The leisure class has the working class surrounded!

One of the reasons I’m such an ardent fan of fiction is that writers of said fiction generally manage to integrate little nuggets of wisdom into their stories, often in unexpected but always delightful ways. I’ve come to think of these valuable nuggets as learning tools, something to expand my knowledge or at least help me to see reality from a new perspective.

Last night, as I was reading Free Fall, a compelling page-turner of a novel by Kyle Mills, an author previously unknown to me, I came across this priceless gem: There’s a leisure class at both ends of the social spectrum.

It took a few moments for the truth of that simple statement to sink in, and when it did I realized I’d never before given the matter so much as even one brain cell’s worth of critical thought. But yes, Mills is absolutely right; there is a leisure class at each end of the social spectrum.

At the upper end you have the idle rich, who survive on a mixture of greed, power and, more often than we like to imagine, ill-gotten gains. People at this end of the spectrum don’t have to work. They let their money do the work. It’s the capitalist’s version of “let your fingers do the walking.” Hey! There’s no point in lifting a finger if you don’t have to.

The leisure class at the lower end of the social spectrum consists of the idle poor, an underclass of citizens who can’t work, or, for whatever reasons, choose not to. Sometimes it’s a matter of taking the road less traveled, or of following the course of least resistance, and sometimes it’s a matter of having no choice at all.

Caught between these two leisure classes is the working class, but that’s to be expected. Somebody’s got to do the work.

A Plea for Sensible Laws

Someone (I think it was Robert A. Heinlein) once wrote that whenever you pass a new law you create a new class of criminals. There’s a great deal of wisdom in this thought, and it should inspire all of us to be careful what we wish for in regards to legislation.

Law is necessary in a civil society to maintain order and preserve the commonwealth. Wise laws are the wise servants of the people, but only laws that apply equally to all members of society should make it into the books or be allowed to remain on the books. Frivolous, regressive, repressive and purely punitive laws should be immediately stricken from the books and banished forever.

Prime examples are the laws prohibiting marijuana. Laws that punish one group of people at the expense of a second group of people for the benefit of a third group of people are not just laws. They are laws of tyranny and oppression that make a mockery of justice and damage society far more than they benefit it.

Striking anti-marijuana laws from the books would serve society in a myriad of important ways; achieving energy independence, building a stable, sustainable economy, protecting the environment, saving taxpayers money, and freeing up jail space to incarcerate dangerous criminals are among the most obvious.

If we really need to have stupid laws on the books, let’s consider a law making it illegal for people not to know how to find Iraq on a world globe. Punishment for violating such a law could be a two-year tour of duty in Iraq, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

Not only would this solve the military’s enlistment problems, but it would also give incentive for students to learn their geography lessons. Best of all, it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers an arm and a leg to fund it.

Slinging mud and other campaign b.s.

As the primary elections draw near, the politicians and their campaigners are ramping up the rhetoric. They’re going into attack mode, now. The gloves are off and the political candidates are resorting to the typical dirty tricks that have always been part of the election process.

Name-calling is a tactic that always seems to work. Candidate A calls candidate B an inexperienced newcomer. Candidate B retaliates by calling candidate A a career politician. Career politician?

Stop and think about it for a minute before you automatically assume that this intended slur carries any weight. What, exactly, is a career politician? Isn’t a career politician someone who was elected to office by the will of the majority of voters and remains in office at the will of the majority of voters? The majority of voters can end a career politician’s career simply by voting the crook out of office.

What does candidate B really hope to gain by calling candidate A a career politician? Isn’t he really hoping to defeat candidate A so that he, himself, can become a career politician?

Career politicians are the ones that get elected, and reelected. All the rest are inexperienced newcomers, a.k.a. also-rans.

Patriotism? Let's vote on it!

Okay, you’re more patriotic than the next guy, right? Or so you say. In the absence of quantifiable proof, let’s put your high opinion of yourself to the test.

Are you registered to vote? No? Then how are you going to vote in the May primary elections? Oregon’s May primary takes place on the 16th. It’s possible other states hold their elections on different dates, but I don’t know this for a fact. I don’t vote in other states.

If you are registered to vote, are you planning to vote? No? I guess convenience defines the limits of your patriotism.

If you are planning to vote, have you familiarized yourself with all the candidates and issues so that when you cast your ballot you will do so as a responsible, well-informed voter? Or are you going to take the same approach to voting that other self-professed patriots took in the last election? You know! The one that left us holding the bag for the bad decisions and insane policies of the idiot cowboy that currently occupies the White House.

Of course, if you are registered to vote, are planning to vote, and are fully informed about candidates and issues, then you really are a patriot. You understand that patriotism is more than just waving a flag. You understand that patriotism also means getting fully involved in the political process.

Rising Gas Prices

Well, it finally happened. Today, gas prices topped $3.00 per gallon, the fourth consecutive increase in as many days. Just 45 cents to go to hit the $3.50 per gallon by Labor Day that I predicted last September. 45 cents is not an unreasonable figure. Prices have risen that much in just the past month.

