If you are currently taking antidepressants and believe they work for you, you’re not going to like this at all. In fact, recent revelations publsihed by the New England Journal of Medicine seem to reveal that your belief in your antidepressant may well be the only reason it works for you.

Alternet.org covers the studies in the NEJM published on January 17, 2008 and I encourage you to read that article in full before you come back to this one. It ties together a chain of causality that is difficult to dismiss as mere alarm-mongering or conspiracy theory wackiness.

• The lead researcher was a former FDA medical reviewer with no ties (refreshingly enough) to the pharmaceutical industry.
• His team had to use the Freedom of Information Act to force the FDA to release studies done that were never published in scientific or medical journals. These studies, obviously, demonstrated lackluster results for antidepressants even though all the studies were biased to show positive results.
• “While 94 percent of antidepressant studies published in journals show antidepressants to be more effective than placebos, only 51 percent of all registered studies were determined by the FDA to show antidepressants superior to placebos.”
• “…in the majority of FDA drug-approval advisory meetings through 2000, half or more of the FDA advisers had conflicts of interest — financial relationships with drug companies.”

• “In addition to biased depression measurements and an absence of a true double blind control, the FDA also accepts antidepressant research in which subjects who respond favorably to placebos are weeded out from final trials.”
• Faith-based healing: “In 2004, the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reported that among those depressed patients expecting an experimental antidepressant to be “very effective,” 90 percent had a positive response […] while among those expecting the medication to be “somewhat effective,” only 33 percent had a positive response.”
• “As one might expect, drug companies do nothing to ensure that depressed people who have little or no faith in antidepressants are proportionately included in studies.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the implications here. For all the billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry is raking in on these medications, it would appear they are less effective than remedies like St. John’s Wort or valerian in treating depression, two natural remedies among many with a long record of efficacy outside the reach of the USFDA — the very agency, funded by tax payer dollars, that the tax payers depend upon to protect them from fraudulent or harmful drugs. It would appear that money and influence have once again compromised public safety for the sake of corporate greed. What’s saddest of all are those who have relied on these drugs in “good faith” to help them battle debilitating mental and emotional disorders — only to find out in the end that it’s likely that simple faith would likely served them as well, and their pocket books better.

With the explosion of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, parents will be well-served by reading this article on the results of a new study about “Internet predators.”

There were several points I found to be surprising. The article lead-in provided the first:

Contrary to stereotype, most Internet sex offenders are not adults who target young children by posing as another youth, luring children to meetings, and then abducting or forcibly raping them, according to researchers who have studied the nature of Internet-initiated sex crimes.

Rather, most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures. The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline, the researchers say.

Intriguing that young people seem to be, for the most part, completely aware of the adult status of those with whom they’re engaging in these relationships. This causes me to wonder how aware the young people are that it’s illegal for these adults with whom they’re interacting to engage in sexual activity with them? It would seem that children over the age of 10 or so should be cognizant on some level that this is neither appropriate nor legal behavior for an adult. It seems that the dysfunctions in the family itself erode the effectiveness of the warnings children receive regarding contact with strangers, something that sociologists and behavioral psychologists ought to note.

Another surprising revelation:

[…]in spite of public concern, the authors found that adolescents’ use of popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase their risk of being victimized by online predators. Rather, it is risky online interactions such as talking online about sex to unknown people that increases vulnerability, according to the researchers.

“Most Internet-initiated sex crimes involve adult men who are open about their interest in sex,” Wolak said. “The offenders use instant messages, e-mail and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate relationships with their victims. In most of the cases, the victims are aware that they are talking online with adults.”

“A majority of the offenders are charged with crimes such as statutory rape, that involve non-forcible sexual activity with adolescent victims who are too young to consent to sexual intercourse with adults,” she added.

These are intriguing insights. Children face much the same risks as adults do in Internet activities, but with presumably much less awareness of the value of their personal privacy. This make them particularly vulnerable to predators when combined with the family dysfunctions mentioned above.

