Security, job #1?

Today, while watching a town hall meeting with John McCain I was struck by his assertion that there is no job more important for a president than security. I wondered what does that really mean? Clearly there is no job more important for the president than preventing the deaths of US citizens (although ideally I would prefer it if the value of an american life equalled the value of anybody else's life) but that isn't precisely what McCain means. According to Families USA 22,000 americans between 18-64 died in 2006 because of lack of health insurance (http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2008/03/group_says_being_uninsured_lea.html). This isn't what John McCain means by security. He means that the most important job for a president is to stop americans dying in a military/terrorist attack, such as happened on 9/11. On that day around 3,000 people died, and none since. If we take the 2006 statistic as an average for each year something like 130,000 americans have died because of lack of health insurance against 3,000 from security reasons. That's 43 times as many people.
So, if the prevention of 130,000 deaths is ranked below the deaths of 3,000 people then there must be something non-rational going on. Security deaths are somehow at least 43 times as important as dying of treatable sicknesses. The only explanation I can give for this is that the security deaths are more frightening, in other words, terrorist deaths are terrifying to John McCain.
My position is that dying of sepsis, or pneumonia, etc. is every bit as terrible for the people involved as getting blown up. My position is also that the only way for terrorists to win is for people to be terrified. Terrorists simply don't have the resources to do any significant damage to the infrastructure and people of the USA. They are terrorists precisely because that's the only way they can achieve anything. It is precisely by being terrified of terrorists that you give terrorists power. This is so ridiculously obvious that I can't believe it isn't just accepted truth, I mean, terror is in the name of terrorists.
Osama bin-Laden's strategy is not hard to discover. It was to provoke the USA into an attack on a middle-east, islamic country, and then wear down the will of americans and cripple the economy. he reason this is his strategy is that it's the one that was used successfully in Afghanistan by bin-Laden against the Soviet Union, resulting in the break-up of that super-power and the installation of an islamic state. How do I know that this was bin-Laden's plan? He told us in interviews prior to 9/11 and afterwards. We have it from the horse's mouth. From the very concept that deaths from terrorism are more terrifying than other deaths, the US government has followed bin-Laden's publically stated goals. We have been provoked, have responded stupidly, and our economy is suffering deeply as a result. It is hard for me to conceive of a method of defeating terrorism more stupid than following the plan of the world's most famous terrorist.
But in general I want to get across this point. We are going to die at some point. This fact should not prevent us from living. One of the most dangerous thing you can do is drive your car. Your chances of dying in a car accident dwarf your chances of being killed by a terrorist. But I don't think we should stop driving our cars to go see movies, or friends, or to buy groceries. There are risks worth taking, and being frightened is no way to live your life, and this is true both for individuals and nations.

Voting follow-up..

So, on Tuesday I voted for the first time. Almost all the people I voted for won. I feel nothing, no different before or after. Nobody won or lost by a single vote, and therefore my vote was entirely inconsequential. I was hoping for some sort of irrational joy associated with the process, a feeling of satisfaction perhaps. But nothing, I know that what I did had no effect. I feel pleased that the people I would prefer to be in office seem likely to be in office, but in the same way that I feel pleased when Hamas and Israel talk to each other. I am pleased that something good is happening, I feel entirely non-responsible for the event, and I suspect strongly that nefarious people will somehow sabotage the best response from happening.
Perhaps it's this cold I have. Perhaps it's because the sunshine has left Portland. Perhaps it turns out that I am more rational than I had hoped.

Beauty.

It's all around you, these are all visible from my house, most in my back garden.

Wow, you are rich.

Here I am, sitting on a couch with a computer, dressed in soft cotton, with a glass of orange juice to one side contemplating whether to eat thai food tonight, or just a regular burger. And I think of how, when compared with the state of most of humanity throughout history (and the world) how ridiculously wealthy I am. If you are reading this you are probably filthy, stinking rich too.
Machine woven cotton clothes are of a higher quality (softer, more durable, more comfortable) than those worn by medieval monarchs. Henry VIII never wore anything as comfortable as my cotton sweatshirt. Before 1492 europeans had no access, no experience of such things as tomatoes, or potatoes. Spices other than salt and the local herbs were essentially unobtainable. In one restaurant in one modern city there is more variety in possible flavors than at the banquet of the greatest emperors five hundred years ago.
Books! In my house I have several hundred books. In medieval times a book would have cost a master carpenter two months wages. And the variety of books available now would have astonished anyone of the time. Through my casual reading of books I probably know more about world religion as a whole than perhaps anyone alive in the 14th century.
My garden has plants from around the world provding a brilliance of colour beyond the ability of most ancient monarchs to replicate.
I am filthy, stinking, astonishingly rich, and so are you.

Are we there yet?

