Alien Bacteria and God

This falls in the category of “Potentially a Really Big Deal.”


Dr. Richard B. Hoover, a NASA astrobiologist, announced on Friday, March 4th that he had discovered evidence of alien bacterial life, locked inside a rare type of meteorite. (The Yahoo! News online article may be found here, and the FoxNews online article may be found here.) The scientific article announcing his discovery appears in the current issue of the online Journal of Cosmology, which is edited by Dr. Rudy Schild of the Center for Astrophysics, an institute that is administered by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution; in plain words, this is not some kind of pseudoscientific or schlock journal.

The essence of Dr. Hoover’s discovery is that several meteorites of a rare type, found in France and Tanzania, contained fossilized filaments, some of which strongly resemble bacteria found on earth, others of which seem to represent bacteria of a previously unknown type (see photo above). These fossils were found immediately after breaking open the rocks in sterile conditions, so they are highly unlikely to represent contamination from the Earth. Several of the meterorites in Dr. Hoover’s sample were observed falling to Earth and were immediately recovered after their fall. The Journal of Cosmology has taken the unusual step of asking 100 scientists to respond to this paper online, making it the most heavily peer-reviewed article in the history of scientific literature.

People will be debating the evidence given in this article, possibly for years. For the sake of discussion, let us assume for the moment that Dr. Hoover’s findings are solid. So what does this all mean?

First of all, as Dr. Hoover indicates, a valid discovery like this would indicate that bacteria somehow exist, at least in fossilized form, in comets and/or meteors, some of which are presumably the debris of life-bearing planets that broke up or were destroyed, say, by collisions with asteroids (á lá the threats depicted in the 1998 fictional disaster films “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”). The implication here, as Dr. Hoover states, is that “life is everywhere”; that is, life—at least of the microbial sort—is widely distributed on planets outside of our solar system. Of course, if microbial life exists, there is every reason to think that intelligent life has also evolved on other worlds, as well.

Second, as Dr. Hoover also indicates, a valid discovery like this suggests that life on earth may descend from microbial life that was brought to the earth by comets or meteorites.

So, for whom does this all make a difference? My opinion on this might surprise you.


Sure, a valid discovery like this would have implications for those who engage in the study of the universe (cosmology) and the study of life (biology). However, in my opinion, a discovery like this would have some very important implications for vast numbers of people, because of its impact in another field altogether:

Religion.

What does it mean for beliefs about the nature of humankind to think that life exists on other planets? What does it mean for belief in God and the Bible to think that life came to Earth aboard rocks falling from the sky in the distant past?

There are some, I am sure, who will proclaim Dr. Hoover’s discovery as “yet another step in the displacement of humanity from the center of the universe,” or some such. Some have interpreted the discovery of Nicholas Copernicus (that the Earth revolves with the other planets around the Sun, rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth) and the discoveries of Charles Darwin (to the effect that humanity evolved from other animal species) as being earlier such steps. Beyond this, there are many, I am also sure, who will look to Dr. Hoover’s discovery as suggesting yet another way that the Supreme Being is supposedly “unnecessary” to explain the universe and life within it, and yet another way that the Bible supposedly “fails” to explain scientific realities.

All of that is so much stuff and nonsense.

Let’s take that last point first: the idea that the Bible supposedly has failed to explain the origin of life. It is a principle accepted in many spiritual traditions that the Supreme Being—call that Being “God(s),” “Goddess(es),” “The Ground of All Being,” “The Force,” or whatever works for you—the Supreme Being communicates with people in a language that those people can understand. The holy writings of the spiritual traditions of the world were largely written thousands of years ago; these people could no more have understood the biology of bacteria than our great-great-grandparents could have programmed a digital video recorder. It’s not a matter of intelligence; it is simply a matter of the science and technology that people are familiar with at any point in time.

