Consequences

I love this word. It is just fun to say. By definition it means something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions. Using logic and past history one can derive the often negative result (consequences) of almost any rational action. I am teaching my daughter the word. She says it much cuter then I do. As she grows I will explain and expand the meaning of the word. Many times I have written about this subject indirectly. Most topics have offered solutions and the most probable consequences weighed against them.


Every single problem and every issue facing this country is a result of a lack of understanding of the consequences. Whether it be something as international as Iran and North Korea arming themselves because they saw themselves included in a group where one of them was invaded. Or more personal issues such as education and health care, we have no sense of the negative impact of our choices. Often the consequences seem so indirect that we don’t realize it. This is the case with cheap imported goods and global warming. We in the west have made an art out of postponing or removing completely the negative effects of all of our crucial life changes. We often do this by spreading the results over everybody in the community. United we stand, and united we also may fall. Get pregnant and don’t want to? Have an abortion. Buy a house or too many things that you can’t afford? Go bankrupt. Eat unhealthy, drink like a fish, and smoke until your lungs are tarred black. You have health insurance to pay for the procedures. Drive like an idiot, the safety features on your car will save your life, and the forced auto insurance will pay for the damage. Don’t bother teaching your children anything. Let the school system be their mentors, disciplinarians, as well as educators. The only thing as parents you have to do is donate the egg and the sperm. Sure, get married. If one day you wake up and don’t want to be, you can just get a divorce. Never mind any of the consequences.


Many of our problems that we have today are addressing issues that were caused by “solutions” not very well weighed out. Slavery? Not very well thought out. Freeing the slaves? Great idea, but they stopped half way through the thought. What do you do with a 20% unemployed poor people. As the country grew economically we entered the industrial age. More people were required to work in factories and the business that support them. As farms were shut down and more fathers went from being “stay at home dads (farmers) to “9 to 5ers” the male role model’s impact on the home was reduced. What was the impact on the children? Then we got into this habit of sending our men off to wars. The women then had to take their place in the work force. The men that did come back were often messed up in the head and the women either had to or wanted to continue to work to support the financial “needs” of the family. At that point who was responsible for passing on the lessons and the moral fibers of the past generations to the new one? How about nobody. Now we drop the kids in our public schools and hope they learn these things from strangers who are under paid and over worked just like the rest of us. This is just one string of events that the consequences were not fully realized.


Many of the things that we in the west find repressive, inhumane, and violations of human rights in other cultures are feeble attempts at reducing some of the negative consequences. One child policies, forced marriages, rigorous religious structure, extreme gender and class distinctions, and strict criminal punishments are a few examples. These are all activities to reduce the impact of many issues that plague even our society.


In western culture we have members know as “defense attorney’s” whose first priority is to prove innocent clients, guiltless. Here the choices of somebody else has a negative result on their clients life. But in the case of guilty ones, their job is to reduce the impact of the consequence that their client must endure. It is very factual that the amount of money spent on these negotiators of the law is directly proportional to the depth of the consequences. Inherently having an advocate to reduce your negative impact is neither good nor bad, it is when that courtesy is distributed unequally throughout the society that the lessons meant by punishment are skewed.


Even the biblical teachings and something as basic as the 10 commandments were designed to counsel people’s choices towards ones with less sever consequences. Many of the negative results of these teachings were of more internal sacrifices.


Whether it is nature or our legislators attempting to hold the citizens accountable for their actions and choices it doesn’t matter. Somewhere some how, as each generation passes, less of us are understanding the meaning of consequences. On this tract we will not only deal with problems of today, but forever compounding problems.

Iran and North Korea: Much To Do About Nothing

There are a few proverbs in life that are a staple to my belief system. One is a Chinese proverb I learned in my studies of military strategies. It says, “never waste your resources blocking a strike that won’t hit you.” On the flip side of that understanding is knowing that getting your opponents to waste their resources by making them flinch is a productive use of your resources. If you have ever played the hand slapping game, (we called it “red hands” or “bloody knuckles” when using a striking instrument”) you know that there is as much effort in getting your opponent to react pre-maturely as there is in actually striking them.

Iran and North Korea are conducting activities in the open for a reason. They could easily hide any of this stuff. As a matter of guess, I would believe that they are doing some of the most damming activities in secret. In the grand scheme of things, all they have to do is deny it and those who want to believe one way or the other will follow their beliefs. But for some reason they are conducting their activities in a way that is sure to draw a response from their opponents. In Iran’s case they are claiming it is for peaceful energy purposes and even our own intelligence can’t prove otherwise. That reason is to pull us into the drama, keep making the western world flinch until we are too slow to react.