If you are like me, and essentially human, I bet you spend lots of time making plans that once completed will make everything alright. "Once I get this done I'll be able to relax." "Just six more months and I'll have things worked out." "I'll pay this debt off, get that promotion, put a little money away and then I'll be set." But think about it, how much time do you spend not at the point you are trying to get to compared to being at the point you are trying to get to? I'm willing to bet you spend more time trying to get somewhere than being at your destination.
I think many of us deliberately delay contentment, a sense of satisfaction, in order to reach for something else. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. What seemed wealthy becomes ordinary once you get there. What seemed like heaven could be just perfect if we could just have a little bit more. What I am trying to work on personally is being where I am, and being content with it. Where I am is great, and trying to make it greater I think takes away from this moment. Our life is simply a collection of moments, one after the other, and I would like to have as many of those moments be fixed in a foundation of contentment as possible.
Now, this doesn't mean that I can't grow, try, improve, and learn. What it means is that the growing, trying, improving, and learning are part of the place in which I am content, rather than the steps I need to take to be content.
Someday might well be now, it certainly wouldn't hurt to tak a moment and check.

Choosing to not be good.

I think most of us have a sense of what is a good person. Most people think a good person is kind, patient, understanding, compassionate. Someone who pulls their own weight and tries to improve the lives of those around them. We know what a good person is like, and most of us think that people should be good. So why aren't we?
I know what it is to be a good person and I know for a fact that I frequently am not a good person. I can be angry, impatient, I can hold people in contempt, I'm often lazy and often I simply don't want to care about those around me. I also know that if I put the effort in to become a better person I could be a better person. For a while, in order to ward off depression, I meditated daily and it had a profound effect on me. I became more patient, calmer, less cruel. I realized that if I continued this practice that over time these qualities would become such habits that they would be largely ingrained. As a result I made the decision to stop the practice. This seems horrific, deliberately deciding to be a worse person. My reasoning was the very things that made me a better person reduced the experience of me living. I phrase it in my mind as deciding not to live in a pleasant watercolor, but to live in a Shakespeare play. A choice of passion, drama, excitement over serenity.
I think all of us who aren't saints make such decisions, we decide to live as we want, we do things for ourselves rather than doing what is good. I have no idea if recognizing that in ourselves is a good thing or not.

When Bad is Good.

"Greed is Good" said Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street, and to an extent he was right. One of the fundamental lessons of the twentieth century is that in order to increase the wealt of people, people have to be allowed to express their avarice. Capitalism, in which individuals attempt to gather wealth to themselves and those that do it inefficiently cease to have wealth, produces more wealth overall than other systems. Even the poorest become more wealthy in a greed based system than more equitably designed systems. This is because people are greedy. People will only work if they are rewarded in some way for it, and to a large extent the amount of work is related to the amount of reward.
Now, clearly greed can also be very bad. Rich people getting richer while poor people remain in poverty is clearly bad. My big screen tv is clearly less good a purchase than sustainable development material for impoverished farmers. But I still bought it, and so do most others with the opportunity.
So, greed exists, it isn't going away as it is a fundamental part of human nature, but if things are organized well this greed can be utilized to improve the lives of people as a whole.
I think the best solutions to problems are the ones in which the baser instincts of humanity are harnessed to produce enlightened results. The best people to solve global warming are the energy industries, and the method that should be used to get them is to appeal to the vast amounts of greed that those industries portray. The way to solve global warming is to convince energy companies that they can make more money by providing alternative energy sources than by burning fossil fuels. If you look at the advertisements of those companies, they are beginning to get that concept.
There are other areas where ad can be used for good. Think of hate. Hate (in my opinion) is a reaction that stems from disgust, animals' reaction to rotting food, or disease etc.. Hate isn't about fight or flight, it's about wrongness, shunning, avoiding, removing. This seems to be something that we would wish to remove from humanity, but I submit that it is the most effective tool at removing other things that we dislike about humanity. Think of racism. How do we remove racism? Telling people that it is wrong has little effect, people stick with their beliefs. But what has happened over the last few decades is that people have developed and demonstrated increasing levels of disgust and hate for those who are racist. It is now such an insult to be called racist that it is beginning to rival the status of insults used by racists. Hate and disgust has become the primary method by which humans are going about removing a form of hate and disgust.
Think of the massive motivating power of jealousy, or fear. Think of the sheer energy that lust brings to humanity. What power in these essential parts of humanity, hese basic building blocks in the personality of everyone. Huge energy and time has gone ino efforts to eliminate these emotions and feelings. To my understanding generally these efforts have failed miserably. Making drugs, prostitution, adultery illegal have not removed their presence from our lives, or even had a noticeable effect on them. Using people to fight against the nature of humanity simply fails, we cannot beat ourselves.
However, I think what can be done is to harness these feelings in ways that make people happier. We can educate how to fulfill these desires in ways that help humanity. We can redefine what it is cool about wealth, imagine if prestige for the rich was defined largely by their ability to effect the lives of the poor in positive ways. Imagine if CEO's competed with each other in the lavish brilliance of their caritable works? Imagine if lust can be channelled into loving relationships, that instead of guilt and self-disgust resulting from a short term sexual relationship people could feel pride and joy in their ability to make another happy, even for a short time. Would the world be better or worse if it was considered a polite and pleasant thing to do, to have sex with a lonely friend? Imagine if pride, esteem for people, was based on the relative saintliness of that person, rather than their prowess in competition? Instead of celebrity actors we would have celebrity monks.
So, Bad is sometimes Good, and looking for the good possibilities in bad situations is the path to improvement for individuals and societies alike.