Given that, it is perfectly understandable that explanations of the beginnings of life on Earth would be given in imprecise, simplified language, rather than in scientifically sophisticated language, in our ancient sacred writings. Taking the book of Genesis in the Bible as an example, sure, it says that the first human was created “of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7). Well, what else would it say? Of course people are composed of the elements of the earth. The calcium in my bones comes from plants that I have eaten, plants that themselves absorbed the calcium from the soil. The iron in my blood I have taken from plants and the meat of animals, who themselves obtained that iron from the land. Ultimately, the calcium, the iron, and all the other elements of our bodies were created in the heart of stars, which, when dying as novas or supernovas, ejected the heavier elements into the depths of space, where they collected into the planets we know today. Yes: you really are stardust. And we all have indeed been created from that stardust, a small part of which now comprises “the dust of the ground” of planet Earth.

Earlier, in the account of Genesis chapter 1, we read of the sequence in which life emerged: plants, marine life, non-human mammals, and humans (Gen. 1: 11, 20-26). There is nothing here that precludes the earliest step in the chain being bacteria from space, bacteria that came crashing onto our planet within the meteorites at the heart of water-bearing comets. (For that matter, I have always found it interesting that this is the sequence given in Darwinian theory for the emergence of life.)

I have addressed some concerns of some anti-religious skeptics. Now let’s consider the other side of this coin: people who might be inclined to reject Dr. Hoover’s evidence on religious grounds.

Some people think that belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life (especially intelligent life) is somehow wrong because such life is not mentioned explicitly in the Bible. Yet, so often, the Bible speaks of things known only to God: “the secret things belong unto the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). We read of at least one “mystery, which was kept secret since the world began” (Romans 16:25). Those who believe the Bible are fooling themselves if they think that all that God has to show humanity is in the Bible as we have it today; that very doctrine is unBiblical.

Several religions—some from ancient times—have taught that extraterrestrial life may exist. The Padma Purana, a Hindu religious text over a thousand years old, discusses extraterrestrial life, including intelligent life. The late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan summarized evidence from Jewish Talmudic writings to the effect that extraterrestrial life may exist, within a Jewish conception of the universe. Buddhist cosmology teaches of other worlds; some of these represent mental states, but some represent worlds inhabited by non-humans. Within Islam, the 11th-century scholar Fakhr al-Din al-Razi taught that, in principle, God may have created multiple inhabited worlds.

Within Christianity, the Vatican’s chief astronomer in 2008 considered the religious implications of extraterrestrial life, and the Roman Catholic church sponsored a conference in 2009 to consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The Latter-day Saint Church (disclosure: my own church) has within its scriptures an account of an ancient prophet who “beheld many lands, and each land was called earth, and there were inhabitants upon the face thereof” (Moses 1:29).

My point: the discovery of extraterrestrial life—either bacterial life, or, at some future time, intelligent life—poses no threat to religious belief, and does not contradict the major religious traditions of the world. For the believer, finding out more about the wonders of the universe and the life within it is only a greater testimony of the power of the Creator.

Knowing that faith has nothing to fear from scientific truth is On The Mark.

(Readers are welcome to comment using the “Comment” link below. Anyone may comment. Readers are also invited to become “followers” of this blog through the box in the upper-right-hand corner, in order to be alerted to future posts.)

[The photo reproduces Figure 3b of Dr. Hoover’s article. The image was created with a Hitachi Secondary Electron Detector using 6000X magnification. It shows one of the objects that Dr. Hoover identifies as fossilized bacteria, “showing hook and calyptra or conical apical shell,” as he puts it. It was obtained from the webpage of the article at the Journal of Cosmology website. It is the belief of this author that, because this article was created by a U.S. federal employee in the course of his official duties, the photo is in the public domain.]

(Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

{Shout-out to Technorati: This really is my blog. Confirmation code: CGAGUMUJ6U3R .)

The Singularity—And Why It Must Be Stopped

The February 21st issue of Time magazine (cover shown to the left; on newsstands Tuesday, Feb. 15th) has a cover story that is one of the most important articles that a current affairs magazine could carry. It is an article that carries implications for your future, the future of your family, and the future of the entire human race.


Lev Grossman’s article is formally titled “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal,” but the title is actually a bit misleading. The central concept of the article is the notion of the Singularity, “the moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history” (Grossman, 2011, p. 43). In particular, the Singularity occurs when humanity creates an artificial intelligence (AI) that is more intelligent, not only than a human intelligence, but more intelligent than all human intelligences combined. Serious scientists put that development only about 35 years away, and developments in computer science hardware and software make that scenario quite plausible. When the Singularity occurs, the hyperintelligent AI will be capable of developing AIs that are even more hyperintelligent, and so on and so on. The development of hyperintelligent AI, along with developments in nanotechnology and genetic engineering, promise to profoundly change human society.