In conclusion, here are more words of wisdom from the study’s author:

“To prevent these crimes, we need accurate information about their true dynamics,” said Janis Wolak, lead author of the study. “The things that we hear and fear and the things that actually occur may not be the same. The newness of the environment makes it hard to see where the danger is.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Some long-time readers of this blog will remember our son’s life-and-death struggle against MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) three years ago. A few others will know I also fought a similar infection last summer, and that Michael wrestled with a skin-level infection last fall. Though our son’s infection was much more serious and was treated through traditional western medical modalities for over a year, Michael and I battled ours at home using natural and homeopathic remedies and recovered much more quickly.

This article on today’s PhysOrg.com’s website sheds some light on an extremely hopeful discovery in the treatment of this strain of staph that is “spreading in epidemic proportions in hospital and community settings.”

Among the deadliest of all disease-causing organisms, Staph is the leading cause of human infections in the skin, soft tissues, bones, joints and bloodstream, and drug-resistant Staph infections are a growing threat. By federal estimates, more than 94,000 people develop serious MRSA infections and about 19,000 people die from MRSA in the U.S. every year. MRSA is believed to cause more deaths in the U.S. than HIV/AIDS.

Given that my son was almost one of those statistics, it would be good to see some actual research done to confirm whether more people actually do die from MRSA every year than from HIV/AIDS.

Among the brightest points for the new treatment is:

The new findings are particularly promising because BPH-652 already has been used (as a cholesterol-lowering agent) in human clinical trials, reducing the cost and time for development.

At a time when MRSA is encamped in hospitals and schools all over this country, real-world implementations of this discovery can’t come quickly enough.

When the American Government starts hiding things, it’s time to get concerned. And when the major news media doesn’t cry foul, it’s really time to start worrying. But on March 23rd of 2006 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) very quietly decided it will no longer publish M3 money supply data, and nobody said boo!

Now, for those of you who don’t know what the M3 is, let me briefly explain. Up until this purely political decision, the Fed tracked inflation using three sets of economic data called the M1, the M2, and the M3. The M1 covers the money you and I normal people use: Cash, checking accounts, and that sort of thing. “Real” money. To that, the M2 adds our savings accounts. (Savings accounts and retail money market and mutual funds under $100,000.) To that, the M3 tracked institutional money. So the M3 included the M2, and M2 includes the M1, making the M3 the largest, most comprehensive picture of real inflation in the United States — including U.S. Government expenditures!

So why would the BLS quit compiling the M3 data and the Fed choose to quit tracking it? Well, the official reason is nonsensical. They claim that the datum are tracked by other indicators, and so not tracking it will save the tax payer money. What other indicators? There are none!

So what’s the real reason?

I submit (and I’m not alone) that it’s to hide the real rate of inflation, and therefore exactly how much we are really being taxed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recall, if you will, from your high school economics class that, in order for inflation to occur, the Government has to increase the supply of money, making it more plentiful , and therefore “cheaper”. What happens when the Government prints money? Its value goes down. It takes more money to buy goods whose real value hasn’t changed a jot. We get inflation.

And what’s happening to the dollar today? It’s value is going down. (About $1.40 per Eurodollar as of close of business on Friday. Or, put another way, your U.S. dollars are now worth about 60¢ in Europe.) What do people people and governments do when the U.S. dollar falls in value? They hedge by buying gold, driving the price up. What’s happening to the price of Gold? It’s at record highs. ($838.80/oz as of close of business of Friday.)

We have inflation.

And what happens if people think inflation is out of control? They begin to lose faith in the U.S. Dollar (which is the only thing that makes it worth anything to begin with) and begin to panic, as they did in the late 1970s. And that just makes things worse.

So my theory is: To hide the fact that its printing (more than the usual amount of) money to finance itself, the Bush Administration ordered the BLS to quit compiling data for the one indicator that would reveal to the American Public what it was doing — the M3.

Consider this: In 2005 (the last year for which the data was complied) the M3 went up an annualized 9.4%; in the last three months of that year alone it rose an annualized 17.2%! Now, a 9.4% increase in the money supply (which is what the M3 measures), should have translated into a 9.4% increase in inflation. But the BLS claimed that inflation only rose a paltry 3.6%.

I know that 2005 was a long time ago, but do you recall ending 2005 with 5.8% more stuff at your house than you started with? (9.4% ? 3.6% = 5.8%) Because if the inflation rate didn’t go up by 9.4% in 2005, then you and I and everyone else had to put 5.8% more stuff in our garages and storage units that year.

