Alright, so the underlying question that will govern this entire thought process is the following:

“Should the child of a gas station attendant have the same chance of staying healthy or getting cured, if sick, as the child of a corporate executive?”

This was a question posed by Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt, one of the nation’s leading authorities on health care economics. Professor Reinhardt has said that people need to determine if medical care should be like public education – where every American simply has a right to it – or if it should be treated like a luxury good. He says that currently health care is like fine dining; if you have the money, you get it, and if you don’t, you won’t. Professor Reinhardt goes on to compare health care with the government response to natural disasters. For example if a hurricane or flood were to strike some American city. “That’s social insurance,” he says. “It’s a natural disaster, and I would say if a lady in Mississippi has breast cancer, isn’t that a natural disaster, too?”

The job of a nation’s government is to protect its people. As it states in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is why we pay taxes. We have our government provide us with many socialized services, such as the police department, public libraries, and the fire department. So why should health care be any different?

Now, let me pause here and explain a very crucial point, before some of you may label me as an advocate for so-called “socialized medicine”, or a “public option.” The role of the government is not necessarily to provide health care through some social program, but it should at the very least assure that its citizens (all of its tax paying citizens) have access to affordable health care. I’m in no way supporting big government, only responsible government.

It’s time for those opponents of health care reform to wake up and notice that the right to Life, one of those very dear unalienable rights stated above, is being taken away by these health insurance companies. As I stated in the first health care ramble: According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, lack of health insurance leads to approximately 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year.[1] This should be unacceptable for our government. As a nation we need to stand up and declare our right to Life.

Ok, so let’s talk about those nearly 50 million people without insurance. Let’s first state some facts about this figure. It originated from a survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau. Actually, the figure they came up with was approximately 47 million. It should be noted that even they think that number is a little high. Also, this figure did not differentiate between citizens and illegal immigrants; it only counted “residents” of the nation. According to the National Coalition on Health Care, or NCHC, there are 46 million uninsured, where the “large majority” or 80%, are native or naturalized citizens. This means that 20%, or 9.2 million of these people are illegal immigrants. To be absolutely clear, some estimates are as high as 12 million uninsured illegal immigrants. Make no mistake about it, I believe only people that pay taxes should be able to benefit from government programs, or any form of health care reform (but this is neither the time nor place for a discussion on illegal immigration). So for all intents and purposes, let’s assume the number of uninsured Americans, is really more like 35 million. President Obama and Congress have routinely made it clear that illegal immigrants would not be covered in some sort of a public plan (the practical way in which that would be implemented and enforced is unclear).

While on the topic of a so-called public option, let’s examine some details behind that. The overall idea of health care reform is to increase competition in the markets, thereby lowering health care costs, including premiums. As I pointed out in the first ramble on health care, currently there are monopolies forming. These are dangers in capitalism because there is no longer any “invisible hand” that will keep prices affordable for consumers. Health insurance companies know they’re pretty much your only option, so you’ll pay whatever they tell you to pay.

This idea to reintroduce competition into the health insurance market is one of the reasons behind Obama’s idea of a public option. The plan is to create a national health insurance exchange consisting of several private companies along with a government run public option. Since the government option would be able to avoid costs like property taxes and other regulatory fees, as well as have lower administrative costs, it would be able offer very low prices. This in theory would force the private insurers to lower premiums in order to stay competitive. Well that sounds all well and good, but there are some problems with it too.

One common argument against the public option is that since its costs would be so low, private insurance companies won’t be able to compete and will be driven out of business. The idea is that private companies can’t compete with government run services. One example to counter this often given by Obama is the comparison of health care to the shipping industry. FedEx and UPS are private shipping services and compete with the government run shipping service known as the post office. Now, he does seem to have a valid point that the two private companies are certainly able to compete against the government run service, but the ironic part is that he will often also add that not only can they compete, but the post office is in real trouble lately. Perhaps this comparison would be more convincing if he just left off that last point.

The fact is, however, the post office isn’t doing too well, and this is a valid concern for those opponents of the public option. There is another common example given, however, by those who advocate a public option. Take for example, public and private schools. Neither are running the other out of business, but instead there is an equilibrium reached from the following reason: speaking very generally, public education as a whole tends to be thought of as sub-par, whereas private education may be better, but you have to pay a lot more for it. Basically, you get what you pay for.

The examples on each side (the possibility that private companies may run government run services such as the post office out of business, or the possibility that an equilibrium can be reached as in the education system) don’t really lead me to believe one way or another that the public option will run private companies out of business, or the public option won’t be able to create competition and lower prices. To me, it seems like there’s no way of knowing for sure what will happen, unless it is actually implemented.

That being said, however, the fact is government programs are not always well run. If government were to be involved in health care, chances are there would be a lot of people falling through the cracks. Chances are the government would have to ration care. That is, the government would have to tell you which procedures would be covered under their plan. Now, this shouldn’t be terribly shocking news, since in reality that is what health insurance companies are doing now anyway. The question is would you prefer a private insurance company making mistakes and rationing care, or the government. From that standpoint, there really is no difference. The difference comes in principle. The idea that the government is doing something like this instead of private companies, as should be expected in a capitalist society, is a legitimate concern. With a public option, the government would get significantly more power over its citizens.

Ok, well you could be thinking if you don’t want the government to have that control over you and your health, then don’t join the public option. This is a point that Obama makes quite frequently. He says that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it, which is only partially true. If you receive private individual insurance, that’s absolutely true (unless of course your health insurance company goes out of business). However, if you receive employer provided health insurance through a group plan, you don’t really have a say in whether or not your company decides to switch insurers. So you would then be forced to partake in the public option. You would be forced to put the government in control of your health. You would be at the mercy of a government run program, and as is evident with the post office along with countless others, they don’t generally have a good track record for success.

I believe this is the main legitimate problem educated opponents against the public option could voice. They don’t want government to interfere with their lives. You may or may not agree with that, but it is a legitimate point. The kinds of things being spit out to the media by people like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are not quite as legitimate. It was Palin who had coined the term “death panel” in an effort to incite public fear against Obama’s proposal. One thing in the proposed bill (the infamous 1,000+ page bathroom reader) that could even give such connotations would be an included provision for end-of-life counseling. The provision would provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life consultation every five years, and more frequent sessions if a person is suffering a life-threatening disease. Health providers would be required to explain to seniors the end-of-life services available, including “palliative care and hospice.” Palliative care is a medical specialty focused on relief of pain, stress and other debilitating symptoms. It can be delivered at the same time as treatment that is meant to cure you. Hospice care is similar because it delivers the same pain relief, but is focused on terminally-ill patients (patients who no longer seek treatments to cure them and who are expected to live for about six months or less). So-called “end-of-life” counseling is nothing to be afraid of; it is not euthanasia; it is not mercy killing or anything of that nature. In fact it is a provision that is provided in most private insurance plans as well. End-of-life counseling is far from a “death panel.”

Perhaps what Palin was referring to with that term wasn’t that provision, but perhaps it was the necessity to ration care. The fact is the government will have to determine what they will pay for and what they won’t (plastic surgery, in general, shouldn’t be covered for example). Health insurance companies ration care. It is necessary. The difference between what health insurance companies do and what the government would hopefully do is quite simple: most insurance companies will ration care to make a profit, whereas the government will ration care to keep people from taking advantage of the system. So this idea of “death panels” – the idea that Obama will decide who lives and who dies; the idea that Obama will go around the country killing grandmas – is utterly preposterous. It’s comments like that which inhibit necessary health care reform. There are legitimate concerns with a public option, so focus on those instead of just fear mongering.

Actually, it’s because of those legitimate concerns that I personally wouldn’t want to see a public option. The idea behind it – the theory of making competition – is a good one, but there are just too many risks involved, not the least of which is creating a bigger government.

Luckily, the public option is not the only option for health care reform! As Obama has said, that only accounts for a small sliver of the reform necessary for this country’s health care system. But what are the other options?

Well, let’s back up and look at the overall goal of health care reform once again. I believe it is the role of a responsible government to not necessarily provide health care, but to make it accessible and affordable to all of its citizens. So if a government-run public system is out, then one obvious answer would be to simply have more regulation. The government won’t provide you care, but it will keep strict laws against these insurance companies in order to ensure that its citizens get fair treatment. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was passed in 1997 and was a giant step forward toward regulation. As I mentioned in the previous ramble, it allowed people with pre-existing conditions to get at least some access to insurance. Without that, cancer survivors, people born with multiple sclerosis, diabetics, and the like would not be able to get insurance at all. That was necessary regulation, and provided access to health insurance to a huge amount of people.

Another form of regulation that I would like to see passed is something to stop health insurance companies from dropping patients from their coverage. If you’ve been paying money for a certain insurance policy for nearly 20 years, for example, then you suddenly get seriously ill with cancer or something similar, it should be illegal for that insurance company to drop you just because they don’t want to pay the bills. Otherwise, what’s the point of even having insurance?

Other necessary regulation that should be put into effect would be to bust up some of these health insurance monopolies that are forming. With only a couple main choices in this country, these companies can charge whatever they want and Americans have to shovel out the money. In contrast to introducing a public option, this is almost certainly guaranteed to create competition and lower premiums.

Finally, something has to be done about health care costs in general. I’m not talking about health insurance companies price gouging; I’m talking about pharmaceutical companies overcharging, unnecessary tests done by doctors, hospital costs, etc. Now, I’m no expert in this area, and I’m not even sure what can be done to combat against these things. The thing is, something has to be done. Health care is placing a large unnecessary financial burden on every American family and the country as a whole (meaning programs like Medicare and Medicaid).

For those of you against big government regulating big business, I understand your concern with these proposed regulations. However, health insurance is fundamentally different than just about any other business in this country. Health care is a necessity. It is really the only life or death necessity that we must buy. Regulation on an electronic store, for example, is ridiculous. The government shouldn’t step in and regulate prices on 50 inch wall mounted plasma screen 1080p HDTVs. Things like that are a luxury, whereas health care is a necessity.

