WHAT I’M NOT HEARING ABOUT IMMUNITY

The media have been going berserk talking ad nauseum about Presidential immunity. But it seems there are many questions that they are not asking.

  1. Is immunity from prosecution the same as immunity from impeachment?

Does this ruling mean that there can be no more impeachments of Presidents? Can the Republicans forget about impeaching Joe Biden?

If so, can a former President be un-impeached? Trump’s infamous phone call to Ukraine, offering the release of US weapons if they would dig up dirt on Biden, was an official act, therefore immune. Can that impeachment be reversed? Would it matter?

2. Suppose Trump, as President, orders a Navy Seal to assassinate Biden. OK, he is immune from prosecution, I get that. But what about the Seal? If he carries out the (legal) order, he himself is committing a crime, and he can be prosecuted, even if the President cannot. Or if he refuses to carry out a legal order, can he be court-martialed and thrown into jail?

And by the way, if the President orders an assassination, is that order itself now legal? Or is it illegal, but the President cannot be prosecuted for his crime, which is still a crime? Is the President a criminal or not?

3. In its decision, SCOTUS made a big deal about the separation of powers. The logic seemed pretty vague to me, but it appears to boil down to the fact that a President’s official acts are part of the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch has no business meddling in that separate Branch.

If that’s the case, what about Cabinet members and other members of the Executive Branch? Are they also immune on the same grounds? Suppose the Vice President orders someone to shoot Biden; is s/he immune from prosecution?  

In its recent decisions, SCOTUS has been tying itself into legal knots trying to twist obvious truths into convoluted confusions. I can’t resist mentioning the recent decision on obstruction of a political process. The lower courts simply read the clear-cut law that states that the Jan. 6 rioters obstructed the Congressional certification of votes. But, no, SCOTUS found a way around that one.

They reasoned that the obstruction law was enacted to punish offenders back in the ENRON case, where the obstruction was of documents, not actions. Even though the law itself didn’t mention documents, SCOTUS reasoned that the law must have been about documents only, and that the Jan. 6 rioters were not obstructing documents, and were therefore not guilty under the law.

How’s that for a twist of the law? It makes a mockery of the ‘originalist’ interpretation of the Constitution. When the Second Amendment was written, the only ‘arms’ were muskets, and so, SCOTUS might argue, the Amendment applies only to the right to bear muskets, but not to semi-automatic assault rifles.

Unfortunately, I along with millions of other Americans, have lost all faith in the Supreme Court. It has become just another wing of MAGA.

PRIVATE EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Public education in almost all developing countries is under-funded, and therefore of poor quality. One result is that developing countries fall further and further behind developed countries in human capital. Their poorly educated graduates just cannot compete with those from developed countries.

Private schools spring up in developing countries in order to meet the demand for higher quality graduates. Of course, poor families cannot afford to send their children to private schools, so this situation exacerbates inequalities in the social fabric. Education is only for those who can afford it, and they will benefit with better skills, jobs, etc.

In fact, there are inequalities even within the private system, as the very elite can send their children to the most elite schools, while the middle class must be content with more middle class private schools.

Worse, every student who attends private school is one fewer for the public education system to cope with. Governments welcome private education, as it relieves them of much of the burden of providing quality education for all. If you are a parent sending your children to private schools, you won’t be pressing government for better public schools.

Even worse yet, the government ministers and all their friends and relations send their children to expensive private schools. For them, there is no problem with the educational system. The poor schools, especially those out in the countryside, are out-of-sight, out-of-mind. The public education system becomes forgotten, as government shirks its responsibility.

Since there is a hierarchy of private schools, the richer schools become symbols of conspicuous consumption for the rich — status symbols. The elite send their children to elite schools not for their educational value, but for their snob value. The richer schools become country clubs, where status symbols become more important than learning.

The owners of these private schools understand this. They are in the game for the money, not especially for the education. Education is sacrificed to profits. The owners also realize that these parents are easy to fool. The owners preach ‘quality!, quality!, quality!’, when in reality, quality is sacrificed to false images, glitzy buildings, swimming pools, and the like. Only a few dedicated teachers are interested in education, and they are often frustrated when they must forego science equipment in favor of a gaudy new Mercedes school bus.

In another post, I mentioned how these rich schools pretend to be ‘international schools’, when in reality there is nothing ‘international’ about them.

