Assume the Position I

Overview

We are beginning a heavy duty political season. The nomination of a Supreme Court Justice is likely to be as demanding as a Presidential election. Every major political group has a stake in this nomination. Their interests are multiplied by the likelihood that this nomination will set the Court's direction for a generation or more. Conservatives, especially, see in this struggle the enforcement of their coup d'etat, a permanent takeover of America entailing suppression of the liberal, urban majority.
 

In California, the same battle will be intensely fought on different grounds. The Republican minority, led by the Governator, is trying hard to subvert this moderately liberal State. The focal point of their attack is the November 8, 2005 Special Election, which is all about the Governator's Initiatives. Redistricting the State and shutting down Union political activities are top targets which, combined, will unseat several Democrats now holding State office and weaken liberal constituencies everywhere.
 

Note that the Governator is busy appointing Republicans to every conceivable position, with the result that State employment is actually rising (as reported this week in the LA Times and SF Chronicle). This is a standard Republican method of taking over operations, because no independents or Democrats need apply. The old Sen Knowland machine, based in Oakland, used that tactic to control Alameda County for more than a generation in spite of its underlying liberal majority. In comparison, it has been a standard dogma of liberals and moderates that everyone should be given a chance of appointment. This difference shows that Republicans are like an invading army, not a citizens group. Further, that is not something new: Republicans have been like that at least since the 1920s.
 

So, in California the major issue is whether the State will be subjugated by Republicans without benefit of elections and votes. This sub rosa attack on democratic institutions is largely unspoken. If Schwarzenegger's initiatives are defeated, probably he will be defeated in 2006 as well. Otherwise, it will be increasingly difficult to remove him and his (p)sychophants from government.

The battles in California will be prominent features of the national political and cultural wars about to erupt. Thus, I expect a lot of interaction. This is going to draw energy and money in several different directions at once. Unfortunately, only conservatives have enough money and hired vigilantes to fight on all fronts at once. I am not sure what choices liberals will make, where to fight and where not, although it is possible "the people" will come to the rescue of many liberal causes. Liberals should keep in mind that conservatives enjoy torturing and humiliating their opponents, before slaying them. Conservative observance of an American Code of Bushido should energize liberals in defending not just their fortunes and sacred honor, but their lives.

While all that is going on, there is the interminable Conquest of Iraq. Unfortunately, it is probably going to be very difficult to maintain attention on this atrocity on account of the foregoing. All of this plays into the Bandit's hands, who will be able to do whatever he wants overseas without much oversight.
 

I think we are faced with the most momentous set of choices at least since the 1960s, and possibly in my lifetime. At the risk of being called overly rigid and doctrinaire, I still maintain most of my convictions basically unaltered by the years. If anything, the advent of virulent reactionary government and the backward drift of much of our society has reinforced my idea of how things should be. On the other hand, age and experience have made me more willing to moderate the pace of leftward change, if that is what it takes to bring almost everyone along.
 

I continue to believe the ideas and programs of the Left will eventually be accepted everywhere, even if Bandit goverment triumphs for a while. I regret that acceptance may be beyond my lifetime, but it will come because of certain basic, natural facts. There is no significant difference between any given set of humans. We are all born with a sufficiently similar set of abilities and skills so that there is no reason to discriminate in almost all cases. It is true that very few will be a Mozart, a DaVinci or a Buddha. It is also true that very few are willing to risk their lives for the common good. There aren't many geniuses or saints, so we have to make allowance for these very special cases. The rest of us can be CEOs or slaves indifferently. This fundamental equality was belatedly recognized in modern times, starting with the American and French Revolutions. It has its own "inner logic" which will eventually flatten (equalize) society. There is no reason to pay one person millions and another little or nothing. This meams we are not only equal before the law, but, as a matter of right, have an equal claim to the resources of this world.
 

That said, here is an outline of my positions. I try to fill in the details in my regular writings. I ask you to keep in mind that is is very difficult to separate issues, as everything is connected to everything else. In the end, it is all of a piece; perspectives from an implied weltanschauung.
 

Equality

I hold Equality as a basic Ethical principle, and believe it is well justified by the facts. In our reasoning about the law and our examination of socio-economic institutions, we must give precedence to this principle just because it is fundamental. It is more fundamental than personal interests or equity, and can be a decisive reason for changing the status quo and redistributing public and private goods.