Now, I’m of the opinion that conspiracy theories are worth exactly the amount of time they’re given by most people. Zero! They’re usually simplistic and often times down right dumb. Certainly we’re not looking at “the collapse of the United States as we know it” as some claim. China isn’t going to end up owning America (or the world) as others claim. And going back to “the gold standard” isn’t the answer to life, the universe, and sin as we know it.(In fact, tying the dollar to gold again would make the problem worse!)

But all that said, we do have a growing problem, and the Government attempting to deceive us is, in the long run, only going to make it worse. America doesn’t live in a vacuum. Market forces are already revealing what the Government is trying to hide from us. As more dollars are pumped out, they’re worth less and less, and global market forces do what they’ve done for thousands of years: They adjust. The dollar falls in value on international markets, gold prices skyrocket, the price of import goods goes up, and the price of export goods goes down. Inflation brews up until natural economic equilibrium is restored.

And who is going to pay? You and I. We already are. The question is: Do we want to do it with our eyes open, or our eyes shut? If we want to do it with our eyes open, we need to demand that the M3 be compiled, tracked, and reported.

To: Obama, Clinton, Huckabee, Giuliani, Edwards, Romney, and all the other candidates. For the last several presidential elections I have wondered something. Now, I’m going to ask:

Every presidential election cycle those of you running for office talk about tax relief. You talk about improving the living standards of Americans. And so it is again this year. I’ve listened to all of you as you talk about “taxing the rich” more so you can lower taxes on those in the lower income brackets. I’ve heard the discussions about how each of you is going to bring health care “to all Americans”. Some of you have plans to completely revamp the tax code, others the health care industry.

But one thing I have never heard a presidential candidate discuss: Lowering the corporate “taxes” on low income Americans. Perhaps it’s because you do not know; perhaps it’s because of the amount of money corporations give  your campaigns; perhaps its the power they wield in Washington and in the State Legislatures of the Union.

I don’t know. I do know that these corporate “taxes” cost poor Americans more than they pay in income tax. In fact, at the moment the American’s hurt the worst by these corporate “taxes” pay no income tax at all. Your tax relief programs simply do not affect them.

Why do I call them “taxes?” Because, Presidential Candidate, that’s exactly what they are. Just like the income tax, they have been approved by Congress and were signed into law by the President. Just like the tax code, regulations have been promulgated on these “taxes” that define the amounts that can be charged. And just like State taxes, by its  silence Congress gives its tacit permission for corporations to “tax” as surely as it does the States of the Union.

So, dear Presidential Candidate, it is a tax as surely as any other. It is simply a private tax.

So, what corporate taxes am I talking about?

• The Cash Tax. Did you know, Presidential Candidate, that some corporations actually charge a fee if a customer is so crass as to pay their bill in hard currency — the good ol’ American Greenback? It’s usually a fee of  around $5. Not much you say? Tell that to the young mother who could have used that $5 to buy her baby some formula!
• The Late Payment Tax. Not only are corporations allowed to charge interest on past due balances, nearly all also charge a “late fee” that can be anything from a dollar or so all the way up to $20 or more. It’s a regular cash cow for the company. And who is the cash cow? Not the middle class, who have money to budget and a savings account and probably an IRA. It’s the poor who have none of those things, who are continually juggling bills and counting pennies to feed their children. Even State governments tax the poor in this way, charging an extra 1%-2.4% of the cost of vehicle registration. They also charge interest on late income tax payments — as does the IRS.
• The Money Order Tax. Some companies don’t accept hard currency for payments on account at all. Did you know that, Presidential Candidate? And many poor Americans don’t have checking accounts. In order to pay their bills they have to purchase money orders for an average of $1 a piece. Tell me, Presidential Candidate: Have you ever stood in line behind a poor American dropping a precious $10 or $20 bill (which might be as much as 10% of all their money) on a string of money orders to pay their monthly bills? It hurts just to watch!
• The Car Tax. What’s the average miles per gallon (mpg) for cars on America’s roads today, Presidential Candidate? According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) it was almost 25 mpg in 2004. Do you think the poor, who drive the oldest, poorest maintained, least efficient vehicles on the road today get that kind of mileage? Not hardly. They can’t afford a new hybrid. They drive cars 20+ years old that get 10-20 mpg! How many bottles of baby formula or trips to the doctor for the young ones do you suppose that 10 mpg difference could pay for at $3/gallon for gasoline?
• The Bank Tax: Those in the low income brackets who try to avoid the horrendous Money Order Tax often find they’ve taken a far more dangerous road when they run into what The Wall Street Journal labeled “The Shell Game,” (In a Your Money Matters Podcast. [Listen to it: (MP3 Download)].) NetBanker.com columnist  Jim Bruene was a little more polite when he referred to the practice as the “creative engineering of transaction-processing algorithms” that generate the maximum possible number of fees possible when an account holder overdraws their account.

