Onus Probandi

Premise 1:  Most people regularly using social media engage in a process of self-marketing, selective sharing, and misinformation intended to present themselves in whatever light they find most favorable.  This applies to real world social interactions as well, but due to scarcity of information and the subject-provided nature of available information on social media, the effect is much more pronounced.  The result is an “online persona” that does not closely reflect reality, or at least not a wide view of reality.

Premise 2:  Most people regularly using social media receive most of their psychological payoff from the process of self-presentation and perhaps imagining how others may be assessing their “online persona”, as opposed to receiving the psychological payoff from assessing the “online personas” of others.  That is to say, it is an essentially narcissistic activity.

Premise 3:  The ubiquity of smartphones and the ability to use these devices to access social media via cell phone networks has resulted in more distractions to persons operating vehicles in public, thereby making driving/riding in a vehicle a significantly more dangerous proposition than it was immediately before the propagation of smartphones.

Conclusion:  People take much higher risk on themselves, and impose higher risk on others, when participating in social media while driving.  The risk versus reward equation is perverse, as the reward for participating is either to increase your consumption of inaccurate or misleading information about others (not what we traditionally think of as rewarding behavior) or else to receive the psychological payoff of an activity entirely narcissistic (i.e. grooming and presenting your “online persona”).  Such narcissism is not illogical as an incentive for increasing one’s risk, however the increased risk to others means that we ought not tolerate such behavior as a society. 

To clarify this last point: if people were causing more car accidents because they were constantly looking in handheld mirrors in order to admire their own physical reflections, we would probably agree that this is unacceptable.  If people were utilizing smartphones to cure disease while driving, and this productivity would otherwise be lost, we may decide that the added risk of car accidents is justified.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

I may not realize my errors in reasoning without feedback.

Something I was thinking about

When comparing the merits and shortfalls of capitalism and Marxism, the criterion for judgment that is most often used is efficiency of production.  GDP.  This is a fine, sensible way to evaluate capitalism, as it is a system which is designed to be the most competitive and most efficient.  If capitalism is also just or compassionate, this is a secondary effect, or unintentional side effect.  Marxism on the other hand, much maligned for the dearth of successful Marxist economies in the world, makes no claims as to efficiency or competitive strength.  It is the ideology founded on social justice and humanity.  A Marxist economy will be far less productive than a capitalist economy, and also far more just and humane.

In the United States we have been indoctrinated with the quasi-religious propaganda of capitalism to such a frightening extent that we, quite sincerely, reject Marxism because it loses to capitalism in the only contest in which we have thought to enter it, namely efficiency of production.  But this is like placing a whale and a thoroughbred on a racetrack and telling them to race for the finish line.  That the thoroughbred will win is assured; he has been bred and trained for just such a contest.  But his breeding will not help him if the two are cast in the ocean and told to hold their breath and dive.

So if we are forced to choose between pure capitalism and pure Marxism for an economic model, it makes more sense to first determine whether we prefer a system which produces the most goods or a system which is the most just and humane.  We cannot, at least in this country, speak from experience as to how a Marxist economy succeeds or fails in its goals, and how the goals of social justice and humanity themselves impact our lives.  But one thing is clear to me.  Under our hybridized capitalist system, we have become so much more productive than previous generations could have guessed, and yet I submit that beyond a certain threshold of material and nutritional prosperity, more GDP does not translate to better lives.  In fact, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to attribute our obesity and diabetes epidemics to an overabundance of cheap nutrition.  In closing, I would like to point out to those who reflexively dismiss Marxism as inherently inferior to capitalism that if productivity was truly the most sacred end of an economic system, then our society would not have put in place all of the regulations and restrictions which make our society more equal, more safe, and more fair, and less purely capitalistic.

