RS Classic: What Kind of World Do I Want to Live In?

Before I delve into the discussions of God and what I think is rational or not, I thought I'd take a trip in the wayback machine to a post I wrote on this same topic (Prop 8) back in November 2008. What do you know, my opinion is the same. You may be seeing that quite frequently. Just goes to show the more things change...

Our new President-elect and the different statewide referendums against gay marriage got me to thinking. Actually, it doesn’t take much; I like thinking. See, I’m like completely colorblind (race-wise) and have been since childhood, in fact, ever as far as I know. Couple reasons for this, not the least of which is the logical way my mind processes things (like why I never smoked. High school friends ask, “Hey, want a smoke?” I respond, with perfect sincerity. “Inhale smoke. On purpose?” - my lack of popularity is probably pretty easy to explain by now.). Why treat any human being different based on something as unimportant as race?

But it occurs to me that there might be some other factors. One of them could be my interest as a youth in science fiction. Think about it. Growing up on Star Trek (the real one) and Heinlein and other science fiction tales, where races of sentient beings extend beyond human, where marriage can be considerably more complex than the standard here, why would someone being dark or tall or oddly hued or mixed race or anything else throw one. Remember, Kirk made it with a green girl. Everything we see in reality is relatively tame by comparison.

It should probably not surprise you, kind reader, that I favor any human being having the right to choose their own life partner. I feel very strongly about a separation of church and state and I’m at a loss as to why people think they have the right to vote away the rights of others. When I’ve discussed this on gather, where I often discuss many of the things I rarely discuss here, I was challenged if we allowed this, what was to stop incest or polygamy?

What indeed? My line is and has always been: consenting adults choosing a lifetime companion hurts no one. Incest has two problems, the genetic one and the fact that, in general, incest involves an adult and a child. I sure as heck don’t condone that, but there are cases where everyone involved is an adult. As for the inbreeding and reinforcement of bad alleles, but steps can be taken to preclude harm. Why, then, must it be precluded automatically if we meet those criteria?

Polygamy/polyandry has a similar problem. The examples we currently see can involve underage girls, pushed by parents, oppressed by men, or situations where one spouse secretly has more than one household. But does it have to be that way? If a group of consenting adults are so close they consider themselves a family, where everyone is cognizant and agreeable to the situation, where’s the harm? The key for me is consenting and adults.

I do read a lot of older and/or classic novels. There’s a tendency to think they’re all clean and filled with regular marriages. Well, not so much. It wasn’t that long ago when first cousins often married and infidelity was considered standard operating procedure.

Then there is science fiction and fantasy. I think back to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein with its polyandries and line and clan marriages. Heinlein was nothing if not unconventional and many books included “marriage contracts” of a limited duration and creative marriages. It didn’t faze me. Star Trek, as mentioned, has half-breeds and all kinds of race interactions, none of which cause me the slightest hiccup. One of my favorite series of books of all time are those in the Liaden series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (which I highly recommend) where matters of race and the mixing of said race are repeatedly a topic, where marriages are nominally contracts and “life-mate” means something special. Other books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen blur the lines frequently. J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts) mixes heterosexual and homosexual relationships almost indiscriminately and includes people of all shapes, sizes and proclivities. Actually, the kinds of books I read frequently challenge what’s “normal.” I presume some people like that sense of difference, but, for me, I feel at home. Apparently my “normal” is a little different than many.

Now that I’ve thought about it, it occurs to me, I’m not sure if I’m open-minded because of the books I read or if I read the books I do because I’m open-minded. But I do believe, absolutely, that the world would be a better place if we would stop getting worked up on things that other people do that don’t hurt anyone and could be tolerant of people that might be just a little bit different.

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Letting Bad Things Happen

Some things completely flabbergast me, and this is one of them. Six teens drowned in a river while their friends and families were picnicking close at hand.

Look, I recognize that people do things that are, in hindsight, not too bright. Like sending your kids into a river you think you know well when neither you nor they know how to swim or, apparently, have any effective flotation devices. Not to say that such doesn't sound like a really bad, if not abysmally stupid, idea, but I know there are many things people do that strike me the same way, like shooting guns in the air on New Years or handing one's ten year old an automatic weapon. Like sending your grade school kids off to the unlife-guarded apartment pool alone or letting them wade, waist-deep, in flood waters while lightning strikes in the distance. But those have all happened, too.