Cambodia has actually made great strides in public education. Twenty years ago, the grade 12 examination system was so rotten that it became the butt of a lot of jokes. Today, the grade 12 exams are more or less legitimate, as students must actually learn things in order to pass. Thus, public education is at least an option for students, whereas in the past it really wasn’t. This competition may be forcing the private schools to become more extreme when it comes to the country club mentality.

At one of the prestige private high schools in our city, the pass rate on the state grade 12 exam was actually below the national average of public schools. Why would a parent send a child to that school, when they would learn more at a public school? However, the attendance at the private school is still booming. It would seem that there are priorities other than learning at issue there.

One problem with Cambodian society is its patronage system, as opposed to meritocracy. The old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know,” applies on steroids in Cambodia, to the extent that learning in many schools and universities has become almost irrelevant, if not non-existent. A few years ago I was asked to help interview our university finance major graduates working in banks. I went to all the major banks, and couldn’t find a single one of our finance graduates. They were working in their daddies’ businesses in other fields, not finance. From what I have observed, their knowledge of finance and banking was nearly nil, despite four years of university. Can you imagine an accounting graduate who doesn’t understand compound interest?

This has all been pretty negative, but I have hope for Cambodia and for similar countries. As Cambodia is drawn more and more into the arena of international business, there will be an increasing need for employees who can actually do something. Thus, I see a trend — slow, I admit —  away from the current know-nothing patronage towards some kind of meritocracy. This will require schools and universities actually to teach the students something. There are a few schools in Phnom Penh who are realizing this and are requiring their graduates to learn useful skills.

Still, the requirement for useful skills will further exacerbate the rich-poor divide, as the elite will have the educational qualifications for jobs, while the poor will not. That is the dilemma for developing countries around the world.

DOES A FETUS HAVE A SOUL?

This is not a political screed about abortion. I have placed it in my ‘Religion’ category.

My thinking was stimulated when a friend told me that I would someday see my deceased daughter in the afterlife. My first question was: “She was 7 when she died. Will she still be a cute 7-year-old whenever I meet her?” A secondary question was, “If I’m a senile old man when I die, will I still be that decrepit creature when I meet her in the afterlife?”

From there, my thoughts turned to my unborn son, due next month. If he was aborted or otherwise died, would his soul go to the afterlife? Would he still be a fetus in the afterlife? Would he remain inside his mother, or would he somehow exist independently?

Let’s assume that a fetus has a soul. Perhaps the first question to raise would be, “Where did that soul come from?” Did it exist before conception? Did that soul reside in a sperm cell, or within the mother’s egg. No, I don’t think so. Both sperm and eggs didn’t even exist at some point before conception, and were created out of bodily chemicals. That would imply that all billions of sperm cells and eggs have souls, but they die before conception. But then, would those souls have an afterlife? No, this is ridiculous.

Maybe those souls were waiting out there in soul-land for a body to enter, and then entered the fetus at conception. There are 8 billion souls in living human beings in the world. Have they all been waiting out there since time immemorial? There were only a billion people only a few centuries ago. Where were those other 7 billion back then? No, I think the idea of billions of souls waiting from the beginning of time is not an idea that I can take seriously.

So I conclude that a new soul is created at conception or afterwards, and may have some kind of ‘soul-DNA’ from both parents.

But then, what about identical twins? They start out as one egg-sperm combination, but then, not simultaneously, the egg sometimes splits and may end up in two placenta, I.e. as twins. Does it have one soul upon conception, which then divides into two twin souls afterwards? That would mean that a separate soul is created after conception. That seems unlikely to me.

Suppose next that a fetus dies before birth. Does it develop so as to be somehow ‘born’ as a person in the afterlife? That doesn’t make much sense if the mother is still alive and not in the afterlife. And yet, I can’t imagine that it remains a fetus forever and ever.

Cambodian Buddhism has an interesting take on this. Despite the central doctrine of reincarnation, the Buddha refused to answer a question on the existence of the soul. Apparently, the ‘self’ that is reincarnated is not the same concept as the soul.

Further, in Cambodia there is a concept of pralung, something like life-force. All living creatures, including plants, have this. The human pralung is not a unique force; indeed, each person has 19 different pralung, which can enter or leave the body. The fetus has pralung, but it is not clear where they come from.

