Conservatism, Religion and Status of Women

In recent months both Right and Left have entered into heated debate affecting society as a whole and particularly women. The left argues from a standpoint of women’s rights to contraception and the Right, religious freedom. This debate made me ponder a possible historic basis underlying the two positions.

Agrarian societies are by their nature patriarchal. One can think of a farm as a business enterprise requiring a number of chores and responsibilities. Because of man’s strength and aggression along with the fact that a woman is somewhat restricted before and after childbirth, the chores in the fields tended to go to the man. For maximum efficiency, in an undertaking involving a number of individuals there needs to be someone to organize the tasks. Because of their stronger involvement in the actual task of faming, the role of manager went to the man. The man became the head of the enterprise, the farm, and by extension, head of the household.

As societies evolved men left the farms and went to work in enterprises (factories etc.) where someone else was the manager and though they maintained the title of head of household, they did so out of custom only. The role of manager no longer had a natural rationale. (I guess some would argue that a household is an enterprise needing a manager. But if that were the case, for the same reasons a man was suited to manage a farm, the woman would be more appropriate.) Today the bulk of the Social Conservatives come from rural areas and not only tradition but their experience, tends to supports an inferior position for women.

Religion is another factor that influences thinking regarding women’s issues. As societies grew, with larger numbers of people living in close proximity, it became necessary to constrain some natural human behaviors and religious institutions became the law-makers. A key issue requiring laws was the transfer of lands from generation to generation and it became imperative that paternity was clearly established. The only way to do this was to make sure that the woman mated only with the head of the farm so any offspring were surely his. Therefore a major role of religious establishment became control of sexual behavior, particularly of women, pretty much banning all sexual activity except that required for procreation. Since most, if not all, modern religions had their origins in primarily agrarian societies, and early societies being patriarchal, it only made sense the religious institutions not only controlled sexual behavior but reinforced the position of man in the family. Beside coming from rural cultures, Social Conservatives tend to also be more religious and more fundamentalist all of which reinforces not only the belief in the naturally inferior position of women but also in restricting their sexual activity.

Nuclear Fusion-Energy Source of the future?

With this being the anniversary of the nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan, there has been a lot of talk about the future of nuclear energy. This made me think about nuclear fusion about which I have not heard nor seen anything in the popular press.

About ten years ago I visited Japan’s nuclear fusion facility. There were large power lines going into and out of the facility. I was told by my hosts that the surrounding villages were actually powered by electricity produced with nuclear fusion. The only problem was that more power was consumed than created. At that time scientists there were projecting that 2016 would be a pivotal year where the amount of energy produced would start becoming larger than the energy consumed in the process.

Following is a little background on nuclear fusion from a layman’s perspective. The current atomic energy and the atomic bomb for that matter, rely on fission, which essentially splits an atom of one material into two separate materials of a slightly smaller combined mass. The mass that is lost is converted into energy. As the meltdown at Fukushima demonstrated, fission is a risky process with heavy costs in obtaining, refining, containing and disposing of the source material. In fusion, on the other hand, two separate materials are combined at an atomic level with the resulting material also having a little less mass. The lost mass, as in the case of fission, is converted to energy. Fusion (the hydrogen bomb relied on fusion instead of fission) has many advantages over fission. First of all, the fuel used is seawater. Though there is still radiation involved, the ½ life of the waste material is very short compared to that in the current atomic energy process and therefore the containment and disposal become much less of a problem.

At the time I visited the Japanese facility, there were also fusion reactors being refined in a number of facilities around the world. Before I retired, our company made a component that went into an instrument that measured temperature gradients in the reactors. Beside Japan we made components for Princeton University and general Atomic here in the US, Hydro Quebec in Canada, the Max Plank Institute in Germany and the French atomic energy organization. I had an opportunity to interaction with scientist involved, though not often and not on a deep technical level and had formed the impression that nuclear fusion, as a source of energy, had long transitioned from the feasibility stage to an engineering stage. I believe engineering problems are solvable. The question comes down to resources and time. In looking toward renewable energy in the future, our government is adequately funding this development.

