Fully Present Post 50

It has taken a fair amount of self-observation and self-reflection for me to understand and accept myself, particularly when it comes to the subject of helping others. I am neither entirely selfish nor entirely charitable. In Sunday School and scouting, I learned that helping those in need is a virtuous act and a humanitarian responsibility. It also feels good. At school and work, I learned to discern between helping and enabling. I also learned that helping can be unreasonably costly for me and my family and so I adopted the Biblical proverb that “charity begins at home”. The airlines gave me another good rule to follow. They say, “Once you have secured your own air mask, then you can assist those around you.” With these principles in place, finding the right balance for me beyond securing myself and helping my family was something I stumbled upon.

I suppose my approach to helping others is rooted in a part of my personality that is highly empathic. I discovered that I am deeply affected by human suffering to the point that I experience empathy in my body. For example, when my mother broke her foot, my foot swelled up so badly that she carted me off to the doctor for an examination. He diagnosed my ailment as “sympathy pain” and my foot reverted back to normal size almost immediately. My involuntary responses to the physical ailments of family and friends occurred frequently into my late adolescence, prompting my mother to tell me to completely abandon any notion of entering the medical field. Not surprisingly, my response to the emotional suffering of others wasn’t much better, particularly when that suffering related to injustice, suspense, and acts of violence. My kids joke about which movies I can and cannot watch because of my acute emotional responses. One example was during the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan”. I was crying so hard that my friend suggested I leave. Over the years, I have left many movie theaters, mid-screening, to collect myself or to completely avoid the most emotionally difficult parts. As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for emotionally taxing stories has gotten worse to the point where I need to know the end of a story before I can read the book or watch the movie.

The point is that my high level of empathy greatly influences my approach to helping others. If I cannot tolerate watching fictional injustice, suspense, violence, and human suffering, imagine the depth of my agony in real life. When I see those things happening to people, I have to do something to help. The only emotional relief I get comes from knowing that I am doing what I can to relieve the human suffering before my eyes. However, I also learned that my approach to helping is a product of recognizing my own limitations.

While I am highly empathetic, I realize that I am also highly judgmental. When I was in my early twenties, I thought I could help young women in juvenile detention. I visited the detention center several times and had conversations with the young women being detained for a variety of serious crimes. I quickly discovered that I was too angry and disappointed by their warped thinking and willingness to harm others that I abandoned the notion that I was the right person to help them. I realized that my generosity didn’t extend to people who harmed themselves or others. I discovered that my heart wasn’t that big after all. Thankfully, there are other people who have the level of compassion needed to help others find redemption, healing, and rehabilitation. I have to admit that I greatly admire the doctors and nurses who continue dealing with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients with patience and compassion these days. I couldn’t do it.

I’m also limited by an acute fear of heights, fire, water, and speed. I’ve never been the dare devil who rides roller coasters, rock climbs, surfs, mountain bikes or jumps out of planes for pleasure. I learned early on that even horseback riding was a bit too much for me. In Costa Rica, I refused the opportunity to zipline, opting to miss the beautiful forest view. In Hawaii, I sat in the boat while my family enjoyed snorkeling off the island of Kauai. And in Italy, I remained seated in the boat when my companions jumped into the crystal blue water of Blue Grotto off the island of Capri. So, it’s highly doubtful that anyone would ever find me on a dangerous rescue mission when it involves confronting these fears.

On a somewhat redeeming note, I realized through a game of “This or That” that as a scaredy cat and introvert my most prominent pattern of helping people over the years has taken the form of writing a check as opposed to physically showing up to help others. I’m not the person you will find on the front lines of a disaster, distributing food, marching in a protest, or canvasing a neighborhood on behalf of a candidate. Over the years, I have done most of these things at least once or twice and quickly discovered that I much prefer behind the scenes preparations, financial donations, or even fundraising. I prefer helping by using my pocketbook, skills, and my handiwork rather than my physical presence. For extroverts and dare devils, helping likely entails very different behaviors.

The final realization about my approach to helping others has to do with a lesson many of us have learned about giving a fish versus teaching a person to fish. I find that I am an advocate of both. Giving a fish solves the immediate problem; teaching to fish deals with the elimination of the need in the long term. I’ve worked to teach my own children to fish, although sometimes I wasn’t 100% effective and they had to learn the hard way. Beyond my family, I donate to Women for Women International, various scholarship funds, and The Boys and Girls Club with the mindset that this kind of helping enables people become the best version of themselves.

However, sometimes helping others in an immediate situation isn’t about teaching anyone a lesson; it’s about mitigating immediate suffering. So, I give to Doctors Without Borders, Unicef, Children’s hospitals, and St. Jude. When a homeless person on the street is asking for money, I tend to give it. He or she isn’t looking for a lesson on how to get a job and become a productive citizen. That person is simply trying to survive through mental illness and/or substance abuse and an inadequate public assistance system. I try to make it a point to give without judgment. In this regard, my husband taught me a different approach by refusing to give money and offering food instead so that the money can’t be spent feeding an addiction. He has a point. He will go out of his way to purchase a sandwich and take it to that person instead. Admittedly, his approach is better than mine.