Islam has an interesting answer. The fetus at birth has no soul, but a soul is somehow ‘breathed’ into the fetus at the age of about 120 days after conception. Not a bad idea, but I have trouble with the idea that one second a fetus has no soul, and the next moment it does. Then we get back to the question of where that soul comes from. Clearly not the mother and father, but rather from the outside somewhere. Moreover, the Islamic version avoids the question of a billion-year-old soul just waiting to enter a new body; rather, Islam has God creating a new soul for each person, after conception.

That brings me back to the question of age. If a small baby dies, does its soul grow older: does it mature to adulthood in the afterlife, or is it forever fixed as a baby. On the other hand, if an old person dies, does their soul grow even older and more decrepit, perhaps to 200 or 300 years old, like the portrait of Dorian Gray? Or do they somehow revert to some golden age of, say, 30, forever.

Related questions: will Michael Jordan play basketball in heaven, or will he be too old? Does Liberace have his piano in heaven? If I am attached to a pet dog, will I see my dog in heaven? Do dogs have souls?

All these imponderables appear ridiculous to me. I have to conclude that, if indeed the soul somehow exists, there must be some kind of non-physical soul-stuff in heaven, and that when we die, our non-physical soul merges with the great soul-in-the-sky. In short, I can’t see myself recognizing my erstwhile 7-year-old daughter, at least not from her appearance. I can’t even see myself recognizing myself, for that matter. However, if we had formed a strong spiritual bond during her life, that spiritual bond might somehow exist beyond the grave, within the great, timeless Ur-Seele.

HOW CITIZENS UNITED DIVIDED THE CITIZENS

I contend that the Supreme Court ruling Citizens United  vs. Federal Elections Committee (2010) is a prime cause of exacerbating the divide between the rich and the poor in America. In short, it allowed the rich, through large corporations, to buy politicians, who then enact laws that benefit the rich and harm the poor and middle class.

In recent days, Donald Trump has made a blatant, explicit offer to the fossil fuel industry, that would increase pollution, increase the effects of global warming, and all the evils accompanying fossil fuels. Is this what the American people want? Of course not, but their vote no longer matters when politicians can be bought. Trump asked the fossil fuel industry to contribute over $1 billion dollars to him, in a clear quid pro quo:

“According to reports, Mr. Trump made specific policy commitments, including promises to auction off more oil and gas leases on federal lands and in federal waters, reverse pollution standards for new cars, and end drilling restrictions in the Alaskan Arctic,” they detailed. “He also vowed to terminate the pause on new permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports,

Gun control is another area where politicians can be bought to work against the people’s wish to control assault weapons that kill hundreds in mass shootings. The Manchin-Toomey amendment was a measure that would have required background checks on all commercial gun sales.  Nearly all of the 46 senators who voted to defeat the amendment had accepted significant campaign contributions from PACs associated with gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association. All perfectly legal, of course, owing to Citizens United.

The lower and middle classes are left out of the democratic process; they realize this and they are angry about it. They are angry that they are paying taxes for the benefit of the rich, who pay little or no taxes because of the massive tax cuts under Reagan, Bush, and Trump. When there is a tax cut, government revenue declines, so that the government must borrow money to pay its bills.

Interest payments made by the U.S. government are a significant part of its budget. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government is projected to spend $400 billion on interest payments for the national debt in the current fiscal year. This amount represents roughly $3055 per household. Additionally, on average, the U.S. spent more than $2 billion per day on interest costs last year, and it is projected to spend a historic $12.4 trillion on interest payments over the next decade, a veraging about $37,100 per American.

I’m not hearing much about corporate tax rates. Back in 1970 they stood at 52%, but were reduced to 35%. Under the Trump tax cut, the corporations who own the politicians were able to reduce it to 21%. Citizens United again.

Noting that the rich pay little or no tax, we see that it is the middle class taxpayers who are paying for this annual $400 billion in interest on the debt. Who benefits from the interest? Not the middle-class taxpayer, for sure. About 7 trillion out of the 24 trillion in public debt is owned by foreign countries, especially Japan and China. So at least $100 billion per year is going outside the USA. Most of the rest goes to financial institutions like banks and mutual funds. Thus, government debt resulting from tax cuts for the rich and the corporations (bought as a result of Citizens United) is another hidden way of taking big money out of the hands of middle class taxpayers and re-distributing it to Asian countries and big financiers.

