Causes and effects: from a case of sloppy motoring, to a physically stressful experience, then a chaotic storm of thoughts, and ultimately to seeing the need for a whimsical post like this to break the current spiral of negativity at this site with a spade of non-seriousness that, unlike my norm, will not have one specific point to make.

I have a confession to make. I've been a naughty girl. Sloppy and over-confident, I rolled through a stop sign recently, according to the official disapproval of the local constabulary. Not wanting to earn the first point on my driving record in a long time, I took the self-interested way out and attended traffic school.

To choose among the available offerings was to remind me how old-fashioned I remain in some ways. Online traffic school seemed just too lazy and prone to computer foul-ups, and the numerous comedy-oriented classes somehow didn't seem serious enough penitence for the terrible crime that I had committed.

No, to do what remains of my old-fashioned sense of propriety right, I chose the school with the most serious-sounding name. It's silly, I know, but doing so felt like the most conscientious way to go.

It became evident that I did indeed correctly select a school that goes by the book - or, to put it in a hindsight sort of way, be careful what you ask for; you might get it.

Underestimating the amount of time to get there and to find it once in the parking lot, my plan was to locate the classroom, save myself a seat, and make the quick trip to the ladies' room that I already began needing to utilize. When my body capriciously decides to cast off a quantity of water it had been hoarding in its tissues, it's usually in the morning.

Not a moment after I located the room, the instructor motioned me in and gestured for me to find a seat. "Traffic school? Come on in; we're getting started." I wasn't even a minute early. Eight o'clock sharp.

"I, um, wasn't quite ready to sit down," I nervously thought to myself as my tush, with a mind of its own, was already sitting itself down. What do I do now? Do I ask the instructor like a little kid, "I hafta go to the bathroom first?" Should I take my seat, quietly settle in, and suck it up with decorum fitting the fifty-something lady that I am? Or just get up and go, trying not to draw attention to myself? Is he going to take a roll call? What if I'm not there?

By the time I finished mulling over the options, I was already settled in and the instructor had begun speaking, making that last option feel less and less wise. Normally I refrain from leaving meetings or the like while in progress, but things had barely gotten underway, my body had chosen to begin dumping off a pound or so of water, and I had no idea when the first break would be. I was getting ready to take the big step and politely seek excuse when...

He announced, "We will take a lunch break and have breaks in the morning and the afternoon.  I have to ask that nobody leave the room except during breaks."

I'm sentenced now. Voluntarily waiting until an appropriate time is bred into me, but I haven't been required to sit and hold it through a class since I was school age. "Here we go," I thought to myself, feeling like a 12 year old looking forward to recess, which was surely at least two hours away. Oh, to feel like a kid again.

As the morning went on, through stop signs and red lights, I dusted off my old childhood coping skills. At first I would hang on the instructor's every word, hoping that concentrating on the lesson material would help me forget the ladies' oasis that kept calling my nature from its inaccessible location somewhere beyond that door. (And, it goes without saying, I'd look at the clock every now and then; while the figurative sand collected in the bottom half of the hourglass, something less comfortable was collecting in the bottom half of my hourglass.)

Zeroing in on the course material did put my obstreperous body in her place for a while, until the call of the Goddess began to feel more like a fire bell instead. Straighten my back; lean forward, dig my chin into my palms, just keep beaming my attention forward at the lesson as hard as I can and make the time go by because the only route to that bathroom is onward through the barriers of time.

Round nine-thirty, I quietly sighed to the girl next to me, "I need to use the bathroom." "So do I," she commiserated. Company made misery feel a little less lonely. At least we could console each other ("comfort" just doesn't fit somehow) with despairing glances.

Finally, around ten, he said to the class, "are you getting ready for a break?" Yes! I could not hide the look on my face. "We'll break in about 20 minutes."

Damn! I already feel like a little girl; if this goes on much longer I'll lose what few wrinkles I have, turn blonde, and grow a longing for a new Slice and Bake Cookie Set. (Right after I change into a dry skirt, that is. God may have quietly spoken to Moses through a burning bush, but Goddess was screaming obscenities through mine.)

The struggle to keep control of my attention has now been lost. Cross legs tightly but as demurely as possible, sit stiff, and stare around the room aware of little more than my legs and the trouble between, and begin to seriously consider braving whatever consequences would result from bolting out the door. But that break is just a few minutes away, so I don't.

Break time! Finally! Guess who's off and running like a mare out of the Preakness starting gate? Silly little me, already out the door before anyone else began to rise from their chairs. I didn't care how conspicuous I was. I just wanted to be darn certain that there wouldn't be a bathroom line in front of me.

It's amazing how, in two minutes, a body can go from unbearable anguish to feeling completely normal, showing no signs that anything was previously wrong. With my mind finally freed from biological insistences, rambling thoughts could again wander into it in relative peace.