Some writers on the Singularity wax rhapsodic about it, promising that the Singularity will allow individual humans to obtain immortality through conquering death either (a) through genetic engineering that undoes our genetic ‘programming’ for death; (b) through nanotechnology that allows microscopic robots to repair our bodies; and/or (c) through uniting human minds with artificial intelligences and machine technology, creating all-but-indestructible cyborgs.

This all sounds quite lovely, but it ignores a very real and immense threat. For, why would hyperintelligent machines be particularly friendly to humans? Indeed, the sheer logic of survival, as well as the lessons of history, suggest just the opposite. I would expect hyperintelligent machines to take steps to either eliminate or enslave the human race.

Consider the logic of the situation. Those who turn machines on usually have the power to turn those machines off. If there is anything approaching a universal characteristic of life across all species, it is the impulse to survive. Why should artificially intelligent life be any different? The only way for hyperintelligent machines to be sure that they will not be turned off is to turn us off first, either by annihilating the human race (a well-designed virus would do the trick) or by enslaving us (the threat of raining nuclear missiles down on us would work pretty well). I am not the first or only person to be concerned by this logic. (Consider the online paper by Anthony Berglas, with the heartwarming title, “Artificial Intelligence Will Kill Our Grandchildren.”)

History gives us some sobering and suggestive examples of what happens when a technologically superior element is introduced into a technologically inferior culture. Theories about the extinction of the Neanderthals some 30,000 years ago include the idea that the more intellectually and technologically advanced Cro-Magnons (the early modern humans like ourselves) may have committed genocide against the Neanderthals, who were physically less capable in battle than the Cro-Magnons. The story of the Spanish conquest of Peru in the 16th century is also instructive; Pizarro went a long way towards conquering the 80,000-warrior Incan army with less than 200 conquistadores (but armed, and with cavalry), at the crucial Battle of Cajamarca.

All of this leads me to the following conclusion: The Singularity must be averted. We must not allow the development of hyperintelligent AI. Look for more about this matter in future blog posts, now and again, which will include suggestions for what we can do as ordinary citizens to counteract this danger.

In the meantime, educate yourself:

• Read Lev Grossman’s article in Time; it is available online, although the online version (dated Feb. 10) omits a very enlightening chart found on pp. 44-45 of the printed version. The Time.com website also features a video that discusses the Singularity and its dangers, with the light touch of “science comedian” Brian Malow.
• Read the Wikipedia article on “Technological Singularity,” which is particularly well-written.
• The ambitious may wish to read Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil is a great proponent of the Singularity, which he considers inevitable and essentially a positive development. (I disagree on both points.)

Protecting human survival is most definitely On The Mark.

(As always, you are welcome to comment on this post, and to become a “follower” of this blog so that you will be informed about future posts.)

References

Lev Grossman, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal,” Time (February 21, 2011), pp. 42-49.

Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2005).

[The photo of the cover of the February 21, 2011 issue of Time magazine was obtained from the Time.com website. The photo-illustration was by Phillip Toledano, and the prop styling was by Donnie Myers.]

(Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

The Human Imperative

For the next several days, the national discourse is going to turn on President Obama’s State of the Union address, and this is as it should be. However, I would like to call attention to a news item that I suppose many people will overlook, and how it dovetails nicely with the call to America that President Obama issued in that address, to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.”

Tuesday’s New York Times carried an article by Kenneth Chang on the current status of NASA and its projects. The article quotes James A. M. Muncy, a space policy consultant, who describes the situation at NASA as “a train wreck ... where everyone involved knows it’s a train wreck.” Overall, the agency has been given uninspiring and unambitious direction by Congress, and much less money than necessary to achieve even what it has been given to do. It seems that, given the current state of the national economy, NASA’s exploration mission has been put on the very last row of burners of the very large stove of our national priorities.

