Blend into our lives like life in living tree trunks

Encompassed, restricted, contained

Bound in wood flesh

Enslaved by mammal inadequacy

Yet saturated by spring’s volition

Growing sacred freedom

In progressive rings

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The Partisan Blame Game

Here’s one question close to the heart of every patriotic American: Who’s responsible for the disappearance of manufacturing jobs? Republicans blame “corrupt” unions. Democrats blame “greedy” corporations. Both explanations are distorted oversimplifications. The truth is more complex. An important factor in the disappearance of manufacturing jobs is also a tribute to American ingenuity.

In the depths of the Great Depression, a North Carolina farm boy with a high school education gave up a job pumping gas, bought a secondhand truck, and went on to build McLean Trucking. McLean grew into one of the largest trucking companies in U.S. history, and was the first to be listed on the stock exchange. But Malcom Purcell McLean’s real claim to fame is as the leading pioneer of containerized shipping.

Before containerization, cargo was “loaded, lashed, unlashed and unloaded from the ship one piece at a time” by stevedores. “What was new about McLean’s innovation was the idea of using large containers that were never opened in transit between shipper and consignee and that were transferable on an intermodal basis, among trucks, ships and railcars.”

Manufacturers couldn’t move jobs to low-wage factories in other parts of the world until there was a way to economically transport vast quantities of goods long distances. McLean led the way in solving this problem. A container ship can be loaded or unloaded in a few hours. There is less breakage and pilferage. Containerization dramatically reduced shipping time and costs. The largest ships now carry up to 15,000 containers.

“By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world’s workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the world.” It’s easy to discover what happened to American manufacturing jobs. Just list the world’s busiest container ports: Singapore,  Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, Dubai  and Rotterdam.

As McLean’s first ship was leaving port, “Freddy Fields, a top official of the International Longshoremen’s Association ., asked what he thought of the newly fitted container ship, replied, ‘I’d like to sink that son of a bitch.’” The unions weren’t the only ones trying to block practical innovation.“Shipping lines, railway companies … vehemently opposed and tried to block the use of containerized ships. Traditional U.S. flag carriers … Moore-McCormack, Delta-Lines and Prudential-Grace saw a threat to their market dominance with … conventional break-bulk vessels … [and] jointly … induced South American governments to invoke legislation outlawing Sea-Land’s containers …”

Noah’s Ark may have been the first container ship mentioned in history. Every kind shared one boat. First the flood of oversimplification is going to rain down upon us “until all the high mountains are covered fifteen cubits deep,” and balanced perspective is “blotted out from the Earth.” Then we will disembark together, to reconstruct the spiritual and material economies of our devastated lands, with God’s covenanted rainbow of diversity extending over all, guiding our common future and bolstering our hope.

One Nation Under God

The flood of election year distortion eventually recedes. When your mind’s made up, and you’re ready to tolerate any distortion as long as your side wins, recall Noah. Strive for truth and righteousness. Resist partisan oversimplification. Shun divisive distortion. Remember that the healthiest patriotism is grounded in facts, not partisan politics.

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An overwhelming majority of people living on Earth believe their god offers them an afterlife. The accuracy of this statement is based on the number of people who belong to a religion that claims life after death is a certainty. Among the many existing religions featuring some form of afterlife are Christianity (2.5 billion adherents), Islam (1.5 billion) and Hinduism (1.1 billion). That’s more than 5 billion of humanity’s 7 billion people.

Where Do Dead People Go When They Die?

The opportunity for sincere believers to improve their circumstances after death is a common feature shared by many religions. Convictions regarding the afterlife develop over time as world religions offer and revise revelation, dogma, doctrine and interpretation. Is there life after death? If your answer is yes, then where do dead people go when they die? What’s it like for them there? Thousands of simple and elaborate answers to these questions have been documented.

The eminently successful Kingdoms of the Pharaohs survived for up to 4,000 years. Their religious convictions changed over that time. Around 2000 B.C. some Egyptian priests produced the Book of the Dead, purporting to describe what happens after death and, most importantly, how the deceased could take advantage of their afterlife opportunities. The Book of the Dead was a personalized guidebook for a successful living in the hereafter. Thousands of copies were sold.

Bad Deeds Weigh a Heart Down.

The main event after death was when the jackal-headed god Anubis placed a person’s heart on a scale and weighed it against a feather. The heart’s weight determined what happened next. Bad deeds weighed a heart down. Light-hearted people moved on to a heavenly banquet. Many Egyptians had themselves buried wearing a small stone beetle-shaped ornament called a scarab, which they believed would hide and reduce the weight of their deficiencies.