I didn’t realize that the desire to help others wasn’t a universal human trait. It took a while for me to realize that I was one of those people who could only find fulfillment in my career if it entailed helping others. My parents passed down the notion that it was more important to make a lot of money and then help people on the side. My mother was known for her volunteerism in the community. However, it was only after her death that I pursued my second career as an educator and counselor. My second career made me much happier than my corporate career in finance despite the significant pay cut. I don’t dispute that some people make a ton of money and give a lot of money to charity. However, only a few actually give in proportion to their wealth and without ego-boosting strings attached. I imagine a lot of injustice, pain, and suffering in this world would be significantly reduced if the wealthiest among us actually cared enough to contribute what is needed. They have the means, but not the will. The reality is that many of them don’t even want to pay their fair share in taxes.

Better humans help others. The method may differ according to our personalities and circumstances, but the virtue and humanitarian responsibility of helping our fellow human beings is what better humans are compelled by empathy and conscience to do.

I’m amazed at how early children grasp the concept of fairness. It almost seems like our brains are hardwired to expect it and when our sense of fairness is violated, we cry foul. Social justice is the fair treatment of all people within a given society with respect to their access to resources and services, life opportunities, law enforcement, and protection from environmental harms. Whether or not a society treats all its members fairly can be determined by observation primarily of its inputs and not necessarily of its outcomes.

I know a lot of people look at outcomes to determine whether a system is fair or not. And in many cases, desperate outcomes raise red flags about a broken distribution model. For example, a mother bakes a pie and slices it, giving each of her twins a slice. However, the twins notice immediately that one slice is much larger than the other. As expected, the child with the smaller slice complains about the unfairness. Mom has a couple choices. She can ignore the protesting child and allow resentment and frustration to fester. Or, if there is more pie, she can easily rectify the situation and add more pie to the deficit slice to make up the difference. However, if the rest of the pie is already distributed to others, she could choose to take some pie from the twin with the larger slice to even out the distribution. This last option might then anger the twin who was perfectly content with the original size of his slice. The problem lies with the imperfect distributor of the pie, not with the twins who are now feeling the uncomfortable stress of unfairness. Thankfully, someone created an equal pie slicer that allows mothers to avoid this problem. But the unfair distribution within our society still needs fixing and the solutions are contested.

Today, we are dealing with social injustice caused by an historically flawed distribution of access to resources, opportunities, placement of environmental hazards, and unfair treatment under the law. Since the beginning, the system in the U.S. favored white males with bigger slices of every variety of pie the country had to offer. White males were provided with the greatest access to education, job opportunities, land ownership, healthcare, and the ability to vote and make the laws. And they were the police of the laws they made. People of color and women were not only given crumbs from the pie but suffered major atrocities at the hands of these self-serving white men. The relative wealth of white Americans today is rooted in this unfair distribution. This is history some white conservatives hope to hide. They want to hide it because, like the twin with the larger slice, they are content with what they have and are fearful that demands for social justice threatens them with the loss of their exorbitant pie slices. This is why they prefer to push a narrative that minimizes a history of slavery, genocide, stolen lands, and state sponsored discrimination in favor of a narrative that blames the lack of social economic progress on a list of character deficits they ascribe to the victims.

The truth is that America actually has more pie available, but the white conservatives want it for themselves. Social justice or fairness demands that the country first rectify the inequity of the past distribution and then moving forward the country must provide fair access to resources, opportunities, and equal protections. Yes, I am in favor of reparations for the descendants of slaves and American Indians because it is the least this nation can do to acknowledge past wrongs. I believe social justice demands mitigating the past wrongs that continue to disadvantage those who were negatively impacted by the systematic unfairness. All Americans deserve a common starting chance in life.

That said, social justice does not necessarily guarantee equal outcomes. I think about the parable Jesus told wherein a father distributed gifts to his sons. One son invested his gift, and it grew while the other took his gift and hid it, producing nothing. The father came back and condemned the son who did nothing with what he was given and then gave more to the son who invested his gift. The point is that unequal outcomes are indicative of individual human capacity and not always an indicator of an unfair distribution. Some can make much from little and others can make nothing of a lot. Think of Oprah Winfrey and how much she made of her life using her extraordinary intelligence, talent, and energy. At the same time, there are countless stories of children who were given everything and squandered their lives. It is a mistake for conservatives and others to make an example of the few extraordinary people like Oprah Winfrey or former President Barak Obama and say that their outcomes represent the fairness of our social justice system today. They don’t.

By the same token, conservatives wrongly point to the disproportionate number of black and brown people in prison and claim that it is because black and brown people commit more crimes. They choose to ignore the fact that whites made laws to criminalize drugs, then over-policed black and brown communities, gave longer prison sentences to black and brown people, and showed leniency toward white criminal behavior. One only needs to watch the different behavior of law enforcement towards armed white suspects versus black suspects (who may not even be armed). If Kyle Riddenhouse was black, he would be dead. If the 15-year-old who just killed four classmates was black, he would be dead. America knows this to be true and yet the injustice continues.

