Annals of Heroism, 1: A Way to Die, A Way to Live

Your correspondent is typically a pretty optimistic fellow, not a morbid sort. However, death is part of life, and the last nine months or so I've had death come to mind more than usual, what with the death of a parent, and now, of course, the swine flu outbreak in Mexico; even one of the family cats died. An incident mentioned in the news today reminded me that, although we have no choice but to die, we have a great deal of choice in the how of it all.

This video and this report from news organizations in Florida tell the story of 70-year-old Mr. Charles Schulze. Mr. Schulze noticed two boys, 9 and 12 years old, caught in the currents and about to drown, off Pompano Beach in Florida (pictured). According to the reports, Mr. Schulze dove in, and brought both the boys close enough in to shore for others to bring them the last bit to safety. Unfortunately, then he was at trouble in the currents himself. Although rescued, he was declared dead at the hospital.

There are lessons to be learned here.

First lesson: One needs to be prepared for the moment of trial, when it comes. My guess is that Mr. Schulze was in pretty good shape for 70 years old, to be able to swim out into the surf and save those two boys. When one sees the struggling swimmers out in the current, it's a little too late to start laying off the snack food, a little too late to start the exercise and swimming program. The trial comes when it comes; at that point, the time for preparation is past. However it is that one feels about matters of spirituality, surely the parable of the wise and foolish guests (Matthew 25: 1-13) has applicability across traditions.

Second lesson, probably the most important: Be a hero, to someone. As I have said before, our lives are not our own. Be oriented to helping people.

This so flies in the face of the prevailing ethics of the modern world: 'Look out for Number 1,' 'Make your pile,' 'Take the money and run,' 'Every man for himself.' That Mr. Schulze is being called a hero is unimportant; unfortunately, soon enough that will be forgotten. However, even the very last hour of his life had meaning and purpose that transcended the accomplishments of all the media Idols that shall ever be, all the bonuses that the so-called Masters of the Universe in the financial world have been pouting and shouting about.

I am reminded of the statement in the Talmud, the accumulated written wisdom of the rabbis of about twenty centuries ago: "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." Everything good that these two boys could ever do for the rest of their lives, every descendant they could ever have, at that moment hung by a thread over the Abyss--and then Mr. Schulze saved their lives.

Third lesson: Don't be afraid to die doing good. The point of life is not to live forever--at least, not as the kind of beings we are now. Whether your beliefs point in the direction of the Hindu Atman; the traditional Jewish, Christian, or Islamic heaven; the Buddhist Nirvana or Pure Land; the Wiccan Summerlands; the LDS notion of Eternal Life; many other traditions besides--whatever spiritual tradition claims your attention, the point of life is to improve oneself, even to perfect oneself, through service to others. There may be much else besides, but every tradition will claim at least this much, I think. It's not about getting the most toys, or playing the life game of Pig-in-Trough, as Robert de Ropp put it in that 1960s masterpiece, The Master Game. The point is to live one of the central paradoxes of human life: by becoming someone other than we started life as--the self-centered infant, of whatever age--we become who we really are meant to be. To die doing good: the perfect endgame in the Great Game. It is how I would want to go. I hope I have the preparation and the guts to follow through on that wish.

Fourth lesson: Don't be afraid to do good after you die, either. The fact of the matter is, we can all give someone life through our deaths. We might not all have a moment of final, dramatic heroism. But how about being a hero to someone through organ donation? (Let's face it, folks--you're not going to be using them any more.) Sure, it may make you squeamish--but it can give sight to the blind, air to those short of breath, life to those whose hearts are giving out.

Having a life that means something, even in one's death: That may be the most on-the-mark of all.

(The picture, by Friejose, is from the Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)

Annals of Innovation, I: The Football Lineman and the Solar City

As I mentioned in an earlier post, humanity faces quite an array of problems, ranging from global warming and terrorism to illiteracy and the threat of asteroids from space. It is a real joy to see someone doing something about one of these problems, in an innovative way. I am talking about the former football lineman and the solar city.

