Is there a universe in which supernatural events can occur?

I had a dream last night that clarified for me a “thought problem” I have been considering. First, the dream: I am in Heaven as The Official who must ask each person who has left the earth for an accounting of what they have done. I am calm, dispassionate, unmoveable by threat or promise. God appears in the chair beside me. I feel a mild surprise, but after all, He has now left the earth and no longer has a part in human affairs. Thus it falls to me to question Him.
He sits facing another direction, smoking a cigar, looking bored. I ask “Will You answer my questions?”

He replies “I am God. Who are you to ask Me?”

With no hesitation nor emotion I say “You made the Rules. Will You abide by them or not?”

The dream ends, but the question remains.

Now the “thought problem” I have been considering. In the multiverse, in which all the “constants” that can vary may vary, each universe will be different. If the degree of attraction between opposite charges varies, chemical combinations may or may not form, or form in unimaginable ways. If gravity varies, planets and stars may form in some but not others. Perhaps even the speed of light or the rate of the passage of time can be different.
Each universe unfolds as it must. But what is the “must”?

Within our universe there are some laws that cannot vary, as well as many that can. The constant of gravity may change, but the acceleration of matter in a gravity field will occur, even if the rate of acceleration differs. Even if time runs “backwards” in any given universe, within that frame causes precede events. Entropy occurs on whatever time scale we consider. With a change in the speed of light in a vacuum, the relationship between mass and energy may change. “Constants” may vary, but the laws describing the relationship between constants cannot.

It’s interesting to consider what may change from universe to universe, as well as what cannot change. One thing that must be invariant is that within each universe everything is bound by the laws of that universe. There cannot be a universe among all the infinite universes in which events occur that are outside the bounds of the laws of that universe. Thus the existence of “supernatural” events is simply not possible either in our universe nor in any other.

The question as to whether God has to follow his own rules remains unanswered.

Uncle Charley on Self-Inflicted Wounds

"How did Bobby Joe get himself so whacked up?" Charley asked as we left the hospital.

"He lost control of his motorcycle out on Highway 9. He wasn't going all that fast, he said, just hit a sandy patch. Good thing he's got insurance," I said.

Charley looked thoughtful for a while. Then he said "I have some problems with medical insurance".

"Don't we all."

"Nah, I'm not thinking about costs and stuff, at least not directly. Now with Bobby Joe, I'm glad he's got medical coverage. But he wasn't doing anything wrong. That accident was just something that can happen when you ride a two-wheeler. I sure wouldn't feel the same way about his situation if he'd have been drunk."

"Hmm." I said. "You thinking that if he'd been drunk he shouldn't be covered by his medical insurance?"

"That's exactly right!" Charley said with some emotion. "Why should we all have to chip in on his medical bills when he done it to himself? Because that's all insurance is, you know, just us chippin' in in advance".

"So maybe it should say on the medical policy that you're not covered if you weren't being reasonably cautious?"

"More than that," Charley answered. "Why should we pay for somethin' stupid you do, like drinking and driving? Or if you get lung cancer after smoking 2 packs a day for 50 years? You want to take the risk, that's ok with me, but why should I pay extra because you don't take care of yourself?"

"You got a point," I said. "Maybe if people knew they weren't going to get covered for stuff like that, they wouldn't do it in the first place."

"Right. I'm thinking about other stuff too. For instance, if you have an accident driving your motorcycle without a helmet, the costs should be on you, not on the rest of us."

"I think that some Harley drivers have a saying 'No Helmets On Harleys'. That's kinda macho but they have a right to ride the way they want. But I don't want my rates to be higher because they want to ride without helmets."

Charley thought for a while. "How about all the motorcycle riders who don't want to wear helmets have their own insurance program? That'd solve that problem."

I laughed. "Sounds good. The principle being that other people don't pay for your risky behavior. And how about people that eat themselves into being so fat their knees and hips won't handle the stress? They should have to pay for their risks and replacement joints too."

Charley smiled. "I can see it now. They got their own insurance program. Call it Health Care For The Obese. I like it. Heart attacks wouldn't be covered, or diabetes, or atherosclerosis. We don't want to limit their freedom, we just want to limit our costs."

"How about people that attempt suicide and don't quite make it?" I asked. "And what about smokers?"

"I guess people that started smoking after the Surgeon General posted those warnings knew what they were doing. So, no medical treatment for lung cancer or COPD for them, unless they have their own insurance group. Plus they gotta pay higher rates to cover family members that got hit with second-hand smoke."

"So our motto is 'Pay For Your Own Risks Or Don't Take Them'. They need Tobacco Users Insurance."

"Sounds great to me," Charley said. "Insurance companies need to limit their costs, and so do we".

Uncle Charley Versus The Stock Market

I was standing in the shade of a sycamore tree near where Charley was repairing his fence. My job was limited to handing him tools, which was fine with me. It was hot, even hotter than usual for an Oklahoma summer, and there was almost no wind at all, which was certainly not usual for an Oklahoma anything.

"You read the paper this morning?" Charley asked, looking up from his work.

"Sure. What got your attention?"

"Been readin' about the stock market goin' up and down. Why does it do that, you think? Them companies don't change their value that much, but the stocks with their name on them sure go up and down like an elevator."

"No mystery to it, Charley," I said. "Stock prices go up when the buyers think they're going up, and stock prices drop when the buyers think they're going to drop."

"So accordin' to you them prices are all based on guess-work?"

"Yes, that's about how I see it."

"Well," Charley said, "that makes it just a form of gamblin', like Las Vegas with branch offices everywhere. Hold that post straight for me."

"I suppose that's true. When a new company starts up and needs money to get started, they can sell stock. The company gets to use the money, and the stockholders get to share in the profits, if there are any, and if he company fails, they lose their money. So that's a gamble, I guess, but it gives a company a chance, and without that, lots of good things wouldn't make it to the market."

Charley looked puzzled. "But after that, people just sell the stock back and forth to each other. That don't do anything for the startup company. That's just speculation."

"You got it," I said.

"All them people, actin' like they're doing something important, doing real business, they ain't doing anything but gamblin'. They don't make anything or produce anything themselves. They just want to bet on whether company stocks will go up or down. What do we need them for, anyway?"

"I don't think we do need them. They don't benefit anybody but each other, as far as I can see. Now, the start-up investors are doing something useful, because they give money to the company to help it succeed, and in return they hope for the company to succeed and pay them a share of the profits. But all the ones on Wall Street, the speculators, they're basically just parasites trying to make money without having a product or service."

"Tell you what, Harry," Charley said. "If I was Emperor I'd just shut 'em down. It's just gamblin' and pretending it's a serious business."

"Then they'd have to get jobs where they actually did something. Most of them don't know anything except gambling."

"Let 'em do it in Vegas and stop pretending that all them stock prices and the stock market are of any importance at all."

"OK with me," I laughed. "I figured out a long time ago that the only reliable way to make money is to work for it."

"Now that's a real unpopular idea, and I don't think it will ever catch on."

"It hasn't so far, that's for sure", I answered.

Charley and Paying Down the Debt

We passed the bank on our way to the donut shop. A large sign on the front urged us to take out a loan for low interest rates.

"You owe any money to the bank?" Charley asked.

"No. Got everything paid."

"Wish our government did. All that debt.... We've borrowed trillions from China and spent it on government projects."

"I guess they're like the international bank," I said. "They keep us going".

"We're spending more than we're making, and we're borrowing from China and places like that to stay afloat. That seem right to you?"

"No, of course not. If I did that, the bank people would call me in and ask me how I planned to pay off my loans."