In addition, conservates choose to ignore the fact that hopeless poverty and crime are closely intertwined. It is human nature to ignore laws in favor of survival. Think of how many black and brown children grow up poor and without the love and guidance of fathers because of an unfair criminal justice system. However, the outcome of this unfair criminal justice system plays right into the conservative narrative of dangerous black and brown people. A thoughtful person simply needs to example the root of the system to discover that years of social injustice has yielded the result we experience today.

Better humans must take the lead in exposing the inequitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and law enforcement by concentrating on the broken distribution points and not only looking at the outcomes. Black Lives Matter is about looking at these distribution points where the pie continues to be distributed unevenly. This is precisely why conservatives hate them so much. This is why they fear critical race theory and “The 1619 Project”. History is not on their side. The facts counter the conservative narrative that desperately wants to hide the system of social injustice. Better humans ask questions like: Who gets access to education, healthcare, clean water, clean air, voting, and job opportunities? Who is subjected to harmful chemicals, excessive policing, poorly resourced schools, longer prison sentences, and longer voting lines?

Demanding social justice means demanding reparations for past inequities and demanding equal protection under the law and access to resources and opportunities moving forward. It’s only fair and any child can tell you that.

I am convinced that bigotry is at the root of human mistreatment of other humans. Bigotry is intolerance of other people based solely on their group membership. It is an emotional rather than a rational dislike of a whole category of people. I’m pretty sure that bias and bigotry are both rooted in our evolutionary need for connection and survival. We seem to naturally prefer those who are like ourselves in significant ways such as ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or even love for a particular football team. It stands to reason that on an evolutionary level, humans reject those whose differences appear to threaten their connections and survival as a group. Perhaps bigotry is a first cousin to rivalry.

It is feasible that bigotry and rivalry are actually closer than cousins; perhaps they are brothers born from the same parents: tribalism and survival instinct. Our species has survived until now by banning together in tribes and fighting other tribes for control over land and scarce resources. Human history is a story about conflict, one group pitted against another as rivals who come to hate each other by concentrating on differences enough to kill, oppress, and enslave other humans. In the past, human leaders exploited these perceived differences using loyal and gullible members of their own tribes as pons to secure control over land or other resources needed for survival.

Today, the majority of leaders are motivated by personal economic gain and political domination, not the literal life and death survival of their tribe. And unfortunately, the most loyal and gullible pons who are get caught up in the dehumanizing lies about other human beings outside their political or religious tribe become ruthless killers. Bigotry is a powerful emotional tool, triggered only by immoral leaders. The FBI says such pons have been “radicalized”. We’ve watched this play out in the Middle East and Northern Africa and now it is here.

In the U.S., it has become painfully clear that new tribes have emerged along political lines with one tribe in particular looking to dominate the entire country. Their leaders have made this a question of survival around certain questions: Who will decide the moral direction of the population? Who gets the job opportunities? Who gets to make the rules? Who gets to decide right from wrong? Who gets to enter our borders? The young men in Charlottesville, chanting “Jews will not replace us” says it all. The insurrection was a warning.

Personally, I prefer sports rivalries over political ones. Sports is about trophies and bragging rights. Many of us were once willing to allow sports to satisfy our basic tribal rival instincts. On game day, we wore our colors and openly hated on the rival team. Things could get heated, but people seldom died over the rivalry. The Olympics was a good proxy for national rivalry for a while. But some leaders have abandoned sports as a satisfying substitute for tribal rivalry because the personal payoff wasn’t high enough. However, they need pons to do their bidding.

In our nation, we are reverting to a dangerous kind of tribalism that has less to do with sports, but more to do with politics. A few power-hungry republicans decided that having a black president was a bridge too far and decided to become an aggressive tribe, first destroying political compromise, then dehumanizing democrats as evil pedophiles and baby killers who are communists. They allowed a “strong man” to take over their party in order to create a tribal army. Trump republicans have become increasingly bold in their willingness to outright steal elections after stacking the courts. And now they are showing a willingness to take up arms against those who oppose them.

The problem is that too many people allow themselves to be pons. They have bought into the unfounded fears stoked by these greedy and power-hungry leaders who need them to wage their wars. These media and political leaders need tribal conflict to make money and to gain or maintain power. So, every day we see them stoking the fire, getting people riled up, because igniting bigotry is a surefire way to get people to act aggressively against others whom they now view as a threat. They think they are patriots, but they are not. They think they are preserving a nation when they are tearing it down.

The bigotry running rampant in our nation today is dangerous. If not curbed, it will surely lead to violence in the streets. Better humans will tap into their ability to reason and to overcome the instinct to automatically hate people with opposing viewpoints. Better humans will recognize that we don’t need bigotry as a motivator to vote for people, we need good sense and accurate information. Better humans will challenge bigotry, will call out leaders who provoke it, and stick to sports to fulfill their need for tribal rivalry.

I have unconditional love for those who share my blood line. I think this kind of love is baked into us as human beings. Maybe its some kind of biological imprinting. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize family members for who they are. They could be horrible, hurtful and even dangerous human beings that we need to cut ties with for safety reasons. However, I discovered that this emotional love persists anyway because I never ceased loving my own father who had been a violent alcoholic who traumatized our family. To deal with my feelings in a safe way, I had to establish clear boundaries around our relationship. These lasted until his death in 1989 and I was the only one of his three children who could say goodbye to him without regret. In the process of loving my deeply flawed dad, I learned a powerful lesson about humans and blood line love. First, I learned that even the most depraved human has some redeeming qualities to offer and second I learned that blood line love becomes emotional poison if denied and unexpressed.