Egyptian beetle scarabs are on display in museums around the world. The scarabs are man-made faith technology designed to avoid divine retribution for bad deeds. On the scarab these words appeared: “Oh heart rise not up against me and condemn me.” From the Book of the Dead, a more elaborate version of the spell pleaded “Oh my heart which I had upon Earth, do not rise up against me as a witness in the presence of the Lord of things; do not speak against me concerning what I have done, do not bring up anything against me in the presence of the great God of the West …”

Pray that the Scarabs of Modern Medicine Intervene to Save Us

Imagine what these Egyptians were thinking as they waited for their hearts to rise or fall. The closest any of us may get to this experience is waiting for the results of a cancer test, while we pray that the scarabs of modern medicine intervene to save us.

No scarabs can hide these truths about humanity. The destructive consequences of abusive and violent human behavior may last for centuries. The legacy of hate between nations, tribes and religions has an afterlife. Many of the species driven into extinction by humanity are gone forever. Plastic litter may not decay for thousands of years. The half-life of some nuclear waste is counted in millions of years. Certain truths are too perilous to ignore and may betray us.

There’s More to Life than Afterlife.

Our progeny is destined to share our hereafter. The amulets protecting humanity grow ever more complicated. While we wait for our salvation, there’s work to be done. Enjoy historic recordings by Johnny Cash and Marian Anderson singing “I Got Shoes,” the spiritual that inspired this post, especially this refrain, “Everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ there.”

Johnny Cash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXWVFQtr4ow

Marian Anderson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBgiIIp9v2c

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A Reuters exclusive posted by journalist Jim Wolf, “Orbital Solar Power Plants Touted for Energy Needs” http://blogs.reuters.com/jim-wolf, describes a fantasy project with the potential to provide civilization with energy for centuries to come.

Indian and U.S. space scientists propose that power plants be placed in orbit to collect solar energy and beam it to Earth. They claim this project is technologically feasible, and could be accomplished within 30 years if expensive research and development is financed.

The sun is Earth life’s primary source of energy. The human constituency accepts that the earth rotates around the sun. No political party challenges the science that the sun is the center of our solar system.

In which Digest This category does this story belong: “Defend Civilization,” “Human Leadership,” “Human Solidarity,” “Questions” or “Fairy Tales Revisited”? Turning to the sun for solutions is a fairy tale revisited.

Male and female solar deities were part of human history for a long time. Those who worshiped divine power associated with the sun included Aztec, African, Arabian, Basque, Brazilian, Canaanite, Celtic, Egyptian, Etruscan, Germanic, Greek, Hindu, Hittite, Japanese, Mayan, Native American, Norse, Persian, Polynesian, Slavic and Turkic peoples.

Humanity’s relationship with the sun includes many prominent markers. It was less than 500 years ago when Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler offered science to replace geocentrism (the earth at the center of the universe) with heliocentrism (the sun at the center). The observations of William Herschel confirmed by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s demonstrated that the sun is one of billions of suns in the galaxies.

Energy and Hope

Yet we remain a man-centered universe. As much as we’ve learned about life and the galaxies, humanity focuses on our own critical needs.  Our critical needs include an abundant supply of energy and hope.

We obsess about the end of civilization. The popularity of doomsday scenarios – including the Mayan Prophecy, 2012, Y2K, and the endlessly updated old-time favorites: Judgment Day, Nostradamus, Armageddon and the Apocalypse – demonstrate that we’re living at a time when energy and hope feel scarce. We’re just a bit frightened.

You Make Me Happy When Sky’s Are Grey

Surely our hopeful fantasies deserve equal time with these doomsday scenarios. So let’s welcome this fairy tale about orbiting solar power plants delivering an unlimited supply of electricity. Make a movie about beaming down energy and beam up hope. Imagine, and then create, a society where energy and hope are plentiful.

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In the 1980 musical comedy film classic “The Blues Brothers,” “Joliet” Jake and Elwood Blues are on a “mission from God” to save a Catholic orphanage. A woman stands in their way and threatens to destroy them.

She says: “You miserable slug! You think you can talk your way out of this? You betrayed me.”

Jake replies: “No, I didn’t. Honest … I ran out of gas! I – I had a flat tire! I didn’t have enough money for cab fare! My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!”

Global Cop-out

Consider this modernized version. The betrayed woman is Mother Earth. Twenty-first century humanity takes Jake’s place in trying to avoid responsibility for the betrayal.

Mother Earth says: “You miserable slug! You think you can talk your way out of this? You betrayed me.”

Humanity responds: “No, I didn’t. Honest … We needed the gas! The economy went flat! We didn’t have enough money for cleanup! Our research didn’t come back perfect! Powerful lobbyists came in from out of town; someone stole our convictions! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Foxes! IT WASN’T OUR FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!”

Our Mission

Is it possible to betray a planet?

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What is Dawkins talking about?

Perhaps Dawkins means that most of the 6 billion people who belong to one of the world’s many faith traditions are atheists about every religion other than their own. They reject other people’s definitions of divinity. They are certain that other religions are harmless fairy tales or destructively misleading. They hold to their one “true” faith.

Dawkins, a passionate atheist, goes “one god further” by proclaiming that no god or religion is worth believing in. He rejects all gods, and he advocates his atheistic perspectives with missionary zeal.

