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.
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