Sometimes, people have a poor understanding basic dangers (just as some people inflate those dangers to a degree that similarly defies logic, but that's a different blog post). Hindsight can be painfully humiliating as well as tragic.

But there is one aspect I completely don't understand.

There was a large group of adults handy, apparently, "family and friends". A family friend that was there said, "None of us could swim. They were yelling, 'Help me, help me. Somebody please help me." It was nothing I could do but watch them drown one by one." That's what I just don't understand.

What I don't understand, just can't understand, is how adults of nearly any flavor could knowingly stand on the shore while children drowned, called out for help, called out to be saved. Understanding, of course, that the adults also didn't know how to swim, I still don't get it.

Can't make a line holding hands? Can't tread water? Didn't have anything that could be used as a flotation or reach or grabbable device? A fishing pole? A towel? Something?

How do you live the rest of your life with that? A few years back, I was at a talk by a fireman on safety day who explained, if you're outside a burning house and your kid is inside, you need to stay where you are and not go after them. I understood why he said it, understood his reasoning, understood that I was desperately unqualified to run into a building and save a trapped child, but I told him honestly that, if I was outside a burning building and my child - or any child - was inside, the only way people could keep me out would be with a dog pile. I'd rather be dead than wonder the rest of my life if I could have done something.

Apparently, one person (described as a bystander) jumped in and managed to rescue one teenager so six died instead of seven (and others might have tried), but I'm at a loss to understand how six children (teenagers) could have died that way with no more involvement from the adults there than described. I'm confused and heartbroken and astounded because I know that could never happen around most of the people I know, that they, like me, would rather end up in the bottom of the river themselves than not dive in after them, swimming talent or not.

It's a tragedy and I don't want to dump any more grief on anyone. I feel actually for them, for the people who felt helpless on the side of the river. I feel sorrier for them than I do for the children whose lives were cut short. After all, for the children, their suffering is over.

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Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Dell's woes are in the news, how they had potentially millions of business/education computers with faulty motherboards.

There's quite a story there. Apparently, there was a family of electrolytic aluminum capacitors manufactured in Taiwan that became very popular even though they were only a fraction less expensive than the Japanese parts. Millions were used only to find that they were counterfeit, using an flawed formula that caused failure, often within six months.

Dell, of course, was not the only victim of these counterfeit parts. Many were duped (estimated cost of this specific set of faulty capacitors was estimated at $100 million (though I'm not sure that tally's done). Many no doubt had to replace equipment as a result. Dell's reaction stands out because of the denial of problems and replacing defective parts with more defective parts. You know, sharing the pain.

But the part that gets me is that the thinking that allows a counterfeit part to get into critical equipment, the thinking that saving a penny today without understanding the repercussions is fine. It's behind the BP fiasco. It's behind many so many companies being taken in by counterfeiters, too. They don't take the trouble - after all, many times, the consumer will be the one to suffer if the parts fail earlier than intended with minimal repercussions on their own.

But, as BP and Dell both know now, that thinking can backfire, rather dramatically.

We need to be thinking of this kind of thing as we make decisions today. I understand how tempting it can be to save a penny here and there today and figure that will do. But, in the long run, doing it right the first time always costs less than redoing it, particularly after it's been put into use, put into space, put in a critical component.

Often much much more.

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Every Little Bit Counts

I've spoken before about paying it forward and how every little bit counts. I've said you don't have to change the world to make it a little better. Every erg of energy you find away not to use is one less erg to pump from the ground (and/or spill in the Gulf). Every please and thank you or unexpected smile can be a ray of sun in someone else's gloomy day.

And spreading even a modicum of good, standing up for what you think is right even a little bit, is better than doing nothing at all.

So, I found this story interesting. Roger Cohen of the NYT wrote about it in an editorial, particularly the novel recently released in English written by Fallada called Every Man Dies Alone (aka Alone in Berlin [UK] and Jeder stirbt für sich allein [originally]). Written in 1947 in apparently less than a month, it was described by Cohen as gripping and powerful, bringing life in Nazi Germany to vivid and painful life. It's the tale of two real people, Otto and Elise Hampel, who defied their own country in a small, quiet every-man kind of way and died for it. Their files were given to Fallada after the war was over and inspired this novel.