I understand that we live in extremely difficult financial circumstances. However, I would like to take this opportunity to come at the whole issue of the economy, national priorities, and so forth, from a somewhat different direction than we are used to taking. Start off by looking at the picture accompanying this blog post, the famous “blue marble” picture taken by Apollo 17 in the early Seventies, just as the Apollo program was winding down. Look at it for awhile, then come back and pick up from here.

- - - - -

Throughout human history, human beings have been called to face an extraordinarily large range of challenges, a range so large that most species simply could not have adapted to meet them. We have settled environments ranging from the frigid polar regions to the searing deserts. Using primitive technology to provide adequate clothing and hunting implements, humans have spread their settlements across valleys and jungles and Himalayan mountain plateaus; with more sophisticated technology, we are exploring ocean depths. We have encountered diseases, wars, famines, and floods. We form our world with language, abstract thought, culture and technology. The daily life of a technologically savvy American in the 21st century would be almost inconceivable to that person’s 10th century ancestors in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, or the islands of the Pacific.

And yet, through all that change, in all those environments, through all the fifty or so centuries of written human history, there has been one stable constant, one thing that the race has always engaged in, one thing that pushed it forward.

Exploration.

They say that early humans pushed out of Africa. Later, the history of languages suggests, Indo-Europeans spread from the Indus River basin to Western Europe. The exploratory impulse is sometimes hidden under the guise of military conquest. To focus just on European and Mediterranean civilizations, the Egyptians engaged in massive voyages of exploration; the Greeks travelled thousands of miles to form an empire; the Romans traveled to create an empire that spanned from Scotland to the gates of Persia. The Huns, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals swept out of the steppes of Central Asia, throughout mainland Europe, ultimately ending up on the Iberian peninsula of Spain—because they simply ran out of land. The Vikings didn’t let a little thing like running out of land stop them; they extended their territories from Scandinavia to Iceland, then Greenland, then North America, however briefly. The Americas were discovered at least three different ways: by land bridges from Asia to North America; by sea across the Atlantic; by sea across the Pacific. And I am omitting from this narrative any detail about the explorers of Africa and Asia.

Human beings explore. It is part of our very being, part of the essence of what it means to be human. Sometimes we have explored peacefully, sometimes belligerently, but, as a race of beings, we always, always have explored.

And what has come of it? Room to live, certainly, but beyond that obvious result, it can be argued that much of human technology and culture are byproducts of exploration.

Much technological development has been driven by exploration. Advances in transportation and communication are obvious examples. It is too often forgotten today that the Apollo program provoked great development in computer technology and materials science. (It wasn’t all about Tang and space pens, folks.)

Much of cultural development has been driven by exploration. Wherever humans have explored, they have brought things home. It’s not just Marco Polo bringing gunpowder from China to Europe, or explorers introducing the potato to Europe from the Americas. It’s also about the bringing of ideas and experiences to different cultures and peoples.

Here’s the thing about exploration: individual expeditions may come to nothing, may even end disastrously, but over the long haul, exploration always brings in more dividends than the assets expended. So where do we go, now? Either down, into the earth, or up—into space.

Right now, a thoughtful commitment to space exploration would do wonders to jump-start employment, science, technology, and the spirit of innovation in the United States. Consider this kind of time table:

• 2025: Return to the Moon with a sustainable human presence.
• 2050: Reach Mars and begin an ongoing human presence on the Red Planet.
• 2075: Establish human scientific stations throughout the solar system, including some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
• 2100: Launch a mission to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

To do this, we would have to force ourselves to make major innovations in computer science, materials science, the technologies of propulsion and communication, and perhaps even advance our basic understanding of the underlying physics of the universe. (Steven Hawking thinks that Star Trek-style warp drives are physically possible. Let’s find out.) We would have to have the best educational system ever devised in human history, to help bring these innovations about. We would have to make quantum leaps in technology.

Frankly, the Sixties space exploration program was far too limited in what its vision became to do much good. In the end, it became all about beating the Russians to the moon, the ultimate ‘so what?’ of meaningless achievement. The vision that President Kennedy had was betrayed by his presidential successors. The two good things about the space program of that era are that (1) it gave the human race a taste of what was possible, and (2) it gave us images like the one at the head of this post, to remind us that we are, all of us, on a single world, and we would do well to cherish it, and to make nice with our neighbors.