Marketing Ingredients

I enjoy reading the absurd special ingredients supposedly in shampoo.  I'll refer to them as "marketing ingredients" because not only are they not actually present in the shampoo, they're often not even real.  The exist solely to exploit that special type of ignorance which wants to believe that something that sounds exotic must be a superior product.  I recently compiled a list of these marketing ingredients in a single trip to a grocery store.  This is only a taste of the bizarre world of shampoo; if you want to see the truly strange, go to a beauty/makeup/whatever-you-call-it store (my favorite marketing ingredient of all time is Volcanic Ash).  I've divided the marketing ingredients into Food and Non-Food categories in order to highlight the ridiculous prevalence of food items used as marketing ingredients.  The shampoo aisle is starting to look like the salad dressing aisle.
Without further ado:

Non-Food Marketing Ingredients:
Argan Oil from Morocco
 Natural Bamboo Extract
Sea Algae Extract
Shea Protein & Warm Vanilla
Caffeine Energizer
Camellia Oil
Grape Seed Oil
Water Lily Extract + Apricot Splash
Australian Teatree Oils, Moisturizing Milk Proteins, Micro-infused Peppermint Oils
Cherry Blossom Extracts, Asian Ginseng Root, Rice Milk, Bamboo Extract
Awapuhi Ginger Extract
Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein

Food Marketing Ingredients
Avocado Oil
Melon Essence
Cupuacu and Brazilnut Oil
Almond + Shea Butter
Rosemary + Mint
White Grapefruit and Mint Extract
Herbal Mint Fusion Extracts
Strawberries & Cream with Soy Milk Protein
Kiwi Lime squeeze with Lemongrass Extract
Fusion of Wild Violet and Pomegranate
Natural Fruit Fibers, Cucumber and Papaya Extract
Acai Berry Antioxidant
Superfruit Beads with Goji Berry + Passionfruit & Kiwi
3 Nourishing Oils: Avocado, Olive, and Almond
Coconut Milk, Ultra Whipped Egg White Proteins, Weightless Coconut Oils
Macademia Oil, Sugar Cane Extract, Bamboo Extract
Coconut Oil, Keratin Proteins, Avocado Oil, and Cocoa Butter

I'll add to this list as I find keepers.  Feel free to post your own in the comments and I will update the list.

Down and Up

I have been trying to force myself to get something out before the end of the month, as I have set myself a goal of at least one post per month this year.  I've been super busy building stuff for work, and now that I'm back down to a 40 hr/wk schedule I have struggled to get anything out because I've been kinda down.  Even this afternoon I was planning on writing a post about how alone I feel in the world.  You see, I am an unusual kind of guy.  I am extremely anti-partisan politically, yet feel strongly about politics, so I don't fit in with Republicans or Democrats.  I don't watch very much tv because I can't stand commercials.  I have better things to do than watch sports, even though I do enjoy watching them.  I listen to NPR instead of pop, country, hip-hop, or whatever.  I like to read, but I don't read the fad books (exception: ASOIAF).  I got married and had a kid long before any of my friends, and now that they're catching up I'm getting divorced.  I'm a combat veteran, which makes people assume I have PTSD.  These traits, and others (especially the fact that I'm a bit anti-social by nature) have caused me to be a social outcast, despite the fact that I think most people would describe me as a decent, friendly, intelligent dude.  This has been fine because I am perfectly happy alone.  The emotional fatigue has set in recently because of the requisite social interactions of having a job and from being treated like absolute dogshit by a woman to whom I thought I was a pretty good husband.  I used to have a very healthy self esteem, but after discovering the infidelity in my marriage I became much more self-conscious about my ability to attract women physically.  Then, after being repeatedly marginalized and ignored at my job, despite what I felt was my obvious value, meanwhile watching employees whom I viewed as less valuable receiving recognition and raises, I began to question my entire self perception.  This led me to desire social feedback, in order to better understand the reality of my worth as a person.  Unfortunately, that feedback is meaningless coming from people whom I don't respect and who don't share my values.  So I have been wondering what a guy like me has to do to find someone who fits the bill.  You know, an intelligent, honest, upstanding person who thinks that philosophy is more important than football, who wants to talk about reality tunnels and lucid dreaming instead of some dumb shit they saw on youtube, and who is willing and able to listen to somebody else while keeping a truly open mind.  It seems hopeless.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure s/he is out there, many thousands of times over, but they are invisible, like me.  I'm a big tattooed guy who works outside for a living, drives an old car, and doesn't own a suit.  I seriously doubt that many people assume that I'm an intellectual at first glance.