So, during the disappointing circumstances that lead to my divorce in 1996, I sat my three adolescent children down and told them that they were biologically preconditioned to love their father for their entire lives no matter what he had done to hurt our family and that I wanted them to preserve that relationship for their own mental and emotional health. The relationship they maintained with their father was up to them and I would support it. To this day, I am thankful for that wisdom and understanding of blood line love as my children have enjoyed and continue to enjoy a healthy relationship with their dad. I’ve come to see for myself that the love and support of two dads (biological and step-dad) is a definite plus in their lives, especially because we don’t fight for attention, affection, nor control. We are able to keep our love for the children at the center of our relationship. Love for my family in the sense of emotional attachment comes naturally. But love of others outside my family is entirely different. Brotherly love or loving ones neighbor is a decision.

I find it easy to love people who like me, agree with me, and encourage me. I even find it easy to love total strangers. But the other folks–those who get on my nerves, hurt people, and destroy everything in sight are difficult to love. However, I take to heart the lessons from Jesus on loving my neighbor as myself and on loving my enemies. The key is not to expect the same emotional attachment I feel with my family because it does not exist. What does exist is a conviction that each person is God’s creation, each is a human being possessing both good characteristics and flaws. Jesus acknowledged human weakness and how God loves us anyway. So, I’ve come to realize that loving others isn’t about how deserving they are, nor is it about developing or maintaining an emotional connection. It is solely about how I treat others.

For me, being a better human who loves others means that I treat other human beings in the way I want to be treated: with compassion, thoughtfulness, and understanding. It means that I act with consideration, defend humanity, speak hard truths tactfully, and offer assistance based on our basic human needs. Peace and silence are not love. So, loving others does not mean that I ignore justice. It does not mean that I don’t hold people accountable. It does not mean that I ignore rude and destructive behaviors. And it most definitely doesn’t mean I stay silent in the face of dangers to humanity itself. Brotherly love is an action word, not a feeling word.

These days, a lot of humans are making it particularly difficult to love them. They act selfishly, refusing to wear masks in public or to get vaccinated. Believing lies about a stolen election from a morally bankrupt former president, they stormed the Capital on January 6th. Convinced that their white skin makes them superior to other human beings, they threaten violence and enforce discrimination. And the most difficult to love these days are the people who profess Christianity but have become the nastiest, most intolerant, hateful, oppressive, and stingy human beings on the planet. But being a better human means loving them despite their crazy. It means fighting for the best interest of their humanity and ours.

My way of loving these difficult humans is to speak the truth as I understand it without cussing them out, calling them awful names, or threatening them with violence. Admittedly, I have to stop myself from hoping they get what they deserve. I leave that judgement in the hands of the Almighty.

If we could all be better humans who love humanity we would experience greater generosity, kindness, thoughtfulness, and empathy because of an understanding that we are all humans living in this world together.

I often joke that we are living in the age of “The Jetson’s”, a favorite futuristic cartoon from my childhood. Absent the flying cars (which is possible) phone calls and business meetings are easily held on screen. That’s been the norm for the past few years and the pandemic necessitated a shift in how we conduct orientations, workshops, classes, business meetings, and even my 2020 family reunion was a Zoom and YouTube event. The rapidly changing technology, new software, and creative apps have made lifelong learning not only more feasible but also more important than ever for job security, efficiency, creativity, productivity, and conducting everyday business.

The world has gotten smaller while the universe expands. There was a time when we opened an encyclopedia to find obscure information. We worked out math problems on paper. And only the wealthy could see the world. And then things changed. But now just about anything you want to know or see is accessible in seconds by a simple internet search. What we learn and how we learn it is also changing. It is both exciting and intimidating.

The old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” has been disproven by neuroscience. However, some of my friends express an unwillingness to try to keep up. Sometimes I’ll tell my husband about a new innovation and his response is, “I’m good”, meaning he is unwilling to learn about or even try using the next new thing. However, when his doctor’s office moved to telehealth because of the pandemic, he had no choice but to learn about teleconferencing. I find myself often stepping in these days to show him how to do things on his phone or on the Smart television. And thankfully, my children also assist me.

In the last few years, I discovered YouTube as a valuable knowledge resource. I learned how to use my new iPhone 12 by watching YouTube videos. I also learned more authentic ways to make fried rice, chicken swarma, and sushi on YouTube. Learning Spanish, gardening techniques, medical information, recipes, and a dictionary are accessible on my phone through apps like “Duolingo” ,”Plantin”, “Web MD”, “All Recipes” and “Dictionary”. I’m currently taking an online class to learn calligraphy through an instructor on “Teachable.com”. And just this week, my son, a Facebook friend, and Oprah Winfrey convinced me that I needed Oculus 2, a virtual reality system that allows me to travel the world without leaving my home. It also has games and other useful content for virtual business meetings.