In reality why bother. Let them make whatever they want. If Israel is worried about them, let them take care of it, or at least produce some credible, usable intelligence. Instead of worrying about what Iran or NK are doing, make them worry about what we are doing. We have rights and would be accepted to put counter missile batteries all along the borders of both countries. Heck, put some war heads right there as well. Let them know that they are wasting money on resources they will never be able to use. Sanction anybody who tries to help either Iran or North Korea along.

To their face, the west need only to present a kind and understanding demeanor. “Oh you are working on a nuclear war head? That is nice.” That should be flowed with an expression that you are curious as to why they feel they need them. Not that it is some mystery that the three countries named in the (Best cartoon villain voice) “Axis of evil” are the ones we are now having trouble with. Whatever reason they give, just nod your head and say, “good point” and go on about your business of building a defense system that will react to any strike that will hit its target. Never let them know you are doing it. Keep all of your cards close. Should they launch an attack, your defense systems should be a surprise they didn’t calculate for. When their attack fails they will then be open for retaliation, with all the support and gratitude of the world. You hit them hard, fast, and show no mercy. (Remember, the world’s nations are like a woman. Each event is only scored as one point. There is no magnitude.)

This is how you deal militarily with nations such as Iran and North Korea. All this concern is for nothing. Nothing can be done about to stop them if they feel the need to arm themselves. However to be honest, intelligent diplomatic maneuvers would have allowed us to never be here in the first place.

Too Close To Home

For you 4 regulars, you might realize that I pulled the "Personal Story" post. There is a chance that too many people that might be close to or work with my wife are reading it. The point of this blog is to share my story in hopes of helping others who others who might have questions or end up in the same situation. It is not a platform to hurt or embarrass anybody, especially my estranged wife. I honestly never thought anybody would take time to read this silly blog. (Well except for John. He is easily entertained though.) I hope people go back and read the post preceding this situation. Those are much more informative.

Sorry if this causes any inconvenience. The post will return when it is more then likely to help somebody. If you want to read my personal story, you can dig for SSRI marriage stories and you will find it has been repeated over and over again since the introduction of this devil drug.

The Divorce Journey

Hello folks, I will now be posting on most of the more personal related issues here. http://thedivorcejourney.blogspot.com/. I only have the introduction up now. But there will be more to follow shortly.

Marijuana Is To Alcohol As Prozac (SSRI’s) Is To Cocaine

I have discussed on other blogs, if not this one, many times the logical disconnect in logic between the legalization of alcohol and the criminalization of marijuana. The main reason alcohol and tobacco are legal and pot isn’t, is due to a major marketing and lobbing effort by the two industries to push out a substitute good. The now cult classic flick known as “Refer madness” was originally produced as a public awareness message to warn of the dangers of marijuana usage. It was funded by the alcohol and tobacco industries. It contains wild and untrue assertions about the use of pot. It includes a scene of people taking it intravenously. It was meant to stir paranoia in the ignorant masses. It worked.

“Weed” had one major problem, it grows like a weed anywhere. Hard to make money off that. Unless you live in the lush climate of the south, you are not growing tobacco in your back yard. Certainly not in the quantities to support the average nicotine habit. So there is an industry. As a home brewer, I can tell you that brewing a drinkable beer is no easy chore even with today’s advances. So alcohol had an industry.

Cocaine can be grown and harvested then brought to the border pretty inexpensively. The biggest cost is the logistics in getting to the US consumer. And again, aside from the awful social affects that come with it, cocaine was pushed out by the alcohol and tobacco industries. Here they weren’t making up the socially unhealthy side affects. Prozac as it turns out is a very complimentary drug for the two industries. This is because its use increases the desire for their product. Go figure.

“So, LOL, besides the political and economical relationship, what else do they have in common? Right now this seems like a stretch.” Nice class, I am glad you asked. Cocaine acts on the brain by increasing the dopamine levels. Get this, it does this by “inhibiting” the cells to reabsorb dopamine. (If that doesn’t sound familiar, it will.) Dopamine is a response to pleasure signals. In your brain it makes you feel happy and pleasurable when warranted. So without the ability to absorb it, people become “euphoric”. Dopamine is a precursor (forerunner) of adrenaline and a closely related molecule, noradrenaline.

Now, for those who have been following along, Prozac and the class of drugs known as (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) SSRI’s. Please note the word “inhibitors”. Serotonin does the exact same thing as dopamine from a slightly different perspective. SSRI’s stop the reabsorbing of this pleasure producing chemical back into the cells. The results of it’s presence in the brain is nearly mirrored to that of cocaine. So are the side affects.

