My last blog post was about the so-called ancient Chinese curse of “living in interesting times.” All the problems I cited in that post are not only still with us, but also have been amplified. Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the US. Although the nominee for the Democrats has not been finally decided yet, Hilary Clinton is the likely candidate. Although I am still paying attention to US politics, I am doing so with an increasingly heavy heart. Even so, some other things have caught my attention, including website advertising, LGBT concerns and legislation, advertising for pharmaceuticals, GMOs and related use of insecticides and herbicides, global climate change, vaccinations, the Crusades, and a slew of other things of seeming less importance.
Website Advertising. Have you noticed the increasing amount of advertising on “news” websites? A few years ago, I found the auto-start video ads annoying, so I added an ad blocker. It does a very good job of filtering out the most annoying ads. That doesn’t mean, however, that websites aren’t fighting back. They post complaints about ad-blockers, ranging from the mild (“We notice you’re using an ad-blocker. Please consider disabling it for our site.”) to highly intrusive notices, from large complaints to what used to be called “pop-up” ads. The irony is that such postings are themselves “ads,” and if sites can promote an anti-ad ad that will show even when ad-blockers are installed, they should be able to figure out a way to promote whatever product or service they desire to use for ad revenue.
Other sites make some or all of their content available only to subscribers. A reader can still see what the “issues” are but needs to have a subscription to see the full content of “locked” articles. Still other sites include “sponsored links,” which identify themselves as sponsored, with the links leading to promotional information about products or services. Such sites get the message across without discouraging readers from visiting the site. At some point, those who manage for-profit websites will learn the lesson TV advertisers had to learn a long time ago: If you want viewers to watch a TV commercial, the commercial needs to be worth watching. Turning the sound up to make sure that those who have gone to the kitchen or the bathroom during the commercial can still hear it didn’t work for TV advertising, and it won’t work on websites either. TV and movies take full advantage of “product placements,” making sure viewers can see brand identification, and websites might consider that approach.
My sense is that people will watch—and even appreciate—advertising when it is done well. It is, of course, easier to complain than it is to come up with clever advertising worth watching.
LGBT Concerns. I am old enough to remember “White” and “Colored” signs on drinking fountains in many of the Southern states and the fears about what awful things would follow integration of the races. Although that issue hasn’t faded completely into the sunset, the major battles have been fought and won in large portions of the country. Sometimes it seems to me as though the “sound and fury” of cultural fears have shifted from race to gender. Like race, gender issues aren’t catching. You can’t catch “sexual orientation” from someone whose gender identification is different from yours. Nothing bad happens if you use a public restroom at the same time a transgender individual uses it.
The LGBT community follows the same basic rule we all do: Pareto’s Law. Vilfredo Pareto came up with what has become known as the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 rule. In terms of human behavior, the principle shows that 80 percent of those in any given population are perfectly decent individuals, and 20 percent are problematic. A more accurate view would show that 20 percent are really good, 40 percent are OK, and 20 percent are unpleasant in one way or another, with the “bottom” 10 percent being pretty darn bad. It is a sliding scale based on time and circumstance. What was considered “normal” in the Middle Ages is no longer acceptable today.
There is a question, of course, why we seem to have so many more individuals identifying as having “alternative” sexual orientation at this time in history. I say “seem” because we don’t really know that much about sexual orientation through history. My guesses are that (a) the numbers of “alternatives” may have always been greater than we thought or (b) as freedom has increased in general, it has also increased when it comes to sexual expression. In spite of all the “sound and fury” about baking cakes for gay weddings and transgender people assaulting children in restrooms, gays and transgender folks aren’t the problem.
The real problem is with those who want to return to the laws of the Old Testament (basically the same as Sharia Law, which they also hate). In one of the images of anti-gay protestors, someone was holding a sign that read, “Jesus would have stoned people like you.” That’s not Jesus I have have read about. He had a chance to stone the the woman at the well and refused to do it. Jesus also essentially said that even those who are not like us are still our neighbors and should be treated with love and kindness.
At this point, most of us are comfortable using the same drinking fountain as people of other genders and races, so we ought to be increasingly comfortable with using the same bathrooms as those whose sexual orientation is different from our own. We are, I think, smart enough to design unisex bathrooms that can accommodate numbers of individuals of different sexes and sexual orientations. We ought to be smart enough to know that Jesus would be comfortable baking cakes for gay and transgender weddings.
Pharmaceutical Advertising. I assume that at this point everyone has seen multiple ads ending with the sentence, “Ask your doctor if X is right for you.” Doctors are, of course, catching it from both ends: They are receiving advertising and incentives for prescribing certain pharmaceuticals directly from the manufacturers as well as requests from patients who’ve been instructed to ask their doctor…. The doctor not only gets to make the patient happy by prescribing something that’s been requested by name, but also receives the financial reward that comes from prescribing the named product. This is one of the things that happened with antibiotics. In the “old days,” antibiotics were often sold to patients who had viral infections as a way to “preclude opportune bacterial infections.”