The middle class, and everyone else for that matter, feels over-regulated. You can’t blow your nose without a permit. You are controlled, spied upon, and restricted at every turn, and you are angry about it. So when a politician promises to de-regulate your life, you are grateful. The bought-off politician proceeds to lessen some small regulation for you, while completely de-regulating a multi-billion dollar company or industry. You are eternally grateful for the small favor, even though you may lose big-time when the company pollutes your drinking water (as in Flint, Michagan) or when the building you are living in collapses due to the relaxing of building codes.

A politician like Trump can promise the middle class a tax cut and de-regulation, thereby earning their undying loyalty, while the middle class loses out to the big corporations, who are given huge tax cuts and de-regulations .

Do you remember that train derailment in Ohio last year? It caused millions of dollars of damage and spilled toxic chemicals into the environment. It turns out that de-regulation and lack of regulation were responsible for much of the damage.  

Commentary following the derailment centered around industry working conditions and safety concerns, such as the lack of modern brake safety regulations, reduced railway workers per train, and increased train lengths and weight (Sirota, 2023).

Sirota, David; Rock, Julia; Burns, Rebecca; Cunningham-Cook, Matthew (February 9, 2023). “Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment”. The Lever. 

Train derailment with chemical spill near East Palestine, Ohio

Such events make the middle class even more angry, but they will continue to support more de-regulation that ultimately harms their lives. Meanwhile, the rich are crying all the way to the bank.

Thus, global warming and air pollution (from fossil fuels), mass shootings (gun de-regulation), water pollution, and toxic chemical spills, are all hidden results of Citizen United. All this in addition to the yawning gulf that has emerged between the rich and the poor.

‘STANDARDS’ and VYGOTSKY’S HIGH-JUMP

I hear so many educators pontificate about ‘maintaining standards’. In developing countries, there is a cry of, “Don’t water-down the curriculum” from the standards of Harvard, Oxford, and other top Western universities.

This attitude usually comes from local scholars who have achieved their advanced degrees from top Western universities. When they return to their home countries, they feel, “I worked hard, and if I was able succeed, other students in my country should achieve the same standards.”

These success stories come from the creme-de-la-creme, who had been miles ahead of other students in their local classes. The majority of students in these countries, coming from poor schools with poor teachers, don’t have a hope of reaching the levels of Western universities. They often give up and drop out. Their education has been largely a waste, a sacrifice to that top echelon of elite students who may receive overseas admission.

There are games being played to pretend that a university is maintaining ‘standards’. One is to require 800-page Western textbooks that the students cannot read. (In a foreign language, no less) A more subtle method is to test memorization rather than understanding. I was amazed at the memorizing abilities instilled by many African cultures. I saw little kids at Koranic schools learning to recite the ENTIRE Koran by heart in Arabic, of which they understood not a word.

I used to teach mathematics in developing universities. A typical calculus exam question might be “State and prove the Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus.”  And the students could do it — pretty impressive evidence that they were achieving Western standards — except that many of them just memorized the words from the textbook without having a clue what they meant.

How high do you set the high-jump bar?

That’s where Lev Vygotsky comes in. This Russian psychologist is known  for his concept of ‘Zone of Proximal Development’, or ZPD. This ‘zone’ is the gap between where a student is and what he is willing or able to achieve. I’m aware that my interpretation of the ZPD may not exactly match Vygotsky’s, but I visualize it as a high-jump apparatus. If you set the bar too high, the student will not be willing to attempt the jump, but if you set the bar too low, the student will not be interested or engaged enough to jump. Of course, each individual student will have their own ZPD, so it is the teacher’s job to find that ZPD and set the bar just high enough to engage the student to jump. Then the bar can be gradually raised as far as the student is willing to attempt it.

I actually witnessed an actual high-jump in Cambodia, where a well-meaning NGO set up many high-jump pits on rural schoolgrounds. They ordered the best — Olympic standard apparatus — so that the lowest peg was far higher than the little kids could jump. The high-jump pits were totally ignored, and the once-sand-filled landing pits became filled with mud and often cow dung. If the NGO had only set up lower bars, they might have interested the kids into attempting to use the apparatus.

Vygotsky used the term ‘scaffolding’, because a scaffold is a series of steps that leads to the summit. The teacher sets these achievable steps for the student, who proceeds, step-by-step, to the top.

