Today my wife and I got the first covid-19 vaccination. I was willing to wait for awhile because my wife and I have been isolating so completely that I feel pretty safe. However, she was anxious to start the process so we can once again see our children and grandchildren, and there is no point in one of us doing so and not the other.

It was an amazingly simple process once we actually decided to do it. The county announced openings for people over 65 years old, which describes both of us. My wife went on line to the announced website and signed us up about ten days ago. The directions for getting there left a little to the imagination. They provided a time and a street address – but the street address didn’t show up on any maps or our GPS thing because it turns out it was just a parking lot, not an actual “place.” I figured that the street address must be enough to find signs directing us to the location. No such luck, there were no signs. However, once we got close enough we could see tents in a parking lot with lines of cars. Obviously that was it, but it took a couple of fairly long loops around long blocks to finally get to the entrance going in a direction that we could actually enter from. It turned out to be the parking lot of the local minor league baseball team – that information would have been a handy hint about where we were going. A non-existent street address wasn’t very informative, especially since we didn’t have any clue about whether it was a drive up affair, or an indoors event like that had been doing at the local basketball arena.

Once we managed to stop going down dead-end roads and found the correct one-way entrance it went amazingly smooth. There were traffic directors everywhere – seemingly dozens of them. We went through something like eight check points making sure we had a “ticket” appointment, had our paperwork filled out properly, asked about allergies, scanning our paperwork, etc, etc. Everyone was very pleasant, there were absolutely no waiting in line, and then we were through – sitting in a parking space while we waited for 15 minutes to go by so we could be on our way. The entire thing took perhaps thirty minutes total, but most of that time was spent being occupied with driving a hundred feet or so, being interviewed yet again, and moving on – we were distracted enough that the time wasn’t even noticeable. We even got a reservation for the next shot in three weeks.

I sure hope these vaccines work as advertised, and that new variants don’t show up that start it all up again. It is really too bad that people have been unable to control themselves enough to stomp it out at the very beginning. All of those who refused to take the simple precautions are directly responsible for most of the 450,000 deaths in America, soon to be over 500,000. In my mind, they are all guilty of the widespread impacts of the virus in America – pure and simple. They are aware that they are engaging in “super spreader” events, with the explicit intention of spreading the virus. If that wasn’t going on we could have been past this whole thing sometime in April 2020 and we all knew it (including the anti-maskers). We had the resources and knowledge necessary to stop the pandemic in our country – just like it was in those countries that actually followed the simple recommendations for six weeks and avoided the deaths, illnesses and huge financial impacts of being “free” to be stubborn.

However, we are still being stubborn as a nation, so we will drag out the costs and the deaths for another few months. It is so comforting to me to know that we are “free” to infect our family and neighbors, and to destroy the livelihood and savings of local businesses and friends. Freedom from being held responsible for the consequences of stupidity seems to be part of the American value system. We didn’t need any vaccines, and the deaths and illnesses weren’t foreordained – we just needed to have a sliver of caring for each other and as Trump said, “poof, as if magic it would have been gone,” but action was necessary to make that “magic” happen. Hopefully enough “anti-science” folks are willing to be vaccinated to get us beyond this whole event. I don’t have much confidence that they will do so and their behavior will drag this whole mess out for months more – but perhaps the vaccines will work and my wife, my family and my friends won’t die excruciating deaths. I understand that death is just around the corner for us, but I would rather not hurry it up so a bunch of stubborn people can proclaim their “freedom” to take “their” chances (along with those of mine and my loved ones). Perhaps we are turning a corner back to “normal” sometime this year.

I have been noticing an uptick in the number of articles comparing the relative cost and environmental impacts of “sustainable” energy and hydrocarbon energy that attempt to “prove” that hydrocarbon fuels are much less expensive and have a tremendously smaller environmental impact than wind or solar power. Some of these point to the fact that these technologies require mining for raw materials and end up with lots of waste at the end of their lives – as if none of that applies to gas, oil or coal. I think this is a pretty brazen attempt to make total poppycock somehow “make sense.” Sure, all sources of power have negative environmental impacts, but to say that hydrocarbons have none while wind and solar are so bad as to be unacceptable is unconscionable.

However, as is so often the case – there is a grain of truth in the warnings that wind and solar aren’t exactly “clean” – they come with their own set of problems. Depending upon how they are integrated into the overall power supply system, these “green” technologies are not only far from “green” but can have negative impacts as to be totally unacceptable. As currently use, large wind turbines fit into this category because they produce no net renewable energy. They require so much backup support from low efficiency hydrocarbon power plants (“peaker plants”) that the overall output is the same as if neither they, and their backup support power plants, were ever built. With regard to energy and production of carbon dioxide, they are a push and do nothing useful for the environment, the use as much hydrocarbons as would be the case without the wind turbines because much higher efficiency power plants can be used. When you add the impacts of making these devices, making the cement to mount them, the number of birds they kill, and what they do to the local environment it is very clear that they should never have been built and should be removed ASAP. Maybe they will eventually produce a positive amount of energy if, or when, sufficient electrical storage capabilities are provided. So far that hasn’t happened, and it is very likely that the current crop of wind turbines will be torn down and replaced before sufficient storage is provided.

This type of tit-for-tat discussion about the relative merits of various sources of power misses the real point, which is that instead of trying to replace the hydrocarbon fuels with “sustainable” sources of energy, we should be reducing our energy footprint so we don’t need so much power. If an argument doesn’t start there, but instead only talks about how to match (or exceed) or current energy demand from a different source of power there is never going to be an acceptable solution.

