Old Man, Talking

You'll have to listen to the last podcast this year. Don't worry, it's not terribly long, just over ten minutes. With the turning of this page in my life, I felt it important to capture the emotion evident in my voice rather than trusting words on a page. This post brings us to an end. We'll be back sometime in February if all goes well. Thank you for listening. Click here to see the picture.

I’m sitting here at my desk on a cold, rainy, late-autumn afternoon trying to keep warm simply by increasing my brain activity. I read somewhere that the more active we keep our brains, the more active molecules in our body become, slightly raising body temperature so that we are fooled into thinking we are more comfortable. The trick isn’t working, but there’s certainly no shortage of things to keep my brain busy.  Over the course of the year, we’ve covered a variety of topics from why we don’t need to be everyone’s friend to the value of life in several parts, to personal terms of service and reducing your digital footprint. I like to think it’s all been interesting. At least, I’ve been interested and a couple of other people keep egging me on. This has been the first year for us to try turning our weekly writings into a podcast, and I rather like what we’ve accomplished even if there’s no one lining up to hand us any awards. Next week I’m going to take a contemplative look over what’s happened this year and how my own life is changing as we go into 2022. There’s a lot to think about and discuss and I hope that you’ll join me before we take the month of January off to rest and catch up on some things we missed. This week, though, I want to take a look at some of the things we didn’t have time to talk about. I get hundreds of articles and studies landing in my inbox every day. Even if my body didn’t require any sleep, there still wouldn’t be enough time to get through all of them. A part of me feels bad for not reading everything because every article represents a lot of time, research, and effort on the part of at least one writer and often an entire team of people. I hate letting them down by not reading their work. Still, there are limits to my endurance. What I’ve done this afternoon is go through that mountainous stack of unread articles and pulled just a handful that we’ve not discussed so that I can present them for you here. Obviously, I’m not going to give each the in-depth full-on conversation I might in other circumstances, but there are links to the articles and I’m hopeful that you will more fully explore the ones that pique your interest. One never knows when some random piece of information we’ve lodged in our brains suddenly becomes relevant in a conversation or a life situation we weren’t expecting. So fill up your mug with something warm, wrap yourself in a blanket or a sweater, and let’s ponder these compelling ideas from a year with too many serious and troubling issues. You don’t need to eat three meals a day Many of us grew up being told that we need three “square” meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in order to be healthy. We even organize our days and activities around maintaining those three meal times. At least, we did right up to the point when we were all staying home all day, working from home every day, and grew fearful of going out and doing anything.  The pandemic has brought to light something many dieticians were already arguing: smaller meals or snacks consumed five or six times throughout the day are healthier for our bodies.

All the way back in 2017, which seems light years ago, Kat and I were making our way through a big warehouse store and noticed that Christmas decorations were already taking over the aisles the first week in October. What I wrote then was an incredibly long rant as to why we needed to rethink the entire concept. Generally speaking, I’ve not changed my mind. Yes, the pandemic has changed the numbers a bit, but with any luck, the pandemic won’t last forever and once all traces of economic aid vanish and interest rates start to rise to combat inflation, the concept of 50 gazillion holidays every year makes a lot less sense. So what I want to do this week, partly because we weren’t doing a podcast back in 2017 and partly because I didn’t have time to write 3500 words this week, is take another look at that article and put it in the perspective we have now. My conclusions haven’t changed, but perhaps, just maybe, the reasons hit differently than they did a few years ago. We’ve experienced a lot since then. I’d like to think we’re a little bit wiser. But then, last December I was pretty sure this year couldn’t be any worse than 2020. Boy, was I ever wrong. The article starts with a review of the situation. Too Many Holidays  Back in 2017, the Harvard Business Review published an interesting article: "Why Retailers Should Retire Holiday Shopping Season." The reason they give, when boiled down, is quite simple: it's not making money. First, there's the expense of all the additional marketing stores do for the holidays. Second, there's the added stress as seasonal employees are added and more work is asked of everyone. Third, shopping patterns have changed and holiday sales don't hold the luster they once did. None of those situations are going to get any better in the future, either. While it's too late to make any change for this year, retailers would do well to begin scaling back next year and all but eliminate the holiday shopping season within the next five years. Given how many retail stores are suffering, the move makes absolute sense. Of course, if/when retailers do start backing off the holiday sales, there are some who are going to be upset; mostly folks of my generation and older and especially those of a distinctly right-wing religious affiliation. By those mindsets, there are no "holidays," only Christmas. Interfering with their holiday on any level results in accusations of waging a "war on Christmas." Even attempts to be inclusive of other religious holidays during the month stir the wrath of those who feel that December belongs only to them and their religious celebration. All of which has me wondering if we, as a generalized society, should redefine American holidays. We have a unique definition of the word that doesn't necessarily line up with the rest of the world, let alone the changing attitudes of people who live here. To some degree, that's not surprising. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn't use the metric system, for example. We’re the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have some form of universal health care. But Americans have an ego larger than our landmass and we think we have the right to define things any way we wish. When the rest of the world talks about "taking a holiday," they're referring to any general time off from work. As a result, you'll hear them talk about their summer holiday in Iceland or their winter holiday in the South of France, and other little trips and jaunts throughout the year. Special days are only really holidays if everyone has the day off work,