  It works something like this: At the end of the day transactions pending against a customer’s account are ordered from largest to smallest. In this way the account is over-drawn in as few transactions as possible, thus letting the bank charge the maximum number of over-draft fees. Also, if a pending debit card transaction takes “the available balance” into the negative, they’ll charge another overdraft fee, even though the account may never actually go negative. (For example: If a customer rents a car, the rental company might put a temporary hold [pending transaction] on the renter’s debit card for $150, thus overdrawing “the available balance.” The bank will then charge the customer an over-draft fee for that $150 “pending” transaction and every other “pending” transaction of a smaller amount, even though the rental company withdraws the $150 hold when the car is returned without incident; the money is never actually withdrawn from the account, so the never really becomes overdrawn.)

  Banks have become so aggressive with “The Shell Game” that it has now drifted “up the food chain” to people with enough money and education to fight back, as Jim Bruene’s article, Blogs Bring Negative Publicity to Overdraft Charges, demonstrates.

It is truly dismaying that it takes a the kind of press a lawyer with a minor in accounting can to bring bear to expose  these predatory practices on the poor. For certainly it is not the middle class that is hurt most by “The Shell Game”, or The Money Order Tax, or The Cash Tax. or The Late Payment Tax. Rather, it is those who have the most to lose. Those that can see an entire two weeks worth of income disappear because they were forced to make the horrible choice of either losing their electricity (and so having to pay three times the past due balance to have them restored), or attempting to float a check for a few days, till they receive their next paycheck.

The question is: What will you, Mr. or Mrs. Presidential Candidate, do about it? Will you remain silent, leaving intact these heinous drains on the meager incomes of those who already have nothing? Or will you step up to the plate and make this the flag-ship issue for your domestic tax policy?

America’s voting poor want to know! ?

“I’m not fat. I’m suffering from the disease of obesity.”

These were the words that went through my head this morning as I read this headline at Yahoo: Obesity must be treated as disease -expert. And while I may admire the intentions of the physicians, researchers, and others involved with the 14th European Congress on Obesity, I can also see the fine hand of the mega-industrial pharmaceutical companies at work in this, manipulating once more to medicate symptoms, rather than treat causes. The (pharmacologically treatable) symptoms of obesity are mentioned several times in the article, for instance. The causes, however, are only mentioned once — and that in a very general way:

“Despite a better understanding of the causes of obesity, a multi-billion dollar diet industry and countless weight-loss programs and gadgets, the number of overweight and obese people is rising at an astounding rate.” (emphasis mine)

Lest anyone think I am callous and dismissive of the plight of overweight persons, I should probably mention right now that I am overweight by a significant measure, and have been for most of my life. I know, first-hand, how painful it is to be overweight, and the subtle but pervasive discrimination that continues to be practiced against the obese. I know the health problems, the self-esteem problems, and the social problems that come along with being overweight. And I also know that my obesity isn’t the result of a medical condition or disabiliy. My obesity is itself a symptom — the inevitable result of the lifestyle choices made over years, and continue to be made on a daily basis.

Speaking of choices: A bit further down the list of headlines was the following article: Soda ups risk of obesity, but isn’t sole culprit:

[The researchers from Ohio State University and Columbus Children’s Hospital] found that, on average, teenagers drink two cans of soda every day, the equivalent of 20 teaspoons of sugar. Soda is also the biggest source of added sugars, which make up approximately 20 percent of total daily calories in children. However, experts recommend that people get no more than 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars.