Now, of course, antibiotics are not working as well as they should. This is a major problem, and the opioid epidemic is evidence that many doctors will prescribe whatever medication provides rewards regardless of consequences.
The next time hear or see an ad for an “ask your doctor” product, listen carefully to the known side-effects. The side effects are usually difficult to hear as they are covered so quickly and often have the volume reduced, but they are worth listening for. The warnings that catch my attention are, “Tell your doctor about any sudden loss of hearing or vision” and “Sometimes fatal events occur.” If you go deaf or blind or die, you’re supposed to tell your doctor….
GMOs. Big Ag would have us believe that GMOs were developed to solve the problem of world-wide food shortage. The truth is that we really don’t have a food shortage. If anything, we have a distribution problem. Way too much food goes to waste. The “problem” being solved by GMOs is the desire for greater profits by the Big Ag companies and the manufacturers of crop-related chemicals. Pesticides, including both insecticides and herbicides, are designed to kill bugs and weeds. The problem is that such chemicals don’t discriminate: bees, butterflies, birds, and bats have declined significantly in areas where such pesticides are used. The pesticides are used not only for large-scale farming, but also for weed and pest control by homeowners. As soldiers exposed to Agent Orange discovered, such chemicals are not good for humans, either.
If such products aren’t required for adequate food production and aren’t good for humans and other living things, why do we have them? The answer is profit. GMOs and other Big Ag products are sold in the same way the pharmaceutical industry sells products even when those products have some really awful side effects. The sad fact is that most of the food we produce goes to waste. Wouldn’t it make more sense to find a better way of distributing the food currently going to waste than to spend time and resources making more and better insecticides and herbicides? The question is almost always, “Follow the money.” Who makes money if we produce more food than we can distribute and eat?
Global Climate Change. The evidence is in, and it isn’t pretty: The climate is changing, and, this time around, it is primarily our (humans) fault. The climate has, of course, changed in the past. It has been both colder (ice-age cold) and warmer (tropical rain-forest warm). For the most recent past (human history), the world climate has been fairly stable, with years shifting between slightly colder and slightly warmer. The current change began with the expanded use of fossil fuels, primarily coal and petroleum. I am by no means an expert, but much of the change seems caused by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and plastic in the oceans.
The bad news is that, if we are unable to significantly slow, stop, and reverse global climate change, life as we know it will come to an end. Mammals and birds will become extinct. If we continue on our current trajectory, it’s just a matter of time. The good news is that some life will continue, and the evolutionary process will begin again. The “Star Trek” series and a variety of other science fiction would have us believe that any day now we’ll develop warp drive and not only be able to travel to distant planets, but also be able to develop the technology to correct the problems on our own. As an old “Star Trek” fan, I would be glad if that proves the case. That is not, however, the basket where I think we should put all our eggs.
My sense is that we would do well to create a comprehensive record of humanity, including our history and current concerns about the climate and the increasing possible extinction of most of the remaining species if life on planet Earth. We also need to ensure that if and when “intelligent” life evolves again on the planet, whatever species evolves or whatever species from elsewhere develops warp drive will be able to access the information and prevent similar problems from developing elsewhere.
Vaccinations. No, I’m not an “anti-vaxxer.” I do not believe that vaccinations cause autism, and there’s no doubt that they can prevent some really nasty diseases. My concern is actually with the infant morality rate in the United States. My sense is that vaccines, or perhaps the vaccine schedule, is partially responsible for the relatively high rate of infant mortality in the US.
Although most physicians are fully in the “vaccines are safe” camp, quite a few are not. I have met a number of them, including Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, whom I met at a meeting of The International College of Integrative Medicine. Had it not been for that meeting, it would not have occurred to me to check our infant mortality rate. I don’t know enough about the science of vaccines to fully understand the issues, but I know that something isn’t right when the US ranks behind so many countries that are less well-developed when it comes to health care.
The Crusades. Yes, the Crusades…. You might have thought they were over, but they are not. The official crusades started in the 11th century and ended in the 15th. European armies went to the Mid-East to stamp out Islam and to “free the Holy Land.” After the 15th century adventures, things in the Mid-East quieted down a bit until World War II came along. Once again, the Mid-East was occupied by Europeans. With the establishment of Israel, Palestinians and others who had been living in that area were displaced, and the Mid-East has been in conflict ever since. What we are seeing now in that part of the world really should be considered a continuation of the Crusades, fueled by the abundance of oil in that area.
In some ways, the oil is key. It’s almost always a case of follow the money. Europeans came to North America seeking a more abundant life and killed and displaced the indigenous people (Native Americans) in the process. The story is similar for South America, only the invaders were the Portuguese and Spanish rather than French and English. Those invasions are not called “crusades,” because their purpose wasn’t religious, unless you consider the love of money a religion.
Now What? The philosopher George Santayana said, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We all—you, me, everyone—need to pay attention to the way human history has been evolving and start making better decisions about what we want to have happen next.