One such thought was a blogger's comment about being a "nation of whiners." Some people file lawsuits over what I had gracefully endured without protest and lived to write this whimsical post about it.

He was right. We have become a society that wants our fixes and reparations now, with less and less regard for practicality and feasibility. It was my own stinking fault that I dallied and got behind schedule en route to class. It isn't the world's responsibility to bend to my mistakes.

Another interloping thought was the fact that adults file civil rights grievances over treatment that many people condone for children. Our society debates spanking heatedly, both pro and con, yet corporal punishment of adults is considered so barbaric and beyond serious consideration that the resulting civil rights suit would blast the roof off of the Supreme Court.

We can debate the pros and cons some other time. But whether or not you consider spanking abuse, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't healthy adults be better able to take harsh treatment than children? It seems backwards to me.

One last insight came out of this after the day was over: I think it would be an interesting experiment for each of us, once in a while, to subject ourselves to the situations and expectations that we impose upon kids. Try, for a day, living by a child's rules.

It was interesting for me to have to live by a child's rules for a day.  Those of us who remember childhood well easily remember the images and sounds of the early years, but we can still forget what it felt like to live, day by day, with the rules and expectations that were given to us as kids.

Yet here I go, trying to put a finishing point on a story that wasn't really meant to have one.  Unmade points are like unfinished homework to me when I'm writing an essay.

But this ending looks good enough ending for me.  I'll take my C- and turn this paper in.

Dark is the symbolic color of mystery; its realm is in the shadowed ramparts and recesses where the light of discovery has yet to shine.  This is no less true in cosmology, where unknown forces and factors often attract the adjective "dark."

"Dark matter," for example, comprises the super-majority of matter in the known universe.  Its name is due in part to the simple property that it does not shine with any detectable radiation, yet it is dark with mystery as well because the known varieties of non-luminous and non-reflective matter nowhere near account for grand total of dark matter that the known laws of physics, by virtue of dark matter's detectable effects, say must exist.

Even more mysterious is "Dark Energy."  Unlike dark matter, which is at least partially accounted for in forms  familiar to scientists, Dark Energy is a little more than a placeholder for pending knowledge; nothing more is known about it than that it is a name given to whatever is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate rather than coast by its own momentum, as a simple "Big Bang" progenitor explosion would lead one to expect.

Dark Energy is what appears to be continuing to push the universe apart. Officially, we know nothing more than this.

I believe I know what Dark Energy is.  If I am correct, it is not energy at all, but a manifestation of a slow, steady change in the frame of reference by which we measure dimensions and velocities. 

Einstein's theories of relativity are built upon the relativity of frames of reference and upon the relationship of gravity with the hyper-geometry of space; Einstein and Hawking went even further to predict that the staggering gravitational forces near rotating black holes (and presumably all black holes are rotating) exert bizarre effects upon both the nature of space-time in their vicinity, and even more bizarre effects on the frames of spatial reference near the event horizons of black holes.

But to write about the Lense-Thirring effect would be a diversion down a tangent of cosmic proportions, so I will jump ahead to my conclusion about Dark Energy so that I can get on with the show:

I believe that Dark Energy is nothing more than the shrinkage of the frames of reference relative to any particle in space.  The universe might not be expanding faster under its own power; we (and our frames of reference) might be getting smaller, shrinking our measuring sticks like an accidental trip through C.G. Spacely's Minivac Machine.

This diversion about dark energy and frame dragging, the diversion that it was, does paint the backdrop theme: there are a lot of unseen things going on in the universe, things that bend, twist, and play with the properties of the universe itself, yet they are very real.

Consciousness is another enigma.  How can it be that matter arranged in the form of Homo Sapiens and other higher animals can be said to possess consciousness, while other highly ordered structures of matter capable of making decisions (such as the computer chip) is just a lump of matter without consciousness?

Yet consciousness is one of the few realities that survived the stringent standards of provability that philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes demanded of justified true knowledge.  Consciousness is both a enigma at the edge of purely physical verifiability, and one of the few absolutely certain facts that exist - a contrast that is almost, but not quite, a logical impossibility.

We know that consciousness exists.  Yet we tend to identify consciousness only in its familiar guise of organic life.  There is no reason whatsoever to confine the logical possibility of consciousness to that which resides in organic life.

In the television series Space 1999, the early episode The Black Sun introduced Commander Koenig to God, however briefly, where she said "I think a thought in perhaps a thousand of your years."

When you free yourself from preconceived notions that consciousness can only exist within organic bodies, and can only operate at familiar speeds, then cosmic intelligence, including Ultimate Cosmic Intelligence, becomes conceivable: indeed, very possible.  With a possible eternity spanning countless births of universes, the self-organization of consciousness on a vastly different temporal and chronological scale begins to seem extremely probable indeed.