The interesting thing about reducing energy demands is that it does not include a requirement to reduce the benefits that we get from using energy. It doesn’t mean hotter, or colder, homes. It doesn’t mean going to back to model T cars (which were gas guzzlers 1927 models got an average of 7.6 mpg), but rather forward to cars that are even better, more comfortable, quieter and safer than today’s models (which are pretty darned good when compared to any cars made in the past). It doesn’t mean that production, or construction costs of buildings or machinery costs are higher to pay for the new much higher efficiency, in fact it means much lower costs in almost all cases. For example, we currently have the technology to produce light bulbs that use less than 1 watt to make as much light as an old fashioned 100 w light, but costs the same to manufacture – with the additional bonus that the average life is similar to the new “long life” LED lights that use 10 watts but cost $6 (or more). Everywhere you turn there are similar savings in energy use and initial cost, coupled with better products.

It is hard to be positive about why this situation exists, but I have a suspicion that it has something to do with the fact that the savings associated with energy efficiency go to the user, not to the power producers or distributors. It looks to me like we have enough opportunities to reduce the amount of energy that we need to do what we currently do with less than 25% of what we are using. The thing is that this requires building things with that in mind rather than just continuing to do what we are doing and wondering why it doesn’t change. It means taking the big look to keep the “big system picture” in view while looking at the microscope view of specific technologies at the same time. Instead of subsidizing large scale “renewable energy” we should be assisting efforts to increase efficiency. The goal is to meet our needs, not to make power (unless you are in the business of selling power).

An example of what I am talking about with regard to the big picture is with the new fleet of electric cars that GM promises to deliver by 2035. Electric cars have the potential for many great efficiency savings, with average energy use of the equivalent of 60 mpg or more (probably quite a bit more by they time they have made the transition). This means using about 1/3 of the energy for cars as we do now without changing or driving needs. But …. this means using a lot more electrical energy for transportation, and it also means that the energy has to be stored onboard the car. Not an inconsequential question is related to deciding how do to store the energy? Batteries are quick, easy, available – and a terrible solution because of the vast amounts of rare and difficult to obtain metals required in their production. Perhaps by 2035 some other type of battery will be available that minimizes the mining footprint, but perhaps not. Maybe fuel cells would be a far better solution. They use far less rare materials, are much less expensive to create, are much lighter, and are a proven solution. However, that means making hydrogen for the fuel, and transporting it from wherever it is made to where it is used. Currently, almost all hydrogen is made using hydrocarbons. It is possibly to electricity from solar, or perhaps hydrocarbons produced by bio-reactors using “waste” plant matter from land fills, logging processes, agriculture and others. But that requires building an efficient infrastructure. Maybe the hydrogen can be made locally using solar electricity. All of these problems have solutions, most of the micro-view solutions are known and in place, it is the larger big-system picture of how to create the required infrastructure that stands in the way of this approach. Creating a complete revision of our transportation energy supply seems like a daunting task, but it has been done before and can be done again. The first automobiles got their petrol from drug stores in quart containers – in many countries that is still how it is purchased, but from curb side stalls instead of drug stores. We can provide the infrastructure once we know what is needed, and that takes a decision – not new technology.

Assuming we have the will to reduce our energy footprint to something like 20% of our current use, then the question of how do we provide it becomes very different. In California, the necessary energy if efficiency is embraced can be provided by continuing to use the current hydroelectric dams, the current geothermal power plants, increasing the harvest of plant based hydrocarbons from landfills and other types of plant “waste” at the same time creating vast quantities of highly valuable compost for agricultural use and expanding the use of local “rooftop” solar generation. At that point we won’t need fossil fuels, wind generators, or nuclear power plants – and we will have almost zero green house gas production from our energy sector.

Because I am a system safety engineer it seems appropriate to write about safety now and then. This post is one of those times.

A couple of events over the past few days have gotten me to wondering. One event was a meeting with system safety engineering friends of mine. The topic of “software system safety” came up for discussion. This issue is concerned with how to deal with the safety aspects of software that controls machinery – all types of machinery including missiles, aircraft and the current hot topic of driverless automobiles. Obviously there can be a few safety considerations with software controlling this type of equipment, especially with the newer “smart” software that teaches itself! The question is along the lines of “how do we ensure that the software will control the machine in a way that is safe?”

When boiled down to the basic bottom line, system safety is a process of analyzing and/or understanding a system (thing, product, operation – whatever), figuring out what bad things could happen, figuring out what could cause those bad things, figuring out how to prevent them from happening, and then doing what is necessary to implement the control measure(s) (as well as verifying that what you think will work is actually in place and actually solves the problem). This is not an easy task, but luckily there are a few techniques to help with this.