In my experience, I have written a whole bunch of easy-to-read textbooks in various university subjects. When I taught the courses using my own materials, students were engaged enough to learn, while in other courses using the 800-page textbooks, there was very little learning. Alas, my materials were not usually welcomed by the elite educators, who accused me of watering down the curriculum. They returned to pretending to use the 800-page texts.

These elitists are supported by Ministry of Education officials, who themselves were part of the elite cadre who succeeded in overseas education, and who had adopted that mentality of catering to the top 10% of students who might qualify for study abroad. So the Ministry officials thought, “If I was able to read an 800-page textbook when studying in the USA, then local students should be forced to do the same.”

In order to study abroad, a student must pass a TOEFL or IELTS or DuoLingo exam, geared to the English of analytical thesis reading and academic writing. The typical non-elite student — let’s say a Finance major — will need a different sort of English: the English of working in a bank, such as waiting on customers, reading banking regulations, etc. These students are being short-changed, since the English taught at all levels is aimed at the eventual study-overseas target, and not at the Finance major.

Thus, I feel that education in developing countries should follow the Vygotsky high-jump/scaffolding method, aiming to educate every student according to their individual ZPD, rather than catering only to the elite 5% or 10% who may qualify for study overseas.

ROCKETS FROM RAFAH

Hamas’ latest actions are consistent with my earlier posts about their motivation.

First, firing rockets at Israel is a message – a show of strength, even though the chances that the rockets do any damage are minimal. Hamas needs such bravado to show the world that it is still a fighting force. As I pointed out earlier, Hamas cannot hope to win the war; the best they can do is to show the world that they continue to stand up to the Israeli bogeyman.

Second, why from Rafah? Just as the original invasion of Israel, firing from Rafah invites Israel to retaliate with full force. If Hamas can provoke Israel into killing 50,000 people in Rafah, maybe that will be the final straw in getting the world to take strong action against Israel.

Everyone thought that Israel would decimate Rafah over a month ago, but they have been dragging their feet due to international pressure.  Maybe Hamas figured it was time to taunt them into assault.

So far, the Hamas strategy has failed, in that it has failed to bring in foreign forces against Israel. However, international opinion has really turned against Israel. Witness the fact that more European countries are recognizing the State of Palestine, whatever that means. (There are actually two competing governments for Palestine: Hamas, and the PA on the West Bank.) The latest Israeli strike killing 45 civilians in a refugee camps is causing international outrage. Israel is being charged with genocide.

Israel originally thought there were Hamas commanders in the refugee camp, but later admitted they had made a ‘tragic mistake’.  Surely Hamas at one point must have figured out that they don’t NEED their operatives in the camps; all they have to do is make Israel THINK that Hamas operatives are there, and they will wipe out a bunch of civilians, while Hamas can claim “There were no Hamas commanders there; Israel was targeting civilians and refugees.” This is what Victory looks like to Hamas.

Thus, while Hamas has failed to bring in outside force, it is winning the propaganda war. I therefore see no negotiated settlement, which might see the end of Hamas’ control of Gaza. They will be delighted if Israel goes into Rafah and kills thousands of Palestinians in hospitals and schools used as human shields used for Hamas military operations.

SUDAN? WHO CARES?

Sudan is the second largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, with an area of 1,878,000 km2, compared to Israel at 20,770 km2, (roughly 1% of the area of Sudan.) Sudan’s population is 49.4 million.   (Israel: 9.3 million, about 20% of Sudan). Sudan is in the midst of a civil war, in which at least 16,000 people have been killed in the past year (probably much higher), with some 8 million displaced, and 18 million facing acute levels of hunger. There is fear of a repeat of the genocide in Darfur of 20 years ago, in which between 80,000 and 400,000 people were slaughtered.

Where is the outrage? Where are the demonstrations on university campuses? Where are the cries of “Genocide!”, when the situation in Darfur really was genocide? How many Americans and Europeans could find Sudan on a map? How many care?

How is it that these same passionate students are so forceful in their demonstrations across the continents against Israel, while they ignore much worse atrocities and massacres in Sudan?

Let’s go back to Rwanda in 1994, when the Hutus massacred between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsis. Where were the Western campus demonstrations? “Rwanda? Where’s that?” One of the perpetrators of the genocide was one Paul Kagame. 30 years later, with the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands, he is still President of Rwanda. Who cares?