Then something unexpected happened.  Purely by chance I wound up in a used bookstore this afternoon.  Dog Eared Pages Used Book Store.  This isn't too unexpected for someone like me, but the proprietors of this particular shop were so unusually wonderful and friendly that after a single conversation with each of them I felt my hope in humanity partly restored.  Plus, one of them is an author which just made my day.  Then I checked out their website, and annaquesterly.com, and was further impressed with their operation and with Anna's blog.  We share a few interests, it seems.  Such a small thing it was, finding this place and these people, but it really put the wind back in my sails.  Imagine how I would feel if someone actually read this and left a comment. ;)

CHECK OUT THESE FIVE NAUGHTY CELEBRITY TATTOOS!

Call me a pessimist, but I've frequently thought that if all the recent economic ugliness has a silver lining, it must be that when quality of living and income inequality get bad enough, people will wake up.  The very people who caused this mess will face a backlash from the "99%".  And watching the super wealthy squirm and cry and lose everything when the party bus comes screeching to a halt does hold a certain appeal to me.  Not retribution, but justice.  After all, when  corporations are granted personhood by our judicial branch it can only be a matter of time before the torch mobs start forming.  Or so I thought.  Then upon listening to an incredible TED Talk by William Black which pointed out (among many other gems) the utter dearth of criminal prosecutions following the subprime mortgage debacle (he says there are zero to date) despite overwhelming evidence of fraud at every level of high finance, I thought that working class (read: poor) Americans would be calling for blood.  After all, people can only be pushed so far and Americans have a reputation for (and a long history of) being easily riled and recalcitrant.

Then yesterday I heard this piece on NPR's Here and Now program.  It describes the plight of retirement-age Americans continuing to work out of necessity, and the phenomenon of their willingness to live as migrant workers, living out of RVs and doing work that would normally be considered a bit hard for their age.  And it is a story of human resilience and determination, but I couldn't help but feel severely let down by it.  Here's why: It is an incredible windfall for mega corporations like Amazon (and many others, to be fair).  Not only will things continue to get worse with respect to income inequality and corporate profiteering, but the retiree voting bloc has long been one of the most feared and respected.  If they can't retire because they lost pensions, savings, and home equity, and they have the will to challenge the system, they would be effective.  Instead, they put their nose back to the grindstone and decide to keep on slogging for another decade or so, even for subsistence pay and no benefits.  Such an attitude would be virtuous, were it not feeding back into a corrupt system of economic oppression and generational looting.

EDIT: 12/23/2014 I have held the opinion that corporations such as W*l-M*rt are defrauding the taxpayers by paying a wage below subsistence rates while encouraging employees to take advantage of government benefits such as foodstamps and Medicaid, on the premise that the jobs would not be filled if the compensation was insufficient for survival, and also disqualified the workers from said government programs.  I suppose if Am*z*n is hiring retirement-age folks without benefits, it probably occurred to them that this will be tolerated because so many of these workers have Medicare benefits...
END EDIT-----------------

Well, maybe we'll just have to wait until Social Security goes belly-up before the common people demand justice.  Unfortunately the most guilty parties will be six feet under by then, or at the very least living out their luxurious retirement in a far away land, probably one without extradition treaties.

