Month: July 2022

I’ve had an interesting week on Facebook since I launched my Fully Present Better Human page. Since it is a public page, it is seen by anyone and everyone and apparently there are some older white men who came across my posting and felt compelled to attack the notion of encouraging people to be fully present better humans. They surfaced when I posted that Better Humans tell the truth. My comment accompanying the poster read, “The truth is the foundation for good decision making. Better humans value the truth and refuse to spread conspiracies, misinformation, speculation and lies. How do you find the truth these days?”

I was called a Marxist, a Socialist and a sellout. I was told I was pushing a mob narrative. I was rightly accused of being a Trump hater. And of course, one of them assumed I was in favor of murdering babies. They acted in tandem, agreeing with each other in their synchronized attack on my page. At one point, I wondered if these men actually knew each other and were a gang of bullies trolling Facebook for people to bully. They were clearly hostile. One blamed people like me for the culture wars and division in the country. One of them said he had done research on who I was, having read some of my writings, for which I thanked him. At the end, two of them summed up their remarks by telling me to be keep quiet about my ideas. Of course, I refused.

But one of the conversations ended on a positive note. The man had been a police officer who initially called me brainwashed and pointed to my support for inclusion and social justice as the root of the division in the nation. He’s the one who claimed to have read some of my writing. I explained that if advocating for inclusion rather than discrimination or justice as opposed to injustice was divisive then I hoped for more “divisive” people like me. It was when we disclosed our personal backgrounds, me as an educated black female and he as a police officer with PTSD that we finally came to an understanding. He stopped calling me names. We came to a common understanding that we both spent our lives in service to others both in our professional and private lives. Saturday morning, I noticed that he deleted most of his posts from the page and that what remains are my rebuttals.

It is interesting and a bit unsettling that grown white men feel so threatened by simple ideas to be better human beings in service to our planet and our society would invite such an attack. But it did. And I was more than ready to defend my position. I do admit that I spent a few minutes revisiting the basics of Marxism, Socialism, and Capitalism in the process. So, here’s where I landed.

I’m not a Marxist. A Marxist centers class warfare between capitalist business owners and workers to the eventual overthrow of capitalism in favor of communism or state-controlled production of goods and services and the elimination of private ownership and profits. I am a capitalist in favor of regulation that prevents the extreme exploitation of workers, politics, and the environment for the purpose of expanding profits. I don’t think the market economy can fully protect individuals and the environment from unscrupulous greedy business owners in the short-term, so regulation is necessary. And I do believe that we have allowed too much capitalist money to unduly influence our politics and policy making as well as our news media. I think our news media should be funded independently with public funds and not owned by wealthy businessmen like Rupert Murdock. However, when it comes to healthcare, criminal justice, infrastructure, and education I prefer to keep the profit incentive of capitalism out of the picture. So, in these sectors, I am more of a socialist. Socialism calls for the production and distribution of these services to be regulated by the community as a whole.

In the end, I’m grateful for the attacks this week. They lead to greater personal clarity on my positions, and I was able to articulate them in my rebuttals. These public arguments provide the opportunity for others to hear different sides to an issue. I avoid name-calling and insults, opting instead to respectfully state my position and my rationale. I’m a kind person by nature and I’m able to genuinely wish them well, although they seem to become even angrier by it. In the future, I will likely continue to engage with people who attack me on Facebook. That is their right. But it is also my right and I feel it is my responsibility to onlookers to defend my ideas and my right to voice my opinion. As a person striving to become a better human for a better world, I will never shrink away from advocating for what I believe is right and good.

This past week it became evident that we needed to purchase a new oven range. In the past, we had maintained a paid subscription to Consumer Reports, and we would rely on their descriptions, ratings, and rankings on products before making a purchase. However, after purchasing three major appliances that had received top ratings but proved to be less than stellar, we cancelled our subscription. Consumer Reports lost their credibility. So, last year we purchased a microwave without Consumer Reports. We did the leg work of considering each model’s brand reputation, reading the specs, consulting salespeople and customer reviews, and closely examining all the features of each model in person. Unlike the Consumer Reports recommended washer and dryer and dishwasher we purchased; we are 100% happy with the microwave we chose without its help. And so, we again followed the microwave method this week and on Friday purchased a lovely oven range that has incredible features that we are confident will meet our needs. But here’s the thing, in a busy and complicated world, it’s helpful to have credible information sources to rely on for good decision making. But like Consumer Reports, many previously reliable sources have loss credibility. The difference is that many have lost their credibility because they are under attack, not because they have failed to deliver.

