to have interesting conversations, there is not enough repeatable content to feed the blog. In addition, and most importantly, the opinions expressed in the blog have for the most part been my own, and while I am willing to take the credit and the blame for these opinions, it is not fair to my friends to be guilty by association with me and my opinions.



In a few days, you will be redirected to my new blog titled Notes from the Common Man. I have obtained my own domain name, and you will be able to find me at http://www.notesfromthecommonman.com/. I will also post a link on my face book account. I hope that you will continue to read my blog, and I appreciate the comments you send me, even the particularly unflattering ones from several anonymous sources. Please pass my site along to your friends if you find it worthwhile.



The title Notes from the Common Man is an idea I had several years ago. I've had a folder with that title on my computer for at least five years, and I occasionally would write an essay or story and place it there for my own entertainment. I will be posting some of these older essays on my new blog as time goes by. I will not post every day, I have so many thoughts and opinions, and so little time. I've got some things to say that require more than a few hours to compose, so sometimes a few days may go by without a post. I think there is a way to notify people of new posts, if they sign up as followers of the blog.

Random Ideas

Here are some quick calculations leading up to my first big idea. All these numbers are very approximate. Their are about three hundred million people in the USA. If you figure a life span of about eighty years, that means about four million die each year. Allowing fifty square feet of ground space for each corpse to bury all of these people, (I'm ignoring cremation, people lost at sea, and others that just go missing.) this works out to be about seven square miles of new burial space needed each year. There's about three million five hundred and thirty seven thousand square miles of land in the United States, so you would think that we have plenty of space for our deceased for at least the near future, but, when you plant a field full of people, it becomes pretty much useless for any other purpose.

So here's my idea for making multi purpose use of our burial sites. The memorial garden people should go into the golf course business. They could ban the use of those plastic floral arrangements that really aren't fooling anybody anyway. If a ball ends up on top of one of those plaques, a drop would be in order. When someone is buried, the grounds people could erect a net between the tent and the tee, to protect the unsuspecting mourners from the errant ball. (Again, a drop would be allowed to give the golfer a straight shot at the green.) There would finally be an excuse for all that whispering.

The owners of the garden/golf course could charge a premium for the best burial spots. Around the greens would be popular, as would anything around the eighteenth hole. The sand traps would not be great places to rest in eternity, but they do have a certain ironic appeal. The phrase, gone but not forgotten, might even become true. As the golfers are waiting their turns, or lining up a shot, they might notice the plaque of a long dead relative or friend. I expect that there might be incentive for people to leave more succinct messages on their plaques.

I've even got a theme song for the course, and a name.

There's a golfer I know
And his bones are all cold
And he's lying in the Fair Way To Heaven (That's the name I had in mind.)