Getting a master's degree. The cost.

This semester I'm teaching one undergraduate course and one graduate course, and I'm administering an undergraduate program as well. A student was interested in getting into our online graduate program, and he wanted to know the cost, the total cost he would have to pay. I didn't know the answer, and it had been a couple years since I last studied the tuition and fees my university charges my students, so I've taken a close look again at the figures.

For an out-of-state student, like someone from California or New York who wants to get an online degree with our department, the cost per course this year is a little under $1,200, but there are various fees online students must pay, and fees for part-time students, and when you add all these fees, a person who takes just one class per semester ends up paying about $1,384.50. That figure is something I should think of when I'm working on my graduate courses. Students who take courses on campus (assuming they're local and paying in-state rates) pay a few hundred dollars more per semester in fees. Assuming a graduate student starting in August of 2009 needs 42 units of credit in our program to earn their master's degree, and assuming they take one course per semester, including one course in each of two of the upcoming three summers, then that student would probably graduate with their master's degree in May of 2013. If each year tuition increases by 8%, their total cost in tuition and fees will be about $16,500. If each year tuition increases by 16%, the total cost will end up being $18,500.

I'm not really clear on why the cost of online education might go up 8% or 16% per year. Since I've worked in academia (about ten years now) I've seen only one year when faculty salaries went up by (slightly) more than 2%. I once compared figures on average faculty salaries in 2006 to figures from the mid-1980s, and realized that after adjusting for inflation the purchasing power of average faculty salaries had declined by about 11% over the two decades after I started college. I don't know that the fixed costs associated with delivering online education are going up much either. Computers and software seem not to be costing so much more. Energy costs have gone up, but they are only a tiny fraction of the total cost to my university of delivering online education. There are more support staff now, I suppose, but I believe their salaries have also been stagnant or declining relative to inflation, and the increase in numbers of staff and faculty were, I thought, matched by increases in student enrollment here.

A few of the biggest reasons for tuition to be increasing at our public university are related to public policies. First, state subsidies for education, particularly public higher education, have declined relative to inflation, especially when considered on a per-student basis. So, while students here maybe once paid tuition to cover 35% of the real cost of their education, they may now be paying something like 60% of the real cost of their education, with only 40% or less being covered by Illinois taxpayers. Something along these lines is certainly very true for our residential and commuter students, but I don't know if this applies to online graduate students.

Of course, it's a legitimate question to ponder: how much of a person's education after secondary school is a social good that benefits all of society (and therefore ought to be paid for by the public through taxes and government spending to keep tuition low)? Clearly much of the benefit from an undergraduate degree, and especially a graduate degree, is enjoyed purely by the student who gains the education and increased salary (if education even leads to increases in salaries, which it usually does, but not always). If the benefits of a master's degree are split about 50/50 by the student who personally benefits and the society that benefits by that individual's enhanced productivity and contributions to the common good (including non-economic contributions), then I suppose a 50/50 split on the cost of paying for the graduate degree makes sense.

The State of Illinois has made some other policy decisions that increase tuition specifically in this state. For one thing, the government used to pay tuition for Illinois veterans of the American armed services, but now the government has evidently stopped paying their tuition, but is still requiring public universities to allow veterans to take their graduate courses without paying tuition. Basically, the costs of educating these veterans are now shifted from the general tax-paying public of Illinois to the employees (including faculty) of the state universities (who will now have lower wages and salaries) and the students without military backgrounds (who must pay higher tuition costs to cover the costs of educating their classmates who served the nation in the armed services). I actually think the policy of offering people who serve the nation in military service a form of compensation that includes lifetime access to free higher education is a good policy, but the costs of such a policy ought to be carried by the military, so that people can see that this is a cost of having a large military, and recognize that paying for this higher education is part of our military spending. When states mandate this sort of policy and then don't fund their policies, the costs are shifted to educators and students, and what is really a form of military spending (albeit legitimate and justified military spending, I think) gets covered up in education budgets.

Another way to consider the cost of higher education is to start with an idea of what a reasonable cost should be. It seems to me a two-year graduate degree is probably comparable to a car in terms of value and usefulness, and ought to cost about the same as a new car. It's odd to compare a more intangible benefit like a graduate degree (and the educational experience it represents) to a mundane tool like a car, and I think in the long-term a graduate education is far more valuable to a person than a new car, but still, it seems to me somehow that a master's degree ought to cost significantly less than a house, but significantly more than a three-week vacation to Europe or whatever, and a car fits in the middle ground between these two extremes.

And, as it happens, a master's degree from my department earned by a part-time online student will in fact cost somewhere between $16,500 and $18,500, about the same as a new car. That actually seems like a reasonable cost to me for a master's degree. It works out to be about 1/3 of the median full-time year-round wage. Considering the costs involved in providing such an education and the benefits to the students, that seems to me about right. I'd be happy if a master's degree cost closer to 1/4 or even 1/5 of the median year-round full time wage, but 1/3 doesn't seem to me extraordinarily high, although it is perhaps on the high end of the range of what seems acceptable and reasonable to me.

However, our online master's degree is one of the less expensive ones, I believe. I think other people might pay $40,000 or $50,000 or even more for a master's degree. I wonder how much of that extra cost is justified by the value of the education, and how much is merely a sign of inefficiency or rent-seeking by more schools with more prestige. No institution is perfectly efficient, and I suppose that almost any price asked of a customer or student will include some amount of money commanded by the seller simply because they want to get the highest price they can get without respect to the value of what they are selling. It has sometimes seemed to me that many brands (and some universities as brands) do add to their prices because of brand prestige, although in fact the the prestige of consuming that brand (or attending that university) is worth far less than the addition to the price.

Back to school videos

Although there is still a week left in the summer, we've started classes at the university, and I'm busy with my new classes and new students and some new ideas for promoting our program. I neglected the blog this summer. I guess it was nice to get away from computer screens and keyboards for several weeks.

Now that I'm back on the computers, and having been impressed by our summer visits to the Acoma, Navajo, and Hopi Nations, I've been listening to some of my American Indian music, and found that I really like Buffy Sainte-Marie. Here is an old video and a newer one to share her music with you.

There are a couple other great versions of that "No no Keshagesh" [No no greedy-guts] here and here. Good art usually does have to exaggerate and simply to make its statement more effectively and with greater beauty. But I think Buffy is fairly honest and accurate in these songs, even for a couple good examples of socially-conscious art.

Hope to see some of you at Critical Mass this Friday afternoon at the Old State Capitol.

Summer Photographs.

This summer I'm planning to put up about six pages of photographs of the family and our travels or activities. I've already put up the first two photo pages. These are available these sites: page one and page two.

Prime Ministers

A little over year ago I put a list of my favorite presidents and politicians on this blog.

