Impact over Interest Archives - Page 3 of 13

On Moving Forward

November 13, 2016 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

There are certain facts that we just have to face in this life.

Donald J. Trump is now president of the U.S.A.

My mom is no longer with me.

Those are two that have hit me within the last two weeks like a ton of bricks. Nevertheless, both have become facts of life that I must live with…while moving forward.

It’s an understatement to say that the last two years of my life have been the toughest to date. And the last two weeks the toughest of those last two years.

I’ve always considered myself to be a very optimistic person. But in the face of all this, it’s damn hard to remain that way.

But, really, what are my choices? What are our choices?

Oh sure, we can despair. We can give up hope. We can give up trying to make our lives better…and the world better. We can give up on making an impact. After all, our vote certainly didn’t seem to matter.

However, giving up is not the answer. Not for me…and not for you.

I launched a GoFundMe campaign about two months ago. I’ve revised the description a couple of times, as if words might matter. I’ve always suffered under the illusion that they do.

The bottom line is that even though I am resolutely determined to move forward, I still need a little help in doing so. I can see a glimpse of light, but there’s still a ways to go before I reach it.

I woke up this morning as determined as ever to move forward, despite the uncertainties of my life. I woke up determined to move ahead in spite of Trump’s victory.

It is what my mom would want me to do.

I have many projects and goals I am trying to move forward on…

My real estate business – both residential and commercial…
My Expat Tours – which are directly connected to my success with real estate…
My Vacation Tours – for Costa Rica and Colombia…
My Writing – I want to offer my books in written form…
Podcasts – I want to start two: one for The Impact Revolution and another for Expat Living…
Indigenous Arts and Crafts Sales – a sustainable business I’ve been involved with successfully in the past, which is a great way to have an impact…
Hydroponic Gardening – I put this one on the back-burner over the last year while I focused on real estate. That was probably a mistake and I want to reignite and reinvigorate the effort.

Many things on the above list I can move forward on right now and I am doing so. Some things, however, require funds that I just do not have at the moment. That is a major reason for launching this campaign.

I have a clear set of goals for each and I know that I can succeed…with a little help from my friends.

Speaking of help from friends, I wanted to take a moment to thank a few friends who have lent me some light…

Chris Palazzari
Dianna Adams
Teresa Berlin
Scott Sherman
Ed Flaspoehler
Michael Weiner

Most of this light was contributed directly to me, i.e., it does not show up in the official campaign results. But that doesn’t make it one iota less impactful. I want to thank each of you from the very bottom of my heart for what you did for me…for the light you extended to me. You are all a blessing and I will never, ever forget.

I am going to be OK. Our nation will be OK. Our world will be OK. But only if we stick together. Only if we remember that we’re all on this planetary ship together. Only if we put our impact over self-interest. Only if we refuse to be blinded by the insidious and erroneous mindset of us versus them. There is no “them.” There’s really only one Big US.

The truth is that we don’t have to all think alike, politically or otherwise, in order to realize that the best path for moving forward is one of connection and cooperation.

So, I am reaching out, not just for help, but also to extend encouragement. Don’t give up hope. Stay in the fight.

Our world is depending on your impact.

My GoFundMe Campaign

Because we all get by with a little help from our friends.

For Mom

November 3, 2016 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

Here’s another post from the distant past, inspired, in part, as was yesterday’s, by the book…The Road Less Traveled…

OK, I’ll admit…at the time I wrote it, I was having some “love” issues…

I seem to be writing a lot on this topic of love, relationships, and, you know, really yucky stuff. I promise I’ll move on soon, but humor me, please, for a moment, whilst I soothe my sore ego.

In Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled (which I recommend for anyone with problems upstairs, which pretty much means everyone, including YOU), he dispels some myths about the nature of true love.

For Peck, it all comes down to extending oneself emotionally, physically, financially and in all others ways, for the spiritual growth of another human being.

I’ve always thought of true love as being unconditional. In other words, if you claim to love someone, but only extend that love if they behave in certain ways, that’s just not love.

Love in return for performance?

Does that really sound correct to you?

I will love you as long as you buy me things, take me places, and please me in the ways I demand. The emphasis always remaining me, me, me…

Doesn’t that sound more like…self-love?

However, I’m afraid many people have that kind of idea about love. As soon as the performance wains, probably due to exhaustion, their “love” for the other dries up…

and they move on to the next ego-feeding source.

Now, there are some good models of unconditional love, in real life, as well as in religious mythology.