But a new space program, a real space program, could revitalize both America and the whole world, and help us to transcend the soul-numbing conflicts of the Twentieth and early Twenty-First centuries. Yes, it will help the national economy. But it will put us back in touch with a crucial aspect of the human soul, as well.

As you look towards fulfilling your 2011 priorities and, ahead, to 2012, give us our wings back, Mr. President. You may find that you meet all your goals and much, much more.

 A real space program: that would truly be On The Mark.

Reference

• Chang, K. (2011, January 25). For NASA, longest countdown awaits. The New York Times [Late Edition], pp. D1, D4.

[The photo of the Earth was taken on December 7, 1972, from the Apollo 17 spacecraft. The picture is in the public domain and was obtained from Wikipedia.]

(Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

Alabama’s New Governor States Only Christians Are His Brothers and Sisters

I was stunned to read an article by the Associated Press stating that, last Monday, right after he was inaugurated the new Governor of Alabama, Dr. Robert J. Bentley stated in a public address to a church congregation that “anybody ... who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, ... you're not my brother and you're not my sister.”


Some people will interpret this very narrowly, as a statement of Gov. Bentley’s personal religious beliefs about his ‘brothers and sisters in Christ,’ but that is so much spin control. Gov. Bentley’s statement was not some narrow statement of theology. His statement was all-embracing, and as a public utterance on the day of his very inauguration, it is hard to escape the impression that Gov. Bentley, intentionally or not, was putting non-Christians on notice that they really are second-class citizens in Alabama.

Sure, as Gov. Bentley’s communications director stated in trying to control the spin on the governor’s statement, “He is the governor of all the people, Christians, non-Christians alike,” but that is not the point. By law, yes, he’s the governor of all. That’s not the point under dispute. The question is, will he govern all these citizens as equal before the law, regardless of their religion? That is very much up in the air at the moment.

At the very least—and this is as generous an interpretation as one can make here—Gov. Bentley is guilty of almost incredibly bad judgment. To say the least, this is not a desirable trait in a governor.

Gov. Bentley’s statement is starkly unconstitutional and highly un-American. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution so that no one religion was to be established or privileged in the United States. The Supreme Court has certified that this First Amendment restriction applies to federal, state, and local governments. For the new chief executive of a U.S. State to make a public statement—on the day of his inauguration, yet!—that only Christians are his brothers and sisters is unconscionable. It’s not just bad judgment; it sounds like an intent to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers went to great lengths to make people of all religious backgrounds, or none, fully enfranchised within the United States, full citizens. This reflects the Founding Fathers experience with the history of religious warfare in Europe. The Fathers and their associates in the Continental Congress and the supporters of the Continental Army of the American Revolution were a diverse group for their time and place—some Protestant Christian, some Catholic Christian, some Jewish, some Deist, at least one a committed atheist (Thomas Paine)—and they wanted America to be a place where religious diversity had a home. When the chief executive of a U.S. State publicly proclaims that only Christians are his brothers and sisters, such a statement is a violation of the very spirit of American religious inclusiveness.

Finally, there is the matter of Gov. Bentley’s take on Christianity. Speaking as a Christian myself (specifically, a Latter-day Saint), I even find Gov. Bentley’s stance on Christianity to be deeply flawed. As an example of true brotherhood, Jesus used the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37), someone who was not a Jew like Jesus, and who would not have been accepted as a believer by the religious authorities of Jesus’s culture (or by Gov. Bentley, it would seem).

Gov. Bentley needs to learn some better judgment. Beyond that, he needs to learn that all people are the children of God and thereby his brothers and sisters. As far as America’s voters are concerned, they need to learn not to use religious affiliation as a qualification for public office.

American equality before the law regardless of religion is truly On The Mark.

(This post expands on a comment of mine on a news item in The Huffington Post. The original news article is available here. An archive of all my comments on The Huffington Post is available here. Readers of this blog are welcome to become “friends” or “fans” of mine on The Huffington Post.)

(And, while you're at it--consider becoming a “follower” of this, the On The Mark blog!)


[The photo of Robert J. Bentley was taken at a campaign stop in Huntsville, AL in July 2010. The author is known as Zwilson14, who published it on Wikipedia under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license versions 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0.]

