Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Illusion of Control

People, in general, seem to cleave to the notion that there is some kind of control in the universe. Be it through a deity du jure, political leaders, heads of state, kings of industry or even one's own inflated and misplaced sense of power, the illusion that there is any actual control over one's fate is pervasive and ingrained.

Let's face it, that feeling of control is utterly false. It can be (and usually is) shattered by forces far beyond our control more often than not. From something as random as a car accident or as deliberate as a planned crime, the control one has over their lives is taken in the blink of an eye. In retrospect, one can look back nad believe that if they had done something differently, this never would have happened. And they can go forward secure in the knowledge that it can't happen again; which, of course, is a fallacy at best.

So what causes this illusion to begin with? I believe it's caused by the way people are generally raised. We are brought up parents or guardians (usually) who (generally) control our environments in such a way that we think they're in charge and have things under control. With comprehension of issues like controling one's fate to be beyond the understand of most children, it's unlikely that they ever thought of the issue in the first place.

As time goes in, a child grows. But the illusion of control remains - for the most part shared by a school system and the parents. The environments are controlled and regimented and the illusion that everyone is prepared for some kind of potential issue promotes the illusion that they have control. Being prepared for an emergency is not control, of course, since even the most prepared people on Earth can't anticipate every possibility they'll face. Some part of the plan will fail to some degree.

Take, for example, the ownership of a firearm in defense of the home (For my feelings about firearms, you can read my other blog here). ALL of these plans include two glaring omissions that renders such an act moot: They require you to have the gun in your hand before you need it and to be able to react appropriately and swiftly when the time comes.

As a plan, this would generally work. The trouble is that it's not a plan that can be reasonably implemented. No one walks around with a gun in their hand all day and night in the privacy of their home (and if you do, you need serious psychological help). Having the gun in the home and making all of these elaborate plans omit the fact that you will never know when you need it and when you do, you will need to react appropriately and faster than they do.

It has never happened.

The control you think you have over the safety and security of your home, in that respect, is a complete illusion. What pushes it into delusion are the firearm death statistics (who actually gets killed by home-owned guns), but that blog's been written and you can read it if you want.

The point here is that any control you believe you have in this case isn't really there. In fact, it's not there in any case. The fact you have to plan for these events and other emergencies proves the utter lack of control. The unknown always ambushes us in ways we don't plan for (not that we can't, we just don't anticipate it), but the very act of ambushing us proves we don't have any control.

What's worse is that mankind is a willing and eager partner in this lack of control we have over things. From industrial cost (and corner) cutting, we get accidents that take or change lives. Even when we think we have a ready response to the worst Mother Nature throws at us, we find out that the parts aren't there, the materials are badly made or inappropriate, the logistics haven't been worked out or a million other things man had some actual control over which weren't done that end up meaning a lot of people are going to die and even more are going to be hurt. Even a family that knows it should have a "what to do in case of fire" plan usually doesn't and members die because they don't know what to do.

So rather than live with the uncertainty of when (not if) certain doom will be visited upon us, mankind invents deities or places their trust in our leaders (political, business, military, social, etc) that they will take care of us when things go wrong or will avert the event.

Fat chance. Praytell, when has that ever actually happened?

We may derive some measure of comfort in clinging to the illusion that people know what they're doing, that they're in charge and have things under control but mostly we're a race speeding from one disaster to another, learning to cope with the aftermath while turning a blind eye to the fact that we really don't have a fucking clue and from the looks of things, aren't going to get one anytime soon. People still believe that political leaders will right wrongs, that kings of industry are looking out for the little guy, that the military will protect us from harm or that God (or whatever deity you believe in) is going to stop something bad from happening. We think they, at least, have that power.

They don't. No one does.

Shit happens - the most succinct summary of this blog I can thing of. Shit happens. We can't stop it. We really don't have any control.