Let’s go back even further, to the late 1970s, when I was spending four years at the University of Lesotho (map?). I witnessed the students on our campus in gleeful support of Idi Amin, who was massacring maybe 300,000 Ugandans (map?). He was seen as a champion, because he told the colonialist English to go to hell. Was there any outrage or protest on Western university campuses? No, if anyone dared to criticize Idi Amin, they would be labeled as racist (horrors!).

At precisely the same time, South Africa was being boycotted for its Apartheid regime. There were international protests, and the UN and other bodies, while supporting Idi Amin, roundly condemned the Apartheid regime.

While I was living in Lesotho (surrounded by South Africa) I observed that there was no mass outpouring of refugees from South Africa. However, there were thousands of African refugees from other countries trying to escape famine and tribal massacres to get into South Africa. As humiliating and demeaning as Apartheid was, at least the refugees would not be massacred, and could find work in the mines.

So what’s going on here? If one considers Israelis as physically indistinguishable from white people, race seems to be the main reason for condemning a country like South Africa. Have there ever been demonstrations or boycotts against any primarily non-white nation?

I contend that there is a secret mentality among many Westerners that black Africans are just savages who will always be killing each other and cannot be expected to do otherwise. Yawn! Yet another little known country where one tribe is killing another. White people, on the other hand, are deemed to be civilized and should be expected to know better. They must be held to a higher standard.

When Hamas invaded Israel and committed all sorts of atrocities on Oct. 07, I read many articles praising Hamas, and justifying their atrocities. This was even before the Israeli retaliation. It appeared that the Hamas Arabs were not held to the same standards as the Israelis. Using hospitals as military bases? No problem, but shame on Israel for attacking them. Hostages? Imagine the outcry if Israel started taking Palestinian hostages. Now there’s an idea!

Back to Sudan. Is there any chance that President Biden or Secretary of State Blinken will even mention Sudan, let alone visit Sudan or bring the genocide to the attention of the United Nations? Sadly, the Sudanese and the residents of Darfur are Africans and simply don’t count.

THE PRICE OF DOING GOOD

I was prompted to write this blog by the ads I see asking for donations for aid to Gaza.

We keep hearing about the impending famine in Gaza, or lack of medicaI treatment, but I’m not hearing anything about famine among the Hamas soldiers. They are receiving food and medical treatment. It’s pretty clear that Hamas is getting first dibs on aid coming into Gaza. If you are contributing to Gaza aid, you should not forget that the first priority of disbursing your aid is to Hamas fighters.

But the theme of this blog is not Hamas or Gaza. It is about the fact that in order to do good, you usually pay a price. I remember back in the days of the Ethiopian famine, when Band Aid and other humanitarian groups were trying to send food to the starving. Ethiopian officials basically asked, “What’s it worth to you to help these starving people? We want our cut.”  Negotiations followed and some kind of percentage was agreed upon, but in fact the officials had the power, and could have demanded 99% if they had wanted. At least 1% would get through to the starving.

When I was in Mozambique, I saw government officials actually holding people hostage. They would prevent food from entering a region, then say to the donor agencies, we’ll allow food in, at a price. If you don’t pay, we’ll let the people starve.

This scene has haunted me for years, especially since I live in Cambodia, where I have seen this scenario played out in many forms. For example, a charity NGO wants to bring in food for hungry villagers, but are forced to negotiate the cut given to officials for the right to help the villagers. What makes me angry is that everyone is happy with the situation: the NGO gets its glossy photographs for its marketing campaigns, the local officials get their cut, but most importantly, the villagers at least get something, so they won’t complain. In fact, the villagers are never told how much they’re supposed to receive.

However, this phenomenon occurs in much more subtle ways, especially when a do-gooder wants to be ‘the adult in the room’.  Suppose you get a job in an aid agency, ostensibly devoted to helping people, where you have a direct influence in delivering that aid. But suppose, further, that the powers-that-be ask you to compromise, and to do something unethical, such as to remain silent in the face of child abuse or other evil doings. You find yourself negotiating with yourself, asking yourself, “How much abuse must I tolerate in order to continue helping the children?”  That is a tough question, to which each individual has a different answer.

