what are our rights

Our “rights” are a constant source of discussion, making one believe that we are naturally endowed with a list of these, and the only argument revolves around which items are on the list. The reality may not be so simple.

Looking at the natural world, it’s hard to find anything resembling rights. From birth on it is a struggle to eat and to keep from being eaten. A creature’s survival depends on luck and on how good it is at these two things. Lions don’t have a right to a fat gazelle, and gazelles don’t have a right to plentiful grass or to immunity from lions.

What humans consider rights are part of the social overlay we place over the natural world, something that imposes our concepts of order on what we perceive as natural disorder. Like most other items in human culture, these are artificial, in that they do not occur naturally. We build certain rights into the structure of our societies. For example, most societies feel one has the right not to be murdered, so they impose severe penalties on murderers.

When the Declaration of Independence claims, “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,” they start the sentence with “We.” In this they are saying that our culture, our society, our leaders hold these things to be true. They did not claim that this applies to people in far away places, bob cats, inch worms or oak trees.

Not all societies have our long list of rights. In some places, the king or chief has most of the rights, and the people have the right to do whatever doesn’t displease the leader. The old Soviet Union believed most rights were reserved for the collective, not the individual, and the collective was embodied in the leaders. Other societies base all rights on their religious books.

Naturally, we prefer our long list of rights, but even in our society some people would rather sacrifice some of those for a bit more order and security. In times of war, we tend toward order and security, and the degree and timing of the return to rights is always debated. The bottom line being that there are no set of rights that seem natural and proper for every human and for every occasion.

We can add to our list or subtract from it. We can have the right to universal medical care, equal civil rights for all, rights of the poor equal to those of the rich, rights of women regarding child bearing and many others. We can even lose our rights and allow someone to enslave us.

We, individually and as a people, have to decide what rights we are to have, and then we must secure these and defend them, once secured. We can secure them by force, which often backfires on us, leaving us with fewer rights, or we can secure them through legislation and jurisprudence. We can also convince others that our list of rights is best, and then we build a consensus which changes our society’s point of view. We can stand up individually against transgressions against our rights, or we can act collectively. However we choose to do it, and whatever list of rights we deem proper, we must do it, for without a conscious social act, we revert to the natural world, where the concept of “rights” has no meaning.

Creating wilderness

One of the most personally satisfying things I’ve ever done was to help create wilderness. I hiked in beautiful, unspoiled country, took pictures and notes, drew lines on a map, and a few months later we had new wilderness.

I was volunteering with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance and The California Wilderness Coalition on the Wilderness 2000 program. We were concentrating our efforts in the northern Santa Lucias, a land of mixed oversight. These mountains above the Big Sur coast have BLM, National Forest, and Wilderness lands, plus scattered private lands. One can walk among the various federal designations and not see the difference.

Our plan was to survey wild public land, put it in a big bill, and send it to Congress, followed up with a public support campaign, along with lobbying. The result was Congressman Farr’s, “Big Sur Wilderness and Conservation Act of 2002," which created over 50,000 acres of new Wilderness. So, with a map, a notebook and a camera, I got to “play God” and help create new Gardens of Eden.

Late December seemed more like summer as I climbed the Coast Ridge Road out of the Ventana Resort in Big Sur. It’s a steep, dirt road that’s used by the Forest Service and the few land owners. You can’t drive or bike it, but you are free to hike it for twenty miles along the ridge. About four miles up the road is an unspoiled piece of forest nicknamed Outlaw.

The walk to Outlaw passes through cool, second growth redwoods before it opens to the grassland hills. The ground undulates away to forested canyons, down to the highway and the sea.

Outlaw sits between the Coast Ridge Road and the Ventana Wilderness. The Terrace Creek Trail descends into Outlaw and drops two impressive miles to the Pine Ridge trail in the Wilderness. It begins in hillside meadows studded with oak and madrone and drops into redwood groves with cascading waterfalls.

The few homes on the ridge were deserted, and without other hikers I was alone with the sounds of nature. The air was thin and clear in a way peculiar to sunny winter days. The smallest details from miles up the coast seemed only yards away. The dirt road undulated along the corrugated ridge. I took photos down toward the Big Sur Gorge below. Then I walked most of the way down the Terrace Creek Trail, almost to the campground and the wilderness.

Terrace Creek Trail was in disrepair. Downed trees requiring climbing and scrambling. In the wooded canyon, the terraces in the creek became visible, long cascading waterfalls that dropped to the Big Sur River below.

Outlaw wasn’t the only parcel I surveyed. Logwood, another, larger parcel, was a bit further up Coast Ridge Road. It also extended down toward the Big Sur Gorge from the road and had all the qualities of a wilderness.

At the Boronda Ridge trailhead, the rain and wind almost changed my mind. I lacked rain gear, and there might not be enough visibility to survey and photograph. But, the rain was stopping, and I could turn back if things got uncomfortable.

Within minutes the sun started to break through the clouds. Before long I was so warm I had to remove my sweater.

The ridge was vivid green from the rains, and along the trail were tiny violet flowers. Too small to survive in the meadow, they’d found a niche on the abandoned roadway. The trail occasionally turned from the exposed ridge to stands of oaks and a brief respite from the wind.