Today I'll post my five favorite Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom. These are, in ranked order:

Clement Richard Attlee, Lord Attlee (1883-1967)
William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778)
David Lloyd George, Lord of Dwyfor (1863-1945)
William Gladstone (1809-1898)
Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston (1784-1865)
Tony Blair (1953- )

I'll also mention that my favorite Canadian Prime Minister was Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919).

Yes, I know all the Prime Ministers I've listed had flaws, and some fairly serious flaws, but if you look over all the Prime Ministers, these are the five I like the most. I also like certain aspects of Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli, but politically I would probably have voted against them in elections, and they don't really belong on my favorite British politicians list.

What we boycott in our family.

What do we boycott in the Hadley-Ives family? There are a few thing we try not to buy, and then there are companies we try to avoid. When I was a kid in middle school I already boycotted certain products, partly for political reasons. I remember certain brands of shoes being popular, but I wouldn’t let my parents buy them for me or wear them because I thought they were made in non-democratic countries where the workers weren’t free. I still make some political decisions when I’m behaving as a consumer. I’ll share those now.

One of the companies I boycott is Exxon-Mobil. I won’t buy gas at one of their stations, and I won’t go to any of the companies that are owned by ExxonMobil. This boycott is mainly motivated by ExxonMobil’s funding for politically-motivated attacks on science around climate change. I believe they have even hired people to attack critics and journalists who have tried to expose how ExxonMobil fought the idea that fossil fuels were contributing to climate change and global warming. I attribute much of the delay in the American political will to make meaningful changes to avoid or diminish global warming to the campaign of ExxonMobil. That’s why I never stop at their gas stations.

Royal Dutch Shell is another company I cannot abide. I hold them partly responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an author and businessman who complained about conditions in the oil producing area of the Niger Delta. He believed that not enough of the profits from the oil extraction was getting back to help raise the living standards of the people who lived in the areas where drilling was taking place. He launched a non-violent movement for economic and social development and justice. When the Nigerian government arrested him and decided to kill him I believe Shell could have applied pressure to stop his execution. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Shell was in fact giving indications to the Nigerian government that the Shell corporation wanted Saro-Wiwa silenced. So, I never buy gas at Shell stations, nor do I buy any Shell products.

I don’t shop at the Family Dollar general stores. I find the sweat-shop retail discount chains like this depressing. Walmart and Sam’s Clubs are other stores I scrupulously avoid unless there is an emergency and no alternative. These are part of the trend of corporations delivering shoddy, cheap goods made by workers from unfree countries where workers get killed if they try to organize and environmental and job safety protections are minimal. This provides lower prices, but it also means lower wages for low-skilled American workers and workers in other nations where decent labor laws and political freedoms keep production costs slightly higher. Not only this, but these companies have a tendency to treat employees unfairly (unpaid overtime, stealing time from employees, etc.), which is exacerbated by the way the companies set the goal of maximizing profits so far ahead of the other goals that for-profit firms should have. Finally, these sorts of companies tend to indoctrinate workers to be against unions, and they make contributions to the persons whose political views differ most distinctly from mine, so I have that motive for boycotting or at least avoiding them as much as possible.

I don’t shop at Lowe’s Home Centers. Back in early 2003 before America invaded Iraq many peace demonstrators in Champaign County, Illinois were demonstrating against the possible upcoming war in Iraq. Some of them parked vehicles in distant corners of a local Lowe’s Home Centers parking lot, far from the store, and not in any way taking parking spots from potential customers. The owners or managers of that Lowe’s store had peace demonstrators’ cars towed away, and so I will never shop at Lowe’s.

I almost never buy meat when I shop for groceries. I don’t like the industrial food production system we have in the United States. I think it dehumanizes us because it creates a bad relationship between people and the animals they eat. I will sometimes buy meat at farmers markets when I’m buying directly from a farmer who can tell me about how his animals lived and were slaughtered. I probably eat animal flesh four or five times per month, about once a week, but this is mainly because Jeri often buys or prepares food with meat in it. If I was doing more of the cooking and grocery shopping we would almost never have meat.

It’s not so much a boycott, but I really almost never watch anything on television or listen to anything on radio if commercials will interrupt what I’m watching or hearing. I find commercials ridiculous and intrusive. When I see an advertisement that I find exceptionally insulting, I try to make a note to myself to avoid buying whatever the advertisers are flogging.

I would not buy any Amway products. Amway supports some of the most reactionary political agendas, and I want none of my money going to support the people at the top of the Amway marketing pyramid.

I tend to make a point of never buying anything from companies that send me too many e-mail advertisements, and I certainly boycott all spammers. I also don’t buy things from companies that use annoying pop-up window advertisements on the Internet.

That’s about it for what we boycott.

Family photographs in May

Here is Sebastian's Spring 2009 8th grade school portrait photograph.

This is Arthur's Spring 2009 4th grade school portrait photograph.

On mother's day we went to the St. Louis Art Museum to see the Ming Dynasty treasures first, and then after we had marveled at that exhibit we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens to see the iris blooms.

Chun-Chih took this picture of the Hadley-Ives guys in the iris gardens.

Here is Arthur in our backyard among the lilac flowers. The strong odor of these lilac blossoms gives our yard a delicious scent in mid-May.

Spring family photographs.

I'll share some more family photographs today. Here are some pictures from the past few days.

Here are Arthur and Sebastian at the Missouri Botanical Garden. We went on mother's day to see the iris flowers.

I like this picture of Sebastian and Arthur along with the white iris.

I think this is a good picture of Arthur walking around in the botanical garden.

We have huge lilac bushes in our back yard, and in the second and third weeks of May the air around our home is perfumed by the lilac scent. Here is Arthur back by the lilacs.

Here is Chun-Chih. Arthur took this photograph with his new camera, which was a birthday gift he received in April.

Photographs from late April and early May

I want to share some photographs of recent events around here.

This is a photograph from the Symbolist Conference held at Allerton Park in Illinois. Rosina Neginsky, my colleague, organized this conference.

This is photograph of Sebastian and myself in the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

This is Jeri with Sebastian and Arthur at the Botanical Gardens on Mother's Day.

This is our home in the morning, with a storm moving in from the west, but the sun shining out of the east on our house and our birch tree. Arthur is coming out of the house on his way to his bus stop.

Videos with Baha'i Themes.

I've decided to share some Baha'i-themed music videos today. I'll start this one from the Pacific Ocean Islands, featuring a song about gossip.

And then here is one from Merz. I'm not sure if it has a Baha'i theme, but Merz did some great Baha'i songs in the past.

Here is a Baha'i Prayer with a slide show:

Here is some dancing and music, including Kevin Locke playing flute.

April 2009 bike short film.

