In Search of the Magic Bullets

We have all been assured that life is very complicated and in some ways beyond our human comprehension.  There are no simple answers or solutions.  There are no magic bullets for life’s many problems.

I see magic bullets everywhere.

The magic bullet to saving someone whose coronary arteries were completely blocked was open heart surgery.  They are developing magic bullets to destroy certain cancers without hurting healthy cells. The magic bullet to prevent severe birth defects was prenatal testing and if necessary, first term abortions. The magic bullets to reducing auto fatalities were seat belts and then air bags and laws against drunk driving.

But are there magic bullets for a country’s poverty or to cure a culture of violence?  How can the poor countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East free themselves from their crippling poverty?  Can Muslim radicals such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah members end their lives of vicious violence? Can air pollution and climate change be reversed?

Surely, these are very complex problems dealing with culture, religion, history, genetics and ignorance.  There could be no easy fix.  Could there?

Yes, of course.

The magic bullet to end a third world country’s poverty by doing just one thing: educate the girls.  Educated girls will have children later and have fewer.  The key to a country’s economic rebound is fewer children per poor family.  Educating all the girls might be easier said than done.  Ignorant men, like the Taliban, do not want girls educated at all, the better to subjugate them.  Educated women would raise educated children who would behave in more productive and less violent manners.

But what of the magic bullet to end culturally institutionalized violence as we see in most of the Muslim countries?  Muslim men are said to be violent toward their women and to everyone they feel has somewhat different beliefs from theirs.  How does this tendency change?  I have the magic bullet.

Give them dogs.

Muslim terrorists, reputed to be the most violent on the planet, are not allowed to have dogs.  It is felt that dogs are somehow unclean. Their feet should never touch the ground and their saliva should never touch a Muslim’s skin.  Murdering, raping, lying, destroying and hating are OK, but not a dog’s footstep?

If we can convince Muslim radicals that their prophet had nothing against dogs, we could give them all our shelter dogs we have that will have to be put down - but no Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Mastiffs, German Shepherds, Dobermans or Great Danes, just Cocker Spaniels, Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mountain dogs, Shelties and Cavalier Spaniels - warm friendly pups who not even a vicious terrorist could abuse.

While Muslim violence can be said to have several causes like low self esteem, feelings of inadequacy, low intelligence, envy, frustration and confusion; the chemical force that ignites the need for violence is testosterone.  It is the fuel of our reptilian brain which is the source of our fight and flight response as well as our sex drive.  The counterbalance to this chemical is oxytocin.  Oxytocin is produced when a mother nurses a baby, or when someone is cared for or when a dog is petted.  Just as testosterone makes us violent, oxytocin makes us loving and kind.

Can you image a nursing mother getting mad and killing someone?  It can not happen.  So too, Muslims no longer denied the companionship of a dog who provides unconditional love and a healthy dose of much needed oxytocin will not hate and want to kill people.  They will not commit suicide killing innocent women and children in order to go to paradise because they won’t want to leave their beloved pets.  Paradise would be here on earth with their loving pets.

But what about climate change, what is the magic bullet to reverse the trend toward greater CO2 pollution leading to the gradual warming of the planet? Besides switching to cleaner burning fuels like solar, wind and hydroelectric power, what can be done?

Grow more trees.

Trees and all vegetation live on CO2 and produce oxygen. We have lost many if not most of our trees here and around the world. If we could immediately plant hundreds of millions of trees all over the planet but especially near highly polluted areas, the vegetation would thrive from all the CO2 available and would produce oxygen in its stead.

The Western world is addicted to a crippling drug called alcohol. It is the cause of several varieties of physical and mental illness. It destroys the liver and pancreas, it cause mood changes and memory loss. Alcoholism can cause people to fight and attempt to damage lives and property. Abuse of this elixir can lead to heart disease and failure, strokes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, driving accidents, type two diabetes and bar fights.

But what can be done to stem what has been a cultural Christian tradition since a Messiah turned water into wine? Alcohol provides an escape from the reality that sometimes is too much to bear. It is an accepted way for us to try to transcend our ordinary consciousness in the hopes of finding more peace and joy, or at least more fun and fewer inhibitions. Life is hard for all of us and we need a way to get beyond the past and future and submerge ourselves in some eternal present. So even though we are all aware of the severe price we pay for enjoying the fermented tonic too freely, we are willing because of the relief we find in it.

Could there be a magic bullet that would liberate us from the harmful effects of this much-needed transcendental device?I say yes there is:

 Legalize marijuana.

Marijuana provides the essential transformational and transcendental experience almost instantaneously at low cost with no known bad side effects. Users will be smarter, funnier, more open, deeper, more compassionate, more creative, less neurotic and will have a much better appetite because food will taste and smell better. Love life will improve, while alcoholism can actually end it. It is also said to cure or at least lessen the effects of asthma. 