For example, consider the team of advisers that Trump assembled as President. They could see his madness, but feared he might do something really insane, like pulling the nuclear trigger. They remained with Trump, trying to modify his stances, but found that they were becoming, more and more, slaves to the Trump cult. A few of these people opted out early, or were fired for speaking out too loudly against the Trump madness. Others, like Rudi Giuliani, who no doubt saw himself at first as the ‘adult in the room’, persisted and dug themselves deeper and deeper into the Trump assault on democracy, and in the end, they lost everything.

Here’s another phenomenon I observed here in Cambodia among the NGOs. An international donor agency entrusts a local NGO with implementing a project, say, to distribute food to poor people. I have seen corrupt local NGOs find ways to steal over 80% of the money, but to send the donors heart-warming photos of distribution of food to villagers. The donor agencies are happy, and show the wonderful photos to potential individual contributors.  Also, the villagers are happy. They don’t know how much was stolen, and they are receiving something rather than nothing. Everyone is happy.

The issue is further clouded by adding to the ethical mix the ambition for self-advancement. The aid worker wants to move up the administrative ladder and become vice-director, then director of some NGO. That ambition also leads to more subservient compromises, so that pleasing the powers-that-be and submitting good reports and heart-warming photos becomes more important than helping people. It’s easy to convince yourself that you are doing good. Trump’s team saw themselves in the national limelight with important titles and positions, which they were loath to give up.

In the Cambodian NGO world, I have seen many good-hearted foreigners, who, seeing the dire need of poor rural Cambodians and wishing to help, set up their NGOs, but gradually become trapped in the expansion of their empire. Raising money and expanding their system becomes more important than actually helping the children.

So what’s the answer? If  you want to do good, where do you draw the line on how much bad stuff you accept in order to keep the right to help others?

I really don’t know, but in my experience, I’d draw that line closer to zero than to one, that is, I’d lean towards saying, “No, I’m not going to play that game, even at the risk of letting people starve.” It’s too easy to get into the game and to go down that slippery slope towards evil, always convincing yourself that you are helping people. It’s the ‘road to hell, paved with good intentions.’

ARE MEN SMARTER THAN WOMEN?

This blog is essentially a lesson in Statistics 101 — one that you won’t see in any Statistics textbook.  Lesson One in most statistics courses starts with means and medians, while Lesson Two moves on to standard deviations.  This blog does almost the same, but starts with a question that many people are asking: “Are men smarter than women?”

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that women have slightly higher IQs than men, say 102 to 98 on average. The bell-shaped curves might look like this, with the women’s curve slightly to the right of the men’s.

But then next, suppose that men’s IQs are more variable that women’s, that is, they are spread out among a wider range than women’s, which are more concentrated around the average. Here’s what that graphs would look like:

The interesting thing about this graph is the fact that the average woman is higher than the average man, still 102 to 98. However, the variability puts just a few men on the far right in the genius category, while there are fewer genius women. The great geniuses in history –Einstein, Mozart, etc. — have mostly been men.

At the same time, there are a lot more men on the extreme left end of the graph. This means that there are a lot more morons and extremely stupid men than women.

This ‘variability hypothesis’, first proposed by Charles Darwin himself, followed by many educational researchers like Havelock Ellis and Edward Thorndike, has been tested over and over during the past century or so, with mixed results. The variability may depend on the trait (like IQ) being tested, and a host of other variables. At least one can say that in some areas, men have shown a higher variability (even with the same mean) as women. So the statistical model I have outlined may be true in measuring some traits, such as some types of intelligence (assuming that we have multiple intelligences).

For this next example, I find it easier to talk about financial income rather than IQ. So, using the same graph as we started with, assume that 50% of women make 102 K or more, while 50% of men make 98 K or more. That’s the definition of median; a median of 98 tells you that 50% of men make 98K or more.

In real life, however, there are just a few people — almost all men —  whose billion-dollar incomes distort the graph. Suppose that we add several billion dollars to the very richest men, while the lower 50% remain the same. [That is precisely what has happened over the past decade.]  That is, the left side of the male graph doesn’t change, but the right side extends much farther to the right, to reflect those few billionaires.

The new dotted line shows the left side of the graph unchanged, as 50% of men still make under 98 K. The median income for men is still 98 K.

However, adding a lot of money to a few billionaire men skews the right half of the graph further to the right. That means that the total amount of money made by men may have increased to the point where it is greater than the total for women.