Does this mean we give up and let bad things happen? Of course not. But we can do more to alleviate the situation when bad things happen, and we can be more attentive and conscientious about the consequences of putting profits before safety. We can stop being willing contributors to the problem. Don't get a gun, get a security system and wear the alarm key at home. It may not stop the event from happening, but it will certainly prevent you from accidentally shooting a loved one (or yourself) and will probably be more effective (and certainly less messy) in scaring off intruders. Do your job right. Stop looking out for number one and start looking out for everyone.

Do no harm.

It won't give us control over everything (or much of anything, either), but we can at least control that small part of our lives which allows us to cope with life when control is - once again - taken away.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Fallacy of the RIGHT to Keep and Bear Arms

I believe that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be abolished.

Now, this post will mark me as a screaming, left-wing, tree-hugging, limp-wristed, commie liberal. (I call myself that in this case so you idiots out there who object violently because you don't understand the issue don't have to call me those names. You're going to have to be more original than usual.)

Now, as I've written on many news sites and such, always after a story of mass murder in the U.S. (I only have to wait a day or two for one to happen), I feel the Second Amendment is the reason why we have more Americans dying every month by gunshot at the hands of other Americans than have died in the Afghanistan war since the invasion after 9/11.

Just so we're on the same page, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says the following:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

To explore my rationale, we're first going to go on a little history lesson to show how the Second Amendment is currently obsolete.

Back in England (from where most Americans originally came) for hundreds of years until they became obsolete, every Englishman between 12 and 60 was required to practice daily with the Longbow. It was not an option. It was a law and a mandatory activity.

To us, it may seem kind of odd for a monarchy to require their citizenry to practice shooting a weapon that was considered one of the most devastating ever put on a battlefield. You'd think they would want their people unarmed and unable to revolt. The truth of the matter was rather simple: England couldn't afford a standing army. Armies are expensive and the citizens tended to revolt when taxes were raised too much to pay for them. (Look at what happened in the 1770's in the colonies when King George decided to use them as his personal piggy bank to finance his war with France). Although by the late 1700's Great Britain was a constitutional monarchy with a more refined tax structure and could afford a standing army, the tradition of the right of individual weapon ownership was long-standing and ingrained.

So British citizens were taught to keep arms in defense of the country. Back in America, this tradition was maintained. It allowed the Colonists to hunt and defend themselves against aggressors. But the latter was supposed to be done only in support of the state at the call of the state. That state at the time was England. The French and Indian war in the 1760's proved the wisdom of allowing the citizenry of the colonies to keep their own arms and have regular practice in drills with them.

So far, so good. We have a citizenry that is well armed and trained in their use that can be called up as a main force for action against enemies of the state. This was the prevailing tradition during which the Constitution was drafted.

After the Revolutionary War, the United States government was funded with excise taxes and tariffs on interstate trade. There wasn't any way to fund a standing army. Knowing this and knowing the capital expenses involved in keeping a domestic army in cat food and kitty litter, the founding fathers performed the artful dodge. They relied on states to fund and train 'militias'. Each man was supposed to provide his own firearm and drill with other men of the community in preparation of being called up should the need to defend the state or country arise. The fact that America was still a frontier and personal defense rated rather high on the need scale, not to mention hunting, and you have full justification for never taking away a man's way of shooting things. But above all, for the State, they had a way of maintaining their army without having to pay for one 24/7/365.

That's the "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" part of the Second Amendment that most people completely forget is just as much a part of it as the rest.

But all was not well in Second Amendment-land. When the War of 1812 broke out, the lack of a standing army almost lost us a country. The Capital and White House were burned and a large amount of the country was occupied. Once the war was over, the necessity of having a standing army had been made painfully obvious and one was created. But guns were still expensive so carrying personal arms was encourage. Keep in mind that this was generally pre-industrial age. Each weapon was essentially hand-made. There was no standardization of parts, so something made for one weapon wouldn't necessarily or even usually fit another. Also, at the time, there really wasn't any alternative weapon that could be mass produced cheaper than having everyone BYOG. So the Second Amendment hung around mostly because it was still the only (affordable) game in town.