There is general agreement that the process that I sketched above works for “hardware” because it is relatively easy to visualize the parts and interactions, and it is apparently relatively straightforward to test and simulate whatever needs to be tested. It is usually judged to be “simple” in comparison to the situation involving complex software controlling critical systems. Software is considered more complex because it is not unusual to have millions of lines of software code written by a large number of individuals (and computers in some instances) and all of which is highly interconnected in ways that are extremely difficult to visual in sufficient detail to have much confidence that all of the potential logical “paths” through the code. It is extremely difficult to ensure that all such paths have been analyzed, designed and tested to prevent some sort of safety problem during operation. One advantage of software is that it doesn’t exactly “fail” – it does the same thing given the same input every single time – unless something changes in the hardware system that runs the software. These “somethings” can be bit changes because of cosmic rays, speed differences in various components changing the order of information being processes (referred as “race conditions”), various ‘hiccups’ where a portion of the hardware (perhaps a microprocessor” stalls for an instant (think about having to reboot windows because it “hangs up” – which would not be such a good thing while landing a jet liner), dropping data, and many many more potential “hardware” problems that change how the “software” operates.

Because of the apparent increase of complexity and a decrease in visibility for software controlled systems, there has been a strong push to do “something different” for software than for hardware. (I use the world “apparent” because I don’t think any system is as obvious as it appears to be.) The software folks insist that their stuff is so different that an entirely new approach is required, one that somehow does follow the model that I sketched out in a previous paragraph.

It has been my contention that there is nothing particularly new or different with software safety engineering than what I sketched out in a previous paragraph. We still have to do the same things, but we might do them a little differently because of the nature of the system under investigation. I have lots of ideas about how to approach that, but in general they are all just more of the same thing that I do for all systems. One point that the software folks seem to ignore (or maybe don’t recognize) is that almost all systems depend critically upon inherently invisible “software” logic systems – it is just that a lot of the software is embedded in the squishy matrix of people’s brains. Ultimately, almost all safety is not only dependent upon hardware acting as it should, but that the control “systems” do the same. Unfortunately people’s minds are not nearly as predictable from person to person, or within the same person at different times. Including the impacts of people in the system is a MUCH more difficult problem than anything that software controls can generate. So at a basic level, it is all based upon some sort of unanalyzable control system.

One of the things that the software folks like to point up as being inherently different from hardware is that there are so many possible paths through the logic that it is extremely difficult to identify the possibilities, and even harder to test all of them out. This is where the “hardwood” part of my story comes in.

A couple of days ago I was outside preparing for a “hard freeze” forecast by the weather guessers. In central California this means putting towels or other coverings over exposed water pipe and covering delicate plants. While doing that I turned a corner around a post and ran smack into a short piece of 2×4 wood that had been screwed onto the post at head height. I am a slow learner, but being smacked in the head with a 2×4 woke me up enough to check out the safety of the situation. Upon inspection, it was obvious that the 2×4 had been installed many years ago (probably by me) for some long forgotten purpose. This “hazard” was on a predictable path (similar in concept to the software logical paths) to causing an accident. I find it interesting that the “hazard” had been created long ago, had been what should have been an obvious issue at that time, when the original purpose had been abandoned the hazard “should have been” identified and removed. the identification and removal process could have been applied each time someone (such as myself) walked down the path past the obvious hazardous condition.

It was very much like one of those “special” software “features” that everyone is so worried about. My board was similar to something that was put into the code for some sort of good reason, but then was abandoned – but not removed or “disarmed.” Once the situation changed, it “all of a sudden” came back to life. The thing that changed in the case of my head banger was that it was raining making the ground muddy and slippery, Therefore, I was looking down to avoid tripping and slipping instead of looking up where I would have seen the board just like I had for many years previously. It was never a problem (“hazard”) before because it was in plain sight, obvious, easy to avoid – and I avoided it.

The point it that almost all system safety problems have features like; otherwise they would not exist because they would have been recognized and fixed. What appears to be obvious in hind sight isn’t so obvious in the moment. Software has a similar problem, and so do simple things such as that board that didn’t actually “do” anything, it was just there – as an innocuous “feature” of my barn. I see no reason to treat software as anything special, or something that has unusual properties other than it can become involved with turning “hazards” into “accidents” – just like has happened with all accidents. Of course that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require special tools, techniques and knowledge to “solve” the safety problem, just like most everything else in the universe of system safety requires special tools, techniques and knowledge. Rather than spending a lot of time and effort attempting to figure out what is “special” about software safety, I think it is best to figure out how it integrates with hardware and people, and in finding engineering and management tools capable of ensuring that hazards are identified and controlled.

I have been noticing a troubling development with regard to people’s thoughts about how protective their measures to avoid infection have been. I first noticed this with myself, which “tuned up” my ears so I am now recognizing a major problem everywhere. In the early days when the nature of the covid threat was unknown, those of us that were concerned enough to take the need for protection seriously were very careful. We wore masks, washed our hands, sanitized surfaces, sanitized groceries, sometimes wore gloves, etc. We tried to learn how long the virus lived on various surfaces, how far it would spread in the air – and for how long, etc. Over time we were told that perhaps some of this isn’t quite as important – maybe social distancing is good enough sometimes, maybe we don’t need to be quite so fussy about surfaces, maybe we can relax a bit. And for most of us, we haven’t gotten sick – so obviously our lower measures are effective. Clearly we don’t need to “always” wear masks, don’t need to wash our hands after touching anything outside of our homes, don’t need to scrub down the cereal boxes.