But what about education? Is there a magic bullet to improve America’s K-12 public school education system?  The system is plagued with all kinds of problems from tremendous student diversity, more probably than any other educationally successful nations like Norway, Sweden or Japan. Our system is impacted by strong teacher unions that make firing a poor teacher almost impossible.  Too many students come from broken homes or from great poverty or parents who do not speak English. While longer school years would help and the infrastructure can always use improving, is there a magic bullet here?

Smaller classes.

They allow teachers to know their students better and to be able to identify problems much sooner. Does this child have a learning disability? Is that child being abused at home? Does this one really follow what we’re learning? Could that one be bored and need more of a challenge? It’s hard to answer these questions with 30 or 40 kids in a classroom. It’s much easier with just 15-20.  Smaller classes would also allow teachers to teach more effectively and would make inadequate teaching more apparent and subject to improvement efforts. The reduced class size would also allow for more experimentation by teachers and students while reducing the likelihood of trouble making.

There is even a magic bullet to reduce our deficit without hurting the recovery or causing damage: reduce the number of non-magic bullets and military bases abroad and let the U.N. and the various regional treaty countries deal with foreign conflicts without enlisting the aid or unilateral action by the U.S. Making peace would be a large magic bullet for our economy, our morality and our very souls.

But what about dealing with income inequality in America where the poor are too poor and the rich are too rich? What magic bullets do we need besides improved K-12 education for all?

Raise the minimum wage and simplify the federal tax code eliminating all itemized deductions and counting all sources of income as being equally taxable.  

Raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour immediately and to $15 an hour in the next decade would raise the minimum annual income of a full time worker to $30,000 a year. This would reduce profit margins in large corporations meaning lower bonuses for CEOs and lower dividends for the idle rich who live off them. Simplifying the tax code so that it exists only to raise needed revenue and not to encourage social or economic behavior, would mean giving all taxpayers a standard deduction but no itemized ones. Currently, two thirds of all taxpayers use a standard deduction. Itemized deductions are used mainly by the highest income households to keep more of their generous revenue. Even keeping the highest tax bracket, for incomes of $1 million or more to only 35%, the country would get more revenue while the rich would contribute their fare share, somewhat reducing their high incomes.

You see, there really are magic bullets.  They’re just waiting to be found, aimed and fired at their appropriate targets.

When Is Time Up?

It seems as though life is filled with time limits. They are the expression of entropy in a finite world. Everything that begins must end. But how do we know when that is?

This question is coming up with greater frequency of late.

In Oakland, a 13 year-old child died unexpectedly from complications during a tonsillectomy.  She was pronounced absolutely brain dead by three top neurologists. Her body was kept alive mechanically. The family felt that since she was still warm, she was still alive and should be kept that way by hospital staff until the child regains consciousness. There was no way that would ever happen. They went to court to force the hospital to keep the dead child alive at hospital or taxpayer expense. After several court-ordered delays, the court finally allowed the hospital to do the obvious and take the dead teen off life support.

In Florida, a misguided hospital staff insisted a brain dead pregnant woman whose fetus was 14 weeks old, must be kept alive until the baby can be born, against the wishes of the family. A court finally ruled that the hospital staff had no idea what they were doing and ordered the woman taken off life support. The hospital then asked the family to pay the costs of keeping the woman alive against their wishes.

Years ago Congress got involved in a case of a brain dead woman kept alive for 15 years because her parents wanted her to recover. When she was finally taken of life support, an autopsy was conducted. It found there was nothing left of her brain. The deceased was completely empty headed.

We have hundreds of thousands of people in hospitals and nursing homes with no chance of ever improving and unable to take care of themselves. We have tens of thousands of people on end life dialysis, being kept alive daily with painful treatments which when ended result in almost immediate death. All dialysis costs are paid by taxpayers. 

Thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, we are able to live much longer. Heart blockages leading to heart attacks can be opened while totally blocked arteries can be replaced. People with heart conditions can get bypasses, pacemaker/defibrillator implants, mechanical hearts and even new hearts through transplant. Most of our organs can now be replaced. Cancer fighting drugs have been developed that can target cancer cells and destroy them. Work is being done to replace external parts like ears, noses, arms and legs.

The majority of national healthcare costs are for people in the very end of their lives in order for them to cheat death just a little bit longer.

It is now the same with our favorite pets. While dogs used to last only a few years 50 years ago, with many killed prematurely in traffic accidents or by natural causes like cancer and heart disease, many now live well into their teens. Pet owners now spend thousands to fight their pet’s cancer or heart disease or to provide devices to enable their loyal furry friend to walk or at least roll. Dog owners are now finding themselves having to decide when their beloved canine must die. It is very painful decision and one that is put off as long as possible.

And end dates don’t only apply to living creatures. When should a T.V. series end? When should a public policy end as we saw with affirmative action, school busing, segregated schools, discrimination against gays in the military and the military draft? These are difficult but necessary planning decisions known as management. 