During the Civil War, personal arms were the norm, but mass production was beginning to come into its own for weapons. Standardization of parts was more and more common. If you didn't have a gun, one would be issued to you, yet most brought their own. But the situation arose more and more often that the calibers of ammo didn't match the caliber (or type) of weapon someone had brought to the fray. Logistically, having to carry ammo or parts for a large variety of arms was a nightmare. The decision after the Civil War was to issue personal arms. But keep in mind that the military was down-sizing quite a bit and it was thought they could fight their own internal conflicts without the need for gigantic standing armies.

Despite this, there came a time when it was decided that personal arms on the battlefield was a bad idea. Most personal arms were discouraged for use in battle after the Spanish-American war when it became obvious that modern warfare - with modern weapons - needed more uniformity of arms in order to be of maximum effectiveness on the battlefield. By World War I, personal arms on the battlefield were actually prohibited or required special permission and approval.

This is how it is today.

Today, we no longer require men of fighting age to possess, train with or bring a personal weapon in defense of the country. If they want to enlist and fight, we (We being the federal government) give them all their weapons, all their provisions and all of their training.

Therefore the first half of the second Amendment - the REASON for the Second Amendment - is utterly invalid today. A couple of hundred years worth of advancements and changes in government structure and financing, not to mention some hard-learned lessons over the years, have proven that state militias armed by citizen soldiers with their own guns is pure foolishness. States aren't raising local militias, the government does that. Reserve units may take on state and local names, but the federal government arms them, supplies them and trains them. The states have control over state militias for local emergencies, but those militias are at the ultimate beck and call of the federal government. Today, they're called the National Guard. And they are provisioned in such a way that they prove the obsolescence of the Second Amendment.

So the REASON for the second Amendment is, quite literally, history. The first part - the reason we even have it - no longer applies.

Now, let's move forward.

We have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms for a reason that is no longer applicable. People can go out and buy a gun - as many guns as they want - any time. And these guns aren't the Founding Father's guns. Back in the late 1700's the flintlock had a rate of fire of no greater than four rounds a minute. Plus, it wasn't terribly accurate. Today's cheapest handgun is more accurate at fifty feet than the best flintlock of the day. Today's weapons shoot easier, farther, faster and hit harder than ever before. The upshot (pun intended) of this is that killing is easier with a modern weapon than the older one. Even a revolver can be fired (with fast reloads) nearly a hundred rounds a minute.

That's a lot of firepower.

So we have more deadly weapons today than anything the founding fathers imagined.

Next let's look at the "well regulated" part. I take it to mean that the militia is well trained, well disciplined and competent to use their firearms in the heat of battle. That's what the amendment SAYS, but what do we have today? Bubba Joe and the Band out wasting tree stumps with a sub-machine gun that could have won the Battle of Lexington single-handed who have never taken any formal training in military discipline or firearms safety.

There is a vast difference between a gun that takes fifteen seconds to load, prime, cock and shoot just laying around the house and one that is already loaded, primed and can self-cock by a light pull of the trigger. In short, the modern gun is far more likely to be set off by accident than one with which the founding fathers would be familiar. This means more accidents. In a military environment, there aren't a bunch of family members around who have no training who can pick up "daddy's gun" and accidentally (or on purpose) kill someone else. Like the difference between gunpowder and Nitroglycerin, you can kick the former around and not have to worry, but if you do that to the latter, you'll end up finding out what the bullet feels like when it's shot.

The long and short of it is that these guns are deadlier, easier to misuse or abuse with far more people around them who know less about safely using them than the average gun owner did (or even had to) back in the early days of the country. They are babies playing with dynamite and it's a constitutional right.

Anyone can go out and buy one, anytime, anyplace in the U.S. no questions asked.

The results of this situation are beyond tragic.

Each year, in the U.S. 30,000 or more people die due to gunshot wound for all reasons. Of these, 30 are killed in defense of home and hearth by an armed homeowner. Another 500 or less are killed by police. Given the margins, this means a solid 1000 Americans die by gunshot from (in order) suicide, accident, crime and other reasons for every single one killed to defend the home.

And defense of the individuals home was NEVER PART OF THE CONSTITUTION!