A Puzzle Solved, No Solution Found

I have long been puzzled by the phenomenon of my countrymen voluntarily aligning themselves with one or another political archetype despite the undeniable absurdity of each.  I thought, "most people seem to be decent; most people identify as either liberal or conservative; neither ideology is decent.  What gives?"  Then I figured it out.  People tend to form their beliefs about social issues based mostly upon their own extremely narrow experience, as opposed to thinking deeply and abstractly about them.  For example, I know a person (we'll call him Hank) who seems to me to be a decent person.  Hank has very conservative views.  Pro-business, anti-labor, pro-military, anti-welfare, pro-gun, anti-immigrant, etc. etc.  How could a guy like Hank love his children and yet harbor no compassion for minimum wage workers?  The answer, I believe, is jaw-droppingly simple.  Hank was born into a middle class family, raised with white American middle class values, went to college, worked hard, and now makes a comfortable living.  As far as he can see, he has behaved according to the plan and it has worked.  Amazing.  He thinks that anyone who is struggling, ill, making minimum wage, or in any other way not succeeding, it is because they deviated from the plan.  The plan works! If you haven't arrived, it's because you did it wrong.  Your fault, your problem.  It is inconceivable (or at least unconceived) by Hank that a person could work hard and that the vicissitudes of fate may not reward her.  In this way Hank does not feel fortunate for what he has.  He feels justified.  This only exacerbates the problem, because while he's calling the welfare recipients lazy, they're becoming rabidly resentful of his class, ungrateful for their good fortune.

For the other side of the coin, I'll invent an imaginary character.  I'll name her Sophie.  Sophie grew up in a working class family, watched her parents struggle to make ends meet for the entirety of her childhood, witnessed some injustice that she interpreted as oppression by the wealthy, grew up, and now she works for Hank.  Sophie's dad has recently lost his job through no fault of his own (as far as Sophie knows), and is now reliant on unemployment benefits.  In Sophie's eyes, Hank is lucky to have his job, her dad is unlucky to have lost his, and all she hears at work is Hank railing against the greediness and laziness of the unemployed.  It seems natural for Sophie to form pro-labor/anti-business sentiments based on her perceptions of her long-suffering father and undeservedly fortunate boss.

If my hypothesis about this is correct, then I suppose that should be received as equal parts good and bad news.  Good because it should be very simple to demonstrate to a person that the narrowness and paltry experience of their personal life cannot be relied upon as sufficient evidence when formulating social and political beliefs.  Bad because it means that humans are even less prone to careful and critical thinking than I had previously believed. 

Maybe we deserve a completely fucked-up, dysfunctional government which attracts ethically vapid megalomaniacs like flies to shit.

Physical Beauty

Are the beautiful people aware of the feelings and impressions that they leave in their wake as they trudge through the mundane activities of their lives?  Do they even trudge, or does their beauty make sufficient impression on their reality that the trudging is largely obviated, either because more of their coworkers, bosses, friends, and even the strangers with whom they interact make additional effort on behalf of the beautiful, or else because the quiet knowledge of their beauty gives them additional reserves of hopefulness, positivity, and confidence?  Are they even aware of their beauty?  Certainly.  But are they aware that there are also souls behind the non-beautiful faces?  Do they even realize that the random (or at least remote) processes that conspired to convey the undeserved gift of physical beauty upon them have also resulted in a larger number of malformed, twisted, plain, and poorly proportioned creatures, all of whom have a burning desire to be beautiful?  Can the beautiful even understand this vain, frustrated, clawing, begging, impossible desire; or is their experience, limited as it is to being beautiful, insufficient to permit them understanding how a person can rage against the very cosmos because of the vision greeting them in the mirror every morning.

The beautiful woman gazes approvingly upon her reflection, worrying perhaps over a new wrinkle, a stray hair, or the faint coffee stains on her teeth.  Perhaps she wonders how much longer her breasts will remain perky and firm, or whether she is getting the exact correct amount of sunlight in order to give the desired skin tone without damaging the beautiful tissue.