Because I am a "leveler," a believer in human equality, I oppose things that destroy equality. In my view, abridging equality is the same as reducing freedom since those who are "more equal" are free to gain advantage from their position at the expense of others who are "less equal." In many cases, not just economic ones, inequality amounts to one person's advantage and another's disadvantage; a zero sum game. If and when the balance of equality is not a zero sum game, there may be some justification for temporary inequality. It seems to me each of those instances is a special circumstance, an exception, which must be argued and proven; not the other way around. The ordinary assumption must be that people (including intelligent ETs) are equal when we make decisions.
 

Based on the principal of equality, discrimination based on any number of characteristics that are irrelevant to the decision is unethical; it should be prohibited. With respect to the law, the usual things - ethnic origin, race, religion, gender, sexual identity, fat, thin, etc - cannot be considered unless a direct connection between the characteristic and performance can be proven. Liberals have always opposed discrimination that has no basis in fact, and cannot be supported with reasons. If anyone with at least two fingers could do a certain job - 2 fingers is the irreducible minimum - then we may choose only those who could do the job. What we may not do is punish those we dislike regardless of their ability to do the job. What is banned is the effects of bias, even if we cannot remove the prejudice itself.
 

The latest furor about inequality and bigotry is caused by the Religious Right - religious fundamentalists, particularly Christians. What all current fundamentalist groups have in common is belief in absolute truths or standards, usually written in a book which they claim is dictated by their gods. In the Middle East, there are fundamentalist Jews and Muslims. We are at war with fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan. American Christians have declared war on America. The Bandit Administration now in power represents Christian fundamentalism, which, ironically, is what we are fighting in its Islamic form. What the Bandit is trying to do on behalf of Christian fundamentalists is makeover America into a theocratically guided autocracy, somewhat similar to Iran. Christians have different rules than Muslims, but their regimen comes to the same thing: they try to impose their will on everyone else. Non-believers and refusers are at risk of imprisonment and even execution.
 

The Founding Fathers understood that religious beliefs and bigotry could undermine democracy. Therefore, they believed in tolerance. Even irrascible men like John Adams understood that there had to be room for disagreement. But, when Adams went too far, straying from the founding philosophy by pushing through the Alien and Sedition Acts, he was not elected to a second term. The hallmark of that period was the first ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights.
 

Our civil rights and liberties are being challenged every day by Bandit government, which causes me to oppose that government. One of the primary reasons I call this a Bandit government is its theft of our liberties, our democracy, from us. What they are doing is expressed in the Patriot Act, which should be repealed. They are trying to stuff their religious leanings into government, as evidenced by how they fund the schools, by giving preference to religious organizations that might assist the poor, and by permitting and encouraging the practice of religion within the government. One has to go back to the Taft Adminsitration, or even further back than that, to find an American government more hostile to the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens.
 

Bandit government also shows its disrespect for equality in its economic policies, most of which encourage inequality. The well off are rewarded, while the struggling are shoved aside. Such attitudes are one result of religious Calvinism, the doctrine that the successful are the Chosen Ones. Oddly enough, in this respect Bandit policies are exactly opposite to what his Christian mentor, Jesus, taught.
 

In any event, I remain steadfastly in favor of an equalitarian society. That is a society in which one person is not too different from the next, and in which each person is treated about the same as the next. "Equal" can be interpreted many ways; e.g., we could have the equality of the prison cell. I prefer to interpret "equality" in a way that optimizes individual liberty. In this context, "optimize," not "maximize," is the correct word. In fact, certain liberties have to be restrained to prevent the reduction of liberty overall. Even Ben Franklin, who endorsed Capitalism, thought that there could be limits on economic power. Society - that's us, the citizens - needs to determine case by case when the liberty of one is the enslavement of another.
 

Resources (Ecology)
 

The allocation of resources is important because we all have an equal right to them. Resources are our connection to the environment; we cannot live without them. Thus, resources are the basis of the economy.
 

Despite the Tragedy of the Commons heuristic, which purports to show that resources held in common are misused, it is a fact that most resources are held in common in the non-human natural world. The assumption of the Tragedy of Commons scenario is that a ruthless operator will appear, who will savage the commons for individual gain. That ruins the commons for everyone else, and leaves it permanently unusable. In fact, that is a typically human scenario, not a result of Darwinian evolution.
 