April is over. Wow. It went fast. Here's a film of Danny MacAskill riding his bike around Edinburgh, Scotland, and I guess some of it was filmed this past month. I just got a bike like this for my son Arthur this spring, and I imagine he'll be impressed by this. I love bike riding, and this month I've been able to ride back and forth to work two or three times each week. This film shows what is possible with bikes. I wish almost everyone rode bikes to work when the weather isn't cold or stormy. It's sad that so few do.

2009 Lincoln Pilgrimage

Every year at the end of April boy scouts from all over the United States come to Springfield, Illinois to parade from Lincoln's tomb to the Old State Capitol where Lincoln often worked when he lived here. The day before, many scouts participate in a trek from New Salem to Springfield, a walk of nearly 30 kilometers (almost 20 miles).

Here is Johnny Smith carrying the American flag at the end of the pilgrimage, near the corner of Jefferson and 6th.

Here is a view of the scouts marching through the streets of Springfield on their way between the tomb and the historic center of the city.

Here are the scouts leaving the cemetery where they assembled at Lincoln's tomb. One boy or girl from each troop or pack carries an American flag at the head of the parade.

Here is Sebastian marching in the parade.

This is Sebastian the night before the parade, when he was cleaning up dishes after dinner out at the campground in New Salem.

Here I am, one of the assistant scoutmasters.

Economics

I think one of my projects for the break I get in May (between the spring and summer semesters) will be to create some web pages that provide links to my favorite blogs and web sites. I've already completed one page, for my favorite economics web resources. 

By the way, the oaks broke up in tiny leaves yesterday, and so now even the oaks have turned green.  We're getting too much rain, so it's difficult to find a window between the storms to get to my office.

Tonight at 6:30 the MacArthur Street association is having a big event at the South Side Church (where we vote). This street is having some tough economic times (21 vacant or abandoned properties out of 140 in a five-block stretch near our home). There is a three-block stretch of the street that has eight sub-prime lending and check cashing shops quite near our home, and many large vacant commercial addresses.  The street is being extended down to a big freeway, where there is a new exit being constructed so traffic can flow directly from the interstate freeway on to our little commercial street.  This is disrupting the route of the bike path I ride to school. But oh well, it should help economic progress, I guess.

Taxes

Last week was tax week, and so I'd like to share some thoughts on the taxes we pay here in the Hadley-Ives household.

First of all, our income is very close to the median income. I work full-time, and my salary is close to the median full-time year-round earnings of all American men, and after you add in the little bit that Jeri earns, that brings our household close to the median household income. We have two children, so we get some deductions and tax breaks related to that. 

Here is what we paid in taxes in 2008 as a percent of our adjusted gross income:

FICA - Medicare: 1.85%

Property taxes to the state of Illinois and the city of Springfield: 6.44%

Federal income tax: 2.32%

Illinois state income tax: 2.20%

An estimation for sales taxes and various taxes on gas, electricity, etc.: 1.58%

Total that goes to the government: 14.41%

But, as Americans and as employees in a state education system, we have some private payments that would be part of the tax system in most other industrialized economies.  Here is what we paid for these in 2008:

Health insurance and all health care expenses: 6.26% 

Actually, since my employer helped pay much of the cost of my health insurance as part of my benefits, and that money could have gone from my employer directly to me in salary if there was a system of public universal medical insurance, the total cost of our household health care and insurance was probably over 10%.

SURS Self Managed retirement fund (instead of Social Security): 10.71%.

Actually, since my employer matched my contributions, and could have instead just paid me as salary what it contributed to my retirement plan, the total money that went into retirement savings was close to 20%. We're one of the very few American household where we don't pay Social Security taxes. And, unless I take some summer jobs or switch to some other job where I do, I'll never get any Social Security when I retire.  Also, since I am in a self-managed retirement plan, I get no set pension at retirement.  Instead, I get whatever is in my SURs retirement account, and that's it.  When it runs out, I have no source of public pensions with the way our national welfare system is set up now. All the risk and responsibility of saving for retirement has, in my case, been shifted to me. 

College Savings: 5.17%

In America we must pay for higher education, and it's quite expensive. So, we save over 5% of our income for sending our sons to college, and we have done so for nearly a decade, since our youngest son was a toddler. I'll have to increase this contribution to 8% or 9% of the household income pretty soon if I want to have enough saved to pay for my older son's college tuition.

We also contribute about 2.02% of our income to various charities, including medical research, social services, poverty alleviation, religious work, environmental protection, public television and radio, and the high schools and universities where we were educated.  I'd rather we contributed about 5%, but I take a rather large loss of pay by working in the public sector, so I consider my lower salary a form of giving to the public commonweal.

If you sum up all our taxes with all the spending we do on health care, retirement, college costs, and charitable giving, it turns out we are spending about 38.56% of our household income on social welfare and government.  But, since my pension and health care expenses are somewhat borne by my employer directly rather than passed on to me, probably our household income could be raised by 15% and we would spend every penny of that raise in covering the retirement and health care benefits we're getting from my employer. So, the Hadley-Ives household and our employer contributions to social welfare and government services combined probably equals about 53.56% of our gross income.

I was trying to figure out what would be a fair policy of taxation and spending that would give us a society where poverty was eliminated, college was nearly free for most students, and everyone had health care insurance as good as what we have. I also considered what it would cost to adjust Social Security benefits and Medicare and Medicaid benefits so they were sustainable (slight increases in taxation and slight decreases in the amount paid out in retirement pensions for some retired persons, I think).  This gave me an estimate of how our taxes and social welfare spending ought to be in the society and government system I would prefer to what we have now.

Here are some changes I'd make in taxation.

First, I'd forbid property taxes on a home of primary residence up to 125% of the median home value for a state or region. There could still be property taxes on cars, second homes, boats, or the value of a primary residence that exceeds 125% of median home values in an area, but most property taxes would be abolished.  I prefer to transfer taxes to income or consumption.

Second, I'd abolish most sales taxes. I'd keep taxes on gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, nights spent in hotels or meals eaten in restaurants, and energy generated by burning fossil fuels, but for most items and services I'd abolish sales taxes. 

Third, I'd raise income taxes to make up for the lost revenue from the reduction in sales and property taxes. Income taxes should be progressive.  Poor people shouldn't pay income tax, working class people ought to pay trivial income taxes (about 1% or 2%), real middle class households (near the median household incomes) ought to pay between 14% and 18% of their income in taxes, upper-middle class households ought to be paying between 20% and 30%, and there ought to be a flat tax ceiling on tax rates set near 45%-50% on the wealthiest 4% of American households.

Here are some changes I'd make in policy.

First, I'd create a national health care system.  It would work this way:

1. There would be a national benefit plan similar to what I get now, or any other standard you want to choose, maybe the medical insurance enjoyed by members of the United States Congress. All health insurance plans would need to have a minimum coverage that matched this national benefit plan or were superior to it.  No plan would be allowed that provided less coverage.
   
