Utopian Economics - Jim's Blog

Just to brag about my wonderful husband, he's created a blog/website at utopianeconomics.com. Take a look, there's a lot of eco stuff, musings about the world and links to other cool sites. Enjoy!

Why I Don't Do Breast Cancer Events

As all two of my "faithful" readers know, I had breast cancer (b.c.) 5 years ago. I'm fine now and celebrated my 5th anniversary in fine style, with a delicious"breast cake". Over the years I have done fundraising for the Life with Cancer program that was a real support for me and the kids during my treatment. But I don't do the Race for the Cure or other breast cancer fund-raising events.

   Why not?  The short, smart answer is, I don't know which t-shirt to wear. At these events the b.c. survivors usually wear pink t-shirts while everyone else gets to wear white ones.  While I don't have any trouble telling people that I have had b.c., I don't want it to be the first thing that people learn about me. It was an important event in my life, but not a defining one. (My vow during treatment was that breast cancer wouldn't make me a better person, and I think I succeeded!) I had it, I have that in common with a lot of women (and men), but its not who I am now. As I said to my therapist, Cancer is like a lemon -- very sour but you can't make a great salsa without it! Not the most important event in my life, but still powerful.

   Another reason that I don't support b.c. fundraising is the emphasis of the groups is on "the cure". Why aren't they focused on finding the cause of breast cancer?!? They never talk about prevention -- the closest they will come is "early detection," but still happens after the cancer has been caused.  In large part this emphasis on cure rather than prevention is because the corporate funding for these groups comes mainly from the companies that 1) stand to make a lot of money on cancer-treatment drugs and the research is supported by the fund-raising and 2) those same companies are the ones that make pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. that are likely to be at the least big contributors to the development of cancer in the first place.

So those are my reasons for staying away from pink ribbons and walks and pink mixers, hats, purses, etc. that are sold to advance the cause of curing breast cancer. It's a nice way to make lots of money!!

Getting older; getting wiser????

I just got back from a long drive to NY and my ears are ringing. They've been ringing for a number of years now, but it used to be noticeable only when there was very little noise -- at night mostly. Now, I'm finding that I notice it even when there is other noise and it gets worse after I've been in the car for awhile -- the road noise plus music, books-on-CD, etc.

This is an ethical problem for me. Back in graduate school, in my medical ethics class, I wrote a paper about animal testing and why it was wrong. I took the position that animals should not die in order to cure things that people do to themselves volitionally. Most ironically, I used the example of researchers killing monkeys after damaging their hearing in order to better understand how human hearing gets damaged so they could fix it. Oh boy!...Now I need that knowledge gained from all those dead monkeys and I feel like a hypocrite and a murderer!

My hearing loss is my fault, but also the accumulation of many, small decisions made in the moment without considering the long-term consequences. Or, the short-term gains outweighed my concerns about eventually losing my hearing. So what will I do? Swallow my ethical stance or get left out of life?!

Raising Moral Children

There was an interesting platform talk (a.k.a. sermon) today about the biological bases for ethical behavior. The speaker, Arthur Dobrin, talked about some of the latest research in other animals/primates that supports the idea that ethical behavior is needed for survival.
But what we know more and more is that while humans have neurons that can organize themselves in a bunch of different ways when we're born, we have to be taught and exposed to things in order to learn/become them. Language is one example: most babies can made the neural pathways in their brains that allow them to learn and use language, BUT they have to be exposed to language in order to do it.
Morality is the same way: we can all become moral people (and most of us do) BUT we must be exposed to caring, compassionate, attentive care as children in order to make the neural connections that allow us to see ourselves as worthwhile beings. Attachment is the basis of morality. Attachment is the process that occurs as parents care for infants, responding to their needs in a timely, compassionate way. Mirroring emotions and helping to calm infants when they are upset are also huge parts of attachment. And all these things teach babies that they are important, can affect their environment and are worth being protected and cared for. And that is the basis of moral behavior -- treating others as we want (and believe we deserve) to be treated.

Why Be Ethical???

We spent the day in ethical pursuits: an Ethical Society colleague and I are developing a Sunday School curriculum based on the ethical issues in the Harry Potter series. We met this morning to discuss the curriculum. It will be available from the American Ethical Union, aeu.org, later this summer. Then I taught Sunday School -- Why do bad things happen? is the theme of the class. We discussed the idea of the Grim Reaper and how death fits into life. We talked about how you might think about death depending on whether or not you believe there is an afterlife.
But when we got home, we did the most ethical thing of all -- we took a couple of trash bags and went for a walk in the beautiful, 60-degree weather and picked up trash and recyclables. The kids got into it. My son Joe especially was willing to risk getting wet, dirty or worse to get trash out of the stream near our house. My daughter Jeannie is getting very good at flattening cans. Why did we do this? Because, as my daughter put it, we have to take care of our home, the earth. No god needed; no fear of punishment needed.

The world becomes even more important...

The world becomes even more important when you don't believe in an afterlife or a supernatural savior to rescue us from our own mess. I've been a member of Green America http://www.greenamericatoday.org/about for about 18 years. Green American used to be known as Coop America and is one of the founders of the Green Festival held here in D.C. in the fall. Its one of the first and leading green business organizations in the country. I am cross-posting one of their editorials on how to make our current recession a green transformation that will help us become energy independent and better stewards of our resources.

http://www.greenamericatoday.org/about/newsroom/editorials/solutions.cfm

Check it out and consider joining a very worthwhile group!

Thoughts about being a "non-believer"

I was motivated to start this blog today after watching the inauguration (on TV) and was gratified and also put off by President Obama's inclusion of "non-believers" as Americans (along with Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus).
I was gratified to hear Mr. Obama acknowledge that some Americans do not hold to deisitic beliefs, but that does not make us "non-believers."
As a member of the American Ethical Union, I affirm my faith in the ability of humanity to create a more just and humane world. I also affirm my faith in human creativity, the beauty and bounty of the universe. I have had to have faith in modern medicine and face its limitations as well as its successes.
As a graduate of Yale Divinity School I have explored Christian theology and have great respect for the thought and faith of theologians, but cannot accept the premise of all deisitic religions: that there is a supernatural being controlling the universe and human history.
I hope to explore the aspects of my spiritual life in this blog and to come to a better understanding of my own contradictions, thoughts, feelings and hopes for the future; and engage in dialogue with other thoughtful spiritual seekers.