War forces adaptation

 "Yours is not to make reply, 

   Yours is not to reason why,

   Yours is but to do or die!"

~ my drill sergeants take on Tennyson's poem

Human Specious

What is the price 
of a human's existence 
compared to the price 
of the species?

Both planet 
and species 
have more meaning 
than you.

Ought I value 
my species 
more than 
my cells?

Am I born 
indebted 
to my species?

We will have no morality 
to speak of 
without the survival 
of our species.

By technology 
our species has come 
to a moment of great potential 
and greater danger.

Without some control of birth rates 
any species 
will consume itself 
into extinction.

How many wars will it take 
before our species realizes 
that us and us is always better 
than us and them?

The self fades toward oblivion 
from the brilliance of a hundred billion 
narcissistic copies 
of the species human.






#'s 697, 715, 873, 935, 1464, 1656, 1929, 2087, 2100

War on Death

Declaring a ‘War on Death’ may be more productive than declaring a war on taxes.  It may even be technologically possible.  Why then don’t we declare a war on death?

In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote:

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” 

Death and taxes

He wrote this letter in French to his friend within a few weeks after the founding structural document had been adopted.

In recent times, many have spoken out that we need to reduce taxes.  Some, like Grover Norquist, have even declared an informal ‘war on taxes’.  The basic idea is to reduce the percentage of taxes paid by citizens.

What if, instead of taxes, we declared a “war on death”?

The battlefield of such a war would be to push the length of productive life for humans to as long as we can make it.  Not just healthy habits to live longer, but technologies to extend life-spans dramatically.

Why We Struggle

Assume for a moment that it is technologically feasible to double the length of a person’s life.  What would be the result?

Longer lives give each person more time.  More time to learn, more time to work and more time to play. 

Longer childhoods

With longer time to learn we could become smarter and wiser before we begin to impact society.  Extending childhood by ten years or more would give parents more time to build character and values into their children.  Education could be extended to cover more information allowing a better educated electorate.

With longer time to work, each life would be more productive.   As time goes by, people become better at their vocations, so skills would have more time to be practiced and used.  A longer working life would also allow more time to save for retirement and old age, reducing individual’s burdens upon society.

With longer time to play, the quality of our lives could be increased.  Investing effort into our families, communities and culture could improve the quality of our lives.

Progress So Far

As fantastic as the idea may seem, we have already more than doubled the average life-span in developed countries. 

In medieval Britain, the average length of life was about 30 years.  By the 1600’s the average age of death had been pushed up to 35 years.  By the 1900, the average jumped to over 50 years.  Now it is typical to live until our mid-70s.

Much of the historical improvement in length of life has been due to nutrition, hygiene, and reduced infant mortality.  Science and cultural practice worked together to allow doubling of years lived.

Assuming one made it through childhood, had healthy habits, and disease or dangerous conditions did not kill a person early, the maximum length of life has stayed fairly stable. 

Our progress so far has been about eliminating the causes of death rather than extending the length of life.

Cells degrade

Technology and Habit

To achieve long life-spans, we need to make progress on the causes of aging.  We would have to increase the longevity of each individual to make new gains in life-span.

If we view our bodies as a process, we can work on extending the functioning of the components that make the process work.

Aging and eventual death are caused by accumulative changes to the complex molecules and cells that we are made of.  Several factors contribute to aging and death. 

Most cells only divide about 50 times before toxins, irradiation, and errors break down DNA so it is no longer viable. 

Some plants and animals have genetic repair capabilities that could be researched in order to build technologies in order to overcome DNA breakdown.  Learning how the regenerative capacity of these creatures work would be one place to start looking.

There are other technologies that could be developed to extend life-spans. 

Current sources of
pluripotent stem cells

Pluripotent stem cells can be induced to become other types of cells.  Although previously controversial because of embryonic stem cells, it is now possible to induce adult skin cells to become other cells.   We may soon be able to use our own cells as building blocks.

Researchers have recently discovered technology that allows a mouse skin cell to become a brain cell.  Extending these tools could allow us to grow our own, custom built replacement parts.

Each individual would have to improve their own habits in order to minimize cell and DNA damage.  Bad practices already can lead to shortened lives. 