However, the best example that I can think of is a mother’s love, specifically my mother’s love.

And trust me on this, it ain’t easy being my mother! Tweet it Out!

Granted, that’s a different kind of love than the romantic type. But only in certain respects.

In keeping with Peck’s definition, we should love our partners with that same brand of unconditional love.

We should extend ourselves even when nothing flows back our way in return.

My mother does that on a consistent basis. And not just for me, but for most everyone.

Sometimes I believe she feels a bit exhausted. I can see it in her face, or hear it in her voice, but she keeps on extending nonetheless.

Why?

Because she has real love in her heart. She doesn’t expect, nor demand, a certain level of performance in return.

Now, I’m sure she’d prefer to see a bit of it, i.e., performance, if she had her druthers, but disappointment in regards to such wishful thinking is never a condition to her extending.

I tend to take for granted how fortunate I am to have someone who loves me in this way. You ever do that? Don’t!

Hence this post is for mom, and dedicated to her shining example of unconditional love.

Save for my children, no human being has ever loved me like that…

not even close.

I never have to worry that if I mess up, really bad, she will stop loving me. If that were the case, well, I don’t believe she’d still be answering my phone calls.

But she does and she’s there for me when I need her, always.

I know she reads my drivel from time to time, so, mom, if you happen to catch this one…

thanks and I love you.

post update: my mom passed away October 31, 2016…she will forever be the greatest model of unconditional love that I’ve known...

Looking for Light Crowdsource Campaign

September 17, 2016 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

The optimistic view is that there is always light at the end of every tunnel. Sometimes, however, the tunnels we enter in life can be quite long. It can take quite a while before we see any light. And sometimes, we need a little help. Sometimes, we need someone to lend us a little light just to make it through.

This Looking for Light crowdsource campaign is my humble request for some light to find my way out of the longest tunnel of my life.

Entering the Tunnel

It was sometime around mid-2012 that I began to notice a problem. I’d been operating a company in Costa Rica that designs and manages vacations, mainly for customers in the U.S., for almost a decade. After a shaky start the company, called Package Costa Rica, had been growing at a nice pace for the past 5 years. Our web site enjoyed a good ranking in Google searches for Costa Rica vacations and that drove a lot of traffic to our web site. And we were pretty darn good at turning vacation inquiries into sales.

My optimism got the best of me and even though sales were growing (from $160,000 in 2006 to almost $400,000 in 2010), I ramped up my overhead too rapidly. I wanted to build a company that perhaps I could sell eventually. I’d always had the idea that an entrepreneur had to have an exit plan.

So, in 2010 I decided to make a few drastic changes. I downsized the company from a team of 4 to just 2. I thought with this change I’d see better profitability.

A Little Background

After several years of practicing law I decided around 1995 that perhaps a career in business would suit me better. My first attempt at that was a failure. My second one, a boutique mergers and acquisitions firm known as Live Oak Capital, fared much better. The idea behind it was to help business owners implement exit plans. Perhaps that’s where I got the idea that I needed one myself. The keys to any good exit plan are growth and organization. You have to be able to build a business that has growth potential, but with an organizaton that can continue growing even in your absence.

I made the same mistake with Live Oak that I would later make with Package Costa Rica. I grew it too fast. When the internet deals I’d had some success with dried up, I was left with a company with too much overhead and little income coming in to cover it. I went on the hunt for deals. That search landed me in Costa Rica with the biggest deal of my life…the sale of Universidad Interamericana.

I provide that little bit of background to satisfy the curiosity of those who are wondering how I got to this amazing country in Central America. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. I blame those largely for the tunnel that I’m in. No, it’s not all Google’s fault!

Meanwhile, Back in the Tunnel

The problem I began to notice back in mid-2012 was that our site had all but disappeared from the Costa Rica vacation-related searches on Google. At first I thought it was just temporary. It wasn’t. I had relied on “experts” to help me with things like that. They didn’t help that much. So, I decided to learn how to do it myself. That didn’t seem to help either.

My sales began to plummet from the $400,000 I enjoyed in 2010 down to below $200,000 in 2012. And they continued to fall in 2013 and 2014.

I panicked.

Groping for Inspiration

I downsized even further. I moved to my current home in the mountains of Perez Zeledon. I began to write about a topic called Impact Mindfulness. I wanted my life to be about more than just trying to make money. I was making barely enough to survive on the little bit of vacation sales still trickling in. I thought perhaps a career as a writer suited me better. I started the Revolutionary Misfit blog. A blog about Impact Mindfulness. I self-published my first book, The Revolutionary Misfit Manifesto. I really didn’t know what I was doing. The book went nowhere.