In the Darwinian struggle, individuals and species compete for the resources they need. The strongest tiger will get the booty, ejecting most of the others. However, not even the strongest tiger manages to eject all the others. Eventually the strongest one is overcome, ages and dies. Thus, in Nature the appropriation of resources to a single individual or small group is temporary. The evidence that natural resources are not stripped beyond recovery is that, if they had been, we would not be here. Darwin's nature is in balance, and only rarely and temporarily produces a Tragedy of the Commons. What this shows is that the Tragedy is a result of inadequate or poor regulation, or unusual conditions.
 

While some biologists and ecologists have made a strong case about the Tragedy of Commons, the origins of the case are in civilization. One does not have to invent Rousseau's "noble savage" to find out that many "primitive" cultures all over the world managed to live within natural restraints for millennia. Until recent post-glacial times, humans managed to eke out an existence for millions of years, avoiding a Tragedy of Commons during all that time. The Tragedy of the Commons can only occur in human contexts, when some people are allowed to dominate others without consequence. For example, ranchers and miners are allowed to use Federal (public, common) lands for their private purposes without having to return the areas they use to pristine conditions By such a policy, we actually incite a Tragedy of the Commons, because "the people" are responsible for maintaining the property without cost, or only minimal costs, to the actual beneficiaries. What this exposes is the disconnection between reward and the costs of production. That is, the Tragedy of the Commons is a result of not making users pay the full cost of production (resource use). That cost would be represented by the effort required to return the resource to its natural, unused condition.

Tigers pay a cost for the food they eat. They cannot eat more than the jungle can produce, for, if they do, there will be nothing left and then they will starve to death. There is a built-in consumption limit. In addition, hungry tigers have to compete not only with other tigers, but other species for available food. Under tropical conditions, ants and bacteria actually eat more dead animals than tigers. All those who feed on prey species are themselves eventually recycled. Everything that goes into a tiger comes out the other end, which encourages plant growth. When the tiger is resorbed into the earth, every atom becomes part of another living thing, The cycle goes on and on, finally fueled by our star, Sol.
 

The Tragedy of the Commons is really an anti-socialist allegory. While it has been put in scientific terms, it is not really a scientific finding about natural ecology; it is a diatribe about humans. The original example supporting the Tragedy of the Commons notion is the common pasture which gets exploited by one person. While those proposing this allegory intend to show the merit of private ownership, in fact they miss their own point. Private property - enclosing something - does not of necessity solve the problem, since there is nothing to prevent the owner from bleeding it white (draining it dry, etc) and then abandoning it. That is exactly what has happened in the creation of toxic wastelands: companies dumped or left their wastes and went bankrupt. Those who operated those companies got their good out of it, then left the scene, leaving "the people" to clean up their mess. That Tragedy of Private Property exactly parallels the Tragedy of Commons story. What both stories show is that resources are abused when there is inadequate or improper regulation. The abuse is not the result of Capitalism or Socialism; rather it is the result of human failure to manage wisely.

What those stories also show is what happens when we believe that one entity (person or company) has some sort of absolute right to do whatever one wants with property. Such an absolute right is a denial that uses are subject to social regulation. I think the notion that one has an absolute, unconditional right to do whatever one wants with property is wrong and unfounded. First, the many anecdotes of actual abuses, and our current major environment problems (e.g., global climate change), show that unregulated use leads to unexpected, bad results, or at least results most of us don't want. So, there is an argument for regulation based on observed consequences.
 

There is an argument beyond consequences that property rights are limited: viz., 'property' is a social construct which can be defined any way society chooses. Thus, property rights are always at the disposal of society - others - even when society says your rights are unlimited. Of course, to ascribe unlimited rights to an individual is contradictory, since that denies the right of society to alter them. This reveals a conflict and a choice which goes beyond property: what is the source of "rights" in the first place? If rights inhere in the individual, then they are self-defined, without social recourse. Any absolute rights theory that starts with the individual's self-definition and self-empowerment makes of each person a dictator. Such a theory denies the equality of human beings, since the starting point must be "I am different and more important than you; I alone decide." Such a theory also implies a totally solipsistic metaphysics. While I am attracted to subjectivism, I view the denial of "the other" as unrealistic and useless. Even a solipsist has to find some way to deal with the material world. The sort of solipsism - extreme individualism - that denies others the status of self could only be maintained by a being in totally vegetative state; i.e., one trapped in its own brain without external sensation. I think having perceptions of an external world, and particularly the perception of others like oneself, forces the criterion of 'socially defined' upon rights and much else.
 