Welcome to December. That wonderful time of year when children all over the world suddenly become interested once again in how well they’re behaving. Everyone knows that if one expects to get anything nice for the holidays, whichever one is being celebrated, there’s a level of niceness, or goodness, that has to be achieved. Nowhere is this driven home more than in those cultures that celebrate Christmas with the concept of Santa Claus bringing toys and treats to good boys and girls. Children are obsessed with being good as demonstrated by the whole “elf on the shelf” phenomenon.  Of course, parents enjoy taking advantage of their children’s attention, using it as an opportunity to get a little more out of them, especially in public settings, because, “Santa’s watching.” For the duration of the month, the little ones are more willing to sit still in church, say nice things around adults they don’t like, pick up toys, play nice with siblings, feed pets, and maybe, just maybe, clean their rooms. Parents love using the leverage of “I’m going to call Santa,” and try their best to stretch it out as far as they can. That never works, though. The tots go right back to being their horrible selves the instant all the colorful Xmas wrapping is sufficiently scattered across the living room floor. We might try to pull Santa’s influence at other times, but kids know better. Santa has no pull in June. The concept of naughty or nice lists never truly leaves us when we become adults. Even if we don’t necessarily believe in Santa Claus any longer, we still like to toy with the idea of whether someone has been endearingly nice, deliciously naughty, or a straight-up old grinch. We invite the nice to our parties, the naughty to our bedrooms, and the grinches get a middle finger as we walk out the door on Xmas eve. We revel in this annual act of judgment without questioning whether our behavior is appropriate, because we’re not really the ones judging, it’s all Santa by proxy. The normal rules of social behavior don’t apply. This is strictly Santa’s territory. We don’t make the rules, we just modify them to fit our needs and desires. Surely Santa will understand. Never mind that in the face of all this listing hullabaloo that we look right past the actual meaning of Xmas or any other holiday. Naughty and Nice lists as adults are all about fun, we keep telling ourselves. We don’t mean any ill will against anyone who doesn’t actually deserve it. Sure, we remember the meaning of the holidays and we’ll get around to that part eventually. For now, we want to enjoy the wrapping and unwrapping and singing and cuddling and all the good feelings we can manufacture while pretending we’re being nice and inclusive for a month. If Santa were real, though, and he genuinely had to make naughty and nice lists for everyone on the planet who acknowledges him (thereby cutting the number down a bit from seven billion), how would he actually make that determination? What criteria could possibly be used that would provide an accurate averaging of our deeds and misdeeds, the good and the bad, appropriately weighted based on content and intention? Could there even be a special Santa Claus algorithm that magically calculates the list and provides a detailed spreadsheet somewhere in mid-December?  If you think about it, the task is quite daunting. While there are always the good things that we’re quick to bring up, anyone who’s been paying attention all year knows that there have been plenty of moments for everyone where we’ve not shown quite as brightly as we’d like everyone to remember. In fact, looking back over the whole of 2021, there have been some rather dark moments for just a...