Santorum's Family Values

Last week I heard Rick Santorum, the GOP Presidential Candidate, talk about the importance of family to the well-being of our society. I agree with much of his commentary, though I would not put the value of family in the context of religious morality.

In his discussion he mentioned statistics supporting family structure indicating the difference in poverty rates and incarceration rates of two parent households versus single parent ones. The statistic that jumped out at me was one that indicated that 79% of individuals behind bars come from single parent households. A couple of years ago I saw a PBS program that highlighted kindergarten students in a Harlem school and then showed the same students as young adults. The thing that struck me was that, though they were very poor, the students that came from two parent homes on the whole did about as well as the general society, most going on to college, some post high school education or working in “good” jobs. Few of the kids from single-family homes continued education past high school with some dropping out and a number winding up in jail. This story, though only one “data point” supports Santorum’s argument for the value of a family.

Last decade there was a controversial book written, I recall neither the name of the author or the exact title but the thing that made the book controversial is that the author looked at IQ as a function of race, braking it up into people of African, Asian and European roots. He concluded that though they all fell into “normal distributions”, the peaks of African descendants was shifted to lower and Asian to higher levels. As a sidebar he also found that the IQ of the prison population was at the lowest end of any of the distributions and not accounted for by the fact that there is a higher percentage of African descendants in prisons. Intuitively this made sense to me. People who wind up in jail for the most part have either not figured out the risks of committing a crime or have not figured out how not to get caught.

Since Santorum’s statistics show that the bulk of prisoners come from single-family homes and the above author that the bulk of prisoners have low IQs, should one conclude that people from single-family homes have lower IQs? That may be the case but there may be factors other than family structure to consider. Tabor Mata, a Canadian physician who wrote several books on addiction and childhood development, postulates (I wrote about this in an earlier post on my blog “Society’s Impact on Good Parenting) that when we humans enter the world, our brains are not yet physiologically fully developed and need another year or two to finish this development. To do so properly, infants need a stress free nurturing environment. In the last couple of decades there has been a stagnation of wages and increasing costs for lodging and food. This situation puts many households under a lot of stress, I would think particularly single families. If Dr. Meta is right, this “stress” in the household interferes with proper childhood development and it is the reduction of stress with two people sharing the parenting not the esoteric nobility nor religious virtue of family that has a positive affect on our society. I suspect that children raised in a two parent setting where both parents work and struggle to survive, would also suffer and children raised in a stress free single parent environment would do just fine. Government policies have an impact in that they can affect childhood development. For example, the affect of the Welfare Reform of the 90s I believe, though it looked good on paper, was catastrophic for childhood development and we as a society will suffer the consequences. The reform essentially limited the time a mother on welfare could receive benefits, forcing her into the workplace instead of tending to the children.. Another policy issue is the low minimum wage we have in this Country. It does two things. First it can force both parents to work and second, the low wages makes childcare affordable, making it easier for both parents to work. I believe in the long term, the answer is to create an environment where all children can properly develop be it through encouraging two parent households or otherwise. A two parent family is a help but probably is not the only answer. The key is to reduce stress allowing a parent to calmly see a child through the first few formative years.

Santorum also attributed (though I may be stretching things a bit here) a certain nobility to family, church and community with government trying to diminish it. Here Rick and I part company. Though I will admit that in many cases, a family structure can have advantages to a society, there is no evidence that it has any ethical advantages. After all, the slave owners were good family men who I am sure went to church and were upstanding members of their communities. The communities in the South that forced people of color to ride in the back of a bus and drink from separate fountains were made up of good churchgoing families. Following passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, the white congregations that established parish schools to continue segregation were made up of families. These acts were far from noble and no different than what I am sure single individuals at that time and in that place did.