We could choose as a society to institute cultural institutions that would promote better behavior.  Parents, teachers, churches and other influencers could help instill the virtues of healthy habits.

Dangers Overcome

With current birth rates, more people would place more demand on resources.   We may have to adjust our rates of consumption or improve our technologies in order to not deplete some limited resources.

With more time and education, we may be able to overcome these kinds of challenges.  With more at stake in a longer future, individuals could be motivated to be more prudent in their choices and habits.

If a revolutionary technology were to appear that suddenly and drastically increased life-spans, there would be social upheaval to deal with.

Those unable to afford the technology could become quite jealous.  Those who control the technology could become quite powerful.

I will not pretend that the consequences of life extending technologies will not present difficult challenges.  However to turn away from the technology because of the challenges seems a foolish reason not to try.  As a parent, I find it a moral imperative to give my children the opportunity for long, healthy productive lives.

Cost Benefit

Each year the U.S. economy is about $15,800,000,000,000 (almost $16 trillion).  This only represents about a quarter of the world’s economic output in a given year.

Even if it costs $16 trillion to develop and roll out a technology that would double life-spans, the payoff in productivity would greatly outweigh the costs. 

On average each person works over 30 years of their life now,  doubling working time to 60 years of productivity is one payoff. 

The labor return on capital investment for such a technology could be as high as 3000% on the one year investment. 

Even taking the ultra-conservative approach that the benefit would cover the costs is still a wise move.  Who would not want to live twice as long if the costs to do so were covered?

The extra years of labor a person could have are added on to the end of their current careers meaning their expertise would be greater.  The payoff to society for each person who gains a doubling of lifespan would be more than a quantity of dollars, but also be a qualitative improvement in labor.

With life expectancy in the mid-70’s a person is employed over 90,000 hours in their lives.   Even improving this number by half would be an enormous gain in professional output.

Who Should Fund it?

Like with the Atom Bomb, life extending technology would have to be controlled by society to ensure power was not concentrated in the hands of the few. 

If at some future time a private institution were to fund and discover technologies that dramatically expand life, they would be in a position of vast power.  With current patent law, this could upset cultural and societal structures beyond repair. 

Currently, no institution but government has the capability to focus and fund such large scale research. 

Allowing government funding could make the research publicly available and keep the power of such technologies focused on the whole of society rather than just a few people.

Baby's future in the balance

The nation that achieves this technology first will be at great advantage to those nations that do not have it.  The first mover advantage of longer life-spans could be enormous. For this reason, peaceful nations may even want to share the burden of costs and the benefits of discovery.

The research would not have to be funded all at once.  Given the potential outcome, even some public debt would be warranted as payoffs could easily overcome its risks and costs.

Even if the effort were to fail, the knowledge that it is not possible to future generations would be a boon.  Knowing that a war on death is not winnable is information that can effect how future generations would live our lives.

How long can we delay?

Dream On

It is easy to dismiss such ideas “out of hand”. 

Some will think their religious doctrines threatened.  Others will doubt it is even possible.

It seems reasonable that Aristotle, Isaac Newton, or even Madam Curie would have seen the idea of putting a man on the moon as fanciful science fiction. 

Consider for a moment the alternative.  If we could make life longer and do not, are we not acting immorally to future generations?

Perhaps extending life-spans is fanciful. 

We must however ask ourselves; what if it is not?  What if it could be?

Meme Wars (Part 7)

A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for territory in our brains.  In the last part of Meme Wars we consider how on science and commerce are effected by battles between memes for minds.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Market Memes

Commercial memes spread through advertising
everywhere on the planet

Business uses branding to create demand for their products.  Branding is a type of meme associated with a product or service.  Images, words, and feelings are generated in the brain by the meme that meet needs, create desires, or inspire lust.  Advertising is the art of creating thoughts in human minds.  Advertising, when effective, generates and propagate memes, that reproducing in people’s minds.

Adapting to new meme reproduction methods, advertising has begun to shift meme creation and reproduction strategies to internet, social media, and other information technologies.

This revolution in meme reproduction has disturbed centralized broadcast replication.  Print media is struggling for access to mind share with web pages.  YouTube is capturing eyeballs once controlled by network television. 