The Old Man on a Sunday Morning We are at that time of year when almost everyone seems to be celebrating something. And I have to say “something” because when we step away from the singular celebration of any particular faith or belief system we find that there are more than 60 holidays or faith-based celebrations during the month of December. Given that knowledge, it seems more than a little egotistical, and horribly presumptive, to simply go around wishing anyone the blessings of a particular holiday. When you meet a person on the street or in the store who is not a personal friend, you don’t know what they believe and it is horribly, terribly wrong to assume they believe the same as you on any level.  Look, I know there are those who fear an alleged war on Xmas. First, let’s be very clear that there is no such thing. If anything, those within the most conservative areas of Christianity are guilty of posing a war on every other December holiday, and that’s something they’ve been doing since the third century when Constantine started moving holidays around so that they would all fall on the same day. If you know that someone celebrates a specific holiday, then sure, go ahead and wish them a happy or joyous occasion. But if you don’t know, and feel that you must say something, an inclusive “happy holidays” is pretty much the only appropriate greeting. Or perhaps you simply leave it at, “have a pleasant day,” and not invoke a holiday at all. For all the celebrations around the world, there are plenty of people who don’t celebrate anything at all. They don’t have a reason to do so. They don’t claim adherence to any organized belief system outside themselves, they don’t feel compelled to exchange gifts, prepare large meals, or gather with people they don’t really like.  Still, you never know who is celebrating Hannukah (which starts tonight), Bodhi Day, Las Posadas, the Winter Solstice, Kisan Diwas, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, Holy Innocents Day, or even Taylor Swift’s birthday. I wish I was kidding. There are dozens of cultural and religious observations particular to specific cultures and regions and as people have migrated heavily over the past few years it’s impossible to know who celebrates what.  What is consistent, regardless of what one believes, is that December finds almost everyone under some special kind of pressure, feeling their efforts are less than appreciated, that end-of-year deadlines are going to be missed, or, like me, the uncertainty of changes that take effect at the turning of a new year. So, for all those people, for everyone who feels rushed, or pushed, or stressed, or depressed, and all the other emotions common to this season, please allow me the privilege of slipping into my vestments as a properly ordained minister of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude and offer for everyone a series of blessings for this holiday season. Take them if you wish. Ignore them if you’d rather. Please know that we offer them in a spirit of caring and compassion for everyone. General Blessings Blessed are the poor, whose numbers have grown despite their $15/hr wages and an improved economy. Inflation has rendered your gains meaningless and left many of you struggling harder now than you were a year ago. May you find wisdom in keeping all the pieces together and peace as you file for another deferment to your student loan. Blessed are the stressed, who thought vaccines would bring some relief and allow the world to return to some form of normalcy. Not only have you dealt with variants complicating our plans for recovery,

The Metaverse. The concept has been there since 1992, but not many people paid a lot of attention to it until Mark Zuckerberg mentioned it like 72 times in the process of announcing that he was changing his company’s name to Meta, which is so, not, meta. Now, all of a sudden, the Internet is buzzing with conversations about the metaverse, which is not to be confused with the multiverse of Marvel comics. There are web articles numbering in the millions, podcasts in the hundreds, and quiet conversations among technophobes who are at the point of needing their anxiety medication increased. Most of that content is little more than noise. Why, then, would I spend my valuable time talking about a topic that is already saturating the interested market? Admittedly, part of my reason is knowing that simply having the name in the title will generate more hits than we might normally get. I’m not against pandering just a little bit every once in a while. I’m more interested, though, in debunking a lot of the nonsense that I’m seeing in all this glut of information and calming some of the ridiculous fears that people seem to have about the topic. I get it, when Mark Zuckerberg, whose trust factor is already about as low as any corporate CEO can get, says that he’s building an online world that will suck us in more than anything else he’s done, the mind tends to shudder at the prospects. It’s difficult to see Zuckerberg ruling over anything other than a dystopian nightmare. But here’s the thing: Mark Zuckerberg isn’t in charge of the metaverse. He never was, he never will be, and by its very nature, the most he can do is offer an alternative. His may be all glitzy and glamorous and contain a lot of things you think you want, but his will definitely not be the only option, and it already is not the first option out there. You read that right. There are pieces of the metaverse available to you now if you’re really interested and have that much expendable cash lying around. The difference is that what exists now is severely limited and not nearly as immersive as some are envisioning. There’s also the fact that the technology isn’t close to providing the deeply consuming alternative reality that some people imagine. This type of development takes time and comes with a lot of glitches along the way, glitches that could doom a metaverse project from the start if they’re not addressed before rollout. So, let’s try and get a better handle on this thing called the metaverse. We’ll try to break it down into easily digestible chunks so that it doesn’t take up all the space you need for thanksgiving dinner. The Metaverse Started As Fiction The metaverse is a child of the 1990s, born in 1992, the same year as my first child. We named our offspring Zachariah. Neal Stephenson named his Snow Crash. His main character was named Hiro Protagonist (no, really), a pizza delivery person of mixed race who spends all his non-working hours running down bad guys in an online world threatened by hackers. In the real world, he’s pretty much a nobody, but in the metaverse, he’s a warrior prince. Sitting here in 2021, the plot sounds almost trite.  In 1992, though, the book was confusing to anyone not actively involved in this burgeoning thing called the world wide web, which, at the time, was more theory than reality. Some considered the book a knockoff of the 1982 video-game-inspired movie,

