TRUST THE SCIENCE

  I cannot speak for others my age, or any age for that matter. I trust science much more than tradition or common sense or what I was programmed with when I was young. So saying, I need to define science before I can speak to it. First, Science needs People, without them forces and matter would still operate as they do. But unobserved and unquestioned they would just be force and matter. Second, there needs to be a Process that organizes information, considers possible cause & effect relationships and draws conclusions. Last and most important, to some extent that information has to be transformed into a Product that can take the form of new or better knowledge itself or a useful application of that knowledge such as a tool or article that serves a purpose. 
People, Americans in particular, want facts and truth that are absolute, that will be true for ever; and they want it now, right now. But that’s not how science works. Universal truth is the business of philosophers who frame their understanding to match their beliefs and beliefs are too many for them all to be true. Likewise people frequently if not always bring a bias to significant questions as to what is true and what is not. We are inclined to believe what profits us or what we want to believe. In the 1950’s & 60’s every research university that received support from the tobacco industry proved conclusively that smoking was harmless to smokers. The rule of thumb for researchers is that you must disregard any bias (preconceived notion) that might skew your process in favor of one outcome or another. Neither wisdom nor Belief rely on unbiased peer review in the vetting of their conclusions. 
One can think of it as good science vs. bad science. Set up an experiment that will yield results that are both credible (measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (can be repeated over and again with the same results). Bad science may be driven by profit or passion or random strokes of misinformed incompetence. Pure research would have, should have us, “Do the math, check your math, use credible-reliable methods and go where the numbers take you.” But doing science is expensive and research universities need sponsors to help underwrite the costs. Unfortunately sponsors can be (often times are) motivated by profits in the marketplace. The politics of that arrangement generate opportunities for bad science and it is what it is. But even then, I trust the Science. It can take a lot of time for good science to trickle down through the peer review process but in the long run good science does prevail. 
Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” He went on to observe that living in that kind of dependency has the potential for devastating outcomes. Ella Al-Shamahi, a prominent British paleoanthropologist & evolutionary biologist explains that human (brain) biology has not changed in over 20,000 years; that 99% of our history is evolved to a hunter-gatherer society. Modern technology has arrived in just the latest fleeting moments of our species timeline and our bodies and instincts are stuck playing catch-up with a modern world. 
Between Sagan and Shamahi I get it. Two of the most credible scholars in recent history come at the same dilemma from different points of view and present the same qualified reservations. They’ve done the math, applied proven logic and meet at the crossroad. I am an old man, something I allude to more often than I care to admit. With that I’ve had a long time (in human years) to weigh and measure this human journey. With enough experience I have grown comfortable with big numbers, 20,000 years of reflecting on our beginnings and the long backstory my prehistoric ancestors left in their fossilized remains and artifacts. We are Super Social animals and we truly need each other. Born with the need to share time and space, to care for one another and be in community. But there is another side to the human personality. We also dwell with competitive, hostile, selfish, greedy nature and the two-sided ‘Self’ has to navigate that impasse.
This has been a rambling reflection; I blame it on old age and the acceptance of my human condition. I prefer cooperation to competition and affection to malice. The difference between being #1 or being #10,000 is irrelevant. When our sun goes super nova and glows red the earth will vaporize leaving no fossils, no artifacts, nothing to speak of. But my story and myself; it is real and we were here.