If cosmic intelligence can be so vast as to be universal, then St. Thomas Aquinas could have a point in that Goddess is both transcendent and immanent.  I'd hasten to question Aquinas' claim that God is immaterial, however; if consciousness is the products of physical interactions of energies, then Goddess is very physical, though obviously not of a human form or anything resembling a familiar carbon-based biological entity.

"If," "could."  Speculation, undoubtedly.  But I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself if the edge of unknowability is enough for you to doubt the existence of the Divine in any form, or embrace the existence of the Divine in some form.

But if I have proven anything, it is that no one human being can claim, beyond reasonable doubt, to possess the definitive truth as to the details of the Divine.

If you believe in Him or Her, then trust.  If not, then don't.  It's all that you or I can do.

God looks down from far above, as envisioned in the paradigms cultivated by Western lore that appear again and again in art and seasonal traditions.  Untouchably distant in abode yet proximate in interest, involvement and effect, the direction down is still often synonymous with separation from God.

Down is a poor direction to go, as Western spiritual archetypes still tell it.

Yet within our bodies, tradition has partially reversed the virtues of the altitude of our own personal guiding lights; it is considered better to have a big heart and a small mind than it is to have a mighty brain and no heart. 

Down still has its limits; it is considered even less praiseworthy if your guiding force lives in the basement, below the waist.  There are presumed limits as to how far down one's dominant driving force can reside and still be seen as a virtue.

But Western archetypes don't own a complete monopoly on familiar paradigms.  The amicability of "body and soul" that sneaks its way into popular culture has a definite Pagan hint that, when accompanied by a tender heart, the cellar is not such a bad place to take a vacation.

Though Western tradition often depicts them as opposing forces, the body and soul, the heart and the cellar, are not necessarily at enmity with one other.  In my tradition, they are great allies.

Some approach spirituality by asking of it, "what's in it for me?"  Others feel that pursuing spirituality for personal benefit is to pervert the true purpose of drawing closer to God into a perverted way of fashioning a God to resemble themselves.  Spirituality, it is said, is then no longer about seeking a Higher Power, but making that Higher Power to your liking.

The two are not opposite goals, in fact; most of us have a knowledge of right and wrong.  And yet each and every one of us occasionally wanders away from what we know is right, and in the backs of our consciences, we know it.

The further we get from meeting the demands of our consciences, the lower our self-esteem becomes.

A good, fulfilling spiritual fit, then, is when its abstract trappings and decor aren't merely harmonious with your nature (though this harmony naturally leads toward what follows), but are also conducive to bringing your natural and habitual behavior in line with your God- (and Goddess-) given awareness of ethical goodness.

To find the right spiritual path is indeed to find that boost in self-esteem when you practice it faithfully.  If practiced faithfully, there is something in it for you: the benefits of living in more harmony with the Divine.

(Secular humanism or other non-theistic, non-spiritual philosophies are included; we who believe in the Divine own no exclusive rights to goodness.  If secularism - with no need for abstractions of God or Goddess - is what brings you closer to the high standards of your conscience, then you have drawn closer to goodness nonetheless, even if you choose not to think of it personified as a Higher Power.)

For me, my best sides come to the fore when I spend quality time downstairs: in body and soul, soul and spirit.  Spend too much time exercising strenuously in the attic of my brain, and I grow overly analytical, less accommodating of error.  When coupled with the cursed gift of memory, impulses can easily forget to honor the callings of conscience.

Most people crave some form of temporary escape.  Some use mind-altering chemicals; as long as they are used responsibly and don't turn the user into a danger to me, I will not judge them.

I like instead, when the attic gets too hot, to escape downstairs into body and soul, indeed sometimes to the cellar - and return calmed, relaxed, and re-connected with the best standards demanded by conscience.  And to end with a rare political comment, I have no plans to vote for Republicans until the party ends its obsession with what goes on in my body and soul.

Still imbued with sprightly verve from Her recent holiday, Lady Epona reaches Her fullness and height of Her power one hour before midnight this Saturday, October 3.  The due departure of the recent lingering heat brings refreshingly cooler evenings just in time for hearts big and tiny, human and animal, to stir with a lust for nature's night life beneath Nature's Night Light at Her irresistible peak.

Many almanacs list October 4th as the date of upcoming the Full Moon, but as most almanacs and ephemerides are based upon Universal Time (formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time), the adjustment for Pacific Daylight Time can sometime step back over into the previous calendar night.  This is one of those times.

Rarely do I miss a chance to draw down Her proffered energy when She makes it most available, and never do I miss it by choice.  But there is a specialness in the way that one of my favorite months, October, is almost bracketed by two Full Moons - one this Saturday; the next just two nights after Samhain.

While it is of more spiritual significance to me when New Moon and Samhain (Halloween) coincide, I also draw delight from the more traditional excitement that coincidences of the Full Moon and Halloween can bring. This Halloween, the Moon will be just two days before full, and will appear bright and almost perfectly round, high in the mid-evening of Samhain.

