Thought for the Day (Any Day)

Received from Rex Saxi:

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

--Jonathan Swift

Do ONE Thing to Change the World

I had a rather Dickensian moment this morning. We have a feral cat and her two kits living in our backyard; this morning as I fed our cats, the three ferals sat outside peering in at them hungrily. (We feed the ferals, too. I went out to feed them a few minutes later; it was just the image of them looking in at the chubby cats eating from bowls that was mildly Dickensian.) I was reminded once again that my cats--and even the feral cats in my yard--eat better than many of the world's humans. Too many.

Which brings me to the ONE campaign. I learned about it through Mercy Corps, a charity I've supported. The ONE campaign is geared toward building and maintaining awareness among wealthier nations (that would be us), with an immediate focus on the upcoming G-8 summit.

Poverty and debt are high on the agenda for the July 6-8 meeting of the Group of Eight (G8), where eight men – the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia - will have the power to save the lives of millions of people who live in extreme poverty. And you can help make this happen.

President Bush needs to hear that Americans strongly support bold leadership on this issue. Nearly one million people have signed the ONE Declaration, calling on U.S. political leaders to devote an additional one percent of the federal budget to ending abject poverty around the globe.

The letter urges President Bush to do the following at the G8 summit:

• Help the poorest people of the world fight poverty, AIDS and hunger at a cost equal to just one percent more of the U.S. budget on a clear timetable;


• Cancel 100 percent of the debts owed by the poorest countries;


• Reform trade rules so poor countries can earn sustainable incomes.

There are rubber bracelets and celebrity endorsements and T-shirts and junk like that for the ONE campaign--whatever it takes, I guess. But the more important thing to note is that the U.S. gives a smaller percentage of its national budget to end poverty than do other nations like us; fewer congressional perks, high-priced toilet seats, machines of war, take your pick, would not have an adverse effect on our nation's ability to do what it does--it's pocket change on the grand scale for the U.S. But it could be life-changing--drinking water for millions of people who don't even have that, to name just one thing--for much of the world.

I still advocate donating to relief charities on an individual basis, and I still remind myself every day (and especially when I am inclined to feel financially crunched) that compared to much of the world, I am extremely, wildly, ridiculously rich. What I spend on a very inexpensive shirt at the outlet mall is more than a month's salary in a lot of the world. What the computer that I write this on cost...yeah, it could buy a lot in many parts of the world. And yes, what I spend on cat food and veterinary care...I may not be ready to give up my worldly goods and pass it all on to the poor, but I try to remember how well off I am, and do at least something to help, to make a small difference. What the ONE campaign is asking us to do is to make a tiny bit of a difference, but as a large group: if all of us in the U.S.--by means of our government, which exists to act on our collective behalf--gave a penny of each tax dollar (dollars we've already paid out) to help, we could certainly change the world for a lot of people.

Start by signing the ONE campaign declaration. That will only cost a moment of your time.

UPDATE 7/6/05: BoingBoing says only 390,000 people have signed (versus however-many million watched the Live 8 concerts--c'mon, people, all you have to do is sign the thing. Is that so hard? Or do you genuinely and truly not care about the rest of the world?

One King on Another

More people care what author and Entertainment Weekly columnist Stephen King says than care about what The New York Times says. Here's what King says in the front of the current issue of EW about the Michael Jackson trial:

It's sickening that it takes a columnist in an entertainment magazine to point out that the number of newspeople who covered the Jackson trial (2,000) is roughly equivalent to the number of American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. On the same day that crowds gathered in Times Square (and around the world) to learn the fate of the Pale Peculiarity, another four suicide bombings took place in that tortured, bleeding country. And if you tell me that news doesn't belong in Entertainment Weekly, I respond by saying Michael Jackson under a black umbrella doesn't belong on the front page of The New York Times.

Hear, hear, Mr. King.

King is laying the blame entirely on the media:

The press might respond by saying "We gave the people what they wanted."

My response would be "My job is to give them what they want. When he steps into a recording studio, it's Michael Jackson's job to give them what they want. Your job is to give the people what they need."

Yeah, that's probably true--news that we don't want to hear will never be a best-seller. But I think it is up to each of us to reassess our own priorities, the ones that have made Michael Jackson's trial a top draw, and take a moment to consider what this says about our values as individuals and as a people. All the ranting and raving about values in the world won't change the fact that the actions and choices (not least in our popular culture) of the American people reflect what we really believe and hold dear.

Decline of the Roman empire, anyone?

God Is a Liberal, Because He Said So

Here's an interesting site I ran across by way of Making Light, enumerating what the Bible has to say about the poor. Says the site's author, Mark Rosenfelder, about whom I know nothing:

American churches have departed strongly from Biblical values in these areas, and even created a rationalization-- "prosperity theology"-- for rejecting them.

Not just churches, but individuals: it's admittedly difficult to set aside one's own comfort, especially in this consumption-oriented culture, in favor of doing the right thing. Last night I was confronted by a beggar on the subway, and yeah, I managed to rationalize my way out of doing anything. But the Biblical message is clear, as Rosenfelder demonstrates.