Alright, but there is at least one other promising option other than government-run public health insurance or just regulation. It’s something called a health insurance cooperative (or co-op for short). Basically a whole bunch of people get together and become their own insurance providers. They establish contracts with doctors and hospitals and they set the rates and determine who can join. The only difference is the government isn’t in control. According to Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who has written extensively on health care policy, including the feasibility of establishing health insurance co-ops has said the following, “the basic idea behind any nonprofit co-op is that a whole bunch of consumers get together and produce something that might not be produced or would be underproduced.”[2] Co-ops have been in existence in several industries throughout the United States, especially in rural areas. There are things like electric co-ops, farm co-ops, dairy co-ops, etc. In fact, this concept has actually been applied to health insurance in the past as well. In the 1930s and 40s, the Farm Security Administration had sponsored one in the Midwest which had insured 600,000 people.[3] The support of the FSA was withdrawn, however, in 1947 and the co-op collapsed. Two insurers have survived: Group Health Cooperative of Washington and Health Partners in Minnesota. The main problem with health insurance co-ops is getting started. As Jost said, “you need to establish a brand identity, figure out how to handle claims, develop actuarial expertise, establish reserves, and meet state licensing requirements and solvency requirements.”[4] Health insurance is very local and the market is very difficult to break into. Just trying to get a few businessmen together to start a co-op to compete with Aetna or Cigna is not going to happen. The key is going to be government involvement in the start-up. The U.S. government has a brand identity and can setup an extensive and inclusive network. In order for it to be a co-op, however, once the network is setup, then there should be no more government involvement.

In principle it’s a very good idea. It has all the positives of the public plan such as, it would give health insurance access to millions of Americans and it could possibly drive down premiums in the private sector due to low administrative costs and a non-profit model. It avoids one large negative: government-run health care; in fact, it is based on the same principle as democracy as whole: the people are in charge.

Let me preface this next section by saying the following: I love this country and I truly believe we have the best form of government on earth. It allows for freedom, human rights, and free enterprise. I believe in capitalism. Ok, with that out of the way, let’s compare our current system with those of foreign countries. In general we as Americans tend to have a different way of looking at things than the rest of the world. To be blunt, we tend to look out for ourselves. I think the main reason why we haven’t implemented some form of so-called “universal health care” is that we don’t want to put tax money towards a system where it would pay for someone else’s health care. We don’t have a very strong “love your neighbor” attitude. But what we fail to realize is that someday (whether you’re insured or uninsured) the system will probably benefit you as well. In fact, it could even potentially save your life. It really comes down to that all too popular, yet surprisingly appropriate, question of: What Would Jesus Do? Would Jesus approve of our current health care model where insurance companies are out for profit while dropping coverage to those with expensive medical bills and denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions? Not to say a totally government-run health insurance program is the best policy, but if one is to be implemented, we as a country would have to get past our current look-out-for-ourselves mentality.

When comparing our health care system to those of other industrialized countries, it seems like we’re in the Stone Age. Every other industrialized country (France, Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, Canada, etc) pays for a higher percent of health care spending than the U.S.

Here’s some data for these countries which can be found on cnn.com:

United States

Percent of health spending paid for by government:

45.8%

Government health spending per capita:

$3074.0

Total health spending per capita:

$6714.0

Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births):

7.0

Life expectancy at birth:

78.0

Canada

Percent of health spending paid for by government:

70.4%

Government health spending per capita:

$2754.0

Total health spending per capita:

$3912.0

Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births):

5.0

Life expectancy at birth:

81.0

France

Percent of health spending paid for by government:

79.7%

Government health spending per capita:

$3233.0

Total health spending per capita:

$4056.0

Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births):

4.0

Life expectancy at birth:

81.0

Sweden

Percent of health spending paid for by government:

81.2%

Government health spending per capita:

$3143.0

Total health spending per capita:

$3870.0

Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births):

3.0

Life expectancy at birth:

81.0

The U.S. system is the costliest system in the world, yet we have a lower life expectancy and a higher infant mortality rate than countries like Sweden whose government pays nearly half the amount of money as the U.S. on total health spending per capita. Now, there are definitely some flaws to foreign systems. One thing you might hear a lot in the news is that in Canada, due to their universal health care coverage, cancer is found faster in patients than in the U.S., however, there is a higher cancer survival rate in the U.S. Why is that? Because in Canada, you have to get in line to get treated. There are other drawbacks to the Canadian system as well. Such as the fact that you can’t pick your own doctors and you need a referral to see a specialist. For any type of health issue you must first see a general physician, and then they will refer you to another doctor and make the appointments if necessary. It should also be noted that something like 10% of every Canadian’s income goes to pay for their costly health spending per capita, second only to the U.S.

Ok, there are flaws to any system. If you’re looking to make a perfect system with 100% coverage and 100% satisfaction, you’re dreaming. It won’t happen. A public option is not necessarily the best option, but certainly isn’t the only option. The fact remains that we need drastic health care reform, and we need it now. But, like I said before, I love this country. I believe it’s the best country on earth, and in the past when we’ve been faced with difficult problems, we’ve been able to come up with creative solutions. We don’t have to simply mimic some foreign health insurance program. We can learn from their examples and mistakes. We can come up with a uniquely American solution. I know we can.

“…where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.”

-Barack Obama, Election Night 2008.

I encourage you to take another few minutes to review some of these true stories from real Americans about this health care crisis that can be found on BarackObama.com (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/). The following specifically encapsulate positive experiences by Americans in foreign countries.

Jerry from Plainview, TX

My husband and I were visiting with a foreign exchange student in Sweden that we had sponsored several years ago. My husband had to be transported to the hospital via ambulance at about 1am. The ambulance arrived within 10 minutes after asking if they needed to be there sooner. The EMTs were professional and competent. My husband was taken straight to an examining room. His fever was 104 and rising. His care was thorough and comprehensive. He was in a private room within an hour and being given further diagnostic exams within two hours. Medication was started and all ended well. They used his driver’s license for identification and only asked diagnostic health questions. When we left we did not get a bill. What he did get was an arm band with his Swedish medical social security number on it that can now be used if he needs medical help in Sweden in the future. My husband happens to be a physician and was more impressed than I could have ever expected with the level of expertise, speed, and quality of care extended to us. It is so sad that we cannot find a way to not only return the favor someday to strangers but to our fellow Americans.

(http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/189614)

Margaret from Cowpens, SC

Dear Mr. President, the main reason I decided to remain in Germany after serving and completing my enlistment in the USAF was the excellent health care system here. Sad and pitiful, isn’t it… that I would CHOOSE to stay in a foreign country and obtain a German residency/working permit rather than return to my own country because of the lack of health care services and astronomical costs of medical insurance. I have a son who is diagnosed with hydrocephalus, CP, and has various physical and mental disabilities… so for me, this decision was a no-brainer. PLEASE PLEASE fix the US health care system! While the German social health care system is far from perfect, it is ten-fold better than the current US model. I would love to return home to the US one day and not have to worry about whether or not I can afford medical coverage for my child. Until that happens though, I will remain here in Germany.

(http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/187650)

The fact is simple: health care in this country is broken, so for those of you with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, guess what? IT IS BROKE! I believe that is a fact that transcends party lines; it is a fact that should be accepted by both democrats and republicans because it affects them equally. This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue.

There are several reasons for this broken system, such as (1) health care in this country is monopolized by a few health insurance companies whose primary motive is to make a profit, (2) most health insurance companies deny applicants with pre-existing conditions, (3) the uninsured in this country receive less care than the insured, and (4) the rising cost of health care is beginning to get out of control and places an unnecessary financial burden on every American family as well as the country as a whole.

The main reason why health care is broken is the following: health insurance companies are just that, companies. They are in it for a profit, period. They don’t really care about your well-being. As long as you keep writing them a check, they’re happy. This is fundamentally wrong. Something as important as health care should not be profit driven. These health insurance companies take advantage of people all the time because of this. They’ll happily take your money no questions asked as long as you’re healthy, but as soon as you get sick with some catastrophic illness such as cancer, paralysis, or the like, and the bills start getting too expensive, they’ll drop you.

This should not be acceptable behavior, otherwise what is the point of having health insurance in the first place? You pay a premium with the peace of mind that some day when you get sick, you’ll be covered – but then it doesn’t happen. This “kick the sick” policy of health insurance companies is beyond disgraceful; it is dishonest and inhumane. With no action from the government these practices will continue unchecked into the future for as long as the companies know they can get away with it.

There is also significant reason for monopoly fears in health care. Data from the American Medical Association (AMA) shows that in 43 states, a handful of top insurers have gained such a stronghold that their markets are considered “highly concentrated” under Department of Justice guidelines, often far exceeding the thresholds that trigger antitrust concerns. 95% of the 294 metropolitan markets studied were above the “high” concentration mark (a score of 1,800 or higher on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI). 67% were nearly twice the value considered as “high” (they scored a 3,000 on the HHI). According to the AMA, there have been more than 400 mergers among health care insurers in the past decade.[1] Health care giants such as UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint represent the two largest carriers in the nation, and in 2008 they were numbers 25 and 33, respectively, on the Fortune 500 ranking of U.S. companies.[2] Health care is big business and big profits. The CEO of UnitedHealth personally earned more than $90 million in 2003 and more than $120 million in 2004 in salary and incentives.[3] As of the end of the second quarter of 2009, UnitedHealth said net earnings were $859 million – a 155% increase from $337 million a year earlier.[4] Health insurance companies are no different than other big businesses in this country.