An hour up the trail, I stood on a rocky outcropping. The wind had whipped the ocean to a silver-gray meringue. A couple of hundred feet below me two deer looked up and watched me until I moved on.

Coast Ridge Road was deserted. Walking north, I looked east toward Logwood Creek. I found an abandoned road going east, down toward the creek. I followed it until I was sure it was impassable. The large fallen tree and young madrones in the roadway convinced me.

Having hiked almost to Outlaw, I turned back south, towards Cold Springs Camp, at the southern extreme of Logwood. The wind in the trees was so loud that I turned around often, thinking a truck was coming. The pines were leaning and shaking, and I was concerned about falling branches. The solitude and the howling of the wind gave an eerie, surreal quality to the five mile walk.

The wind was getting stronger, and the temperature was dropping, and I was anxious to find the De Angulo trail. The first part of the trail was treacherous, a steep trail bed of loose rock. Even below the rocky section, the piles of leaves, freshly wet from the rain, made the trail slippery, and in places the trail had broken away leaving it the width of a single boot. The dark stillness of occasional wooded patches was a welcome change.

I stopped to enjoy the view. The cloud cover was cumulonimbus piles rushing by. The shadows of the clouds on the ocean were like lines of ghostly, gray, giant amoebae marching southward across a mirrored sea. Sunlight streamed through the clouds in fan-like rays. I might have stood there the rest of the afternoon, but the moments of sunshine ended suddenly with gusts that almost knocked me off my feet.

I was almost seven and a half hours into the hike before I saw other humans, a young couple coming up the trail.

On the last two miles of the way down, I experienced hail, rain and even snow. And at that point I was greeted by two dogs, who walked up as if they knew me and took it upon themselves to escort me the rest of the way to the highway, as if I were somehow expected, as if this entire drama was staged for my enjoyment or education.

It was an exhilarating and satisfying way to help the environment.

You can be a fool

Remember when you were a kid and your overly supportive parents said you could be anything you wanted to be? Then you struggled through high school and college, and now you're not working at your dream job.

You haven't won a Pulitzer prize, an Oscar or the Nobel. You haven't discovered a cure for cancer, started the next mega Silicon Valley business or married the person of your dreams. Discouraged?

Don't be. You can still become a fool. It's easy, and it will make you popular. Here's a couple easy steps.

First, have lots of opinions and shout them out with conviction at every opportunity. You don't have to do the careful research necessary to determine if your opinions have any basis in fact. That takes valuable time away from forming opinions and using them to make friends. Better to get your opinions from vocal opinion makers. Just choose opinions that have a strong emotional appeal and repeat them, changing the wording slightly to personalize them. People will either agree with you and be your friends, or they will disagree with you and you can have an argument. Either way, people are talking to you and acknowledging you.

Then make sure you think in black and white. Gray areas confuse people, and you will be left with only those insufferable intellectuals to talk with, and we all know how they are regarded by the public.

Once you mastered "basic fool," there are higher levels you can work on.

Ha ve a merry, secular Xmas

It’s that time of year again, the time I write a short piece to justify my enjoyment of Christmas, or my preferred “Xmas.” People assume that since I’m an atheist, I would shun this religious holiday.

On the contrary on two counts. First I welcome it, rather than shun it. Second, I’m convinced Christmas is really a secular holiday, despite what the church-goers say.

Historically, Christmas has most often been an excuse for wildness, drunkenness, and rowdy behavior of all sorts. In fact there was a period in the 1600s when the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in England, mostly because of the excesses of the party animals. It was even outlawed for a time in parts of New England, for much the same reason.

Once we shook off the Middle Ages, Christmas became a time to cut loose, with only a tip of the hat, at best, to the birth of Jesus. Times and work were hard, and in mid winter not much work could be done, so people had time to celebrate the way people always tend to, with excess.

Religion started creeping back into the holiday in the 19^th century, but at the same time a different tradition was starting. Charles Dickens was one of the first and best at promoting this new attitude toward an old holiday. With the writing of A Christmas Carol, he got people thinking about the idea that Christmas was a time of unselfish acts toward others, generosity of wallet and spirit. Note that Jesus wasn’t mentioned in his delightful little book.

People now not only give over-priced gifts to family, friends and co workers, they also donate to charity, bring sacks of food to can food drives, drop money in the little pots the bell shakers have in front of stores, and generally act nicely toward people in the street.

Strangers pass me on the Boulevard and we wish each other a Merry Christmas. It makes us both feel good, and it doesn’t require a debate or conversation about the existence of God.

At the same time as A Christmas Carol, the idea of using the holiday to get together with family and rekindle ties became popular. The Christmas feast became tradition.

We send cards to friends in distant places, rekindling friendships that might otherwise fade. Some of us decorate our homes to stave off the darkness of mid winter. We have house parties, where we give our friends and families food and drink, and we don’t ask them to contribute or to reciprocate.

I have a great time doing things most of us enjoy: giving and receiving gifts, eating good food, drinking good wine and talking with good friends, and none of this comes with the requirement to talk about an itinerant Jewish preacher who was born two thousand years ago.