NOT HERE TO JUDGE

  Today is Thursday but every day is special; my mother would say today’s the day the Lord has given us, Eleanor Roosevelt would say it’s a gift - that’s why they call it the present. I think it special because I woke up this morning and that’s not nothing. It’s the day I usually volunteer with the HOT (Hunger Outreach Team) at All Souls Unitarian Church. Whenever I mention my church I feel the need to qualify that identity. Collectively we are secular humanists who focus on human behavior and what we truly believe will be manifest in what we do. However one does or does not address God or gods in their spiritual practice is their own business. On Thursdays a group of us from All Souls and a couple of other organizations meet to prepare and distribute a fresh meal and bag lunches that can be saved for another day. We fix food at the church and serve hungry people at a public park in Kansas City, Missouri. That’s today and I’ve got about an hour before I head that way. 
Depending on the season and the weather we serve from 150 to 250 folks every Thursday who are, for whatever reason, food insecure. Some are homeless, others can’t hold a job but there is a tangible reason they will go to bed hungry tonight if someone doesn’t share what they have and that’s us. Some of the hungry are regulars, show up every week. Some are the dregs of society with little or no hopes of repairing what it is that’s broken. They’ve all come up short for one reason or another but we’re not there to judge. 

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Just after 8 p.m. getting home from kitchen cleanup at All Souls. The feed went well but every time out is a new adventure. It’s been hot, really hot for the past week and everyone is stressed a little. The park where we usually feed was reserved for an Irish Fest, street blocked off and a big crowd. Across the street diagonally and up a block there is another smaller park with no place to park so couldn’t take all the vehicles. So we went over the curb and set up under a tree, set up tables and arranged a serving line. Most of our customers were milling around the Irish Fest, not knowing where or if we would show up. At 6 p.m. it was in the mid 90’s. Our ragged people started trickling over from the crowd up the street. The meal was really good; I was serving pasta salad that was loaded with cherry tomatoes, black olives and cheese cubes. Along with that was french fries, curry chicken with chick peas and chopped green veggies. I sampled the leftovers before we packed up to leave. 
Leftovers were consolidated and back in the van, serving tables folded and in the truck when a medium size black man, maybe 40 came up to me. He was late, couldn’t find us and hadn’t eaten all day. His clothes all fit and he wasn’t carrying any belongings. That may not have meant anything but at least he wasn’t carrying an oversized backpack or dragging a bicycle or grocery cart. I had several protein snack bars that had spilled out of a brownbag sack-lunch and gave them to him along with a water bottle I had picked up for myself. He was polite and well spoken, thanked me for the food & drink and sat down in the shade.
Around 7:00 a clean up crew shows up at the church to help us unload. Shortly after we arrive two or three people are ready for doing dishes, pots & pans. They determine what can be repackaged and served on the Saturday feed and what goes in the garbage. When I pull out of the parking lot the sun is low, I need my headlights and it’s still 90 degrees. It’s a good job. It needs to be done and I can do it. I’m not a self-righteous bigot who thinks they are qualified to judge people who cannot meet their own needs, that they get what they deserve. I am one of those people who know that sh*t happens and it does not discriminate. I believe the three most important choices we make in our lives (all of us) are; choosing our parents, choosing our teachers and the neighborhoods we grow up in. I believe that this life is a crapshoot from the start and the cards we get are the only cards we get to play. That’s it; still really hot and it’s been a long day.

HATE THE BASTARDS

In April of 1962 I was 22, fresh out of the army working nights at an entry level grunt job in a factory for $ 2.72/hr. It wasn’t a bad job, not sitting at a machine assembling pieces and parts which it very well could have been. I got to walk around, pick up and clean those parts, put them in boxes and deliver them to quality control. John F. Kennedy was President. To say he was a rich man’s son would be a dreadfully serious understatement. Like previous rich men’s sons in that office, the Roosevelts, Teddy and FDR; he aligned himself with ordinary people and a greater good which infuriated the barons of big business. 