Certain sectors have lacked credibility for a long time. Few people trust a used car salesman. Perhaps even fewer trust the advertisements of large corporations. And fewer than that trust politicians. Most of us realize that the greedy self-interest of these parties creates their credibility problems. We recognize their bait and switch tactics, their obvious lack integrity, and their long record of failing to deliver. It’s our common knowledge of these shortcomings that has provided us some protection. Their lack of credibility is attached to their consistently poor performance record. However, many Americans today are questioning the credibility of important information sources based on the narrative of a few bad actors rather than actual merit.

In just a few short years, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdock, and their Republican allies managed to destroy the credibility of sources in our lives that we have historically relied on for vital information. Using the cult of personality, the public’s lack of critical thinking skills, and exploiting institutional weaknesses, they infiltrated the television and radio airways and used the internet and social media to strategically sow doubt and confusion about the information coming from previously credible institutions that provided us with news, history, science, and health information.

Without hesitation, they took every opportunity to characterize scientists and health professionals as liars when they rightly needed to revise previous statements with evolving or new information on a topic. They used minor mistakes in journalism to characterize mainstream news media outlets as purveyors of “fake news”, ignoring the many corrections and updates. They manufactured false accusations against their enemies without evidence, calling democrats pedophiles, socialists, or communists and President Biden senile. They exaggerated basic lessons in human sexuality, American history, and science to characterize schools and teachers as evil masterminds who are corrupting children’s minds. They mischaracterized a prayerful knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality to be un-American.

These days, many Americans have ceased to trust the news, the science, the teachers, the researchers, and even worse, our public health officials. The proliferation of lies and omissions, conspiracies, deflections and misinformation directed toward a largely uneducated and gullible general public in this country has not only wreaked havoc on civil discourse but has cost people their lives due to COVID-19 and has stressed our medical system.

When I listen to the Washington Journal public forum on C-Span early each morning, I am both amazed and disheartened by the people who call in to repeat conspiracy theories, disproven lies, and their own feelings of hatred and distrust of the government, science, the news, and public health officials. When asked where they get their information, they often cite the internet, their own research (whatever that means), or they won’t admit to the obvious source, Fox News political pundits. The moderators are careful not to scold the viewers who call in spouting nonsense; they leave that task to other viewers. I admit that it is often frustrating, but it demonstrates a couple of things important observations about what we must do as individuals who desire to preserve our sources of credible information.

There are seven things we must do: 1) We must protect our schools and teachers by showing up to school board meetings and PTS meetings so that we can support the efforts to teach basic American civics, history, science, and critical thinking in K-12. 2) We must financially support investigative journalism with paid newspaper subscriptions and only watch actual news reporting on television, not the hours of commentary about the news. 3) We need to label our own protestations as either opinion, speculation or fact while asking our friends to do the same. 4) We need to remind our children and each other that new information rightfully leads to a modification in recommendations and actions and does not mean we were lied to. 5) We need to gently remind our religious brothers and sisters that when they insist that their religious beliefs become law, they are inviting a theocracy no different from the Taliban. 6) We need to expose the nature of cults and cult leaders. 7) We need to remind ourselves and encourage others to allow our reason to temper our emotions.

As a community of friends and family, we have a duty to help each other return credibility to sectors of our society who have had their credibility stripped away by nefarious actors hell-bent on causing confusion and distress so that they can rule with impunity and unfettered power. Credibility is earned and sustained, not by perfection, but by integrity and the delivery of reliable information over time. It should never be given nor removed on the basis of mere accusations by a charismatic personality whether that personality occupies the White House, is on television, or is heard on the radio.