I purchased the system for $399 and watched videos on YouTube to learn the best ways to use it. Already, I traveled to Botswana to hang out with the rangers who protect elephants. I traveled to the deepest parts of the ocean with explorers to learn about the life that surprisingly thrives in that environment and how our plastic waste has even made it there. I’m excited about the places I will go and the things I will see and how much I will learn without ever leaving my home. I’ve always loved learning; it’s one of my personality traits, but lifelong learning is important for everyone who wants to maintain a healthy brain and thrive in the modern world, especially financially.

I’m a finance buff who made it a habit early in life to read books and to attend financial literacy seminars as a means to learn how to become financially secure. Putting those many lessons into practice really paid off and I am comfortably retired. Since the pandemic, I have subscribed to various financial planning channels on YouTube to keep me up to date on wise investment strategies, retirement distributions, tax strategies for retirees and Medicare. I will say that as a frequent YouTube watcher, I find it well worth the $15.99 per month premium subscription. I’m convinced that the lack of knowledge in areas of consequence cause real life pain. For example, on C-Spann this morning, I was disappointed to hear a 70-year old retired woman with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology decry her inability to survive on Social Security alone. I lamented that she never learned about savings and investments, despite her academic acuity. She is looking for a new job, but no one is willing to hire her. My guess is that her age and outdated skill set are the problem.

Knowledge is the foundation of good decision making. I believe we must know better to do better and as technology advances, exploration expands, science learns new things, and creativity blossoms, the need to continually learn has never been more imperative. It seems that so many problems in our society stem from the lack of knowledge. But today, an unwillingness to learn new things is simply asking to be left behind. Better humans are lifelong learners.

In closing, I am reminded of the day my husband got a cut and asked for the iodine. I laughed because we haven’t swabbed iodine on cuts in years. In this world, knowledge becomes obsolete. In fact, realizing how things change, I watched hospital infant care videos for new parents on YouTube before visiting my new grandson to take care of him this past summer. And sure enough, things have changed since 1985 when my youngest child was born. I’ll say it again, better humans are lifelong learners.

Being truthful is not always easy, especially when there are so many tempting reasons to be untruthful. Before I turned eleven, I told a lot of lies. I told them because I liked a good story and enjoyed seeing my friends react to my tall tales. Later, I occasionally lied to protect myself or others from certain punishment for a broken rule. I lied to enhance my image in front of peers I wanted to impress. I lied to protect someone else’s feelings. But the biggest lie I ever told cured me from lying as a “go to” strategy to get what I wanted.

When I was in the seventh grade, 12 years old, a group of my friends were plagued by a girl in our group who wouldn’t keep our secrets and who constantly talked negatively behind our backs. Her malicious gossiping was out of control and I decided to teach her a lesson by creating a very convincing lie that an unknown girl was going to beat her up after school for talking about that person behind her back. In absolute terror, my gossiping friend went to the office and reported the threat. Because I was the messenger of doom, the Vice Principle summoned me to the office. In the presence of my anxious friend, I confessed to the Vice Principle that I had fabricated the threat as an intervention to try to end my friend’s malicious gossiping. I got off with a stern warning and a phone call to my mother, but I also lost my friend in the process. That situation made a truth teller out of me. I learned that while lying may be the easy route, it is often a cowardly and unethical route to a desired end. And worse, lies can have devastating unintended consequences for oneself and others.

In reality, telling the truth when the stakes seem high can be difficult. For me personally, self-preservation and empathy remained my biggest obstacles to telling the truth for most of my adult life. I didn’t want others to think ill of me and I still don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. As I’ve grown older, I care less about what others think about me and so truth-telling about myself has become much easier. But when it comes to the feelings of others, I admit that I’ve developed some work arounds. For example, when a singer asks me how he did, and I felt the performance was sub-par, I’ll say something like, “I really liked your energy or that was a great song.” Admittedly, I do feel a bit of guilt about that kind of obfuscation. I still have a ways to go when it comes to providing truthful, but hurtful feedback. Another challenge was convincing my children to be truthful. One child was naturally very honest and another was the polar opposite.

My youngest daughter was a lot like me. She enjoyed making up stories, however, her lies were bigger and more prolific than mine ever were. When she was five, she made up this story about me accidentally running over my father with the car. Her teacher was so unsettled by the tale that she called to see if my father was okay. She said she even looked for the story in the local newspaper for details before calling me. I explained that my daughter liked to make things up. To try to dissuade her from lying, I repeatedly shared the story of the boy who cried wolf, but it didn’t work. The lying became a constant issue in our relationship and trust was damaged as a result. Too many lies, half-truths, omissions, and exaggerations erode the trust in personal relationships and corrupts communication and interactions. Her imagination was so taken in that to this day she sometimes has to ask me if a childhood memory is actually true. Which brings me to another, more important point about being truthful. We have to know the truth in order to be truthful.