I can't speak to the quality of the novel. I have not (yet) read it. However, I am quite inspired by the Hampels, leaving angry postcards denouncing the Nazi regime all over their city in prominent places. Yet another noble story I'm glad to have stumbled across and thought I'd share it with you, those of you who haven't heard it yet.

I have to admit I liked the smirk on Otto's face.

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Doin' Good, Part Two

Continuing onward on my quest to highlight some of the people who are actively working to make the world better, do the right thing, I thought I'd pass along this interview with Dr. Peter Pronovost, one of those making the world better.

Dr. Provonost set up a program to reduce secondary infections at the Intensive Care Unit at John Hopkins. Not using nuclear weapons or a miracle cure, but by creating a checklist and holding doctors (and everyone else) to it. Part of the process involves empowering nurses, giving them power to stop the process if the doctor hasn't washed his hands or is missing something critical.

I love this for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that reducing infections saves lives, saves money and reduce time in the hospital. It is providing good care. But, more than the intent, I like that his process has been successful. His checklist is credited with saving 1500 lives and $100 million in Michigan in a single eighteen month period.

Success is good.

But I also like it from my safety engineer persona. He saw a preventable hazard and addressed it, knowing it could be prevented. That's what safety engineers do. Sure, we often work in risky ventures where there are some unknowns we can't see coming and some issues we just can't fix. But we push to fix what we can fix. When he talked about stopping a surgery because a patient had a latex allergy, I could so have been there.

Dr. Provonost wants secondary infections from hospitals to become a thing of the past. And he has a method with a good track record for doing so.

That's doin' good. Good for him. Good for all of us.

I respect that.

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Naive=Manipulatible?

One of the responses to the last post was that the naivete of my "pure" equated with gullibility.

Well, although I admire the commenter, I don't agree. Naive means innocent or deficient in worldly wisdom. I don't think that equates with stupid. And the people I were describing weren't necessarily pure in the religious sense, though that isn't precluded. They were people who genuinely cared about the happiness and well-being of others, were willing to sacrifice their own happiness, even lives, for the benefit of others.

True, people have sacrificed themselves for war and oppression, no doubt, and no doubt they thought they were doing it for the greater good, were convinced that this was the only choice against an "evil" threat. But that's manipulation via hatred and fear. The individuals I'm talking about can't be manipulated like that.

Pure, in this case, isn't about what God you believe in (if any). It's about what you are willing to do and why. Pure in this case precludes being manipulated by hatred and fear because they don't hate anyone. You can't trick them into smiting an enemy because they won't smite anyone, sometimes even in self-defense. They aren't the ones blindly marching along to war because someone convinced them it was a good idea - they are the conscientious objectors who have been there during every war, from the very beginning, often killed for their intractable stands with regards to their own beliefs. Not killing, dying. Even in modern times, they often face years of hardship in response to their unwillingness to kill others.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
- Tony Benn

They are the quiet unsung heroes who hid thousands of Jews in Germany and the surrounding countries (and likely shared their fates as a result). They are the quiet unsung heroes who helped ferry escaping slaves from the South. They are the quiet and unnewsworthy neighbors who provide blood in a crisis, come help clean up after a disaster, pick up the pieces after a handful of fanatics kill indiscriminately, even though they know the dangerous rubble they sift will likely only provide bodies. They are the firemen who rush into a burning building and the policemen who take a bullet for an innocent bystander.

They are the volunteers who bring water and what comfort they can to a people orphaned and alone after their families were swept away by a tsunami and dig the bodies of children out from a village lost to a mudslide after Hurricane Mitch. They are doctors and, yes, even missionaries, who brave disease and death by violence to help those who have no one else to aid them.

The loud fanatics who have lost site of humanity in their railing against this label or that label can call themselves any number of things. Pure may even be one of them, but it's a lie. It's not about religion or color or lineage or gender or any other label. It's about not letting oneself become a monster because you care about other people, all other people. And, though they don't get the headlines and don't rant on blogs, they do exist, more than we know, more than the world acknowledges, which is why I'm convinced the world is getting better.

For this cause I too am prepared to die, but for no cause, my friend, will I be prepared to kill.
-Mahatma Gandhi

I am not one of them. Oh, I try to do the right thing and try to be part of the solution, but there are things I'd kill for. But I admire them for their unwillingness to ever compromise who they are.

At least, that's how I see it.

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