Advertisers have long known that younger minds are more receptive to new memes.  Humans now spend three billion hours each week playing video games.  These gamers are largely younger minds.  In order to circulate their memes, business must learn means of reproduction inside these media.

Even in the poorest of societies, pervasive
commercial memes are hard to ignore

Immunity Avoidance

Global consumer business has boomed by being successful and spreading memes.  The poorest countries in the world know what Coca Cola is.  Nike’s meme of “Just Do It” is in most of the planets brains. 

Entertainment media uses meme’s sexuality to grab our attention so that businesses can place their ideas in our brains and associate them with the other attractions.  Sporting events that grab us emotionally are used in similar manners to allow more receptive brains to get meme’s about automobiles.  Demand is thrust upon us unaware.

Commercial memes are intentionally crafted and delivered to avoid our mental immune systems.  There economic success depends upon meme-crafter's ability to do circumvent our minds immunity.

Opinion Makers

On a more strategic level, owners of businesses try to convince get us to act in their best interest by creating memes that distract us.  Pointing to people and branding them as lazy, leeches on society, and “takers”, memes can cause us to act in ways that are not beneficial to us.  Driving down expectations for compassion while driving up anger and fear, these memes warp our view of reality.

Non-compassionate meme generator

Shell Oil has tried to cast itself as caring and for good, while destroying thousands of livelihoods.  Wal-Mart convinces that lower prices are most important for consumers while Main Street dies and wages plummet.  Goldman Sachs did severe damage to the world economy in the 2007 financial collapse yet advertises on public television for how they build small business.

News networks and online media build and circulate memes that tear at the fabric of society.  Belittling their opponents with personal attacks, bad memes about government, economy and society are allowed access to unwary minds. 

Appealing to frustrations and remapping it onto their own desires, meme crafters shift public opinion.  Calling public servants useless, they devalue our ability to help each other.  Politics devolves to personal attacks, civil debate disappears, and solution finding becomes nonexistent as memes wage war in peoples minds.

We have yet to build meme immunity systems that will allow us to keep such bad ideas out of our minds.  Until we do, bad ideas will reproduce and cause havoc.

Religion and Science

A meme war between science and religion is being waged in brains.  Religious memes have a huge “head start” on scientific ones. 

Science and religion engage in a meme war

Around the planet, religion is taught to us when we are very young.  Science is kept from developing minds until much later.  Religious stories enter our brains while they are still forming.  Most western society’s children know of Noah, Adam and Eve, and Christmas before they know of numbers, letters, or discovery methods.

Most religious people acknowledge that other faiths have “bad ideas”.  Immunity memes against other religious beliefs are placed in children’s minds early on, thus barriers for science memes are also set high.

Some memes are more complex and complicated than others.  Complex memes require more time and space in minds to reproduce than simple ones.  Entrenched complex memes are much more successful at holding onto minds.  

The new information technology is allowing education to be individually tailored.  Home schooling, especially for religious people, surges in western cultures.  This permits minds to form without common concepts.  Science memes that were delivered in public schools not long ago are allowed to die out.

Science tends more toward facts and religion tends more toward faith.  In the meme war between them, science will continue to press that advantage.  Will it be enough to overcome early indoctrination by religion into young minds?  Perhaps science needs to shift it's memes to the battlefield of younger minds?

Conclusions

There is a war of ideas struggling to control our brains and thereby our actions.

By examining previous meme wars, we can learn more about those ideological struggles in our own time.

Ideas replicate in human minds in ways similar to biological systems.  New technologies alter how meme’s reproduce.  Our current communication technology is accelerating and focusing meme reproduction. 

Meme wars may never end.

Good ideas (facts) do not always win over bad ideas (myths).  Memes are engaged in an ongoing struggle for supremacy.

Memes can develop immunity to other ideas.  Some memes can stop the entry of other memes into brains.

There are too many ideas for any brain to handle, so we specialize and move toward familiarity memes. We also are trending toward simpler, easier to mentally digest memes and trending away from complex, subtle ones.

Business, religion, governments, and media create memes intentionally.  We are usually unaware of their existence.  They can and do cause us to act against our own interests

Conflicts of ideas occur in our brains regularly.  We need to become aware of these conflicts and build our own immune systems. 