"Guess it would be nice if you didn't have to put up any collateral. The US don't have to put up collateral."

"That's right".

A pause followed. I could almost hear the little wheels in Charley's head going round.

"What would happen," Charley asked, stopping on the sidewalk outside the donut shop, "if the Chinese government called a meeting with the President and asked us how we're gonna repay our loans?"

"What a thought!" I said, laughing.

"Ain't no joke, really. They got a right to know what we're gonna do. There's no collateral they can collect, they got no protection for that loan. They could call the loan and force some kinda payment, but we'd collapse and they'd never get their money. I guess we could print a lot of worthless money and pay 'em with that, but that would cause the worst inflation since Germany in the 20's."

"Good point," I said. "They can't afford to collapse us. What would a bank do in that situation?"

"Well, they could demand a payment schedule where we pay the interest as we go and some on the principle. Give us a certain number of years, like 20 years. Like a mortgage. But there'd have to be a condition, that the payments would be tied to inflation, so if the government printed a lot of money to pay 'em with, it wouldn't get us out of debt."

"Where would the money to pay the Chinese come from, in this scheme of yours?"

"We could have a new income tax added to the old one. It would be a graduated tax, high at the top income levels and high for corporations, low for the poor. I read somewhere we would have to come up with almost $40,000 each. That's a lot, but spread over 20 years like a mortgage, we could maybe handle it."

"With money going out of our economy and into theirs, we'd get a lot poorer. There would be a depression, I suppose."

Charley nodded. "That's what happens when you spend your way into debt and don't have enough income to pay your bills. It'd be hard on the American people, but we've let this happen, and there really ain't no easy way out, 'cept to buckle your belt tighter, work harder, get another part-time job or something. And quit spending what we don't got!"

Teaching Critical Thinking

It appears that most people have not been taught basic skills in thinking. They don't understand what constitutes "evidence" or "proof"; most have little idea as to what "logical errors" are, or the difference between "faith" and "knowledge". They are taught by television and radio ads to confuse feelings with thought. Many do not have any real idea as to how one goes about solving problems.

As a result, many grow into adults who are easily manipulated and led, who act on their impulses and feelings without thought, who are scarcely above the level of primitive primates in their thinking. Yet they are expected to deal with a very complex political and economic world. They are expected to know how to vote and on what to base their opinions, other than how they have been told to feel by others.

What if we taught a course in critical thinking in the schools? We could give them the tools to distinguish argument from demagoguery. We could teach them how to know when they are being sold snake oil or eternal youth pills and how to evaluate the evidence for a particular idea or set of ideas. They would learn the basics of the scientific method and how to apply those techniques to everyday problems.

We certainly have no hesitation in teaching children religious thinking, and expect them to accept as proof things they are told and for which there is no evidence. Why should we not teach them how to think critically? Critical thinking itself is not anti-religious, and it is not a "theory". It is a set of tools, like algebra, that have wide applications. Learning to question what we are told, how to look for the errors in arguments, learning how causality works and does not work, all these are important skills. Without them people are little wiser than herds, which may well be what the corporate world wants them to be.

Uncle Charley Supports An Emperor

"I can't tell you how tired I am of listenin' to all them politicians lyin' and puttin' a spin on the truth," Charley said, handing me another beer.

"That's what's going on, though," I said. "I don't understand why they keep these transparent lies going when it's simple to tell the truth".

"Simple for you," Charley laughed. "You don't need any voter support."

"I think they lose more support than they keep when they hand out another line of politically correct baloney," I said. "That beer is good, Charley. Where'd you get it?"

"It's made locally at that little German restaurant up Sooner Road almost to Moore. No hops, hardly. And what would you do different?"

"Differently from what?", I said.

"Fer instance," Charley said with a laugh, "If you had been in Clinton's place when he got caught foolin' around with that young woman, what would you have said instead of 'I did not have sex with that woman'?"

I thought for a minute. "OK, how about this: 'Yep, I stepped out of the bounds of my marriage, and now I have a real problem, a personal one. How is it your business if I'm not faithful to my wife? The Chief Executive of this country is not required to make his private life public, as long as that doesn't affect his ability to do his job. Next question?'"

Charley laughed. "I like it, Harry. Course you're not married to Hillary".

"That's for sure," I said.

"What if you'da been Nixon when Watergate came crashin' down around his ears?"

"I don't believe I would have gotten into that situation in the first place. It's a lot easier to tell the truth when you're staying honest. But I wouldn't have said 'I am not a crook'. I might have said something like 'I did not behave ethically when I obtained information illegally. I stepped over the line. I will accept whatever consequences follow, but until my responsibilities change I will continue to do my job and try to be more of an honest man and less of a politician. Next question?"

"That's good, but not too practical. I get your point. People got a right to know that you're honest, and they got a right to know the things that you do or don't do as part of your job. But you don't think they got a right to know squat about your private life. Is that about it?"

"I think so," I said. "Some things you can't talk about publicly. No business or corporation can survive with all their plans open and public. But the United States is a business, a big one.
And the people in charge need to stand up and be truthful about what they are doing and what they have done as far as their job is concerned. I don't care if the President of the United States has sexual relationships with sheep, and it's none of my business, unless somehow it affects how he does his job."

"I agree. I think them reporters will tell anything to anybody if it helps 'em keep their jobs. Like them paparazzi sneaking around tryin' to take pictures of naked celebrities. It's just low class panderin' to the lowest level of curiosity." Charley took a drink from his beer.

"I think it would be interesting to see how the American people would react to a President who told the truth and who demanded that his personal boundaries be respected."

"I think people would love it," Charley said, finishing his beer. "I think they might make you Emperor if you did that."

"I'm willing to be elected by acclamation," I laughed. "Let's see if someone wants an honest man."

Uncle Charley Pays Off The National Debt

I knocked on Uncle Charley's door. When he came to the door, I handed him the sack of peaches Elaine had picked up at the Farmer's Market that morning.

"Howdy, and thanks!", he said, looking into the bag. "Them peaches look real good. Don't know whether to eat 'em in a bowl with cream or make a pie with 'em. Come on in."

I followed him into his small and neat living room and sat down while he took the peaches into the kitchen.

"Tell Elaine I said 'thanks'," he said as he put them down on the kitchen table. "I appreciate her pickin' 'em up at the Market. Saves me a trip".

"Be glad to, Charley," I answered, looking at the pile of papers scattered over the desk. "What you working on?"

"Been thinking about that national debt thingie," he answered. "Them politicians keep saying we got to spend more money because we're in debt, and they got some economists who say we can pay it off. The same economists who recommended we get in debt in the first place."

"Doesn't sound reasonable, does it?"

"Nope. I got some ideas that would work, but they'd be real unpopular."

"I don't think anything we do that solves this mess is going to be popular," I said.

"Right. That's why they're not gonna solve it. They need the popular votes more than they need us to be solvent. Can't spend our way out of debt, nobody can. We gotta raise more money and spend less, and that's the long and the short of it."

"What do you have in mind?" I asked.

"Well, we can raise a lot of money if we can get the people who aren't paying income taxes to pay what they owe. You got any idea how many people don't pay taxes?"

"A lot," I said. "Lots of people work for cash only, most of them working people, not many of them well-to-do. But there are a lot of them. And a lot of illegal immigrants who do work that we can't get Americans to do at the price, and we still have to pay for their medical expenses and for putting their kids through school."

