Can the Human Spirit Prevail Through the Harshest Circumstances?

My thoughts after reading "Anthem", by Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand is polarizing figure in not only literature, but in the realm of political theatre as well. This essay will not analyze her, but will focus on the book “Anthem”, and what thoughts it provoked out of me. Due to the nature of the controversy surrounding the author I will simply state that I am not a supporter or proponent of her writing or political theories. So let us move on from that.

“Anthem” is basically about a man in a dystopian future that has no personal identity, and no other individual does either. There is no concept of the individual, and there is no concept of “I”. In fact, speaking the word “I” is punishable by death. The entire society is run by the concept that every single thought and action is strictly done with everyone else in mind. There is no concept of self, hence no thoughts of self. In fact, there aren’t any mirrors, and there is no concept of preferring one thing or person over another.

Professions are regulated and given out to every member of this society. Everyone lives together in giant bunker housing developments. Every aspect of every day is structured and followed. All are conditioned to believe this is the best for all, and it is never questioned.

Technology does not exist. Candles are the only allowed form of light. This is where the first problem arises for the main character. He has discovered an ancient underground tunnel from an ancient time, a time that is looked upon by this society as an evil time that must not be talked about. In this tunnel, over an extended period of time, the main character discovers how to manufacture artificial light. In his excitement and naiveté, he believes that his discovery will be accepted by the scholars and they will use it to benefit everyone, forgiving him in the process for creating such a thing to begin with.

During the story, he discovers a woman and develops feelings for her that he does not understand. Relationships and love as we know it do not exist either in this society.

To make a long story short, his invention is rejected and he flees for an uncharted forest that no one has ever attempted to explore. To his surprise, the lady he had fallen in love with followed him into the forest. They discover the joy of sharing an intimate life together and eventually discover an ancient house. It is there that they start their lives anew, bearing children and reevaluating and discovering an entirely knew way of thinking and living. Books are discovered in this house, and these books help them see what life once was in an ancient time. Ultimately what is found inside them is the importance of being an individual and not a tool for use by a dictatorship society.

Now, I apologize for the rather crude and quick synopsis, but it brings me to the point I wish to make. Does any amount of human and social conditioning completely destroy what are our deeply driven human instincts? Even after years and generations of complete control by government oppressors, is it truly impossible to stamp out our primal instincts? Does a time eventually come when some of the oppressed realize what is going on and snap out of it?

It’s a fascinating subject. Today we have various forms of manipulation, from television, to media, to politics, to social pressures and there are many who think this is a trend towards an eventual breakdown of any individual identity and replace it with obedient worker bees with no other care in their live other than to serve the state. If this is the goal of the leaders in this world, can they eventually succeed in doing so with various techniques and tactics to break our will and accept their decrees? Books like “Anthem” seem to suggest that yes, they can for a while at least, but eventually the human spirit will find itself again and want to allow it to become something more.

Some fear that subliminal messages in media and television are helping break that inner spirit, to confuse it, and ultimately convince it to give itself away to an authority that will control it. The microchip for humans has been invented, and if a time comes where it is mandatory for all humans to have one implanted, could that be the final piece of what the authoritative state would use to gain control of our minds for good. Is it possible that this chip is the key to forever overriding any primal instincts human beings possess?

If a book like “Anthem” is correct and no amount of control or brainwashing/conditioning can work with 100% accuracy forever, then is the creation of the microchip the answer to that? Can a microchip be the final answer to gaining the 100% unbreakable control over the human population forever? It’s an interesting thought, and some would consider it paranoid, but this book provokes these wonders in my mind.

The book clearly shows that in that world, control over society had reached peak efficiency and nearly no one ever had one thought to ever question it. If there are those who wish to create a system of complete control, they have to look at a book like “Anthem” and think, “how can we keep everyone under control and not allow an ‘Anthem’ like storyline to occur?” How do they ensure that there are zero defectors? The microchip may not be the answer, and in fact in today's ever growing technical world, a microchip may be somewhat primitive. The point is really this: whether it is a microchip or some other device, will something be put into place to forever quiet our deep human instincts and create submissive, mindless slaves to their disposal forever? May we as a populace never allow such a thing to occur. 

Chernobyl

Chernobyl, as you probably already know, was a power plant site in the Ukraine(former USSR) that had a nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986. Thousands were evacuated. Unknown numbers of people suffered from various issues related to the event, and today there is a nineteen mile radius around the Chernobyl plant that is off limits to human occupation. So, it seems that is the end of the story, right? After doing some basic reading on the subject and looking through some pictures, several questions came to mind. There may be some very logical answers to these questions, and if you happen to have any input after reading this, please feel free to leave any comments.