2. There would be a national maximum price for the national benefit price.  It would equal the less of two figures: either 13% of a household's income or a rate of 5% of the previous year's median year-round full-time salary for each person covered on the policy. Wealthier families would pay the per-person rate and poorer and middle class families would pay the 13% of household income rate. No insurance plan could charge more than the national maximum price for health insurance.
3. The federal government would offer the national benefit plan at the national maximum price. Private insurers would be allowed to offer better plans for lower prices if they wanted.
4. Private insurers would be allowed to sell additional supplementary plans that covered more than the national benefit plan at whatever prices they wanted.
   
5. The national maximum price would be charged to everyone, but the government would help pay the premiums.  For persons or households with incomes lower than 50% of the poverty level the government would pay 100% of the national maximum price.  For every 1%-point of the poverty level over 50%-of-poverty a household earned there would be a 0.20%-point reduction in the amount of the health insurance plan covered by the government up to 100% of the poverty level, and then (at 90% of the premium subsidized for households at 100% of poverty) the subsidy would start decreasing by 1%-point of the subsidy for every 1%-point of the poverty level over poverty a household earned, so that the health care subsidy would decline to 0% of the payment when a household earned 190% of poverty (a 10% subsidy for a family earning 180% of poverty, a 50% subsidy for a household earning 140% of poverty, etc.). 
   
6. All insurers, whether government or private, would be forced to accept any legal American resident or citizen into their risk pool as beneficiaries. There could be no screening for conditions, no exclusions, and each insurer would need to charge exactly the same to all it's customers.
   

Second, I'd make states cover the full cost of tuition and fees at their public universities for the top half of students at each public high school within their state, and I'd have a national test for college scholarships, and the American citizens with the top 10% of scores on this national achievement test would earn full tuition and fee scholarships to any university in the world (with perhaps limitations on reasonable tuition and fee levels).  I'd also have a national policy to set reasonable tuition and fee levels in higher education. Only universities that charged below the tuition and fee thresholds would be eligible for federal financial aid for their students. Federal research grants would only go to faculty who taught at such schools.  The fee and tuition thresholds would be set at reasonable market levels, maybe at 150% of the median tuition and fees charged in some pool of most American 4-year universities. 

Third, I'd create two national pension programs similar to what the Canadians have.  Every American citizen and legal resident would get a pension equal to 110% of the poverty level for an individual, but this pension would be administered as if it were a negative income tax. For every dollar you earned up to 110% of poverty you would lose a dollar of this pension. This would thus give us a 0% poverty rate for Americans over the retirement age. Persons earning over 110% of poverty from their own private resources would get nothing from this first program, but persons earning nothing would get the full 110% of poverty pension income.  This would remove the economic incentive (but not the social incentive) for many elderly persons to work, and they would leave the labor force to make more opportunities available for young people.  Then, there would also be some sort of a retirement plan more like Social Security is now, and this plan would require everyone to make a flat 4% contribution out of their payroll, and would return to them a benefit level adjusted so that persons who paid more into it would receive more out of it. Everyone would also be encouraged to put money into income-tax deferred retirement savings accounts. A middle class family might put 4% of its income into the second retirement program with the flat contribution rate, and perhaps 3% into the negative income tax to eliminate poverty among the elderly, and then perhaps 4% into a tax-deferred retirement account, so that your typical median income household was saving or paying in taxes about 11% toward retirement security for themselves and everyone else in society.

With these reforms taxes would increase a bit, but employer and employee contributions toward health insurance would go down for most people.  Here is how I think our tax burden would change if these reforms were put in place:

FICA - Medicare: 0% (replaced by the national health care policy).

Property taxes: 0% (replaced by a higher state income tax).

Federal income taxes: 5.95% 

They should go up for a middle class family such as ours. Currently the very wealthiest Americans pay between 19% and 23% in the federal income taxes after all their deductions and tax loophole advantages (according to the IRS, and not counting their FICA-Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes). I think the wealthiest families ought to pay more, perhaps 30% or 35% in federal income taxes. After you adjust for the Earned Income Tax and other benefits so that poor Americans pay no income tax and then assume that the wealthy ought to be paying around a third of their income in federal income taxes (and perhaps another eighth in state income taxes), your left with a situation where the median middle class needs to pay somewhere between 5.5% and 8.5% of their income in federal income taxes.  Households earning $80,000 or $110,000 aren't median middle-class, and such upper middle-class households ought to be paying a rate somewhere between 10% and 30%. 

State income taxes: 8.59% 

Increase to match decreases in sales and property taxes. State taxes should be progressive, with the wealthiest families paying perhaps 11% to 12% of their incomes in state taxes.  In my state (Illinois) we now have a flat tax of 3% on incomes.  That's ridiculous.

Sales taxes: 0.92% 

We would still pay taxes on gasoline, and our energy consumption that wasn't using renewable energy sources.

Health insurance and medical costs: 13.28% 

We would pay 13% for the national plan and still have co-pays worth about a quarter of one percent of our income. We could go with a public plan and have the 13% taken out of our taxes or use a private health insurance plan and have 13% or less paid to them.

Retirement pensions and old age security: 11.10%

This includes the two universal retirement programs that replace Social Security plus our tax-deferred retirement savings account.

College costs: 0% 

Covered by national and state taxes. When our sons are at college we would pay significantly to help with room and board, but those costs would not be so high that we would need to save 5%-10% of our income for each year that our children are under 18.

Charitable giving: same as in the existing system, or about 2.02%.

The total amount paid by our family in social welfare an taxes in the new system would be 41.86%.  This is more than the 38.56% our family is now paying directly, but probably less than the 44% I estimate is paid by our family and my employer when I exclude the matching pension contribution from my employer.  I think my figures are all reasonable, and the figures for typical 4-person households near the median income distribution would be about the same.  That is, if you want a well-functioning government that eliminates poverty among persons over 64 years of age, provides free college educations to most of the country's students who are able to do college work, and provides a national health care system, then middle-class families need to figure they'll be paying somewhere between 36% and 46% of their income on public spending (taxation) or personal savings and health insurance. You can't get what you want and have the middle class paying under 36% (unless you totally soak the rich with something like 65% taxes on them), and you don't need to have the middle class pay and save more than 46%.  

Also, I think this exercise points out that state taxes (and state and local policies) are very important for middle-class taxpayers.  We actually are paying more to our state and local governments than we pay to the federal government, yet most news media coverage devotes far more attention to national policy and very little attention to local and state policy.  This is funny, because at the level of state and local policies it's pretty easy to meet your elected representatives and influence how they make policy, while it's pretty darn difficult to have much of a say in national policies.