"That' s right," Charley said. "So getting them to help pay for the system that helps them is important for us.That's one part of my plan. Here's some more ideas: We let anybody who wants to come here to work do so, but they have to register and they have to pay income taxes. We legalize drugs, subsidize them and drive the cartels out of business, and un-employ all the young people who are living on the drug profits so they'll have to find work. We add a small national sales tax on everything but food, medicine and rent. We stop federal subsidies for everthing that can be put off for a couple of years, because right now we can't afford long-term investments. We switch to socialized medicine so that medical bills can't bankrupt us."

"A lot of people, probably most of us, won't have nearly as much money as we are used to now. There'll be a lot of unhappiness, anger, maybe revolts."

"Yep," Charley said. "It's gonna be bad. But if we don't accept bad times now, we're gonna have to accept terrible times later, so terrible that we might not ever recover. Like taking bitter medicine. I got more ideas, but they ain't any more optimistic."

"Geez, Charley. That's about as bleak a picture as you can paint."

"That's right, Harry. Here, eat a peach to take out the bad taste."

"Gonna take a lot of peaches."

"You got that right," he said cheerfully.

Uncle Charley and the National Budget

Uncle Charley was reading the paper so intently he hardly noticed me as I sat down across from him with my coffee.

"You read the paper this morning?" Charley asked without preamble.
"A little," I answered. "Lot of politics, lot of bad news."

"Yep," he said. "Kinda proves my point".

"Which would be what?"

He put the paper down and looked straight at me. "No offense, Harry, but you don't read most of the paper, and you're an educated man. How are you supposed to form an opinion to guide your elected representative if you don't have any information?"

"In the first place, Charley," I answered, "the politicians don't seem to care what I think. And in the second place, the newspaper isn't a very good source of information. Mostly talks about local scandals and deaths."

"And that is my point", Charley said. "I'm thinking that we're looking at the coming failure of representative democracy. And by that I mean it's failing now. The politicians feather their nests, and when they do listen to their constituency it's just to figure out how to please them and get re-elected. So we got really a people's democracy, which is a bad idea, because it means that our country is more and more run by the votes of people even less educated than you. Here's the important thing: They vote for what they want, not what's good for the country."

"What's got you so pessimistic all of a sudden?" I asked, pouring another cup.

"No 'all of a sudden' to it," Charley answered with some bitterness. "But what's happening in Greece really got me to think harder about it. You know about the Greek situation?"

"I've read a little and heard on NPR a little more. I think if it weren't for Diane Reems I wouldn't know much at all".

"OK, let me give you a quick summary," Charley said. "They got real far in debt, and they got the EU to help them by buying a bunch of gummint bonds. Basically they got a long-term loan and they're trying to live on that money".

"I read that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with that among the Greek people."

"Oh yeah. Well, the gummint says they all got to cut back and quit living off the gummint and start paying off their debts. They call it a "austerity" program, which means they been living too high off the hog for too long, and now they gotta live within their means, even save some money so's they can pay their debts. Heck, we've all had that happen to us. It's not a big deal for us to cut back when we have to and live within the budget. But gummints don't seem to like to live that way. So the Greek gummint got itself way too deep in debt, and it borried a lot more money to bail itself out, which is kinda like usin' yer credit card to pay your debts."

"So now the people of Greece have to cut way back, and that's what they're protesting about, huh?"

"You got it. They know they gotta, and they don't wanta, so they're mad, and they expect the politicians to cave in and give 'em back their goodies."

"But they can't do that, can they?" I said. "The politicians let themselves get into a corner by pleasing the people, and now they can't get out without losing all those votes by people who are used to being taken care of."

"That's about the size of it," Charley said. "What the people want is what every spoiled child in the world wants. And it's bad for 'em if they get it,and they want it anyway."

"Sounds a lot like us," I commented. "We've been living beyond our budget for years, been borrowing money and going into debt to other countries, like China, and we just keep borrowing more."

"The politicians know what needs to be done, but they don't want to take action in an election year, 'cause all us spoiled brats will get mad. So the debt limit gets raised, and the reckoning is coming due. I'm afraid that when it does hit the fan, we're gonna have a collapse so big we may never be able to recover. It's happened before, but not on this scale. Hell, Harry, we owe most everybody in the world! How we gonna pay 'em?"

"Seems to me that sooner or later we're gonna have to go on an "austerity budget" like we should have been on all along. Our mistake was allowing a negative budget, where we spend more than we're making. That should never have happened. I can't even imagine what we're going to do."

"Probly just what the Greek people are doin'," Charley answered. "We'll go out and holler in the streets because we can't have as much of the goody-pie as we're used to. But tantrums don't solve problems, and even real loud whinin' and bitchin' doesn't make us entitled. Sooner or later, though, we got no choice."

"Charley, you got me worried."

"Yeah? Why weren't ya already worried? This isn't new, it's been coming on for 50 years or more, whenever we stopped stayin' inside our budget. Yer just gettin' worried now because you can see it coming in the near future".

"I hate it when you're right", I said, glumly.

"Bein' right is small consolation," Charley said, and got up to go.

I sat there for a while, but I didn't like what I was thinking, so I left too.

Uncle Charley and the Drug War

"Great dinner, Elaine", Charley said contentedly as he pushed his chair back. "Could I have a little more coffee?"

I got up and got the coffee. Elaine brought her coffee in and sat down. "Charley," she said, "I've been reading about the drug war, and how expensive and unsuccessful it is."

"Yep", he said. "Prolly nobody ever thought it would work. It's just a gesture, I guess."
"Just a P C thing to do?"

"Would be my guess. We've tried all kinds of bans on stuff, and when has it worked? We banned liquor and created organized crime,and now we're back to selling liquor. England tried to stop opium back at the start of the last century, and that didn't work. We've been fighting drugs for the last 50 years, spent I don't know how much, and there's more drugs on the street than ever."

I leaned back in my chair. "Do you think we should just do what China did?"

"You mean just execute all the drug dealers and send the users off to a work camp or something? That might fly in China. They got a surplus of people anyhow. I don't see us putting up with that here."

"You always have some ideas, Charley," Elaine said. "What have you thought of this time?"

"Hmmm. Truth to tell, I have given it some thought. The problem is that drugs are a major money maker. Drug sales are among the biggest businesses in the U.S., and they don't pay taxes neither. All the "war on drugs" thing does is to cut back on the supply, then of course the prices go up, and it's business as usual. So it seems to me that the only thing that might stop drug sales is to make it unprofitable, like they did for heroin in England."

"How would we do that?" I asked.

"I have a thought, but I don't think you're gonna like it."

"OK, OK," Elaine said. "Spit it out. I'm out of coffee."

"Well, what if the gummint took over the drug business? Starting with something like cocaine and crack. We'd use that budget set up for the useless War On Drugs and spend the money on buying cocaine from the source. Pay 'em their regular price and everything. Then we'd give it away to everyone old enough to vote who wants it. What's gonna happen is that we'll drive the cartels and the gangs out of business. Can't get much lower price than free. Then there's nobody to push the drugs or get people hooked on them, and eventually the market would drop. Might take years, but you'd be able to see a steady decline in sales when you have to pick your drugs up from a gummint drug store. Why would you pay a lot of bucks on a street corner and risk being poisoned, when you can get 'em from the gummint cheap and clean and in the daylight?"

"What an idea," I said. "Some people will think it's immoral."

"What's going on now is immoral. The gummint ain't trying to build up a market for drugs. It would be tryin' to destroy the drug market by making it unprofitable. And think of all that money going to pay off cops and entire gummints in Latin America. Those people might end up with a gummint that ain't corrupt."