The problem comes from out having no way to determine if, or when, there is an actual threat. We don’t know when viruses are present on surfaces, or in the air, or if a person is infected. The “positivity rate” in California is sometime like 2.6% meaning that 2.6% of people that get tested are positive (infected). Unfortunately, that is based upon those that get tested for some reason, meaning that most of them have concerns (or actual knowledge) that they might have been exposed. It is not a random selection, therefore it is almost certainly quite high. The real percentage of people testing positive is probably closer to 1% (one person out of a hundred), with pockets of much higher values and others that have rate that is much lower – but we don’t know where those locations are and they move so even if we knew it would be “yesterday’s” information, not necessarily reflecting what it is now. That means that perhaps less than 1 out of 100 people walking around are actively infected. The chances of encountering that person is slim. For example, I find myself in a building with other people perhaps once a month, potentially being exposed to maybe 5 people a month – and that exposure is while maintaining distance and everyone wearing a mask. Did the distancing and masks help? Who knows? It is highly unlikely that any of the people that I was remotely in “contact” with was infected – therefore I have zero knowledge or feedback on whether or not the protections were effective. But since I didn’t get sick I assume my protective measures worked. Perhaps they did, and perhaps they didn’t – I have no information to inform me on those topics.

After almost a year of performing my mini-tests, I find that I am getting pretty complacent – and I see a lot of other people getting extremely complacent. I often hear people say things like, “I see this person regularly, but we both take our precautions so it is very safe to do so.” Really??? Perhaps if you both really take all of those precautions, but I know you don’t because I watch and see that hand washing is seldom done, I see distancing much less than six feet (which is bogus in any case – it needs to be more like 30 feet to be marginally effective), I see nose-out masking, I see people spending time inside with others. All is well until one of the people that are assumed “safe” no longer are. When nobody is infected the protective measures appear to be highly effective (because they aren’t needed). Those same degraded protections might well not be effective once that situation changes and they are actually needed – but we have no way of knowing if, or when, that has occurred.

We are entering a period of much higher risks of being in the vicinity of infected people because it continues to spread. The number of cumulative “cases” in California has gone from 1 million at the end of November to 3 million at the end of January with a doubling time of about 1 month. That means that by the end of February it is likely to be 6 million and by the end of March perhaps 12 million cases. “Cases” means those that have been infected and become sick enough to need treatment. Those make up about 10% of the population of infected people. There seems to be no particularly great statistics available about this, but it is pretty clear that within a month or so it is reasonable to assume that almost everyone that has any exposure risk will be infected. It will no longer be 1 in a 100, it will be 1 in 1. So the question will then become whether or not you trust your life with whatever protective measures you are implementing.

The thing is that there is no possibility of vaccines having any appreciable impact on this in a statistical sense. Perhaps it will provide protection for those that are vaccinated, but those will not be available in anything like the numbers that will be needed as the infection rates spike in the coming weeks.

I think that this is the time to be ultra conservative, not a time to be complacent that since we haven’t gotten sick our approach to protection is good enough. Most likely we just haven’t yet been in the approximate vicinity of infected people. That will change quickly.

I have been practicing meditation for many years, trying out various approaches or techniques over the decades. It turns out that for me, they are just different ways of “practicing” to do something – the question is of course; “Practicing to do what?”

A common myth is that it is trying to learn to shut off “thinking” while staying awake. That seems to be close to it – but not quite right. This weekend I started wondering if it is perhaps something a little different than that. It seems that perhaps it is, in part at least, practicing to find that place between two thoughts (after watching one thought finally winds down and before the next one comes into focus) where there is no internal dialogue – and then practicing to expand the duration of that space. It isn’t exactly an experience of not thinking, but rather it is a place of experiencing, but not talking to yourself.

For many years I have been working on being able to experience observing myself without judgement – just observing what is happening, what I am feeling, my reactions – but not necessarily interfering, evaluating or judging. In the Buddhist jargon I believe this is referred to as “the witness”. The thing that I realized this weekend was that the practice of meditation where I observe and experience without dialogue is the same as the observer that I have been working with all of those years. Once I noticed that, I also noticed that it isn’t actually necessary to stop my internal dialogue to experience life from the point of view of the observer/witness. That point of view is always there, but it gets hidden from view because of all of the chatter, emotions, and activities in “normal” life. I noticed that I have been doing this so long that I am aware of the observer pretty much all of the time, not just during meditation, and not when I do something specifically to get myself to “stop and smell the roses.”

Maybe that is what we are practicing to do during meditation, practicing to become aware of the witness during sitting, and during all other times too. I think that is the path to personal freedom, freedom from all of the negative things we tell ourselves that are actually not true – they are just judgements of ourselves based upon experiences that we had over our lives, but none of the stories are actually true – they are something like our dream of what is really true. In many cases, we use someone else’s truth (or what they think is their truth) to reinforce negative judgments that we make of ourselves.

I’m angry at myself for being angry.   My parasite; my ego; are fighting hard to eat me alive.   I took a bike ride to clear my head.   It’s the middle of January and the weather is clear and 65 degrees.   It’s beautiful.  I’m actually writing outside at the patio table with a cigar.    The bike ride gave me a bit of space to observe my anger.   Anger at what exactly?  Myself?  The constant strain of human injustice?  The trump supporters who stormed the capital?   Why do I hate trump supporters?   Something came to me during my ride.  The thought was this …“There but for the grace of God” that I’m not a Trump supporter.  Really?  Really.

My earlier life was tribal with a patriarch as the head of the tribe.   Tribal elders held the same beliefs as the patriarch.   The tribe was quite conservative in its beliefs.  That included its politics and its view of the world.   Liberal ideas were not looked upon in a favorable light.   I grew up hearing that Franklin Roosevelt “screwed this country”.   His name was never pronounced Roosevelt but instead he was always “Roosenfelt”.   The Kennedy’s were the Fucking Kennedy’s.   The word liberal was most often accompanied by a retching sound.   When conservative media came out, Rush was on our radio and the Fox channel was on the TV.  