So lets take this one step further and apply a little logic. Why don’t we want people openly using cocaine in our society. Most of us, especially reading this blog would agree that cocaine and any drug use that doesn’t negatively affect the community at large should be completely legal. If you want to sit in your living room and snort coke, destroy your house, and scream profanity at the top of your lungs, go to it. As long as you don’t have a spouse or children who will be effected by this activity, party on Skippy. What you do to yourself in your own home is your business. However, coke and crack alike has a personality altering affect that produces citizens that are not functional healthy members of the community. By that, I mean they loose the ability to be good parents, hold down a job, or do an important job that requires responsibility to the required level. It has been known to produce violent and other criminal behavior such as theft, fraud, and sexual crimes. So our freedom seeking American society has cast it out as too much of a threat to our goal of social harmony. However, these SSRI’s have been proven to produce the exact same result. Because they are not often identified as the cause, they are not demonized. So why are they handed out like jelly beans at Easter.

Look, when you are talking about messing with brain chemicals, there are no guarantees. That is basically what my own counselor told me. Handing people these drugs nothing more then treating them like lab rats. So if for no apparent reason your wife runs off with your child and then falsely files a police report that she has been kidnapped, it is thought that adjustments need made. We all know people who can drink like a fish and walk out generally sober. We also know people who after 1 drink act like they have been drinking all afternoon. I know people who if I told you they do coke with some regularity, you would curl up your face and say, “really”. God knows I did. These drugs have the exact same consistency. The results are often the same unhealthy personality emerges. The difference is that since they are FDA approved and doctor prescribed, people look right past them as the cause when somebody’s personality on these flip. The diagnosis is further complicated by the fact that some people’s brain chemistry naturally goes haywire and act similarly. This results on many supporters of these drugs to say, “see people do this all the time that haven’t taken this drug”. To that I say, “my foot gets wet whether I get caught in the rain or I piss on it. The difference is one is my fault, and you can’t do anything about the weather.”

There are countless cases of people on these drugs doing the most heinous crimes. Here are just a few high profile ones. http://www.health-essentials.info/science/health-issues/ssri01.html . Then there are the ones that don’t make the news because nobody makes the connection. Then there are the grey areas where the personality flip ruins small individual lives as their person turns dysfunctional, but doesn’t do anything illegal. Children end up growing up in split homes, financial strains cause bankruptcy, disease are spread, abortions are had, and unwanted children are brought into the world. But we will leave that for another post.

The problem is that people who are already in a troubled state are going to doctors they trust and getting prescriptions for these antidepressants. Whether it be a vet returning with PTSD, a child who lost his mother at an early age, a deadly disease patient that is suffering from depressions, a mother suffering from post partum, or my favorite a wife who suffers from mild anxiety, anyone of them could be predisposed to heightened receptiveness to an increase in serotonin. Many times their adverse feelings are completely unrelated to a lack of serotonin level. You might as well snort coke or become an alcoholic. At the end of the day, whatever problem caused you to seek out mental health therapy, its still there. Now you have a deficiency in whatever was causing your problem and a serotonin addiction. Now you are headlong in the wrong direction at mach 2 with your ass on fire. Great job docs.

The trouble is how many people are getting rich off this. The drug companies are getting rich, the divorce lawyers are busy, the courts are full, the prisons are fuller, and the therapists who prescribed the drug often get business from the patients spouse, children, and even extended family members. Oh and don’t forget the doctors prescribing it.

Look, there are a select group of a few people who have serotonin deficiencies. For these people, SSRI’s are the answer. But what is becoming evident to me is that many of these people are not having their issues addressed. They are being prescribed aspirin for a brain tumor. I personally know of three people who were prescribed SSRI’s for to cope with anexiety. Caught early enough and having knowledgeable people around them they were taken off the drug quickly. One had a thyroid problem. The other had an androgen deficiency. The third just had deep rooted issues that needed brought into the open. A forth, well, I miss my baby.

Separated Parents: The Bible, The Courts, And The Science.

Those who read regularly know one of my pet peeve arguments is “ U.S. laws are based on Christianity”. It is total chutzpah. The reality is first “Christian values” were based on values that had evolved to be socially functional. “Don’t lie”, “don’t cheat”, “don’t steal”, “don’t kill”, “respect your parents”, “expect to be treated the same way you treat other people” are not profound revelations. They are rules for a community to reduce aggressive behavior. If in fact he was a deity, he came down only to point out the ideas we should already have been aware of. The US laws were designed around these basic understandings. However, with about 90% regularity, if a value falls in the grey area, the US laws are crafted in complete disregard for what the bible would council.