But here's an easy thing you could do:

If you wanted to be a Biblical one-issue voter, you'd do well to make that one issue serving the poor.

Too bad so few one-issue voters see it that way.

Another Unqualified Evolution Denier

Lacking, as usual, anyone with actual scientific credentials to take up the creationist mantel, something called the Social Affairs Unit has published an evolution-denying rant by a history professor in Wales. The author clearly lacks any understanding of evolutionary theory as posited by Charles Darwin or as refined in modern years, as this author points out (and is able to provide links and references to support his points, unlike Prof. Rubinstein, who just claims evolution doesn't make sense to him.

Not least because he doesn't understand it? Fourier analysis didn't make sense to me on its face before I studied it...but I didn't claim it was false because I didn't understand it. (I guess if, like most evolution-deniers, you think you have the monopoly on the hotline to God--which Rubinstein doesn't claim directly, although he does spend some time patting himself on the back about how smart he is--it's incomprehensible that you might not understand something.)

Says Prof. Rubinstein:

The incredible complexity of life, and its apparent ever-increasing sophistication over time, strongly implies a guiding force of some kind.

But apparently not one that has yielded sophisticated thinking on the part of evolution-deniers.

This Is Not In Memoriam

One person who read this blog regularly, and reminded me when I hadn't posted anything in a while, won't be nudging me any more.

Writer, teacher, and all-around spectacular human being Pat York died in a car accident May 21st. You can Google around (skip past Pat York the photographer; that's not her), or just go straight to Cory Doctorow's tribute, or the SFWA eulogy, to read about her. This is not an obituary, or a remembrance, or a tribute. I want this to be a rant, but rants require singlemindedness and pinpoint focus. This is more a meander.

I've spent the last however many days it's been trying to make sense out of this in an assortment of ways. Strategy 1: Read everything I can find about the actual accident. Dissect it to figure out the exact sequence of events, diagram the forces at work, do the equations, try to put it all into a giant spreadsheet. Strategy 2: Read every word everyone has to say about Pat, and share my own stories of her with any stray person who will listen.

There are a bunch more after that. But ultimately, it's just a doomed quest: senseless death can't be pounded into a rational framework, no matter how big the sledgehammer. I know that; still doesn't stop me from trying.

And once the effort for rationality is spent, or at least worn down to the point where it clunks along halfheartedly, comes the quest for meaning.

Sorry, I can't find meaning in Pat's sudden death. I try. I tell myself little myths--Myth 1: If Pat had been told her daughter was going to die in an accident, she would have said, "Take me instead." Her daughter survived the accident. So maybe that's what happened. (Which of course begs the question of meaning in the potential death of her daughter.) Myth 2: Pat had just retired from teaching grammar school, a career she had loved and whose importance she was deeply devoted to. Without teaching, her life was deprived of its most meaningful aspect; she no longer had a reason to stick around. (Yeah, and the bus that plowed into the car knew that somehow. And her family had no need of her, nor her of it. The novel in progress? Pointless and unimportant that she finish it. The varieties of bullshit inherent in this myth are so many, so diverse, and so reeking with a giant heaping stench that even the most naive person must just boggle that the mind of an ostensibly intelligent person could come up with something so phenomenally stupid.)--because myth-making in search of meaning is something we humans do.

There is comfort to be had in myths, but they have to be good myths, not ridiculous myths like the examples above. Unfortunately, the sudden, accidental death of a loved one (which, I note as an aside, is usually taken to mean a family member--how constricting and just flat-out silly is to insist that the only people we love are the ones we're connected with by the accident of birth) doesn't yield to strong, comforting, meaningful myths because--SEE ABOVE--sudden, accidental death isn't exactly fraught with meaning. Life might have meaning--I don't know, I really don't--but death? Uh uh.

What it's fraught with is pain and emptiness and sadness. It just hurts. It makes some people cry, and hurt some more because the crying doesn't make it better, and other people wish they could cry, and hurt some more because they can't make the tears come. The things that normally blunt aches--activity, distraction, drink, drugs--don't change a damn thing.

Pat left us with tons of great memories--I've been hearing her voice, and particularly her infectious laugh, in my head all the time these past days. And she left lots of tangible things: in my case, she is part of the triumvirate of friends who pushed Rob and me together, and fed and nurtured our relationship until it could form its own strong roots. That is to say, I thank Pat (and Cynther and Janis) for the love of my life, the person I depend on every day. (And I sure have been leaning on him a lot this week.) She also introduced me to many other great people, and gave me encouragement and feedback and moral support as a writer. She listened to me bitch and whine (two special talents of mine that go underappreciated for some reason). She drank wine with me at the picnic table at Gibraltar Point every day at 5. Lots of other cool stuff came by way of Pat.

Her death gave me a powerful kick in the gut right around the time I was beginning to wonder if I had lost the ability to feel much of anything. It dragged me out of my emotional cocoon and brought a lot of friends together, reminding us all to cherish each other today because you never know about tomorrow.

Sorry, none of that grants meaning, or sense, to her death. I still just want Pat not to be dead.