At weekly tribal gatherings politics was often discussed by the elders.  The patriarch held court at the head of the table.  He (they), expounded on how liberals were the root cause of all their troubles.   As a young tribal member, I was expected to listen but not engage while the elders conversed.   I was a good member of the tribe.  I was a quiet follower.

I came of age voting for conservatives.   My first vote was during the 1976 presidential election.  Jimmy Carter vs Gerald Ford.   I did not vote for Carter.  I voted for the Republican, Gerald Ford.   In the tribe you were expected to vote Republican.    Democrats had held a strong hold on congress and it was important to get those “liberal mother fuckers out of office”.   The patriarch was a member of the NRA.   I was a member of the NRA.   Nixon did nothing wrong.   Rush was speaking for us, the quiet majority.   Within the tribe, it was common to hear about the “others” that were “ruining their world”.   Blacks.  Jews.  Mexicans.   The words I often heard to describe the “others” were niggers, kik’s and spics.  In our tribal world, these groups were the cause for our low economic status.   Opportunities to live the good middle-class life were out of reach due to these “others”.   They were to blame for all their missed opportunities.

When several tribal members were in their late teens, they started to question the tribal elders.   They asked why believe what they believed?    When the answers were unsatisfactory, they pressed harder.   At first, the tribal elders treated these inquiries as the un-informed thoughts of youth.   But there came a time when the questioning turned to challenges.   Family gatherings became tense.   I was a good member.  I stayed quiet while the few tried to battle the elders concerning the beliefs of the tribe.   Soon after, large tribal gatherings faded away.   The patriarch still held court for smaller gatherings but the dialogue was more of the same.   There was nothing more to learn. 

By my late teens I still had no voice but I felt something wasn’t right about all this.  I lived in a very small world.   Wasn’t there more to it?   When I got into college, I started to have strong feelings centered on one reoccurring thought.   Get away!   Get far away from this tribe!

In college I had courses and met people who had ideas and opinions much different than the members of the tribe.   When I finished college and took jobs close to the tribe, the idea of “get away” never left me.   It kept getting stronger.   It was so strong that I promised myself to get away at any cost.   It was to be my first mantra.

When a job opportunity came up that took me a few hours from home I ran to it.  But it was still not far enough away.   I was still close enough where the expectation was to come home.  When I did, the tribe had not changed.  It was actually getting worse especially from other young tribal members who were now making a home and family in the tribal zone.

Then it happened.   A chance to “get far enough away”.   2,000 miles away from the tribe and its hold on me.   I got away.  With distance and time I started to develop as an individual and not as just another tribal member.   It felt great.  It was liberating.   It was truly heaven.   I broke free of the collected consciousness of the tribe.  It was an awakening.   The ideas of the tribe were petty and shortsighted.  Based on the dribble of conservative news.   I finally saw that the government that the tribe railed against was actually taking care of them.   All of the older tribal members came to depend on Medicare and Social Security.   Liberal policies put in place by “Roosenfelt”.   I saw that they payed homage to the Gods who they called “Real Men”; John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Ernst Hemingway.  They lived in world of illusion.      

I opened up to befriending people who had traveled the world (not just read about it), who had life experiences (other than the one year they spent abroad in WWII).  They included blacks, and Jews, and Mexicans as well as people from the middle-east.   I truly saw the horror of the myopic world of the tribe.   And this was especially true of the patriarch. 

In a ten year period, the patriarch died.   Most tribal elders died.   They died from cancers and ulcers.   I believe they died from their narrow minded conservative beliefs.   And as for their progeny, the ones who remained in the tribal territory, they still carry on the beliefs of the elders “in honor of the elders”.  Most are trump supporters. 

Distance.   Time.   Being open to new experiences.   Developing relationships with people from all walks of life.   Reading a multitude of books on various topics.  A bit of travel.     And listening to media that make me think.  All helped me to become the non-tribal person I am in this moment. 

If I had never left the tribe, I would probably be a Trumper.   Just like the people who stayed “home”.     I get you.   You who are angry at the government.   Upset that the liberals are taking over, taking away your guns.   Treading on your liberties.   Listening to Rush and Fox news and adsorbed in right wing social media.   I get it.   But for “The Grace of God”, I would be one of you.

It must be Winter 
Leafless branches of the Oak
Carry two dark birds 

Noticing silver
Of the bark on the old Birch
Two crows exiting

The blue of the sky
The unusual crispness
That surrounds each one

Clouds begin to part 
Giving way to a fresh warmth
Raven wings glisten

I have been reading (too many) right-wing materials in an attempt to understand where they are coming from. Obviously, there is no “one” point of view, but there are a few things that seem to be common. Some things that keep coming up are calls for “smaller government”, “fewer regulations”, and “elimination of taxes”. Mixed in with that are a bunch of other topics including such things as “include (Christian) religion in all government activities”, “provide government funding to private schools, and “outlaw abortions.”