Now we face new decisions about end dates.

When should we get out of Afghanistan? The vast majority of Americans say “immediately.” But those who fought and sacrificed there want to see our troops remain for as long as ten more years to make sure that all they accomplished with 17 years of war would not be lost.

When should we end the extension of unemployment benefits to those who have been receiving benefits for more than six months already? The extension expired in December and has not been renewed. Should the extended benefits be allowed to end now that the unemployment has fallen to almost 4% from a high of almost 10%? We sometimes forget and are never reminded, that under the best of economic circumstances, the unemployment will be between 4 and 5%, meaning millions of Americans will always be unemployed.

When should a relationship end? How do we know that it is really irreconcilable? Should couples stay together for the sake of the children or would everyone be better off if the two parted?

In today’s journalism the question has been when should coverage of a story end. Clearly some stories go on much longer than they should because they help raise advertising revenues. We see this with natural disasters and perverse political stories as well as juicy crime sagas.

Some reporters seem so taken with their own verbiage, that they extend their columns well past the needed length not wanting to end the experience. Not so with this column.

It ends here.

Evolution and Free Will

Most people who read this column would admit to believing in the theory of evolution and in Man’s free will. The theory of evolution posits that evolution occurs through natural selection with the survival of the fittest. Every religion, especially Western ones, insist that even though there is an all knowing, all powerful G-d in control of the universe, every person has free will. Free will is described as the ability of individuals to freely choose their path in decision they make. Some consider free will Man’s greatest vanity.

We all believe these ideas until they involve real people or the things we love.

Yes, there is the survival of the fittest, but every human and most animal species should survive, regardless. We believe that any human death before age 100 is a tragedy. The unborn child who has major health complications should not be allowed to pass away and should even get surgery while still in the mother to prevent a still birth. No cost should be spared. A human life is at stake.

If a person sustains a totally debilitating injury or is so advanced in age that s/he will never function independently and can never contribute to society, we must spend whatever necessary to make the person as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. Every human life is precious.

If a teenager gets killed after trying to kill someone else, it is a tragedy and the killer is at fault even though it was self defense. His parents are due damages from someone with deep pockets. No young person should die, no matter what.

If an animal species is facing extinction because it cannot adapt to changes in its environment, the environment should be changed to allow the species to survive. Every species is essential to the planet’s survival.

If a business can no longer sustain itself with costs exceeding revenues and faces bankruptcy, we morn their loss after all efforts to save it fail.

If some people lose their job for any reason, they should be entitled to every possible safety net to keep them going. Everyone must survive economically.

If people’s lives are threatened because of the loss of functioning in an essential organ or a painful joint or a missing a limb, every effort must be exerted to fix or replace the damaged part. Soon we will be able to replace deadened heart tissue with our own stem cells. We will be able to give hearing to those who have lost it, sight to those who cannot see as well as replace any body part. We want everyone to survive regardless of their fitness.

And then there is free will. Free will means that we are each responsible for our actions because we choose them freely. But there are many allowed exceptions.

If a person is homeless because of mental illness and/or substance abuse, we realize that it is not that person’s fault. We feel that we should do whatever we can to help the homeless and we tolerate whatever they do, no matter how unpleasant, because they can’t help themselves, they have no free will. (Yet, we invite them to stay in shelters but only if they freely choose to do so.)

If people come to our land without documentation, invitation or permission because they are poor and see no future in their native country, we say that they are not to blame. They had no choice. We understand that they might drive without license or insurance, that they might purchase fake I.D. or use someone else’s Social Security number to get work. What choice do they have? All they want is to work and earn a living. If they commit crimes or have vehicular accidents, we realize that their situation forced them to do what they did, they had no free will.

If people live a certain lifestyle, it is said that they had no choice, they were born that way. Some are said to have known since an early age that they were different.  Some realize much later in life that they actually were born to be different. In any case, the argument is that since they have no free will as to what lifestyle to choose, all choices should be considered equal, since we are all created equal, at least according to our Founding Fathers’ Declaration.

In a sense, all these rationales have some basis.

Humans are perhaps members of the only species that knows that their finite existence will surely end in death. We know, if only instinctively, that life's entropy, the force we battle our whole lives, will finally defeat us. We want to fight this force until the death.

And on one level, everything is predetermined. If there is an all knowing and powerful G-d, then there can be no free will, He already knows what we will do. If we are each infinite or part of the infinite, there is no free choice, everything just is a part of a much larger interdependent pattern. If we are mainly products of our genetic makeup and our early childhood experiences over which which we had no control, then how can we be said to act freely? If we are bound by the structure of our brains which predispose us to different thoughts, feelings and resultant actions, can we be held responsible for our actions?

So should we believe in evolution and free will?

 What choice do we have?

 Our survival is at stake.