The leaves are appearing

This is a good time of year to ride back and forth to my office on my bike. On Thursday the 16th there were very few leaves out, and then on Saturday the 18th as I was riding home I noticed many trees had tiny leaves beginning to show. The magnolias are starting to lose their blossoms and change over to green leaves instead of white and pink petals. The maples are beginning to have leaves join with the seeds and flowers that have been showing. In two weeks, when we have begun the month of May, most trees will be in full leaf.

I'm also sharing this design for a house I made a few years ago. If I were building a house, it might be something along these lines.

Social Work Logo Ideas

In January of 2003 my mom took this photograph of Jeri and myself holding our son Arthur's hands as we stood on the beach at Santa Cruz, California, facing the sea and the late afternoon sun. It's a nice image, and my mom uses it as a sort of logo for her counseling service. She let me use it as a sort of logo for my social work classes as well. (the image is copyrighted by Virginia Ives). I like how we are silhouetted so we can be almost any couple with a young child. And of course, the sea and the sun are two powerful images. The sea representing vastness, potential, possibility, and depth. The sun representing life-giving energy, power, glory, warmth, and vision. And the beach is a border, a place where two different realms come together, the land, which is known and understood, and the ocean, a place more mysterious, where we are guests, not residents.



I took the image and used it to play around with ideas for artistic designs to use with our social work club at the University of Illinois. Here is one where I try to place the image in a context of written words. On the left we have a list of social workers and people who did social work and can be claimed as honorary members of the profession, even if they were not actually trained as social workers. I didn't include the comedian Martin Short on the list, although he is a trained social worker and was considering that career before he got into comedy. On the lower level and right the words represent issues, concepts, and tasks that are associated with social work and social workers. I'm not entirely satisfied with this design. I need to arrange the text in a more artistic way according to some design, rather than just using this columns of text.


The green lettering design is in fact one the students in the social work club chose to use for their T-shirts this year. The lettering was a bit tricky to do. I'd really like to just create some fonts and then use Illustrator and Word to position the letters. I actually drew these letters (using iWork 08's Pages application) and arranged them using Adobe Photoshop. Too time consuming. But I did achieve the home-made do-it-yourself look that I was striving for, and the letters are supposed to be friendly and free-spirited, and I think they are.

Photographs of friends

I was looking for some old documents to photocopy last night, when I discovered my old middle school yearbooks. I scanned some of the pictures from the yearbooks and uploaded the images to my Facebook photo albums. And then, for a while, I reflected on friendship.

Here is one of the images from my 8th grade yearbook. In it I'm in the upper left, holding the French Horn (which I still have). There are a couple students in this photograph who had classes with me all the way from kindergarten through eighth grade, but I moved away from Indianapolis in 1982 and lost contact with most of these people in the 1990s. Now, through the Internet, I've reconnected with several of the old friends in this photograph, including Amy Wharton (Amy Shirk, front row far left), Andy Hamaker (front row on the right), Rob Deppert (front row on the right holding the trumpet), Angela Brown (Angela McCormack, behind Andy Hamaker and Rob Deppert), and John Dishinger (in the third row, on the left, wearing tinted glasses).
I wonder if, thanks to the Internet, my own sons will keep up continuously with their childhood friends all through their lives without the 20-year-gap I've had. That could be a good thing. Keeping in touch, even at a distance, makes it easier to occasionally get together for more supportive or fun activities. I find that what I liked (or even loved) about these old friends when we were children and teenagers still is present in who they are now. Rob Deppert and I are still passionate about politics, usually fairly leftist; Andy Hamaker is still involved in music, etc.

This particular photograph is one of the first ones taken of me without glasses after I started wearing glasses in 1976. I decided to switch to contact lenses partly because I preferred how I looked without glasses, as in this photograph. (There were also issues with active sports, playing in the snow or rain, etc.). These days I wear contacts and glasses almost equally. I have had some trouble with the contact lenses while commuting to work on my bike, so I'm more likely to wear glasses while riding.



The second photograph here shows me with my friends Dave Sutcliffe and Dave Wicker at the Johnston Center Renewal in Redlands California, during this past February President's Day weekend. Dave Wicker and I were roommates in our freshmen year (1986-87) at the Johnston Center. That year there were several Erics and Daves living in Bekins Hall.






The third photograph is a recent one of me with some friends. In this case I'm with a few of my graduate students, although Michael Kim had just finished presenting his master's thesis, so he was celebrating becoming a UIS alumni at this particular outing. Amy, the young woman on the left, is finishing up her master's degree with a focus on cross-cultural communication through the arts, with a special emphasis on documentary film and photography. She teaches at Robert Morris College. The woman next to her in the white shirt is Stephanie, and her master's degree focus is in environmental stewardship, with a focus on writing about environmental issues for Christian audiences. Michael Kim is the Korean-American doctor (he is a surgeon) next to me. His master's degree had a focus in surgical education. I'm the guy on the far right.

Hero of the Ebro

I'm going to post three art images I want to share with the world through this blog.

The first one is a scan of a diagram given to me by Andrew Irvin. The artists are C.A. and J.W., but I don't know exactly who they are. They must have been students at the Johnston Center in Redlands in the mid-1980s. Anyway, the letter from which I scanned the image has this note: Enclosed is a diagram CA & I made to illustrate "Irvin's Theory of Reciprocity," which he stole from me in the fall of '83 - JW










The next image is a painting by Miguel Viladrich (1887-1956) called Hero of the Ebro (El héroe del Ebro). It shows a handsome young Spanish soldier, naked except for his helmet and a towel across his left leg, rowing a tiny boat, presumably in the Ebro River. In his boat are large artillery shells. The soldier has a pensive and placid expression on his face. I'd like to know more about this painting.





The third image is some commercial art from a signboard advertising a seaside aquarium attraction in Oregon. The sign, which was photographed in 1985, asks readers to:
Visit the
AQUARIUM
LIKE A WALK on the OCEAN FLOOR
Showing the
HIDEOUS OCTOPUS
WOLF FISH
SEA ANEMONES...
"Beautiful Flower-like Animals
From the Ocean Depths"
And MANY MORE OREGON SPECIMENS!
ALL ALIVE
Displayed in 35 Glass Front Tanks
Simulating the natural habitat of marine life!

A model for pricing Sienna LE 8-passenger minivans

I've spent the better part of two days meeting dealers and private sellers to look at Toyota Sienna LE 8-passenger minivans. As a social scientist and social worker, I'm interested in the variables that go into determining the cost of a car or a used car. I think I have a formula for how to price these cars. Here it is. All figures are in 2009 dollars, so if you find this blog entry in 2010 or later you'll need to adjust using a consumer price index adjustment.

