There’s a new drug on the horizon that could eliminate sleepiness, courtesy of DARPA. Like so much of what is around us, it’s a Pentagon application that may make its way into our daily lives.

In a trial with monkeys, some who were sleep deprived for 30-36 hours were administered orexin A, and performed on the same level as well-rested monkeys.

The subtleties are way too obvious.

We were in Wendy’s the other day – the place was almost empty, and as we approached the cash register, a man appeared on my left. He had that depraved look of a lost cause – sunken eyes, ragged clothing, stooped posture. He asked me for money. My initial reaction was to avert my eyes. We ordered my food, and I collected my change, and then I went over and gave him some money.

Whadda guy, eh? My initial reaction bothers me. But I suppose I’m like everyone else, secure in my little nest. And he did take me by surprise.

Some would say I was wrong to give him money. I know what he’s going to do with it – he’s either going to buy some food, or some liquor. Food first, but by midnight of that day I know he’ll be passed out in an alley. In the not-too-distant future, he’ll turn up dead.

There exists in conservatism a strain of social Darwinism. They deny it. If someone says to me one more time “teach a man to fish…”, I’m going to get physical. There are lost causes on this planet. They only need comfort – food, shelter, the warmth of human compassion. We can do no more for them. Maybe they’ll come out of it, but what if they don’t? Is it so wrong just to give them shelter for one night without pestering them about Jesus? Is that a bad use of public funds?

But the Darwinism operates on a higher level than the pitiful poor. In the conservatives’ mind eye view, all of us are working away on a ladder, all of us are upward bound. To reach down and help anyone below us is wrong, as it robs them of incentive. To reach up and take anything from up above is wrong, as it punishes success.

It’s ice cold, heartless. And it’s wrong. We’re not like that. We are connected, each to one another, by a firm hand grip. Some, like George W. Bush, are born high up, and very dependent on the hand up. He’s been bailed out of trouble more times than Paris Hilton. But he removes his own hand from those below. His dad was the same way, scarred by lavish inheritance, a sense of entitlement and mythical achievement. As Jim Hightower so famously said of W, he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

It’s that sense of entitlement that bothers me, the idea that we should never involuntarily offer a hand down. Conservatives have a misshapen view of the privileged classes, that they will extend the necessary generosity to bring the lower classes along. And if they don’t, well, that’s how it works. If a man turns up dead in an alley, well, it’s probably best he never reproduced.

In the view of most of us, we’re all in it together. We can all use a break, whether it is help putting food on the table in hard times, or overcoming unaffordable illness. The best solution for most of us is education and job training. Private charity will never provide enough to help those who can use the help, because too many of the wealthy are like George W. Bush – “I’ve got mine. Screw you.”

Yes, there will be those who form a sense of entitlement to public resources. But they will be a minority. We should not all be punished for a few miscreants. Most people want to be self-sufficient, and only need help overcoming the early hurdles. So we eliminate some of them.

In other industrialized countries there is a much higher degree of public service to one another, and these countries have healthy economies, but more than that, happier people. In various measures of happiness, like this one, countries like Denmark, Canada and Sweden consistently outscore the U.S. Here we are tempered to hard-boiled competition, and can be wiped out by medical hardship. Our kids go deeply in debt to get an education and are chained to the wheel when they leave school by the need to service that debt. It’s a constant strain. We are hyper-busy, irritable, strained and insecure. We work harder, take fewer vacations, and have fewer public benefits. For all of those reasons, we Americans are very good employees.

How much better, how much more sensible, to use our resources for mutual aid. Conservatives say that no one should ever be forced to help another. But most of us recognize a duty, and see the tax system is the most efficient way to do it. Private charity, while important, is too small and selective to be as useful.

There are those among us who recognize no duty to one another, have no sense of fellowship, who want only to live in splendid isolation. They collect the bounty of all our labors and pretend that they created it. They are the strident voice of selfishness. They need to be dragged along, kicking and screaming, into humanity. Otherwise, they are safely ignored.

From Glenn Greenwald’s 12/26/07 column at Salon.com, listing some of his favorite quotes of 2007:

“When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it’s my own policy — our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission” —Tim Russert, under oath at the Lewis Libby trial, citing the textbook function of a government propagandist to explain his role as a “journalist.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used. It’s our best format,” as it allows us to “control the message” — Cheney media aide Cathie Martin, under oath at the Libby trial, making clear how well Russert fulfills his function.

I ran across these words again today – they are worth repeating. In another time, when the media was not so forgiving of (or intimidated by) power, these words would be on banners and book covers as a classic example of a woman so removed from reality that she cannot begin to feel the pain of ordinary people. Is it any wonder her son exhibits indifference to the lower classes (like those who fight and die in Iraq)?

Anyway, we need to be reminded of who raised our president. From an interview with Diane Sawyer, here is Barbara Bush on why she would not be watching television coverage of the attack on Iraq:

Why should be hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it’s gonna happen? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

She must be of two minds. I’m yet to see the beautiful one.