Think health insurance companies aren’t profit driven? Linda Peeno, a doctor whose shocking testimony stunned Congress in 1996, is a former medical director for a large health maintenance organization (HMO). In her testimony, Linda said, “In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life and thus caused his death. No person and no group has held me accountable for this because, in fact, what I did was I saved a company a half a million dollars for this.” She went on to say that her denial earned her a reputation as a “good medical director” and helped her career. She went from making a few hundred dollars a week as a medical reviewer to a six-figure income as a physician executive. “In all my work, I had one primary duty, and that was to use my medical expertise for the financial benefit of the organization for which I worked,” she said. “I know how managed care maims and kills patients, and I’m haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper on which I have written that deadly word: denied.”[5]

Another huge (and very personal for me) reason why I strongly believe in health care reform is that many health insurance companies will not insure people with pre-existing conditions. There’s just too much risk that they won’t make a profit from them. The reason why this is personal for me is because of my back injury. The way things stand right now, I am a 21 year old male, non-smoker, with no life threatening illnesses, but because of my previous injury, I’m more prone to injure my back again in the future, and these health insurance companies know this. So if I do get coverage, then my premiums will likely match this “no-profit risk.” This idea of denying pre-existing conditions is especially repugnant when insurance companies refuse to insure cancer survivors or things of that nature. One stride towards combating against the injustice of “pre-existing conditions” was made on July 1, 1997 when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was passed. Basically this states that in group insurance policies, this exclusion is not allowed. Since there are more people involved in group polices, health insurance companies can afford to cover pre-existing conditions because there is a good chance they’ll make up the difference elsewhere in the group. For example, if a company offers health insurance to its employees, within that group there are going to be people who are healthier than average and will take less money out of the system, and there will be people who are less healthy than average. All in all, insurance companies view group policies as less risky. There is a catch, however. With a pre-existing condition, even in a group policy, there is something called a pre-existing exclusion period, which thanks to HIPAA is a maximum of 12 months. That is, if you have a pre-existing condition in a group policy, for the first 12 months of your coverage you cannot receive any payment for any medication or other treatment of your condition (this is still ridiculous for cancer survivors since they have to wait a year to receive financial help with their medication if the cancer were to come out of remission). The fact that pre-existing conditions can be insured at all is only really relevant to group insurance policies, however. Since with an individual, there are no other people that may be healthier than that one person (as in a group policy), insurance companies view them as a higher risk. HIPAA rules only govern group policies, not individual ones.[6]

With all that said, however, there is yet another catch! Not really surprising since these health insurance companies are all trying to make money. When an insurance plan does not officially label a certain condition as a pre-existing condition but essentially treats it like one, it’s known as a “hidden pre-existing condition exclusion”. Under HIPAA regulations, they are not permitted in group plans, but they still could occur in individual plans. That’s the point. The fact is, with our current health care system, people with a pre-existing condition are denied health insurance coverage. Plain and simple.

Ok, those are just some ways even people with insurance in this country stand to benefit from health care reform. These are major problems with our current health care system, and I haven’t even mentioned the nearly 50 million Americans that aren’t insured. Until now.

As George W. Bush famously said, “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” While this is technically true, practically speaking, it is far from acceptable. If a terribly sick person who was a few minutes from death’s door came stumbling in the emergency room, say from a gunshot wound or perhaps a debilitating seizure they suffered a few hours earlier, then they will (generally) get treated. That’s just part of the Hippocratic Oath taken by medical staff. I did add a parenthetical “generally” because of the following story of Dawnelle Keyes and her 18-month-old daughter Michelle.

On May 6, 1993 Michelle became very ill. She was vomiting, had diarrhea and was having trouble breathing and a very high temperature. Michelle’s mother, Dawnelle, called an ambulance, which took her to the nearest emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center in Los Angeles. The doctors believed she probably had a bacterial infection, which could be treated with antibiotics. But he didn’t conduct a simple blood culture or treat her with antibiotics because her health plan, Kaiser, told him not to. You see, Martin Luther King hospital was not a Kaiser facility. Kaiser said the simple test and treatment had to be done in a Kaiser hospital. But Michelle became sicker and sicker. She became lethargic and unresponsive. Dawnelle pleaded to them. She pleaded for her daughter’s treatment. And no one would give her antibiotics. Over two hours later Michelle had a seizure. Only an hour after that Michelle was transferred by ambulance to Kaiser. Within 15 minutes of arriving, she died.[7]

There are problems with the line of thinking that emergency room care is sufficient.

First of all, regular care will identify and treat health problems before they become severe enough for emergency room care; more than 40% of uninsured adults have no source of regular care.

Second, people will often postpone medical care even when they know they need it due to the expense.

And finally, even though emergency rooms will treat anyone that comes in with an acute health problem, they will bill the patient afterwards. Anyone who’s ever been in an emergency room knows that by just walking through the doors and waiting for someone to see you can cost a couple hundred dollars (and that’s before the outrageous costs of medicine or other procedures).

Overall, there’s no two ways about it: uninsured people receive a lot less care than insured people. And in some cases, this lack of care kills them. According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, lack of health insurance leads to approximately 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year, just like that of Michelle Keyes.[8]

If you think this can’t happen to you, you’re wrong. If you think that since you’re covered by your employer’s health insurance, everything will be ok, you’re wrong. Let me paint a perfectly plausible picture for you amidst these hard economic times. Your company that you work for has been making some cutbacks recently; they’ve been letting quite a few people go. You go to work hoping that today isn’t your last day. Your boss walks towards your desk and gives you some good news and some bad news. The good news: today isn’t your last day. The bad news: Friday is. Well, now what? No more job. No more health insurance. Guess what? You’ve suddenly become a part of those nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. Well now you had better go find another job, and fast. What’s that? The effects of this bad economy have doomed you yet again? Turns out that after a few weeks you can’t find a job. Well, a few weeks turns into a few months, which turns into a year… or more. And now, guess what? Oh, come on, I bet you can guess. You get sick. But I’m not talking about just the common cold. No, I’m talking seriously ill. After a few months of not feeling all too well, perhaps even dizzy or maybe you’ve even passed out once or twice, you finally decide that the blood you just coughed up is the last straw before you stop putting off going to a doctor because you are afraid of the outrageous bill (remember, you have no health insurance). Turns out you’ve just been diagnosed with cancer. Now what do you do? What can you do? You had better do something to help pay for these enormous health care costs looming in the shadows. Chemotherapy itself can cost anywhere between $30,000 to $60,000 (or higher), and when it is partnered with necessary cancer drugs that can cost upwards of $100,000 (rising at a rate of 15% each year) the bills start to add up. Did you try getting some loans? A second mortgage? Oh, by the way, I hope your credit is good enough for all this too (because if it isn’t, well looks like your only option is bankruptcy). By all of these methods, including eventually selling your house and significantly downsizing, you are somehow able to come up with the money for all the necessary treatments. After a two year long battle with cancer, you miraculously come up with a clean bill of health; the cancer seems to be in remission. Now you can finally move on with your life… err, wait… now you have a pre-existing condition, right? Oh, so sorry, turns out you’re not going to be able to find anyone willing to insure you, and if you do, you’ll be paying through the roof in premium costs.

Perhaps there are still some of you out there thinking: yeah, that can’t happen to me. First of all, my company is doing really well right now, in fact. I’m in no danger of being laid off from my job. Secondly, I take extremely good care of my health. I get regular check-ups; I wear sunscreen so I have a decreased risk of skin cancer; I don’t smoke, so I have a decreased risk of lung cancer; I watch my cholesterol, I have an impeccably healthy diet, I exercise regularly, so my risk of heart disease is next to nothing; I have no family history of any life threatening diseases. I am a 100% perfectly healthy individual.

Ok, so you wake up one Tuesday morning, eat your Total for breakfast (now with extra fiber!), perhaps even go for a morning run (only 10 miles today, you’re feeling a little lazy). You get to work only to find out that your boss has been involved in some international conspiracy and has laundered all of the company’s money to over-seas bank accounts, and your company will officially be in bankruptcy within a week. Guess what? No more job. No more health insurance. Now, being the perfectly healthy individual you are, you’re not too worried. After months of searching for a new job, you’re driving to a very promising interview and while going through a green light, BAM, you get hit by a semi-truck who ran a red light. You wake up in the hospital and after first wondering how it could be possible to have so many tubes and sensors connected to your body, you are then informed of the 12 emergency surgeries that have already been done just to stabilize you and the 7 more necessary to repair other internal injuries, not to mention the combined 16 reconstructive surgeries necessary for your arm and your face. If you only had health insurance!! Of course, of those 9 reconstructive surgeries on your face, only 3 of them would have been covered by any ordinary health insurance anyway because the rest would be considered cosmetic surgery (you don’t need to have two front teeth, right?).

Although I’ve been somewhat lighthearted throughout these last few stories, in all seriousness, my point is: it can happen to you. It can happen to me. It can happen to ANYone. There are countless ways you can lose your job (and therefore health insurance) through no fault of your own. There are countless ways you can end up with astronomical medical bills, even if you’re perfectly healthy. This can happen. This does happen. It happens to the uninsured and the insured alike. It happens everyday in America. But it doesn’t have to end so badly. What if you didn’t have to get a second or third mortgage? What if you didn’t have to sell your house? What if you didn’t have to declare bankruptcy? Think that doesn’t happen? Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. I highly encourage you to read an article that can be found on consumeraffairs.com (http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html). For those of you not so compelled, here is the gist. In 2001, Harvard Medical School conducted research on this topic and arrived at the following results:

Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001.

UPDATE: In 2007, medical bills caused 60% of personal bankruptcies.

Medical bankruptcies affect nearly 2 million Americans annually (counting debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children).

Most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance (more than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. 38% had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy).

Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class (56% owned a home and the same number had attended college)

In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work, losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.

30% of families in bankruptcy had a utility cut off and 61% went without needed medical care.

Dr. David Himmelstein, the lead author of the study and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard commented: “Unless you’re Bill Gates you’re just one serious illness away from bankruptcy. Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick.”

“The paradox is that the costliest health system in the world performs so poorly. We waste one-third of every health care dollar on insurance bureaucracy and profits while two million people go bankrupt annually and we leave 45 million uninsured” said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.[9]

Not only is the American health care system the most expensive in the world, but it is ranked #37 as a health system by the World Health Organization.[10] Health care costs in this country are absolutely astounding. On average, treatment for a brain tumor costs $200,000. A stroke - $140,000. Leukemia can cost up to $600,000. According to the National Coalition on Health Care, these are some facts on the cost of health insurance and health care:

In 2008, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9% - two times the rate of inflation. Total spending was $2.4 Trillion in 2007, or $7,900 per person. Total health care spending represented 17% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4.3 Trillion in 2017, or 20% of GDP.

Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.

Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens.

Health care spending accounted for 10.9% of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7% in Germany, 9.7% in Canada, and 9.5% in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.[11]

The overall message here is simple: the American health care system is broken. Badly. Health care costs are rising many times faster than inflation and employee paychecks, yet we still have nearly 50 million uninsured Americans having to make the choice between a house and health. This broken system affects everyone. Every single American. Whether you are uninsured or insured. Everybody everywhere in this country should be protesting in the streets FOR health care reform. These people at town hall meetings across the country have every right to voice their opinion against certain aspects of the Obama proposal. But hopefully they realize that inaction is not an option. Something must be done. And it must be done soon. The question is what are we going to do?

I encourage you to take another few minutes to review some of these true stories from real Americans about this health care crisis. Below are summaries of just some of the stories that can be found on BarackObama.com (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/). To read the full stories, follow the links provided at the end of each summary.

Allena from California

Last summer Allena was mauled by a bear suffering injuries to her face. She was able to make it to a hospital where she received a grueling 7-hour emergency surgery, but because most of her injuries were to her eyes and facial structure, her surgeries were deemed cosmetic by her insurance company and demands a 30% co-pay before they will pay for the $300,000 bill for reconstructive surgeries. (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/189195)

Linda from Bainbridge, MD

She lost her job through no fault of her own and shortly after was diagnosed with cancer. She could have easily borrowed what ever money she needed, but she was denied treatment purely because she didn’t have insurance. Now she’s stuck paying huge premiums because of her pre-existing condition. (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/186744)

Kimberly from Memphis, TN

One morning while taking her dog on a walk, she fell face first onto the street after tripping on a tree root while chasing after her dog. She was taken to a hospital, but didn’t have insurance. After 5 hours of no treatment (and not even getting the dirt rinsed out of her wounds) she left the ER. Soon after, she received a bill for $13,000 for doing hardly anything except x-rays. (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/73299)

Bryce from San Jose, CA

Bryce and his wife have a health plan under Cigna and recently discovered his wife is pregnant. Turns out that a baby is not covered in their plan leaving them with literally thousands in medical bills. When they looked for other health care options, they found that no one else would insure them because his wife’s pregnancy is a “pre-existing condition.” (http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/29624)

Age must play some role in the measure of a man. Evidence of this lies in the age restrictions we have in place in our society. At the age of 16, it is legal to drive. At 18, you can go to war, get married, go to college, and are considered, for all legal intents and purposes, to be an adult; you don’t need your parents’ signatures or written permission for many things. At 21, you can legally consume alcohol. At 25, you can rent a car. At 35, you can run for President of the United States. There are several age restrictions in this country, but why? I suppose there is at least one irrefutable biological reason for one age restriction. The adolescent brain is still developing until the age of 21, thus the reason for the limitation on alcohol. The reasoning behind the other restrictions is something much more subjective. Lawmakers must be under the assumption that maturity comes with age; that an 18 year old is automatically more mature than a 15 year old; that an 18 year old can automatically make better decisions than a 15 year old. In general, there may be some merit to that solely based on the amount of life experience accrued over time, but don’t the age restrictions seem arbitrary? Perhaps an 18 year old, in general, is more mature than a 15 year old, but why is it ok for an 18 year old to die for his country and not a 15 year old? Is there really a single defining age where things just click? Maybe on the exact day of our 16^th birthday, our “driving gene” suddenly kicks in and we’re instantly able to drive. At 18, maybe we’re suddenly able to get married and go to college on our own, but not yet able to drink responsibly for some reason. And at 25 you must be an excellent driver. The day you turn 35, you must have acquired all possible life experience necessary to run a country.

Although there are many, somewhat arbitrary, legal age restrictions, what about becoming a man? Is there a certain age for that as well when things just click? In the Jewish culture, a male is given a Bar Mitzvah when he is 13 and from then on is considered a man and given the responsibilities thereof. So is it possible to become a man before you can even drive?

Certainly it is absurd to think that on the morning of some random day exactly a certain number of years from our birth, we instantly acquire knowledge that was absent before 12 am. Age cannot be the driving force behind the measure of a man, but it is correlated with a much better gauge: life experience. In general, as people age, they acquire more wisdom from experience and life lessons. That is not the case for everyone, however. In scientific studies it is important to recognize the difference between correlation and causation. Just because life experience and age are correlated, doesn’t mean that age causes life experience. There are many 15 year olds that would be considered by most to be more mature than many 18 year olds. Unfortunately the best objective measure of life experience gathered is how many years you have spent on this earth. That’s why lawmakers have to rely on age, which can be a very inaccurate gauge.

So life experience and age are correlated and they seem to be a necessary requirement to become a man, but there must be something more.

Can a male in his 30s and picks pockets be considered a man? Maybe not. Can a male in his 40s, who has learned many life lessons, and just killed a person be considered a man? Probably not. Can a male in his 50s, who has learned many life lessons and has five decades of life experience, and beats his wife be considered a man?

Absolutely not.

So what is the missing element for the measure of a man? There are many interesting quotes that can be found by a simple google search that might help to explain this absent component.

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

- Plato

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

- Ann Landers

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”

- Plutarch

“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

“If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.”

- Robert South

“I would say that the surest measure of a man’s or woman’s maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.”

-  Benjamin Spock

Clearly, there must be some moral component required to truly be considered a man; a component that doesn’t just automatically happen with life experience. You have to want it to happen; there must be an internal driving force, instilled by some powerful factor (law, religion, parents, etc.), that makes it very difficult to act immorally. This is probably the most important part of the measure of a man. For example, of the following two examples, which would you consider to be a man? The first is a young male, age 12, whose father left him, his mother, and his three younger sisters when he was only 5 years old. His mother has to work double shifts in order to just put food on the table and so this young male must raise his siblings. The second is the boy’s father.

A true man must be able to shoulder overwhelming burdens. A true man must be able to provide for his family. A true man must be able to overcome adversity. These are traits that cannot necessarily be taught, but they can be learned. You cannot teach a boy to overcome adversity, but through life experience (and as long as he has that internal driving force), he can learn methods to do so. So that is how this all ties together. Just as age was life experience in disguise, life experience is really moral strength in disguise. You gather life experience as you age, and you gather moral strength through life experience. What it comes down to, then, is not how many years you have been alive, or how many experiences you have had. What really matters is how you react to, and what you learn from, those experiences. That is the true measure of a man.

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More than fifty years ago, on the evening of July 4, 1947, an incident is said to have occurred in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. According to some who claimed to have seen the wreckage, an aircraft crashed that was not of this world. Fragments were found of an extraordinarily light-weight metal that, after being crushed by the hand could spring back to its original shape. On one metal fragment an inscription was found written in a strange script unlike any other writing system on Earth. Survivors were found near the wreckage, but they were not human in form – survivors who would die soon after without telling their tale. What had crashed at Roswell was a spacecraft from another galaxy, or even from another dimension, an extraterrestrial vehicle that had taken an incredibly long voyage across both space and time. Of course, all of this is denied by official governmental sources.

But what if it all did happen? What if it was all true?

What might these aliens have taught us, these visitors from another world? What wisdom could they have conveyed about the universe, about life, perhaps even about ourselves?

Surely we would be fools not to listen, fools not to attempt a decipherment of the strange inscription, fools not to find and search the wreckage for more evidence of alien wisdom.

A Legacy That Waits

Such alien wisdom, however, is already available to us. Written in a strange script, it lies strewn through wreckage and has traveled thousands of years to reach our world. It is the alien wisdom of our own past that survives from a lost world that once existed on our own planet. It endures in the wreckage of buried cities and abandoned temples and in crumbling manuscripts that record a tongue last spoken more than twenty centuries ago. It is the wisdom of classical Greece.

Our mission, then, must be to recover the artifacts and literature of this lost civilization, to decipher the writing, interpret the words, and see if we can or should apply those antique teachings to our lives today.

But what is this supposed wisdom? And why is it “alien” to our world?

The Lessons of Greece

To begin, what are the teachings transmitted to us by the ancient Greeks? First, our lives are brief and fragile and, as such, too precious to waste. This lifetime is the only one we will ever have.

Second, we do not know who we are until we take time to discover who we can be. Hidden within us is unrealized potential. Hidden within us is a self we have yet to become. Next, we can only become that self with effort, with struggle. Each of us has a spiritual odyssey to undertake, a voyage across the sea of time.

We cannot undertake that voyage alone. We will need the help of others, the love of others, to reach port. And they will need our help and our love if they are to join us on the voyage.

There will be obstacles along the way and temptations – great obstacles and great temptations. There will be the temptation to give in to the current, to yield to the waves, to abandon our dreams. But the greatest obstacle, the greatest danger, will not lie outside us, but within: our willingness to remain who we are rather than become who we can yet be. Our greatest enemy is the enemy within, for hidden there are dark and destructive emotions. But also hidden there is the light of reason that can lead us to the dawn.

We must live with passion but beware of seduction. If forced to choose between a life of passionate commitment and a life of ease, we must elect passion over comfort. What matters most is not the gratification of our nerve endings but the nourishment of our soul. That is what separates us, and will always separate us, from the animals.

Worlds Apart

I have described this wisdom not simply as ancient, but alien. Why, then, is this so alien? Obviously, because it comes from a world that is not ours, a culture very different from our own. And since we have grown up in our culture, and live in it now, our conditioning prevents us from freely accepting these teachings as true. Instead, they seem foreign to our way of thinking, to the values our culture has taught us.

We live in a materialistic society with more plenty than any society has ever known. Here the emphasis is on power and possession, on things, not on something as invisible as the human spirit. We are told that we are what we own, that happiness derives from the acquisition, ownership, and use of things, and that the more things we own the happier we will be. We are told this in words by commercial advertising, but we are also told this worldlessly by the images that surround us and the examples of success that are held high.