For each year past the current year, deduct $360 from the "new price," which is $23,642. You can think of this as $1 per day in depreciation, as a proxy for wear and tear on the car. If the car is in better shape than you would expect, add a few hundred, or subtract a few hundred if it's in worse condition than you would expect, given its age. For every mile the minivan has been driven deduct 15.272 cents. That's it. The price this yields should be within a couple hundred dollars of your final price. If you're a buyer, don't settle for any price more than a few hundred over this predicted price, unless there is some extra special thing that has been added to the basic configuration of the van. If you can get $100 or $200 under this price you have a great deal. If you're a seller, don't sell for significantly under the model's predicted price.

My "new price" of $23,642 is about $200 under the lowest "new price" (dealer's invoice) I could find for any basic new 2009 Toyota Sienna LE with one power door and the radio/CD system. Typically a dealer can go under the official dealer's invoice by a small amount if they are eager to make a sale, because there are several hundred dollars the dealer has to use as incentives. Also, the dealer can make money on the sale if you finance, so the car can actually be sold to you within a couple hundred of the dealer's cost if the dealer can then make 4% or 5% interest off a loan to you for the better part of the price of the car. Were I a dealer, I would offer my cars to customers at a few hundred dollars over my actual final cost and then finance the buyers with rates about a quarter percent under the lowest reasonable home equity loan rate a buyer might be able to secure (to prevent buyers from getting home equity loans to pay off their car loan debts to me before I have collected all that 4% or 5% interest on their $20,000+ loans).

Various options on the Sienna LE can add $50 to $400 or $800 to the value of a new car, and if you're looking at a car with those extras you just add those numbers to the "new car" price. The only options I was including were one power door, the am/fm radio and cd player, and the 8 passenger configuration.

Incidentally, I should add here that we did significant research on various cars that could carry 6 or more people, and our second choice was a Mazda-V (Mazda 5). In fact, I would have purchased a new Mazda-V except that it wasn't quite big enough and our children felt they didn't have enough leg room in the back. The Mazda-V is more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Sienna, so it's rather a pity that we decided against it. I looked at some older Honda Odysseys and decided against that one. I also don't trust our local Honda dealership in Springfield. We looked at the Kia Sedona and Dodge Grand Caravan as well. Using some formulas to account for discounts or price rises related to quality, we still came down to a choice between the Mazda-V and Toyota Sienna. Keep in mind, I'm a buyer with almost no interest in how a car looks. My main concerns are reliability, safety, fuel efficiency, durability, and comfort.

Springfield, where the wind is always in your face

What is it with the wind in Springfield? Twice this week I head out to ride to my office in the morning (it's nearly seven miles, going south, then east, then south, then east, then south, then east). Each morning there is strong wind out of the south. Today it was so bad people were telling me they couldn't hardly stand up in it. But I think to myself, "ah, but this afternoon this wind will be at my back and I'll just coast home). Then, twice this week, when it's time for me to ride home, around 6:30 or 5:30, the wind has shifted, and I get wind out of the south or west.

There are two really bad places on the commute between my home and the campus. These are in the area where a bike must cross Sixth street near the new Walmart near Eleventh Street. There is a stretch of about 300 meters with no sidewalk nor bike lane, so you must ride your bike either on the right, in a right-turn only lane, or else on the left, in a "go straight" lane. I usually ride on the white line between the two lanes and then make a choice about which traffic lane to use based on where the cars are going. If a car is coming up behind me in the "turn right" lane I head over into the "go straight" lane so I'm not blocking it. Today cars came up behind me in both lanes, so I moved to the middle of the "go straight" lane. After all, a bike is a vehicle and has a right to the road, and the traffic light ahead was red, so although I was slowing traffic, the cars would need to stop anyway. But the two cars behind me start honking. I assume these are friendly horn blasts from friends or students saying hello to me, but then when we get to the red light (it didn't turn green until about three seconds after I arrived at the intersection and moved out of the way of the cars that were following me to go straight), the cars behind me pull up and the drivers (of two cars) each swear at me, insult me, and honk their horns again in anger. Huh? Where did they want me to go? There was no sidewalk, no bike lane, and for that short 300 meter length of road the whole time they were behind me the light ahead of us was red anyway. I could have saved them some gas mileage by forcing them to drive slowly as they approached the red light so they didn't have to come to a complete stop and then accelerate from a dead stop to continue when the light turned green, except that they tail-gated me to get the honor of stopping for two seconds before the traffic light changed color.

This problem of a section of road with no sidewalk or bike lane is really crazy at Sixth street near the Walmart because once you get to that traffic light I mentioned there is a wide sidewalk for another 300 meters, and then there is a suddenly a bike lane that you can follow all the way to the UIS campus. Also, if you like to ride on the south outer road of the Interstate until you reach the bike trail that connects Chatham to Springfield, and then take the bike trail into Jerome and Springfield, then the only way to get from this bike trail to the campus is to cross 6th street at this point near the Walmart where there is no bike trail or sidewalk. The same problem exists as you return from campus in the other direction. So, the city of Springfield has these two bike trails, one connecting the UIS campus to... a Walmart, and then ending, and the other a nice interurban trail that connects a road with light traffic to an area just a few hundred meters from the Walmart, but for those few hundred meters that could connect the two systems there is nothing but this very dangerous stretch of road where, as I demonstrated today (for the second time, actually) a cyclist can be verbally abused by car drivers for daring to use traffic lanes.

Anyway, betwen having to ride into the wind in both directions on my two days of bike commuting (with rain in my face on the way home today) and having these car drivers shout at me, I'm really upset at the traffic engineers or planners from the city who created this hazardous road situation. I'll talk to someone in city government about this and see what can be done.

- Eric

Philosophy Quiz

I just took the “which great philosopher are you?” quiz. I have a few comments about the questions.

The first one asks, “Do we have a soul that is separate from our body?

My answer would have been, “the body is the manifestation of the soul in this reality/universe, and the soul is independent of the body, but in this reality/universe the soul is, practically (although not essentially), identical with the body.” So, the question of “separate” doesn’t really work for me. It’s not separate here, but yeah, I guess if we look across all the realities and times of the various levels of creation, the soul is separate, since it is independent of the body, and continues in other realities after the body perishes in this one. So, what answer do I give?
The quiz gives thirteen possible answers, and the four that seemed closest to my understanding were:

b) Not really. The Human body is the best picture of the human soul. Or
c) No the word “soul” makes no sense, there is only “being” or
d) Yes, a “soul” is the form of every living thing.
f) Yes, an immortal one.

I went with the fourth of those, although I didn’t like saying “yes” to the idea that the body and soul are separate.