Time magazine reports on its website today, in an article by Michael Grunwald, that a former NFL lineman has made an innovative proposal for Babcock Ranch, a solar-powered city to be developed in southwest Florida (near Fort Myers, roughly halfway on a line between Miami and St. Petersburg). This would feature what would be the world's largest photovoltaic solar power plant.

After the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, when the volume went up on developing renewable energy sources, one argument against solar power was that 'the science isn't there yet.' It surely is now. The Florida solar power plant presumably would look and function something like the photovoltaic array at Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada), currently the largest solar photovoltaic power plant in North America (pictured above, from the Wikimedia Commons). The Nellis array, when fully developed, will supply over one-quarter of the power used on this base, which is home to more air squadrons than any other U.S. Air Force base in the world, including four air wings attached to the United States Air Force Warfare Center. Somehow, solar power is good enough for one of hte largest and most important bases of the U.S. Air Force. It should be good enough for much of the rest of the United States.

This idea for a solar city in Florida--what Time is calling the Sunshine City in the Sunshine State--is the idea of Syd Kitson, who, after six years playing as an NFL lineman for the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, turned many years ago to real estate development. As Kitson put it in Grunwald's article, "The time has come for something completely different."

Kitson's proposal for his solar city includes details that would make his development sustainable and self-contained, with a green orientation that is unprecedented for a community of its size. That would be a major change of orientation for Florida, where communities typically are not sustainable, do require a car to do anything, and do carry an enormous carbon footprint per person. (I lived in Florida for over eight years. Sorry, my friends and former neighbors. I'm not saying that New York City, where I live now, is any better, either.)

My point in describing all of this is two-fold. Sure, I am promoting green ideas. However, beyond that, I am promoting innovative thinking. Here's a guy who played pro football for years. However, when that career ended, his thinking and ambition did not. He was willing to think outside the box, and to apply his intelligence to addressing some of the significant problems that our society faces: how to design sustainable communities, with renewable power, so as not to make our current environmental crisis even worse.

May his tribe increase. And may we each follow this example: each of us, in our own way, applying our intelligence in innovative ways to address the problems of the world. Yes, we can. Yes, you can. An innovative orientation like Syd Kitson's is definitely On The Mark.

Nuclear Disarmament: Yes We Must

As an elementary school student during the 1960s, I and other students across America took part in drills to prepare us to survive a nuclear attack. We dutifully crawled under our desks, to shield us from falling plaster, I guess. Then, on the walk home, I stood at the corner of First Avenue and St. Marks Place in Manhattan, looking to the northeast at the Empire State Building--not even two and a half miles away. It was widely rumored that the Soviets had two 20-megaton hydrogen fusion bombs aimed there. My school desk would not provide much protection against a blast that would vaporize the entire city block on which my school stood. I was stunned to learn, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that some American political leaders and think tank consultants, such as Herman Kahn, talked about 'winning' a nuclear war, and about 'acceptable' levels of American casualties during a nuclear conflict--casualties in the tens of millions, of which I would undoubtedly be one, along with everyone I knew.

For a total of eight months during 1978-1980, I lived in and near Hiroshima, Japan, where one of the first atomic bombs had been detonated, at the end of World War II. The Hiroshima atomic fission bomb, "Little Boy," was a weak little monster by today's standards, with 'only' a 13-kiloton yield, or the explosive equivalent of 13K tons, or 26 million pounds, of dynamite. (A 20-megaton hydrogen fusion weapon has the explosive equivalent of 20,000K tons, or 40 billion pounds, of dynamite--well over 1,000 times the power of "Little Boy.") Yet, the Hiroshima weapon immolated about 75,000 civilians instantly (with more dying later). At the museum in Hiroshima's Peace Park, I saw artifacts and photos illustrating blast effects. In this city divided by many rivers, photos of bridges showed the permanent "shadows" created by the brilliant blast, shadows left behind by morning commuters, as well as children who had been walking to school on those bridges at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, when the children and the commuters and everyone else were turned into piles of hot ash. (See photo above; note the outline of the shoes.)