"Right now the US is a major source of income for some of the poorest countries," I commented.
"In Afghanistan the major cash crop is the opium poppy, and if we stopped sending them money they'd be in trouble".

"That's always the problem with countries with just one cash crop. They're always on the edge of disaster," Charley said. "Right now our citizens are sending money to the poor people of Colombia or wherever, and with the Uncle Charley Plan they'd keep on getting their money, so we wouldn't be hurting them. Just the gangs and the cartels, and you can bet they wouldn't like it. So if my little plan was proposed, it'd be right interesting to see which congressmen would agree with the cartels. And you know that some of them are taking dirty money. When there's that much dirty money out there, it's impossible to stop corruption and bribery. So the only way to get things cleaner is to make drugs unprofitable."

"I like it, Charley," my wife said. "I never thought I'd say that about one of your hair-brained ideas, but this one has some possibility. But what are you going to do about all those federal employees in the drug war, like the DEA?"

"Good question," Charley grinned. "We can have them manage the Gummint Uncle Charley Drug Stores! They would have to take a cut in pay, but at least they wouldn't be having gun battles with gangs. Now, I haven't figured out what to do about home-grown drugs, but where there's too much profit there's gonna be graft and corruption and violence. So any solution has got to involve taking away the profit margin."

"Give up profit?" I laughed. "Why, that's almost... un-American!"

"The more you feed the animal, the bigger it gets," Charley said.

"And that's the truth." Elaine added.

Uncle Charley Visits The Cemetary

"It's Memorial Day," Uncle Charley said as he ambled up the walk.

"I know," I said. "None of my family is buried in the local cemetary, so I haven't been out there."

"Well, I was out there this morning," Charley sat down on the glider across from me, and poured himself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher.

"Hi, Charley," my wife said from the house. "Help yourself to a glass of tea."

"Thanks, Elaine. I just did."

"I know," she answered.

Charley grinned. "She knows me pretty good, all right".

"Yep," I said. "You been out to the cemetary?"

"Uh-huh. Got me to thinking."

"What a surprise," I commented.

"You know those places are getting flat crowded," he said after a pause. "I had a thought that could save space."

"Cremation?"

"Nah, too many people want to have a marker. You probly want a statue of yerself on a horse, and you ain't the only one."

"So what's your idea?"

"I had a couple, acshully. See, I was driving over here and on the way I saw a big old machine boring a hole in somebody's front yard so's they could put in a big tree. And this thought come to me: why not dig burial holes like that, like you would for a tree or a telephone pole, and then just put the body in feet first?"

I laughed. "It would save room, huh?"

"It would, it would! No question. And with the machine it wouldn't take all that long, either. Just dig the hole, 8 foot deep and 2 and 1/2 foot wide, and in you go. You could put the body in, like, a plastic cigar tube, only the right size, of course, and then to keep it secure pour in a foot or so of concrete and set a plaque in the top of it."

"You got this all worked out, haven't you?"

"I figured out that you could put 8 or more people in the same space that one takes now. Would be a bunch cheaper, too."

"Wouldn't it be crowded? Hard to find your relative in the group?"

"I thought about that, and I had another great idea."

"I'm afraid to ask", I said

"What would be the problem in putting a solar-powered gadget into the concrete, and have it have a little memory chip and a proximity-detector in it? Then when somebody walked by, the chip would say whatever the deceased wanted said. Could be just sayin' his name, or maybe a little poem or somethin' like that. Then a walk in the cemetary could be positively entertaining!"

After I stopped laughing, a thought occurred to me. "Charley, I know you've already thought of something. What do you want your solar-powered tombstone to say?"

"Oh, it might say 'Hi, Harry', 'cause I think you're the only one likely to drop by. Or it could say 'Come back later when I'm not so busy', or 'Ouch, yer steppin' on my head'". Maybe it could have a selection of things to say and pick 'em at random."

I was actually getting interested in his idea. "If you encased the whole works in clear acrylic, the weather wouldn't deteriorate it... it could last for many years."

Charley put his glass down. "I can imagine a time when going to the cemetary would be a downright entertaining and exciting event. As long as it wasn't a one-way trip."

Charley Weighs Tactics vs. Politics

Charley set the sack of groceries on the kitchen table. He pulled a packet of peanuts out of the sack, opened it and sat himself down.

"What do you think about that Osama bin Laden gettin' hisself killed?"

"What do you mean? Don't you think he had it coming?"

"Oh, sure," Charley said. "I ain't sheddin' no tears for him. But we coulda got a lot more mileage out of him if the President didn't need the political boost so bad.

"What kind of mileage are you talking about?" I asked.

"Well, now we got a dead terrorist. And they got a dead martyr. What would it have hurt if we had played it smarter? For instance, suppose we snuck his body out of the country without tellin' nobody, and once we had him back in the US we coulda said 'Hey, we captured bin Laden and we got him in jail in the US, and we're gonna question him for a while before we try him".

"I'm following you so far, you wily old coon-hunter."

"And maybe later we could say we convinced him of the error of his ways, and he's getting ready to rat out all his terrorist buddies. That oughta put the wind up. And we could always threaten to execute him if they was another terrorist attack."

"That all sounds good, Charley. Why do you suppose they didn't do that?"

"Oh, they're smart enough in the CIA to have thunk of this. My guess is that Obama needs the political boost what with elections comin' up in another year. Politicians don't think in terms of long-range anything, except re-elections."

"We ought to put you in charge," I laughed.

"They don't make enough money at the Mint to pay me to do that stuff. But I appreciate the thought."

Charley and the Afterlife

“I been to church again,” Charley said as he plopped himself into the lawn chair.

“Good for you. I thought you were an atheist or agnostic?”

“Agnostic? Nah, I’m never wishy-washy, I got more pride than that. Of course I’m an atheist, but I gotta see what the other side is thinking about, don’t I?”

“Well, what are they thinking about?” I asked, knowing that Charley had his answers all prepared.

“They was talking about the after-life, you know. They got all these ideas that really don’t make any sense unless you already made up yer mind to believe ‘em.”

“Such as?”

“They say they’re gonna see each other, see all their old friends and family. Don’t say what they’re gonna see ‘em with. And they say we're gonna know each other. As far as I know, memories have to have something to be kept in, and we know all that physical stuff is gonna stay right here.”

“I think part of the reason people long for an afterlife is because they really can’t imagine not continuing on in some way or another. We’re pretty important in our own eyes. Surely we can’t just… stop.”

“Don’t know why not,” Charley said. “The universe has been going on almost 14 billion years, I read somewhere. Passed like a blink to me. I don’t think the next 14 billion years will be any slower. I really think that people think they’ll go on forever because they can’t imagine stopping, and at the same time the idea of going on forever is pretty darn frightening. I couldn’t stand being around my ex-wife for more than 5 minutes, and if I had to put up with her forever…”

“So what’s your theory about why we imagine an afterlife?”

“Lack of imagination, mostly,” Charley said. “Once you say there’s an afterlife, you have to come up with reasons for how it works and who gets to go there and what there is to do once yer there. Most religions have come up with a description of heaven that sounds a lot like what the rich people in their home towns already have. Sounds pretty arbitrary to me, but then I’m not plannin’ on going there”.

“Doesn’t that scare you?” I asked.

“Nope,” Charley said. “I’m not scared of going to sleep at night either. When my machinery ain't working or on stand-by, I’m not there to see it. Time don’t mean anything when the clock's stopped. I really think that people are mostly scared of somehow knowing they’re dead and stuck down there in the dark. The really good news is that they ain’t gonna be there. Or anywhere.”