Okay, so here's the thing; there is the Exclusion Zone mentioned above. There are workers to patrol this outer area to monitor any possible entries. I have read that these workers take different kind of shifts to eliminate any overexposure to radiation. Makes sense, right? What I do not understand then, is that there are anywhere between 3000 and 3800 people(depending on the source) that go to the Chernobyl plant everyday to work on various projects. See below:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-110328-chernobyl-empty-town-eg-03.photoblog900.jpg

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-110328-chernobyl-empty-town-eg-03.photoblog900.jpg

Neither of the above pictures show these workers in the famous looking "space suits" that we see authorities wear when dealing with high doses of radiation. If it isn't safe in the parameter of the Exclusion Zone, how do these workers survive daily exposure without even the use of a respirator? According to the 100 percent accurate Wikipedia, this area will not be safe for human habitation for about 20000 years. Yes, I realize the workers do not live there, but they are there quite enough considering it is a place that won't be safe for a period of time that is longer than our entire recorded human history.

Speaking of habitation, there actually are many people who have gone back into the Exclusion Zone to live in their former homes. A quick google search will show you that hundreds of people live there, and many of them seem to be fine. That does not mean that it's safe for the usual habitation we have in cities, but again, for an area not safe for thousands of years to come, you would think these people, many of whom are very elderly, would have run into several health issues in a relative short period of time. Take a good look at the picture below:

According to the Boston.com, the people who live in that home live mostly off of gardens make in contaminated soil. Fair enough, yet how does a house in an abandoned area that has supposedly been shut off from human life on an official level, have running water and electricity? 

The whole thing is just weird to me. I'm not trying to put dots together to support any kind of theory that I want to shove down your throat, but these particular things do not make sense to me. Maybe the answers are simple and just not stated in the pages I read because the details were deemed unnecessary to the writers and publications. Who knows. Does it tweak curiosity in anyone else?? I mean, the plant itself wasn't completely decommissioned until 1999, if memory serves me correctly. How the hell did it keep running at all after the incident?

One last thing before I end this. Below is a picture of the site after the accident at Chernobyl happened, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The apparent number given is that this explosion released several hundred times more radiation than that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Forgive me here, because I have no clue what the physics behind nuclear weapons is, but compare that picture to Hiroshima.

Source

Hiroshima was wiped off the map, more or less. Chernobyl just had part of it's building destroyed. I have to assume that a bombing and its affects are different than a core reactor explosion propelling radiation into the air, but the difference in the outcome is quite shocking. 

Thanks for reading, please leave comments on anything that I have overlooked. I could be just missing something. On the other hand, it may be possible that there is something even more sinister than what I've noticed. Chernobyl after all, is the Russian word for Wormwood. For all you bible readers, Book of Revelations ring a bell????

Time

The following excerpt is taken from the book "Life Lessons", written by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler. I apologize if I do not follow the letter of the law for footnoting this, but what I am taking from the book to share with you is on pages 117-118.

It caught my attention as I was reading it because I have had the same type of thoughts on the subject as well. Here it is:

    "Our lives are governed by time. We live by it and in it. And of course, we die in it. We believe time is ours to save and to lose. We can't buy time, but we talk about spending it. And timing, we believe, is everything.
    "Today we know what time it is at every point on the globe, but before the mid-nineteenth century, we measured time more casually. The advent of rail travel made stricter scheduling a necessity, so in 1883 the American and Canadian railroads adopted the system we still use of four time zones in North America. The plan was considered radical: many felt that the time zones and standards of time were insults to God. Today, we accept our watches and alarm clocks as the
truth. We even have a "National Clock" in the Naval Observatory, and official time keeper for the United States. But this "national clock" is actually a computer that averages the findings of fifty different clocks. 

   "Time is a useful measurement, but it has only as much value as we give it. Websters's defines time as "and interval separating two points on a continuum." Birth appears to be the beginning, and death the ending, but they are not, they are just points on a continuum. 

   "Albert Einstein pointed out that time is not constant, that it is relative to the observer. And we now know that time passes at differnt rates depending on whether you are standing still or moving. Time runs differently if you take a trip on a spaceship or even a plane or subway. In 1975 the Navy tested Einstein's theory, using two identical clocks; they placed one on the ground and another in the plane. For fifteen hours the plane flew while lasers were sent between the two clocks comparing time. Just as Einstein had stated, the time was slower in the moving plane."


The book continues by saying on pages 125-6:


   "We think of the past as coming before and the future as lying ahead, but that assumes time lies on a straight-line continuum. Scientists have speculated that time is not linear, that we are not locked into a rigid past-present-future pattern. In nonlinear time, the past, present, and future may all exist at the same time.
   "Does this possibility matter? Will our lives be changed if time is not linear, if we are simultaneously in the past, present, and future?"


