Theory of a Thousand Marbles

A friend sent the following story:

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having a fixed commitment. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities. I'll call it the "theory of a thousand marbles."

You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail, and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. Let's use it well.

Iron and Wine - Lion's Mane

What's important.

Ignorance is Optional

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

Believe it or not, ignorance is optional. We control whether we have the knowledge to be fully functioning human beings. This includes the fundamentals of science, technology, history (and biography), government, politics, and spirituality (and ethics), and the arts. The more we know about the things we need to know, the easier and more fulfilling our lives will be.

But what is ignorance? I think that there are five factors which encompass ignorance, and which lead to a painful and diminished life.

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge.

Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events.

Third, is wooden-headedness: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts.

Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests.

Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Why does this matter? It matters because mistakes are the products of ignorance. It matters because ignorance limits our options for solving our problems.

One of the first steps that we Americans can do to move from ignorance to knowledge is to become familiar with our Constitution. You can learn more here and here.

Learn -- because you have an option.

Endangered Species Act

Thanks to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) -- the 1973 law that requires the federal government to protect endangered species and plan for their recovery -- iconic animals like the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon and the gray whale have rebounded to healthier numbers. It is one of the real success stories of the green movement.

If the Bush Administration has its way, however, those protections may soon be endangered themselves. This week, the White House proposed a sweeping regulatory overhaul of the ESA, virtually eliminating the independent scientific evaluation of the environmental impact of federal actions.

The administration has gone to great lengths to circumnavigate the clear language of the law by rigging the science (in many cases ignoring their own scientists), negotiating settlements favorable to industry and simply refusing to obey court orders. This time, however, the administration means to rewrite the law itself.

It's no secret the Bush administration, along with conservative Republican lawmakers and special-interest industries -- mining, logging and oil -- dislike environmental laws. Their interests should not outweigh our common public interest to preserve all life.

A loud public outcry is needed to halt the process. The president must not be allowed to achieve this dishonorable goal.

(To read more about biodiversity and it's importance to us all, visit E.O. Wilson's Biodiversity Foundation site. To see wonderful examples of life on our planet, visit Frans Lanting's site.)

Energy Fiction vs Reality

America, one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, now pays roughly the same price for oil as the poorest nation, and we respond in immature and irrational ways, stamping our feet and calling for action.

A toxic combination of $4 gasoline, voter anxiety and presidential ambition is making it impossible for this country to have the grown-up conversation it needs about energy. Our presidential candidates are talking about tax gimmicks, tapping into the oil reserve, or drilling everywhere and anywhere now.

Here is the underlying reality: A nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while possessing less than 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness at the pump, much less self-sufficiency. The only plausible strategy is to cut consumption while embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels and energy sources. This is a point the honest candidate should be making at every turn.

Yet four times this summer, Republicans stopped the Senate from taking up legislation that would have provided tax credits to an array of renewable energy entrepreneurs.

Like a nation of small, selfish, petulant children, we cannot rise above politics to establish a policy.

The Union of Concerned Scientists have four things which can start today; it is not dependent on future technologies:

1. Make better cars and SUVs - The technology exists to build cars, minivans, and SUVs that are just as powerful and safe as vehicles on the road today, but get 40 miles per gallon (mpg) or more.

2. Modernize our electricity system - A national standard requiring 10 percent of our electricity to be generated from renewable energy sources by 2020 is an attainable goal. We are already using clean, safe, renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass (fuel from plant matter) to produce clean energy.

3. Increase energy efficiency in homes and businesses - Like better technology for transportation and power generation, the technology for more efficient motors, appliances, windows, homes, and manufacturing processes is here today.

4. Support American ingenuity - Vigorous support for research and development is critical to achieving practical solutions. Yet, we invest far more in subsidies for the fossil fuel and nuclear industries today than on R&D for renewable energy or advanced vehicle technologies. For instance, Congress appropriated $736 million for fossil fuel research and $667 million for nuclear research in 2001, but only $376 million for all renewable energy technologies combined.

(To this list, I would add building up our railway system, as explained in my post here.)

While the United States has a clear-cut moral responsibility to lead the way internationally, we also have the financial and technical expertise that will help us reap the economic benefits of new markets for clean technology exports. If, however, we choose to sit on the sidelines as the rest of the world moves ahead, we will lose our competitive advantage to Europe and Japan.

Masters of War

Betrayal of Principles

At the end of World War II, 1200 heavy bombers flew over the vicinity of Royan in western France and dropped napalm, killing German soldiers and thousands of French civilians, destroying what was once a beautiful little resort town. This was April, 1945, and the German soldiers were stranded, left behind, waiting for the war to end.

During the Korean War, a surprise U.S. air attack on east Wolmi island on Sept. 10, 1950, killed 100 or more South Korean civilians. In clear weather from low altitude, U.S. forces napalmed numerous small buildings, strafed children, women and old people in the open area.

In November, 2005, U.S. Marines shot 24 Iraqi civilians, killing men, women and children at close range. Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,'" Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."

In war, there is nothing noble. In war, there are only betrayals of the principles for which the war was supposed to have been fought. I don't want to honor military heroism -- that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who have opposed the horror of war.

Buddhists believe that all life is precious. "No killing" is the First Precept. For those who have, with intent and foresight, harmed or caused harm, their future is determined by the law of Karma. There is no exception.

However, Buddhists don't believe in passivity. We believe we should do something about the conflicts in the world. But we should not do war. Because war makes things worse than they were before. War has consequences which you cannot predict.

What we can do is change from a military superpower to a humanitarian superpower. We are enormously wealthy. Let's use that wealth to help change social and economic conditions around the world. Is this less of a goal than is war?