We can build better minds by expending effort to allow complex memes to enter our brains.  Resisting the simple, we must learn to think more deeply to avoid bad memes.

Crafting memes is a relatively new idea itself.  Like DNA, words and pictures are the tools that we can use to build memes.  Technology is providing us with powerful ways to reproduce memes.  

In this new revolutions, each of us as individuals can and should engage in the meme wars.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Please subscribe to this blog, so I can put more of my memes in your head!

Meme Wars (Part 6)

A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for territory in our brains.  In Part 6 of Meme Wars we consider political and social effects of a new meme landscape and I advocate becoming involved in the war between memes.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Memes in a mind battle for control

Meme Wars

Good ideas are struggling with bad ideas for supremacy in the minds of writers and their readers.  Conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives are warring upon one another with ideas profane and sane.

All over the world established orders of power are being threatened by communications through new technologies. 

Dictators, like kings before them, struggle to maintain their power bases as common women and men gain access to new ideas.

States that prevent the new communications are being left behind scientifically, culturally, and economically.

Arab Spring

In Egypt, Libya, Syria, Morocco and other places we witness a revolutionary wave of protests threatening authoritarian power structures.  Traditional conservative order is being confronted by new progressive, liberal masses.  A wave of democratic revolution is sweeping northern Africa and the Middle East.  Using civil resistance or out right warfare, common people are overthrowing centralized power and trying to institute more democratic forms of social order.

These revolutions are highly enabled by new communication technologies.  Individuals are able to broadcast to each other, bypassing centralized and controlled broadcast technologies.

A parallel to medieval Europe’s revolutions is not difficult to see.  Information has become more widely available and more easily transferred between people.  What was before hidden or secret is now open and shared.

By speaking with each other directly, it is now possible for individuals to group together in ways that were impossible before. 

Social media is a breeding ground
for meme reproduction

As libraries in the renaissance made information widely available, the internet has made meme transmission and reproduction highly fluid.  Like water, memes flow into open minds.

Not all progressive is good.  Some nations or groups of people want to return to medieval social orders, thinking their sacred texts or Sharia should become law of the land.  Entrenched hatred between tribal groups is causing some lands to experience genocide. 

The communication technology is neutral.  As with previous information revolutions, bad ideas and good ideas compete in people’s minds.

It took Europe centuries to work out the effects of printing presses upon their societies.  Conflicts raged back and forth with one side winning and then losing and then winning again. 

We should expect nothing different in our current turmoil, brought on by these new set of information technologies.  New stable systems of order will not appear overnight.  The first change will not be the last change enabled by new technologies.  Sometimes things will go backward before moving forwards.

There are peaceful ways to engage
in meme warfare

Taking Sides in Meme Wars

Meme’s that are factual have a slight edge on those that are not.  Reality will intrude upon ideas.  Facts do not always win in battles between memes.  Events in physical reality will be driven by struggles between ideas.

Bad ideas that take root in minds and are spread widely can lead to disastrous consequences.  The Taliban’s treatment of women, suppression of free thought in Iran, and genocide in Rwanda are examples of bad meme’s spreading resulting in  harm.

External minds have a role to play in internal conflicts between memes.  Deciding which ideas we wish to support and those which we wish to combat is necessary for coordinated action. 

More stable societies may be able help those in turmoil by supporting positive memes. Engaging in meme warfare for minds will happen.  To fail to become involved will allow memes that threaten us to prosper.  While violence may sometimes be necessary, the larger battle front is in the minds of humans. 

Powerful change can be made in the world by crafting and reproducing memes that change minds.  Meme creators should be aware of how memes conflict and reproduce inside human brains.  Crafting ideas that will overcome immune systems, take root, then reproduce is necessary in order to wage war upon memes.

In part 7 of Meme Wars we effects of a new meme landscape on science and commerce.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme Wars (Part 2)

A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for the territory in our brains.  In Part 2 of Meme Wars we examine how printing technology started a war between memes. 

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

German Information Revolution

Hand crafted meme

Prior to Gutenberg’s popularization of printing presses, communication was largely by hand or mouth.  Scratching surface of clay, putting ink on papyrus, and carving in stone where skilled manual labors that few could master. 

