Imagine the Quaker
an erstwhile mirror site for weblog on newquaker.com
archives | newquaker.comSaturday, September 13, 2003
Don't let this happen to you. I was late for an appointment Friday morning, so nothing was going to get in my way as I raced across the Higby Road landscape, a scenic rural highway route from New Hartford to Herkimer, on my way to the office. I drove a little too fast. About 5 miles from the College, I passed a car parked on the opposite side of the winding two-lane road. A man was walking away from the car with two children in tow. It looked like his car was disabled. But the timing was all wrong and I was late and he didn't seem to be in distress and he was near a couple of houses and, besides, he had a cellular phone in his hand, so was probably calling for road service ... well, you know the rationalization thought process—probably the very same avoidance reasoning that the priest and the Levite engaged in as they hurried past the man who had been robbed on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho [Luke 10:25-37]. I too was not a good neighbor. Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan stayed with me all morning: my remorse led me to consider three behavioral areas I still need to work on, as perhaps we all do.
First, tardiness. Being late is very much like borrowing—in this case from the future. This is real a presumptuousness, an arrogance, a sense that we are entitled to take from the future that which, in fact, may not be ours to possess. For when God calls to us, as he might do when a neighbor needs help, we find it hard to obey, instead becoming wayward and defiant, because we've used up all of our time.
Second, procrastination, the fraternal twin of tardiness. Here we put off until later what can very well be accomplished now. Here, too, we are borrowing from the future for an indulgence today. And when God calls to us, we can no longer fit him into our schedule.
Third, financial indebtedness. This can take a double form: as current unpaid debts and as the taking on of additional debt. Both leave us little opportunity to obey God when he calls for us to help a neighbor. I am sitting here now with two gift requests for two charitable organizations I feel very strongly about, but I have other bills to pay first and some other obligations I'm trying to clear up—so these have to wait right now. If I had planned differently, I could be generous and timely with my gifts, but now there is an uncomfortable, frustrating delay.
God knows, and my friends and acquaintances also know, that I am guilty of excess in all three of these behavioral areas. But these are three things within my control, or at least within my ability, and I sure hate remorse. God blesses us for his purpose, not ours, so we all of us need to be ready—and of course able—when he calls us to service. Please reread, as I did, the Parable of the Talents [Matt 25:14-30] and the Parable of the Ten Minas [Luke 19:11-27].
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 10:01 PM
I really should get out more often. I just discovered that at the end of May 2003 New Jersey's Congressman Rush Holt sponsored a bill (now in committee) requiring all voting systems to produce a "voter-verified paper record suitable for a manual audit equivalent or superior to that of a paper ballot box system." His bill H.R. 2239, also known as the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003," is in part a reaction to well-founded concerns about e-voting security. See specifically the Analysis of an Electronic Voting System[.pdf], a report by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Rice University that found serious security holes in the electronic voting process. The scientists concluded:
"Using publicly available source code, we performed an analysis of a voting machine. This code was apparently developed by a company that sells to states and other municipalities that use them in real elections. We found significant security flaws: voters can trivially cast multiple ballots with no built-in traceability, administrative functions can be performed by regular voters, and the threats posed by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and even janitors, is even greater. Based on our analysis of the development environment, including change logs and comments, we believe that an appropriate level of programming discipline for a project such as this was not maintained. In fact, there appears to have been little quality control in the process."
You can read more background about the groundswell of opposition to no-audit-trail e-voting at Stanford University computer scientist David L. Dill's VerifiedVoting.org site. There's also the online Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election petition proposed by Martin Luther King III and author Greg Palast.
And the issue remains timely. Yesterday evening the Associated Press sent out a news release on Al Sharpton's opposition to a plan by the Michigan Democratic Party to allow Internet voting in its presidential caucus. Sharpton is of course concerned about equal access for black voters, who are underrepresented in this technology. He called it a "high-tech poll tax."
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 2:29 AM
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Today the College observed 9/11 (Patriot Day) by a moment of silence in all classrooms at 10:29 in the morning, followed by the chiming of the Carillon at 10:30 and ceremonial additions to the "Wall of Remembrance" at 10:50. At 1:00 in the afternoon there was a gathering in the quad where students painted an enormous American flag on the lawn. The clocks (and watches) around the campus weren't all synchronized, so the commemorative activities seemed to endure outside of space and time.
I'm not a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but I think this is like a day spent eating cotton candy. I would like to have seen the occasion as an opportunity to register all students to vote: to look ahead of us, not behind us. I know that there are some who deride the history and origin of our public school system as a process for making our children into good US citizens, but, you know, today I would really settle for that.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 6:05 PM
Casper gets grounded. BBC News announced yesterday that scientists in the UK have "devised an experiment to test whether out-of-body experiences close to death are a real phenomenon or just a trick being played by the brain." The plan is to suspend pictures from the ceilings in trauma centers in 25 hospitals across the UK: when people later claim to have floated around the room, they will be challenged to describe the pictures. [See BBC News, Science/Nature, September 10, 2003]
Whew! This might finally bring the whole creepy issue to rest. It will effectively discredit Eckankar and its primary doctrine of "soul travel." It will also, I hope, dissuade Christians from the ridiculous belief that we are somehow three beings (body, mind, soul) in one. There is no consistent doctrine in either the Old Testament or the New Testament of persons essentially as minds or as souls—as something separable from the body. We got this entirely through syncretism and cultural expressions that continue to strew a false and impossible doctrine about the inherent structure of the human being.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 12:08 PM
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Just when I think I really don't understand the Canaanite worship of the high god Ba'al, or idols of a golden calf—or, for that matter, any worship of animals made of metal, stone, or wood—along comes the annual Hindu festival of Ganesh. [See BBC/World News, September 9, 2003] Ganesh is an elephant-headed deity whose devotees spend 10 days every year in religious revelry, colorful tableaux, and parades with ornate hand-pulled chariots, ending their ceremonies by dropping the clay and papier-mâché Ganesh idols (many so large that they have to be moved by crane) into the nearby sea. The birthday bash for Ganesh comes every year at about this time (end of August, beginning of September). Hindu worshippers pray to the elephant-headed god for the lifting of obstacles in their lives.