To put the matter differently, it is the recognition of human equality that forces a social definition of human rights. To assign rights, we must ask what it is to be human, which is to ask what the human species is "like." This same question could be asked of any other species, such as tigers and extra-terrestrials (ETs). Asking it this way leads to a different definition of rights (and responsibilities) for each species, even if many of these legal and ethical definitions rise to become general principles governing behavior of many species. The common commandment 'thou shalt not kill' is clearly dependent upon the circumstances of a particular being's existence. The tiger probably cannot be ruled by this maxim, because it does not make "moral" choices; it only wants to eat. Humans and ETs, however, probably have the sense of wanting to survive and the ability to ascribe that same desire to others sufficiently similar to themselves. So, in most circumstances, the commandment applies to huimans and ETs. (But, the lifeboat situation may override it.) The social nature of rights definitions simply means, when intra-species equality is postulated, that the same rights must apply to every member of that species. Thus, equality is an essential ingredient of a universal rights theory.
 

If equality is denied, then we have a potential state of war, because each individual reigns supreme. In that case, whatever someone does to implement his will is justified. In a conflict, the winner (survivor) reigns supreme. This shows that the philosophy of 'might makes right' is probably intimately related to any absolute rights theory. Basing ethical princples, thus morality, on the will of the gods is the ultimate extension of this sort of absolutism, because it is assumed the gods have absolute, infinite power and wisdom. It is those fancied abilities which allows the gods to issue Commandments and, through their human intermediaries, compel compliance. The appeal to deism does solve one problem: it removes the state of war one step, to a war of men against the gods rather than a war of each against all.
 

If property rights are socially defined, as I think, then an individual's rights are limited. Those limits are justified by the postulate of equality, applied as 'equal access.' You have as much right to eat as I. The same is true of clothing, housing, medical care, education, etc. The only exception to this rule arises out of scarcity; i.e., the lifeboat situation. This is a very important exception, since Capitalism is based on it. The justification of Adam Smith's theory and its successors is that there is always scarcity. The supply-demand curves and all the other analyses assume there is never enough to go around. When there is a surplus, when demand is filled, Capitalism stops working. Capitalists get around that difficulty by postulating that consumers are insatiable, and that there is a "market clearing" price. Unfortunately, those last premises make the entire Capitalist enterprise self-justifying; i.e., a vicious circle. If you assume satiety is never reached, Capitalism turns into a peculiar sort of belief which can never be disproved, so it is unscientific. This is not to subscribe to Popperism, that falsifiability is the sine qua non of science, but to agree that falsifiability is a necessary criterion of a scientific theory.)
 

The "lifeboat exception" justifies all sorts of unusual behavior; e.g. cannibalism. Essentially, this exception is about what happens when the usual assumptions break down, when equality no longer applies. Lifeboat behavior is always short-term, because there are going to be winners and losers in the near future. Someone will live and someone else will die. The simplest way to think about lifeboat behavior is to characterize it as Darwinian. In other words, the lifeboat exception is a reversion to the underlying 'Law of the Jungle,' prior to society and civilization. It is the basis on which the non-human portion of our living planet, Gaia, operates. The lifeboat exception denies rationality and meaningful choice; i.e., it denies how we humans regard ourselves.
 

This discussion should indicate that there is a close connection between how we perceive ourselves and how we allocate resources. If we think of ourselves as essentially like the tiger of the jungle, we would allocate the means of life by a Darwinian struggle such as Capitalism. If we think otherwise, that we are rational and capable of choice, we could reject the unthinking "natural choice." When Capitalists praise being guided by an "invisible hand," they are saying more than they think. The "invisible hand" is without thought or care about people, so to accept its rule is throw oneself on the mercy of fate. The proposition that all humans are equal can be accepted under Capitalism, if that means all human beings are equally worthless (without value).
 