Personally, I cannot help but think that this is a major "reality altering" concept. Everything about our lives revolves around time, and if we were to truly find out how the nature of time works, or even a step further and find out that it doesn't even exist beyond the illusion we believe in, then each life on this planet would be affected in some way. How exactly is way beyond my ability to speculate. 

Book Review - THE FIX IS IN, by Brian Tuohy

Is there another side to our professional sports that the media ignores? How much does the almighty dollar play into the outcomes of "pure competition" we see on television?

These questions get explored in great detail in Brian Tuohy's book, "The Fix Is In: The Showbiz Manipulations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NASCAR". The book starts out with the outline of the main thesis:

"There are two histories of professional sports. There is the one that fans know and cherish, filled with great players, genius coaches, incredible plays, and dynasty teams."
"There is another history of the sporting world, however, that exists in the shadow created by the glaring spotlight of the sports media...Hall of Fame players are criminals, addicts, and gamblers; owners care more about profits than winning..."


From that alone this may seem like a man who has his own view on what is seen in the sporting world, but the book is filled with rather interesting facts that have to make a person wonder. 


There is a core theory, backed by quite a lot of research in the book, that because television ratings generated billions in revenue in recent years, it is imperative for these leagues to make sure that the audience is kept interested in the product. In Hollywood, script writers are employed to keep the shows interesting to keep viewers watching each week. Pro sports in general may not be scripted in the same extreme as WWE wrestling, but is it out of the question that certain strings are pulled to keep the most interesting players/teams in the spotlight? The notion that cities support local teams by giving these teams a majority of the revenue is simply not true. Television is where the money is. To rule television you must rule the ratings.

Television has come to dominate sports in many ways. It is no secret that things like the two minute warning in football were put into use to throw advertisements at the viewer while they were in a heightened emotional state while watching the end of a game. Also, the NFL and NBC have an agreement to use "flex" scheduling for their Sunday night games, as to televise in prime time the potentially most profitable game.

As far back as 1977, NFL teams were earning more in television revenue than gate receipts. If the NFL makes so much, then you can guess that the television networks themselves are making a killing on advertisements. The higher the ratings are for a show, the higher a network can charge for commercials. During the last Super Bowl, how much did it cost to run one commercial spot? Anywhere from 3.5 to 4 million dollars for a thirty second spot. Do you ever wonder why you never see the Browns in the Super Bowl? Certain teams generate better ratings, and those teams seem to catch all the breaks.

Every last bit of footage you see on television in regards to the NFL is controlled by the NFL. They have a complete stranglehold on what is shown, what is said, and how the game is portrayed. That is why you will never hear or see anything on ESPN that would truly jeopardize the sport. Yes, scandals break the news from time to time, but there has yet to be a major leak of the underbelly goings on that are common within the sport. Every scandal is looked at like a rare isolated incident. The NFL makes sure that the serious stories are controlled or outright squashed. Example; Chicago Bear Sam Hurd was arrested for attempting to sell multi kilos of cocaine to an undercover agent. Why was this not a major headlining story for days? It got very little attention. The NFL wants no fan questioning at length why a professional player who earns a nice paycheck had reasons to sell drugs on a grand scale.

MLB gets a hard look at as well in the book. The truth behind the MLB strike of 1994; what has been whitewashed over the years is that the players had very good reason to not trust the owners and decided to strike against them. During the 1980s, the owners were sued three different times by the players union, and eventually were rewarded almost $300 million in damages. So when negotiations broke down in 1994, the players felt the need to stand up for themselves. The owners greed nearly killed baseball, and their solution put a black eye on the game for years to come. That being the steroid era. The book goes into great detail on all of this.

Tuohy reveals shocking details of all major sports underbelly hidden truths. Alcoholics given a slap on the wrists, athletes trafficking cocaine, domestic violence, and sex scandals all plague the major sports, and the book explores it all.

The NBA has been criticized for years for either fixing games, or having the officials call games in favor of certain teams and players. Since 1980 the NBA has seen the Los Angeles Lakers win 10 titles, the Boston Celtics 4, the Chicago Bulls 6,  and the San Antonio Spurs 4. That is only four teams winning 24 titles in just over thirty years, and each of those teams had major stars to bank on. The Lakers have even been in 6 other finals that they lost; making it an average of every other year of them being in the Finals. Also take into consideration that the Rockets won back to back titles while Michael Jordan was "retired".

Jordan's retirement is yet another topic gone over in the book, and it is evident that his departure from the game may have been more of an unofficial suspension than anything. During his first title run, Bulls merchandise dominated sales, and the NBA rode the "Be Like Mike" campaign all the way to the bank. When the NBA found out that Jordan had a serious gambling problem they feared a widespread public backlash on the star player, which would be a disaster in possible revenue made. Convenient it is that while Jordan was gone, the NBA saw another star, Hakeem Olajowan, take his team, the Houston Rockets to back to back titles.