It is my observation that in most cases the folks on the right don’t really mean what they are saying. For example, they would like to eliminate environmental regulations so that they can take freely from “the commons” without having to worry about spoiling the neighbor’s environment (in the broad sense of every being a neighbor). However, this is only desirable if there are sufficient regulations to prevent a company from trashing their neighborhood. It is one thing to be able to poison a river down stream from your operation, but it is entirely a different thing to have your water supply poisoned and “your” fish killed by someone else. It is one thing to be able to pump unlimited amounts of water to irrigate your crops, but an entirely different thing when neighbors pump the water out of “your” (shared) aquifer so that your crops die. This sort of logic expands to almost everything. When they want protection, they want government. When they want to take as much as they can for as little as they can, they don’t want government. Let me do whatever I want, but protect me from what others do to harm me.

This expands to other areas, such as health care. Many agricultural families and rural folks don’t want government funded health care (Obama care?) because they don’t want to pay taxes for someone else’s health care, and frequently they don’t need it because their wife works for the government (State, university, local government, etc.) which provides the family with free health care. This isn’t just happening in the rural areas, it happens everywhere including folks that work for a large corporation that pays the insurance bill. I understand this, sort of. However, the reality is that there are many, many people who do not work for the government or large corporations and therefore don’t get free health care. These people can’t afford insurance, so they don’t get it. Besides, even if you could afford the insurance, why buy it? – if I need medical care the government will always provide it for free. Instead they put off health maintenance (preventative care), and get their health care from emergency rooms. This ends up costing the tax payers (including those opposed to government supported insurance) many times as much as it would cost to take care of their health care. If you just look at costs and dollars, it is vastly less expensive for everyone to have a centralized payment scheme along the lines of Obama Care. It is not only less expensive for the “society everyone”, it is also less expensive for each “individual everyone.”

I think almost all of us want a clean/safe environment, high quality inexpensive health care, excellent schools, good roads, etc. Not only that, but I think everyone knows that it costs something to get these things, and everyone knows that it requires an effective government to manage it. There are some things that we might not agree upon, such as outlawing abortion. But even those aren’t so clear cut. In the 1950’s and 1960’s when abortion was outlawed, there was a really high number of young ladies that were killed and/or severely injured from amateur abortions. Many young ladies crossed the boarders to Mexico or other countries seeking abortions, which often ended in catastrophe. It got so bad that the public finally rose up and demanded that the laws be changed so that women had an opportunity to get safe abortions instead of dying from the botched attempts. The idea was that it was far better to provide for rare, but safe, abortions than to continue on the path that was created by outlawing the practice. It was a pragmatic approach to a serious and deadly problem that had become common in the “middle class” (“white”) homes across the nation. It is important to note that nobody was mandating abortions, nobody was forced to do anything against their will or their religion. The current push to outlaw abortions isn’t with making people do anything that they don’t want to do, it is about making other people do things that the other doesn’t want to do. The laws allowing for safe abortions also didn’t (and don’t) result in more abortions than were being performed illegally, it merely reduced the amount of harm being done to the women.

In summary, I think we are all pretty much in agreement about what we want in our Country. We want a balance between “unfettered freedom” and protection from what happens with unfettered freedom. We want everyone to pay their own way as best as they can, and we want to minimize the costs of supporting those that can’t.

A common thread that I keep finding in my research into right-wing literature is a complaint that the “liberals” are at fault because they have failed to stop the right wing folks from destroying things. For example, I commonly see descriptions of devastating pollution events (spills into rivers, screwed up wells, etc) as being a failure of “the government” and “the liberals” from stopping the “conservatives” (not conservationists) from creating these spills. They realize that the perpetrator of the spill was trying to save money and therefore just dumped into the environment. That is apparently their right to do. However, the liberals are at fault because either the liberals (or nasty “environmentalists”) failed to stop them from doing that, or more damningly, they failed to clean up the mess before it impacted the community because there was insufficient resources to do the cleanup.

An interesting example are the large open gold mines in the desert run by large corporations to extract gold cheaply as possible. They mound up huge piles of “ore”, sprinkle it with a cyanide laced water system that dissolves the gold. The cyanide/gold solution is stored in large open ponds. All this just happens to be on some of the main migratory bird flyways and a surprise to all, the birds land in the ponds and dye. That is just dead birds, no problem. But of course the water also seeps into the ground water and poisons the local wells along the way. Eventually the mine runs out and the company leaves, leaving the process of cleaning up their mess to the government (taxpayers) for decades into the future. I don’t think “conservatives” want this sort of thing to happen, but it seems to be the “duty” of industry to try to move as much of the costs of their actions into the public domain as possible so that the public picks up the costs of the damage that they do, instead of the industry. That approach is much more profitable than preventing the problems in the first place. It happens with roads and infrastructure in new subdivisions, it happens in oil drilling and fracking, it happens in the lumber industry, chemical industries, agriculture, semiconductor industry, etc. , etc. It seems that everywhere you look “industry” tries to get all that they can, leaving the cost of the damage created to the public to pay.

This brings me to the point of the story. The “right wing” folks want the same things as the “left wing” folks. However, they seem to believe that it is their “right” (maybe “obligation”) to push as hard as possible to do it anyway they want to increase profits by taking as much from “the commons” (resources owned and shared by everyone) as possible. They can do this because they are confident that the other side will do everything that they can to prevent them from damaging the commons. It is like a giant game of tug-of-war, with the right trying to take as much as they can, and the left trying to protect as much as they can. This might result in some sort of dynamic equilibrium, but at great cost to the environment and the public good. The balance of power is with on the right because that is where most of the money is concentrated.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to perform an “experiment” where instead of deciding what sort of “freedoms” and “taxes” we want to struggle over, we talk to each other to figure out what we jointly want and what they should be like. For example, do we want good schools for our children? If so, what does that mean? What would “good” look like? Perhaps we can come to an agreement about that – if so, maybe we could then figure out how to do it – together. Another example might be about what we want for our environment, and what does that look like? Then maybe we can figure out together how to get that done.