With each passing day it becomes more difficult to know the truth. We now live in a society where the knowing the truth in order to speak the truth is itself a challenge. Greedy doctors pushing quick fix weight loss diets and quack medicine are all over the internet. On two separate occasions, I was photo-shopped into group pictures because I couldn’t make the actual shoots. This should be worrying because it means that others can be photo-shopped to appear to be somewhere they are not and with dire consequences. We now look at magazine photos where the model has been made to appear to have slimmer hips, thicker lips, or airbrushed perfected skin. We know that these images create feelings of inferiority among young women. Even more worrisome, the technology now exists to replicate a person’s voice, image, and mannerisms so well as to make that person appear to say or do anything. We also have the ability at our fingertips to remove people and objects from our photos, creating an alternate if not impossible reality.

Couple new technology with how our society has become accustomed to being lied to by greedy corporations, ambitious politicians, and unprincipled media outlets, and I’m afraid the public trust will only be further eroded. Conspiracy theories are already thriving because the public trust has been destroyed by too many lies, omissions, silence, and cover ups. People are willing to believe whatever suits them because they don’t know who to believe or how to find the truth. As a result, COVID-19 has killed more than 750,000 people. Some people believe even that is a lie. And worse, people are still refusing to get vaccinated based on a plethora of lies that feed into their worse fears. I’ve heard of conspiracies that link the vaccine to mass murder for population control to sterilization to mind control to tracking implants. A few greedy anti-vaccine doctors are even pushing their own quack remedies for the disease.

It is a sad reality that people with varying motives are happy to make stuff up for fame, money, or power. They willingly take advantage of the least educated, the most gullible, and the fearful among us. It was actually bizarre to hear about the hundreds of QAnon members who flocked to Dallas, Texas this past week believing the lie that dead Kennedys were going to appear and reinstate Trump as president. How disappointed they must be that it didn’t happen. Others believe Trump is still the president and is running the government while flying around on Air Force One.

But perhaps the most dangerous lie to our country’s future is the one that is having an adverse effect on election laws in Republican states. Based on Trump lies about voter fraud and a stolen election and fears of a violent Republican base who support him, cowardly Republicans are working to suppress the vote of minorities, urban dwellers, and younger voters while at the same time giving themselves the authority to overturn election results. Every American should be vehemently countering this lie and demanding voter protection laws from Congress right now.

The reality is that what comes out of our mouths has consequences. The people buying into the big 2020 election lie now actually believe they are telling the truth and they have shown that they are willing to use threats and violence to push a false agenda based on it. They have literally traded a factual truth for a debunked, but more desirable lie. The problem is that too many people in authority are speaking lies with impunity. However, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were sued for billions for defamation by Dominion over election fraud claims involving Dominion’s voting machines. Powell’s defense was that her lies were too outrageous for any reasonable person to take seriously. But they did.

The time has come for laws to be enacted that make it a crime for public officials to knowingly lie about issues of public welfare. It is good that Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law was suspended for his lies about the election. Doctors should also lose their license to practice medicine for spreading false claims; surprisingly they aren’t right now. It should become law that media and photos that are doctored have a disclaimer that they have been doctored and do not fully represent reality.

The fact is that it is becoming too difficult to distinguish between truth and lies and without a swift intervention, the truth will be completely elusive and bad decisions with life and death consequences will ultimately destroy our society and the world. We see the slow walking of climate change mitigation because of people who claim it is a hoax. This is why better humans must first be truth seekers and then truth tellers.

Final note: Sources for the truth matter and education combined with critical thinking are a must.

I live in Southern California. It is sunny and warm pretty much all year. I seldom need an umbrella and I rarely wear a coat. I’ve never had to shovel snow, scrape ice off my car windows nor worry about slipping on black ice. For me, those are the upsides to living in California. The downside is the lack of water and clean air. California suffers from extreme draught conditions and a year round fire season due to climate change. The hillsides that surround us are brown tender boxes. They seem to burn with such regularity these days, destroying wild habitants, homes and businesses, and even human lives. But California is not the only location facing increasing problems brought on by climate change.

This is a worldwide problem that is already impacting both animals and humans. Warmer oceans upset the ego system, killing off wildlife and an important food source. Draughts negatively impact the food supply by limiting agriculture. Floods and hurricanes destroy homes, schools, and businesses. Some coastal cities are in danger of disappearing altogether. The disruptions caused by continuous climate change events is already costing billions of dollars and the price tag, including the cost of human lives, will continue to rise if we do too little, too late. As always, the poorest and most vulnerable among us are suffering the most.

If we care that our children and their children inherit a habitable planet, we must become better humans who do better by our planet. It’s time we develop habits that reduce our carbon footprint, that save water, and use energy wisely. Yes, world leading are meeting in right now to discuss governmental commitments to mitigate climate change. Some corporations are starting to do their part too. But we as individuals have a role to play as well.

The most important thing we can do is limit our driving. In places like Southern California where public transportation is rare, having a car is a necessity. It is time to insist that our public officials invest more of our tax payer dollars into building more public transportation using clean energy. While the situation is improving, it still isn’t good enough, particularly where I live. In the meantime, we can carpool, purchase hybrid or electric vehicles, and cluster errands. Driving less is the best thing we can do. And when possible, consider moving loser to where we work, study, and shop as a way to reduce our carbon footprint. I’ve been fortunate to drive less than 5,000 miles each year in my hybrid because I lived so close to my work and I’m able to shop locally. However, there are so many other small changes that I’ve made and have committed to making as a better human. Below is a list of small and big changes that when taken collectively could help us protect our planet.

