J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Culture Rants/Shares Page 2 of 20

What Is Civilization? What Is Progress? (Roe vs. Wade)

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On June 26

In Culture Rants/Shares

This week the Supreme Court rolled back an important human right: the right for women to unequivocally control their own bodies, the right to never have to give birth against their will.

To me and many others, it felt like a huge step backwards. So what does that mean, to move backwards, culturally and socially?

It’s a trap to view civilization and culture in terms of linear progress. Human history and pre-history includes thousands of diverse cultures, each contributing unique and valuable ways of speaking, thinking, moving, preparing food, celebrating, crafting, etc. Many cultures and civilizations have fallen or disappeared that were more civilized, by many measures (quality of life, cooperativeness, personal freedoms) than any human system of living that exists today.

But it’s also a trap to not acknowledge that some ways of living are more civilized than others. Civil rights–the degree to which at all members of a society have equal freedoms and protections under the law–is a worthy metric. So is nonviolent conflict resolution, the degree to which we can coexist and mediate our disagreements without stabbing or shooting each other.

This morning I watched a video on YouTube about a pride of lions, six brothers, that came to dominate a large swatch of territory in South Africa. They did so by hunting buffalo, slaying their rival males, killing the cubs of those rival males, and impregnating the females. As the lions aged, they died, one by one, mostly from gruesome injuries inflicted by prides of younger, stronger lions.

Totally natural behavior, for lions.

Human civilization, at its core, is an attempt to move away from this “natural” way of living, to introduce more safety and security, to create and distribute wealth and abundance, to create and enforce the social constructs we call “rights”: the ability to go through life with certain entitlements (food, shelter, relative safety, freedom, access to education, access to healthcare, etc.).

But there will always be people who feel that we are too civilized. People who feel that the strong should dominate the weak, and that only some privileged members of a society should be afforded full rights (the right to vote, the right to healthcare, the right to not be murdered by police).

So while human civilization, in its broadest sense, is a tree with a million branches, a marvel of sociocultural evolutionary complexity, there are also linear metrics by which we can and should judge progress. Technology and science can help us pursue more civilized ways of living by increasing our understanding of the world and making us more powerful and wealthy, but the important metrics are ethical ones. How are we helping and protecting each other? How are we collectively improving our lives?

When we choose love, when we choose acceptance, when we choose equal rights under the law, when we create and implement greater human rights, we move civilization forward.

We progress.

Free To Live, Pay To Party

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On March 20

In Alternative Economics, Culture Rants/Shares

I’m taking a break from my consulting work next week to make music. I’m calling it “Beat Week”. I haven’t even worked out the details yet, but I’m planning on writing multiple music sketches a day, brushing off the studio rust, and hopefully creating some great grooves.

I’m fortunate and privileged enough to be able to do this. 65% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, with no appreciable savings, and can’t afford to pursue their creative whims, impulses toward social service, or other non-income-generating pursuits.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The majority of people are working too much, with too little time to relax and play, because of massive wealth inequality. With a minor wealth tax, we could afford universal healthcare and free education for everyone. These two benefits alone would ease so much suffering, improve mental and physical health outcomes, generate more free time, and raise our national happiness.

As a society, we don’t have to choose between corruption-riddled communism or exploitation-based capitalism as our only two economic options.

There are literally an infinite number of economic models we can choose from.

Free to Live, Pay to Party

What if, as a citizen, you could count on the following services being provided to you and your family, regardless of your economic means?

  • Healthcare, including preventive, medical treatments, vision and dental
  • Education, from early childhood to PhD
  • Emergency services, including fire and police
  • Libraries, parks, and other public facilities
  • Local transportation
  • Basic internet and phone service

We already get some of those, so it’s not too hard to imagine, right?

Suddenly life is easier. You don’t have to worry about going bankrupt if you get sick. You have no student loans to pay back. You don’t have to own a car. If you want to live a simple, inexpensive life, that’s available to you.

What if, in addition to the services above, your municipality or region enacted policies to encourage abundant supply (and thus lower cost) of the following? Or perhaps even provided these for free for all citizens?

  • Non-luxury housing
  • Staple healthful plant food production (fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, etc.)

An affordable roof over your head, and plenty to eat. No more homelessness. No more tents lining the streets of every major city.

But what if you want to live large? What if you want to wear designer clothes and drive a sports car and eat sushi prepared by the finest chefs? What if you want to eat a big steak every night and drive a giant oversized truck? What if you want bionic legs to run really fast?

Get a job, slacker! Or start a business. And use your paycheck and/or profits to pay for the following:

  • Restaurant dining and luxury foods
  • Air/space travel and tourism
  • Cosmetic body modifications
  • Cybernetic enhancements
  • Life extension treatments beyond the average natural maximum (~100 years)
  • Luxury items (fancy watches, yachts, designer clothing, etc.)
  • Drugs, alcohol, and other non-essential consumables
  • Entertainment media and experiences
  • Non-essential personalized services
  • Mansions and other large/luxurious domiciles
  • Computers and electronics

Would this “free to live, pay to party” model work in reality? Would there be sufficient motivation for people to work? Could the government afford to pay for all these services?

Yes and yes. All basic income experiments demonstrate little to no drop in personal productivity. And a 2% wealth tax on the ultra-rich would generate between and 2 and 4 trillion USD per year. Right now American’s spend between three and four trillion per year on healthcare, but that includes huge corporate profits for private healthcare providers. Other countries provide excellent healthcare to their citizens for a fraction of this cost, and there’s no reason we can’t do the same.