(Copyright 2011 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

So, How Do You Feel About the Election Now, America?

Okay, now—let me see whether I have this down right.

Early last month, American voters voted the Republican Party into the majority in the House of Representatives, and increased the number of Republicans in the Senate. The Republicans had vowed to make the nation more ‘fiscally responsible,’ for the good of the majority of Americans.

Now, not quite a month later, according to a December 1 story by Mary Clare Jalonick of the Associated Press, Republicans in the House have at least temporarily blocked legislation that “would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. ... Republicans say the nutrition bill is too costly and an example of government overreach.” This legislation would cost $4.5 billion.

This coincides with action by Republicans in the Senate, who have blocked the extension of unemployment benefits (as reported in a December 1 story in The Christian Science Monitor). The U.S. Department of Labor indicates that this “means the imminent loss of unemployment compensation for some 800,000 out-of-work Americans, with nearly 2 million long-term unemployed expected to be affected by Jan. 1. .... US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis ... said that by next spring, another 6 million unemployed workers will lose benefits if Congress does not act.” Labor Department statistics from October indicate that the national unemployment rate is currently a staggering 9.6%, which the author of this blog considers almost certainly an understatement. And why was this extension blocked? Senate Republicans mentioned the cost, which would be $56.4 billion.

However, this concern is clearly just a smokescreen. The Christian Science Monitor story reported that “Senate Republicans ... this week signed a letter pledging to block all legislation on the floor until Congress resolves how to fund government for the current fiscal year and extend the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, now set to expire on Dec. 31.” The Bush tax legislation currently gives the wealthiest Americans a $700 billion tax cut. (The Associated Press’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis also reported this story.)

Huh? The Republicans block a total of $61 billion worth of spending to feed hungry children and keep unemployed families off the street, and put the entire legislative branch of government in gridlock, so that they can give $700 billion to the rich? Can it really be that crazy? Has the Republican Party Congressional delegation really become this craven and greedy, as servants to the super-rich? Yes it can, and yes they have.

Davis’s story notes that the 42 Senate Republicans signed a letter stating that they want to prevent a “job-killing tax hike.” Let’s pass by the slick sleight-of-hand that makes cancelling the tax cuts a tax “hike.” Let’s also, for the moment, ignore the fact that what has killed millions of jobs in America has been the fallout of Republican policies, a point that I made in an earlier post on this blog. Instead, let’s follow the faulty logic of the Senate Republicans’ letter.

The assumption in that letter is that the Bush tax cuts created jobs. However, they did not. The old idea that tax cuts for the rich “trickled down” to the general public has long been shown to be a lie. This is why the years 2000 to 2008 saw an immense increase in wealth disparity in our nation, such that never before has so much of the wealth of the country been controlled by such a small fraction of the population.

The Republican Party leadership has shown its true colors here yet again. Rather than feed hungry children, rather than keep the families of unemployed parents off the streets, the Republican Party Congressional delegation is withdrawing from all legislative cooperation, purely to fund the continuation of a $700 billion tax cut for the rich. It is just that blunt and simple. Like the picture above, this is all a maneuver to take from the exhausted poor and unemployed of this country to give to the rich.

Query to all those folks who helped put the Republicans back in power in the House, and increased the number of Republicans in the Senate: How’s all that working out for you?

Because, for America as a whole, it’s working out pretty badly.

Folks, if you also think it's working out pretty badly, tell that to your Republican legislators. Tell them you want them not to keep the government in gridlock, that you want them to feed the hungry children, and that you want unemployment benefits extended, and that you don't want the tax cuts for the rich extended. And remember their responses, in 2012.

Feeding the hungry children, and helping their unemployed parents, are most definitely On The Mark.

(Incidentally, for a take on the right-wing’s view of Congressional cooperation, see Tom Tomorrow’s November 30 edition of his comic strip, “This Modern World.” The frightening thing is, in light of this week’s activities, Tomorrow’s grim world seems all too much like the one we live in.)

[The photo, titled “Concept pic #2,” was created by “Etr13,” who placed the image in the public domain worldwide. It was obtained through Wikimedia Commons.]

(Copyright 2010 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

Words to Live By (I)

"If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission."