“Maybe you’re right. I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to do for a million years.”

Charley laughed. “I think it’s gonna be nice to be off duty.”

Uncle Charley Doesn't See A Ghost

Charley knocked on the front door.

"It's Charley," my wife said to me. "Taking your camera?"

I opened the door. "Hiya, Charlie, come on in. I'll get my stuff".

I started picking up my gear. My wife gave Charley a hug.

"Where are you two going this evening?" she asked.

"I thought we'd go out to that old cemetery that they're gonna build a hamburger place over," he said. "Might be some angry spooks or somethin'."

"Have fun and stay out of trouble," she said, shaking her head.

We put our cameras in the car and headed out. When we got to the empty plot of land that, according to legend, was a very early cemetery dating before statehood. It was somewhat rough, with a few trees darkening in the early dusk. There were a couple of bulldozers on a little access road. A small sign near the main road said "Future Home of Super Burgers".

"It looks real peaceful," Charley said, looking through his camera.

"It won't stay that way long," I commented, walking through the tall grass.

"It's a good location for a business, I guess", Charley said. "You think it was a cemetery?"

"Yes,", I said. "It was before the township was platted, and there are no official records showing anything, so there's no way of moving bodies, if anything were left to move after 120 years. Still..."

"Spook you a little?" Charley grinned.

"Maybe. Bad pun, Charley".

Charley moved off under the trees. "You believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never seen any. I've watched a couple of those tv shows where they use equipment to see if they can detect anything ghostly. They never seem to come up with much."

Charley was kneeling down, looking through his camera. "You notice they always pick kinda scarey places to look? Wonder why they think there would be ghosts in castles or places like that, instead of battlefields or graveyards."

"Makes a better tv show, I guess."

"Think about it, Harry. They never find anything. Castles and abandoned buildings? Why, there's probly not many places in the world where somebody hasn't died. And died of everything imaginable, from car wrecks and wars to plague and executions. Think about battlefields and concentration camps. Why, there's more dead people than live ones, I suspect, millions and millions. So the question really is why ain't there more ghosts?" He took another lens from his bag. "If being a ghost was an easy thing, we ought to be up to our necks in ghosts. "

I found myself grinning at the thought. "You're right. Becoming a ghost must be tricky."

"Maybe you have to fail an Exit Exam at the Pearly Gates," Charley commented. "I read about a phantom dog in a graveyard. I wonder how dogs fail the exam? Maybe pee on the Pearly Gates?"

"Some stories about ghosts claim the ghosts had 'unfinished business' or maybe they got treated badly in life," I said.

"You think very many people die without having 'unfinished business'," Charley asked. "And how many people died mistreated or mad? The whole business don't make a lot of sense. Why, right where we are, there oughta be a bunch of ghosts all pissed off because we're gonna put a hamburger stand on their graves."

"Getting dark, Charley," I said. "Let's pack it up."

"Woooo," Charley said. "A ghost or two might make a good picture."

We looked around the peaceful area. "I like it better as it is," I said.

"Always need more hamburger places," Charley said. "Even if they're full of spooks."

Uncle Charley Discusses Prayer

Uncle Charley was over for dinner last week. "I just came from a prayer meeting", he began.

My wife gave me a look which clearly meant "Here we go again".

Trying not to provoke anything, I said "That's nice, Charley. Didn't know you were religious".

"I ain't," Charley said. "But I like to know what the opposition is talking about, in case I have to hang out with them."

"I'm guessing they were talking about prayer," I said as neutrally as possible. My wife gave a barely-audible sigh and reached for her wine glass.

"Well, they were asking God to save them from a calamity, like that tidal wave that hit Japan. And they were thanking God for the ones he saved."

"I know you have some kind of problem with that, or you wouldn't have brought it up. So what's your objection?"

"Let me ask you something," Charlie said. "You think those people in the meeting believe that God can intervene and save folks?"

"I'm sure they do believe that," I said. "They wouldn't be there if they didn't."

"So why didn't God save all those people in the first place? I mean, if they think God could save some of 'em, why didn't he save 'em all? Among them hunderd thousand or so people, there musta been at least some nice ones, kids and babies even, ... Didn't they deserve help?"

"Some of them did get saved," I answered. "I don't know why some and not others."

"You think the ones that died or got hurt deserved it?"

"No. I don't think that," I said.

"Seems to me you got a pretty basic contradiction in yer thinking. If God is responsible for saving people, which I guess is why you thank Him, then he has to be responsible for the ones who died or got hurt as well. They seem to be thanking God for not having been quite as bad as he could have been."

"Wait a minute..." I said.

"If God can save people, and he doesn't, then he should be held responsible. We sue people for not doing things they oughta do to save somebody."

"That's been a problem since people first started thinking about some kind of Supreme Being. The problem is how to account for evil or bad things that happen. Either just one boss is in charge of everything, including evil, or he isn't. So if you want a loving god, you gotta separate duties. Mostly people have decided that some other junior god must be in charge of evil."

"Well then," Charley said, "since there's a whole lot more bad stuff happening than good, the evil side must be mostly in charge. Because if God allows the Devil to do bad things, he's just as responsible as the Devil. It's called a 'criminal conspiracy' or somethin' like that. If God was here we'd have to arrest him."

I thought about it for a minute. "When the illogic of the whole thing is brought up, religious people usually give as an excuse that there are things we just aren't meant to understand, like God's reasons for things."

"That's just about as lame an argument as you could possibly come up with. We got brains that can think. We gotta judge what happens with the brains we were given, just simple old human brains. So in our human world, we got to judge things with the equipment we got. We'd never accept from some other mass murderer that we simply can't understand his reasons for killing a lot of people. To jail he'd go. So God is guilty by all the standards of reason I can think of."

I said, "The real problem, I think, is that we all need to think that the universe is governed by either God or logic or both. We don't want to think that things happen to us randomly, even though the evidence is overwhelming. When you try to force random things into a logical pattern, you get some weird explanations."

"On the idea that 'weird explanation' is better than none at all?" Charley asked?

"I guess so," I said.

Charley laughed, reached for his wine glass. He bumped the salt-shaker over and quickly set it upright."

"Oops," he said. He picked up a pinch of salt from the table and tossed it over his shoulder. "Fer good luck", he said with a grin.

Uncle Charley and High-School Dropouts

Charley and I were walking past the high school a few days ago. The young people were doing their usual horsing around like young people all over the world.

"Nice to see them having a good time," I said.

"See that little group over by the new Ford in the parking lot?"

"Sure," I said. "They're smoking, I think."

"Probably weed, if I ain't mistaken. Look again."

"I think you're right. Somebody needs to put a stop to that. How are they going to get an education if they're stoned?"

Charley laughed. "Yer just not thinking right. Why do you want for them to get an education?"

"How are they going to make something of themselves if they don't?"

"See, that's the point. They're making somethin' of themselves. Day labor! We need to be able to compete in the national day-laborer market. We need people who can stock groceries and wash cars and fix roofs, and right now people from other countries got the market on that."

"You're serious?" I asked.

"More serious than a brain tumor. Look, we need cheap labor. Those idiots over there in the parking lot signin' up for digging ditches. They're not gonna be running companies or even goin' to college. They're gonna be sacking groceries or working for Walmart or running for office. We need grocery sackers and garbage collectors! We need them to work real cheap! If they all go to college, whose gonna mow yer lawn?"

That stopped me. "Charley, that's... that's not...'"