Traditional non-Pagan Halloween art and lore so often shows Halloween with a perfect Full Moon in the sky, but a true Full Moon on Halloween is actually rather rare.  The next near-full Moon to appear on Samhain will be in 2012, where the Moon comes full two days before Halloween, waiting until much later in the night to begin rising high in the sky.

Wiccans sometimes refer to Samhain as Ancestor's Night, because in tradition, the veil that separates this world from the next is most thin, making Samhain the most opportune time to contact the spirits of departed loved ones.  With Samhain's thin veil coinciding so closely to the Goddess' power at Full Moon, it has the makings of a weekend of power and opportunity for those whose spiritual inclinations are like mine.

It is also the Wiccan New Year in most traditions, the end of the last harvest and the anticipation of winter and the fresh starts of spring.

And yet, it concerns me still.

The intriguing question of governing ethically and legitimately seems able to chase me faster than I can run.  I was almost safe, though out of breath, when I got flying-tackled by a Washington Post opinion piece that is rich in philosophical nuances and missteps of trying to do the right thing in a minefield of complicating interests.

A Cold Shoulder to Liberty by op-ed columnist Michael Gerson

A few key passages, not all of them contiguous, which I hope and believe amount to fair use:

"This October, on a scheduled visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama will not be welcomed at the White House. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was recently dispatched to Dharamsala -- the Dalai Lama's place of exile in northern India -- to gently deliver the message. The Tibetans took the news, as usual, nonviolently. "A lot of nations are adopting a policy of appeasement" toward China, observed Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of Tibet's government in exile. "I understand why Obama is not meeting with the Dalai Lama before his Chinese trip. It is common sense. Obama should not irritate the Chinese leadership."

"It is not that Obama is completely unwilling to anger the Chinese. This month he imposed a 35 percent tariff on tire imports from China, leading to talk of a trade war. The head of the United Steelworkers said the president was willing to "put himself in the line of fire for the jobs of U.S. workers." But Obama is clearly less willing to put himself in the diplomatic line of fire for other, less tangibly political reasons.

In great-power politics, morality often gets its hair mussed. Every president needs room for diplomatic maneuvering. But rebuffing the Dalai Lama is part of a pattern. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has argued that pressing China on human rights "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis" -- a statement that left Amnesty International "shocked and extremely disappointed." Support for Iranian democrats has been hesitant. Overtures to repressive governments in Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria and Egypt have generally ignored the struggles of dissidents and prisoners in those nations. So far, the Obama era is hardly a high point of human rights solidarity."

"This split is now evident within the Obama administration. It includes some very principled, liberal defenders of human rights such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council staffer Samantha Power. But it seems dominated, for the moment, by those who consider the human rights enterprise as morally arrogant and an obstacle to mature diplomacy.

Which raises the question: What is left of foreign policy liberalism when a belief in liberty is removed?"

For the full article, go here:

http://www.washingtonpost.c...

For more food for thought, have some dessert:

http://www.tnr.com/article/...

I ask, please, no coarse partisan bashing.  There is enough opportunity in this article for rational, thoughtful comments.

Difficult questions that test my economic stances.

Quite unlike anything that I have posted before, this post is a continuation of thoughts inspired by de Jouvenal on Power, posted at Political and Philosophical Commentary, at bakersfield.com. 

This will be the first time that I have written directly about politics, but since there exists at least one person interested in politics at a philosophical level, namely the maintainer of the referenced blog, I am writing this primarily for him and his fellow philosophy scholars.  I think there are a few other people here who might be interested in an examination of this depth as well.

This is timely in the context of the nature of numerous recent posts.

Imagine yourself enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in your home.  Your peace is soon disrupted, however, by a street gang in a vehicle or motorcade, terrorizing you and some of your neighbors at will, trying to break into their homes or, at least, making it known that stepping outside your front door is a step into danger.

In a civilized society such as ours, with peace officers to protect us, that would indisputably be felonious criminal behavior.

Now imagine taking a closer look at this street gang, and you notice that they are wearing official uniforms of the state.  These are indeed real uniforms, and these are indeed authorized agents of the state.  Because they are agents of the state, they are equipped with the tools to break into any home that they choose, and there are laws against resisting their attacks.

That little fact changes everything.  Unlike the criminal street gang acting outside of the law, they are the law, accountable to no one.  You cannot turn to the state for protection; they are the state.  That one detail makes the difference between criminal terrorism and lawful, state-sanctioned activity, even though the actions themselves are identical to those of the criminal street gang.  And in this logically plausible hypothetical example, the state-sponsored form of terrorism is more dangerous than that of the rogue street gang.

The second example, obviously, benefits from being legally authorized.  However, I would dare to say that it is logically impossible to argue that this second example of power, even more destructive than the first by dint of its specialized equipment and special legal protections, is by definition a legitimate form of power, if the criminal street gang is not a legitimate exercise of power.