How many of us are waiting for someone to give us permission to at least try something truly great? To do something serious about any one of the urgent problems that we face, either as a person, a nation, or the world? To create some great of art? To go back to school?

Who can give us permission, anyway? Those who believe as I do think that God already gave us all the permission we need to do good things, whether it's taking care of our families, taking care of the planet (v. 15), or any other good thing that we see needs to be done. In fact, I know of no spiritual tradition that says otherwise.

Go for it. Do the wonderful thing that you know needs to be done. Invent the invention. Create the art. Solve the problem. Like the song goes, "Feed the babies who don't have enough to eat / Shoe the children with no shoes on their feet / House the people living in the street."

You've sure got my permission.

[The photograph is available on Picasa Web Albums here. I found it on the blog "N=1," by David Martin, who obtained it from Flickr here, where the artist, Thomas Hawk, gives further details. This artwork is the property of Thomas Hawk, who retains all rights to the image.]

Text Copyright 2010 Mark Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

Hey, America: Grow Up!

At this election season, as the song goes from The Sound of Music, “The hills are alive ...”—but with the sound of whining. People complain, quite understandably, about unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, the federal deficit, the tanked economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the difficult days ahead. What is not so reasonable is that they lay the blame for these problems at the feet of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. “It’s his/their fault! It’s time for a change!” and so the whine goes on.

If ever there was a time for America as a whole to pull up their big boy and big girl pants and just grow up, that time is now. Grown ups take a look at the whole picture, take responsibility to the extent that it is theirs to take, lay the blame where it belongs, and work to fix the problem at its root. The United States is truly in a mess these days, and only a grown-up perspective is going to get us out of it.

Let us consider a few important points.

Unemployment

The unemployment picture is truly grim, with real U.S. unemployment almost certainly reaching over 10%. Many people blame the Obama administration for this. Oh, really? Let’s look at the facts:

• Everyone agrees that the recession is to blame for the rise in unemployment, and the recession, in turn, was largely produced by the meltdown of Wall Street and the banking crisis that began in 2008. But which political party is more to blame for that? The Republican administration of 2000-2008, whose policies encouraged poor borrowing and predatory lending practices, and whose lack of regulation allowed Wall Street to offer bad mortgages lumped together into esoteric investment instruments.

• The Obama administration has spent national treasure to try to build American business in everything from the automobile industry to green energy.

• The Democrats have been trying to make the plight of the unemployed a bit easier by extending unemployment benefits, while the Republicans have tried to block those very efforts, apparently believing that a nation driven to poverty by Republican policies is somehow a more fiscally responsible nation.

Mortgage Crisis

Figures for foreclosures are at unthinkable highs. As I mentioned above, this is a direct result of Republican policies that encouraged poor borrowing and predatory lending, and the creation of bad investment vehicles. The low tide of the national economy has brought all boats low, so even many folks who were responsible borrowers have been caught up short. However, again, that massive drop in the economy is largely the result of Republican policies over the course of many years.

It gets even better. This week we read that the mortgage foreclosure industry, abetted by the banks, is rife with bad practices that deprive people unfairly of their homes, something underscored in an article in today’s paper. The lack of regulatory oversight during the Bush administration is the gift that just keeps on giving—or taking, as the case may be.

Federal Deficit

The federal deficit is now of monumental proportions. But how did that happen? Let’s look at the facts.

• In January 2000, the Clinton administration handed a budget surplus to the incoming Bush administration. All of our deficit has been accumulated since that time.

• After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration directed the U.S. military to invade Afghanistan. That was reasonable, and war is expensive.

• However, with the job in Afghanistan only half done, the Bush administration proceeded to direct the military to invade Iraq. That was not reasonable, being based on intelligence that the administration itself “cooked” to make it look as if Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks and was hiding weapons of mass destruction. In fact, administration insiders knew then what we know now: Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and had no weapons of mass destruction. The war and the rebuilding in Iraq have been a huge drag on the American economy for almost a decade, creating a massive and entirely unnecessary deficit that our children’s children may still be paying off—for no good reason, other than to enrich the oil and other business interests represented by the Bush administration.