The Time Almanac 2011 edition published by Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. estimates that there are 138 million atheists in the world today. This is, however, difficult to estimate with accuracy because atheists learned to keep their mouths shut a long time ago. Many people paid a high price for openly doubting the perspectives of locally empowered religious establishments. Doubters are conditioned to play it safe.

The right to disbelieve is yet to be established in many regions of the world. Do 138 million atheists represent a threat to the future of religion?

God Created Atheists

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about atheism:

“Atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.”^”

Those who believe in an all-powerful divinity may be comforted by this thought: God created atheists.

What do you think?

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The Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus is one of the first wing analogies we know about. The powerful King Minos holds brilliant inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus prisoner on the island of Crete. Daedalus devises a plan that they will escape by flying over the sea. He constructs two sets of wings using feathers and wax. Before they take off Daedalus warns Icarus, Don’t fly close to the water, because wet wings fail. And don’t fly too high, because the sun’s heat will melt the wax.

Icarus flies too high. His wing wax melts. He plummets to his death. Daedalus survives.

The traditional lessons derived from this tale are mostly about hubris: Don’t overestimate your capabilities. Don’t fly too high. Know your limitations.

A Wing and a Prayer

Wing analogies are so common these days one wonders if humanity is part bird. People spread their wings. Airplanes, theaters, hospitals, pilots and ice-hockey teams have wings. Tired people sometimes say they’re winged out. People improvising say they’re winging it. We clip people’s wings. We take people under our wing. A wing-man is a reliable friend.

The most common application of the wing analogy is political. Millions of people are using the terms left-wing and right-wing every day. This usage began in the 18th century before the French Revolution, when aristocrats supporting royalty, the church and the old order sat to the right of the king. The commoners sat to the left.

‘Fear Lent Wings to His Feet’ (Virgil Aeneid)

Twentieth-century history demonstrates that there is much to fear from wings. The left-wing regime led by Joseph Stalin and the right-wing regime led by Adolph Hitler inflicted death and suffering on hundreds of millions of people.

Politically, both wings are prone to support more tough-minded ideology, an authoritarian approach to solutions and less compromise.

Three Things About Wings

Here are three important things to remember about wings:

1. Healthy birds have two wings. It takes two wings to fly.
2. A bird’s brain is never in its wings. The brain is in the center.
3. And the wings of the world have a lot in common. They flap a lot.

 ‘Wing Your Course Along the Middle Air’ (‘Metamorphoses’)

So let us remember the Roman poet Ovid’s retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Consider heeding this father’s advice to his son as they embark on their quest for freedom:

“My boy, take care, to wing your course along the middle air; If low, the surges wet your flagging plumes; If high, the sun the melting wax consumes: Steer between both: nor to the northern skies, nor south Orion turn your giddy eyes …”

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In the dark days when the hard-won benefits of a thousand centuries of civilized advances are obliterated, our descendants will judge us. Struggling to survive amid the consequences of our reckless deficiencies, foraging through the rubble we’ve bequeathed to them, they’ll condemn our selfish arrogance.

“What kind of misfits were they?” our descendants will wonder. “The imperfect civilization they inherited was splendid. The work of a thousand generations was destroyed on their watch.”

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

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When Jack returns home with five beans, no money and no cow, his mother is heartbroken. In her rage, she throws the beans out the window. By the next morning, they have grown into a beanstalk that reaches into the sky. Jack climbs the beanstalk and discovers a land above the clouds that is dominated by a gluttonous giant.

This giant is obsessed with his personal consumption. “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too.” The giant doesn’t know how to share. He captures Jack and plans to eat him. Jack escapes. There’s a chase. The giant falls to his death.

What’s the moral of the story? More to the point, how does the story of Jack and the Beanstalk apply to human behavior today?

Jack’s character embodies humanity’s quest for self-determination. Enterprising Jack takes risks to improve his personal circumstances. Determined to cast off his yoke, Jack is tenacious in the face of hardship and natural constraint.

The details and interpretations of Jack’s story have been changing for centuries. A common feature in humanity’s progressive aspirations is that opportunities are imminent, under our noses, and often close at hand. Unfortunately, the giant hangs out nearby as well.

Humanity recklessly consumes resources, stalks the earth like the giant in this fairy tale, and even deposits waste above the clouds. If other life forms could talk, many would describe how we invade their space, consume their resources, and thoughtlessly endanger the survival of their kind. We are Jack and the giant at once.

Humanity’s magic vines are composed of trillions of personal decisions made by billions of individuals on a daily basis. People are not challenged to climb above the clouds, although some do. Each of us is the temporary master of a tiny kingdom called ourselves. Our individual decisions and behavior provide the most accurate reflection of who we are.

The immediate challenge is to voluntarily upgrade our own behavior. Be like Jack: Take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Let your giant find less consumptive ways to satisfy his needs.

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