While doing my typical morning surf through Twitter one day this week I came across an interesting topic. It seems that a MySpace-like social media site that started sometime last year is gaining in popularity. Like MySpace, part of the site’s attractiveness is the ability to insert your own HTML code, apply themes, and give your profile a unique look. The name of the site is SpaceHey.com and yes, I’ve already created a bare-bones profile that looks horrid because the last thing I have time to mess with is yet another social media site. I know I’m not alone in having an account on just about every social media site available. I have, so far, managed to avoid TikTok, because I’m not 14, but I have a presence just about everywhere else. Why? Do I really have some psychological narcissism that pushes me to connect with people on all these platforms? Maybe, but the more likely answer is that we want to be there, wherever there is, when something finally replaces Facebook. We all know it’s coming. The nature of social media demands a limited shelf life for any online software. But we’ve also seen some spectacular failures as well. Remember Google+? With all its parent company’s money and marketing power, one might have thought the site was destined for greatness. Certainly, the Google+ team was convinced they were going to take over the world. That didn’t happen, though, and we’ve watched as plenty of other sites popped up only to never gain enough users and cross-platform hype to make the cut.  Assuming that you, like me, have a deep digital connection is probably a safe direction for me to travel, given that you almost certainly wouldn’t be listening or reading this right now if you didn’t have an online presence of some kind. We talked last week about your personal Terms of Service, and how you need to develop a contract that protects you and sets expectations both online and in real life. The heavy-touted metaverse’s encroachment seems inevitable at this point, despite there being some misgivings as to what the dangers might be. Is living more of our lives online and in digital spaces a good thing, or do we risk surrendering every aspect of our humanity? For a growing number of people, the better option is to opt-out of all of it, social media, gaming, avatars, websites, everything. This digital environment that has developed over the past 30 years has taken a toll, mentally, emotionally, and physically, across every aspect of our lives. And while there have been some good things that come of this digital world, such as food delivery during a pandemic, or being able to talk to your doctor online, there are a lot of negatives as well. Every day there’s another story about personal data breaches affecting millions of people. Ransomware attacks have taken down some of the biggest corporations on the planet. Hateful attitudes, unchecked misinformation, and lies, trolls challenging and mocking everything you say, all adds up to a situation where none of us can say we’re all that happy with what we’re experiencing online. Should we abandon everything that’s good and eliminate our digital presence completely?

This is the time of year when a lot of technology companies update their products. Maybe you’ve noticed. Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and many others have all issued significant updates to their products in the last month or so. Sure, they may issue bug fixes and feature updates here and there during the year, but these are the big ones, the ones that go from version 10 to version 11, not 10.15.9 or something of that sort. These are the updates that make a difference. What’s not terribly surprising is that along with these updates come changes in the Terms of Service agreements that companies are required to post. You have to accept the Terms of Service in order to install and use the software. There’s no getting around it. Even companies that may not be issuing updates are getting in on the act. The company that makes my cell phone issued an update to their Terms of Service this morning. No update, mind you. We’ve already had several this year so perhaps their development team is a little weary. The Terms of Service updated, though, and yes, I’ve read the small print.  What, you don’t read all that small print in the Terms of Service agreements? You’re not alone. Few people do. In fact, companies bank on the fact that less than ten percent of their users, sometimes less than three percent, actually read what amounts to a legally binding contract. Most of the time, as long as everything goes well and neither you nor the company is up to no good, we’re safe. Few companies set out to deliberately harm their user base. There are exceptions, though, and there are frequently paragraphs and phrases dropped in the middle of all the legal speak that have the potential to cause trouble for someone down the road. For example, if you use a Samsung product, such as one of their cell phones, the Terms of Service includes this lovely bit of information: When you share content, you continue to own the intellectual property rights to your content and you are free to share the content with anyone else however you would like. However, to use your content in our Services, you need to grant us a license for any content that you create or upload using our Services. When you upload, transmit, create, post, display, or otherwise provide any information, materials, documents, media files, or other content on or through our Services (“User Content”), you grant us an irrevocable, unlimited, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to copy, reproduce, adapt, modify, edit, distribute, translate, publish, publicly perform, and publicly display such User Content (“User Content License”) to the full extent allowed by Applicable Law.  Do you see what they did there? In one sentence, they say that the content you create is yours, you retain the copyright, and Samsung can’t use it without a license from you. In the very next sentence, you grant them that license to use anything you upload using their device. The license is “irrevocable, unlimited, worldwide,” and “royalty-free.” That means you can’t take anything back, they can use it anytime, anywhere, for any reason, and you can’t charge them for it. All those pictures of your child’s third birthday? They can use them. That embarrassing video of you throwing up on the shoes of some D-level celebrity? Yeah, they can sell that to the tabloids and you won’t see a dime or even get any credit. And those nudes you’ve been sending to that person you really like? Yeah, someone else is looking at those, too. 

