A Modest Proposal for Texters

I can see clearly that the following proposals have little likelihood of being implemented.  Unless, of course, I am elected Emperor by acclamation.  Laugh, if you will, but it could happen.
     The intent of these proposals is to stop texting while driving.  Not slow it down or punish the texters, stop it. As with any other activity in which it is possible to kill others as well as one's self, decreasing the frequency is not really a good solution.  Stop it is what we must do.  Texters kill others.  I can tolerate their killing themselves, and preferably early in their lives, if possible prior to breeding.
     First:  Anyone convicted of texting while driving or caught while texting has the following sanctions:
Driver's licence suspended for 6 months for a first offense; Driver's license forfeited for life for a second offense.  But wait.  There's more.
     Second:  A "texter" will have his smartphone confiscated and impounded permanently.  Of course, there is nothing to stop a texter from buying another phone, and thus
     Third:  Their phone account is suspended for 3 months.  For a second offense they are prohibited from having a phone at all for 6 months;  for a third offense it is prohibited for life.
     For additional offenses the texter is placed under "house arrest", which means he or she wears an ankle bracelet with GPS and is limited to his/her home and employment for 1 year.  I believe that for these compulsively socially-addicted people this punishment would be very effective.
     Another suggestion I received was to require convicted texters to have their car marked in some appropriate way, such as a flashing red light on the roof, so that the rest of us can be aware of them and take appropriate precautions.

As Emperor I will be open to suggestions, and the more ingenious ones will be rewarded appropriately.

The dangers of absolute rightness

The art of politics is compromise.  Compromise makes adjustments so that the maximum amount of benefit accrues to the maximum number of people.  At least, that is the ideal use of compromise.

Religion does not value nor even tolerate compromise.  When someone or some group believes they have been given instructions from some form of divinity, how can they even consider compromising?  For that reason all religions have splintered into smaller groups from time to time, as various members get a different set of instructions which cannot be reconciled with the previous ones.  There is no “sort of” in “revealed truth”.

Obviously religions, as a general domain, do not value compromise;  in fact, they see it as sinful because it finds changes in the inerrant word of God(s).

When political compromise is useful, religion can block it.  When the political leaders value religion strongly, they become less and less willing to compromise.  Instead of compromise, one side must win, and that side, by definition, will have been the “correct” side.  According to the winners, at least.  

The mixture of religious thinking with political pragmatism results in wars and terrible tragedies, all in the name of unprovable beliefs.

 

Religious thinking is not restricted to deism or theology.  It is based on the quality of absolute rightness.  History teaches us that there are political beliefs that are identical in structure to religious beliefs with the exception that deism is not a necessary quality for absolute rightness.  The early days of fascism come to mind, as does the Soviet regime in the middle of the last century.  Many other examples come to mind.  No state based on absolute values can be a healthy nor happy state, and the people in it will have neither. 

The problem is not religion, per se, though that is a prime and clear example of absolutist thinking.  It is the absolutist thinking itself that is the disorder.  Unless the absolute value includes human life and the quality of that life we could expect to be trampled and crushed between absolute "rights" that do not value us as human beings.

When several states are absolutist, conflicts become inevitable, and since the absolute values do not include human life or happiness, they war with each other, and their people suffer and suffer terribly.

But how can there be compromise with absolute rightness?  We know the answer and we know the cost.  But we tolerate such thinking, because, of course, it is right.

Depression and free time

When people are fairly depressed, they have no energy.  They would say they have no "motivation", which only means there is nothing they actually want to do.  In spite of that feeling, they can continue to do things that they don't particularly want to do; such as jobs or tasks of various kinds, even going to the dentist or other relatively unpleasant task. They "feel paralyzed", that they "can do nothing", but that's simply not true.  Many people use the word "motivation" to denote some positive feeling toward action. When you're depressed, there are few positive feelings.   However, it is  possible to have purely intellectual motivation, a form that does not depend on how you feel but rather how you think.

The very worst thing for depressed people is to have nothing to do.  We instinctively want to lie down in a quiet and relatively dark place and hibernate when we're depressed.  But that gives us lots of time, time to think about things.  Usually the things we think about when we're depressed are pretty negative, which further increases our depression and inertia.  We disapprove of our own inertia and "laziness", which makes us feel more worthless. We get caught in a vicious circle with plenty of time to deepen the spiral.

To fight  the depression with activity is counter-intuitive.  There is a great deal of experimental evidence that supports the idea that activity of any kind, including exercise, will gradually improve the depression over a several month-long period.  In fact, the improvement is about as fast as the improvement one expects from an anti-depressant medication, but the long-range effects of exercise are clearly a lot better.  It's just that the hardest part, that of actually starting exercising, comes at the very time when the depressed person least feels like exercising.  Of course, that's where medication comes in: a short-range "jump-start" to get going with.  And it's easier to take a pill than to work out.

Having nothing to do but think while you're depressed is really the pits. So how do depressed people get started?  Well, mostly they don't.  To exercise while depressed is like going to the dentist to have a tooth drilled.  To do that we have to understand that "motivation" is neither available or necessary;  it's a luxury which depressed people have to do without for a while.  It does come back eventually, but it takes at least several months for that to begin.  For some of us (including me) exercise always has to be done without emotional motivation.  But so many things are never going to be based on "wanting to".  The world is full of unpleasant and distasteful tasks. Actually we're used to doing things we don't want to do.  Saying we "aren't motivated" is like going back to be an adolescent rebel again.

I have also noticed how many depressed patients I see who lead empty and fun-free lives, and did so for years prior to their depression.  How easy is it to get up to face a day with nothing pleasurable in it?  Why wouldn't we think "What's the use?"  It doesn't occur to us that arranging pleasurable events and experiences on an everyday basis is necessary for mental health.  Taking an anti-depressant does not provide a substitute for an interesting or enjoyable life.

"Motivation" is an award earned only by play.