[Grovenet] A heckuva job! ! ! ! ! !

Sat Apr 14 08:13:13 PDT 2007

There an old saying about lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. 

In my experience the idea that "human beings are not basically honest" is
false. I don't believe babies are born crooks. I have been blessed to know
people who are honest. I strive to emulate that ideal. 

Being honest means doing the right thing even if we think no one is looking.
That's because someone is looking - always. Ourselves if you don't believe
in God. The person who puts garbage into his life, into his soul, has to
live with garbage. Pretty soon the stink permeates the individual and he
begins to think the whole world smells like that. 

The fact that the world has many sick, diseased, dishonest people does not
mean that is the normal state of people. It means only that we have sick,
diseased, dishonest people. 

Like dealing with any epidemic, it is important to behave in a way to
protect ourselves from their illness, to avoid being a victim of their
illness. 

We humans behave much like the guidance system on a torpedo. When it's
rushing toward a goal - a target - a torpedo guidance system is doing very
little, just monitoring inputs from various sensors that say the torpedo is
on course. But if something pushes the torpedo off course the guidance
system comes "alive" with activity. Sensors input the course error and the
guidance system sends correction signals to the steering vanes to push the
torpedo back onto the proper course.

Only when wrongness is detected does the guidance system "spring into
action". Similarly, healthy, honest people are pretty tranquil unless they
detect wrongness. 

Healthy people are most sensitive to their own behavior. They recognize
personal errors that come to their attention and correct them. They know
it's important not to identify with the error. As the old saying goes among
Christians, "they aren't perfect, they are forgiven". That's true of all
people, of course. They have to know that they can forgive themselves or
believe that God forgives their trespasses. They can do that only if they
recognize the error is like a wart -- something that is attacking them,
trying to grow on them and not something that is an essential part of
themselves. It can be treated and removed from their life. 

Unfortunately, we can delude ourselves into believing we are behaving
responsibly and honestly when we are not. That's where family, community and
society become important. They provide essential feedback like the multiple
sensors on the torpedo guidance system. 

As a community or society, we have limits on what we will tolerate from
others. Recognizing our own weaknesses and errors, we try to allow others to
have room to live and learn, but we cannot tolerate things that threaten or
harm us severely. We have evolved systems to provide feedback and prevent
harm from others when they fail to apply the proper correction to their
errors. It began in families, spread to communities and has grown to embrace
nations and, hopefully, someday the whole planet. It's how we have learned
to live together peacefully. To the extent we haven't learned it, we have
strife, chaos and conflict. 

Every group seeks to protect itself from the failures of others in some way.
Families pull together: blood is thicker than water. Communities may choose
relative isolation to avoid the negative effects of neighbors. Consider the
Society of Friends, Amish and others who are a part of our nation. Indeed
most religions strive to accomplish a similar result: a coming together of a
community for the purpose of understanding how to be honest, caring people.
Much of worship is dedicated to lessons in self-understanding and awareness
and accepting who we are as human beings. These things occur because people
do not accept that they are essentially dishonest. 

Here in the USA we have criminals. That does not make us a criminal nation.
Indeed, we work hard to root them out and isolate them from our society so
they can no longer do harm. We discuss, argue and agonize over what we
consider criminal behavior and what we can do about it. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of David Morelli
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 9:56 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] A heckuva job! ! ! ! ! !

This country was founded upon the principle that government was  
inherently corrupt, and that it needed to be reduced in power to the  
minimum needed to accomplish the designated tasks and divided to  
prevent any one person or group from concentrating power.  There have  
always been Tories who disagreed with that assessment.

The beauty of the Constitution wasn't that it created an honest  
government, because it didn't.  It created a government that could  
function while remaining transparent.  The internal conflicts of the  
three branches helped to keep rivalries active to keep power from  
concentrating in one group.  Even the Federalists couldn't dominate  
the government that they created.  Add in the natural desire for  
independent sovereignty by the various states and you got a rolling  
boil of activity that precluded a dictatorship.