I am a child of the 60s, a period known in part as the sexual awakening and culture revolution. To some extent, that label is inaccurate. The actual sexual revolution of the 20th century began earlier as a strong push on hygiene reduced the occurrence of venereal disease, opening the door to more liberated opinions especially among women. From flappers to bohemians to so-called “butch” lesbians, the early 1900s laid a necessary foundation for the open exploration that grandchildren would explore. [Source] By the early 1970s, names such as Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler (NSFW), and Andy Warhol were all associated with the liberalization of sexual attitudes. Tossed into that mix, “the pill” gave women more control over their own bodies, igniting a debate that, sadly still continues. This led to an array of Supreme Court decisions that opened the doors to personal freedoms. Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965) established a right to privacy within married relationships. Eisenstadt vs. Baird (1972) extended the right of privacy to any procreative sexual intercourse, regardless of relationship status. Those two decisions were critical in the court’s decision on Roe vs. Wade and also came into play in 2003 when Lawrence vs. Texas established a fundamental right to consensual homosexual activity.  Courts during this period were a critical part of opening the doors to not only sexual awakening but sexual understanding and exploitation. 1969’s Stanley vs. Georgia set forth a right to private possession of “obscene materials,” and a unanimous decision in Hustler vs. Falwell in 1998 secured the right of sexual parody by a publication. Music from the latter half of the 20th century echoes the new openness in talking, at least euphemistically, about sex. Paul McCartney isn’t talking about the diner menu when he mentions “finger pies” in Penny Lane. ZZ Top’s Pearl Necklace barely concealed its fluid reference. Starland Vocal Band left little to the imagination in Afternoon Delight. Then along came Madonna’s Like A Virgin, Prince’s Little Red Corvette, and topping it all off, George Michael’s I Want Your Sex. Each step of the way, politicians, mothers, and preachers around the world, from Tipper Gore to Jerry Falwell, denounced the music. As a result, the

Take A Listen It’s September 2021, and the world remains in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. We didn’t want to be here. Global leaders assumed earlier this year that we would be past this thing by now. After all, we have vaccines that have the ability to severely reduce the rate of infection and seriousness of the disease. Logic says that once vaccines are available, infection rates should go down.  But that’s not reality, is it? Mamta Murthi, the World Bank's Vice President for Human Development said just last month, "The situation that we see right now is absolutely unacceptable because a large part of the world remains unvaccinated and this is a danger for all of us." Globally, approximately 27.6% of people have received at least one shot, but among poorer countries, including most of the continents of Africa and South America, the rate is something in the neighborhood of 1.1%. [Worldbank] According to the CDC, the current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (153,246) increased 4.9% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (146,087). The current 7-day moving average is 123.6% higher than the value observed approximately one year ago (68,533 new cases on July 20, 2020). Children are getting hit especially hard this fall, and Idaho’s situation has gotten so bad that hospital officials there are having to make the difficult decision to ration care. Against this background, having good health seems that it would hold an extreme amount of value. Not being sick, not being immunocompromised, being vaccinated, and having reliable access to healthcare arguably should be a desirable advantage that elevates one’s personal value enough that we would all desire to pursue it. Who doesn’t want to be healthy? Yet, around the world, millions of people who have access to vaccines are turning them down. They’d rather take horse dewormer, which is proven to not only not work but to be dangerous when consumed by humans. As city and state leaders are once again talking about mask mandates, the same people who are unvaccinated are claiming that such public health policies violate their personal freedom.  This leads us to question who holds the responsibility for maintaining the value of health? Does it all fall squarely on the shoulders of each individual? Under that line of reasoning, it would be up to everyone to find their own cure to whatever ails them. Does the state have a vested interest in keeping the populace healthy? If so, where’s the line between dictatorial control and acting in the public’s best interest? What is the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals, and caregivers? Is it their fault when people die? Knowing how socially and politically sensitive this issue is at the moment, I’m not going to pretend to be objective. If our aim is to base our decisions on the truth, then we have to disregard personal opinions and desires and look at hard definitions and verifiable truth. That may not play well with everyone reading/listening to this,