It's a right in order for the ordinary citizen to have something to use to defend the COUNTRY. Home defense is simply a holdover from the frontier days when one needed to protect themselves from the Native Americans or (more likely) each other. The Indian Wars ended in 1887. The number of intruders deliberately and correctly shot to death each year by gun-toting home defenders is less than one in a thousand gun deaths.

Today, people have forgotten why we have a Second Amendment. It's right there in the thing, but they ignore it. What's even worse, is that they keep harping on the second half, without remembering the first half, as some strange justification to fight against the state itself. Rather than for the defense OF the STATE, people today look upon it as a sacred right to allow them to ATTACK the state, to keep the State in line or to overthrow the government.

Never mind that the government will make a total hash out of any group who tries because regardless of what kind of guns the private citizen brings to the fray, the government has bigger, better and more powerful toys and can afford the best. If it comes to a revolution, my money's on the federal government. A few doses of Firemist, a couple of hundred rounds of HE from thirty miles away or a few precision-guided smart bombs and the rebels will be wannabe pate' on toast and the rest of us can go back to paying our taxes and being law-abiding citizens. Let's face it, no government today is going to be afraid of a bunch of dingbats carrying any kind of small-arms who think they can topple that government.

The carnage continues unabated. The only reason we have so many shootings (We have a higher murder rate than any of the top 25 industrialized countries in the world) is because we have so many guns.

So let's attack the fallacies that the right-wingers and radical wannabe's use when talking about repealing the Second Amendment. They say if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.

On the face of it, yes. If a formerly law-abiding citizen uses a gun in a crime, they become outlaws. But before they were outlaws, they got their gun legally. Outlaws get their guns from people who have bought them legally in the first place. Cut off the supply of guns and you cut off their availability. As more and more guns are taken out of circulation, fewer and fewer of them will be out there ready to kill someone. Our death rate by firearm is so high simply because guns are so available, so simple to use and so efficient in action. Remove their availability and the number of deaths will go down.

In short, get rid of the RIGHT to keep and bear arms. Abolish the Second Amendment.

Another thing these moronic nitwits tend to cite is the gun control measures in Germany and other places that went into effect before a totalitarian regime took over and started killing citizens. They say the government first took away their tight to defend themselves then enslaved them. Yes, that happened, but re-read the above paragraphs about governments taking on its citizenry and you may understand that even if the citizens could have defended themselves back then, the difference in the outcome would have only been more dead citizens. And back then, the guns citizens had and the weapons the government had were closer in firepower to one another than they are today.

Just as the second Amendment was once relevant and useful, but is not longer so, personal gun ownership today would do nothing to stop a government from taking over its citizenry.

Finally, the most fallacious argument used to keep guns in the hands of Americans is the one citing WWII and the Japanese not invading America. Gun rights proponents would have you believe that the Japanese feared to invade the United States because the citizenry was all armed.

Bullshit.

The Japanese never wanted a protracted war with the United States in the first place. They thought a hard, decisive blow at America's ability to defend herself would bring America to the negotiating table where they could coerce the US into agreeing to end embargos of oil and iron from and through Indo-China (Indonesia today). This is why Hawaii wasn't invaded or occupied. The only occupation of American territory by the Japanese in WWII was a few minor spots in the Aleutian Islands, which itself was a distraction intending to draw out the American carriers so the Japanese could attack and invade Midway. They eventually withdrew from the Aleutians without a fight.

The Japanese never feared American citizens or their guns for the same reason a government doesn't fear its citizenry today: They had bigger, better weapons to bring to the table than anything Joe Average American may have had.

Common sense isn't, and citing that kind of history isn't applicable to today where precision munitions have little chance of missing their targets.

Now, all that said, I'm not against gun ownership. I own a gun myself. I'd never use the thing against another person, of course (it's a pretty dangerous thing to do to both you and them), but I enjoy the challenge of hitting a target at long range. Of course, I use a black powder rifle (more of a challenge), but that's beside the point.

The point is, gun ownership should not be a constitutional right. Driving is almost as essential to life today as hunting was back in the day. But driving is a privilege. So should be gun ownership.