We live in a technological society driven by speed. Because of this we lack the opportunity to think and reflect on the meaning and purpose of our lives. Indeed, speed discourages us from thought and reflection by denying us perspective. Instead it gives us the exhilaration of sensory stimulation. It would be economically counterproductive, in fact, even subversive, if too many of us examined the unquestioned premises upon which our society is built. Instead, we are kept moving, our velocity sustained by corporate interests that profit from our addiction to speed.

Though our computers are crammed with data, they are devoid of wisdom. We have all the answers we’ll ever need; it’s the questions that we lack, the missing questions that, if found, could lend meaning and purpose to all the empty facts we possess.

Material and technological progress teach us that what is old is obsolete and useless. So we avert our eyes from the past and thus turn away from the very countercultural lessons that could serve as the means to our personal and social liberation.

The Death of Permanence

We live in a hyperculture, a culture moving too fast for its own human good. We are governed by the power of now, the power of an insistent present, uncompromising and uncompromised by any other dimension of time. It is the now of swift and unfeeling electrons.

In such a society, few things last or were ever meant to last. Instead, we are surrounded by flux. In such an environment, there are no grounds for passionate commitment, for there is nothing permanent to be committed to. Rare is a sense of obligation to one another, or a sense of obligation to anything that lies beyond the transitory self.

What we are witnessing in our time is the death of permanence, the death of those permanent things that were a source of comfort to people in ages past and a source of moral direction for humanity.

Even the past itself is being forgotten as our remembrance of history steadily declines. Afflicted by this cultural amnesia, the social equivalent of Alzheimer’s disease, we are lost and confused among familiar surroundings.

Everywhere we go we are oppressed by urgency. But it is not a natural urgency to find our way again. Instead, it is an artificial urgency that impinges on our lives, an electronic urgency that requires us to respond at the speed of light to every external demand. And it is this same false urgency that is tearing at the fabric of our lives.

The Imperfect Greeks

The ancient Greeks did not have all the answers. They failed many times.

Neither they nor their world was perfect. The Greeks lacked most conveniences we know and many things we would regard today as necessities of life. And in those days life was more perilous and short than now.

Moreover, the Greeks often failed to live up to the very ideals they held high. Sometimes, in fact, they brought on tragedy in the blind pursuit of those ideals.

But the ancient Greeks asked questions – lots of them – and articulated those questions passionately in literature and art as has no other people. They took life seriously – not so seriously that they couldn’t laugh at life or themselves, but seriously enough to turn the power of critical intelligence upon themselves and their shortcomings. Their legacy to us is those enduring questions.

A Challenge from the Past

The Greek philosophers ask us in our hurried pace to stop and think before we lose ourselves in all our rush, before we lose sight of the selves we could otherwise become. They ask us to transform our frenzied hyperculture into a humane culture before it is too late. But if we cannot save the world, they add, then let us begin by saving ourselves and those we love, for it is from such small and incremental changes that a new world can be born.

Lastly, the ancient Greeks remind us they are not aliens, but human like us. They remind us that if they, with all their imperfections, could begin a Golden Age, so can we. They ask us to board their spacecraft and continue their journey to the stars.

The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom

            Each morning in Athens at dawn, the rising sun illuminates the entrance to the Parthenon, the most famous monument of ancient Greece. Erected atop the Acropolis, almost twenty-five centuries ago, the marble temple celebrates “the glory that was Greece.”

            Like the eight tall columns that still support the Parthenon’s entranceway, there are eight ideological pillars that held up the edifice of Greek civilization, eight principles that explain its creative and enduring power.

            Separately, each principle represents a single, dynamic idea. Together, the eight principles constitute an outlook that can transform our lives.

            These are the eight pillars of Greek wisdom and their message to us

Humanism:

“Be proud of your human abilities and believe in your capacity to achieve great things.”

The Pursuit of Excellence:

“Try to be more today than you were yesterday, more tomorrow than you were today.”

The Practice of Moderation:

“Beware of going to extremes, because in them lies danger.”

Self-Knowledge:

“Identify and understand your weaknesses and strengths.”

Rationalism:

“Search for the truth by using the power of your mind.”

Restless Curiosity:

“Seek to know what things really are, not merely what they seem to be.”

The Love of Freedom:

“Only if we are free can we find fulfillment.”

Individualism:

“Take pride in who you are as a unique individual.”

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I decided to only write on the practice of moderation, for now at least, since it is the one that really struck a chord with me. The practice of moderation was so important to the Greeks that they inscribed the following message on the entrance of one of Greece’s most revered sanctuaries, the temple of the god Apollo at Delphi: Mêden ágan, “Nothing in excess.”

The author, Bertman, opens up discussion of the practice of moderation with some Greek myths. The first is probably the best: the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. I’m sure you’ve all heard of it, but just to refresh your memory, here’s a brief summary. Daedalus constructs wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus to escape out of a window of a tall tower in which they were being detained. Daedalus warns his son “you must not fly too low, or else the salt spray will wet your wings and weigh down the feathers, making them too heavy to lift. Nor must you fly too high, or else the heat of the sun’s rays will melt the wax and the wings will come apart.” Well, Icarus of course ends up flying too high and the sun melts the wax and his wings come apart and he plunges into the sea and drowns. The lesson from this myth is simple: in our lives we must seek the safe middle between otherwise dangerous extremes. Moderation in all things is best.

The next myth Bertman discusses is from The Odyssey. In Ulysses’ adventure back home from Troy, he had to sail through a straight between two cliffs. On one cliff, there was a cave that contained a great monster, Scylla, and near the other cliff there was a huge whirlpool, Charybdis. The monster could snatch up a few men off the ship, while the whirlpool could swallow the entire ship whole. When sailing through the straight, Ulysses had to choose which side to sail closer to, and he chose the side of Scylla reasoning that it would be better to lose some of his crew than the entire ship and all his men. The lesson here is: sometimes we must choose the lesser danger and pray we make it through.

Bertman then brings up many other examples of Greek myths that are interesting and applicable, but I’ve decided to limit this discussion to those two. It is kind of cool to think about how even though they lived many centuries ago, we have many things in common with the ancient Greeks, including the need for moderation. I believe moderation is good for just about everything in life; from diet to work/play to politics.

How many times have you read or heard a news story about some new scientific study that some type of food is good for you, only to hear a couple months later that it causes cancer? It seems like any food in excess is bad for you, even ones that would otherwise be considered healthy in moderation. For example, there was a recent study that concluded beta-carotene had cancer and heart disease preventative benefits, but if you take a lot of it, your skin turns yellow! (http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/nutrition/supplements_8/) Or vitamin D; it’s been known to promote healthy bones and possibly prevent certain cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions, but too much of it can lead to nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, constipation, weakness, or more seriously: confusion and changes in heart rhythm (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vitamin-d/AN01864).

If there’s one thing you have to learn in college to be successful it’s how to balance work with play. Tipping the scales in either direction can be extremely harmful.

Politics. Let me explain. This brings up a crucial aspect of moderation that hasn’t been addressed yet. To practice moderation does not mean to have no opinion. I believe it is perfectly fine to have strong opinions about something, as long as you are able to understand each side of the issue. Moderation in this respect means to logically weigh all arguments before formulating an opinion, and to never stop questioning the opinion you reach. It is very easy to be blinded by strong opinions and to lose sight of logical thinking. For example, after you weigh all your options carefully and decide where you stand on all the issues, you may find you fit best with the Democrat label or perhaps the Republican label. As long as you logically deduced which party you most agree with, everything is ok, but to blindly vote down the ballot all one way or the other is not a good idea.

For example, the Greeks have many words that have entered the English language, however, “two of their words that have not entered our language are men and de, but they inform us about the Greek mind as few other words can. Men is best translated as ‘on the one hand,’ de as ‘on the other hand,’ and they function as a pair. Thus an ancient Greek might say, ‘On one hand (men), this man speaks eloquently, but on the other hand (de), what he says isn’t true.’ The fact that the Greeks used men and de frequently is instructive because it shows us they viewed reality not through one eye only but through both eyes at once. They looked at things from both sides (which may explain why the enjoyed debating so much), and therefore saw things in depth and with perspective.”

Those two words, men and de, represent two extremes and imply that the truth may lie somewhere in between. In the practice of moderation, it’s always best to identify the extremes first and then find the middle. This is similar to measuring a wall or a piece of paper. One interesting thing that the Greeks did in jury trials was after a guilty verdict would come down, the defendant and the accuser were instructed to each come up with their own alternative punishments. Knowing the jury would probably reject a too harsh or too lenient sentence, the accuser would have to be more lenient towards his enemy and the defendant would have to be harder on himself. The jury was then given the choice between two relatively moderate sentences to decide upon.

I’d like to end this with another section from the book.

“Moderation may not make your rich, but it can make you secure. If you dabble in stocks and bonds, the dullest style of investing is diversification, yet it is also the safest. Diversification means building a balanced portfolio based on the premise that what is doing well today may not do well tomorrow, and vice versa. Spreading your bets reduces your risk. But as every savvy investor knows, the greatest profits involve the greatest risks. If the ancient Greeks had had a stock market, they might have bet on some hot stocks occasionally (they were, after all, a race of risk takers), but they were also intimately familiar with the danger of losing everything. Moderation, then, in all things, including, perhaps, moderation itself!”

Based upon a request, which by the way I absolutely love to receive, I’ve decided to write about something that has been a long time coming: this very historical and dramatic election season.

Let me first share my political view in general and how it has changed over the years. I began to get interested in elections around 8 years ago with the 2000 election. I remember watching the news about it and generally knowing what was happening, though I don’t think I actually supported one candidate over the other. It wasn’t until the 2004 election that I had realized I was 100% pro-Bush. I thought of myself as a conservative republican and believed that George Bush could do a much better job on matters of foreign policy specifically than John Kerry.