Additional research also suggests that too much soda can increase children’s risk of obesity, and decrease their intake of important vitamins and minerals. In one study, researchers found that for every additional can of soda children drink per day, their risk of obesity increases by 60 percent.”

A note: A “can” of soda is 12 oz. Most children and adults drink soda in liters, plastic bottles that are roughly twice that amount. The article hastens to assure us that (mega-corporate) sodas aren’t solely to blame for childhood obesity, and in that I concur. The cause of obesity for the vast majority of humans can’t be blamed on externals. The cause, for those who don’t have a legitimate medical condition, is choice.

One must choose soda over more healthful drinks. Portion sizes are a choice, as is how much we eat of what we are served. Choosing potato salad over green salad is a choice, as is choosing bleu cheese dressing over balsamic vinaigrette. Choosing to take the elevator rather than the stairs. Choosing to sit here and write my morning blog post rather than taking a walk first — all these choices matter. They all count. They all have consequences.

I urge you all to look at the pattern, here. Encouraging citizens to control the causes of obesity leads to personal empowerment. In emphasizing the right to choose, citizens become the authors of their lives rather than the spectators. Sales at MacDonalds, Jack-In-The-Box, Domino’s Pizza, and other fast-food corporations will plummet, as will the dominance of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other “diabetes drinks” in the marketplace. The multi-billion dollar diet and exercise industry would collapse. A vast potential market for the pharmaceutical corporations vanishes. Such an empowered citizenry might start to take a much harder look at the scam that is health insurance in this country, or the excuses that pass for “health care.” Wise to the power of choice, they may start to think a bit about their vote, and how best to cast it. Comfortable with the exercise of personal power, they may begin to recognize its abuse at the highest echelons of government and corporations.

But by focusing on consequences and managing symptoms, responsibility for choice is abdicated, and one becomes a victim. Victims are notoriously easy to manage. They have given over all self-knowlege of their choices, and handed over the management of the consequences over to the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries. By surrendering the right to choose, it’s easier stop thinking about my vote, or how my tax dollars are spent. Living in that victim mindset that assures me there’s nothing to be done about the abuses of corporate or governmental power. I can’t make a difference. Just sit back, pop the insulin, open a Coke, turn on the TV, relax…

It’s probably redundant to say it at this point, but I am deeply disturbed by the trend toward victimization in this country. Its continuance portends nothing but doom for us, and it is spreading at an alarming rate. We are told we are “victims” of child abuse, “victims” of domestic violence, “victims” of over-taxation, “victims” of terrorism, “victims” of alcohol abuse, “victims” of cocaine addiction, “victims” of job outsourcing, “victims” of almost everything imaginable. No matter how otherwise well-meaning, the underlying message is the same: Victim = Powerless.

We are becoming (or perhaps already have become) a Nation of Victims.

A nation, that is to say, of the chronically disempowered.

Quote of the Day: A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. –Bertrand de Jouvenal

On stem cells, roses, and the fallacies inherent in the “culture of life” philosophy.

All life has intrinsic value.

I was inspecting our new roses this weekend, removing pests, fertilizing the soil after this month’s nearly incessant rains, removing any weeds lest the beautiful, fragrant flowering hedge in my dreams become choked with noxious sow thistle and dead leaves. Spider mites, aphids, ants, sow bugs… sow thistle, three kinds of grasses, a wild cucumber vine, and what I think might have been a cottonwood sapling.

If all life has intrinsic value, why am I destroying so much of it to preserve so little? Aren’t sow bugs and wild-cucumber vines “life,” too? Don’t they have equal intrinsic value to the rose?

I value life. My moral and ethical position has always been to do what is necessary to preserve life — except, apparently, when it comes to my roses. Or at mealtime, come to think of it. I’ll happily sacrifice a chicken’s life for my family’s, and those organic salad greens didn’t stand an evolutionary chance against a harvester’s knife.

Hmmm. If all life has intrinisic value, then why is it that some life is valued more than other life? I would wager that most of you rose enthusiasts nodded along knowingly as you read that first paragraph. Since every one of you has to eat something in order to survive, I’d imagine you’re right with me on the salad argument too (if not the poor, deceased chicken). No reasonable person would quibble or complain about crushed spider mites or the green death implied in that lovely salad. Some life, we know, must be sacrificed so that other life can endure. This is a reality that most mature persons come to understand: Life thrives on death.