The non-beautiful person is consistently and unpleasantly surprised by their reflection, as their residual self image is always improving on itself.  Bringing the eyes closer together, straightening the teeth, erasing the skin blemishes, trimming the excess fat.  When reality and self image become sufficiently diverged, a queer sense of lack of ownership settles in.  "I suppose this is how I look to everyone else.  If only they could see how I truly look.  Alas, I am sentenced to spend my life entombed within the ugly form of another, my true beauty never to be known or admired."

Don't even read this, it will rot your soul

I heard a couple of days ago that our President would be presenting a Congressional Medal of Honor to a member of the armed services.  My diseased brain  took in this information and immediately formulated a question that I think is fascinating, albeit a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Here it is:

All other things being equal, do women cheat on men who have been awarded CMHs?

This is admittedly politically incorrect (or as my daughter used to say "un-correct") but I am genuinely very curious.  Is our nation's highest military honor sufficient to compel a would-be-unfaithful woman to stay true to her man?  My guess is no.

Something for Everyone!

What follows is a thought process that I have been meaning to share for a few years, but I was never able to rouse the courage to (metaphorically speaking) put it down on paper.  It consists of a philosophical analysis of social attitudes toward two institutions in America: Business and Labor.  Specifically, I mean the justification of free-market capitalism and organized labor unions.  It seems to me that, anecdotally, very few people have no strong feelings about these two usually adversarial forces.  People tend to either rail against the greed and oppression of "Corporations" or else sneer contemptuously at the laziness and inefficiency of "Unions".  I intend to argue that the two are more closely related than we think, and perhaps inseparable.

First, for the sake of disclosure, I will state my perception of each institution, not as an argument but in order to increase the transparency of my thinking and hopefully aid in exposing any fallacies or errors in my argument.  I think that Business is largely honest about its motives (profit, profit, and profit) and doesn't pretend to serve any altruistic causes.  I think that Labor usually seeks to provide the best possible wages and conditions for workers, but certainly creates some corruption and occasionally makes mistakes, and some unions are likely just as greedy as the Businesses that they lambast.  That being said, I tend to be somewhat more sympathetic toward Labor than toward Business.  My two reasons for this are as follows:

1.  History.  Workers have historically been the victims of some ghastly oppressions.  I never learned about the Coal Wars in school despite a voracious appetite for history, so I think a majority of Americans may be largely ignorant of this important piece of our history.  If this applies to you, I strongly suggest that you stop reading this and immediately familiarize yourself with the topic.

2.  Consequences of "overreaching".  Simply put, if we err on the side of labor, we may damage or destroy a local industry, injure the economy, and put out of work the very workers which we had been trying to help.  This seems to be a relatively self-evident and easily corrected problem.  If we err on the side of protecting business and stripping workers of rights, we may entrench and institutionalize a system of oppression which will, at least, violate the dignity of the working class and at worst may result in a violent  backlash against the monied class.  I don't wish to see blood in the streets.

Now, my basic theory here is that the "philosophy" used to justify and explain the virtues of capitalism serves also to justify and explain the organization of labor. I feel the need to make this case because labor organization is so frequently (and in my opinion, ignorantly) accused of being communist or Marxist.  So here it goes:

(Again for Full Disclosure, I took this next section pretty much directly from Karl Marx)
Historical Primer:  Before the industrial age the guild system reigned supreme.  Craftsmen learned specialized skills via the apprenticeship >> journeyman >> master program, and trade secrets were carefully guarded.  The result was a class of craftsmen that were well paid and well respected for their abilities.  Of course there was still an enormous agrarian "peasant" class, but they are not the focus here.  With the onset of industrialization, skilled craftsmen became obsolete and were replaced by unskilled machine operators and laborers.  Because of the replaceability of these laborers, wages were low, hours were long, and conditions were awful and hazardous workplaces were the norm.  For the first time, the capitalists were paying labor by the hour.  In a very literal sense workers were dehumanized and their labor was commoditized.  Ever since, the cost of labor has been viewed by business as just another input into the cost of providing a good or service, alongside raw materials and administrative overhead.