(Yes, I know the received wisdom about the bombing being 'necessary to end the war.' I don't buy it; the historical facts show otherwise. See Howard Zinn's essay about this claim.)

The 1980s saw the publication of books like Carl Sagan's A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, which documented how even 'small-scale' nuclear war could bring about global nuclear winter, changing the climate of the planet for generations, ending human civilization. (See also Schell's The Abolition, and his 2007 book, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.)

In the 1990s, with the political disintegration of the Soviet Union, I wondered who was taking charge of Soviet nuclear arms. I learned that, for all practical purposes, no one was; nuclear materials were being protected on lonely bases by rusty locks and corruptible guards. Consequently, there is now a lively international black market in nuclear materials and technology.

Yesterday in Prague, President Obama made an observation that should have been obvious since the demise of the Soviet Union: "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up." He has called for a renewal of American and international efforts toward nuclear disarmament.

I am not a pacifist. However, I have come to understand that the mere existence of nuclear weapons presents a threat to the survival of the entire human race. They must be eliminated from the armories of the nations of the world, and they must be kept from the hands of stateless terrorist forces.

Some say disarmament cannot be accomplished at this late date. I say this is a problem of will, not practicality. We have satellite technology that can read newspaper headlines from space; surely we can find a way to monitor the world for nuclear weapons.

Some say disarmament is weakness. I say it shows the will to survive. We are not the stronger for holding weapons that can destroy humanity; we are only making it more probable that some extremist politician or military officer or terrorist will someday use them.

I do not wish my someday grandchildren to end up as shadows on a bridge. Let us end these weapons now, before they end all of our hopes and dreams. I urge you to contact your federal Senators and Representative to instruct them to follow the President's lead on this matter, including the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Nuclear disarmament is clearly On The Mark.

Reference

Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger. (2009, April 6). Citing rising risk, Obama seeks nuclear arms cuts: Warns of spread of bomb technology in black market. The New York Times [late edition], pp. A1, A8.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Adam Harrison Levy for posting the Hiroshima bridge picture on the site of DesignObserver with his story, "Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs."

Annals of Wasted Lives, I: The Poker King

The March 30 issue of The New Yorker carries Alec Wilkinson's article profiling Chris Ferguson (pictured), the first person to win a prize of more than $1 million in a poker tournament (the 2000 World Series of Poker), and the co-founder of one of the most profitable on-line poker sites ever launched. Ferguson is unusual even among poker grandmasters for his application of John Von Neumann's mathematical game theory to poker, which has allowed Ferguson to develop an "optimal strategy" for poker. Of course, Ferguson comes from an unusual background: his mother obtained a doctorate in mathematics, as did his father, who taught game theory and theoretical probability at UCLA; Ferguson himself holds a doctorate in computer science from UCLA.

Chris Ferguson, 46 next week, is a brilliant man. To date, he has won more than $7 million playing poker, and reportedly has earned even more than that just through his on-line poker business ventures. Financially, he is wildly successful--and he is wasting his life.

In Chris Ferguson, we have a certifiable hyper-genius, called "one of the more brilliant and creative young men that I've known in my career at U.C.L.A." by his doctoral thesis adviser. (That adviser knows brilliance when he sees it; he is Leonard Kleinrock, whose lab helped develop the Internet.) But to what is Ferguson applying this brilliance? He's playing cards.

We live in a world that faces problems, nasty problems, horrifying problems, human-species-extinction-scale problems. A short list: global terrorism, the threat of bioweapons and suitcase nukes in private hands, famine, weird weather (likely caused by global warming), worst-ever inequities between economic classes, religious extremism that foments suicide attacks and warfare, lack of intercultural understanding, illiteracy, innumeracy, the resurgence of antibiotic-resistant infections, lack of affordable healthcare, a global economy sliding towards a New Depression, kids dying from dysentery and other preventable diseases, by the thousands, daily--hey, asteroids from space. And what's this guy doing? Playing cards.