Under Nazi occupation, France’s motto was changed from “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”; to “Work, Family, Country” (I wonder how that motto would play on the Right today in our Country?). I am sure that the Nazi Storm Troopers imprisoning and killing countless Jews came from good German church going families. Stalin, who murdered more than a million of his own people, though an atheist, was a family man. There probably are no stronger family ties than exist within primitive Islamic countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan yet they oppress women. So where was family nobility?

Yesterday Santorum went further, criticized President Obama for wanting to expand attendance at college claiming the President wants to brainwash our children molding them in his own image whereas Rick would want them to be made into the image of their parents. Though I doubt that the President really wants a country full of people like him, he certainly would not want a county peopled with children carrying over the values of the segregationist South. Fortunately most of the families were not fully effective in passing these values onto their children and we as a society are better for it. Unfortunately a few families were successful. Old beliefs need to be challenged and often discarded and replaced by ones that advance the prosperity and quality of our whole society and not just their family, church and community.

“Politics Based on the Bible”

In a speech last week Rick Sentorum, front runner for the Republican nomination for President severely criticized President Obama, stating that his policies are not “based on the Bible”. If not basing policies on the Bible is very wrong, I assume a President basing his policies on the Bible would be a very right thing to do, and Sentorum certainly promises to do so.

If a President made policies based instead of on the Bible, the Torah, would that still be the right thing? How about the Qur-an? What about the Bhagavad-Gita or the writings of Confucius? Sentorum would argue that the Founding Fathers intended for our great Nation to be based on Christian teachings even though there is nothing to support this. There was no need to mention it in the Constitution because Christianity was assumed, and furthermore, the term“ Creator” in the Declaration of Independence really meant, not only the God of Abraham but the Christian interpretation of the God of Abraham.

We are rightly critical of the theocratic government existing in Iran and apprehensive of a
reinstatement of one in Afghanistan so let’s not go down that path and establish a theocracy here. A theocracy whether an Islamic or one that the very Orthodox Jews in Israel struggle for or one aspired to by Fundamentalist Christians here in the US, is still a theocracy and anathema to our most basic principles. I can’t see how Sentorums rhetoric can be interpreted other than a promise of a State governed on Biblical principles. Rick, that’s a theocracy! Sentorum was critical of the Government imposing its ideology on Churches during this last healthcare/contraceptive debate but apparently insists on the establishment of policies based on a religious writing by which all the people, regardless of religious preference would have to live.

If a tree falls in the forest - revisited

In one of the early posts I wrote about my answer to a Zen riddle. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, is there a sound? My answer was that sound needs both an originator (the vibrating air created by a falling tree) and a sensor (our ear) along with the ability to process the sensation (the chemistry of our brain). In the post I expanded the answer saying that without someone there, not only is there no sound, there is no forest nor tree, only empty space with tiny bits of matter and energy swirling around. The other day I was pondering emptiness and thought of a more tangible example of there being nothing but emptiness without a sensor and a processor.

We are surrounded by a multitude of vibrating photons zipping all around us. A small segment of these we can see with our eyes (visual spectrum), others we can feel on our skin (infrared). Also zooming around us are photons of longer wavelength (radio waves) which we neither see, smell, hear nor feel. The sources of this long wave radiation are varied, some known and others unknown. A certain portion of these waves we have generated ourselves in the form of radio and TV signals. Because we cannot sense them, though we may be in their midst, we are totally unaware of their existence. However, out of this jumble of energy, with a proper antenna we can detect these photons and with the aid of the processor in a TV set and a screen, we can view what to our eyes and mind appears as scenes of amazing clarity. In this context, the question would be; if a TV station sends a signal and there is no antenna nor TV is there a picture? The picture is made when the waves are captured with the antenna, converted in the TV receiver and picture projected on a screen. No TV, no picture. Without a TV, though there are signals emitted in some orderly fashion, they are still only waves.

So if there is no one or nothing to sense and process information, just as without a antenna and TV there is nothing but empty space with subatomic bits of matter and energy zipping around and no sound, no tree, no forest and certainly no picture. My feeling is that in the greater scheme of things, our sensing and processing capability is very limited as is our understanding of the universe and its origin. How does a chimp see the world, a fish, a worm? How much further from the truth are they?