Good grief! It’s Christmas day, and we sit here in a mountain home surrounded by conifers, and it’s snowing. The whole scene is a Leanin’ Tree Christmas card. We’ll be around relatives and over-excited kids today, and I think back to the days when my own kids were up at 5AM jumping with excitement. In Billings, where the kids grew up, there was a guy who used to take his helicopter and fly a lit-up Santa sled with reindeer across the rimrocks north of town on Christmas Eve. We would go to evening mass (a hangover from my own childhood), and then tour the city looking at lights. But seeing Santa’s sled was the key – it meant that the kids had to get home and get to sleep so that he could come visit.

They figured that out soon enough, but it had charm. I wonder if he still does that. Not Santa – the helicopter guy.

Anyway, I often write about religion here – I don’t much care for it. Christians have coopted the winter solstice, and now maintain that it isn’t a real Christmas unless you also worship. Without Jesus, they say, it’s just a materialist orgy. It is that, for sure, but long before there was a Jesus, when it was deep winter and the fields could not be worked, when people were stuck in their huts for untold hours of darkness, they began to celebrate that date when the days would start getting longer. I too like that idea – Christmas is a sign that it’s only 65 days or so now until pitchers and catchers report to the practice fields in Arizona and Florida.

It’s a time for sharing our bounty and talents, for families to gather. I wish I was with my own kids today – they are scattered all over and each decided this year to stay in place. None of them are churchers, but when they get together, they are oddly like every other family, and their Christmas memories are just as pure as anyone’s.

So, from one who loves this pagan ritual to all of you who come here to, I hope, be entertained, Merry Solstice, and many more.

The primitive mind endows the world with agents, and makes a god or gods the cause of events which affect man. (Joan Symington)

God allowed Katrina to happen to bring attention to lack of preparation for terrorist attack. (Charles Colson)

The discussion down below regarding Huckabee’s sublime appeal to right wing Christian voters reminded me that religion is a powerful force in our lives, and that no amount of reasoning will overcome it. We nonbelievers will always be a minority. But as I implied down in the comments, the job of leadership requires a realistic sense of how the world really operates. For that reason, I suspect that most of our presidents have been either atheist or agnostic, or at least indifferent to Sunday preachers.

The question of evil underlies every debate on religion. The presumption on the believers’ side is that religion is a counterbalancing force to evil, that we are involved in a battle between light and dark. So sayeth the Bible, Pat Robertson, and Star Wars. But it doesn’t take much research to uncover how religion itself has been co-opted into doing evil.

It’s no surprise. Most people are good because good is its own reward. Most people are kind and generous. As individuals, humans have immense capacity for goodwill and benevolence. But as a group, humans can be truly ugly. I’ve often wondered about this – how our capacity for evil manifests in our group behavior. George W. Bush loves his family, will pray over a Christmas turkey, and unleash horrible violence on the Iraqi people. Hannah Arendt referred to it as the “banality of evil”, how kind and caring and generous people become cogs in larger machines that do evil.

I suspect it has to do with a couple of things – one, that human leaders are not chosen, but choose themselves. A person has to want power to achieve power. The very fact that a person wants to be president ought to disqualify him from that office. But that’s now how it works. In the end, we are led by people who are hungry for power. The trilogy of the ring was an illustration of the lure of power, and how power corrupts us. Perhaps our greatest president, George Washington, didn’t want the job. That’s what made him great. He chose not to be king. That quality is extremely rare.

Our inhumanity percolates up into our group behavior. Suppose I have within me a small lust – a dislike of Muslims or blacks – alone I won’t express my inner feelings. But if there are many like me, our groups will give voice to those impulses. The Ku Klux Klan is a perfect example – men hiding under hoods, their anonymity allowing them to express ugly sentiments toward their black brothers and sisters.

So it follows that our leaders can lock into our individual prejudices, and use them to foster our anger and enlist our support in attacking other countries. They create archetypes for us, objects of hatred like Saddam Hussein or Osama. With that object in place, our national hatred is set free, and insanity and violence ensue.

But there’s a counterbalance to this – there are organizations through which our good impulses are expressed. The United Nations is one, as is just about every charity I have ever encountered. The UN operates on a large scale, and though it lacks the power of the United States, it has on occasion counterbalanced the evil that comes from our leadership. It tried to do so before we invaded Iraq, but just didn’t have enough.

Most religious organizations embody individual charitable impulses. Most churches do good work. But this animal called the “Christian Right” is not such a body. Like fundamentalist Muslim extremists, the Christian Right calls upon us to hate other people and invade other countries. Clever leaders have seen their numbers, and have enlisted them in their power quests. The Christian Right gives expression of the evil that lurks in our hearts. As such, we need to call upon the good within us to expel them from our leadership. They are truly dangerous.

We’ve crossed the line, rubbed it out completely. It’s getting out of hand, this Christian stuff.