Access to communication was limited to those with wealth or power.  This focused writing for future minds and listening to past minds on a small subset of humanity.

The printing press took the power of communication from the hands of a few and democratized it.  Meme’s could spread from central places to many minds.

Before printing presses (about 1450) there were only a few thousand books in all of Europe.  A hundred years after Gutenberg’s invention, there were 20 million.  By 1650 200 million books had come into existence. Literacy, listening to past minds and speaking to future ones, became common.

Before mass printing, Bibles where read almost exclusively by priests and nobles.  These fountains of wisdom were under tight control.  The Church doctrine was that lay people would not understand the Bible’s mysteries and should be sheltered from actually reading its words for themselves. 

It is no accident that a Protestant Reformation occurred when it did.  Among the first mass produced books were Bible translations from Latin into local languages.  Within three generations, Church thought control was challenged by Martin Luther. 

The meme’s of the Bible spread and flourished into fertile and unfilled minds.  This initial wave of meme growth had profound effects on culture, thought, and how people lived.

As literacy spread, wisdom became democratized.   Access to information promoted independent thinking.  As more people came to read past minds, they changed their futures.

Gutenberg's meme reproducer

Reading Past, Making Future

With the printing press came an immediate and overwhelming demand for new content.  Previously written books were mass produced profitably.  New content was rare, old content readily available. Ancient Roman and Greek books became the stock and trade of these new high tech printing firms. 

Reading the minds of the long ago dead became common and easy.  The ancients spoke to people about philosophy, mathematics, and politics.  Old ideas created revolutionary new memes jumping from mind to mind. 

Challenging Church’s interpretation of the Bible, people began to challenge other ideas.  Copernicus revealed the earth was not the center of the universe.  Columbus sailed beyond the known, finding new lands.  Northern Italy began to discover and translate Roman and Greek knowledge beyond the Bible.

With each new discovery of ideas from past minds, new ideas were explored.  When people read good thoughts from the past, society can benefit.  Good memes entered into to peoples brains and were passed around.

Machiavelli, after reading Plato and Aristotle, described a world of princes acting outside of religious doctrine and control.  Reading Roman thoughts from long ago, the first Republic in a thousand years formed in Florence.  The humanist movement sprung from revived ancient ideas that each person could study poetry, grammar, history, morality and rhetoric to advance their lives and their communities.

When people read bad thoughts from the past, society can be hurt.  Bad memes fight for a share of mind and communication with good memes.

Nostradamus published prophecies that distorted later minds with false ideas about the future.  Reading from the mind of Dante, irrational concepts of hell placed irrational fear into ignorant brains.  Ancient ideas of leech bleeding and laxatives killed thousands as old misconceptions about medicine became popularized. 

In part 3 of Meme Wars looks at power struggles between ideas/memes occurring in renaissance minds.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme Wars (Part 1)

There is a war for minds occurring, enabled by revolutionary technologies.  New ideas struggle with old ones to shape our destiny.  Our brains are the battleground between thoughts about how we should play, work and live together. 

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme battleground

Idea creators build mental weapons that clash with one another in minds across the planet.  Mind share is the spoil of this war in this conflict of ideas.

When I read, I listen to past minds.  When I write, I speak to future minds.  This is true for all forms of communication.  Our literacy of what was said in past times will limit our future thoughts. 

The printing revolution allowed past minds to speak to many future minds.  Our current information revolution allows all current minds to speak with each other in almost real time.

As books created rebellions from medieval ideas, this new revolution of communication will lead to changes in how we live our lives.  The winners are not yet clear, but our culture and the nature of the human experience is in the balance.

In this series, we will consider past battles for brains and see how they might help us better understand our current mental wars. 

Memes and Memetics

Ideas striking the brain

Memes are ideas that spread from person to person in a culture.  Memes reside in our brains and affect our understanding of the world.

Memes are the mental equivalent of genes in the cell.  They have structures that create understanding in the minds they occupy.  Ideas can change the very structure of our brains and therefore our actions.

Memes reproduce by spreading from brain to brain through communication. Printing provided a means for memes to spread widely from a central source.  Printing could be thought of as a new method of meme reproduction.

Each mind can only hold so many memes.  Memes compete with each other for human minds like genes compete for resources.  Memes struggle for limited mind share in people’s brains.