I could go on citing examples, but that would make a long post. Instead the one that is fresh on my mind is the lesson highlighted by the story of King Solomon. For reference sake I will sum it up. Two women had babies of about the same age. One woman’s child had died. Both women claimed the living baby as their own. (I know it is hard to envision this in our separated living type culture, but remember back then they were more tribal living arrangements.) Unable to resolve the dispute they were brought before the king. The King Solomon proposed to just “split the baby in half”. One woman actually agreed to the decision. The other broke into tears saying she would rather see her baby live then to suffer such a fate. The king recognized that the real mother would never allow her baby to be hurt and awarded the custody to the second woman.

In this area US laws are 180 degrees out of the teaching of the bible. Here our courts don’t just suggest, but often demand that the baby be “split in half”, at least emotionally speaking. First and foremost the laws are set up as such that the mother gets primary custody unless proven to be a vengeful homicidal abusive maniac. Even then the courts only want her to go through a program, and show that she has gotten her emotions under control. Even if one of the parents are proven to be to the extreme, the courts still generally allow some sort of visitation and custody rights. These are the extreme cases. The grey areas in between where a parent is shown to act irresponsibly and/ or out of the best interest of the child, that parent is still awarded custody. If it is the mother, she is often awarded primary custody. This is a situation that allows a parent who is looking to emotionally torment the other parent a link to do so. We all know people who have crazy ex’s that use the kids to do irrational acts.

Generally US family courts try to establish what they call “joint custody”. (Picture a thick burly royal guard with giant sword.) This is where the two parents share equally in decision making and often living arrangements. This only tends to work if the separation was something that both parents wanted and they had been emotionally sepaerated for years. They often became some variety of “friends” over the course of their together but separate lives.

Joint custody certainly doesn’t work if only one parent wanted the separation and the other is hurt and frustrated with the other parent. The parent often uses the child as a pawn in some game of emotional chess. They will say and do things to the child that shouldn’t even be consider acceptable. It also doesn’t work when neither parent wanted the split, but just became involved in some kind of hurtful game escalated to the extreme of divorce. I have seen this a few times personally where not only my friends ex is acting not on the best interest of the child by doing irrational activates, but so was my friend. Every now and then I would check him by saying, “what are you doing. I though you guys were through with each other. Why would you continue the drama?” One friend made my jaw drop when in a burst of raw honesty she said, “I still love him, and I hate him for that.” I mean what do you say to that? I ordered a round of shots.

So in this instance as in many others the US laws are not “based on biblical teachings”. But wait, there’s more. It turns out they don’t even act in accordance to scientific understanding either. Here is a study that was conducted by Professor Yongmin Sun of OSU released in early 2008. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080507132910.htm

It turns out that children of separated families have greatly varying chances of success depending on their custodial situation. First of all, as has been said by every councilor and even during the “separated parents” seminar I was forced to attend they stress that just having separated parents greatly reduces their chances at reaching their full potential. As Sun put it in this interview, “A stable family situation after divorce does not erase the negative effects of a divorce.” The study goes on to show that children of stable custodial environment are far more likely to succeed and be functional then children of changing custodial situations. The main point in the article showed that while children of single parent custody had the same chance of going to college as an “always married” family structure. However, the level of degree was reduced in the cases where sole custody was the norm. Children of “joint custody” environments fared half as well in most aspects as their other peers. Bottom line, divorce is a damming experience for a child. Passing the child back and forth is further damaging. Yet that is what the courts try to do.

The reasoning behind the disadvantage of the separated parents are no mystery. The fact that split parents suffer from reduced financial backing and social continuity was cited by the study. The courts attempt to recreate the “standard of living” in two places. Most couple could barely afford to do it in one. The second is a core understanding of the meaning of relationship and commitment to a common goal that are demonstrated by a divorce. These children often are more willing to give up on goals and commitments that are needed to drive their way up the ladder of success.

So as unusual, when I trash a social norm, I have a solution. Well part of one. In this case marginalizing the damage seems about the best one can do. First, obviously the situation has to be taken into account. A pregnant teen is a vastly different situation then an established marriage that were not “till death”. I have talked at length about teen pregnancy in the past, and will not address that here. But improving the fate of a child from a marriage that ends should have a different set of criteria.