Evidently, people haven’t had enough, yet. You still see them, one person to a car, mired in rush hour traffic. Perhaps no one’s driving more these days, but for damned sure few people are driving less.

Conventional wisdom says that when people are fed up with higher gas prices they’ll change their behavior. They’ll walk more, bicycle more, use public transportation more often, buy smaller, more economical vehicles, make fewer trips. Of course, conventional wisdom is sometimes wrong.

While most people would argue for lower gas prices, what we really need is higher prices, something to discourage them from driving SUVs, or even from driving at all. Higher gas taxes would serve that end, as would vehicle weight/mileage taxes and a progressive luxury tax on vehicles costing more than $25,000 (hybrid economy cars excepted).

Maybe gas rationing is the answer. If people were allotted only so much gas a month, surely they would curb their gasoline usage, either through driving more economical vehicles or through driving less.

One thing seems certain, though. If we don’t break our addiction to fossil fuels, our addiction to fossil fuels will break us. Get over it, then get on with it.

And welcome to the new reality.

Time flies when you're old enough to see the obvious.

As you’ve gotten older you probably noticed that time seems to be picking up speed, as if it were trying to leave you in the dust. Do you ever stop to think that maybe it’s just you trying to return to the dust?

Admit it! Things aren’t like they were when you were a kid. Back in the day there was time enough for everything. Those were the days when the hardest things you did were to learn to do the things you now take for granted; tie your shoes, tell time, read and write, the multiplication tables, stuff like that.

Back in the day, time slowed to a crawl as you fidgeted your way through the school day, hurried out to play, then struggled to get your homework done in time to watch an hour of television before your nine o’clock bedtime. The school year seemed to last forever, but when summer vacation finally came, it lasted long enough that by the time the new school year started, the previous year was only a distant memory.

Those were the days when you didn’t have to stop to smell the roses. You could smell them as you pedaled by on your bicycle, just as easily as you could smell the dog shit squished between your toes as you raced, barefooted, across the yard, or the aroma of fresh-baked cookies wafting from the open kitchen window as you played catch with a friend. You didn’t have to stop to do anything. Only rarely did you even slow down.

Whatever happened to those good old days, anyway? Today, it seems as if your plate is always full. Too full. You plod along, knowing that whatever remains on your plate from today gets added to your plate for tomorrow, ensuring that you won’t finish tomorrow’s tasks, either. The backlog builds; the days grow shorter.

The sun comes up, you blink a few times, go through a few motions, and then the sun goes down. There never seems to be enough time, in one day, to do all the things you have to do. But, there’s always tomorrow.

Few people who have entered into middle age will argue the point; most people agree that as they age, time seems to speed up. One day blurs into the next and pretty soon another year is gone.

I think Einstein’s theory of relativity adequately explains this time distortion phenomenon. I’m pretty sure that in there somewhere he postulated that time slows down as one moves faster through space.

The answer is simple, then. Kids move faster than aging adults do, so time goes by slower. Aging adults are slower than kids are, so time goes by in a rush.

It’s all relative.

Words that Hurt

“You’re not smart enough to be a writer.”

Stung by my father’s words, I fled the room in anger. No bee swarm could have inflicted more pain; no knife cut so deep, no fist hit as hard as did those eight words, uttered in a mean-spirited moment of carelessness some 46 years ago.

The words came in response to my simple statement that I’d changed one of my elective classes to high school journalism, journalism being as close to creative writing as one could get in those days. The first day of my sophomore year was over; at age 15 I was high on life’s possibilities, wired into the future, proud that I was beginning to take charge of my own life. Evidently, my dad wasn’t similarly impressed.

Looking back, I can see now that that’s where the problems started.

The following day I canceled the journalism class, signed up for a class I no longer remember, and proceeded to tune out of the high school curriculum. Soon, falling grades became failing grades. By the time I entered senior year I realized that school was failing me just as surely as I was failing at school.

Ironically, the two subjects that I failed were English and Social Studies, both of which would be among my top subjects were I to take them today. Sometimes the right things come along at the wrong time.

Is there a moral to this story? Of course there is.

If you are a parent, a role model, a mentor, employer, authority figure or friend, I urge you to engage your brain before you move your lips. Beware that the words you’re about to speak have awesome power, and that they should not be used thoughtlessly.

Language is mankind’s most powerful, most useful, and most commonly used – and misused – invention. Without language, few other inventions could exist.

Words of a spoken language – any language – are aural expressions of ideas. Words of a written language are made up of symbols that are visual representations of the sounds contained in the spoken word.

The words we say and write have infinitely greater power than most of us realize. Every day we use words in casual or careless ways, or in meaningful and purposeful ways, sometimes not fully aware of their incredible power.

Pundits and politicians use words to forge public opinion. Historians and futurists use words to rewrite history or shape the future. Scientists, academicians and philosophers use words to express complex theories, carry on intellectual discourse, or debate high ideals.

Words have the power to start wars or stop them, to build confidence or generate fear, to inspire to greatness or relegate to the dustbins of mediocrity, to express love or show contempt, to praise or ridicule, to wound or to heal.

When you talk to those who are important to you, beware that the effects of the words you use can last a lifetime.