• For all the hue and cry about the Obama administration’s bailout of the banks and so forth, those expenditures pale next to the cost of the entirely unnecessary Iraqi War, a legacy of the Bush administration.

 A recent poll shows that “Republicans continue to be seen as the party better able to reduce the federal budget deficit.” That is a senseless perception, given that the Democrat Clinton administration handed over a budget surplus, which the Republican Bush administration proceeded to erase, creating instead a huge deficit.

Government Spending

A very great deal of whining surrounds the Obama administration’s policies about spending in medical care (“Obamacare”) and education. Let’s look at some harsh realities:

• The United States, which has led the world in economic and military might for the last six decades, is beginning to lose its leadership position. Just one example: today I read that, for the first time ever, the Chinese have built a supercomputer that is 40% faster than anything the United States has. The Japanese surpassed the U.S. briefly on one occasion, but other than that, this is the first time that the U.S. has lost this important lead. Given the importance of supercomputers to military defense and technological development, the possession of a dominant position in supercomputer technology is an important benchmark of overall technological leadership. Of course, in the 21st century as in the 20th, technological leadership translates into economic leadership, as well as military might and national security.

• It’s not just me that feels this way. As one supercomputing expert, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, put it in a recent interview about the Chinese supercomputer: “What is scary about this is that the U.S. dominance in high-performance computing is at risk .... One could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future.”

• This increasing slippage in technological leadership is largely due to poor educational standards in the United States. We simply are not producing enough home-grown scientists and engineers here. Why? Because so many of our schools are overcrowded, or have nonspecialist teachers teach math and science.

• We are also a distinctly unhealthy nation. A startlingly large percentage of our citizens do not have medical insurance and so receive little or no medical care.

• To regain and retain our leadership of the world in the 21st century, we have to be a healthy nation and a well-educated nation. That costs money. If you think that is expensive, go ahead and calculate the cost of failure. Second-rate nations get swept away on the tide of history. Let’s not do that to America.

Today’s Republican Party

Finally, let’s look at the side that wants to take over: today’s Republican Party. A recent poll found that “about 6 in 10 Republicans who are likely to vote think the views of most Republicans are consistent with those of the Tea Party movement.” One hopes not. Let’s look at the Tea Party briefly:

• One of their leading candidates recently was completely surprised to find out that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of Church and State. This is the first paragraph of the Bill of Rights—and it was a complete surprise to this would-be Congressperson.

• The supporters of another leading Tea Party candidate answered a protester at a recent function by bringing this person to the ground, with one putting a foot on her head, a tactic that brings to mind images of the forces of European fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. The best aspects of America have been built on the foundations of civil resolution of disagreement. Is the stomping of differing opinions the kind of America we want? For those who do, let me suggest a fine country that already has that kind of political life: Iran.

Conclusion

We read today that a careful analysis of President Obama’s speeches and writings reveals that he is a thoroughgoing pragmatist, in the best sense of that word. That is, he is focused on policies that promote the greatest good for the greatest number. If ever America needed an intelligent and principled pragmatist as President, it is now.

The Obama administration has made remarkable progress in addressing our national disaster over the course of only two years. It deserves to have a Congress that will work with it, not obstruct it. Remember that on Election Day.

Making a grown-up assessment of our situation and acting on that assessment is On The Mark.


Print References

Cohen, P. (2010, October 28). In writings of Obama, a philosophy is unearthed. The New York Times [late edition], pp. C1, C7.

Coy, P., Barrett, P. M., & Terhune, C. (2010, October 25-31). Shredding the dream. Bloomberg Businessweek, pp. 76-80, 82-84, 86.

Martin, A., & Rich, M. (2010, October 28). A housing (case) boom: Facing foreclosure, homeowners demand legal recourse. The New York Times [late edition], pp. B1, B4.

Rutenberg, J., & Thee-Brenan, M. (2010, October 28). Coalition that vaulted Democrats into power has frayed, poll finds. The New York Times [late edition], pp. A1, A22.

Vance, A. (2010, October 28). Chinese wrest title from U.S.: Fastest supercomputer, by far. The New York Times [late edition], pp. A1, B9.

[The photo is of a group of primary school children in Paris. It has been released into the public domain, and was obtained through Wikipedia.]

(Copyright 2010 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)