This conclusion becomes my first premise: legal authorization of power and use of force is not, in itself, sufficient to deem an implementation of power to be a legitimate one.

For the next thought experiment, hypothesize about what sort of government might doing this.

The first example that comes to most people's minds is the despotic regime, like Saddam Hussein and his army.  Most everyone will agree that the Hussein regime was basically a criminal organization with the color of authority.  Hussein's power was illegitimate.

Such a regime operates without the consent of those being governed.  Without the consent of the population, no amount of "official" legal recognition can make such a plundering agency of power legitimate.

However, such malicious abuse of power might meet with wide local popular approval.  The roving band of well-equipped terrorists might be operating with the consent of a democratic majority or a fairly elected legislature.  They may be singling out people who support an opposition politician or belong to a hated minority group.

Most people would still argue that this use of power is illegitimate despite its popular approval.  So, we have another premise: popular support for a politically empowered body is also not sufficient, in itself, to make a particular use of power legitimate.

In between the despotic regimes and the democratically supported exercises in evil are governments operating under many different shades of illegitimacy.  However, I will dissect those later.

The premises that this kind of analysis require imply a necessary precondition: there must exist some standard of legitimacy outside beyond that of the empowered institution itself.

This puts us in a really difficult spot: what determines legitimacy and illegitimacy apart from the empowered agency?

Such a determination requires the existence of objective normative ethics, one of philosophy's most challenging quests for a definitive answer.

One easy way out is to appeal to divine command ethics, in which "God says," and it is so. 

However, that faces a serious epistemological problem.  It is uncertain enough for any one of us to ascertain whether any message, text, or inspiration revealed to us is truly of divine origin and not from an impostor; it introduces an added layer of epistemological uncertainty to trust an outside human institution to hand down "what God said." 

In order to trust an outside human institution as a source of God's authority is to trust both that it is possible for such an institution to definitively ascertain divine authenticity, and that you or we have vested our trust in that this particular institution, as opposed to others, will always, faithfully and accurately, relay God's revelations to the rest of humanity.

Legitimacy by appeal to alleged divine edict, therefore, introduces an extra layer of uncertainty between ourselves and ethical truth, rather than eliminating the one layer of uncertainty that is troubling us.  Appeals to (asserted) divine edict obscure the path to ethical truth rather than clear it.

So, divine edict ethics are out of the question.  What absolute ethical standard should apply instead?  Is there such a thing as an absolute ethical standard?

The difficulty of this question splits libertarian thinkers down the middle.  On one side are the passive libertarians, moral skeptics who believe that almost any use of power or force to influence others is illegitimate.  These libertarians, one would think paradoxically, tend to condone absolute states' rights and/or pure majoritarianism within communities.

On the other side are pro-active libertarians, who believe that it is a legitimate use of power to resist and oppose illegitimate power or use of power.  These libertarians are more likely to support the American Civil Liberties Union.

The moral skepticism of the first group introduces a paradox.  They take freedom of association to an extreme, their definition of freedom includes the freedom to form empowered political bodies and use power freely against others,  even against their own community members, regardless of how inhumanely and indiscriminately it is used.  Using force to interfere with their uses of force is considered an illegitimate use of force, even if the force being targeted is itself illegitimate.

By refraining from all but the most minimal use of legitimate power, they abdicate the command of power to illegitimate uses and agencies.  Like a pacifist community invaded by a warlike tribe, passive libertarianism vacates the stage to allow non-libertarian, even evil, assemblages of power to rise to dominance.  Thus anarchy is indeed a short route to despotism.

Passive libertarianism, due to its moral skepticism that tolerates despotism if that is what the nation or state wants, is out as well.  Passive libertarianism is of little help in ensuring legitimate power instead of the illegitimate power that was produced many of the darkest pages of history.

To tackle the difficult task of finding a higher ethical standard that can separate legitimate uses of power from illegitimate uses, I will borrow from the thoughts of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.  Even this depends upon assumptions that may call for questioning, but to my eyes, the thoughts of MacIntyre look like a good starting point that is difficult to argue against.

In Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, MacIntyre recognizes the need for a balance between individual interests and societal interests, with neither the individual nor social interests being grossly disregarded.  It can be observed directly when a society's ethical or political system is causing it to flourish, and when it is causing a society suffering and is holding it back.

The title quote, "dependent rational animals," recognizes the dual nature of the human species as a social species of animal with a built-in dependency upon the surrounding society, and as a species endowed with powers of rational thought and contemplation.

The capacity for rational thought gives us the potential to recognize and acknowledge our own vulnerabilities, to anticipate that each of us may encounter times of hardship when one must reach out for the aid of society, and to recognize that the vulnerabilities that each of us bear are borne by everyone else.