Yes, I can imagine what some readers are thinking: "If this is a way to waste your life--count me in!" However, before you sign up yourself or your kids for Poker Camp this summer, let me point out a few things.

Our lives are not our own. Every reputable philosophical, spiritual, or religious position holds that people have a responsibility to give back, to do something for the world with their talents. Ferguson--who has sometimes signed autographs as 'Jesus' because of his looks, although reportedly he is an atheist--would do well to consider the real Jesus' parable of the servants (Bible, New Testament, Luke chapter 12), which carries the memorable phrase, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required" (Luke 12:48). Or, if you prefer, as the Spider-Man comic put it, "with great power comes great responsibility." Abraham Maslow, one of the greatest psychologists of the 20th century--himself an atheist--found that an even higher level of motivation than self-actualization (or expressing one's own talents) is self-transcendence, that is, furthering some cause or purpose beyond one's own needs. Few people are better equipped to make a contribution to society at large than Chris Ferguson. But he's playing cards.

I have to wonder what Ferguson's stunning intellect could accomplish in the world. Game theory applies to all sorts of behavior, such as negotiations between groups; in this globalized world, where mistrustful groups face one another left and right, perhaps game theory might help to promote better outcomes in cultural encounters and ethnic conflicts. One might use game theory to better understand the way the stock market melted down recently, to promote better social stability and prosperity for all. Going way out on a limb, I wonder about the application of game theory to evolutionary theory and, in turn, to theories about the development (and thus the treatment) of infectious diseases. (Do cells negotiate amongst themselves? Do species?) I cannot come up with all the ways that Chris Ferguson might apply his prodigious intelligence to the problems of the world--but apply them he certainly might. Nah--he's playing cards.

Perhaps I misunderstand Chris Ferguson. Perhaps he spends his free time working on the mathematics of innovative cures for cancer. If so, I beg his pardon. Based on the known facts, I don't think so.

Isn't this all terribly judgmental? You bet! That's social commentary--and life: applying standards and passing judgment. Working from a reflective perspective just means that I apply standards like "our lives are not our own." The point is not to beat up on Chris Ferguson, but to encourage a more thoughtful approach to life on everyone's part.

On that basis--the idea that one ought to use one's natural gifts for the good of humanity--I'm sorry to say that Chris Ferguson is NOT On The Mark.

Reference

Wilkinson, A. (2009, March 30). What would Jesus bet? The New Yorker, pp. 30-35.

How to Protect Your Computers From the Conficker Computer Worm

In my take on candidates for the 21st Century version of Dante's Inferno, developers of malicious computer software--viruses, worms, spyware, and so forth--are prominent candidates for damnation. (They rotate on the Infernal rotisserie along with terrorists, Ponzi schemers, predatory lenders, tobacco company executives ... hmm, there's another post in here somewhere.)

Now we face the Conficker computer worm, which is widely reported to have already infected many computers, with an activation date of April 1--that is, tomorrow. It seems that the worm has been out on the Internet for some time now, insinuating itself quietly deep within the operating systems of the computers that it infects. No one seems to know what will happen when the worm becomes active on a given computer, but computer security experts have noted that, in recent years, malicious software ('malware') increasingly has been used in identity theft schemes. Thus, Conficker might be looking for credit card information, Social Security numbers, passwords, and so forth. Or, maybe it simply wants to wipe our files clean and write ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY on every sector of our hard drives (written with a nod to Stephen King's The Shining).

To combat this threat, Microsoft offers the concerned computer owner the use of their software, the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner, for free. The program will scan for a wide variety of malware and other computer abnormalities (stuff that makes your computer run inefficiently). After the scan, at your option, the program will fix the problems that it discovers on your computer.