If all life has intrinsic value, as I know it does, then why is some life “valued” more highly than others? Why is it all right for me to crush spider mites, but not that annoying old biddy next door? Why is it okay to catch and eat salmon, but not whales?

It becomes obvious, doesn’t it? Sure, all life has intrinsic value, but some life forms have more value, or significance, than others. We practice this every moment of every day, despite our rhetoric. It’s just not politically correct to talk about it. “We’re all equal strands in the web of life!” as modern ecophilosophers claim. “All strands are equally valuable. There is no strand more imporant than others.”

All the while they’re slicing up that eggplant for dinner.

It’s another of those circumstances where we are, most of us, mired in our cultural hypocrisy. We claim we believe one thing, but in practice it’s quite another. The question for reasonable persons becomes one of how to rate, rank, or value differing life forms to be sure
that what we’re sacrificing at any given time is for the greater good, the common weal.

Some of the rankings are subtle, and Deity knows I am not qualified to sit in judgement. Does a Serb outrank a Croat? Are Arab Muslims somehow better than African Muslims? Should a person immobilized with Multiple Sclerosis be ahead of, or behind, a quadriplegic war veteran?

I am not being facetious. Nor am I sure those questions are worth anyone’s time and attention — nonetheless you’ll find the answers to them being made at our nation’s State and federal levels, every day. If my government is making those decisions for me, I surely want to know what criteria they’re using to do it.

Some of the rankings, however, are just incredibly obvious, and should be especially plain to anyone who got through an Ivy League school: Mere cellular life should never trump the meaning and significance in a fully-formed human life. I’ll grant you that if you wiped human beings off the face of the earth, cellular life would still remain, but you still won’t find a group of cells composing a symphony or a sonnet. Or committing atrocities in Guantanamo Bay either, for that matter.

If I had to choose between cellular organisms and that MS patient, I’d choose the human patient every time. Which life is more significant? Which has more value? It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? You’ll pour boiling water down an ant hill, eradicate pests in a corn field, harvest wheat and chard and maybe even beef for your dinner, all to improve what you perceive as your “quality of life.” Why not harvest stem cells from cellular organisms to improve life, too?

It’s time to throw over a “culture of life” that would rather see fully-formed human beings suffer than sacrifice a few blastocytes to do research to relieve that suffering. These are humans with lives full of significance, lives lived among other humans, lives who have touched, loved, laughed, comforted, cajoled, and otherwise engaged in LIFE to whatever extent they were meant. To say that those blastocyte cells have equal signficance is to refute life, and its dependence on death, not value it.

Quote of the Day: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live” –Thomas Macaulay

This is a list of Things I Have Decided Today.

It’s just my list for today. I could decide differently tomorrow, of course. But for today, this is it.

I have decided that:

• Puppy alarm clocks are better than the other kind. Even if they are set to go off at sunrise.
• Espresso in front of a roaring fire is a decadent way to laze into the morning.
• The decadence factor is increased geometrically by sourdough pancakes, eggs and bacon for breakfast.
• I adore my husband’s new haircut.
• Gorgeously clear autumn days that follow two weeks of rain are especially well-suited for driving up into the mountains.
• Viewing the distant surf crashing on the beach while motoring along the ridges behind Berry Summit (ca. 2800 to 3000 feet elevation) is just about the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen.
• If my husband hadn’t been a professional driver we likely would have ended up sliding off that treacherous icy forest service road and probably not stopped bouncing until we hit the surf.
• Panic attacks are not more fun at 3000 feet.
• Always bring gloves when you’re heading up into the mountains. Even if you think you won’t need them.
• Young dogs and snow go together like sourdough pancakes and maple syrup.
• Hauling fresh-cut firewood up a slippery-wet, muddy, overgrown bank can be fun if you’re doing it with someone you love.
• I need to get way more serious about bringing my body back into condition after this past summer’s illness.
• This has been the best day of my life. Even if Kira hadn’t taught me to think that about every day, I’d still know it was true.

Humans, thinking, and consciousness all evolve — and our religion and politics must evolve with it. Time to examine the other side of the “political theology” debate and check in with Rousseau and The Savoyard Vicar.

Section III: The Inner Light.

