Whose War Is It Anyway?

Politics is never black and white. I personally never can make sense of the multitude of motives, actions and reactions of the game players. However, the 'all bad' image of Qathafi is too bad to be true.

A man is known by the company he keeps. The Libyan leader garners support from the likes of Nelson Mandela,  Fiedel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Even the UN General Assembly report from earlier this year is mainly full of praise for the Libyan government. I personally found it baffling that any Libyan will seek support from America of all the places. Things may have changed since I was there in the 80s, but that does not mean history needs to be erased. Having lived in democratic Bangladesh since, and having some exposure to the democracies in the west, I am left with questions like: What makes a good leader? Which is the ideal method of governance? What makes one rebel a revolutionary, one a freedom fighter and another one a terrorist?

Ma'assalama Jamahiriya

Once upon a time, not too far away, there was a country untouched by the menaces of civilization. Life was not a race. Time was not money. Privileges were not dependent on your bank balance. Marketing gimmicks did not fuel your greed. There were no beggars or slums. Streets were safe. Life was simple.

This was the 80s in Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as I saw it.

The Silver Bullet!

More often than not, Bangladesh seems to be a failed state, with no telltale signs of improvement. Some might argue we are a young nation that needs more time to settle down, that being in a land of plenty had made us less enterprising, and a subservient nature was cultured by the long colonization. Others may counter with the boom of the garments sector and statistics of per capita income, national growth or GDP. All the same, the earlier we do the SWOT analysis, the faster we can step on the path of progress.

After much soul-storming and brain-searching, the meaning of the phrase 'People get the government they deserve' hit home.

It's A Barbie World

Corrupt politicians, freeloading businessmen, bribe takers, drug dealers, smugglers, murderers, fanatics and psychopaths all came into this world as innocent guileless newborns. Same is true for those meddling relatives, obnoxious neighbors and egotistical colleagues. Why then do we all see a child as God's blessing?

It is blood line and legacy that perhaps play the most important role in the motivation for parenthood. The love for immortality makes us want to have our name carried forward in this world even when we have returned to earth form. It just does not give us fulfillment enough to take responsibility of one of the millions of impoverished children out there. It is only okay to adopt when you cannot have one due to medical reasons.

There are other reasons like ...having a child in the house! It is a source of joy and charm. It gives you a purpose in life. It is also assumed to strengthen the family bond, turning a couple into a family. Having children increases your self-esteem. Toothless smiles and cooing grandmothers add to societal acceptance. An adult offspring provides social and emotional support in old age. And thus the parents chose to bring people into this dangerous world knowing that he/she will suffer numerous illness, defeats, injuries, disappointments, physical and emotional pain, and not knowing what fate has in store.

Raising a child is not a science. There is no right or wrong way, and yet almost every breath you take has a decision that affects the development of your little one. Do you pamper him or do you try to preach austerity? Do you shelter him from the evils of the world or do you prepare him to fight? How do you instill conflicting traits of sharing and competitiveness, and that of ambition versus being content with what one has?How is the toy demanded not affordable when you get to buy your choice gadget or plan a tour? Is it fair to tag the child along in the tour he is rather suffering or is it better that you go off alone? Do you force feed him in these growing years or do you tap his independence by giving food only when he asks for it? Do you prefer discipline over patience and deal errant behaviors strictly or do you try to develop his reasoning power? How do you convey that the restrictions and deprivations you are imposing are for a greater good and do not make him an outcast? Are you able to explain the differences in cultures without being racist? How do you instill religious values and bring up a secular being? There is no distinctive line of balance. You weigh your experiences and prejudices and impose what you think is best on the little one who has nowhere else to turn to. And here in lies the immense sense of power and control that is a vital part of parental satisfaction. Life gives meaning to life.

To thrive in ever civilizing world with polluted air, contaminated water and adulterated food, raising an infant is more than a full-time job. In addition, one needs to be conscious of the child's psychological impacts of one's own behavior and also deal with the likes of Nature Deficit Disorder. Gone are the days when a child would grow up with dozens of siblings and cousins without much individual attention. So often the mother gives up her job and hobbies to meet the needs of the baby. Time for herself may be limited to shower times and she tries to take in stride the dwindling conjugal romance. And the father toils longer hours to meet the financial demands of the family. He tries to juggle between his own recreation, career, duty to parents and responsibilities for children. Life is full of choices and you feel mighty important.

You do complain about the sacrifices, the sleeplessness and the constant demands. Still you plan for a second child and advice newlyweds to embrace parenthood. Two children in a family after all does not add to the over population of our country or the worldwide resource shortage, neither does it add to carbon footprint. There are 4 births each second of every day, with less than 2 corresponding deaths. So it does not help either, but nature can fight its own battle with global warming, earthquakes, pandemics and homosexuality.