Microsoft also gives you the opportunity to purchase the program for about $50, which will activate the program to run "live" in the background any time that your computer is turned on. There is a free 90-day trial; Microsoft suggests that you de-install any other antiviral or firewall software that you may have installed on your computer at present.

However, you may use the program on an occasional basis, scanning your computer for current infections, for free, at least for now; the 'occasional scan' use of the program does not require de-installation of firewalls or any of that. This is what I tried. The program seemed to work very nicely.

The program can take hours just to scan your files; I estimate that the scan alone took about 6 hours to complete on my computer. Fixes went much more quickly. According to OneCare, my computer was not infected with the Conficker worm or other malware, although there were other abnormalities in my system. These were fixed in a few moments once the scan was complete.

If you do go the Windows OneCare route, please note that you probably should complete the use of the program altogether before midnight tonight, because the Conficker worm is reportedly set to activate on April 1. So, do not plan to just set the scan to work overnight, as I did. You'll need to set it to work as soon as you get home from work, and then go through the repair sequence before midnight. Inconvenient, true. So is getting your identity stolen, or losing all your files. Those of you whose blood pressure spikes did not just result in fatal coronaries will probably see the wisdom of my advice.

This type of scanning and repair does seem like a reasonable step to take. Taking action to protect yourself from malware is definitely On the Mark.

P.S.: Why is a post like this on a blog of social commentary? Because this sort of warning-with-solution reflects a fundamental philosophical position upon which this blog--a blog ostensibly "from a reflective perspective"--is built: we are all in this together. We should look out for one another, watch each other's backs; whatever the metaphor, we should take a proactive approach towards each other's welfare. Peace.

Disclaimer: Nothing on this blog should be as offering legal, medical, business, accounting, financial, or computer advice. The author specifically disclaims responsibility for any real or consequential or other damages that may result from following the advice given on this blog. Readers should consult with appropriate legal, medical, business, accounting, financial, computer, or other professionals before taking any steps recommended in this blog.

There! Now my lawyers are happy.

Is Obama’s Restructuring of GM and Chrysler a Step Toward Socialism?

On Sunday night, the Associated Press reported that Rick Wagoner, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, will step down from his corporate posts immediately, at the request of President Obama. On Monday, the White House will unveil a plan to restructure both General Motors and Chrysler LLC, in exchange for further government assistance to the auto industry; Wagoner’s departure is a condition for this help.

Here is the federal government dictating personnel decisions at the top of the corporate organizational chart, and laying out terms for the restructuring of corporations whose stock is publicly traded. Surely it would be justifiable to ask, is this action by President Obama a step to move the United States towards socialism?

And the answer would be: No.

“Socialism” is an umbrella term for various social and economic theories that have in common the idea that the government should own the means of economic production, and bring about economic equality across the population (that is, absolute equality in terms of final results, not just in terms of equal economic opportunity). In some approaches to socialism, private property is permitted to individuals, and private corporations are permitted to exist, although the government has a strong hand in economic matters; in other approaches to socialism, private property is not permitted, and there are no private corporations. The distinction between ‘strong socialism’ and outright communism is sometimes difficult to find. For some thinkers, socialism and communism are essentially the same, with different terms being used in different places depending upon where one term or another is more socially acceptable.

President Obama’s approach is by no means socialist. It is a strong approach, to be sure, an interventionist approach—but these are difficult times that call for strong measures. Let’s review some essential facts.

For years, the American automobile industry has operated with its head in the sand as the world has changed around it. The industry made only token moves towards improving gasoline mileage, while at the same time it depended for profits on gas-guzzling SUVs. (Hey, I used to own one—great for use as substitute trucks, but gas-guzzlers nonetheless.) The scientific community long knew that oil prices would climb, and widely reported that projection years ago, but auto manufacturers ignored that during an era when the federal government regularly ignored or even suppressed scientific findings that it found inconvenient. Thus, it’s no surprise that as oil climbed to $4 a gallon, people stopped buying American cars. Now, in the New Depression where people don’t want to buy much of anything, even as oil has dropped, consumers aren’t running back to buy autos. For this and other reasons, American carmakers are hanging on by a thread. The AP article reports that GM and Chrysler have survived the New Depression so far on $17.4 billion in federal government aid, and have asked for $21.6 billion more.