Now to bring it all together.  Capitalism is lauded as a kind of natural selection for business.  The market is supposed to tolerate a certain ideal price for each good and service based on supply and demand.  Noncompetitive prices are eliminated and efficiency is constantly refined in an effort to provide a good or service at the lowest price available.  Profit is not evaluated on a moral basis, that is, as long as your firm's goods/services are the cheapest around, you may ethically pocket the difference of that price and your input costs, regardless of the size of that difference.  Therefore labor costs, as an input, are systematically driven down in order to either increase profit or decrease the market price.  Fair summation?  I think so.  Let's move on to the labor side of the coin.

I want you to think of the laborer as his or her own firm for the purposes of this comparison.  His input costs are basically his cost for lodging, groceries, clothing, and the other necessities of life that enable him to sell his labor to the highest bidder.  After all, this labor is the good/service offered on the market by this person, same as a farmer selling produce or a surgeon selling  medical intervention.  This laborer will sell her labor to the organization willing to provide the best price, although in our society the equation is complicated by things like benefits and social regard.  So an organization of laborers cooperating in order to maximize their wages is identical in principal to the business seeking to maximize profit.

These labor unions will also be subject to market pressures; unions demanding noncompetitive wages will be eliminated.  Obviously this result is contrary to the laborers' interest, and so by the magic of capitalism, an ideal balance between market price, labor wages, and business profit should occur.  My final thought here is that Labor and Business should strive for a cooperative (as opposed to adversarial) relationship in order to reduce the number of strikes, stoppages, etc.  Also, if you are a fat cat businessman/woman and are frustrated by what you see as the corruption present in the union leadership (as distinct from the laborer-members), then perhaps a good course of action would be to champion education of the working class, as a conscientious and astute laborer is more likely to recognize and decry the wastefulness of her organization, all the while cultivating a pride and appreciation for her employer.

See, that wasn't terribly Marxist, was it? ; )

A 21st Century Watson

I made a simple electronic repair yesterday.  I am very proud.  I had two pair of  broken headphones and zero functional pair, so I cut the bottoms (3.5mm jack) off of each and spliced the functional top half to the functional bottom half using a soldering iron.  This was my very first time soldering anything, and when I had finished (including troubleshooting the hands free button functionality) I tested them by plugging them into my phone and playing music.  My daughter was persistently requesting that I stop to play spaceship with her, so I said, "okay almost done, let's see if the microphone works."

She held the earbuds up to her little ears and I pressed the hands free button and gave the first command that came to mind: "Call *****," the name of my soon-to-be ex-wife and the mother of my daughter. It worked flawlessly, and as my phone began to dial it occurred to me that of course I didn't wish to speak to her so I hurriedly ended the call before it connected.  Then my daughter and I played spaceship.

It occurred to me this morning, as I was still reveling in my undeserved pride, that this must be a similar sensation to how Alex G. Bell felt after his famous, "Watson - come here - I want to see you," transmission (granted that he was one of modern humanity's greatest achievers and I merely soldered four pairs of wires together).  I only wish that I had a Watson with whom I could have shared my tiny success story.

The Headline of the Year

However you feel about Vlad Putin, we owe him thanks for setting in motion the events that made possible a news story that could be summarized with perhaps one of the greatest headlines in human history: Pussy Riot horse-whipped by Cossacks

Cost of Sochi Olympics: $51,000,000,000
Pussy Riot horse-whipped by Cossacks: Priceless

Two and a Half New Features on the Exchange!

Although I am certain nobody noticed, a short while ago I added a quotation to my front page.  I decided that I should also link to a quotation archive where all previously displayed quotations are available for your pleasure.  That's one and a half new features.  Tonight I added an entirely new section titled, "Puzzles, Trivia, and General Interest" which I hope is as exciting to someone else as it is to me.  I think my only readers thus far are probably NSA data mining algorithms, but here's to hoping!

Who's Responsible?