In relatively recent times, as with the example of the TV, we have developed numerous sensors and converters that translate un-sensed activities within our “emptiness” into ones we can indeed see, smell, hear or feel moving them into our realm of consciousness. As time goes by, more and more such will be devised and with that our understanding of the universe will continue to expand. However, I believe that because of our brain’s capacity and the limitation of our reasoning abilities we will probably still only come to know at best only one billionth of what there is to know. Or will we evolve to where it grows to two billionths?

Transformation of Capitalism

Today there is much said about the rise of “State Capitalism” given the recent economic successes in China, Brazil and Singapore. In essence, over the next several decades traditional Free Market Capitalism will be competing with the new version for world dominance. The hope for the West is that the predictions of the disadvantages of government involvement will start to show once the novelty has abated. My own feeling is that some transformed version of traditional Capitalism, other than State Capitalism will evolve and endure through the twenty first century.

Over the last several millennia the proceeds of enterprises have gone to different segment of a society depending on the technologies, major contributing factors to the success of enterprises and the sources of power at the time. During the medieval era with city-states and baronets fighting each other for wealth and power, the excess output of a society went to heads of armies. They were the ones providing the key element, protection from other warlords. In time the feudal system faded and city-states were replaced by national governments. Farmers no longer needed protection from the neighboring lord and the value of protection declined. The Free Market expanded and the industrial revolution matured. Countries produced beyond their needs and trade between far corners of the world flourished. The key element for a successful venture now, instead of protection, became capital. There was an overabundance of labor and skills required of factory workers were low, the population was growing and markets were expanding. If you could find money for plant and inventory, if a manufacturer, or for a ship and crew you were in business. Without capital, no matter what your skill you would have a hard time getting things off the ground.

Over time two primary economic systems evolved, the Free Market and more recently the Socialist System with Communism at its extreme. The free market, as it churns, building and destroying, leaves in its wake a segment of the population in poverty. To ensure the markets continued viability, governments with functioning market systems developed “safety nets” in the form of assistance for the impoverished. Therefore today there are no truly Free Market States but in reality Free Market Capitalist Welfare States. Each of the market system practices some degree of Socialism. It varies in degree from that of the United States at one end to the European countries at the other. In both the Capitalist and Socialist systems the main ingredient is still capitol and proceeds go to the providers of the capital, however the sources of capital differ. In the Free Market System capital is provided by individuals, whereas in the Socialist System, by the entire population through the states. The proceeds in one case go to individuals and in the other to the population as a whole. From the standpoint of the workers inside an enterprise it looks pretty much the same since the result of their efforts go to others. (As a practical matter the statement that things look the same is an obvious exaggeration because the management styles employed by the two are vastly different. Though in both cases the workers are paid to work for someone else’s benefit.)

The biggest difference between the two, and it is a big one, is that the market system counts on market feedback for business decision whereas the other counts on governmental central planning. All of the interdependencies affecting business decisions are too complex to try to plan. If you think about what is involved in putting a simple thing like a chicken on a dinner table, it is astounding. A large component of chicken feed consists of anchovies that come from the Pacific. So when there is a period of an active El Nino, waters warm, plankton disappears, anchovies move and the price of chicken goes up. If you add to this the farm implements requiring various materials and technologies not to mention the mining to extract the materials and what goes into the boats catching the anchovies and the trucks and trains transporting, not only the chickens and the feed but, all the other stuff. The argument that the market, giving its feedback mechanism and ability to respond quickly to establish how much of what is needed, and at what price is much more affective than a human plan, has great merit. However, with today’s great advances in computer science, I am not sure for how much longer the argument will be valid. A couple of decades ago it was thought that, given the complexity of variables in the game of chess, no computer will ever beat a true chess master. Big Blue proved that assumption wrong.