In a situation like this, there are four possible approaches:

1. The hard-line, “laissez-faire” capitalist approach: Let the carmakers twist in the wind. Both GM and Chrysler go bankrupt. Tens of thousands of workers are thrown out of work. America loses more manufacturing capacity. Stockholders lose the value of their stocks. The American economy drops that much further into the New Depression. Thank you, President Hoover.
2. The soft-line “cheaty” capitalist approach: Just give these companies all the money they want, and let them do what they want with it. Billions of public dollars disappear without any oversight or accountability, and without really addressing the underlying problems. After a brief period of false hope, we are back at Square One again, and the game continues. Thank you, President Bush.
3. The socialist approach: Nationalize the auto industry, and administer it directly by the federal government. Jobs are saved, but now we have a mixed economy, both capitalist and socialist. That would give a whole new meaning to the term “the American experiment”—but not a welcome one. Thank you, Karl Marx.
4. The measured intervention approach: Assist the industry, but insist on strong federal oversight and direction, until the companies within this industry are capable of standing on their own again. Emphasize accountability and responsibility, at the same time saving jobs and strengthening the economy. Ultimately, a new style of American capitalism—call it “Capitalism 2.0,” or “Responsible Capitalism”—emerges to bring America to a stronger position among the nations of the world. Thank you, President Obama.

The political extremists for whom only two choices exist—laissez-faire capitalism and Stalinist socialism—will castigate President Obama for the actions he will take on Monday. This commentator thinks that President Obama is making the hard, fair, best choice among the available options. As far as we’re concerned, President Obama is On The Mark.

"You Just Haven't Been Caught Yet"

Every once in a while I come upon a statement in the press that expresses an idea—especially a bad idea—so perfectly that I feel I must comment on it. Such a statement came up in an article in today’s New York Times, in a story regarding how a middle-school student came to be strip-searched for drugs.

Ms. Savana Redding was 13 years old and an eighth grader in 2003, “in between nerdy and preppy,” as she now describes her younger self. One of her fellow students had been caught with prescription-strength ibuprofen (basically, double-strength Advil), without a prescription. That student—a kid on the outs with Ms. Redding, apparently—said she had been given the pills by Ms. Redding. On the strength of this accusation (as the article states), Mr. Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered Ms. Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse, and Ms. Helen Romero, a secretary at the school, to strip-search Ms. Redding—which allegedly they did, right down to the skivvies, and then some. No pills were discovered in the search. Ms. Redding has sued the school district, and the case has now reached the United States Supreme Court.

This strip-searching incident was wrong on so many levels. I could fill a very long post detailing the failings of the school officials in this case. However, what attracted my attention in particular was the way the school district responded to one aspect of Ms. Redding’s complaint. As Adam Liptak noted in his Times article:

Ms. Redding said school officials should have taken her background into account before searching her.

“They didn’t even look at my records,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was a good kid.”

The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.” (Liptak, 2009, p. A19, emphasis added)

Well, this is surely news to me. A clean record is not to be taken as implying good conduct, then? It only means that one has never been caught?

This logical principle is utterly dazzling in its moral and even legal implications. One marvels at the things one could assert if one applied this simple principle to people in general—say, to some officials at the Safford [Arizona] Unified School District, and their attorneys:

• The assistant principal in this case, Mr. Kerry Wilson, would probably say that he has a spotless record regarding accusations of child abuse. However, according to the above-mentioned ‘it-just-means-you’ve-never-been-caught’ logical principle, the lack of a record of child abuse allegations does not mean that Mr. Wilson never abused a child. Rather, this lack only means that he was never caught.