Other things we can do to help protect the planet:

-Flying less often, making video-conferencing a permanent option

-Improving the insulation of our homes’ windows, doors, walls and ceilings

– Turning off lights and appliances when not in use

-Eating less red meat and dairy

-Consuming leftovers

-Switching from oil and gas heaters to electric

-Repairing clothes, donating clothes, buying second hand or renting clothes instead of purchasing new clothing

-Taking a train instead of flying whenever possible

-Buying energy efficient appliances

-Walking or biking instead of driving whenever possible

-Investing in solar and wind energy

-Reducing use of single use disposables and recycling more

-Conserving water with fewer and shorter showers, using the dishwasher, washing full loads of laundry, going to the carwash, and draught resistant gardening

-Planting trees and draught resistant plants or donating to organizations who do

-Supporting eco-friendly corporations and small businesses

-Voting for political candidates who take climate change seriously and are willing to enact laws and policies that protect the planet

I created The Better Human Project in response to the downward spiral I’ve recently observed in how human beings are interacting with one another.  As a retired educator and grandparent, I care deeply about the survival of the next generation.  I want my kids, my grandkids, and former students to not just survive, but to thrive in this world that we share with other human beings.  I have always believed that we humans collectively have the power to shape the society in which we live. When we lose sight of this reality and allow the greedy for fame, wealth, and power to dictate the rules, humanity and the planet itself ultimately suffer. 

During the process of creating this project, I reflected on what I thought it means to be human.  To help me think deeply about this, I took the word human and assigned a word to each letter. 

The letter “H” came to stand for creatures of habit.  We all know that humans develop habits that enable us to live important parts of our lives without having to exert a lot of mental energy.  Some are good and others are detrimental to our health and that of the planet.  Being a better human means consciously developing habits that are beneficial.

I made the letter “U” stand for the reality that we are each unique, having differences in talents, energy levels, intelligence, and personality.  I find great beauty and appreciation in the uniqueness of each human being and the special contributions their unique attributes allow them to make, especially when used to benefit humanity.

In my mind, the letter “M” came to stand for multicultural.  Each human is raised within a community with an established set of values, traditions, language, and social rules.  These provide an important feeling of belonging and safety.  When a culture uplifts and values every human within the community, it is worthy of preservation.  However, when individuals within a culture suffer alienation, oppression, and discrimination, then it is time to revise elements of that culture.

The letter “A” represents for me how humans are always active.  We have an innate need to do something with our lives and when we are no longer active, we become bored, lethargic and depressed.

And finally, the letter “N’ stands for neighbors because we share a planet together and we affect each other’s lives whether we care to acknowledge this reality or not.  We are not islands onto ourselves, nor communities unaffected by how other communities live.  We breath common air, share oceans, and have limited resources.

With these beliefs about humans as the foundation for The Better Human Project, I narrowed down nine things each of us can do to become a better human.  They are:

1. Protect the planet
2. Be truthful and value the truth
3. Learn new things as a lifelong learner
4. Love your neighbor
5. Challenge bigotry
6. Demand social justice
7. Help others in need
8. Practice inclusion
9. Vote for better humans in elections

 And that is The Better Human Project.  I hope you’ll join me in becoming a better human to make our world a better place to live.

Over the years, I’ve collected and stored wise and inspiring maxims that literally guide me through life. Many have come from early Sunday School lessons, like the Golden Rule: “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you” or “Judge not less you be judged” and “You’ll know a tree by the fruit it bears”. Others came from my mother, although she probably wasn’t the author. Many of her wise words continue to influence my behavior like, “Haste makes waste” and “You eat an elephant one bite at a time”, “Consider the source” and “A hard head makes for a soft behind”. And then there are aphorisms I gathered from speeches, songs, books, educators and activist making a point. For as long as I can remember, certainly as far back as the eighth grade, I was moved to action by the dictum, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

It turns out that these powerful words originated with Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998), an early leader of the Black Panther Movement, former Muslim, ex-con, and civil rights author. I don’t recall where I was nor who first shared his words with me, but they became a part of my cache of wise and inspiring maxims to live by. In the eight grade, his dictum motivated me to start a school club to deal with the numerous problems I observed on campus. I called it the “Get it Together Club”. The mission of the club was to bring the student body together to improve our school from the bottom up. The effort was ambitious and notable enough to gain the attention of then Major of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who attended my 9th grade graduation in order to present me with his “Community Service Award”. Honestly, I wasn’t impressed by the beautiful plague and I can’t even recall the praise he heaped upon me in front of the audience, but I retain the satisfaction of working for the common good. When a reporter asked me what inspired me, I unknowingly quoted Eldridge Cleaver, “If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.”

Throughout my personal and professional career, I have continued to be motivated by Cleaver’s words. And now, in retirement, as I find myself daily lamenting the sorry state of human interactions in our country, his dictum rings in my ears. And true to my lifelong belief system, I feel a responsibility to do something about it. I had thought that I would write children’s books to address the moral character of the next generation. And I still might. But then one morning, it occurred to me that I really wanted to get the message out to people actively involved in our society today that we should be better, could be better, and must do better if we are to survive as a human race on this planet.