In part two, we will consider Gutenberg’s printing technology revolution.  Examining how old ideas created new ones, we will illuminate battlegrounds and combatants in a war for minds.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

The Weak Suffer What They Must

"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." ~ Thucydides in the Melian Dialogue

Athens was strong.

In 415 BC the Athenian democracy deemed it necessary to subjugate the island of Melos in its struggle with martial Sparta. Famously, the Athenians demanded the Melians to surrender using the threat "the strong do what they will". Melos did not relent.  Athens invaded and laid waste to the small town,  island, and it's inhabitants. The use of power by Athens in this manner is how governments interact with each other ever since.

Technology has moved far beyond the spear and shield used by Greeks. Today we use drones. Drones are unmanned vehicles that can reign down violence upon the unsuspecting. Drones hover silently over a target for hours, sending image and sound to operators hundreds of miles away, even to bases in the mainland United States. When an enemy is identified, drones can make deathly strikes without warning.

Modern will.

The United States has made more than 400 such attacks in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen in its war on terrorism. More than 3,000 have been killed in covert programs operated by the the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command). Although estimates vary, between one half and one third of those killed using these tools were non-combatants. The lowest estimates are that over 170 of those who died by drone strikes were children. As with Vietnam 'body counts', the U.S. counts any military aged male killed in a drone strike as an 'enemy combatant'.

The Executive Branch argues that international law and the 2001 resolution “Authorization for Use of Military Force” makes legal the right to self defense against individuals linked to al-Qaeda or terrorists. This law includes using drone strikes against both foreigners and U.S. Citizens. Both Bush the younger and Obama have engaged in drone strikes using this legal argument.

Recently Jay Carney, a spokesman for the President, said “first and foremost that is (the Presidents) responsibility to protect the United States and American citizens." He continued "In order to prevent attacks on the United States and to save American lives, we conduct those strikes because they are necessary to mitigate ongoing actual threats to stop plots, prevent future attacks, and again save American lives." Later Mr. Carney added "These strikes are legal. They are ethical and they are wise. The U.S. government takes great care in deciding to pursue an al-Qaeda terrorist to insure precision and to avoid loss of innocent life."

Some say that the drone strikes are immoral. Use of these weapons erodes the confidence in the government’s commitment to the rule of law and protecting the accused. When targeted killings are against U.S. Citizens, they argue that it denies due process and they are unreasonable seizures of a person's life, violating the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Using the constitutional framework, it is said that citizens and foreign nationals are protected against violence without trial.

The front line is now often near our homes.

Another popular anti-drone contention comes from the ex-military leader of the U.S. war in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal saying “The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes ... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never seen one or seen the effects of one. “

Is it not strange that the murder of 27 plus children and teachers in Sandy Hook has created such outrage, while hundreds of other children killed by our government do not bother us? Our application of morality, our sense of justice even, places the value of our own citizens lives as superior to those of foreigners.

Drone warfare is a clear example of “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” As with Athens of old, the morality of warfare can be perceived as a 'good' to the strong and as an 'evil' to the weak. The perspective of the violence depends upon who has the power to do their will. The points made by both those for and against the use of drones as means to violence upon their fellow man follow along lines laid down those many centuries ago by the Athenians. The language and technology have changed, but the dispute on use of force remains the same.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog and leave your thoughts below.

Obscene Purification

Innocence of holding hands. 

So what then is pollution of the soul? My hand touched the oven of death then tried to stroke my daughters face. Am I tainted and her with me or made pure and blessed with a baptism of faint residue?

In early 1990, just as the Berlin Wall was about to fall, I was among the very first westerners behind the Iron Curtain. My next door neighbor was a refugee from the Solidarity movement of Poland in the early 1980s and we had become both friends and business partners. Using his contacts Jurek and I had been able to get past the heavy security and gain very early access to the untapped potential of black market businesses which had been subsisting beneath the shadow of a communistic hand.

Faun fountain in Glwice

To the locals we came to meet, our arrival was a big affair. We represented the first symbolic ray of hope of a new future and prosperity. Levi jeans, Star Trek, and the Beatles were our commonly shared vision of the world where the Polish people yearning to be free looked to us for omens of good fortune.