"It's not liberal or somethin' like that. I know. You want everybody to be educated. You can lead students to books but you can't make 'em think. Some of 'em are too dumb to know they need it, and those are the ones I need to clean my septic tank. All they're doing in school is to hold the others back and wear out the teachers."

"I'll have to think about that one, Charley".

"I'm not talking about refusing to teach 'em. I'm just suggesting we let the ones that don't want an education go free. Maybe give them work to do in school, get 'em ready for the assembly line. I got a plan to keep 'em from voting too, but I'll tell you another time. When yer not so overcome."

"Thanks, Charley," I said weakly.

Uncle Charley As Inspector General

Charley sat down beside me on the park bench and sighed.

"Oh, hello, Charley," I said. "You look troubled."

"Well, I am, I am. I been reading the newspapers again, and that always gets me upset."

"Don't like all the car wrecks and tragedies?"

"Nah, that ain't it. That stuff happens, and it ain't really interesting unless you knew the people involved. It's the politicians. They just frost my butt."

I laughed. "They frost everybody's butt. Haven't you got used to them yet?"

"Nope. And it ain't even their dumb votes or bad economics. It's the out-and-out dishonesty, crookedness, graft, whatever you wanta call it."

"Always been there," I pointed out.

"It's always been there because unless they do something really stupid and get caught at it, we don't really give a damn. God knows they got a tough job to do, I give 'em that. But I'm real fed up with them getting their noses too deep in the feed trough."

"We catch them and put them in jail, at least some of the time," I said, sipping from my paper cup of coffee.

"Not nearly enough. I got this thought, though..."

"What's that, Charley?" I laughed.

"I want to be the Inspector General of the U S of A. I want to have a staff of secret police whose only job is to find graft and dishonesty among our elected crooks. And I want there to be public trials for clear-cut cases of dishonesty. Just going to jail ain't enough, not when you defraud near 300 million people. I want to make it plum unpopular to be a crooked politician".

"That's a lot of power. What's to keep you from becoming a crook?"

"You got a point, kid. I'm thinking there ought to be a fairly short time limit on my term as Inspector General. Like maybe one year. I think I could hold out against corruption and sin about that long."

"With that kind of power, there ought to be some real checks and balances," I said. "Who watches the watchers?"

"I read that somewhere too," he grinned. "I reckon the Attorney General could supervise my ethics, but not my job as IG. See, he could make sure I wasn't getting crooked, but he's another politician, and he shouldn't be able to tell me who I could or couldn't go after."

"That makes sense", I commented. "What would you do with the crooked politicians you caught?"

"Anything from public floggings on national television up to life in prison, and I don't mean no Federal country club. I want people to see justice being done. And not only the bad guys get punished, but they or their estates gotta pay back every damn penny."

"Just don't expect any favors your own self," he added, looking stern.

"OK," I said. "I wouldn't expect it".

Uncle Charley Visits the High School

Charley started before we were even out of the driveway.

"You mind if I talk to you about something while we're going to the hardware store?"

"Nope," I said. "I always enjoy our talks".

"Well, some things I think are probably not safe to say in public, so I figure, you're a relative, so what choice you got?"

"True enough," I grinned.

"OK, here's what started me thinking. I read in the paper not long ago that somethin' more than 9% of the kids in high school here in town have been threatened or assaulted with a gun, knife or bat within the last 12 months. And more than 5% admitted having brought a weapon to school."

"That's pretty bad," I admitted. "It was sometimes bad when I was in high school, right after the invention of the wheel, but I guess it's worse now."

"You got no idea," he said soberly. "I decided I wanted to see what it's like for the kids, so I arranged to stand around in the halls between classes and after school, and I just watched and listened."

"And?" i asked.

"I tell you what," he said angrily, "if people acted like that in the mall, we'd never put up with it. I heard young men and women using 4-letter words loudly, I saw the boys bullying each other, pushing and shoving. I saw young women being sexually groped and harassed. One guy grabbed this young, maybe 15 year old girl, and his buddy grabbed her breasts, and they walked off laughing. There was a teacher there too, did nothing."

"That's terrible," I said.

"What's terrible is that we grown-ups don't do anything to stop that crap. We make laws to protect us grown-ups from that kinda thing, and we enforce them, but not in the high schools! Those kids live in a jungle where the biggest apes get to do whatever they want!"

"That's bad. How can kids learn anything in a situation like that?"

"Grown-up teachers stand and watch without doing anything because they're afraid of the consequences, not only from the kids but from their parents, and they know they won't get any protection from their administrators."

"I think the threat of lawsuit paralyzes them to some degree," I said.

"It ain't just the lawyers or the scared school administration. The parents of those kids are no better than the kids, and they raise hell at the top of their lungs when somebody wants to make their little angels mind their manners and obey the law," Charley said.

"Maybe we ought to punish the parents if their children misbehave."

"Well, since we don't protect the kids, I guess they figured out that they gotta protect themselves. So that's why they're takin' weapons to school."

"Maybe we should put more police in the hallways" I suggested.

"Nah, our police have enough to do as it is. Maybe we should train and deputize a bunch of grandparents and give them the power to arrest people for breaking the law. I mean, there are plenty of laws against assault and sexual harassment already. We just need to make the kids realize that they have to obey the law like adults or face real consequences."

"I guess right now we're just teaching them the law doesn't protect them. No wonder so many grow up without respect for police or the law in general," I said.

"I think some of those kids need to get arrested and answer to a judge. Hitting somebody isn't a form of play. It's a damn assault. There needs to be consequences, and all the kids need to see that there is a law that can protect them and that they can respect." Charley said. "Doing nothing about wickedness is how it succeeds."

"That's what my grandma would have said."

"Mine too," Charley said. "But my grandpa just mighta gone down to the school and done something about it".

Uncle Charley Gives God a Performance Review

"Thanks for having me over for Easter dinner," Charley said amiably. "That lamb was really good. Say, that's not a symbol for you or anything?" he asked with an innocent look.

"Don't go there, Charley," my wife said with a warning look.

"It being Easter, I just thought..."

"Charley."

"OK, ok, I was just funnin' you."

"Don't make fun of religion," she said. "It's important to lots of people. A lot of us need to believe that religion is good, that God is good."

"What would you do if you was God?" Charley asked.

"I'm not getting into that with you today," she said, and went into the kitchen, giving me a raised eyebrow as she went.

"How about you?" he asked me.

"What do you mean, Charley? Are you asking me what I would do different?"

"I was thinking, no matter how big the company, the CEO needs a performance review from time to time."

"You want to rate God, Charley?" I asked incredulously.

"Oh, I know it sounds funny," Charley said. "We don't have all the information, of course. But we got a lot of information just based on what we do know about. Here's an example, from what we were talking about last week, that Japanese tidal wave thing. Would you have sent that wave to kill all those men, women and children?"

"Probably not," I acknowledged.

"Why not?"

"I don't think there is any way they could all have deserved that."

"So I guess you're saying that God didn't show good judgment, or else he did have good judgment and just didn't care. And you yerself would be more forgiving and kind than God. Hmmm."

"Well, maybe there were reasons that we don't know about."

"Don't have to know the reasons behind a mass murder to know it wasn't good. So you'd give God a low rating on the tidal wave."

"Yes, I guess so," I said.

"Would you rate yourself higher than a mass murderer?"

"Charley, you're going pretty far!"

"Oh, yeah? Because I object to anybody killing a hundred thousand people or so? I remember you being pretty mad at Timothy McVeigh, and he didn't kill near that many. How would you go about believing in or worshipping a god that wasn't even as nice or kind as you? and that ain't saying much about you either. That always amazes me. People worship a god they actually believe they are superior to."