The people who want to own guns should be required to state why they want one then have an intensive background check, including a mental health examination - and do this for EVERY PURCHASE OF FIREARMS OR AMMUNITION. They should be required to prove competence in handling their weapon (both on and off the range). They need to be required to pass frequent surprise inspections to prove they comply with all regulations and basically train with them on a regular basis. ANYTHING less than 100% compliance means you lose the privilege for life.

After all, this is the historical basis for the private ownership of weapons: Responsible weapon ownership. Even if it's not going to be in defense of the state, it's only prudent to make sure the people who have that kind of firepower at their command are fucking responsible for it ALL OF THE TIME. The firearm today is far more deadly than it was back when the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution. It requires a much higher standard of ability, understanding and training than before.

It's time that Joe Average Citizen had his guns taken away and we start screening who should and more importantly should not have guns. But in order to do that, we need to revoke the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon and will probably happen only when people get tired of seeing 30,000+ Americans die at the hands of other Americans every year. We seem to take issue with terrorists killing one tenth that number, but we have killed more Americans in one year than the "bad guys" have killed in 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan COMBINED.

You'd think we'd have a clue. If you want to find out why I think we don't, read the post before this one.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Lack of Common Sense Factor

I believe the human race is getting dumber.

Back in 2006, a little known and little regarded movie called "Idiocracy" came out. It's the story of a regular, average guy who awakens 500 years in the future and finds humanity is so stupid, he's the most intelligent man on the planet. By and large the reason for this is because intelligent people put off having children (or opted not to have them) while the "salt of the earth" kind (you know - rednecks) kept spewing out babies like the goose's golden eggs. Successively, these kinds kept breeding while the more intelligent people didn't. End result: Really stupid people who thought because the ads for a Gatorade-like drink said it had what's good for you in it, used that stuff instead of water to irrigate their crops (with predictably disastrous results).

Now, the idea has a certain amount of merit (assuming all rednecks are stupid, which obviously isn't true) but doesn't take into account several other factors that play into a human's desire (or lack of it) to use their noodles. Evolution doesn't stupefy a species in a single generation, yet that is what I see happening all around me.

Notice that it has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with one's desire to USE it. Anyone who is intelligent, but doesn't use it is, in my book, dumb. Hence the rationale for this post and the opening line.

People are not using the sense they were born with. They don't use the talents, they don't use the abilities, they don't use the skills. This trend is ever-growing, and seems unlikely to stop anytime soon. What used to be common sense is no longer common. People have, for whatever reason, eschewed the concept of looking any deeper than the sound-bite they hear and accept as gospel everything their "trusted" source says.

For the sake of clarity (Because the gods know that there is precious little of that anymore) I define common sense as a reflexive distrust of the immediate situation. Taking the classic situation of looking both ways before crossing the street as an example, we will see how this reflexive distrust of the immediate situation saves your life and how ignoring it will let you become a hood ornament and the title star at a coming funeral near you.

You come to a street that you want to cross. The person with common sense distrusts the immediate situation. You know that pedestrians have the right of way (a common misconception in the middle of a street block, but let's assume it's even true) which means cars have to stop if you decide to cross. Cars are moving at car-speed. Cars are driven by (allegedly) alert drivers who can react instantly to your desires.

That is the immediate situation.

There is a lot to distrust.

First of all, if you walk out into moving traffic you are assuming:
1. The drivers see you.
2. They will stop.
3. They have TIME to stop.
4. They CAN stop.

Without a reflexive distrust of the situation, you believe all of that which you assume.

If all of the above are true, you live to endanger your life another day. If any one of them are not true, you die and enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame as an Internet headline and a minor footnote in the obits page, thus proving your unsuitability to contributing to the gene pool.

A person with a reflexive distrust of the situation will simply wait until one can cross the road safely without making any cars veer, slow-down or even have to see you to avoid you. You get no fifteen minutes of notoriety being the subject of ignorant online abuse, nor do you get to have your family gather beside what's left of your shattered corpse to cry and wail about how your life was tragically cut short. You do, however, get to pass on your genes to the next generation - if that's your thing.