The second question asked, “Is there ever such a thing as the objectively “right” thing to do?
My answer would be yes, there sometimes is a “right” thing to do. I think there are standards of right and wrong existing outside human values or invention, and I think we “discover” those when we “invent” them in a way that corresponds to the natural or objective “right” thing. I look to the authentic scriptures revealed by Manifestations of God as the standard by which we determine what is “right” action, but that's still an imperfect standard, especially because Manifestations of God tend to use fallible indicators like human language to describe “right” to us. I'm also not clear on how much "noise" gets into the message filtered through the Manifestations of God, based on Their setting in a historical and cultural context, or the human personalities of the Manifestations. So, in figuring out what we believe about what Manifestations of God tell us also depends partly on our rational intuition or our spiritual intuition (our tendency to naturally recognize what is good and bad). That said, for the vast majority of things that we tend to think of as being “right” or “wrong” I think we’re just following social conventions, which tend to be set by the most powerful persons in our cultures. In those cases, “right” is a social construction rooted in intellectual fashions and habits rather than any reflection of a deeper moral reality in the universe.

Okay, so which answers come closest to my thinking on this one? Again, the quiz-makers give us thirteen choices. This time again four of these looked appealing to me:

b) Yes and it is based on rational intuition
e) No, there are no morals beyond those set by the most powerful rulers
l) Yes and we naturally recognize what it is as human beings
m) No, just the product of customs and habit.

I went with the choice that agreed there are “right” actions (at least in some cases), and that those are “naturally recognized” by us (at least some of us).

The third question asked “Can we ever really know what the world is like outside of ourselves?” The key to that question is what is meant by “really know” and here I guess my answer depends on how I understand that phrase.

The answers that intuitively appealed to me were:

a) Yes and we can build a clear picture of it through empirical science
f) Only God knows so our only mission is to know God.
g) No, we have only our inner “ideas” about what the world is like
h) No, we can only know things as they appear not as they are in themselves

I went with “only God knows” since that seemed less open to contradictions than the other answers (a and h, which both seemed correct to me, seemed in contradiction because they depended on a different understanding of “really know” about “the world” whatever those mean.)

Number 4 was easy. The question asked, “what is the most important purpose of our lives?” There were many fine secondary goals in life, but the primary root was almost nailed by the response “to develop faith and get close to God.” I would have said “to improve our knowledge and wisdom, and in particular our spiritual insight, which is akin to “knowing god,” and to transcend our desires and habits to follow the rites, or obey the laws, or submit to the greater good in a way that defeats self-interest and pride, which is akin to “worshiping God.” Every day I say (in prayer) to God (and most importantly, myself), “Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee,” so I’m pretty clear on what I think my purpose in life is, at least in a general and vague sense.

There were a couple other questions as well. Some of the potential answers were pretty funny.

It turns out the quiz says I’m most like Søren Kierkegaard. That doesn’t surprise me. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure Abū al-Faḍl Gulpāyigānī wasn’t a part of the great philosopher pool from which I could have been identified. I would have liked to know who I was most like after Kierkegaard. I would have liked this quiz better if it had given me a result of 50 great philosophers rank-ordered by how similar my thinking was to each of them. Am I 80% like Kierkegaard, or 90% or 70%? And how close am I to John Stuart Mill, to William James, to Immanuel Kant, to Maimonides, to Paul Tillich, to Reinhold Niebuhr, or to John Rawls? I generally like those guys. And how far am I from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, or David Hume? I'd like to know.

Snow in late March

We've just had a few inches of sticky wet snow last night, and as always, a snow in the spring is a lovely thing to see.  The snow clings to the trees and flowers.  I guess I've seen five or six significant snowfalls between March 25 and April 15 over my life so far, and they are always a treat.  We tried to go sledding, but the snow was so sticky we just spent more of our time throwing snowballs at each other or rolling balls of snow down the hills so they grew as they rolled.  

I took some photographs around our neighborhood, and made a page of images showing them, along with some other pictures I took back in February.  The pictures are at this page.

Christians and Poverty

I've been looking for books that would exhibit some of the attitudes and beliefs of early Christian social work pioneers. Then, while I was doing that, I collected some other books that I thought might interest one of my advisees who will be doing an independent study with me on theology and service to the poor. I used RefWorks, a tool that is like EndNote, to collect the reference information for some sources that were available in Illinois (thank goodness for I-Share and the UIUC library!). I'm trying to encourage students to use RefWorks or Endnote to get their citations right, but now that I see the results here, I'm not so sure this is exactly what I wanted. Anyway, I'll share the list of books here:

Barnett, , & Barnett, H.,. (1972). Practicable socialism; essays on social reform,. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press.

Brace, C. L.,. (1885). Gesta Christ, or, A history of humane progress under Christianity. New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son. (chapters 9, 21, 29, 31, & 32)

Brace, C. L.,. (1967). The dangerous classes of New York and twenty years' work among them. Montclair, N.J.: P. Smith.

Brace, C. L., & Brace, E.,. (1894). The life of Charles Loring Brace chiefly told in his own letters. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.

Chalmers, T.,. (1821). The application of Christianity to the commercial and ordinary affairs of life, in a series of discourses. New York: S. Campbell & Sons.

Chalmers, T.,. (1821). The Christian and civic economy of large towns. Glasgow: Printed by J. Starke for Chalmers & Collins.

Chalmers, T.,. (1911). Dr. Chalmers and the poor laws: A comparison of Scotch and English pauperism and evidence before the committee of the House of Commons,. Edinburgh: D. Douglas.

Chalmers, T., & Masterman, N.,. (1900). Chalmers on charity; a selection of passages and scenes to illustrate the social teaching and practical work of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. Westminster: A. Constable and Co.

Davis, T.,. (2007). Red letters : Living a faith that bleeds. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook.

Gurteen, S. H. (1882). A handbook of charity organization. Buffalo: The author.

Gurteen, S. H. (1883). How paupers are made; an address on the prevention of pauperism ... Chicago:

Gurteen, S. H., & Charity Organization Society of Buffalo. (1879). Hints and suggestions to the visitors of the poor. Buffalo [N.Y.]: Published by the Charity Organization Society of the City of Buffalo.

Hamlin, C. (2006). William Pulteney Alison, the Scottish philosophy, and the making of a political medicine. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 61(2), 144-186.

Katz, Michael B. (1996). In the shadow of the poorhouse, revised edition. New York: Basic Books.

King, M. L., & Carson, C.,. (1998). The autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Intellectual Properties Management in association with Warner Books.

Niebuhr, R., & Robertson, D. B.,. (1967). Essays in applied Christianity: The Church and the new world;. New York: Meridian Books.

Schweitzer, A., & Campion, C. T.,. (1949). Out of my life and thought: An autobiography. New York: H. Holt.

Schweitzer, A., & Joy, C. R.,. (1967). Albert Schweitzer; an anthology. edited by Charles R. Joy. Boston: Beacon Press.

Sider, R. J., & Gay, C. M. (1997). Rich Christians in an age of hunger - revisited. U.S.: Christians Scholar's Review.