I hate watching the news these days because it leaves me angry, frustrated, sad, fearful, and feeling overwhelmed by incidents of evil perpetrated by evil doers. Too often, it feels like our world has been completely overtaken by evil. But then I go to the grocery store and experience the everyday common courtesies of human beings just trying to live happy and peaceful lives. I enjoy spontaneous conversations with “masked” individuals in grocery store aisles or at the checkout line and the unexpected insertion of humorous life situations that often present themselves while I’m out and about. These little gems remind me that most people are decent, peace-loving, fair, and kind-hearted. I realize that most people value truth and reliable information. But I also realize that most people make up a silent majority who need to do much more to make our demands for goodness heard.

There’s this song from a children’s album titled, “Music Machine” that I often played for my kids when they were growing up. The lyrics were taken directly from Bible verse Romans 12:21 that reads, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” To this day, the melody and the words continuously ring in my head and have become an anthem for my life. Evil exists, but I have enough faith to believe that it can be overcome by good. So, what exactly is evil in my thinking and how do I define good?

I’ve come to define evil as the intentional and unprovoked perpetration of harm upon others. Evil doers are people driven by unfettered internal bloodthirst, sadism, masochism, greed, and self-interest. Evil doers inflict pain and suffering upon others with or without remorse. They have little to no self-control over their emotional need to see others suffer or to amass wealth, exert power, obtain fame or gain prestige at all costs. They are the devil incarnate who come only to kill, steal, and to destroy. Their tools are confusion, deceit, fearmongering, coercion, and violence. I believe the truly evil are rare individuals among us, but they are so outrageous in their behavior and so loud in their proclamations that they capture the headlines of our news media every day. In our collective desire to be entertained, we give them the biggest platform to efficiently spread their poison on television, at rallies, and through social media. Unfortunately, enough of us ushered these evil doers to prominent places of power in our government. And with their prominence they have sowed and then watered the seeds of evil in vulnerable hearts that had held evil in check for most of their lives. Evil begats evil and evil doers have entered the realm of our politics in recent years, threatening to tear our country apart.

I would classify Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carson, Matt Gatz, Margarie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Rupert Murdock and numerous others as evil doers whose unregulated thirst for wealth, power, prestige, and fame has driven them to water the seeds of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia throughout the Republican Party under the guise of preserving a white morality that never embraced equality, liberty and justice for all. Jesus told us that we would recognize a tree by the fruit it bears. It is not difficult to recognize the fruit of these individuals. And sadly, their reach has extended to the white evangelical Christian church. Through persistent lies, conspiracies, and deception they have convinced many white evangelicals to push for a theocratic government that harms many and ignores the suffering of human beings while believing that they are acting on God’s behalf. History has shown us that this never ends well. They are following Trump rather than Jesus with their disdain for immigrants, the poor, and the powerless. When did Jesus ever embrace weapons (guns) instead of love?

I watched the Congressional hearing on abortion this past week, and it was disheartening to hear lawmakers talk past each other and repeat the same arguments over and over. The Republicans repeatedly mischaracterized Democrats as being pro-abortion people who want to kill babies just before they are born because of the gender or disability of the baby. If that were true, then that is evil. However, the reality is that Democrats are trying to protect the health of women and the bill seeks to acknowledge the rare medical need for a late term abortion. In another hearing a few weeks ago, they entertained testimony from a practicing OBGYN who testified that something has gone terribly wrong if there is an abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy and that doctors do not provide late term abortions on demand, nor do they kill babies just before they are born. The doctor had to continually correct the Republican talking points meant to mislead the public. It is evil to knowingly and intentionally harm women for political gain, but that is what the Republicans are doing. It is good to protect women and viable life.

And that’s what good is. Good is promoting the well-being of others. Do-gooders act in ways that promote the health, welfare and happiness of others. Again, we can tell a tree by the fruit it bears. The problem is that too many people do not bear any fruit at all. They act on the basis of convenience as they go about their daily lives. They aren’t evil doers, nor are they do-gooders. They simply mind their own business as though they were an island unto themselves. If they witness someone in need, they simply walk by, ignoring the silent plea or sometimes even the loud plea for assistance. They wear invisible headsets and blinders so they will not be bothered. They are apathetic, distracted by their own needs, or simply disinterested in the plight of others.