My favorite quote from this section of Professor Lilla’s essay goes like this:

“There is much we cannot know about God, and for centuries the pretense of having understood him caused much damage to Christendom. But, for Rousseau, we need to believe something about him if we are to orient ourselves in the world.”

— Professor Mark Lilla, from his essay in The New York Times.

In this installment, the argument swings back to discussing the human need for God and religions in political discourse. In tracing out the history of this long debate Lilla, through Rousseau, raises questions which cannot be answered with standard Hobbesian thought. These questions were being raised in the 19th century, in the very heart of the Enlightenment era by those who had seen purely secular governments breed the nightmarish aftermath of the French Revolution. If man divorced from God and religion also bred monsters (as it surely did) then with what recourses was man left?

The answers began emerging in Germany, where first Protestant Christians (and later, Jewish reformers) envisioned a religion, enlightened by rationality, intellectualism, and philosophy, that could play an integral role in modern governance. Since it was not possible for man to govern rationally without religion, it became necessary to determine how he might govern himself rationally using religious and moral principles to guide him.

As Lilla aptly points out, this came to a fine point with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Émile (1762) and the character of the Savoyard Vicar, Rousseau elegantly reframed the discourse. Instead of dwelling on the horrors man committed in name of religion he talked about the good it also brought forth in humanity. Among these, Lilla lists “of conscience, of charity, of fellow feeling, of virtue, of pious wonder in the face of God’s creation” and that ” Human beings, he thought, have a natural goodness they express in their religion.”

Rousseau was roundly reviled by devout Christians in Europe for suggesting that religion could be framed in terms of human needs rather than divine truths — and yet, for a humanity struggling to evolve from its own bestial and savage roots, Rousseau was the necessary answer and successor to Hobbes. In any evolutionary development, integration must follow differentiation (here spoken of as the “Great Separation). Where there is no integration of what has been learned pathology follows — differentiation becomes dissociation and all that was true and great and beautiful about evolution derails and is lost.

Has humanity descended into a pathological dissociation of God and Government? In the United States of America, the “wall of separation” between church and state is understood to be all that protects its citizens’ religious freedom, but is it? We believe humanity is capable of separating politics and God, but is that true?

Professor Lilla suggests that we were wrong to think so and points out that the political theologies of the Middle East and South Asian countries continues to shape mankind’s present and future. It is upon us and we must somehow learn to integrate an evolved theology back into our (hopefully likewise evolved) politics before the Bin Ladens and Ahmadinejads and Bushes of this world drag us back into darkness.

I received this email yesterday from my web host and thought I’d pass it on in lieu of the next installment of analysis on the Lilla essay. Metaphors For Life is a proud Draknet affiliate and this announcement gives us yet another reason to feel really good about where our site is hosted.

We wanted to send out this special announcement that as of today, DrakNet is now 100% Carbon Neutral, and you can now brag that your website is truly green.

DrakNet now purchases Green Tags monthly for the amount of energy that is used to run the servers, lights, etc. Green Certificates (also known as Green Tags) are a simple way to offset the use of carbon-based energy sources and effectively power a business (or your home)on 100% renewable energy resources, without changing electricity providers.

We have chosen to purchase Green Tags for 110% of our carbon footprint, for 100% solar power. What this means is that for any energy DrakNet uses in our operations, that same amount of energy (+10% in case our calculations are incorrect) will be pumped back into the grid from solar power generation, essentially “cleaning” the energy, neutralizing our negative effect on the earth, and allowing us to claim to be “solar powered” and “green”.

DrakNet struggled for several years between our energy consumption, and service - there are solar hosts in a few solar data centers. The pricing, however, both for shared and dedicated servers is no where near economical and would effectively negate the pricing structure our clients have come to rely on, and their reliability is not yet up to the par of a world class data center.

By purchasing certified green certificates (or green tags), we have been able to negate our power hungry servers and make sure that our impact on the earth is neutralized.

We look forward to the day when solar energy data centers offer as much value as power hungry data centers - and when they do, we will be there.

To learn more about Green Tags and how to make your home and business carbon neutral, please visit http://mainegreenpower.org.

The next installment for “On `The Politics of God’” will be up sometime in the next few days.

[tags]draknet, carbon neutral, green, renewable, energy [/tags]