As a dabbler in philosophy, I have spent some time pondering a question that has plagued philosophers for millennia.  Namely, what is the nature of free will?  This is usually addressed in the context of a religious or counter-religious argument revolving around the compatibility of predestination, divine pre-knowledge, and our ability to make choices both simple and profound.  This is a fascinating conversation, but not one that I am interested in indulging at the moment.  I am more concerned with the role of free will in a social context.  This question can be tailored so as to apply to every aspect of society.  For example, let's look at socio-economic classes (I hope that's the "vogue" terminology right now).

It  seems to be an American tradition to believe in social (upward) mobility, that anyone with work ethic can "pull themselves up from their bootstraps" (I don't know what bootstraps are) and achieve a good life regardless of one's birth, or one's parents' station.  This is an optimistic and comforting notion, that many of the upper class citizens became such through personal achievement and hard work, and that the poor deserve our pity only to the extent that we pity their laziness and wasted opportunity.  Sounds harsh, I know, but I at least agree that, if true, this system is preferable to one in which the poor are such because of circumstances beyond their control.  That would be unjust.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am employed full time and make well below the national median income.

I will now steer the conversation toward the philosophically interesting part, but I would first like to acknowledge that there does seem to be a growing trend of rejecting this notion of unfettered social mobility in the media.  And that is another fascinating conversation that I would love to pursue with you, but not in this post.  So, if a person is born with a severe mental or physical handicap which prevents them from participating in the workforce, no reasonable person would fault them for not achieving.  If a person is born to a junkie mother in an abusive home, but seems to be more or less physically whole, maybe some of us decide that such a person does not get the same "pass" as the handicapped person does.  If a person is born into a "normal" family environment, but has emotionally distant parents or suffers mild psychological abuse, probably more of us are going to take the stance that such a person can be expected to thrive in our society if they so choose.  And finally, if a person is born without any identifiable disadvantages, probably most of us are going to expect them to succeed in society (provided they want to).

The point in all this is that we as a society have a very wide-ranging set of beliefs on where the threshold of environmental factors in social achievement ends, and therefore where personal responsibility begins.  And drawing that line arbitrarily somewhere between severe physical/mental handicap at birth and a "perfect" childhood seems, well, rather arbitrary.  Perhaps we are looking at the problem the wrong way.  Maybe "work ethic" and "laziness" are not characteristics that we can take personal credit for.  Maybe they are as much a part of our environmental circumstances as genetic disease and abusive, neglectful parents.  I know, I know, this sounds like some socialist drivel to some of you, but consider this:
If you view hard work as a personal achievement that you can take credit for, then likely you would consider yourself a hard worker, at least to some extent.  If so, then you and I have something in common.  I consider myself to be a hard worker.  If I were forced one day to label complete strangers as either "lazy" or "hardworking" based on the extremely incomplete information set yielded by my passing observation, I would certainly encounter folks that I would label as "lazy".  So I certainly don't deny the existence of lazy people, but rather I wonder if they choose to be lazy, or put differently, if they would prefer to be hardworking.

Here is my reasoning.  If I am correct in evaluating myself as being relatively hardworking, then I am certainly glad that I am not lazy.  In fact, I wouldn't mind being an even harder worker.  Now the limiting factor on my laziness is stress.  I don't want to spend most of my time working so that I can afford an apartment and a car that enable me to spend most of my time working.  But the stress of being homeless or without transportation or without food would be so taxing that it is simply easier for me to spend most of my time working in a dead-end job.  In fact I show up early every day in order to avoid the stress of constantly cutting it close.  That's just the way I am wired.  So if a person is free from those stresses, what precisely is their motive to work hard?  I don't endorse a lazy lifestyle, but I sure as hell don't endorse my lifestyle either.  Freeloading or being exploited? Seems like a "lesser of two evils" kinda thing to me.

Anyway, I'll wrap this up.  I wonder if our work ethic is outside our control, and if it is, doesn't that dramatically change the way we look at society, success, poverty, and fairness?  For an interesting tie-in, here's a podcast about a similar way of looking at criminal guilt.