• Mr. Wilson’s upstairs boss, the superintendent of schools, Mr. Mark R. Tregaskes, would probably claim that he has a perfect record of innocence regarding accusations of ritual human sacrifice. However, according to the ‘never been caught’ principle, this record does not mean that he never murdered a child, only that he was never caught.

• The two allegedly strip-searching employees, the nurse Ms. Peggy Schwallier, and the secretary Ms. Helen Romero, would likely claim that there have never been any accusations against them regarding child pornography. However, according to the ‘never been caught’ principle, a clean record in this department does not mean that they don’t view child pornography, only that they have never been caught.

• The lawyers for the school district, who wrote the brief stating the groundbreaking ‘never been caught’ principle, would probably be the first to tell you that they have never been arrested for selling crack to fourth-graders. Yet, according to that very principle, the lack of an arrest record does not mean that they didn’t deal drugs, only that they have never been caught—at least, not yet!
  

For the record, I emphasize that I am not saying that Mr. Wilson ever abused a child; I am not saying that Mr. Tregaskes ever ritually sacrificed anyone; I am not saying that Ms. Schwallier or Ms. Romero have ever viewed child pornography; I am not saying that the school district’s lawyers have ever sold crack, to fourth-graders or anyone else. (And, believe me, I would have named these lawyers if only their names had appeared in the newspaper article.) What I am saying is the following:

First, I am trying to encourage better thinking. The whole logic to this position—the idea that the presence of a good record only implies that one hasn’t been caught yet—is essentially immoral. It replaces the presumption of innocence with, at the least, the innuendo of guilt. Sure, a good record actually does not definitively prove that one is innocent. However, this is so obvious as to go without saying. When one says that a clean record only means that a person “was never caught,” this carries at least the implication that this person is actually guilty—a vile implication, at best. Perhaps now Mr. Wilson, Mr. Tregaskes, Ms. Schwallier, Ms. Romero, and the school district’s attorneys can better feel what it is like to be the target of that sort of implication.

There really is a lot at stake here. This line of logic has surfaced from time to time in our society, with nasty consequences.

In the 1980s, as American society became more aware of the actual size of the problem of child sexual abuse, this line of logic emerged and tainted the entire debate on this issue. I read then, and I heard people state the idea, that the fact that a given man had never been accused of child abuse did not mean that he had not committed this crime, it just established that ‘he hadn’t been caught.’ This was an insult to all men, to be sure. Beyond that, and perhaps worse, this bad logic tainted the entire movement to deal with the problem of child abuse—a truly horrific problem. Bad logic taints the best of motives and the best of causes, because it gives the impression that the entire cause is shot through with bad thinking. Thus, bad logic like the ‘never been caught’ principle must be exposed for the trashy thinking that it is.

Second, I want to encourage better legal practice. We are worse as a society when we allow our representatives, such as our attorneys, to use immoral lines of logic to defend a position. Yes, I am familiar with the idea that a defendant is entitled to the best possible defense. I would suggest, though, that the most vicious defense, the most aggressive defense, the ‘take no prisoners’ defense that uses all lines of logic, moral or not—none of these is what I would call the best defense. Memo to the Safford Unified School District: If this defense is the best that your attorneys could come up with, then you should have offered to settle this case a long, long time ago.

A final note: The article reports that Ms. Redding is now at Eastern Arizona College, studying psychology and planning to become a counselor. I don’t know if this blog post will ever reach you, Ms. Savana Redding, but if it does, allow me to mention that I am an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association, I hold a doctorate in Counseling Psychology (NYU, 2000), and if you ever need to discuss your future educational or career plans, just drop me an e-mail: koltkorivera@yahoo.com . Hang in there.


Reference:

Liptak, A. (2009, March 24). Strip-search of young girl tests limit of school policy. The New York Times [Late Edition], pp. A1, A19.