One of the most astonishing news stories of the past couple of weeks is the large number of people taking an animal dewormer, ivermectin, in an attempt to cure or prevent COVID-19 without taking an FDA-approved vaccination. The problem is so widespread that the FDA released a lengthy statement about why ivermectin shouldn’t be taken, especially in the doses intended for horses and other large animals.  The lack of logic here is astounding. There are three drugs, all administered as vaccinations, approved for the treatment of COVID-19 in the United States. They have been tested, vetted, and the Pfizer vaccine has full FDA approval. Making things even better, they’re free. You don’t have to pay for them. Just show up at your local pharmacy in most cases and they’ll be happy to give you a jab. So, if an approved medicine is available for free, why would anyone take an unapproved drug that is proven to be dangerous?  This is just one of a growing number of incongruencies that lead us to question whether our secondary school science education is failing and the decline of the whole education system in the United States. What’s wrong? Every child in the United States is required by law to attend school, regardless of where they live, what their economic or family situation might be, their religion, their gender, or their presumed capacity for learning. If everyone is going to school for at least twelve years, then why aren’t we, as a nation, smart enough to not take horse medicine? Researchers, teachers, and pundits offer plenty of excuses for this problem. Everything from decreasing school funding, excessive emphasis on standardized testing, child and family poverty, the No Child Left Behind Act, and plenty of other factors have a part in explaining why a high school education in 2021 is less valuable than, say, a high school education in 1975. Not that 1975 was infallible, mind you. The American educational system has a long history of bias and underserving particular populations, such as people of color and children from indigenous families. What has become evident, though, born out through the challenges of the pandemic, is that our education system has some pretty severe flaws.  Equally disturbing is what seems to be a rise in anti-intellectualism in the United States, further devaluing not only the education system but those who appear to be well-educated or in some fashion smarter than others. Anti-intellectualism isn’t new, historian Richard Hofstadter took a deep look at the problem in his book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life all the way back in 1963. Devaluing education is a uniquely American thing to do. For far too many people,

Anyone who knows us is aware that we have two dogs, Belvedere and Hamilton. Belvedere is an English Hound and Hamilton is a pit/lab mix with a stronger emphasis on the lab now that he’s getting older. Both dogs are super protective and have a reputation in the neighborhood for protecting their domain. Anyone walking too close to their fence, i.e., on the sidewalk, is going to be made aware of their presence.  What I find interesting are the different ways the two dogs approach their job of protecting the family. Belvedere considers us all as a single unit. When he first goes out of the morning, he checks the perimeter of the yard for dangerous intruders such as homicidal squirrels or thieving raccoons. Once he’s sure the yard is safe, he comes back and lies down near the door. Hamilton, however, focuses more on the safety of individual family members. If none of us are outside with him, he wanders around and tries to convince Belvedere to play with him. Let anyone step outside, though, and he’s immediately by their side, their personal bodyguard against all dangers real or imagined until we decide to go back into the house.  Inside, we see a similar approach. Belvedere is content to sleep on the most comfortable cushion he can find, regardless of where it is or who is around. He listens for the sound of the door and pays little attention to internal squabbles between family members. Hamilton, however, has to be near one of us at all times, preferably me. If there’s an argument between the kids, he gets upset and stands between them. He also does the same with the cats, interestingly enough. Again, the dogs’ emphasis is on the family as a unit versus a collection of individuals.  There’s a lot of commonality in both dogs’ approaches. Both bark ferociously at anyone they perceive as a threat and breaching the fence in any way is a danger a few unfortunate people learned through painful experience. Both are especially protective of the kids. Both know that outside is more dangerous than inside. Neither like seeing the kids get on the school bus in the morning. Both come running when anyone returns home.  What we see in the difference between the dogs is a separation of philosophy of what makes a family. For Belvedere, we are homogenous, we all go together. If one of us is gone, the whole is incomplete, but he remains with the ones still at home. For Hamilton, though, we are a collective, individuals residing together. If one of us is gone, he would leave the group to protect the one.  In the dogs’ example, we find the basic differences for how the family is defined and how each individual member is valued. We might think of Belvedere as being more of a traditionalist, with there being two parents and their offspring composing the core family unit. Hamilton is more liberal, emphasizing individual identities from which the family benefits, however it is constructed. One might reasonably argue that neither view is puritanically wrong or right, but the definition one chooses inevitably affects one’s valuation both within and external to the group. As such, how one operates within the family, the roles we take, the responsibilities we assume, affect our valuation, and that valuation is noticed and generally adopted by the society of which we are part.  This makes our relationship with family one of the most challenging aspects in determining the value of our lives.  If we’re going to dissect this to better understand our value, we need some definitions. Be warned, there’s not a lot of consensus among philosophers, lawyers, or sociologists in this regard. In fact, just trying to define what is a family gets pretty sticky.

