Should The People Decide?

Concerning an issue like gay marriage, should it be determined by a public referendum? If so, should a public referendum in favor of slavery be valid just the same (as I'm sure society would have at some point in the past favored)? If not, why should a public referendum against or even in favor of gay marriage be any more valid just because a majority of its citizens desire it? Just the same, what would a public referendum in Nazi Germany have yielded? Perhaps solidarity with Nazi propaganda?

Majority opinion on a given issue does not necessarily make it right or good, nor does it necessarily make it wrong or bad. How then are we to know what "progress" really is? It seems neither majority opinion nor supposedly benevolent politicians offer any clear answers to this. Perhaps we should seek God to shed light on such matters? If so, the question now becomes, whose God?

Even if majority opinion suggests we follow "God X" (of course as per my fundamental argument even this is dubious), there is still no consensus as to how we are to view "God X" anyway. Does "God X" want a society built upon self-reliance (strive for a more capitalistic approach) or does He prefer a society built upon reliance on Himself and by extrapolation others (strive for a more socialistic approach)? Does He want society to be conformed or tolerant? Does He want a society that places judgment on our failures and scandals or grace, mercy and forgiveness? Does He want a society that embraces ecological balance even at the expense of humanity or does He prefer a society that places utmost importance and care on humanity?

Of course the obvious response to these questions would be to say that God's "truth" lies somewhere in the "middle" of all these dichotomies. But this obfuscates the problem just the same because there is no consensus as to what the "middle" actually entails. Ultimately, people harbor conflicting views of the same God!

Who then can we necessarily trust? Not the masses, surely. Neither can we trust allegedly benevolent politicians. Nor apparently even GOD!* How about trusting ourselves as individuals? I must confess that this scares the living daylights out of me! Trust myself? In any case, how shall we address our intense disagreements? 



*I can't help but think peoples' supposed "trust in God" is simply a proxy for trusting themselves. In other words, it is a projection of EGO onto "all-knowing and infallible God". This in turn elevates peoples' mere opinions to stratospheric "holier than thou" heights because after all, they come not from self but from GOD. So in essence, we seem to arrive back at the idea of trusting ourselves as individuals. But once again, how shall we address our intense disagreements?

Everything Is A Trade-Off

Cities around the country are finding out their energy saving LED traffic lights (which use up to 90% less energy than the conventional incandescent type) are not producing enough heat to keep them sufficiently thawed during winter months. As a result, they are crusting over and becoming invisible. This oversight is implicated in many accidents and at least one death! What to do?

Well, how about installing heaters on the lights to prevent this from happening*? Of course this will bump up energy usage thus making the environmental impact of the switch futile. Though they do look pretty cool, I don't think that was a consideration in their implementation.

On the other hand, they could employ crews to thaw them out, making any sort of cost saving benefit futile once again.

It just goes to show, although we strive to do things with the utmost of honorable intentions, we mustn't forget that good intentions have a way of going horribly awry. Alas, everything is a trade-off!

*A client of mine had a most sensible idea.....how about cities in, say, Minnesota trading their LEDs with cities in Florida that have not yet upgraded from conventional types?

The Mystery of Global Warming Solved!

O.K.....finally.....here it is. The much anticipated reconciliation to the contradictory claims of global cooling and global warming. As recently as the 1970's, it was believed we humans were going to be responsible for a cataclysmic global cooling. Of course this never happened. Perhaps it has just not happened yet? Apparently, what they meant to say was that we would actually be the purveyors of a cataclysmic global warming. Oops.....

It is now claimed this error was due to lack of understanding and knowledge. For, you see, we have a much deeper understanding now than we did previously. But how much total understanding and knowledge do we actually have at this point or any other for that matter? Perhaps a mere .5% as opposed to .05%? Certainly this is a huge jump in understanding, by a magnitude of 10 in fact, but is this overall amount of understanding and knowledge anywhere near enough to inspire much confidence in concluding anything?

On the other hand, perhaps our level of understanding is now a much more impressive 90% versus only 10% back then? This would inspire much more confidence in any given conclusion. But how do we know what level of understanding we have at any given time? Furthermore, how do we know our increase in knowledge in any given time period brings us closer to the truth?

It seems oftentimes the greatest feats of knowledge and truth are attained only as a result of making the most egregious of errors! Might the theory of global warming, or any theory for that matter, ultimately be a huge mistake through which all or at least most of our greatest advancements in knowledge and truth stem?

In other words, it seems like the attainment of knowledge and truth is not analogous to a graph of a perfectly straight, ever increasing line. Rather, it is more like a typical stock's price changes over time. Over “long enough” time periods, the cumulative up and down movements in price will reflect a net increase, one sincerely hopes.

The problem with environmental concerns is, who is to say what a “long enough” time period is to assure that the “net price of truth” as it were is increasing? Stocks have been around for a relatively short amount of time. We can then reason fairly confidently that we have a pretty good idea of what “normal” is concerning stock price behavior. But the earth has been “doing its thing” for many billions of years! Who is to say that our increase in knowledge of the environment in the last thirty or fifty years has brought with it a corresponding “net increase in truth”? For the earth, thirty or fifty years is but a fart in the wind!

Maybe our increase in knowledge must meet a certain threshold before our level of truth starts to increase again? One might question that if we were right about global cooling, how did we know about it if we had much less knowledge than now? Serendipity perhaps? In other words, possibly we were right purely by luck or mere happenstance.

Many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs are found this way. For instance, serendipity more than anything else proved to be on Henri Becquerel's side when he discovered radioactivity. If you are interested in how he did this, consult Wikipedia.

Suffice it to say, this ever important and interesting property was happened across largely by sheer dumb luck! Such is the case with many things, perhaps even most.