In the competition between the Free Market System and the Communism of the Soviet Union, the markets won though there are still pockets of Communism remaining, they are fading fast. Over the last several decades a new system is evolving, State Capitalism. Here basically the state is a primary investor in an enterprise but instead of relying on central planning and being the only provider of capital, it opens the enterprise up to market forces. In countries practicing State Capitalism, though private enterprises may be allowed, they must compete with the much larger government supported ones. Time will tell.

As discussed above, over time the proceeds of the enterprise have gone to provider of the most important element, protection during feudal times and capital during more recent industrial times. If there is merit to that reasoning, than what is the next precious element to supersede capital? Toward the end of the last century there came to be what was called the Dot-Comm bubble. Large numbers of enterprises erupted, many of which have since faded. The driver of the exuberance was technology. Intellect started to seriously compete with capital. Though capital still remained a requirement, an enterprise was not expected to get off the ground without the brainpower of creative “nerds”. There were a number of reasons the bubble burst. The fact that the structure necessary to support the rapidly evolving technologies was not yet in place certainly was one. Another was that as with any revolutionary development more players jump into the game than it can sustain and a number fall by the wayside. There are also a number of conspiracy theories that I don’t subscribe to and won’t get into here.

There is another piece of evidence that intellect is not only competing with, but starting to surpass capital in value. Several decades ago the average pay of a CEO was about 25 times that of the average worker. Today it is 250 times higher. Part of the contribution to the rise in the cost of healthcare and education is a similar rise in income for doctors and educators. The income of professional athletes and entertainers has grown much more rapidly than the factory and service workers. This all is a result of capital yielding to individual talent.

A move needs to start somewhere and here it has started at the highest level of skill and I believe that this transfer of power is going to continue and expand to include the individuals working in factories and in service positions. As capital starts losing to intellect and is surpassed as the more important element to the success of an enterprise, with it will come a shift in the beneficiaries from the providers of capital to providers of skill. Innovation will continue as the driver for differentiation and thus profits and already I see signs of recognition that a significant portion of innovation comes from the workers on the floor. I have noticed in a few discussions about keeping jobs in the US where the proponents argue that having manufacturing done overseas allows workers there to learn the processes and their experience will leads to innovation. In the Wealth of Nations written in the seventeen hundreds, Adam Smith also talks about many of the ideas leading to technological improvements originating with the workers. A couple of years ago I saw Jack Welch on a cable news show where he talked about the necessity of shifting the priority of an enterprise from the stockholders to customers and workers.

In the immediate future, I believe Free Market Capitalism will coexist and continue competing with State Capitalism and in time both will evolve to a system that primarily values and rewards skills. This is not the Socialist system where the proceeds go to the state or the Capitalist system where again the proceeds go to individual owners. (In both cases proceeds go to the providers of capital.) In the newly transformed Capitalism, the benefit will be shared between providers of capital and those of skill with capital taking the back seat.

Job Creation Contradicted

All election campaigns are fraught with contradictions. An enormous one I’ve noticed in this presidential contest relates to “job creation”. The point that the Republicans are trying to make is that, to cut unemployment we need less government since it is the private sector and not government that crates jobs. Government only interferes making it harder. So the mantra on the Right is “government can’t create jobs”. Having repeated this, with the next breath Governor Romney talks about all the jobs he created while Governor of Massachusetts and Speaker Gingrich takes credit for the jobs that he created while Speaker. Maybe I’m missing a point but, if while you were in government, under your leadership, jobs were created, then it is not much of a stretch to conclude that at least in your mind, governments do indeed create jobs. Very many, in fact, when you were in charge and even more when again you take the reigns.

My disappointment is not with the contradiction as much as with the media. When interviewing a candidate who makes contradictory statements, the interviewer doesn’t require that the contradiction be explained. In this case, does or does not the government create jobs and in either case, how? This would be called a “gotcha” question and the interviewer criticized by the proponents of the candidate for asking it. Unfortunately there is a tacit understanding that the interviewer will not ask tough questions of their interviewees for fear that if they do, no one will agree to be interviewed by them. So the politicians will continue spewing talking points no matter how contradictory without challenge.