Automation and robotics are creating real wealth and efficiencies. The problem is all that wealth “naturally” trickles up if we don’t intervene. A minor wealth tax fixes this. We don’t all have to work this hard.

It’s not communism! Under this model, private ownership still exists, as does a reasonably regulated free market. And even with a minor wealth tax, the ultra-rich stay ultra-rich (and probably keep getting richer). Sure, it’s wealth redistribution, but only a little bit of wealth redistribution. And there’s no cap on how rich an individual can get.

But the rest of us get to work a fifteen or twenty hour work week, spend as much time with our family and friends as we want, take multiple vacations per year, and live rich, varied, free lives. We get medical care when we need it, and we go to school as long as we want without incurring debt. Even if we’re not rich.

Does all this sound too good to be true? If it does, you don’t understand how extreme wealth inequality is in this country. Yes, a 2% wealth tax pays for it all, even if we maintain our ridiculous military budget at current levels.

How Does Human Consciousness Change?

What happens when a society organizes itself so that basic life becomes affordable for everyone?

  • We all relax a little more
  • We all feel less fear and desperation
  • Maybe we’re all a little more charitable toward our neighbors
  • We don’t feel resentful, because everyone gets the same deal (no means testing)
  • We have enough time to sleep, exercise, prepare healthful food, and socialize, making us healthier and happier

Just spend five minutes imagining your life under this kind of socioeconomic system. It’s completely within our grasp.

Free to live, pay to party.

This Too Shall Pass

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On January 6

In Culture Rants/Shares, Personal Updates

This too shall pass.

Sounds like a Biblical phrase but its origins are Persian, popularized by Sufi poets.

It’s been on my mind a lot recently.

Referring to the pandemic, of course. Which feels like it might go on forever. Maybe Omicron is the last, most contagious, least lethal wave. Or maybe it’s just one more wave in the middle of a dozen or more.

But eventually, and I’m guessing sometime in 2022, the pandemic will be over. There will still be Covid, but it won’t be any more lethal or notable than any other infectious disease. And at that point we’ll have to figure out what “normal” looks like.

I’ve left so many activities behind: playing racquetball at the Y, playing tabletop D&D, hosting parties at our house, going to parties, eating indoors at restaurants, seeing movies in the theater.

I don’t think we’re going back to the movies anytime soon — we bought a huge OLED TV and it looks incredible. The San Francisco Y doesn’t have racquetball courts. My D&D friends have dispersed to different cities. Some of my regular weekly activities may now just be part of my past, like DJing at clubs and hosting huge dance parties.

I’m reflecting, not complaining. The pandemic has been gentle to us. We survived getting Covid, and only a few friends have gotten seriously ill. My family relationships and friendships are still strong. We have a roof over our heads and we’re in good financial shape. Mental health could be better but we’re hanging in there.

But it’s strange to think that there’s no going back to the way things were, even when the pandemic ends.

Not entirely, anyway. I’m sure I’ll still play D&D and racquetball again, sometime and somehow. And we’ll go out to the movies once in awhile.

Slowly, a sense of normality will pervade our collective consciousness (unless the United States plunges into civil war or a fascist dictatorship).

This too shall pass.

Vaccine Hesitancy and the Pursuit of Purity

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On November 14

In Culture Rants/Shares, Health/Body-hacking

Recently I unsubscribed from Chris Masterjohn’s YouTube channel. While previously I’d found his perspective on vitamin D and other nutrition research to be interesting and helpful, the fact that he got Covid twice and still won’t take the vaccine was just too much for me. I just don’t have any patience for vaccine hesitancy when there is so much evidence that the vaccine offers protection against severe disease and death from Covid. I don’t disagree with Masterjohn that some supplements (such as vitamin D and zinc) can also offer protection against severe Covid. And of course contracting and surviving Covid offers some natural immunity as well. But as I’ve written about before, continually rolling the dice when the stakes are so high just isn’t a good strategy. There are just too many cases of robustly healthy people who take all the right supplements getting severely sick from Covid.

So what’s behind vaccine hesitancy? Academics who have looked into the issue associate vaccine hesitancy with values such as purity and personal liberty. Many people are willing to accept the larger risk of Covid (or measles, or other serious diseases) to avoid the much smaller risks of adverse side effects from vaccines.

It makes me think of other health areas where priorities get mixed up in the pursuit of purity and optimization. For example:

  • Suffering from dehydration because you don’t want to drink tap water (which is mostly safe — though in some parts of the U.S. it isn’t)
  • Avoiding the sun so much (to prevent skin cancer) that you become deficient in vitamin D, and miss the blood-pressure lowering/nitric-oxide-releasing benefits of direct sunlight
  • Not getting enough calories or nutrients because of strict dietary restrictions (organic-only, veganism, etc.)

Tolerating some levels of impurity (in air, water, food, radiation and chemical exposure) can ultimately improve health outcomes.

More on Ideological Subversion

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On August 30

In Culture Rants/Shares, Personal Updates, Politics

I’m trying to learn more about ideological subversion, specifically the KGB-backed, bring-down-the-USA kind. Last week I linked to this NYT Op-Ed that serves as a kind of broad introduction to the concept. This week I read a post on Paul Orlando’s blog Unintended Consequences that gets into some more details. (The post is concise and illuminating, please click through and read.) Orlando summarizes the four stages of ideological subversion as outlined by ex-KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov:

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