Our base of operations was in Gliwice, a city in the Upper Silesia district of Poland. Gliwice was symbolic as the place where Hitler's launched his first attack of World War Two using storm-troopers dressed as Polish soldiers to give him the excuse he needed for war.

After we had been there a week meeting with those whom desired trade and commerce, we took a day off for a specially arranged tour of Auschwitz. Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, as the German's would say, was a special prison camp where extermination of those people unwanted by the state occurred. This camp had been designated the place where the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe would be resolved. One of the secret business owners we had been negotiating with had pulled some strings and got us a private tour of this place of terror and great pain.

"Work will Make you Free" says the gate to the camp

Dressed in somber black we met Ewa, the graduate student from the University of Silesia who had made a deep study of German occupied Poland, having agreed to act as our guide. Only Jurek, Ewa, and I were at the Auschwitz camp that day, the tour being private and the camp closed to tourists. Ewa unlocked the gate and escorted us slowly through offices, work rooms, barracks, gas chambers, crematoria, and processing blocks.

Jews lining up to be "relocated"

At least 1.1 million Jews and over two hundred thousand other people met their deaths in this place. Nazi authorities had targeted groups because of their perceived inferiority for race, political views, ideology, or behavior. People whom today we would call “gay” or “homosexual” were among the first to be led to their deaths as undesirables. Communists and anarchists followed, with Gypsies and Jews close behind.

The ghastly procedure was carried out with incredible efficiency  Trains of humans packed in by the hundreds to cars made for hauling livestock would arrive. All had been told to bring a small kit of goods so that they could be resettled to the newly conquered land or “lebensraum”. Getting out of the trains, SS soldiers would divide those who could work from those to be immediately killed. After working them in starvation conditions or being used for medical experimentation, even those divided out would be sent on to a fateful shower of Zykon B.

Combs stripped from the bodies

From the showers, the bodies of those who had been victims of the gas chamber where removed and their personal effects gathered for reuse by the Reich. Small, black, plastic hair combs by the tens of thousands filled one two-story, basketball court sized building we saw on our tour.

We spent several unbelievably difficult minutes by the ovens where the bodies were burned, stacked and packed remains filling the small space of heat to maximize the energy used to reduce to ash what had only minutes before been human beings.

As I stood there filled with a horrific sense of fascination upon the limits of cruelty possible by my fellow man; I by reflex reached out and touched the oven brick and its open metal arch shaped door. Becoming conscious of what I had done, I jerked my hand away.  I tried to wipe it clean of the feeling of the thing on my pants. There were no remains, or even dust, on my hand as I stared down at it in disbelief of my own action. Ewa, sensing my violent physical reaction to the abominable touch, quickly and mercifully hustled us on to the next monstrous exhibit.

Ovens to remove the evidence

This sense of having become personally involved with the destruction did not soon leave me. Like post-traumatic shock or the death of a family member, my heart was darkened by a force I could not shake. Even the shared bottle of vodka Jurek and I downed could not obliterate the feeling that I had been polluted.

Several weeks later, upon returning to my home, I reached out to touch my young daughter's cheek. Remembering the ovens, I was unable to even place that hand upon her. The idea of sharing that evil, even in so indirect a way caused me to shudder and lose courage.

As time passed and my perspective changed by other events entering my mind and concern, the intensity of the experience faded. Even during the worst of it, I never thought there was anything real to this haunting feeling, but all along I knew it was my own emotions run amok. This knowledge did not provide comfort. Eventually I was able to put the feelings aside.

Challenge hate.

Even now, this memory still occasionally returns to me. The feeling of cold. The smell of death. The cramped intense little space of so much claustrophobic evil. When I hear those deniers of this great sin against humanity, I wonder at how such ideas can even exist in the hearts of men.

Confronting evil, staring in the abyss of what men can do, while jarring and unpleasant has had a profound impact on my conscience  and morality. This many years removed I can say that it has allowed me to become more patient, more tolerant, and more filled with the desire to understand the diversity and beauty of my fellow man.

To those of you who are filled with hate. Who fear the gay, the black, the Jew, the religion unlike your own; I challenge you. Go to such a place of great evil, mediate and return to those you love, if you dare.