Despite my study of comparative religions, I suppose I still don't fully comprehend the worship of inanimate things, but then I also don't get nature worship, Shi'ite suicide bombers, or the sufficiency of humanism. I suppose I should add to that list my puzzlement at evangelical Christians who crave crude oil, large stock portfolios, expanding prison populations, and a huge military presence on foreign soils—I should add, too, the desire to spend $87 billion on military operations in Iraq instead of using that money to fix the US school budget crisis or to feed every starving child on this earth.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 12:13 AM
Sunday, September 07, 2003
It should be common knowledge by now that when the federal government announces the national unemployment rate, they are only counting those who are still on the unemployment rosters. So when our Bureau of Labor Statistics announces an unemployment rate of 6.4% in July 2003 and a 6.1% unemployment rate in August 2003, it only seems that the economy is improving. My friends at Antipas Ministries have an interesting mathematical method for getting to more accurate numbers (see S.R. Shearer's "Greed, Avarice, and the Coming Dictatorship"). By their extrapolation method, the 6.4% unemployment figure for July is really more like 21.14%! In August alone 93,000 workers dropped off of US payrolls, so a .3% change in unemployment shouldn't make us overly optimistic.
A good reason for these dismal unemployment numbers is the move of big corporations' labor costs from the US to other countries. This is really nothing new, but as the US moves more aggressively into the global marketplace, not only will we see more of these miserable statistics, we will see more foreign stakeholders left behind as multinational US businesses take their labor costs to the lowest bidder.
Witness Mexico and their "maquiladoras," plants that import components to assemble for export. The maquiladora is a Mexican corporation that operates under a maquila program. The program was designed to bring jobs and prosperity to northern Mexican cities and also to attract foreign-owned companies to a cheap source of labor. The 100 Top Maquilas include firms from such countries as the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the Netherlands—companies such as Alcoa, Daewoo, Emerson, Ford, GE, Hitachi, Levi Strauss, Mattel, Motorola, Philips, Sara Lee, Seagate, SONY, Thomson, Tyco, TRW, and others. Since 2001, according to the Mexican government, 500 of the 3,800 maquiladoras in that country have closed down, meaning a loss of 218,000 jobs. Where are these jobs going? In this case, to China, a country whose labor costs are now one-fourth of Mexico's. [New York Times, September 3, 2003] According to the Maquila Census for August 2003, there remain 3,375 plants in operation, employing 1,047,587 workers. Their average wages range from $2.38 an hour to $6.42 for skilled technicians. In 2002, the two cities in China with the lowest labor costs were Tianjin (at $1,728 per annum) and Chongqing (at $1,150 per annum). Typically such costs are low because the hours are long, there are no employee benefits, and there is little or no regulatory oversight—either for the worker or for the environment.
Big business in a global marketplace has become the scourge of the earth. Although leader of the pack, the US no longer has hegemony, as other multinational companies from the Economic Union (EU) and Asia also seek to increase profit and market share by using up the cheapest natural resources. In their ebbing tide is left the sad story, repeated often, of a torn landscape, industrial poisons, more poverty, broken homes, alienated lives, and the ironic belief that this has all been a good thing, really. With the rising tide comes the need to protect vital corporate interests, and hence there are wars and rumors of wars.
What drives the individual businessman to seek profit is a separate issue from what drives the multinational corporation to increase its profits. The publicly traded multinational corporation, its stock sold to the general public, lives and dies by the presence of the life-force of profit. Once created, the publicly traded company must seek profit, and how it achieves that is irrelevant to its existence. Accountability may be a moral issue for the privately held company, but for the publicly traded company "accountability" is at most a legal matter, or whatever (such as public outrage) might affect the marketability of its stock.
We are all of us stakeholders in such corporations—whether through our utility companies, our 401(k) or retirement funds, our investment portfolios, or individual investment choices that include the purchase of stock. And we will remain stakeholders in their mission whenever we accept that the publicly traded company is always the first choice for our investment dollars. I look forward to the day when the small business owner is prized above the large stock-owned corporation, when our desire for investment reach is directed instead toward the growth of local and regional businesses owned by accountable individuals who do not shirk from their responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and their environment and its natural resources.
We should remember and heed Paul's warning to Timothy. In his first letter to the young Christian, Paul warned him against the lure of material discontent: "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." [1 Tim 6:9-10]
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:56 PM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