Interesting video. Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has overseen an investigation of Ohio’s electronic voting system to assure that votes are counted accurately and that the system is secure from tampering.

Her conclusion: “There is cause for great concern.”

You have to follow this stuff on the internet, as it is just not covered by the media. Two Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) election officials are in jail for interfering in that state’s recount. 56 of 88 counties have illegally destroyed their election ballots and records, in direct defiance of a federal judge. There’s widespread suspicion that Ohio was stolen, that Bush once again occupies the White House by fraud.

Jennifer Brunner trounced former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell at the polls, and promised to clean up Ohio’s elections.

Ohio witnessed a 6.7% flip in exit polls versus counted vote. The exits say Kerry won. There’s widespread evidence of multiple means of fraud, from voter list purges to illegal lock downs of election headquarters (Cincinnati) to shorting black voters of voting machines to illegal caging. Then there were the machines themselves – seems anyone with a wi-fi could hack them.

Her recommendation: Paper ballots with central point optical scanning. The State of Ohio would take over training of election personnel, and would be in charge of keeping machines secure and training state employees to use them. This would eliminate the former system where state employees, corporate reps and independent contractors all had access to the machines at various times leading up to the election. Security was nonexistent.

She also recommends a two week election period where polling places are open seven days a week, to replace this crazy system where we all try to squeeze into the school cafeteria on the first Tuesday in November. That is long overdue.

Interesting video. It will be an interesting battle in Ohio to see if she can push her reforms through the legislature.

Researchers have discovered that endorphins, a brain chemical that operates on the same opiate receptors as alcohol – with the effect of suppressing pain – can also be released after deep expressions of religious faith. Perhaps most widely associated with strenuous exercise, endorphins are thus part of the brain’s response to spirituality – not just moments of religious ecstasy, but a steady, calming diet of faith.
Justin A. Frank, M.D., Bush on the Couch, p57

Quite a while back we were at dinner with a neighbor couple who we did not know well, but wanted to know better. It was a pleasant evening and we shared many interests. But at a point late in the meal, he laid it on me: “Mark, are you a spiritual man?” Poof! The bubble evaporated. He tried to recruit me for his religious study group. He was quite excited that they were about to open up Paul’s epistle to the Romans – he’d been suffering through some of his other letters in anticipation.

Buzzkill. How to ruin an otherwise fun evening. At least he wasn’t selling life insurance.

I grew up in a religious family – not slightly so, not one inclined to bow to the formalities while ignoring the substance. My parents were deeply religious, and I attended Catholic schools for twelve years. I don’t have many fond memories – mostly, sitting through the same ceremony again and again and again and again was frightfully boring. When I hit my teen years and could drive myself, I started “attending” 7PM Sunday mass – at the church of the great pinball at a local bowling alley. I was always afraid that Mom would ask me specifics of the service – what was the gospel and stuff like that. But she didn’t. She knew.

I never understood the appeal of religion. To this day, it gives me the creeps. I was hobbled by my youthful indoctrination, and carried with me the mandate to believe due to fear of damnation for many years. At last, one night around the time of my first midlife crisis, I decided it was all bunk, that I would not be damned, that financial ruin would not happen, that my kids would not suffer greatly if we all just sort of pretended that it wasn’t there. Freedom.

But I see so much religion going on around me. I see a cynical man like George W. Bush, and assume that he, like me, doesn’t’ really take it seriously – that he’s just diddling his base. Mr. Bush’s psychiatrist, Dr. Frank, thinks Bush is sincere. That worries me. I like the idea that most of our presidents have been agnostic or atheist or indifferent and practical. Having a genuinely religious man in the White House could be dangerous.

Look around. It is. This Bush guy, with his certainty and inability to self-reflect, is really harming people.

But I see the good too. I know people whose lives have been turned around by religious faith – it seems to minimize self-destructive impulses. I’m happy for them, even more so if they keep it to themselves. I see the hundreds of cars at the fundamentalist churches as we make our now-and-then trip to our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I know that religion is making people happy. And now I know why. It is giving them an endorphin buzz.

But it’s creepy. I am not of a mind that can endure for long secret friends and miracles. Repetitive ritual is extremely boring. The yielding of one’s identity to a “higher power” robs one of one of the things that can produce satisfaction – individuality. It’s no accident that I am one of those who hits the keyboard every morning and churns out this stuff – that I eschew political party ID and seek out the nonconformist route. It is my own key to happiness – to be who I am.

For most people, it seems, there is happiness in plunging one’s self into a group. We’re tribal – I get that, but I rebel at the notion that a man in a pulpit or podium has any special wiring or communication channels to some higher imaginary being. It’s all here, right in front of us, and everything we can know is there – clues are everywhere. Life is exploration, and satisfaction is now and then finding that some small puzzle piece fits.

We’ll never have all the pieces or be able to stand back far enough to see the whole puzzle. But that is satisfying too. How boring it would be to have all the answers, to have everything spelled out in detail. How boring is religion.