Educational Reform Starts with Tenure Reform

There seems to be a growing consensus about education reform in this country, at least a consensus about how we have a serious problem. Unfortunately, education is a complex affair, made up of many components. Many of the diverse small problems that make up the large one require leadership skills, buy-in from a diverse group of stakeholders and revised curriculums. There is, however, one area that isn't complex and would go a long way toward true reform, even though it would be hard to implement.

Tenure is a relic from long ago, perhaps a good idea 100 years ago, but a disaster now. Eliminate tenure and start improving education immediately.

What is gained with tenure. Excellent teachers aren't going to lose their jobs, and hiring new teachers to replace higher paid older teachers wouldn't even be an issue if teachers were paid for how well they teach, not for how many years they sat in a chair in front of a class.

In California we decided that we wouldn't even give our elected representatives a chance at tenure when we passed term limits. Do we really believe a group of people who sit around in eternal political gridlock are more deserving to be replace for poor performance than the people who make the difference between our children growing up to be successes or failures? And that is the issue, our children's futures.

Does anyone really believe that teachers are interchangeable, like those fast food workers that one day wait the counter, the next day work the fries? Do teachers who pass out work sheets deserve the same pay as someone who is actively teaching and continually checking for understanding? What about the teachers who opt for fun activities and cultural enrichment rather than teaching students to read and compute?

I have substituted in a number of classes over the years, and I can see a difference. In some classes, the teacher has provided a rich set of learning activities for the students, and the class understands the expectations. In classes like that, I've worked for my pay. I've babysat in other classes, with 1 hour, 45 minute blocks, where the assignment was a one page worksheet, something I could do in 20 minutes, the better students in 30 and the slackers in well under an hour. The rest of the interminably long block is spent chatting, texting, playing games on their phones or actually napping. These kids are bored, and it's no wonder many drop out, opting for a minimum wage job that at least give them a small monetary feedback.

The teachers who will yell the loudest about this suggestion aren't the ones who would be retained and earn a higher wage. Rather it will be the people who, without tenure to protect them, would be out on the street, looking for another job.

Eliminate poorly performing teachers, pay the good ones more money, hire support staff to do the non teaching, routine paper and phone work, and we will start turning out graduates ready to take on the demanding work of the 21st century. The alternative is stagnation.

Naturally there are other measures that must be taken, such as redesigning the make up of school boards, and having checks and balances between certificated, classified and administrative employees in order to keep one group from abusing the rights of anot

Productive and fun time

So far Dec. has been both fun and productive. I just got another article published in California Kayaker
See pages 18-20
Also took a wonderful paddle in the Watsonville slough system and filmed it.
Hope my readers enjoy these, and I'm always anxious to hear from you.

Book Review

Sam Harris' new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, provides a clear and insightful challenge to those who have conceded the moral argument to the moral relativists. He has made, sometime redundantly, the point that moral good can be derived from whatever creates human well-being, thus being a subject that can be studied scientifically, allowing us to make objective claims, at least in principle, about moral right and wrong.

Harris doesn't shy away from the label, "moral realist," and in fact he defends this position admirably. He makes excellent points about some of the cultural practices that create misery for large numbers of a population, under the moral umbrella of religious practice, and how many of our intellectuals are reluctant to condemn these practices as morally offensive and just plain mistaken.

I think this should be a must read for any open-minded intellectual who seems to think that moral issues can't be objectified and that we shouldn't impose our values on other societies. He believes, rightly so, that our political correct, multiculturalism has gone too far, and now refuses to recognize any standards of human behavior.

Harris did, in my opinion, miss some opportunities to make a good point. He quotes philosopher and neuroscientist, Joshua Greene, and then argues against Greene's points.
However, when Greene states: "And like may of our common sense abilities, our ability to make moral judgments feels to us like a perceptual ability, an ability, in this case, to discern immediately and reliably mind-independent moral facts. As a result we are naturally inclined toward a mistaken belief in moral realism."

I believe that Harris should have jumped upon this implication that because something isn't mind-independent, it can't be a real fact and subject to the idea of realism. There are many objective facts that are mind-dependent and also collective mind-dependent. One great example, used by philosopher John Searle, is that of money. There is no physical, mind-independent fact about those little green pieces of paper, and lately, those little ones and zeros in bank computers that makes them intrinsically money. They are money because we accept them as money, believe they are money and treat them as money. Money is mind-dependent, actually also collectively mind-dependent, and yet it has an objective reality. It can provide food and shelter for people, cause the building of cities, allow governments--an other mind-dependent fact--to function and finance bombs that can level cities.

Values and morals are no less objectively real than money, justice, elected leaders or other facts of society. We can't relegate mental and social process to some ambiguous concepts where objective evaluation can't proceed.

While I can look at Harris' work, one that really needed to be written and read, and in the process find some points that weren't made strongly enough for my taste, as well as some that I felt might have been overstated, that in no way takes anything away from this book. He has said something that, at this moment in history, really needed to be said.

In short, if you ever think about these issues, you need to read this book.