Imagine yourself in a scenario you’ve likely experienced multiple times before: you’re at a party, a meeting, or some other type of social gathering where you don’t already know everyone there. As you’re standing around the coffee pot or waiting in line for some handout, the person next to you extends their hand and says, “I’m Harold Enterprise, the CEO of Harold’s, Inc.”  How do you respond?  In most cases, you tell them your name and your occupation, or at least your title within the organization that employs you. This is a common social exchange all across what we might consider the industrialized portions of the world. We introduce ourselves with what we consider the most critical pieces of information: who we are, and what makes us valuable. Granted, we may not always respond with something work-related. If I’m at the salon, where Kat is a dominant figure, I’m more likely to say something like, “I’m charles, Kat’s nesting partner.” Why? Because my relationship with Kat is what establishes my value in that situation. There is an unspoken yet recognized need to establish what makes us worthwhile, why someone should talk with us, or why this new person we’ve met would want to engage with us on any level. What’s interesting is that, depending on the situation, we’re willing to sacrifice our morals, to answer with something other than the truth, if we think doing so provides a level of benefit. For instance, in my initial example, Mr. Enterprise introduces himself as the CEO of his company, a company named after himself. Whether you recognize the name of the company is irrelevant because it’s the presumed fact that he is a CEO, Chief Executive Officer, and that establishes his value. But what if Harold is actually a self-employed contractor who cleans other people’s offices and mops floors for a living? If we saw him performing his actual duties, we might think, “Ah, he’s just the janitor. He only said he was a CEO to over-inflate his value.” Yet, in some arguments, we’re all the CEO of our own lives, so how is Harold’s false? After all, he didn’t say what Harold’s, Inc. does. As a private contractor, he could well have created a corporation or limited liability company (LLC) for tax purposes. Yet, if he had said, “Hi, I’m Harold and I’m a janitor,” that would have likely changed our perception and, perhaps most importantly, our valuation of him. Unless we’re at an event designed specifically for janitors, we’re less likely to want to strike up a conversation with the janitor than we might a CEO. How people perceive what we do and the importance of its role in society influences how our lives are valued. This is a critical part of our identity. Studies have repeatedly shown that losing our jobs increases the risk of suicide, regardless of age, gender, or level of education. Losing our jobs is about more than losing an income, though that’s certainly important. Being unemployed strips us of a sense of identity. If Harold suddenly finds himself without any contracts, is he still a CEO? Is he anything?  If we’re going to discuss the value of life, we have to look at our relationship to work and how that influences our perceived valuation. Please note that we’re not inferring that a person doesn’t have any value outside their stated profession, that would be short-sighted and largely incorrect.