"Well," I said, "they don't think that way. They just figure that God has reasons they can't understand."

"That's a cop-out. If you were a judge trying a murder case, would you accept an argument from the killer that we 'just couldn't understand his reasons'?"

"No," I answered. "I think that for most people it's important to believe in some kind of reason in the universe, even if they can't understand it, and even if he (or she) lets bad things happen."

"I think it'd be pretty hard to worship a God who lets wicked things happen. Now, I ain't the most moral of men, but I believe I could do a kinder and more just job than the incumbent."

"If there's an election, Charley, let me know so I can be sure and vote".

"Thanks,Harry. I don't really care about who ya vote for, but I think you oughta give a lot of thought to your reasons And thanks again for the dinner."

"You're welcome," my wife said from the kitchen.

Uncle Charley and the Styrofoam Reef

Uncle Charley handed me a beer as I sat down beside him on the front porch glider. I thanked him and settled down comfortably.

"Charley," I said, "I got a problem with my lawn".

"I don't want to hear yer lawn problem right now. We got a lot worse one I been thinking about. I'm older'n you and prolly gonna die first so I get priority".

"OK, what's your problem?" I asked, possibly a little peevishly.

"I been thinking about packaging. All that stuff we end up with after we're finished with whatever was inside... makes a lot of trash."

"Sure it does," I said. "So what?"

"So what? I'll tell you so what! You know who pays for getting rid of that stuff? We do! You know who ought to pay for getting rid of it? The company that put that stuff on." He paused and took a sip from his beer.

"It's worse than that," he said thoughtfully. "Some of that packaging never really goes away. I'm not talking about paper sacks or carboard boxes. We can burn 'em or we can put 'em in a land fill, and in a few hunderd years they'll just be part of the soil. But that styrofoam, that's a whole different story. That stuff never goes away. In ten thousand years we'll have beaches made of it."

"What do you think we should do?"

"How about this? What if manufacturers had to pay for the cost of making their packaging biodegradable?"

"You mean burn it?"

"Nah, ya poop-fer-brains. That only solves one problem while making a worse one. We got to find a way to make it a bad deal for manufacturers, and one they can't just ignore or take our a stupid ad like usual. I mean hit 'em in the pocket book. Make them pay for what it costs."

"They'll just pass the cost on to us", I said dubiously.

"Sure, Harry. But here's the real kicker. If I got to choose whether to buy a hamburger in a styrofoam box for ten bucks or the same hamburger in a paper box for 5 bucks, what do you think I'll pick?"

"Huh." I said, thinking about it. "You'd force the manufacturers to price their product including the cost of actually getting rid of the packaging. Not just the cost of the packaging, which is pretty cheap, getting rid of it appropriately. That's smart. It just might work".

"Even if it only kinda works, it's better than having the Great North American Reef in the Gulf of Mexico made 2 miles high of styrofoam."

"You got a point," I said.

Chats with Uncle Charley II

Charley came by to see me again the other day. It being a nice day, we set out in back on the porch.

"I been thinking," he began. "You work out there in the mental health, don't you?"

"You know I do", I said.

"Lots of people out there have some kind of mental disability?"

"Yes, some do. Many of them live pretty normal lives."

"But some of 'em feel too bad to work?"

"Yes, I guess you could say that. Medications don't work on everybody."

"Give me an example," he said.

"O.K. People with a bipolar disorder have mood swings that make them unable to function or think clearly some of the time. It's hard to hold a job when for 3 weeks every couple of months you can't be at work."

"I understand that," he said. "So they get some money to help them survive?"

"Yes. Not much money, and just barely enough to survive."

"But part of the time they can function, right? What do they do then?"

"Watch TV, I guess, take care of their kids."

"What do they give back?"

"We have to help those who really can't help themselves."

"Yep, I know. But you guys spend a lot of time helping them get the disability money. Why can't the state come up with jobs, even limited jobs, that they can do during the times they're able? There's a lot of wasted hours out there with people that're really able at times, and they could be doing something."

"I suppose you're right," I answered.

"What's the matter? That too much trouble? You rather just hand them the money? Listen, Harry, you oughta know, there's nothing worse for people than knowing they're useless. And you make that worse when they got a lot of time on their hands to think."

"I suppose you're right."

"Damn right I'm right. That's a work resource out there that needs to be useful and productive, and we don't go to the trouble to find stuff for them to do. Being disabled don't mean dumb. Some a them are real smart They can do editing or research or look things up for people. Even the slower ones can stuff envelopes or be elected to Congress."

"Thanks, Uncle Charley. You always give me something to think about".

"Devil finds work for idle hands, kid. See ya."

Chats with Uncle Charley I

Sometimes I drop in to talk things over with Uncle Charley. He's pretty opinionated, and his opinions are certainly not in the mainstream of mid-American thought, but on the other hand, the perspective is frequently enlightening. Recently he read my blog article "No Help for Self-Inflicted Wounds", and he dropped by to give me his opinion. (He doesn't like to respond directly on the blog).

"There's nothing the matter with your idea of withholding payments for medical expenses for some half-wit driving his motorcycle into a bridge-abutment without wearing helmets and body armor. You just don't think it through far enough." His smile was a wicked one.

"What do you have in mind?" I asked, girding myself for something outrageous.

"Well, it's clear you think the human race might be better if the arrogant and stupid were allowed to take themselves out. But the number of people driving motorcycles AND who are able to become parents ain't that large. So, I got this thought..."

"And?"

"You probly want to set the bar a little lower. For instance, what if you issued all of the teenagers, and I mean every one of them, issued all of 'em a motorcycle and made it against the law to use a helmet?"

I was a little stunned, so my response was probably not very effective. "Huh?" I said.

"You want to get all them dummards to sort themselves out before they breed, you see. The ones who make it to 21 alive and mobile deserve to stay in the gene pool".

"Charley," I said. "You're not going to keep the smart ones alive, just the physically able and the lucky!"

"Yer stillnot thinking it through. The smart ones and the rebels will see that they need to disobey the law and wear their helmets anyway."

"I have some real doubts as to whether you could get that to pass," I answered.

"Course it wouldn't pass. Everybody thinks their own idiot child deserves to breed. Specially legislators. But it's always been survival of the fittest. We're not looking at fairness or punishment here, just self-weeding. And being lucky is also a good thing to keep in the human race".

"I wouldn't want to be the person who proposes your modest proposal," I said.

"Well, there's plenty of people who are dumb enough to do it, and we probly already elected them to something or other. Anyhow, good luck with your blog thingie".

"Thanks," I said. "Come by again".

"You can count on it".

The People Hive vs. Us Others

Visiting a step-daughter in the hospital with her first baby, I'm watching the relatives and friends come and go in the room. Most of them are using their phones to text and twitter and send photos to each other. And, gradually, I begin to get a sense of a huge web of people connected electronically to each other, not communicating ideas but rather the personal trivia of our lives, back and forth, constantly affirming that they are here connected with us, all the time. All the time.

There is a group awareness developing more and more. It's almost as if the members of this huge web don't really exist as separate, independent people any more. Their very identities are tied up with what other people know about them, what experiences they share, their immediate perceptions of the world. I think of this group awareness as like that of a hive of bees, all independently operating but at the same time linked to one another and part of a group awareness that is not self-conscious. This "hive" awareness has somewhat tenuous boundaries of varying intensity, and is also linked to other hives of interlinked people.