First of all, I draw on wisdom from a short story I read I think in 6th grade called the “test”. The basic jest of the story was that people attempting to get their drivers license were put under hypnosis and made to believe they were involved in a horrible crash that killed their love ones. When they woke, if they still wanted their license they were committed. If they didn’t they were approved to get it. The first test of a parent should be making sure they understand the ramifications of separating. If they are still willing to go through with it, then maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to have custody of their child. This concept should not wait till people are in divorce court to be explained, it should be part of the marriage license process. If one of you are willing to separate, break your vows, or dissolve the family, then that person risks loosing access to their child. There has to be consequences. Now if the person is looking to separate for reason of abuse, then obviously the courts would have to consider. But simply wanting out is not an acceptable excuse. It demonstrates a selfish disregard for the child and the sanctity of marriage. It is damage that is actually felt financially upon the entire system and community as demonstrated by the study. Too many times marriages that have just reached minor lows end without properly addressing the issues has progressed. Making the consequences more dire might make the couple reconsider.

As a personal experience, I know a dozen or so divorced couples with children. Two of them stand out. Both of these children have very little interaction with more then one parent. In those cases, the children have grown to be very functional and are off to renowned success. Luckily, one of my friends recently got the chance to do it again with the right person. He is so ready it seems.

Defamation Of Character: In Depth

With the return of a few politicians and sports figures to public light, the word “defamation” has come up in conversation a few times. As a legal term it is interesting to consider what this means, and why it would be included in our legal system.

First let us define the term “defamation”. M-W.com defines it as “the act of defaming another.” “Defaming is further defined as “to harm the reputation of by libel or slander.” So “libel” is “a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression b (1): a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2): defamation of a person by written or representational means (3): the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures. “Slander” is just a restating of libel. Slander seems to be used for short indefensible verbal attacks. (Basically any political news conference ever aired.)

These definitions tend to miss the elements of truth and relativity. I think the Wikipedia article might get it a little closer. (I know Wikipedia is normally avoided as a source, but sometimes it is useful.) It says, “defamation In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel (for written words), slander (for spoken words), and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image.” I have a joke at work when I am supporting somebody who is doing something dangerous. I say, “You know there are two ways to the top, either be better then the guy in front of you, or take him out.” From the perspective of defamatory statements, this would mean that a person would have something to gain by uttering a nonfactual statement. This issue is expressly addressed by the Bible as being one of the ten commandments. “Thou shall not bear false witness.” It turns out in England they don’t really care about the truth of the statement, just its intent. In their case even a truthful statement (juicy gossip) when uttered if the teller is trying to gain social or financial advantage is considered defamatory. This from the country most renowned for it’s gossip.

Another word often associated with this term is “derogatory”. Defined as the act of disparaging; belittling. The reasoning behind these forms of human communication are the same. A functional community needs both full and accurate information in order to continue functionally. Thus my outrage over the lies told by the previous administration in the rallying of the US public to war.

So why would our governing representatives adapt a negative attitude towards this activity? Simple, because the courts or their representatives are rarely present at the incident that ends up in front of them, and since often legal issues are decided by a jury of peers, falsely influencing public opinion can cause damage to justice of the outcome. Think of the Salem which trials here. In the days of small communities as well as in the days of mass communication, this truth in statement is very important. The sad part is that it is also important to our political system, but these types of statements are often used in politics. It is called “going negative”. Sometimes the truth and fiction are separated by a thin grey line that would take more resources to fight then they are worth.

They irony of the idea of defamation of charterer is that we have a 24hr news cycle that is dedicated to the process of walking that thin line. I gave a comparative of news stories mid last year that were posted by The Associated Press and the same story posted by FOX news. The story was about a protest at the WTO meeting. There were thousands of peaceful protestors that were also infiltrated by a few dozen self proclaimed anarchist. This was a fact included in the AP story. The FOX story was titled “Anarchist Disrupt meeting with violent behavior.” They went on to tell nearly the same story as the AP article which was titled “Few problems plague otherwise peaceful demonstration”. The group that organized the peaceful demonstration was defamed by FOX who had an agenda to advance to appeal to their demographic. However, the area was grey, so no court case could really stand the test.

Think about it this way. If you mailed a letter to the other side of the country but knowingly put a false address on it, whose fault is it that the information didn’t make it? So if there are not measures to stop defamation of character, libel, slander, perjury, and other deragative statements, then whose fault would it be if bad and damaging decisions were reached by the people who work for the governing system?

The dichotomy of the situation is that in order to have a healthy democracy speech needs to flow unhindered by opposing forces. But that speech must be truthful and relative in order to remain on a positive track.

On a personal note, I have never attempted to advance an agenda here. Almost all of my perspectives are backed up by links and/ or citations of my sources. Every post is about the quest for the truth or to answer the question “why” is this reality. I invite anybody to challenge me if they see it otherwise.