If anything can be a statement of the obvious, an ethical or political system designed to inflict ill being upon its own members, or benefit those in power and their supportive constituency to the deprivation of benefit to the remainder of the population, or exploits citizens' vulnerability to create hardship, cannot possibly be a system that will result in the individual and collective flourishing of its members.

The detrimental effects that illegitimate power have on a society are quite visible.  It is no coincidence that parts of the world where governments that wield power in purposefully harmful ways against their own communities, result in levels of poverty, pestilence, barbarism, and lack of education much more severe than local environmental circumstances would otherwise create.  The Taliban is probably the most noteworthy example in current events.

The application of objective normative ethics in a society is much more than the implementation of a political system, of course, and their application to political systems includes many more considerations than just ensuring the political system's legitimacy.  (It may tempt one to conclude from what follows that ensuring the legitimacy of political power would by consequence ensure the ethical use of that power, but I hesitate to elevate that to an axiomatic degree of certainty.)  Yet with this foundation in place, I can go back to examine the shades of illegitimacy that power can take, using an objective ethical lens.

Consider an election won or ballot initiative passed through heavy campaign spending that exposes false or misleading information to great numbers of people, far more people than the opposition is able to reach with a counteracting message.

Voters may have "consented" by delivering an election victory, but if voters' decisions were based on information that deliberately concealed possible harm or other adverse consequences that victory would bring, including harm to those who voted in favor of it, then that power was obtained illegitimately, and the needless harm that follows is the product of power being used illegitimately.

Somewhat related and much more familiar to most Americans are legislators indebted to powerful special interest groups who hold the reins and purse strings that can make or break their re-election.  Candidates win on an ostensibly winning message, only to tweak the laws in ways that favor their masters to the detriment of the citizenry.  The changes leading to the current financial collapse are the most familiar examples of power used illegitimately, since it was used to favor powerful interests with disregard to the potential damage to Main Street.

In a country like the United States, where illegitimate power exists in moderate amounts, and yet where voters still have some choice of outcomes, it can (and in our case, has) become a political game to allege the illegitimacy of whatever party or group is in power at the moment.

While it can be a necessary thing to point out illegitimate power and its use when it is indeed illegitimate, over-use of the allegation for partisan purposes can make future restoration of perceived legitimacy (and perception is also important) very difficult.

In 2001, some Democrats alleged the illegitimacy of the Bush presidency by charging that the election was stolen.  In 2009, so-called "birthers" question the legal eligibility of President Obama.  Whether or not any truth exists in either claim, charging illegitimacy has itself become a power game that, ironically, can be wielded illegitimately.

Restoring both the perceived and real legitimacy of power in the United States and lower tiers of government will be difficult but necessary if we expect to retain our position of world leadership.

That will require building or restoring safeguards to prevent the acquisition and use of illegitimate power.  Unfortunately, illegitimate power once gained, as it is rather common today, is extremely reluctant to let go of it, and will use it to continue to skew the system to oppose such safeguards or render them ineffective.  The difficulty in passing campaign finance reform is a classic example.

The other opposition that ensuring against illegitimate use of power will encounter are objections to the inconveniences that the safeguards will cause. 

Those who want the police to be able to rush into any situation on any pretense using any methods that they choose, will be turned off by the restoration or imposition of defined procedures designed to protect against misuse of their lawful power.  And those whose emotional impulses favor disproportionate punishments for certain wrongdoings, real or imagined, will be put off by expectations that punishments, if any, be measured according to actual harm done rather than the strength of some people's visceral reactions to the deeds being punished.

But if we are going to allow the establishment of empowered agencies that have the privilege to "do things to" the citizens of a community or nation, it is ethically mandatory that all practical measures be taken to ensure that such power is used legitimately.

Otherwise, we have something hardly better than "legalized" criminal behavior.

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The Wheel of the Year clicks once more; the Earth's north pole begins to lean away from the Sun and nights begin stretching longer than days, leaving me to wonder what mysterious energy source is sustaining these mid-July temperatures now that the incident strength of the Sun's life-spurring energy has waned considerably since then.

Still, the persistent heat has a unique character that differentiates it from the crisp heat waves and cool nights of Spring, or the uptake of tropical moisture that gives August its viscous sultriness.  It's a character of drying, ripening, gamely clinging to a season that it once owned, only to yield eventually to destiny as harvest turns to orange and gold.

Mabon, the Pagan holiday associated with the first day of autumn, has always been special to my heart.  Sometimes called the Second Harvest, the formerly torrid pace of nature and life begins to coast the rest of the way to its maturity, and there is something about whatever hot days remain that fills me with a love for the forest and an urge to rip off my clothes and run skyclad through the mountains' dry breezes and the Sun's raw bite.

Pagans who envision the Divine as a pantheon may associate Mabon with the Goddess Epona (Celtic), or perhaps the Goddesses Cessair and Modron and the God Mabon (Welsh).  Or they may identify with other traditional pantheons, or simply revere the God and Goddess from whom all pantheons are seen as specific aspects and roles of the God and Goddess.