The mean (per capita) income is the total income divided by the number of people (assuming an equal number of men and women), so if men make a greater total income, then the mean per capita income for men has surpassed that of women.

Therefore, while the median income remains greater for women (102 K > 98 K), the mean income is now greater for men.

This could happen to IQ scores as well, if just a few ultra-genius men skewed the graph so that women have a higher median IQ, while the men have a higher mean IQ. You could still have median IQs of 98 and 102, but the few male ultra-geniuses could raise the mean male IQ above women’s 102.

In summary, differing types of statistical analysis may show that most women are as smart or smarter than most men, but that there might still be a lot more male geniuses and/or morons than women.

PEAK EXPERIENCES AND GROKKING

Have you had a peak experience? Peak experiences have been described by many authors, for example, Kendra Cherry in Verywellmind.com (2023).

Fulfillment: Peak experiences generate positive emotions and are intreinsically rewarding.

Significance: Peak experiences lead to an increase in personal awareness and understanding and can serve as a turning point in a person’s life.

Spiritual: During a peak experience, people feel one with the world and often experience a sense of losing track of time

This feeling of being one with the world, along with the sense of timelessness, was also described by the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, back in 1961, in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, which described a person born and raised on Mars, where he learned to ‘grok’ or understand things in a different way from Earthlings. Part of his description of grokking was to  “understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you.”

So Sixties people like myself went around trying to grok things. A common expression, instead of ‘Do you understand?”, was “You grok?” Are you old enough to remember those days?

A lot of people, myself included, have had peak experiences at Angkor Wat, that marvelous temple rising out of the jungle. That combination allows the viewer to merge (i.e. grok) with nature (the forest) and human spirituality (the temples) at the same time.

I went there shortly after the coup d’état in 1997, when Angkor was closed to tourists. I scored a pass from a friend who had been working there, so I had the entire park virtually to myself. I even went swimming in the lake in front of the main temple at sunset. That was a peak experience.

On another occasion, I simply walked back into the forest surrounding Angkor Wat and came across a small, moss-covered temple, where I sat for… hours(?) as I lost track of time feeling at one with the forest, the birds singing, and the ancient history of the temple.

Many tourists experience the magic of the Angkor temples, and assume that the feeling comes from the temples. But maybe not. Just maybe the place itself was magical, and the Khmers recognized this and built the temples there. New-Agers will recognize this idea from the books of James Redfield, like The Celestine Prophecy (1993). There are simply places of magical spiritual energy that we must train ourselves to locate.

I experienced this phenomenon when visiting the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia in the early morning. I felt a wave of history that gave me a peak experience there. But I wonder whether my feelings would have been any different if I had not known about the historical significance of Carthage. Was the site magical in and of itself?

Carlos Casteneda, another Sixties favorite, was into these sorts of ideas. In one of his books, Don Juan instructs the novitiate to ‘find’ his spot in a room, that is, the place with the magical energy that is in tune with the person’s own wavelengths.

Another good description of the phenomenon is that of  Vincent Guerry, a French monk in the Ivory Coast in the 1960s and 70s, who wrote La Vie Quotidienne dans un Village Baoulé. Guerry described the Baoulé tribe of central Ivory Coast as ‘knowing’ things in a different way from Westerners. It could almost be a definition of grokking. The Baoulé  ‘know’ something by entering into its spirit. That’s just the opposite of Western analytical knowledge, whereby to know something is to describe from outside its color, shape, and external properties. You might say that the Baoulé are more right-brained than the left-brained Westerners.

Small wonder that ‘primitive’ or animist societies worship the spirit in each living thing, or even non-living things. This is an art that we moderns have lost. That is also why I have been attracted to animist societies in Africa or Papua New Guinea. I feel they have a way of thinking that they can teach me.

I used to criticize the missionaries with whom I worked in Africa, because they were there to ‘teach’ their wonderful knowledge to the benighted heathens who lived in spiritual darkness. The missionaries had nothing to learn from the Africans because they had all the answers. [I admit that I knew a few missionaries who got the hint that these primitives might have something to teach them.]

Sadly, grokking is out of fashion these days. However, the poet William Wordsworth understood this dual way of thinking way back in 1807, when he wrote:

  The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

.… Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan in a creed outworn….