Eternity, Identity, and You Pt. 1

This post is the first of a planned three-part series.  Part one deals with the terminal view of hell, part two deals with some questions regarding the nature of heaven, and part three examines questions of identity.

I'm going to begin by listing some assumptions that I am making for this post.  This post is concerned with the Christian biblical explanation of Hell, and sin, etc. as it has been explained to me throughout my life.  The short version: 100% of humans are born destined for Hell as we are sinful by nature.  We will all commit sins in our lifetimes, any single one of which is sufficient to compromise our afterlife in heaven with God.  Any and all sins are forgiven if we ask God, due to the sacrifice of Jesus.  By accepting the gift of His grace, and repenting from our nature, we are granted eternity in Heaven.  No amount of action on our part (besides the above) can possibly be sufficient to earn this forgiveness. It is and must be given freely.  The lack of God's grace and forgiveness sentences a person to eternity in Hell, apart from God.  Okay, I think that fairly sums it up.

The argument that I intend to make here is this: Eternal damnation is inconsistent with the nature of God as He is described, and so if we don't wish to scrap the whole religion, we must find a different explanation for the nature of Hell.

Eternal Damnation is Inconsistent with the nature of God as He is described

This seems to me to be a relatively simple argument to follow.  Here 'goes.
Premises:
A) God created man
B) God knew every man's fate before creation (omniscience)
C) God is love (I admit that this one is a bit ambiguous but, hey, I didn't come up with it)
D) Hell is suffering
E) A soul condemned to hell spends eternity in hell (This I mean to disprove)

Now, if we take A and B together, then it follows that God created Adam and Eve with the foreknowledge that they would sin.  This means that He knew countless souls would be sentenced to Hell.
Call this A + B => F
F) God created man knowing that many would die and go to Hell
Then E + D => G
G) Hell is infinite and suffering, hence it is infinite suffering
F + G => H
H) God created humankind with the knowledge that He was creating infinite suffering

I propose that creating a system with the foreknowledge that it will cause infinite suffering is inconsistent with the idea that the creator is possessed of "perfect love".  in other words, C and H are incompatible.

Now in my experience, Christians get really defensive here.  I don't know why.  Their own behavior is in accordance with my assertion here: if a person fervently believes in premises E and G, that is a person lacking salvation is destined for infinite suffering, then it seems to me that such a person has a moral obligation to devote their life to helping others attain salvation.  The idea that another person, whether evil, a stranger, an acquaintance, or a loved one, is going to suffer infinitely would, in my mind, bother me so deeply that I wouldn't be able to ignore or accept it.  And yet a statistically insignificant percentage of Christians live a life devoted to "saving" others.  And most don't even make a halfhearted effort.

Consider this: Humanity is not likely to exist in its mortal form forever.  Even if we don't kill ourselves or fall prey to a hostile force or cosmic disaster, the last source of energy in the universe will one day decay, making life impossible.  So barring any divine intervention that would "rewind" the entropy of the universe, there will be an end to humanity.  Now however long our run may be, all of the suffering experienced by the human race for any finite amount of time is a finite amount.  So one single soul condemned to eternity in hell suffers more than the sum total of the human race.  Not only does this seem an odd tenet of a religion, but it also precludes the argument that, even after death, a person's evil influence will continue to propagate and cause more suffering, thereby warranting additional penance.

So in conclusion, unless I've missed something, it seems that we have to decide that one of the premises I've given is false.  Either Hell isn't suffering, or it isn't eternal, or God isn't love, or He didn't know that mankind would sin, or He isn't omnipotent.  Anybody object?

INSERT OBLIGATORY NEW YEAR REFERENCE HERE

I've been absent from the exchange again.  I apologize to my nonexistent readers.  Had some health issues recently, and some other issues, but I am still alive and I at least intend to be more diligent about posting here.  Note that I do not resolve to be more diligent.  Happy 2014.  May its splendor outshine its predecessor.