These are the people whom I hope to reach because they can help reverse the tide of evil we are facing. This is their fight as well. The people on the fence can be activated into action to overcome evil with good if they are recruited by do-gooders.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve launched the Fully Present Better Human Project for the sole purpose of further empowering and enabling do-gooders to inspire fence-sitters to become fully present better humans who take small actions in their everyday lives to help overcome the evil that is now all around us. Small collective actions of good can improve our lives. Together, as fully present better humans we can overcome evil and create the kind of society that we want to live in.

My website is now available and the products to help promote the project are available for purchase to support the efforts. Visit the website at www.fullypresentbetterhuman.com and leave your email for access to the monthly newsletter. I also started a Facebook and Instagram under Fully Present Better Human. Taking a moment to like the page will help me reach more people, especially those fence-sitters. We don’t need to be perfect humans, just better humans who are fully present. Together, we can overcome evil with good.

The pandemic changed a lot of things for a lot of people. I know I retired a few years sooner than I had planned for several reasons. I retired earlier than expected in part due to the requirement to return to the office sooner than I felt safe, in part because of unfavorable changes in the work environment itself, in part because I could afford to comfortably retire, and in part due to the demands of my husband’s cancer treatment. While it may seem like there are many older people like me who greatly contributed to the “Great Resignation” statistics, the actual data shows otherwise. According to a great article I read titled, “18 Great Resignation Statistics” by Jack Flynn from Zippia, young people seeking better pay and more favorable working conditions make up the greatest percentage of people quitting one job to find another. What is evident though is that the shortage of workers and the abundance of new workers makes everyday life a little bit more difficult for everyone.

Over the past several months, I’ve found many of the local businesses I relied on for goods or services have gone out of business. Others are experiencing a remarkable decline in customer service because of either a shortage of employees or employee inexperience. For example, it’s become normal to wait four to six months for a non-emergency doctor’s appointment. Then in dealing with a hospitality company, I fought over a $1200 simple mistake made by an inexperienced employee that took me several months to rectify by a combination of emails, letters, and multiple phone calls. I had to find a store manager to convince a checker that in California food items in their small food market are not taxed. I’ve noticed that it takes longer to receive some items that I ordered, sometimes by a wait-time of months. On Friday, I called my bank’s customer service phoneline and was greeted by a recording that informed me that my estimated hold time was 60 minutes. I’ve waited on hold for as much as 90 minutes to talk to a representative. Most times when I ask a store employee for assistance, I hear the words, “I’m new here, so….” But it’s only getting worse.

Anyone traveling by airplane knows that its pure luck these days to have a flight that isn’t either delayed or cancelled because of pilot or crew shortages since the airlines provided incentives for workers to retire or leave during the pandemic. The stress of the pandemic has also led to a shortage of healthcare providers as many of them exited the field with emotional scars. My son places healthcare technicians and says they have more job openings than trained technicians to fill them. Even though the pay and signing bonuses rise, the stress of dealing with an ungrateful and irresponsible public is just not worth it.

Dealing with an increasingly angry, irrational, inconsiderate and demanding public in addition to unreasonable laws banning history and books, banning abortions, and loosening gun carry restrictions is likely to push even more workers out of public service professions like teaching, healthcare, social work, law enforcement, and poll workers. There will be women in red states who will have a more difficult time finding an OBGYN. There will be overworked social workers dealing with an even greater demand for foster care and family services among poor women forced into giving birth. There will be confused law enforcement officers who can’t tell the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun. Some will be too cowardly to act in the face of an AR15 like we saw at the Uvalde school in Texas. There will be public schools without enough qualified teachers to teach children actual history or science because they can no longer deal with irrational laws and parents ready to criminalize them in addition to the daily threat of gun violence. There will be a lack of experienced election officials at the voting polls because of crazy people with guns “monitoring elections”. And there will be overwhelmed mental health professionals dealing with heartbreak and hopelessness among LGBTQ youth and adults who are ostracized.