Taylor, G.,. (1913). Religion in social action,. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.

Taylor, G.,. (1936). Chicago Commons through forty years. Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Commons Association.

Teresa, , & Benenate, B. (1997). In the heart of the world: Thoughts, stories, & prayers. Novato, Calif.: New World Library.

Teresa, , González-Balado, J. L., & Playfoot, J. N. (1985). My life for the poor. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Tillich, P.,. (1966). On the boundary; an autobiographical sketch. New York: Scribner.

Tillich, P.,. (1971). Political expectation. New York: Harper & Row.

Tuckerman, J.,. (1838). The principles and results of the ministry at large: In Boston. Boston: J. Munroe.

Tuckerman, J.,. (1839). Christian service to the poor in cities, unconnected with any religious denomination a series of extracts from "the principles and results of the ministry at large" in Boston, U.S.

Tuckerman, J.,. (1971). On the elevation of the poor; a selection from his reports as minister at large in Boston. New York: Arno Press.

My student will actually be reading about half of these, and I guess I will too. Hopefully I can blog about some of these in the coming months.

Oxford Comma

I'm always encouraging my students to use the Oxford Comma in their writing.  It seems like a losing battle here in America, where people omit that last comma in a list, but I beg my students to do it, at least for me.  My friend Amy Wharton may not know this, but she gave me a CD with a catchy song in it that seems to ridicule my concern.  The video that goes with this ("Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend) is worth watching.  It has crude language, and may not be suitable for all audiences.

Animation

I'm fond of unusual animation, and I'll share a few interesting cartoons here in today's post.

First, here is one of my favorite commercials from my childhood, featuring the voice of Ken Nordine, who gave us Word Jazz and Now Nordine.


Next, here are a couple excellent examples of music videos from Sally Cruikshank, whom I saw at Webster University back in 1986 (I think Julie Mell was with me). Cruikshank has a friendly presence on YouTube. First, enjoy this catchy song:



Then admire this, one of Cruikshank's very early works:



Next, you can admire this patriotic short cartoon from the mid-1970s. Ah, the Bicentennial:


And here, some of my earliest encounters with the music of Phillip Glass were provided by the PBS program Sesame Street:

Spring is here

Well, this is the week that Primavera (primus ver)—Spring—bursts forth here in Springfield. I rode my bike back from the office on Tuesday with a t-shirt on. Our maple trees came out in flower on Monday and on Saint Patrick's Day (Tuesday) they were pretty much in full bloom, not that maple tree flowers are spectacular or anything. They look like tiny red or yellow fuzzy spikes. Our forsythia will bloom tomorrow, I think, as the buds are yellow and big. The crocus flowers were blooming a week ago, or earlier.

It's Spring Break. I've been working on catching up on giving students feedback on their papers, and I've been reading—some academic stuff for papers I'm writing, and some interesting stuff I just wanted to read. I just listened to a great song on the radio driving home from a friend's home tonight. It's Airborne Toxic Event's Sometime Around Midnight.

I had a nightmare a couple nights ago where I was in the future, and people were watching, for entertainment, people being voluntarily decapitated. It was like a game show where contestants were getting their heads cut off, and trying to maintain a smile as their heads were cut off. I guess it was understood that before irreversible death set in the heads were reattached to the bodies and no permanent harm or scarring would result. I was horrified. The horror was mostly at the empathy I (as a human) was feeling for the "contestants" on the show. I couldn't understand why they were doing it. What leads to such dreams? I am a pessimist about most popular entertainment, and I suppose the dream was a manifestation of my fears about where cultural trends were headed. I think I had been considering something my father mentioned this weekend when he visited, that in some ways the Romans were more barbaric than the "barbarians" who overran the Empire, and of course one of the most famous aspects of Roman evil was their pleasure in watching public executions and gladiatorial combat. The theater of the cruel. And I'd also been reading about Maimonides and his ideas about martyrdom. He thought it was wicked to seek out martyrdom, and one was morally obliged to avoid martyrdom. He was working against the Masada Complex in Jewish culture. All that could have contributed to the dream. Or maybe it was in some way precognitive. Just tonight a friend showed me a film Frank Miller's Sin City. It featured a decapitation, and it was, I thought, presented as a form of theater of the cruel, an exercise in immediacy, savagery, and brutality to elicit strong feelings of horror and disgust at a deep emotional level, forcing the audience to reject what we were witnessing and turn away in panic at our own animal enjoyment of the violence (I didn't feel much enjoyment). But I don't know, maybe it was just an amoral artistic exercise reveling in violence. Bread and circuses. But, like my dream, there were scenes reveling in violence. In my nightmare I was horrified that people would cheerfully submit to a "game" of being decapitated. Here, a day later, I was horrified by an artifact of my culture that "entertained" by showing a hero possessed mainly by the desire to torture evil-doers.

I was reminded of that first Mad Max film where Max finds the gangster who killed his wife and child, and ties him up next to a bomb, and lets him have a saw, and tells him that he has time to saw off his limb and escape before the bomb goes off, and the murderer is begging for mercy, and the film is constructed so we are supposed to feel satisfaction, because Max is getting revenge and the criminal is quailing. And yet, if we stop and reflect, this is extra-judicial killing, itself a form of evil and murder. But evidently satisfying feelings for revenge is like satisfying feelings of hunger or thirst. It's a deep physical need. But one that does not provide long-lasting satisfaction.

Back to that idea of decapitation, I was also thinking of martyrdom. I try to read Baha'i history on almost a daily basis, and there certainly is plenty of shi'ite martyrdom imagery in the Baha'i writings. Most Baha'is know about Baha'u'llah's vision of the Maid of Heaven when he was stuck down in a dungeon, but what about Ali-Muhamad (the Bab) and his vision of the Imam Husayn's bloody head? And I do think of our modern Baha'i martyrs as heros. Many of them were modern, well-educated, materially successful persons who could have renounced their faith to save their lives, left Iran, and then rededicated themselves to the Faith once in safety. That might have been what Maimonides suggested they ought to have done. But they refused to recant, and they died, even as recently as the 1980s. I met the son of one of these martyrs, and he was not really very happy about his parent's choice. I got the impression, although he didn't actually say this, that he would have rather that his parent had followed the advice from Maimonides. And going willingly to one's execution, with a smile on one's face, that is an ideal for religious people who take faith and God's commandments seriously.

Yet, there was my dream, where people were doing this for "fun" to entertain others or prove their own extreme abilities of self control and pain tolerance. Anyway, it's odd what one will dream about. I have disturbing dreams about once or twice a week, and they usually wake me up between 5:30 and 6:30, and I can never get back to sleep after them, so I just get up usually.

Here, I've embedded a video of that song I liked so well.