Next comes schooling. Schooling nowadays start very early in a child’s life, and he has gone to school for 4 long years already before he is in a proper class 1. You try to pick the best school that is conveniently located. Judging a school is hard but if you really looked into the quality of teachers and administration, you might be disappointed with most. It is after all a business in a capitalist world.

The busy schedule flies, and soon your child steps into adolescence bringing for you fresh challenges of coping with newer trends and of bridging the generation gap. A lucky few offspring have opportunities to go to a different city or country for higher education. Additional few go away for jobs and suddenly you do not have much to do anymore, a void in your middle ages. The dilemma for you is whether to let go and allow them to build a prosperous career for themselves or seek their company back at home and reap returns of the sacrifices... you chose. There are selfish reasons to unconditional love.

Either way, the cycle continues with the 'settling down' of the next generation. The mental set is so prevalent that whatever your own outcome of life and your interpretation of the human race, you are happy you have done the right and religious thing. This is only more transparent in lower classes. All the maids that have worked in your households have been stranded by their husbands and they now struggle to feed 3 to 5 kids. Not having enough to eat themselves, they somehow manage dowry to marry off the girls among the kids. Soon this daughter too is likely to be physically and financially violated, and ultimately left to take care of the children she has borne in the meantime. Still, one has to do what one has to, and the mother toils to arrange the next daughter's marriage to comply with society and complete her worldly duties. The middle and upper classes have additional complications of expectations and ambitions. No amount of honest savings is really enough for your health emergencies and your child's education. You always aim higher, and the tension and stress causes you a heart attack or cancer eating up your life long savings.

Women of course have their own bundle of complexes. The male dominated society tend to leave them manipulative and egocentric. A child specially if it is a son gives the wife a sense of belonging in the adopted family. The girl that once played with plastic dolls now has a flesh and blood one. She builds her life around him, doting on him and catering to his needs and whims. Selfless as she is, the mother finds it hard to let go once the son grows up and marries. The new wife now struggles to make a place for herself. Although she was told often enough that she may do her own thing in her own family, she will wait her turn to be mother-in-law to get the authority to do what she pleases. Sadly by then she too is infected with the contagious its-your-turn-to-repay-sacrifices syndrome that often rub on to her daughters who are themselves wives in other similar households. Generation after generation of even educated women are the greatest barriers to happiness for the new women members of their family.

Man is born free and gets to live only once. Still, he forms societies with norms, puts blind faith in centuries old text of unknown origin, and follows the tried and tested path in the course of life.


Bibliography:

OptumHealth - Pros And Cons Of Having A Baby
Licensing Parents by Hugh LaFollette
Do I Have What It Takes To Be A Parent
Parenting The Positive Way
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by David Benatar.
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement - BIOLOGY AND BREEDING
CBC Canada - Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids
How to make peace with your mother-in-law
"Tug of War": Dialectical Tensions within the Mother-in-Law/Daughter-in-Law Dyad--A Qualitative Analysis
WebMD - Kids Often Depress Parents
Population - The Last Taboo
Synopsis of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
No to Children, Yes to Childfreedom blog - The Many Forms and Expressions of Pronatalism
Laura Carroll blog - Oprah Finally Talks About No Kids
The Childfree Life - Links for Surfing Childfree

Quotes- Government [law, tax, democracy]

People get the government they deserve.
-Italian Proverb

If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
-Jay Leno

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
-Henry Cate VII

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
-Harry S Truman, Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
-Tom Stoppard, Jumpers (1972) act 1

People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.
-Lee Iacocca

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
-Dorothy Parker

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
-Alfred E. Newman

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.
-Georges Clemenceau

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
-George Carlin

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
-Noam Chomsky

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
-George Orwell, Polemic, May 1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Law is a bottomless pit.
-JOHN ARBUTHNOT, The History of John Bull

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
-JONATHAN SWIFT, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind

We are slaves of the laws in order that we may be able to be free
-Cicero, Marcus Tullius

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

We have done almost everything in pairs since Noah, except govern. And the world has suffered for it.
-Bella Abzug

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
-George Carlin

You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.
-Chris Rock

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn
-Edward Abbey

A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.
-Author Unknown

The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
-Barry Goldwater

The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them.
-Author Unknown

The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
-Benjamin Tucker

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be related.
-J.C. Watts, Jr.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
-Plato

[on filing for tax returns] This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.
-Albert Einstein

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.
-John S. Coleman

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: animals have instincts, we have taxes.
-Erving Goffman

When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation.
-Vanya Cohen

We make war that we may live in peace.
-Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
-Henry Allen

Science and Sensibility

Times change. People change. It seems that nowadays facts change too.

To start with a very simple example, I have heard changing medical advice on whether we should drink the glass of water during, right after or half an hour after meals. Daily walk is good for the health – but do you walk slowly or briskly, before breakfast or after dinner? Some do say coffee is good for the heart, still others say wine has its benefits. There are very recent studies to suggest harmful effects of cow milk!