The hives haven't been around long enough for us to know about their life-cycles, beginnings and ends (if they ever end). The hive members can't even consider not being linked up every moment, communicating with one another. Their communications are not really about what they're having for dinner or who is going out with who. They seem for the most part to be really simple affirmations of presence and existence. As such the content of their messages can be almost anything. People tweet to each other while in the bathroom, having sex, walking.. privacy doesn't matter when you are a hive member. Hive members tell each other and show each other EVERYTHING, and this unwillingness to have boundaries and privacy helps create the hive awareness and the blending of selves. I get the impression sometimes that hive members are all simply afraid to be alone and disconnected.

And some of us are individual bees, flying along and minding our own business, increasingly on the outside of the growing hives who know all about each other but who are hardly aware of the presence of us singletons. We don't belong. We don't share. We cherish our privacy and our boundaries, while the hives around us blend more and more with one another. Perhaps the hives will themselves develop an identity and boundaries of sorts, even a sort of limited self awareness. If one thinks of the members of the hive as nerve cells and the cell phones as axons and dendrites, it's clear that right now there is little difference between the structure of a solitary brain and the hive brain. The hive can even look out through the eyes of the cell phone and perceive things as well as hear them.

I hope the hive doesn't decide there is no room in the world for solitaries.

No Help For Self-Inflicted Wounds

I believe we should take care of our citizens who are unable to take care of themselves, as every civilized country does. In fact, one of the primary marks of civilization (in the highest sense of the word) is that willingness. We don't abandon our sick and helpless to the wolves of this world.
On the other hand, I strongly object to paying for the care of those who choose to shoot themselves in the foot, especially when they do so in the full knowledge of what they are doing.

For instance, I object to paying for medical treatment of people who have knowingly accepted the potential consequences of risky behavior, such as smokers. This category, which I call the Self-Wounded, includes people who ride on motorcycles, especially without helmets. It includes the morbidly obese, alcoholics with liver damage, people who are injured as a result of a wreck resulting from driving at excessive speeds or while impaired, people who poke themselves in the eye with a sharp stick, and probably a host of others with equivalent problems.

The crucial distinction is that the Self-Wounded knowingly chose to engage in risky behavior. I have no objection to this, of course. People should have the right to behave as stupidly and with as much risk as they wish. What I object to is their assumption that if something "goes wrong" and they are injured, the rest of the population should chip in to pay for their treatment. Should we expect the government (i.e. us) or insurance (i.e. us) to pay for medical treatment for conditions known to result from a specific risk?

I propose that Self-Wounded people assume the costs for the specific risks they knowingly take. For instance, I think medical insurance should exclude costs for lung cancer arising from cigarette smoking. For instance, I think medical insurance should not pay for head injuries suffered by motorcyclists riding without a helmet. For instance, I think that medical insurance should not pay for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver for alcoholics. For instance, I think that we should not pay for joint replacement for the morbidly obese or for their heart damage as a result of excessive fats in their diet.

By excluding such conditions from medical insurance or government medical benefits, people engaging in risky behavior would do so knowing that they, and they alone, assume the responsibility for the consequences. Spelling out the exact definitions of "risky behavior" would require some careful thought, time and attention. Clearly there is room for exception, so there would need to be an impartial committee or the equivalent.

I am fed up with paying for the foolishness and irresponsibility of others. It's expensive enough to pay for my own.

The Point System in Love and Marriage

Perhaps you think that couples rarely keep track of good deeds and jobs well done by either party. Or maybe you believe that couples keep only enough of a rough balance so that chores and tasks don't get too lopsided. Well, in an ideal world that would be the case, But in this world there is a system that women use to track the affectional part of the relationship, which I call the Point System. Points are used to keep track of how loving the male partner is with his woman. If this sounds a little one-sided, that's because it is. Men don't track women's romantic attachment. They simply assume it is there.

Men are aware, however, that they are being tracked. Points are being counted. We have a general sense of how well or how poorly we are doing. Interestingly, relatively soon after the marriage ceremony, we begin to have a vague and uncomfortable feeling that we are not doing something right. This is correct. I will explain how this comes about, from having had years of marriage (to various women) and from years of listening to them as a therapist.

Women keep a mental account of how they are treated by us. When we do something that strikes them as a positive, loving thing, we get a plus point. When we do something that strikes them us uncaring or even unkind, we lose a point. So much is obvious. What is not obvious is that we lose points whenever we merely do the expectedly nice things. To gain a point or even to stay even we have to go beyond the call of duty.

For instance, on Valentine's Day, taking her out to dinner and giving her a nice and loving (not comic) card gets you no negative points. It does NOT give you positive points, because you have not gone above and beyond the expected. You have only done your duty, and that's a zero-point operation. We lose points whenever we might have done something especially nice, without having been hinted at or coaxed, and we didn't. As an example, a female patient told me that her husband had driven the car right past a road-side stand selling her favorite flowers, and he didn't stop. He lost points. Being loving and affectionate while expecting or hoping for sex later is at best a zero point operation, and if egregious enough, is a major point-coster.

It should be clear that we men will spend our lives with points steadily going down. By the time we have been together a while, the points are generally overwhelmingly negative, which results in irritated, caustic and resentful behavior by the women in our lives. This does not cost them points, of course. Responding to their negative behavior in an irritated way costs us points. Treating them nicely when they have said something caustic is just a zero-point option. Just reading this blog to her has undoubtedly cost me a bunch of points.

It's technically possible, I suppose, to have at some time a positive point balance. It is not possible, however, to keep it positive. It's just a matter of time.

The Old versus the Young (and vice-versa)

We tend to see ourselves as belonging to one of only two groups, the Old and the Young. A philosophjy teacher once told me that the world is divided into two groups: the ones who believe the world can be divided into two groups, and the ones who don't. We do seem to have a tendency to simplify as well as to group together, so perhaps it isn't puzzling that the Old see the Young as all being alike, and the Young do likewise.

Muzafer Sherif, the famous social psychologist, pointed out that when we see any group as outside our "latitude of acceptance", we tend to see its members in a simplified and extreme manner. They are seen as all very different from "us" and all very alike to one another. The actual boundaries, if they exist at all, are vague and arbitrary. When I was 18 I saw anyone older than 30 as Old. At 30 I saw 50 as Old. Somewhere between 40 and 60 I wasn't sure where I belonged personally, but Old was somewhere north of 70. At 77 I see that while I'm... on the Old side, the Young now include anyone under 40.

In our minds we exaggerate the qualities that make the other group "different" from us. The Young see all us Old as pretty much alike, and as very different from themselves. I asked my grandmother, when she was about 80, what it was like for her to be Old, she said "I feel just like I did when I was 18, only I'm stuck in an old body". That was the most frightening thing I had ever heard to that point. Surely being old meant you lived in a different world than us young did. I did not want to think that there might be common experience between us or that, even worse, that being Old wasn't really different from being Young, and that someday I would experience this as well.

I didn't want to belong to a group that would become Old and die. I belonged to the Young! The Young were....different from the Old; the Old were ugly and wrinkled and alone, and were going to die, and I certainly didn't want to be a member of a group that did things like that! Sherif was right (as he was so often) in saying that we dis-identify from groups to which we don't belong. Dis-identifying gives us some protection from the thought that we might share the same basic feelings and fate as members of the "other" group.

Well, I see the Young as pretty much all alike. Their taste in clothes and music..they're all alike. Us Old are like Ents, and we see the Young as "hasty" and impulsive, led by their emotions and impulses, with no more judgment than we had when we belonged to their group. I'm still not going to die, though.