It wasn’t until recently – as in over the past year or so – that I have begun to move closer to the center. Now I like to think of myself as a moderate since I can relate to many different aspects of each party. As for the reason for the move, (and I realize this is becoming quite fashionable to say these days) I attribute it to George Bush’s policies. Perhaps then, it would be more accurate to say I’m just anti-Bush rather than moderate. As to what my reasons are for being against Bush specifically, well that is a whole other topic and easily a whole other ramble entirely.

So then why have I chosen to vote for Barack Obama? Well the short, and predictable, answer is: he represents change. Let me expand on that. Washington has become overrun by politicians who are owned by lobbyists. These lobbyists finance political campaigns based on the assumption that if elected, the candidate will create policies based on the beliefs and agendas of said lobbyists. This political hostage taking is chiefly responsible for the failed energy policy of the Bush administration. Over the past seven years, big oil companies (i.e. Exxon Mobile Corp., Conoco, Shell Oil Co., and BP America Inc.) have met behind closed doors with Dick Cheney and his energy task force in order to help create the Bush administration’s energy policy. A similar meeting happened only once with environmentalists. Yes, oil companies actually helped make the national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which in 2005 were still being debated. Maybe that’s the reason why over the last seven years we have continually seen record oil prices. On July 11, 2008 oil peaked at $142 per barrel and that is a 617% increase since 2001 when the average price per barrel was only $23 (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp). As of August 4, 2008 the McCain campaign had accepted $1.3 million from big oil companies (factcheck.org). So why mention all this?

Lobbyists are constitutional, and in principle, they are the very essence of America. They are people that represent large groups of citizens and can effectively give many Americans a voice that would not normally have one in Washington D.C. However, this power is getting abused. Lobbyists should have a voice in Washington, not mind control.

This is the chief reason why I am planning on voting for Barack Obama. Obama’s campaign has been a grassroots movement across America. Individual contributions have made up 100% of the money raised by the Obama campaign. 47% of the money has been from donations of $200 or less compared with only 26% of the money raised by the McCain campaign (factcheck.org). Obama has not accepted one penny from Special Interest Groups or Political Action Committees (a.k.a. lobbyists), unlike John McCain (and Hillary Clinton and most other politicians in the past 20 years). Obama does not have a single lobbyist employed in his campaign, unlike John McCain who has seven of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington employed, including his campaign advisor.

Here are some very specific reasons why Obama is a good candidate for change. These were taken directly off his website under Barack Obama’s Blueprint for Change. I would highly encourage everyone to at least skim over that document and other bulleted points on his website in order to understand his stance on certain issues (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/). Also notice the points below on his record.

BARACK OBAMA’s Plan

Shine Light on Washington Lobbying

Centralize Ethics and Lobbying Information for Voters: Obama will create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings in a searchable, sortable and downloadable format.

Require Independent Monitoring of Lobbying Laws and Ethics Rules: Obama will use the power of the presidency to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so that the public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated.

Support Campaign Finance Reform: Obama supports public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. Obama introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and is the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) tough bill to reform the presidential public financing system.

Shine the Light on Federal Contracts, Tax Breaks and Earmarks

Create a Public “Contracts and Influence” Database: As president, Obama will create a “contracts and influence” database that will disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, and what contracts they are getting and how well they complete them.

Expose Special Interest Tax Breaks to Public Scrutiny: Barack Obama will ensure that any tax breaks for corporate recipients – or tax earmarks – are also publicly available on the Internet in an easily searchable format.

End Abuse of No-Bid Contracts: Barack Obama will end abuse of no-bid contracts by requiring that nearly all contract orders over $25,000 be competitively awarded.

Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.

Shine Light on Earmarks and Pork Barrel Spending: Obama’s Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act will shed light on all earmarks by disclosing the name of the legislator who asked for each earmark, along with a written justification, 72 hours before they can be approved by the full Senate.

OBAMA’S RECORD

Federal Ethics Reform

Obama and Senator Feingold (D-WI) took on both parties and proposed ethics legislation that was described as the “gold standard” for reform. It was because of their leadership that ending subsidized corporate jet travel, mandating disclosure of lobbyists’ bundling of contributions, and enacting strong new restrictions of lobbyist-sponsored trips became part of the final ethics bill that was signed into law. The Washington Post wrote in an editorial, “The final package is the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet.”

Google for Government

Americans have the right to know how their tax dollars are spent, but that information has been hidden from public view for too long. That’s why Barack Obama and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) passed a law to create a Google-like search engine to allow regular people to track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and loans online. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “It would enable the public to see where federal money goes and how it is spent. It’s a brilliant idea.”

Illinois Reform

In 1998, Obama joined forces with former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL) to pass the toughest campaign finance law in Illinois history. The legislation banned the personal use of campaign money by Illinois legislators and banned most gifts from lobbyists. Before the law was passed, one organization ranked Illinois worst among 50 states for its campaign finance regulations.

A High Standard

Unlike other candidates Obama’s campaign refuses to accept contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees.

I also believe that it is time that America has some form of national health insurance policy. I believe health insurance is a fundamental right that should be provided by government just as fire and police protection. I do not offer a perfect solution, and the main reason why the general public opposes national health insurance is based on the example of other countries. In Canada for example, you do not get to pick your doctors and you have to wait a long time to see a specialist. In America we don’t have to base our policy off of other countries; we can have a truly unique American system. With that being said since John McCain offers no plan for national health insurance, I am forced to support Obama’s plan. It may not be perfect, but for the sake of the 45 million Americans that do not have health insurance, it is worth trying. Here are the basics of Obama’s plan outlined below. You can find the comprehensive version on his website (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/).

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan

Quality, Affordable and Portable Coverage for All

The Obama-Biden Plan to Cover Uninsured Americans: Obama and Biden will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress. The Obama-Biden plan will have the following features:

Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.

Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.

Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.

Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.

Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.

Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to

job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.

Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.

National Health Insurance Exchange: The Obama-Biden plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.

So with that all said, hopefully I have made it obvious that I am a Barack Obama supporter. Also, it is worth stating again that although I support Obama, I do not consider myself to be a liberal or a democrat; I simply do not fully agree with either liberals or conservatives. Let me share one specific example that might make the case clear.

I fully support stem cell research. It could lead to an untold wealth of medical knowledge that could greatly improve life for everyone. Unfortunately, the best form of stem cell research currently is embryonic stem cell research (there are other forms, but none have proven to be quite as remarkable as the embryonic type). Generally, I consider myself to be pro-life as well. Abortion should not simply be another form of birth control, yet I am not entirely against it. It should only be resorted to under extreme circumstances such as in cases of rape or incest, or if the mother’s health is in danger; in any other circumstances where the mother doesn’t think she is fit to raise a child then adoption is a much better option than abortion. If it is just the case that some high school teenager is embarrassed to walk around pregnant at her school, well sorry, but you should have thought about that earlier. So you can see my dilemma. With this particular issue, I do not neatly fall into either category of liberals or conservatives.

Why do I bring this up? Well even though I plan to vote for a democrat, I am not the best person to ask how a leftist ideology will make America a better country, seeing as how I don’t necessarily believe it does. Large government has its pros and cons. The largest pro is that it (in theory) ensures at least decent living conditions for all Americans. Some of the best examples of this ideology are FDR’s New Deal programs. In the years of the Great Depression, specifically between 1933 and 1938, FDR initiated programs that took care of the unemployed (Works Progress Administration), brought electricity to distant areas (Rural Electrification Administration), helped many economically ravaged farmers regain prosperity (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), and guaranteed Americans that money in the bank was secure (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). Two of the largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and Securities Exchange Commission (Wikipedia). It would be hard to argue that programs such as these are a bad idea, however, it can reach a point where creation of programs such as these goes too far. The largest con with the large government ideal is that it costs a lot of money, and taxes don’t usually go over well with anyone anywhere at anytime. I think the basic difference between left and right ideals is not that one cares more about the well being of all Americans over the other, but they simply have different philosophies about the approach to eventually meet that goal. The left believes it is better to ensure a good quality of life from the bottom up, offering help to those who need it most. The right believes it is better to ensure a good quality of life from the top down, offering help to those that are in a good position to help others below them. Neither philosophy is right nor wrong, however I think it has been painfully obvious that at least at this current time in American history, the trickle down theory of the George Bush administration simply has not worked.

The short story is: America needs change. Yes, I realize how cliché that sounds, not only for an Obama supporter, but for any election year in general. Politicians always promise change – every politician, every election. No, I don’t think Barack Obama is the best thing since sliced bread. No, I don’t view Barack Obama as my Lord and Savior. No, I don’t even believe that half of what Barack Obama is promising will be done if he were elected. Why? Because at the end of the day he’s a politician. Barack Obama is not the answer to all our problems, but I do believe we have a better chance with him instead of John McCain.

Check out this funny video from JibJab too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adc3MSS5Ydc

When you’re driving there are two main places where you focus your attention. The first is the windshield. It is absolutely imperative that you keep your eyes on the road ahead of you so that you avoid an accident. The windshield then is like the future in our everyday lives. If you aren’t constantly looking forward and preparing for the future, you are likely to end up off course in life and maybe even crash. However, if you are only looking forward to the future, then you may also be in jeopardy. The second area you focus your attention on is your mirrors. These are important because they allow you to keep an eye on things behind you to make sure someone or something doesn’t run into you. These mirrors then are like our past in our everyday lives. It is important to never lose sight of where you came from and to always remember the past mistakes you’ve made so that they don’t sneak up on you again and cause you trouble. However, if you are only looking in your mirrors, or living in the past, while you are driving through life, you are very likely to crash as well so you must constantly shift focus between the windshield and your mirrors; that is, your future and your past otherwise you are likely to be hit off course in life and on the road. The present then could be compared to the side windows on a car; if you move too quickly in life, everything’s just a blur.