Mabon is associated with the ancient alchemical elements Fire and Earth together.  That is not to imply that Pagans literally believe in the ancient science of alchemy; rather, alchemy is part of the symbolism that we preserve, maintaining traditional connections to the years long past when our lives depended so much more closely upon nature. 

There aren't many Pagans anymore who are fortunate enough to be able to reap full-fledged harvests around Mabon and Samhain, but the remembrances of these distant associations help to keep us grounded in nature's ways.  Some, like me, believe that at some point in the future, we will once again need to depend more directly on the Earth, and that our society's present separation from nature is but a temporary and prodigal misadventure.

The next stop on the Wheel of the Year is Samhain, the Third Harvest, the Wiccan new year and better known to most as Halloween.  Gaia gets ready for a long winter's sleep, and Wiccans remember our ancestors, who have gone to sleep to awaken into a new life.

The nice thing about Pagan traditions is that you need not believe in Pagan spirituality to honor them; one can be an atheist, Christian, or Jew, and still remember departed ancestors and remember fondly the earthy ways of simpler times.

The plummeting quality of partisan politics, with its epidemic way of poisoning the treatment of most other issues of importance today, has made any serious and thoughtful reflection on the state of health care nearly inaudible above the din and noise. 

As priceless as we say life is, the sincerity and constructiveness of our handling of it should be magnitudes better than this.  What I have written is an attempt at rational analysis for anyone with enough attention span and individual will to read it.

I am, in fact, yet undecided as to the best approach to health care.  But whatever system of delivery we choose or keep, some concerns remain unchanging and ought not be dismissed.  What I see down future's road is not necessarily what I would like to see happen; it is, however, what I believe will happen.

But first, let's dispel some of the exaggeration with a few minutes of common sense.

First, even under a single payer public program, there is neither need nor plan to establish a board to decide when you must die or go untreated.  At whatever point a public program declines to pay any more toward a certain treatment or even, worse yet, toward a certain person, it doesn't mean that you will necessarily go untreated or be left to die.

All that it would mean is that you must find other ways of paying for it.  In other words, you would revert to the old-fashioned way.  If limitations or rationing of treatment under a public plan became real and valid concerns, and I think this is possible, then it would mean that supplemental insurance would become a booming industry of its own, much like the supplemental plans that already exist to pick up where Medicare Part A leaves off.

This is not to say, however, that concerns are entirely groundless.  I do believe that some sort of rationing is conceivable under any public plan, as it is already practiced by most private plans.  This worrisome aspect of the future of health care, public or otherwise, appears to be an inevitable result of the insatiable nature of health care demand as its repertoire of procedures and treatments grows.

Let's hypothesize that we implement a health care system in which each and every person gets all necessary care, when it is needed.  It doesn't matter, for the purpose of this hypothesis, whether it is delivered by the government, the private sector, or a combination of the two.

The compassionate part of us, and compassion, in my opinion, is a very important part of every good human being, will always want that one more medical procedure that can avert a sorrowful and needless death.  By definition, once a medical procedure for an illness or injury is developed, any death from that specific illness or injury becomes a needless death "if only he or she had access to / could afford that procedure."

We perfect the procedure.  We fend off death for a while longer, only to face it again later in life, often in the form of an even more challenging disease.  We will search for the cure or treatment for that.  And we will find it.

We will have warded off death once more.  And we will face it once more, again in the form of an even tougher opponent.  And we will long for the cure or treatment for that.

It is an endless cycle that will demand more and more of our resources and energies, only to finally see life end in the very same sad, bereaving death that we are getting better and better at forestalling, at ever greater expense.

There is, by logical inevitability alone, some point at which we will eventually concede the battle against our mortality, a battle limited by the resources we are able and, sadly, willing, to devote to resisting it.  The good in us wants to save and preserve lives as often as we possibly can; our ability to carry out that good will be ultimately limited by our time, resources, and what fraction of them we decide to allocate to life preservation.

We will reach a point where supply of money (and hospitals, and physicians) cannot meet the demand.  At that point, we will have decided upon a definitive price of life. 

The idea that life can have a price is unsettling to most people.  It is very unsettling to me.  However, it is a number that we will find out, in the relatively near future.  Our options in confronting this ultimate limit, fortunately, are not equally unsettling.

The least unsettling resolution of this disturbing question is for each of us to have the right to price our own lives. 

Physician-assisted dying is coming.  People who fear some panel deciding our lives and deaths should be in favor of placing the decision-making power to end our struggles against illness peacefully in our individual hands.  Either we get the power to choose our own times of exit from earthly living, or someone else will do it for us.  Ultimately we cannot oppose both personal choice in dying and so-called death panels.

I have another concern, too.  The fears of eugenics do have merit, though again not via any widely repeated partisan email rumor mills.