Anyway, like the title suggests, all major sports are exposed and discussed. The NHL and NASCAR are brought to light as well, but I will not go into every detail here.

The other major theme researched in regards to influence on professional sports is gambling. Sure, we all realize that Las Vegas exists. Yet why are their odds posts on every publication and website on the planet? Illegal gambling is widespread, and just how deep the tentacles of the underground gambling monster go are quite disturbing.

The book suggest that $35 billion dollars is wagered illegally each year on the NFL alone. The NFL total revenue doesn't even come close to that number. Fan interest is not just generated by television, but by people willing to "make it more interesting" for themselves by putting some hard earned cash on the line.

Just look at the NFL injury report. What is the true reason for even having it? Is it for other teams to figure out better strategies, or for the would be gambler who wants to know if a star player is going to be on the field that particular Sunday?

The influence of gambling has even been discussed on radio shows like Jim Rome, where a former mobster revealed that certain games were out righted fixed due to millions of dollars being on the line for a certain outcome. People who love sports may shrug the notion away, and think, "mobsters controlling sports? Sure." I suggest you read the book and look at the facts. At the very least it is possible.

Anyway, dear reader, I digress. If this kind of thing interests you then check it out when you can. Personally it makes me wonder, especially when I see such controversy arise after the weekend's boxing match between Bradly and Pacquiao.

It is also possible that the author took certain facts and connected the dots himself to make conclusions. He may or may not have the ultimate answers, but he at least brings several facts to the surface that cannot just ignored.

Society and How it Handles Death

Human beings as a whole have being dealing with death since the beginning of time. How death is dealt with though, has largely been dependent on what society, or in some cases tribe or community, tells it's people what is appropriate.

Right now I do not want to go through every cultural approach in recorded history, but there is one basic approach that could be widely accepted today if we chose to use it. I am curious for any feedback from any reader, so let us get to the point.

For the most part we treat death like a morbid taboo, a topic that is used in various unhealthy and borderline unethical ways. Many times death is used by companies to make money, other times it is used as a scare tactic to persuade public opinion. For example, some would argue that funeral directors that push a mourning family into a decision to buy a $10,000 casket is outrageous. In a society like ours, where everyone is encouraged to make money, in any way possible within the boundaries of the law, it is obviously within that funeral home director's rights to do whatever he wants. The larger question becomes then, is this the type of culture that we really want to have for our society? I am sure there are many with arguments on both sides.

Another aspect of our society is the overwhelming, never ending analysis of statistics, numbers, and massive overload of data. Interpersonal interactions have become more and more dependent on technological usage than face to face conversation. Add these together and we have a growing problem of an individual caught in a society where he/she has to digest all this available and often conflicting data, and figure out how it affects them, all the while becoming more and more detached from their fellow man. It then becomes easier to grow contempt for certain people if problems occur, especially when one can sit at home and pick what information they feel is best without ever having to interact with anyone on the other side of the argument to see how things affect them.

Take a moment to expand that to combat. Today we have technology that can strike an opponent without ever having to show a face. The threat of widespread death and destruction is forced into our minds by the media on a regular basis. A neurosis has developed within the public, where death with no chance of survival, without any notice to prepare, is causing a mentality of "better him/her than me".

Safety is one of the most important part of the human psyche, and when we become convinced we can never achieve any feeling of that safety, death becomes an even bigger monster. Not only is it viewed as a monster, but a monster that always wins at some point. We become less concerned about helping our fellow man, but concerned with our own safety and survival at any means necessary.

These are difficult and complex issues, and to strip away the layers to get to the core problem may be out of the scope of my abilities, but there is something much more simple that is the biggest reason for this discussion.

Why not return to the old fashioned way of letting someone die at home, in the comfort and peace of the place one would feel most comfortable. Once death has occurred allow the person to stay at home until family and friends have had a chance to pay their last respects. Why take the recently deceased to some generic and false building, where they are dressed up and put in makeup as to give the illusion that they are just in a peaceful sleep?

One benefit, I believe, to doing it the old way is that we can begin to include our youth in a more personal way. By "keeping them in the loop", children can be a part of the grieving process in equal part with the rest of the family. The feeling of shared responsibility and importance may give young people the chance to discuss their own fears, and open a line of dialog with their elders that might give them a better foundation for handling death in better ways as they grow older. This is no guarantee of course, but I fail to see how it is worse than sheltering kids "for their own good" away from death, making it more of a shocking thing to deal with as they get "old enough to handle it".

This may be a concept that seems insignificant to larger social and cultural change at first look. What I think may happen though, is that after a couple of generations of treating death with a different attitude that includes children with equal respect, a domino effect may occur that will eliminate some of the more grotesque practices that businesses and medical fields sometimes exploit, and allow a growth in intellectual and emotional approaches in handling death.