In April of ’62 JFK was embroiled in a battle with the Steel Industry. He had just pressured steel workers to sacrifice with a modest pay raise for the sake of holding down inflation. The steel companies followed with a significant price increase to their customers which gave the appearance that JFK had conspired with big business against the union and its workers. The President’s response was captured in a private conversation which of course was leaked to the press. In so-many words he shared what his father had told him about businessmen, that they were all a bunch of bastards; that he hadn’t believed it before but this changed his mind and punctuated his feeling with, “I hate the bastards.” 
At 22 with little more than 3 years of rigid military conformity and a few months of swimming in corporate conformity I was more like half-baked bread, almost ready but not quite. But now, 65 years later I have most of the puzzle pieces in place. I learned how important trade unions were for us in my growing up and how the teacher’s union protected my family’s best interests. The biggest problem with trade unions is, in order to succeed they’ve learned to fight fire with fire. Union leaders and members are willing to adopt the same underhanded dealings and deceitful schemes that the Business stereotype had employed from the beginning, the Bastards. 
This story may be a stretch and I may be overreacting but then it’s my story. My garage door broke last week and I couldn’t park my truck inside. I googled for businesses near me that do that work and started calling. On their websites I noticed the absence of their address, only that they serviced my town. I asked  if they did in fact repair broken garage doors and whether or not their business was located in my zip code. It didn’t seem to matter who I had on the other end, male or female, scheduler or the guy driving the service truck; all I got was vague answers. All they wanted was my address and a request for service. I’m full of questions, it’s my nature and nobody I talked to wanted to answer my question about where their business was located. I like to hire local people. It keeps local money in the community and I get a local name and face to go back to if need be. It’s not uncommon for the voice on the other end and myself to argue and be confrontational and I don’t like being that way. But they want to charge me for a $75 service call when they make an estimate, even if I don’t hire them. They say, “We have to pay our drivers.” I reply, “My time is as valuable to me as yours is to you. I have to spend valuable time waiting for your service tech to arrive and you tell me it will be sometime (sometime) that afternoon. If he runs late then so do I. My time is valuable too so I’ll pay you for the service call after you pay me the same amount for me having to wait.” I don’t have to elaborate on how those conversations end. I got my garage door repaired but neither of us were happy and the tech was grumbling as he left.
Going back to JFK’s off the cuff remark, my mother told me there are two different sides of business. One is where you give someone the business which is to exploit the vulnerable person/group so you maximize your gain at their expense. The other end of the business is the vulnerable person/group who is being exploited, getting the business. The underlying rule is; maximize profit, whatever it takes, whatever you can get away with. And yes; Bastards is a good fit.
True, individuals and groups of individuals can vary greatly to the extent of how accommodating or how manipulating they are pursuing Business. People like myself would prefer the two doing business to view themselves as equals trying to meet the other’s need in a mutually beneficial transaction. It seems to me the fewer individuals involved the easier it is to be collaborative; in the end you  all have to feel validated for it to succeed and 2 is a much more accommodating number than sales, supervisor, manager, purchasing, president and board of trustees. The farther one is removed from the interface the easier it is to fall back on Bastard behavior. 
Think of it as a game; the formal game is called “Zero-Sum”. For Zero-Sum to work there has to be a winner and with that distinction there has to be a loser. Without a loser there can be no winner. In each case the competitors knows their role in the outcome. If you cheat and win it’s still a win. The opposite game is called “Non-Zero-Sum”. Rather than competing in a winner-take-all interaction they can negotiate terms of agreement. The perfect outcome is a “Win-Win” where both sides give up something in return for a concession on the other’s part. 
I have been taking my vehicles to the same shop for scheduled services for so many years I can’t recall; oil change, rotating tires, safety inspections, etc. I’ve done the math and don’t see how he makes a good return on my business. While I’m there they check things that aren’t included in the description on the receipt. By now the owner and I are on a first name basis and he is genuinely interested in my travels. His shop employs 6 or more techs, a bookkeeper and an assistant. It’s a rare day when he doesn’t have to turn work away because his plate is full. 
When something goes wrong with my truck that one of my mechanical sons can’t get to or is too big a project for them, John (the business owner) works me into the schedule as soon as possible. I understand that return customers are like vegetables in the garden; if you don’t cultivate them they die on the vine. John knows that too. I think of it as a “Win-Win” game or maybe just Paying It Forward but we both benefit and the cost of playing that game is worth it. 
I’m afraid JFK’s father was right, if anything has changed since 1962 I don't know what it is. The Bastards are still bleeding the public and the ordinary people still being exploited.