Of course you can’t always keep an eye on everything at once, hence your blind spots. There’s always going to be something in your life that you did not see coming and did not prepare for. The best thing you can do to prevent something like that from causing you to crash is to check your blind spots every once in a while. Prepare to be unprepared; just realize that there are going to be obstacles coming from your blind spots and the best thing you can do is be prepared to make quick adjustments.

Maps and directions can be compared to advice from others. With a map, you can easily plan out your future route, although you may have to take a detour every once in a while. It’s a lot easier getting to a destination when you have directions from someone who has been there before, such as friends or family members. What’s the only thing better than a map or simple directions? A GPS.

God is the ultimate GPS in our lives that guides us from above and is with us for every turn along our journey. He’s that little voice telling us where to go. He always knows how to get through difficult areas, and He’s always many steps ahead of us and has an ultimate plan to get us to our destination. He can even help you get back on track after taking a wrong turn. Sometimes we don’t always listen to God or actively seek His advice, however. That’s where street signs enter the analogy.

If you follow all the signs on the road of life you can easily get where you want to go and if you happen to take a wrong turn you’ll quickly realize the signs that will help you get back on the right road. In addition to signs, there are other ways God can get our attention, such as speed bumps. They cause you to slow down and if you don’t then you’ll be sorry.

Signal lights and brake lights are also important on the road and on life. It may be useful to let the people around you know your intentions, that way they will be able to keep you from going down a wrong path. Similarly if you’re absolutely stuck and you need help, you can signal for it using your hazard lights.

Anyone who has ever driven around a campground or swampy area knows it’s not always easy to look forward to the future because of all the bugs and other dirt that builds up on the windshield. Every once in a while our view of life gets skewed or otherwise obstructed from things we might deem important (such as getting a hard fought A in a class, getting a promotion, making a six figure income) and if it hasn’t gotten too bad, we can just use the windshield wipers to clear our view. However it might be bad enough so that you have to actually stop at a gas station to clean the windshield, which I guess would be analogous to completely stopping your life and seeking external help.

And finally it’s worth it to mention perhaps the most obvious way that life and driving are intertwined: a crash. As many of you know I was involved in a somewhat serious car accident recently. I wouldn’t call it a near death experience, but it very well could have been. When you’re talking about cars traveling at pretty high speeds, even if each are traveling around 30 or 40 mph, the difference between minor and serious injuries, or even life and death, is just a matter of fractions of a second or fractions of an inch. I was lucky enough to have gotten hit in the strongest part of a car, but had the other car hit me just a few split seconds sooner, or if I had been going just 1 mph slower, things could have been much worse. My point is that life is fragile and you can never really expect to get into an accident, just as you can never truly expect obstacles in life. Life, like driving, can be extremely unpredictable. After all, who would expect to get hit while going through a green light?

I think that’s probably a good place to start – a definition of music. In high school I had this really amazing music theory teacher that had each of his theory classes start the year by coming up with a definition of music. This was of course for us to step back and see the bigger picture of what music really is, instead of only focusing on which type of music you like, for example. I think taking that step back is what really allowed me to broaden my horizons concerning which type of music I listen to.

Ok, so let’s start. What is music? Well the way my teacher always started was to just write down words or phrases that students shouted out that describes some element of music. The list would commonly include, but would not limited to, some combination of the following: notes, rhythm, melody, harmony, emotion, pattern, organized, sounds, art, silences, vibration, volume, pitch, duration, instruments, timbre, tone, dissonance, intervals, etc. After completely filling the board with many terms, we would go through and discuss the significance of each term. Eventually what our class came up with was the following: “Music is a pattern of organized sounds and silences that elicit emotion” …or something of that nature. Alright, let’s analyze the significance of each of those terms. Music is a ‘pattern’ because it is usually predictable and follows some sort of form that allows it to fit into a certain genre. It is ‘organized’ because there must be some way to differentiate music from just noise. ‘Sounds’ is probably an obvious term. ‘Silences,’ on the other hand, might be a bit curious. Silence is just as vital to music as sound, since without silence it would be hard to determine when one sound ends and another begins. It also allows for rhythm (see U Ramble: Is there more than all there is? by Erica Olenski). Now a tricky one: ‘that elicits emotion.’ That must be included in a definition to highlight the significance of music. It is an art form, and like most art forms, it elicits some emotion that can’t quite be conveyed in exactly the same way through just words alone.

Believe it or not, coming up with that definition took us a good day and a half. It is difficult to define music because it is so subjective to each individual. I suppose it would be similar to trying to define beauty or love and the like. Music is something that fundamentally cannot be expressed in words alone, therefore it is impossible to come up with a single definition of what music actually is. So if music is different to each individual, how could it be universal? Math is universal. 2 + 2 = 4. That’s fact. That’s irrefutable. But not everyone on earth would agree that Bach’s music is better than Metallica’s or vice versa. Music though, perhaps even more so than math, is indeed universal. If you go anywhere on earth, to any city or civilization, you could probably hope to communicate in one way or another through music. For that matter, if you go to anything in the animal kingdom, you could probably hope to communicate in one way or another. Soft, slow music might elicit a calm response, whereas even a lion would be frightful of loud, fast music. But when’s the last time you saw a lion doing math? So music, like math, is not limited to location, but unlike math, it is also not limited to species. Therefore, you should be able to go anywhere in the universe and be able to communicate, in one way or another, with a different civilization. So how could something so obviously universal be so ambiguous and subjective? I think it is important here to separate the interpretation of music with the primal beat and rhythm of music.

For example, if we were to come in contact with some alien civilization, they might have a different interpretation of “good music” but we would still be able to communicate through music because its universality lies in its beat and rhythm, not necessarily melody and harmony or tones and timbre. Why is that?

There is a book that talks a lot about that question. It goes into detail about why beat and rhythm attracts us to music and why songs can get stuck in our head. The book is called “This Is Your Brain on Music,” and I’m only going to very briefly skim over just a couple points that it makes. Perhaps the reason why we our attracted to the beat of music is that we have many natural periodic occurrences that might resemble the beat of music, such as our heart beat, blinking, breathing, circadian rhythm sleep cycles, etc. Every animal on earth are creatures of naturally occurring periodic patterns. So somehow that might explain one reason for the primal connection to music. Another possible explanation for that connection might also explain our connection to dancing with music. In African tribes, for example, they can have pretty simple instruments – mainly just drums, but that’s all they need. It is with drums that they can create a beat and rhythm which allows us to easily dance with the music. Dancing is a very good cardiovascular exercise and is a good representation of your endurance. Why would that matter? Well, in tribal eras, women would take particular notice of this skill in men because of… er, reproductive purposes. There are many more reasons the book discusses of our attraction to music, but many times throughout, they can get very detailed and hard to understand (I think I only understood/retained no more than half of what I read).

Music not only transcends species and space, but also time. Music is forever. We instantly can become connected to a time hundreds or thousands of years earlier than ours just by pressing ‘play.’ We can relive the emotions that the songwriter was expressing each and every time we listen to a song. Furthermore, music today will last for as long as someone is around to hear it.

            I’m glad you asked. As you may have noticed there is an overarching theme found in many of my rambles: science vs. religion. Are they truly fundamentally opposite?

            Fundamentally, science is logical and rational. It is based on facts that you can see and test. Religion, on the other hand, is fundamentally illogical and irrational. It is based on beliefs that you cannot see or test. So at first glance it probably seems pretty obvious that they are fundamental opposites, however, don’t be so quick to judge.

            Science can explain the “how.” It can tell you how tall you can build a skyscraper on certain types of land. It can tell you how fast a ball will fall after two seconds of being dropped off of a 100 foot cliff. It can tell you how cells replicate, how DNA is used as a means of replication, or how the circulatory system works. It can tell you how planets will orbit a star based on Newton’s universal law of gravity, but it cannot tell you why.

            Religion, therefore must be necessary to fill in these gaps. It can be used to explain the unexplainable. That does not mean that it should be used as a catchall and that if it can't be explained by science, then it should just get thrown under the umbrella category of: “oh, it’s because of God.” Religion is not simply a means to explain something that science cannot yet explain. Instead, religion is necessary to explain certain things that science can never hope to explain. Let’s take for example one of the most eluding “holy grails” of science: gravity.

            Based on equations from physics, you can know exactly where a planet will be, you can know exactly how fast a ball will be traveling after you drop it, and you can know exactly how much force is necessary to move a block resting on a table. These equations work and help us build skyscrapers and extrapolate theories of the universe. They tell you how gravity affects objects, but they can’t explain what gravity is or why it exists. How in the world can one object have such a strong effect on another object without even touching when they can be millions of miles, and even millions of light years away? Science can’t explain that and any attempts to do so with quantum mechanics seem very occult – which is a major no-no in science.

            Another example is the scientific origins of life. Science may be able to explain how the universe has expanded and cooled since the big bang, but it can’t explain why the big bang happened or what would make it happen – without reverting to an occult explanation using quantum mechanics. Take this one impossible question: if there was nothing before the big bang, how could something randomly come from nothing without some divine intervention?

            So you can see that science can only explain so much. It can trace our footsteps back billions of years and explain how we got here, but it cannot explain why we are here. Science and religion may first appear fundamentally opposite, but they are in fact simply two pieces of the same puzzle which together can complete our picture of life and all its wondrous questions.

I briefly mentioned in previous rambles a concept of philosophy known as atomism. To recap, this theory states that since every thing in the universe is made of atoms, every action in the universe is caused by the collision of atoms. On the surface, this idea seems pretty reasonable and not very radical or groundbreaking. However, if you analyze some of the repercussions of this theory, you open quite a large Pandora’s Box.

First of all, this would mean that every movement you make is attributed to atoms colliding in chemicals in your brain. Certain chemicals mix, or are ejected from certain parts of the brain, atoms collide and send signals that collide with atoms in your muscles, which in turn move your arm and allow atoms in your skin to contact, and collide, with atoms of other objects, all within a fraction of a second. Something you used to take for granted suddenly has become quite a chore. Another example would be to picture your good friends Joe and Susie having a conversation. Atoms collide in Joe’s brain, which collide with atoms in his muscles around his jaw which allows him to open his mouth. Other atoms continue on to collide with atoms in his vocal chords which vibrate and collide with atoms in the surrounding air which allow him to utter a simple “hello.” The atoms in the air all collide with one another making a sound wave that carries all the way to Susie’s ear. The atoms in the air surrounding Susie’s ear collide with her eardrum causing it to vibrate and send a message to the brain which is interpreted by other atoms colliding in her brain. Once she figures out what Joe has said, more atoms collide in her brain… and I think you get the picture.