Some perhaps thornier problems involve “freedom” of beliefs (including religious beliefs). If I understand it properly, freedom to have your own religious beliefs was a big deal at the beginning of this Country. Does freedom to have your own religious beliefs mean that only if your religious beliefs happen to be the same as mine, or does it mean we each get to have that right – even though I am a Buddhist and your are a Hindu (or whatever)? It is my opinion that it applies to each person’s beliefs – and that we don’t “shame” or otherwise force otherwise to practice their beliefs when they don’t align with mine. Apparently this is a complicated and important issue for many – I don’t exactly know why, but it sure gets a lot of angry confrontations. We keep hearing that this is a “Christian Country” based upon what I don’t know about. As far as I can determine, we are a Country that was created upon the proposition that we are free to believe in whatever religion we want (but the practice of the religion needs to conform with the laws of the land). I don’t understand why we can’t be agnostic in public places, and religious in private ones. Maybe we can come of mutually agreeable definitions of a few terms, perhaps “God” would be one that is agree to mean whatever you want it to me, either a big guy in white robes, or “energy”, “the great unknown”, or whatever form applies to a wide variety of religions, included none in which case maybe it just means something like “everything.” But even that should be easily negotiable because I think everyone’s desire is to be allowed to have whatever beliefs work them them, and to practice without interference (as long as that practice isn’t causing harm to anyone or anything thing). The sticky point seems to be when one person wants to force another person to pay attention to their belief. What to do about Christmas? I think it is Santa Claus (no-religion) with private additions as suitable – I see no reason to object to anyone’s displaying important things, as long as they are done so as a matter of personal belief and not the Country’s (Government’s) belief. We should be able to agree upon symbols that are acceptable to all.

What would happen if we decided to work together to find the best approach for understanding and achieving the “common good?” Are we strong enough to do that? Are we compassionate enough? Do we have the energy to do it? Are we civilized enough? Can we talk to neighbors with curiosity, wondering what it is important to them and curious about what is really important to ourselves? Can we share, compromise and find common ground? Once we do that, can we find ways to accept, and deal with, those areas that really are differences?

I have been wondering what the implications of a declining birth rate might be for a country such as the USA (or the world). The world birthrate in 1950 was almost 35 births per 1000 people, today it is a bit under 18 per 1000 (it is about 12.5 in the USA) – a 50% decrease since 1950! In 1950 there were about 2.5 billion people in the world, today there is about 8 billion – and increasing rapidly. In the USA, the population went from about 150 million to about 330 million people in the same time period, with a projection of around 450 million by 2100. Obviously, there is not an immediate “risk” of a decreasing population in the world, or the USA, any time soon. That doesn’t mean that the growth will continue everywhere during that time. For example, Japan’s population peaked at 128 million in 2008, now it is about 126 million and is projected to be about 105 million in 30 years. In that means that they will have about 12 million excess housing units, millions of empty class rooms, and untold numbers of empty hospitals. There are many countries around the world that are, or will be, experiencing significant overall population decreases, at the same time that they will be experiencing vastly reduced birthrates leading to a major shift in the age distribution within the country.

While there is little “danger” of running out of people any time soon. However, “local” changes can result in major problems. One obvious issue is that while average birthrates are decreasing in countries, it does not decrease uniformly across ethnic, age or society groups. Therefore, some groups will grow in percentage of the population while others are reduced. This is bound to have a very stabilizing influence on “the balance of power” within countries – creating fear and hope (depending upon who you ask). For people in groups that maintain low birthrates, it will feel like an “invasion” by groups that maintain high average birth rates.

Looking into the future “crystal ball” of countries such as the USA, it appears that while the population will continue to increase for many decades, the available work force will change radically. The highly trained and experienced people will “retire” (but not die), resulting in a workforce that is much younger, less trained (and smaller because many of the productive people will be removed from the workforce due to old age and retirement). We hear about the growing problem of the smaller number of youths having to support the growing number of oldsters, both in terms of “retirement” dollars, but also food and other material things. My guess is that this will be manageable for the current cohort of old folks because many, or perhaps most, were able to plan for their “golden years”, but it might become a problem for later generations that don’t have the excess resources required for such planning.

As populations decrease there will be a decrease in things like housing needs, which will result in reduced home values instead of the “normal” annual increase. It is likely to also end up with a lot of vacant homes and office buildings. Perhaps this will reduce housing costs enough to take care of our current homeless crisis. A negative population growth curve will result in fewer people to fill jobs, perhaps increasing wages because labor becomes a scarcity rather than a glut. For awhile, housing will become a glut, rather than a scarcity making housing more affordable, but also removing the profit incentives for building and maintaining property. This is likely to result in vast numbers of abandoned buildings. Maybe building demolition jobs will replace building construction jobs? Other odd things will happen such as sewer systems will fail to function because of insufficient water flow, requiring the replacement of sewer infrastructure. Power grids will need to be revised to meet the new demographics. Highways will become under utilized so instead of a continued need for more and bigger highway systems (funding highway construction projects), simple maintenance will be sufficient. Fewer houses being built will result in less logging, and therefore the failure of the economies of many rural communities that depend upon logging as the source of good paying jobs. Oil will once again become a glut on the market as demand decreases.

