A heartless system

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Palo Alto is a technology boom town with a per-capita income well over twice the average for California.  But 93% of the homeless population end up sleeping outside or in their cars. Palo Alto has almost no shelter space, just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest population of people in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.

The gentrification of the Bay Area has lead to a cascade of displacement of the region’s poor, working class, and ethnic and racial minorities. In San Francisco itself, currently the city with the most expensive housing market in the country, rents increased 13.5 percent in 2014 alone, leading more people to move to the middle-class suburbs. As real estate prices rise in places like Palo Alto, the middle class has begun to buy homes in the exurbs of the Central Valley, displacing farmworkers there.

Some people shrug and say “that’s the way of the world. Just get on your bike and move elsewhere”.  As an Epicurean I would reply, “that’s not good  enough”. The displaced people were likely born and grew up in that part of California.  Why should they be forced to live in their cars?  At the very least some community-aware techie boss could start a fund to build shelters and give something back to the rest of the community.  I like the habit some Christian sects have of tithing their members, who apparently don’t mind parting with 10% of their income because others are doing the same. In just a few years the poor and dis-possessed would at least be being treated with dignity and decency.  No, you can’t make the rich techies contribute, but you can make them feel uncomfortable about the way the treat their fellow men and women.

A toxic image of God

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“Unfortunately, it’s much easier to organize people around fear and hatred than around love. Most people who want to hold onto power view God as vindictive and punitive. Powerful people actually prefer this worldview, because it validates their use of intimidation. Both Catholicism and Protestantism have used the threat of eternal hellfire, which “works” because it appeals to the lowest level of consciousness, where we all start.
 
“Much of Christian history has manifested a very different god than the one Jesus revealed and represented. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, but this “cultural” god sure doesn’t. Jesus tells us to forgive “seventy times seven” times, but this god doesn’t. Instead, this god burns people for all eternity. Many of us were raised to believe this, but we usually had to repress this bad theology because it’s literally unthinkable. Most humans are more loving and forgiving than such a god. We’ve developed an unworkable and toxic image of God that a healthy person would never trust. The mystical, transformative journey cannot take place until that image is undone. Why would you want to spend even an hour in silence, solitude, or intimacy with such a god? (Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Today Is a Time for Mercy,” December 10, 2015, https://cac.org/richard-rohr-on-mercy-mp3)
 
This one reason why I am an Epicurean. Epicureanism is very simple and straightforward.  There are no priests, no supernaturalism, nobody threatening you or making you fearful of death.  It is an individualistic belief (just look at the number of websites on the subject) based on moderation, friendship, tolerance, respect for others and simply getting along with others with the minimum of stress. It is rational, kind and sympathetic.

The Pope and zika

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An estimated 4000 babies have now been born with microcephaly, probably as a result of the mothers being infected by the Zika virus.  

Notwithstanding this the Pope, who is supposed to be so liberal, has said that women exposed to Zika are permitted to use contraception to avoid pregnancy, but only as the least bad option. Contraception is evil, just less evil than abortion.  Both come under the heading of “killing one person to save another”, which is “a crime, an absolute evil”; it’s  just a matter of degree.  The Vatican issued a statement to the effect that it doesn’t  approve of contraception, but it can be “an object of discernment in a serious case of conscience” (whatever that means). This has been the case for years.

The Guttmayer Institute figures show that 91% of Latin American Catholics support the use of contraception, a damning indictment of church teaching.  If most of the Catholic world is ignoring you, why do you persist?  The concept of “life at any cost” was understandable in a more empty world, but now the world population is 8 billion, and heading towards 11, with all the problems of resources and the environment, the best interests of women, their health and resources, should be the deciding factor.  They should be in any case. These cruel and misogenistic strictures on (mostly) the poor should be condemned and stopped for good. This is an Epicurean stance.

Thought for the day

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“I sympathise more and more with Kingsley Amis’s view that life is too short to read any books that don’t begin with the words ‘A shot rang out’”. (Jonathan Coe, The Guardian)

I don’t know about you but life is so earnest that my preference is a fast-paced book with an exciting plot that takes me up and away and allows me to forget the list of things I should have done yesterday. My wife shares my preference for good detective or spy books and movies. Thus, we can happily tune out for a time together, saying little or nothing, enjoying neverland. Something really funny is even better, but “funny” is rather thin on the ground. Writers are seldom writing “funny”. Why not, I wonder?

How do you relax?

Monopolies in the air

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A short time ago My wife and I returned from Florida. Those who have done any flying recently will know that the trend towards making the customer do everything himself has extended in spades to airlines.  

You check yourself in. You pay $25 per checked-in bag, yourself. You take the bag sticker and you attach it to your bag – yourself.  Then you pick up your checked and paid-for bag and put it on the moving luggage track, planeward bound. No staff are involved except to check that you have paid the $25.

All this and the cost of jet fuel has collapsed and the staffing levels have probably halved.  Notwithstanding this, airfares are higher and, of course, service is worse.  They do give you a bag of little biscuits and a free(!) soft drink, but whole corporate Board meetings are devoted to discussing whether this piece of unwonted generosity should be scrapped in view of the current direction of the company’s shares.

The most important department under an Epicurean government, after a group of terriers who would recover every dollar of tax hidden by tax dodgers, would be a hugely beefed up Anti- Trust Department, charged with breaking up all these monopolies – because that is what the national airlines have become – effectively five huge airlines who have carved up the routes to avoid competition, and all with the blessing of the Federal Aviation Authority.