So what is the most basic way to view atoms? That’s right, as hard spheres like billiard balls. The last time you played pool, you might have found it pretty easy to guess at least the general direction that the balls would go once you put them in motion. For example, you don’t directly hit a numbered ball because you first have to hit the cue ball. To be able to play pool in the loosest sense of the term, you have to be able to guess where the numbered ball is going to go after the cue ball hits it. One example would be a very slightly more complicated play. Say the cue ball is on one side of the 8-ball and the ball you want to hit, say the 2-ball, is on the other side. You would first have to hit the cue ball off of the side of the table in order to hit the 2-ball without hitting the 8-ball. Congratulations, you just used physics to determine what angle you have to hit the cue ball to avoid the 8-ball! So you see that we can use physics to easily predict the path of these small hard spheres, but it extends far beyond one simple rebound off the side rail. We could for example write a computer program that could extremely accurately predict the motions and speeds of each billiard ball on a pool table after someone has “broke” the arrangement of balls in the beginning of a game (no surprise there, seeing as how there are plenty of video games that do just that). Now take that another step further. Theoretically then, there should be no limit as to how many balls are involved, because the laws of physics apply just as accurately with 2 trillion balls as they do with 2. The only practical limit then would be the computing power.

So now, if all that is true for billiard balls, and the most basic way to view an atom is as a billiard ball, then the logical conclusion is, the above applies to atoms as well. So what does that all mean? Why does it matter? I’m glad you asked.

If we had the computing power, we could theoretically then account for every single atom in the universe and by simply speeding up the calculations, we could predict the future. Now before you go and patent that invention, realize this is more hypothetical than any hypothetical thought experiment I have introduced in these rambles up to this point. It is literally impossible to catalogue the exact location and velocity of every single atom in the universe – even if we somehow had the man power and technology to find and label every atom in the universe, we would still be blocked by a key theory of quantum mechanics. But, as we so often do in these rambles, let’s pretend that none of that matters.

By “predict the future” I don’t mean simply whether or not you will get a certain job, or how many kids you’ll have, or when you will die. Oh no, I mean every single detail about every single event in the future would be yours for the investigating. What is the 586^th word you will say on July 31, 2024? You could find out. Or how about something more useful, like when will an assassin try to kill the president, or where will an enemy nation be hiding weapons of mass destruction? Anything at all. Of course, it also wouldn’t be limited to the future – that is the result you will see if you speed up the calculations. What if we rewound the motion of every atom in the universe? Well, we could see exactly how our ancestors lived. We could see exactly which civilization created which artifacts. We could solve murders. Given, we couldn’t actually change the past, it would still be extremely useful to just view it in action. We could even rewind every single atom in the universe to the beginning of time which would lead to an infinite well of knowledge for all the cosmologists and astronomers out there. We could see how everything started, how galaxies and planets and stars actually form – which leads to my next major point.

The theory of atomism not only lends itself to predicting the future and viewing the past, but if you think about it, ever since the Big Bang itself, the laws of physics have applied. Now obviously they may be different under such extreme circumstances (i.e. extreme heat, speed, and gravity) but that actually doesn’t matter for this discussion – not because we’re just pretending to ignore it, but because it actually does not influence this next point. The laws of physics (whatever they have been since the Big Bang) have always determined the exact trajectory of every atom in the universe. What does that mean? Well, it means that atoms have always had a destined trajectory throughout all points in time. This brings a whole new aspect to fate, or destiny. I want to be absolutely clear: this is no longer hypothetical. Every single atom in the universe was destined to be where it is at this moment in time, as well as this time last year, as well as 5 billion years ago, and 5 billion years from now. Are you catching on yet? Since every atom has a destined trajectory, if we apply the theory of atomism, every single action and event and thought that we have ever experienced or that has ever occurred in general throughout the universe was destined to be that way since the beginning of time. That is completely irrefutable – that is, if you believe the theory of atomism.

Let me point out some important details I have left out. Atomism, in its most basic sense as I have presented above, is outdated. Since the conception of the theory we have found subatomic particles such as electrons (which you may have noticed would actually be involved in the transfer of information between your brain and muscles in the above example), and other quantum advancements like the behavior of light and such. So for our modern day purposes, it is perhaps more accurate to term the theory “particlism” since it is not exactly the collision of atoms that determine every action in the universe, but more generally, the collision of particles. Also related to the problem with viewing atomism as the collision of atoms is that atoms have been theorized to not be hard tiny spheres like we once thought. For all intents and purposes they can be viewed as such, but just know that it’s not exactly the case.

The fascinating part of all of this is that neither of those two clarifications have any ramifications on the theory of atomism. They do not make the theory less viable, or less credible (aside from the misnomer). So an interesting thought then arises: do we really have free will, or are we simply governed by the collision of particles? Has every action we’ve ever performed and every thought that we’ve ever conceived been destined ever since the beginning of time? Perhaps, but a better question is: does it make a difference?

Realize though, that this possibility has no affect on religion or whether or not there is a God. Because although every particle might have a predisposed trajectory, that does not mean that God doesn’t control what happens here on earth or any other part of the universe. I believe in science and physics – I think principles discovered using those methods are for the most part irrefutable. However, I believe that God is the one who created physics and put everything in motion in the first place. In fact, the theory of atomism has always deemed something called a First Mover necessary in order for the theory to be viable. This gives new meaning to not only destiny, but “God’s plan.” After all, someone has to break...

When you look in a mirror, you see a familiar person staring back at you. They look like a slightly more aged person than you saw a couple years ago, or a couple decades ago, but it’s the same person. Who is that person?

I mean really think about that. Sure you have a name and a home; a social security number, a driver’s license. But do you really have an identity outside of all those numbers and all that legal paperwork? I want you guys to really try and think about that question for a while and if you reach a point where you suddenly have an epiphany and feel a rush of cold and lonely realization sweeping over you, then you’ve thought about it correctly.

Not to be a downer or anything, but this is a serious, life-altering realization that will allow you to see the world in a very different way than you ever have previously. As some of you know, I took a philosophy class my freshman year in college and I never could have imagined what a profound effect it would have on my life. Ever since then I have seen everything… literally, everything differently. It is almost as if I was blinded by naïveté and now I can finally see. Now, in the couple of minutes that it will take you to read through this ramble, I hope to reveal to you at least a little piece of what changed my life. But, be forewarned that if you simply dismiss the following thoughts without truly considering them, there is no hope to achieve a new perspective of life.

First things first: many of you have probably seen the Matrix. And many of you probably don’t understand the Matrix. I will now attempt to explain not the characters, or the plot line per se, but the main theme that you should take away from those movies. The premise is that we are stuck in a digital representation of the real world. Meaning that everything that what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell does not actually exist. Let me pause here for a second for those of you that have mentally checked out and ask you a simple question: why do you trust your senses? Maybe the answer is that throughout your daily life you have learned to react to your senses accordingly and those reactions have kept you healthy and happy. If you touch something hot, you jerk your hand away, or if you hear a loud abrupt sound you tense your body, ready to react to even the most foreboding cause. But what if all of that – all that you sense – is simply all in your head? Every taste, every sound, every conversation, and even every person that you have ever known could all be imagined. I don’t mean in the schizophrenic sense, but perhaps – as the Matrix suggests – we are all simply brains in vats. Brains that may or may not be in a physical body, but regardless are attached to several electrodes which control everything about us and everything that we sense.

This idea of living in a digital representation of reality is not really as far out there as you might think. Consider the following. There are three eventualities that could occur to the human race. First, we live long enough as a species to develop incredibly high powered super computers and we are curious to see how our ancestors lived, thereby creating a whole digital world in which to view their interactions. Second, we live long enough to have the technology for those super computers, but are not interested to see how our ancestors lived. Third, we don’t live long enough as a species to develop that technology. So based on this argument you could conjecture that we therefore have a 1 out of 3 chance of living in a digital representation of reality. A 33% chance should be enough to make you at least consider the possibility.

But a digital representation of reality is only one alternative way to view daily life. Around 300 BC, there was a great Chinese philosopher known as Zhuang Zhou who wrote in his book Zhuangzi the following: “Once upon a time, I, Zhuang Zhou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

Now let’s look at the bigger picture: what does this all mean? If you have thought about it for a long enough time to have a great epiphany, you might feel distant, cold, and surprised. But eventually if you have reached the point where you are no longer struggling to understand what this all means, you should feel calm, comforted, and reassured that no matter what type of problems you are facing in your life or what obstacles you have to overcome, in the grand scheme of things… guess what? It doesn’t really matter.

To better understand this let’s look at a famous picture of earth taken from the Voyager I probe in 1990. After completing its primary mission, it was instructed to turn around and take some pictures of each of the planets it had visited. This picture was taken a little over 4 billion miles away from earth. Our home is a mere “pale blue dot” in the vast cosmos.

The famous astronomer Carl Sagan was so moved by this picture that he gave a lecture in 1994 to Cornell University. Click here (or enter this URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M) to see a video with someone else’s narration of some of his speech and a slideshow of some remarkable pictures. Just in case that link does not work for some of you, or if for whatever reason you can’t watch the video, I’ve included the excerpt below so that you don’t miss out:

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“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known”

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So maybe this puts things into perspective in your life. Questions like “who are we?” seem insignificant when looking at the bigger picture. We’re stuck on a rock 93,000,000 miles away from a fire ball, orbiting at 18 miles per second in some insignificant part of some insignificant galaxy of a seemingly infinite universe. More simply, we are small dots, on a pale blue dot.