Look at the never ending debate on whether Daylight Savings Time saves electricity. Now you would think that electricity usage was both measurable and also accurately model-able but still there is no definitive outcome of the different studies.^{[timeanddate.com]}

I am sure life expectancy has increased over the decades. But so has the number of fatal diseases and the percentage of people suffering from them. One might argue that the diseases were not detected peviously. In my observation though the grandparent generation lived much longer and healthier than their following generations. Think about how many things today cause cancer. The more responsible texts throw in a subdued politically correct phrase like 'have been found to increase the chance'. Basically doctors still don't actually know what causes cancer and having to lay the blame somewhere, they suggest lifestyle guidelines one or the other of which you are not likely to follow. The speculative attributing of reasons of cancer started with a face-off on the then-newer products like cellphones^[WHO] and microwave ovens. The list kept growing to include smoking, alcohol, pollution, sunlight, red meat, fat dairy products, age, genetic make, and so on and on ^[ACS]. Also fish and vegetables are not safe because of the preservatives, fertilizers or illicit chemical colorings applied. It is almost as if - if you live, you get cancer!!

Smoking is, to borrow from Fletcher Knebel, the leading cause of statistics. It causes everything from TB to heart attacks to cancer:
- One in two lifetime smokers will die from their habit ^{[Better Health Channel]}.
- Tobacco is responsible for 18.1% of total deaths in 2000 ^{[American Medical Association]}.
- More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined ^[FDA].

The broad availability of such sporadic 'statistics' makes me skeptic. Will the non-smoker not die?! What's a 'life-time' 'smoker'? In the comprehensive (nationwide, sub-parts adding up to 100%) data on causes of death provided by CDC's National Vital Statistics Report (Table 9, Page 27), smoking is not listed. So obviously the claimed effects of smoking is indirect – it influences (not causes, as reason is still unidentified) one or more of the causes of the diseases. Now then, how do these researchers figure out whether the cancer or heart disease in a certain patient is influenced by tobacco and not by, say, Genetically Modified Foods?

Given that the history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000–3000 BC, added to the modern curses of stress and pollution, the human race would be extinct by now! And if cigarettes are so bad, why is it not banned? Cigarette manufacturers are not even required to give out information to the public about the ingredients and additives used in cigarettes. Read more about the anti-smoking propaganda in The Smoking Issue-An essay by Joe Jackson. Nothing in this world is simple anymore, vested interests reign everywhere.

Let's move beyond to the topic of the times. Climate Change. Mind you at the onset, it is all prediction. And how many predictions can scientists claim to have made correctly in the past? We cannot even make weather forecasts a few day's ahead. So how much of a base does a long term future analysis of not a particular region but the entire globe have?

What is causing this greenhouse effect - the use of cars, industries and inefficient fuel utilization therein. So after all the forward progress with manufacturing engines and making highways, we are not to use them - irony indeed. New causes of greenhouse effect have come out and would you believe that they include water vapor, eating meat and having pets:
- Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 51% of annual worldwide GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions ^{[World Watch Institute]}.
- The domestic cat population of the ten largest feline-friendly nations takes 154,400 square mile of agricultural land to support them ^{[New Scientist]}.
What do you do with these figures? Turn to herbivores? Are cows, cats and humans not part of nature? Rather, what is not a part of nature? We are not the creator and so we have not 'created' anything. Why should nature not be supportive of human civilization? Is saving endangered species not interfering with nature? Should we go back to living in the jungles but even then every breath we take would interfere with the atmosphere.

I am not saying smoking or pollution is good. I just do not need dramatic numbers to use common sense along with some simple basic principles that we are taught since childhood, like Waste Not, Want Not.

So why this mad desperate rush for fast new 'findings' for which a lot of people are putting forward these embellished statistics? It could be aided by the lack of breakthrough scientific inventions/discoveries in the 21^st century. Perhaps physics has seeing the evolution of quantum particle theories and biologists are grasping the first level understanding of DNA, but what else has happened of late? And even before that most discoveries/inventions have been accidents. Sure our lifestyle is advancing – we are reaping the benefits of commercial application of the past inventions. The internet and radio communication was there much before Facebook and cell phone. Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time, guesses that the existing knowledge base has grown to become too large for a single mind to learn/understand and then to go beyond to come up with something new.

Perhaps that is the case. Or perhaps as a easier method, a lot is increasingly 'based' on statistics ^{[Odds Are, It's Wrong]}. The term has a scientific touch to it. Also it is easier in the sense that you observe rather than predict. You choose your sample size and control parameters and derive at the conclusions that have no way of being proved or disproved. Still you get a theory, for mind the definition: A theory, in the scientific sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations.

What's in a System?

Rules are made to be broken. Ever wondered why? I was not surprised when I delved a little deeper though.