Every day, my email inbox is filled with companies looking to hire. I see help wanted signs in the windows or entries of nearly every place of business I enter. With unemployment at a 50-year low and inflation at a 40-year high and wages rising by about 5% over last year, I fear that even though our pain with higher prices will eventually settle down, our pain with worker shortages and inexperienced workers is just beginning. I predict more deaths caused by inexperience in the air, domestic violence and child abuse, suicide, guns on the streets, and errors in hospitals.

I once read an article that explained how it takes two full years for a new employee to become fully competent and comfortable in a new job. However, when the people who would otherwise serve as mentors or trainers are absent, the training time increases, and more mistakes will be made. It’s scary to think about the effects of pilot error, hospital errors, social worker errors, and police officer errors due to inexperience.

Where there is challenge, there is also opportunity. The opportunity now exists for employers to work harder to retain their existing and new workers by better valuing them, paying them living wages with benefits, and providing them with good working conditions and flexibility to care for family. We know that it costs much more to recruit and train than to retain good workers. There is also the opportunity for workers to demand more of their current employer or to find an industry that is personally rewarding while also meeting their financial and family needs. For many people, it may be time to move to a state where they can practice their profession without fear of arrest or being overburdened. Until public policy and elected lawmakers in red states recognize the detrimental effects of loose gun laws, abortion bans, LGBTQ bans, and bans on teaching history and science, it’s probably wise to steer clear of certain professions in red states. You couldn’t pay me enough to work in these states.

The time to retrain, rethink, and revise our relationship to work is here. Those help wanted signs put workers in the driver’s seat and I hope workers are wise enough and persistent enough to demand better conditions and demand more pay. As a society, I hope we realize sooner rather than later that we must treat public servants with the respect they deserve and also pass laws that help them do their jobs well. If we continue to fail at this, we won’t have the teachers, the doctors and nurses, the social workers, the poll workers, nor the police officers we need to protect and serve any of us.

I enjoy everything about being retired. What I enjoy most is the time and freedom to pursue my passion projects without the time and energy limitations from a job. Now, my only limitations stem from pandemic restrictions, a husband recovering from lung cancer, and family obligations. Other than these, I have been free to discover what I care about and how I want to spend the bulk of my time and energy moving forward.

I intentionally gave myself a full year of retirement to allow my passions to organically rise to the surface. I tried new things like calligraphy and graphic design and social media. And what I discovered is that I’m the same person I was at age 12. I crave order. I crave safety. I crave justice. And I crave beauty. My passion for creating spaces that are safe, orderly, just, and beautiful extends beyond my home and garden; it extends to society. So, as I watched our country descend into a place that I no longer recognize nor admire, I created the Better Human Project consisting of nine principles which I laid out in 11 separate blog posts over this past year (weekly posts beginning October 17, 2021, through December 26, 2021).

I had initially agreed that the Better Human Project would fall under the Inclusion Media Group, a non-profit that my daughter created. However, after deep consideration, my daughter and I decided that its rightful home is under my Fully Present Post 50 sole proprietorship because my purpose isn’t really to push the media to be more inclusive; it is to encourage everyday people to become better humans. I have to thank my brilliant daughter and her other degree in marketing for giving me clarity and then helping me forge a pathway towards inviting others to commit to being better humans and then helping to spread the movement.

Starting August 1st, I will be launching a website and a monthly newsletter for the Fully Present Better Human Project. I will not only feature the nine principles and practical guidelines for fulfilling them, but I will be offering Better Human promotional products to allow like-minded supporters to help spread the notion of what it means to become better humans. There will be mugs, notecards, prints, posters, water bottles, mouse pads, reusable bags and t-shirts for purchase to help spread the message and to financially sustain the efforts. In brief, here are the nine Better Human principles:

Better Humans practice brotherly love, protect the environment, demand social justice, challenge bigotry, are lifelong learners, are inclusive, help the needy, speak the truth, and vote for better humans.

I firmly believe that together we can create a safer, more just, and livable society for ourselves and our families and so I’m dedicating my retirement to helping to make that happen.