I began to work on a public service message to encourage people to be better humans. For several days I thought about what it really means to be human and then what it means to be a better human. Out of this deep thinking, I created “The Better Human Project” and I asked my daughter who runs a non-profit, The Inclusion Media Group, if my project would fit within the mission of the non-profit and if they would take it on. She welcomed the project and I have been working on the details as the project manager ever since.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share the details of the The Better Human Project and will point to ways my readers can help spread the message. In researching for this week’s post, I found another quote from Eldridge Cleaver that surprisingly sums up The Better Human Project. Of course, I’ve already added it to my wise and inspiring cache of maxims.

“You don’t have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.” (Eldridge Cleaver)

Many teachers will tell you that a great percentage of their time and effort goes to managing the squeaky wheels in their classrooms. A squeaky wheel is the attention grabbing kid who through either exceptionally constructive behavior or exceptionally disruptive behavior motivates a teacher’s actions in the classroom. As a result, the majority of kids in any given classroom are largely forgettable and they receive from the teacher what is dictated by the behavior of the squeaky wheels. I grasp that the same is true in our society. Political, business and religious leaders cater to the prerogatives of the exceptionally outstanding or the exceptionally obnoxious among us.

This week, I decided to become a squeaky wheel to our nation’s political leaders, as an exceptionally constructive person. Among the exceptionally constructive in our country are the highly educated and well informed, successful business owners, the famous for their talent, the patriotic heroes, and the articulate. Among the exceptionally obnoxious are those self-centered and unethical individuals who are greedy for fame, power, and money at the expense of everyone else. Caught in the middle are unsuspecting Americans who are simply living their lives to the best of their ability. For many years, I was one of them. At that time, the Republic was relatively safe. Lawmakers compromised. Americans shared the same basic facts on matters of importance. No political party owned an entire news network. Indecent, bullying, and blatantly immoral candidates were disqualified. However, these things are no longer true.

I learned through a conversation with one of my daughters just how unaware hardworking Americans continue to be. Too many know too little about the current thwarting of the rule of law, the threats to our basic rights, and the dangers to our Republic. My daughter admits to being too busy running her business to pay much attention to the news. It didn’t help matters when she explained how last week, on her return flight from New York, she watched a few minutes of Fox and then a few minutes of CNN. She concluded that neither of them was reporting the news, but both were stoking political divisions. In that few minutes, she concluded that watching the news produced unwanted anxiety and was therefore a waste of her time. She concluded that there was no truth to be had, only heated opinions. After some unpacking about the two news outlets, she conceded the misinformation and vitriol was worse on Fox. In her defense, she does vote in every election. But our founders made it clear that a healthy democracy depends on an informed electorate. I warned her that she may one day find herself living in a country she no longer recognizes if she remains uninformed.

And so, I recommitted myself to being a squeaky wheel on behalf of people like my daughter who have no time nor inclination to make a fuss. I spent a good part of the week emailing the president, my representatives, the speaker of the house, and the senate majority leader. Of particular concern at the moment is the threat to our Republic and the rule of law by Trump and his accomplices. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits an elected official who has participated in, aided or given comfort to insurrectionist from ever holding elected office again and yet Trump is talking about running again in 2024. There was a question as to whether or not those Trump accomplices will be prosecuted civilly or criminally for ignoring Congressional subpoenas. Why is this even a question? The Constitution already prohibits any threat to the full faith and credit of the U.S. and yet here we are debating it in Congress. I posted the issues and my opinions on Facebook. I followed political leaders from both parties on Twitter and responded to their posts. I even got into a lengthy, several days long back and forth with a Ted Cruise supporter. That interaction enlightened me a bit about the other squeaky wheels we are dealing with. It’s not just the vicious protesters at school board meeting or the January 6th insurrectionists, but individuals on social media feeding them a false and dangerous narrative.

First, I learned that this person is somewhat inarticulate and uneducated. I learned that he is ultra-religious but doesn’t really know the Bible very well. I learned that he thinks scientists are working on behalf of the “dark side” and just want power and money. He calls scientists in universities, pseudo-scientists. He accuses Dr. Fauci of working for the dark side. He knows little about the Constitution. He calls abortion murder and believes that life begins as conception and must be protected no matter the circumstances.

I realized that people like him are among the exceptionally obnoxious like Trump, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Ted Cruise, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Chuck Grassley and Kevin McCarthy. They rely on each other. I looked at their tweets and responded to the blatant deflections, misinformation, exaggerations, scapegoating, false accusations, and nastiness they were putting out. I also responded to tweets by Democratic legislators urging them to get tough, to follow the Constitution, protect women, protect voting rights, to hold political criminals accountable, and to get rid of the filibuster.

My hope is that more patriots will take to whatever platform they have and contribute to the discourse by injecting truth and reason and demanding justice and accountability. More of us must become the squeaky wheel on the exceptionally constructive side if we want to motivate leaders to move in a productive, not destructive, direction.