Personally, I see it as survival of the fittest, and you were the stronger link by distrusting an inherently deadly situation and suffering to have to breathe for a few more instants of time in an infinite universe, but that's just me. Those who get that fame (or infamy, depending on one's point of view) have the luxury of getting to lay around decomposing much sooner than the rest of us. But they're labeled as dumb. Only a dumbass would get hit by a car (and having been hit by a car once, I can attest to my dumbassness at the time - I didn't see it, and should have)

But I digress.

The person with the inherent distrust of the immediate situation (or common sense) will live all of the time they face situations where common sense is needed for survival. The person without common sense, who trusts the current situation (that the safety of the "right of way" will protect them) will far more often have their bodies rearranged in exciting and frequently tragically deadly ways. If that kind of body modification is what turns you on, please have the courtesy to jump off of a building based on the following table since sidewalks tend not to be driven by drivers whose lives may be impacted when they intersect your lacking of common sense body with their vehicle.

1 Story: 17 MPH
2 Stories: 24 MPH
3 Stories: 30 MPH
4 Stories: 35 MPH
5 Stories: 38 MPH
6 stories: 42 MPH
7 Stories: 46 MPH

You won't survive beyond about 5 stories, but it's your funeral you want others to attend, after all.

The point of all if this is that people are ignoring their reflexive distrust of situations. For some reason, they're believing things that have no actual impact on a situation or, worse, in things that will adversely impact their situation that they think will improve it. They have lost their distrust of things. Trusting people may be very intelligent, but they're dumb to automatically trust. Either that or we have a really skewed method for determining intelligence.

From politics to religion to sex (After all, is there anything else to life? Don't answer that!) common sense is becoming harder to find than hen's teeth and is rapidly heading toward the same fate as the Dodo bird. People have stopped trying to decipher the truth of a situation, have stopped using critical thinking and/or logic (assuming they ever had used it in the first place) and instead are believing pundits, "experts" and people whose lives are vested in making people believe them.

My question to those who blindly believe these folks is, why did you check your brain at their door? Assuming you have one to begin with, you should be fact checking, digging into sources, making sure that that you're being told is at least somewhat accurate if not entirely factual. Yes, it can be tedious and laborious and not a lot of fun, but you can learn things (like something resembling the truth) and you can be satisfied that you are not among the baa'ing sheeple who faithfully follow their Judas Goat to the slaughterhouse to be sacrificed upon the altar of expedience.

That scenario of fleeced flocks is becoming the norm rather than the exception over the last twenty years or so. People are letting others do their thinking for them, forgetting their distrust of "trusted sources" and allowing these sources to fill their heads with any inane drivel those sources can think of. It doesn't necessarily mean that the drivel is incorrect or inaccurate, but it may easily be that the drivel is a point of view lacking adequate perspective. One side of the story, as it were, without hearing all sides and making a decision. People are allowing themselves to be manipulated, molded, redirected and distracted from the important things that a person reflexively distrustful of the current situation would otherwise investigate to keep the important things in mind and in perspective.

The result of all of this lack of common sense is a rise in extremism. Extremism is simple, easy, and lazy. You don't have to think. You don't have to investigate. You just have to agree to a set of inflexible positions and you're done. No muss. No fuss. No bother. No brains. And don't mistake extremism with politics. Religions, politics, sex (am I forgetting anything?) more and more people are adopting extremist viewpoints as if the world ceases to change around us and as if we never need to acknowledge that change.

The change I see is a dumbing down of people in general, and there is a vast difference between acknowledging a change and accepting one. I acknowledge that it appears to be happening, but I will never accept that this change is one that needs to happen or even should happen. But it is happening none the less.

Now, here's the rub: If you just believe me without investigating for yourself, you are as guilty of being 'dumb' as anyone else who doesn't reflexively distrust the current situation. Check out the facts. See if they fit. See if what I said is right, true and/or accurate. If you're already opening a new browser tab to check, congratulations, you're among the rapidly dwindling minority of people who can call themselves intelligent. Good luck in your investigation. If you're not, cultivate some cynicism. The world can use a lot more of it.