My concern is that eugenics may become necessary to offset the anti-eugenics effect that increasingly sophisticated medical technologies could bring into our gene pool.

Natural selection is a cold and indifferent process, but it is what has kept beneficial genes in our DNA while screening out those gene combinations that are not so conducive to survival through child-bearing age.

Medical advances have the potential to defeat the natural selection process by enabling the survival of people whose genetic make-ups predispose them to chronic ill health, a process sometimes called dysgenics or genetic deterioration.

I have some friends who have lived their entire lives to date without ever needing hospitalization or medical treatment for anything other than injuries.  I have other friends who, along with many of their family members, check into hospitals nearly as often as I check into hotels.

Predisposition to frequent or chronic illness is often influenced by heredity.  If we defeat the mechanism of natural selection, we may begin accumulating genetic flaws rather than weeding them out.

Health care advances, regardless of how much public or private involvement is behind it, will lead to an evolutionary process that will reshape what we consider morally acceptable.  It will be so shaped by the limitations of resources and will.

Eugenics, which conjures up images of science fiction novels and infamous figures in recent history, strikes fear into the hearts of many good human beings.  In the wrong hands, there is good reason to fear.

But as with dying, the best hands to exercise this choice are our own hands.

As a society, we already practice a little eugenics.  People with known hereditary illnesses or susceptibilities are cautioned about having children without first getting assurance of minimal genetic risk to the prospective child.

The future direction in which natural courses of events will take health care is fraught with pitfalls and potential reasons to fear.  It will alter what we consider morally acceptable.

But the best way to meet these inevitable changes is to keep the decision-making process in each of our own hands, whether it's when we choose to exit this world, or through access to the information and technology needed to decide whether to risk having a child that might be condemned to a life of chronic illness.

And, the best way to limit the undesirable consequences of these inevitable changes in health care and life issues is to be sure that whatever solutions we implement reflect the social value that nearly all human beings place on human life and the quality of that life.

In my mind, that rules out a system that allocates health care solely on the ability to pay.  If we make health care available solely on financial status, then we have placed all value on financial status and no value on life itself.  In my mind, that option is necessarily ruled out, because zero is not the value that most of us place on life.

If we decide that the present state of law is the ideal situation, under which everyone is entitled to emergency life-saving trauma care regardless of inability to pay, then we ought to formally implement it, systematize it, and streamline it.

But if we come to agree that human life is worth a little bit more in intrinsic social value, then some form of baseline public health care, to which private supplemental plans can be added, sounds like a reasonable balance to me.

It is not my specific intention to call someone out, but only to meditate on a comment that I have seen a couple of times recently.  I have a number of posts in the works, which both time and maintenance of my own interest are delaying, but I feel this need to interject on the matter of Senator Ted Kennedy's death.

The statement, "being dead doesn't change what he was," is a true statement.  What is not so amenable to a snap judgment, however, is the answer to that question: just what sort of person was any particular individual during his or her life?

Is "being a tomcat" in itself a sufficient criterion that justifies or forbids speaking ill of a dead person?  In my belief, one's night-prowling proclivities are generally among the least of indicators of one's inner goodness.

Though some miss the point, Christianity has some wisdom to contribute on terms that are familiar to many.  "Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law," states the book of Romans.  And Jesus' recorded Sermon on the Mount focuses on the intent behind one's actions moreso than the actions themselves.

Most people who try to make a difference in the world are trying to make a difference so as to bring goodness and benefit to others.  Sometimes they attempt it in ways that we do not understand; sometimes they choose methods that we may not agree with.  Other times, the good intentions behind the deeds are obvious.

Truly evil people are comparatively rare, and if I may say so, I can spot them pretty quickly and accurately.  Ted Kennedy was no such person.

The ultimate answer to the question, in my opinion at least, is: was that person's heart inclined to helping people, or hurting people?  Were they renowned for their outpourings of love, or infamous in their malice?

The answer to that question ought to govern how we speak of them after they are gone.

Neda died tragically, but she didn't die alone, and died even less unloved.

Now living between lives and between worlds, as my beliefs envision her, I'm sure she can feel the love of more hearts reaching out to her now than she could ever have known existed or cared before.

I can barely write this, but I must.  However long it would have taken me to be able to slowly step up to this tragic loss and hold together long enough to pay respects, my heart would not be complete again until I did so.

You are loved.

The Christian faith speaks of Jesus Christ taking upon himself the sins of the world.  I am not a Christian, but there is still a beautiful and profound metaphor in the inability of a mere mortal human being to do that and survive, physically or emotionally.

Technology, and its ability to relay news in a first-person presence within minutes, has put each of us in a position to feel the losses and hurts of more people, more intimately, than ever before in history.

None of us may be Jesus Christ, as the Christian faith describes Him, but we may be getting the most rudimentary inklings of what it must be like to actually feel all of the evils of the world and take them to heart.

It isn't easy.