My proposition about equality is an ethical principal which imputes equal value to each person. In the span of the Universe, humans probably are just flotsam, so an ethical principle of equality is just temporary and relative. Nonetheless, it is the feeling each of us has, that 'I am important,' which drives an assessment of value greater than worthlessness. It could be that feelings of worth are merely a generalization of the mechanisms of survival, the biological urge to live, in which case those feelings may be identified with self-consciousness or "awareness." However derived, the fact that we have such feelings and that we believe we make choices, is a basis for an ethical theory about human behavior. The further fact that there is no natural basis of discrimination between individuals not only supports the notion of equality I propose, but denies the Capitalist mechanism of allocating resources. Here, I must add that there is no paucity of resources for the presently living, if the resources were equitably distributed, so there is no reason to suspend the right of equal access.
 

Malthusian Limitations
 

Now, it is true that we are overusing Earth's resources, and endangering ourselves in the process. There are just too many people and not enough resources, in the long run. In the short run, we are "borrowing" from the future by gobbling up available resources faster today. In other words, the integrated total of Earth's resources is capable of supporting so many person-days, allowing for solar input and losses to entropy. If we use the aggregate total faster, we just shorten the time Earth's resources will last. If overuse persists, then we all die when the resources run out. Nature will take over, despite the abilities and energies of the human race, if we do not live within our means.
 

Rational creatures with a will to live should want to avoid annihilation. They don't have to want to live, but we usually consider a lack of 'will to live' a mental disorder (such as depression). I assume a normal person does want to live, and does want to avoid annihilation, and has the mental ability to carry out that purpose. So, I believe a rational person will abandon Capitalism and Social Darwinism when it comes to human beings. Rational people don't volunteeer to sink the ship, in order to put themselves in the lifeboat situation (the "reality show" fad notwithstanding). A rational person, realizing our current problems are due to ineffective regulation, will seek to regulate matters so as to obtain a more favorable outcome.
 

An equitable allocation of resources requires certain actions now and in the foreseeable future. First and foremost, the human population needs to be regulated downward. This does not have to be a crash program, but nature will enforce on our species a drastic crash program if we do not manage ourselves. Over the course of the next 2-3 generations, the population needs to stop growing and move downward. The target should be in the 1-2 billion person range, or whatever we can be sure Gaia can support comfortably. (It doesn't pay to push things to the edge, the absolute maximum.)

Population control requires major adjustment of social policies. For example, there should be tax penalties for having large families. Individuals - not couples - should be licensed to have children to insure that everyone gets a fair and equal chance to contribute to the on-going gene pool. Raising children is an honorable activity, but should not be the major purpose of life for most people. In fact, we are probably better off sending out our children for raising - meaning puttting them in nurseries and schools as soon as possible. Raising and teaching children should be a specialized, licensed profession which pays very well. Here, I note that there is very little historical evidence that the American nuclear family is the best family structure. The nuclear family is adapted to isolated, frontier conditions, and may work well for nomads (ancient or modern). But, in most places and most of the time, people are more settled than Americans and tend to aggregate in extended families.

The prototypical pattern of the following is still "the norm" among African Watusi and certain other tribes who persist in living the traditional lifestyle. It is common in all human societies for a male to mate with many females, and for designated females to have the major responsibility of raising all the offspring. I think there is very little historical evidence for a required male presence after children reach basic survival age (3-5 years), and until male offspring reach puberty. Children attach themselves to mothers (in a process called bonding, which is at least partially chemical in nature), not fathers, in a manner that usually persists for a lifetime. Sons learn from a father-figure in their teenage period, but this apprenticeship may be served with almost any male, not just the genetic parent. Teenage males tend to form gangs that run wild, with the result that many - sometimes most - males are killed off early in life. In almost all societies, daughters bond tightly to their mothers and are under the mother's tutelage for life. Most women tend to turn men out of the home after breeding. Older men often control the homes, after their sexual powers decline. Older men and women especially force young men out, as they are too hard to control and too competitive. Thus, a women's life is centered upon home and family, whereas a man's life is centered on the outdoors - out of the home. Although I am totally in favor of women's liberation, and believe in the equality of the sexes, I see nothing in liberated people that denies this model. The facts of reproduction and human biology seem to force the foregoing pattern on us.