The change from an economy based upon continued growth to one that experiences continued shrinkage will be dramatic and pervasive. Almost every industry that depends upon supplying the needs of the population will face a future of decreasing, rather then increasing, profits. Investment opportunities will be harder to find, and will likely return a much smaller return on investment. Taxes on profits will decrease, resulting in a much leaner government, perhaps so much leaner that they will find it extremely difficult to maintain the minimum necessary level of service.

But it is not all doom and gloom – there will be lots of benefits in terms of a cleaner environment, less pressure on the natural resources, the potential for far better paying jobs for those that are available to serve the job markets, and many other things. My remembrance of a USA with a half of the current population was that it was pretty nice. We were not “short on people,” we had all that we needed. There was not so much crime, very little (or no) homeless problems, not so much crowding everywhere, much prettier parks, plenty of job opportunities for the young people, much better schools and a lot more. Some of this was the result of fewer people, but some was the result of a rapid growth curve coupled with an economic system that was designed to thrive during growth creating funding. For example, if you purchased a house at the top of what you could afford, within just a few years wages grew so that the percentage of income devoted to housing was reduced to almost being a nominal amount. It was easy to “bet” on the future because the future was always increasing, making the effective cost of investments such as property decrease rapidly. This will probably not be the situation in a economy based upon shrinking populations and therefore shrinking markets.

I think we are in for some interesting times, or at least my children and grandchildren will see them. I think it is best to figure out what is likely to happen, and begin the process of educating people about what to expect so that they can understand it as an inevitable result of dialing back the population rather than thinking that what they are experiencing is the fault of the government, or because some group is trying to invade in a silent war or some sort. These changes, and many more, WILL occur as we readjust to better fit our population that the world can sustain. The end result will be MUCH better, but the path to getting there from here will be treacherous and difficult. It is pretty clear that the population of the earth will decrease because we are operating above the carrying capacity of the earth. The question is whether we just keep going until it collapses on its own (with all of the horrible consequences that we create), or do we try to manage the decrease in ways that get better over time rather than much worse. It is a choice, but one that we might not be capable of making given the political and social unrest that has been happening in the USA over the past decade or two.

I attended a rather amazing party celebrating NYE. It was a free zoom based event called “New Year’s Eve.rywhere” hosted by the Co-RealityCollective (CRC). I was notified about the event because I had attended last year’s (2020) virtual Burningman event, spending time in the Sparkleverse. This event was connected to that in some way that I don’t quite understand. Apparently CRC hosts various on-line parties, perhaps in support of good causes, or not. “The” party was not actually a party, it was more of a bunch of marathon party’s held in more or less the same virtual space. There were seven or eight separate “rooms”, each with its own set of hosts and activities. I chose the one that was about new year’s everywhere. It was something like 26 hours long, spending time at each of the time zones to party and ring in the new year at that point in time as “new year” raced at about 1000 miles per hour around the globe (that is about how fast the edge of “dawn” moves in the middle latitudes). The party and celebrations were relatively “tame” by most people’s fantasies of BurningMan. Mostly talking, sharing stories, sharing songs, a little music, and generally friendly times together with strangers from around the world.

Each time zone had local tour guides that usually talked a bit about their location, and a bit more about their local NYE traditions. We learned about food, drinks, costumes, and some interesting traditions such as the first-foot tradition associated with Vikings, good luck, as well as food and drink. The attendees changed as the day went along, peaking at each NYE celebration in one location but then moving on to the next with mostly new people, but also those of us that hung in their and moved with the flow. Old people, children, young folks – they were all represented. Not so many children since it was late at night for those in the time zone.

I found it charming, mildly fun, a little interesting – but it took me awhile to warm up to what became a big epiphany for me. I realized that something important was happening, at least to me. I was watching all of these different people; different accents, different word usage, different cloths, different traditions, different skin color – everything seemed different. That was until it came over me that everyone was just the same when they were “looking out” of their bodies at the world. We all feel the same inside, we all feel the same about what it is like to look our of eyes, to taste things, to feel a little (or a lot) drunk.

I was odd because I have “known” this for as long as I can remember, but I suppose it was an intellectual knowing. Watching the party creep around the world make it very clear that there is something very much the same everywhere. Sure, we all have different ideas, all have different agreements about what is important and true, our minds do all sorts of different things when sorting, storing and interpreting the massive flow of “data” (experiences), but while that is true – there is a common feeling of what it is like to be on the “inside” looking out. I can’t exactly describe what I was experiencing, but it has to do with a visceral understanding that if I were to somehow be “transported” into any of these people it would have felt very much at home. There would be a lot of interesting things to explore, but beyond that I would recognize almost all of it. My Buddhist friends talk about responding to others understanding that they are “just like me.” I knew that, but sitting and watching the flow from place to place brought it home in ways that even traveling around the world hadn’t done.

Before I forget – Happy New Year to you all. I sure hope it is better with regard to sickness and death, financial security and anxiety – but my experience has been that there were many good things that came to me because of the change in pace and a shift in understanding what it is important and what is not. I would like to maintain some of that even after we have moved forward and look back at the time of covid. May you all be healthy, wealthy and wise throughout the coming year.