How do we measure the value of a human life or any life? This is an extremely important question that affects everything from whether or not we wear a mask when asked to how much money we’re willing to spend to prevent Afghanistan from falling into the hands of cruel and heartless despots. So far, we’ve looked at methods of economic valuation and in a broad sense how life itself is defined. What we’ve found so far is that there is no straightforward answer and the best we can hope for is to gather all the information we can and try to make an intelligent and reasonable decision. Intelligent and reasonable. Those are important words and, as with much of what we’ve discussed, not everyone agrees on their definition. When we look at the state of the world in its current form, one might make the argument that we are dangerously short of both. We’re failing in fighting the opioid crisis. The US, and arguably the world is in a pandemic spiral, either unable or unwilling to control new variants as they arrive. Weather is more extreme and climate change is more drastic than even the worse predictions imagined. And by all accounts, twenty years of war in Afghanistan proves to have been a colossal waste of time, money, and lives as the country once again is overtaken by the Taliban, one of the most repressive and inhuman regimes to ever exist. When we look at the status of the world around us, we find plenty of what we might call “bad” actors, people, and organizations who not only put their personal interests above others but do so in a way that intentionally puts others at risk or commits deliberate harm. Those are people whose value we would question. Does the world need “bad” people? What positive contribution are they making to the world by inflicting so much pain on others?  Perhaps more importantly, we might anxiously ask where all the “good” people are and why aren’t they making more of a difference? After all, most of us like to think that we’re “good” and would probably give the same label to most other people we know. We’re hesitant to call someone “bad” until they’ve proven repeatedly that they are a threat to the peace and happiness of others. In our valuation of life, it seems natural that “good” people are worth more to society than “bad” people, despite the fact that “bad” people take up more of the conversational news space. The challenge we’re faced with, though, is how do we define “good?”  The answer lies in a discussion of morality and, once again, we find ourselves faced with a variety of definitions that not only present different points of view, but at times flat-out argue with each other. How we adapt these different philosophies of morality shapes not only how we behave but how we judge and value the behavior of others.  There is a lot of ground to cover here. Any of the topics I’m about to raise are more adequately covered in very large books with longer words than I use, which is quite a feat unto itself. We’re not going to be complete. What I want to do is give you enough information for you to ask yourself questions about why you are good and how you value those around you. Let’s get started.

We’re picking up on the topic we started last week asking what is the value of life? For many, Life is priceless. At least, that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves and telling our children for the past couple of centuries. The concept was codified by Immanuel Kant in 1785 when his book, Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals (also published as Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals) presented the idea that not only was there not a monetary value sufficient to exchange for life but that there was no other form of trade or presumed equivalent. In short, the only thing that could replace a human life was another life, and even that comes with some difficulty in terms of equity. That kind of statement is easy enough to make if one is a philosopher. Statements like that make us feel good, it aligns with our religious beliefs and an overall general sense of morality. Most contemporary religions suggest that every life is sacred, making it theoretically impossible to place a price tag on any life. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But not everyone is a philosopher. Specifically, economists have not only disagreed with Kant’s premise but held that the monetary valuation of human life is necessary for certain risk assessments and in determining things such as accident liability. One of the most famous instances of such valuation comes from a 1973 internal memo developed for General Motors as they considered the cost of “automotive fire-related fatalities” in GM vehicles. At that time, the value of human life, at least the life of a person owning a General Motors vehicle, was determined to be $200,000. That would be the equivalent of about $1,223, 855 today when adjusted for inflation.  As one might imagine, once the GM memo was made public as part of a lawsuit over the placement of gas tanks in the ill-fated Pinto, public opinion was not terribly supportive. Whether we’re talking about $200,000 or a million dollars more than that, both seem incredibly insufficient, and more than a few people will argue with Kant that there is no amount that sufficiently compensates for the loss of a parent, spouse, child, or friend.  Defense of Kant’s philosophy loses in terms of practicality, however, when courts are forced to decide restitution, insurance companies are asked to offset risks, or when we start talking about reparations for the lives of enslaved and indigenous peoples. These are situations that cannot be resolved unless we give in to a limited value justified, for the most part, by subjective opinion.  There are dozens of forms of valuation with varying levels of complication. But for today’s conversation, let’s look first at the literal value of the elements composing the human body, an actuarial accounting of human value, and the economic impact of an individual living in the United States. When we’re done, I think we’ll find that the value of life is much more complicated than what we extracted from Kant’s thesis.  Tell yourself whatever you must to maintain a positive sense of self-worth, but at the end of the day, priceless is not a concept that fits well with contemporary economics, and that, ultimately, changes the conversation. Let’s Get Literal