Further, I believe the ancient model - minus the abuse of women - can be used to good effect in controlling the population. That is, accepting the notion that adult males aren't homebodies, and that most adult women are not child-bearing beasts ("cows"), we can construct a healthy way of having and raising children. "Healthy" means more closely aligned with "natural" conditions - the way it was for thousands of years. I don't think the so-called "child-centered" family or the nuclear family is healthy for most people of all ages.

So, fulfilling just the first of the things we need to do - limiting the population to what the planet can support - implies major changes in existing government and social policies right down to family structure. This would be so, whether or not my proposed arrangement of social structures is the one that works.

The limitation of population implies another anti-capitalist idea: stability, not growth, is the desired goal. As noted above, Capitalism is based on growth, particularly the idea that people are insatiable. There is a parallel dictum which applies to the natural biological world, 'grow or die.' Companies that just produce the same old product, the same old way, year after year, don't make much (or any) money. In investing, for example, groceries and other "consumer staples" are very low profit businesses, so are often avoided except during recessions. Consumer staples stocks are reasonably steady because people need to eat. On the other hand, when the bulls are running, investors usually abandon consumer staples for high growth (get-rich-quick) equities. But we need not be subjected to boom and bust because, as Keynes suggested 80 years ago, the business cycle can be managed. The key notion underlying Keynesian economics is that intelligent, rational beings can control their destinies. If we dispense with the invisible hand and take charge, we can achieve stability without growth. While science fiction, Ayn Rand and market fundamentalists characterize a stable society as dull, boring and backward, that need not be so. Stability does not in itself imply a lack of verve in life. There is nothing to prevent a stable society from writing new books and music, wearing new and stylish clothes, eating gourmet foods, learning a thing or two and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, all of which are interesting things to most people which do not make huge demands on the environment.

Bringing our demands within supportable limits implies an end to pro-growth policies, not only in population, but also in all other activities that excessively load the environment. The most obvious excessive demand at this time is the use of oil and other carbon-based fuels. This is not merely a matter of using recycled carbon resources, but actually a need to reduce the amount of carbon being oxidized to CO₂. Our energy useage has already started a process of global climate change which we probably cannot halt, much less reverse. Global climate change is one of the ways Gaia will take revenge for crossing the "sustainable" line. Despite our exalted powers, we are not invincible, as many of us will learn within our lifetimes. If we are rational, we will learn the lesson from the early signs and change our ways. Otherwise, we get what we get.

Reducing our demands on the environment need not be the economic disaster conservatives portray. It is true that existing economic arrangements will have to change. It is probably true that those made extraordinarilly wealthy by control of oil will become poorer. It is also probably true that none of the required changes will happen without major intervention by governments in international agreement. So, rearranging the world to use fewer global resources implies a change in present economic and political structures. This sort of challenge is what is most dangerous to ordinary people, unless there is a very strong commitment to egalitarian democracy. One way to reduce population and demand, while not disturbing the interlocking economic, political and social hierarchies is to deprive the lowest classes to the point of their eventual death. Another way is to destroy populations in a major (nuclear) war. Yet another possibility is the destruction of most of the planet's people by the secondary ravages of climate change: famine and disease.

I believe if we continue the way we are going, one of the apocalyptic scenarios will eventually materialize. If climate change turns major fertile areas into dustbowls, similar to what happened in the African Sahel, some of the affected people are not going meekly to lie down and die. In a world increasingly armed to the teeth with biological and nuclear weapons, losers will almost certainly "get even" for their predicament. As the world sinks into despair and disorder, people become less rational. Desperate people have always blamed someone else and taken whatever revenge they could. So, not dealing with the problems is very likely to have a self-imposed catastrophic end.

For those of us who believe this world is the beginning and end of our existence, it is important that the delegated decision makers not believe in things like Second Comings. The other-worldly among us should not be in positions of power, because either they do not care for this material place ("God will provide") or they see fixing the problems as unimportant ("the end is coming, anyway"). Putting that sort of person in a position of power is likely to bring about a disastrous end even sooner.

My major hope for the future is that we will apply reason and science, not emotion and superstition, to our problems. I firmly believe rational, intelligent creatures will make the choices required to save themselves and the planet.
 

To Be Continued ...

There is a close connection between our ideas about equality and resource use. Both things are tied up in the human network of government, business, society, family and personal relations. Together, all these things are a Gordian Knot which has to be unraveled and remade a different way.