The Civil War changed that.  We accepted a stronger central  
government with an acceptance of crooked politicians working together  
with crooked business people as a cost of the war, and a cost of  
expansion to the West.  The rise of railroads was a new high water  
mark in political corruption.  But, that was only an indicator, not a  
cause.  The monopolies in sugar, oil, rail, steel, etc. were accepted  
as a natural consequence of our growing economic power.  The  
expansion into California, Hawaii, and the Philippines were accepted  
even as they overruled all of our national moral principles.

We were never the moral people we saw in our self image.  And as a  
consequence, we have always been open to the political and economic  
swindles that I referenced the other day.

"You can only cheat an honest person if they trust you.  You can  
cheat a dishonest person any time that they believe that they will  
come out ahead on the swindle."

We keep getting taken to the cleaners and we never understand "why?"   
We, as human beings, are not basically honest.  We are basically  
human.  If we want to avoid the penalty of the swindle, we have to  
refuse to participate in the swindle.  Yet, we keep thinking that we  
can come out ahead.

There are people who insist that we can continue live in a world that  
fails to balance our resource checkbook.  We believe them because we  
want to continue to "come out ahead" and keep our level of resource  
consumption.  We will pay for this swindle, or pass the bill to our  
children.

There are people who insist that the world economy will collapse if  
we don't continue to add population. We believe them because we want  
to "come out ahead" and continue to breed without limits.  Same  
outcome, our children will pay.

Life is full of hard choices.  When someone tells you that you can  
have everything with little cost, smell the stink of the swindle.   
That applies to war programs and social programs.  Republicans and  
Democrats, Libertarians and Tories.

There is a positive side to this.  We can live productive, enjoyable  
lives without "owning everything".  There is a lot of pleasure and  
beauty that we can bring into other's lives that will enrich us in  
the process.  We don't have to accept the standards offered by Bush  
and company.  We also don't have to accept and allow them to practice  
their form of morality to our detriment.  We can say "No" and we can  
say it forcefully.  We can enforce the legal standards of this  
country, and we can do it while they are in office.  We don't need  
new laws, we need to enforce the existing laws.

So, why isn't my proposal another swindle?  I am not asking anyone to  
ignore the law, or overlook the improper actions of another for the  
sake of preserving some benefit that we may enjoy.  I am not asking  
anyone to join me in a conspiracy to outwit or out maneuver someone  
through some back room actions.  And I am not asking that we allow  
some crook to go free so that we avoid political embarrassment.

I do think that we should follow a planned strategy.  First replace  
Dick Cheney.  Then impeach George Bush.  Then file charge against  
Rove.  And if the charge warrant, prison time is appropriate.  The  
lie that a political figure who is humiliated "has suffered enough"  
is hogwash.  The people who suffer and die in the Iraq War have  
suffered enough.  Punishing the people who took us into Iraq cannot  
make us whole, but we should allow them to stand as a reminder so  
that we don't repeat this again in the next generation.  Which, I  
take it, is the mistake we made last generation in pardoning Nixon.

BTW, for prison, I would suggest Guantanamo Bay <smile>.

David

On Apr 13, 2007, at 1:55 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> Surely you aren't suggesting that I think corruption is only 30
> years old!
>
> In the 1940's and 50's there was a very high level of trust in our 
> government. Many Americans had just risked their lives to protect
> it. Many
> families had lost members protecting it. Our economy was good (that  
> always
> makes for happy citizens, no matter the country). We were the  
> technological,
> economic and moral leaders of the western world. They were heady  
> times for
> America in spite of the perceived threat from the Soviet Union.
>
> I'm not going to bore you with an essay in recent American history. If 
> you're interested it's readily available for you to read, see and
> hear.
>
> The key points are that Vietnam called into question the role of
> the USA in
> the modern world. Were we really responsible for spilling our blood  
> and
> spending our money to stop communism at all costs? The answer was very
> clear.
>
> Then President Nixon called into question the integrity of the US 
> government. Is the President really "above the law"? The answer to
> that
> question was just the opposite of what happened over Vietnam. About  
> Vietnam
> the American people demanded change. About President Nixon, the  
> American
> people accepted the idea that we could ignore the problem.
>
> So we did, and that problem has festered in our government ever
> since. Right
> up until today.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire
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