My wife and I began to discuss the idea of my repatriation to the U.S. I thought that if I was going to go back it had to be to a place that meshed with my current very progressive mindset. It had to be to a place where I could perhaps make it as a writer and blogger. It had to be…Portland, Oregon!

I left for Portland on February 2, 2015. I had sold virtually everything in Costa Rica except what I could fit in my backpack. My idea was to make it with some kind of a job, sell a few vacations, and ultimately start making money with my writing. After all, Portland was full of successful bloggers. Why couldn’t I be one of them?

Little did I know that on that fateful day, the long dark tunnel would grow even longer and darker. Upon entry into immigration in Los Angeles, where I had a connecting flight to Portland, I was arrested. My ex-wife had gone to court late in 2014 because I’d fallen behind in support payments. I was never notified of anything. I had no idea of any outstanding warrant. I was taken to L.A. County Jail, one of the worst in the U.S., where I sat for almost a month before finally being extradited to Horry County, S.C. I was able to make a deal with my Ex and after a month behind bars, I was finally released.

By the way, always being one to try to turn sour lemons into some sweeter lemonade-like experience of growth and impact, I wrote a series of blog posts about my stint in “County.” You can read them here .

That was the nail in the coffin of Package Costa Rica, or so I thought. Despite these setbacks, I remained optimistic about my plan for Portland. So, I carried on.

I spent 5 months there, looking for a job unsuccessfully, writing, and still making a few vacation sales. My wife came to meet me, along with her daughter. She found a job in a beauty salon that catered to Latinos. My wife doesn’t speak a word of English, but she had much more success in finding a job than I did!

Nevertheless, she didn’t like the place and our economic struggles continued. She became fearful that we would not be able to move forward with getting residency for her and her daughter. She decided it was best for her to return to Colombia before her visa expired and they became “illegal.” I had no desire to continue living in the U.S. without her, so I decided it was best for me to return to Costa Rica.

A New Direction

One thing I did not sell when I made the decision to repatriate was my vehicle. I left it with my wife’s sister. So, as soon as I arrived I jumped in it and made a B-line to Perez Zeledon. I rented a little studio apartment in the mountains and began to devise a plan to get my life back in order.

After a brief attempt at a hydroponic gardening business that really didn’t go anywhere I joined the Coldwell Banker real estate team in Dominical. I’m still writing and I just self-published a second book, The Impact Revolution. Low and behold, I still get business with Package Costa Rica. I am trying to rehabilitate that business. I am also beginning to start a similar site for Colombia vacations. With the peaceful progress my wife’s home country is making, I feel that the tourism potential there is through the roof. My wife has returned to me.

I may still be in the tunnel, but at least I have a sense of moving forward in it!

Nearing an Exit?

This crowdsourcing campaign is my request for some light. I have direction. I am motivated and working hard to progress as rapidly as possibly to the exit of this long dark tunnel that began in 2012.

One thing that makes it exceedingly hard to make progress is that I’m starting from such a position of lack. When I returned to Costa Rica last year all I had was a car and the clothes on my back. I didn’t know how I would make things work. I had no credit lines, credit cards, or access to any credit whatsoever. I jumped at the first idea, the hydroponics business. That one just didn’t work.

Since I have a background in law, doing business transactions and tourism, I am confident that getting involved in something that combines tourism and real estate is the right path for me. I’ve started a site that markets Expat Tours and the agency is helping me to get the word out. These are tours, guided by yours truly, for people seeking a new life as an expat in Costa Rica. They need help. They need guidance. And I feel I am the right guy to give it to them.

I’ve also launched a commercial real estate site. Before mine went live there were none. I was amazed that I was able to acquire the domain for Costa Rica Commercial Real Estate with such ease. I am marketing the commercial listings of Coldwell Banker agents throughout the country.

I am now working on a new book about living the Costa Rica expat life. I plan to self-publish on Amazon at the end of September.

I have renewed motivation and my optimism still burns brightly.

My needs are both personal and business related…

My car is now 13 years old and has over 300,000 logged kilometers. It needs work. In the real estate business, a car is essential. In Costa Rica, a car that can climb a mountain is a necessity. Mine can, but like I said, it needs some work.
I have been holding back on certain real estate strategies with regard to target markets due to my pervasive lack of funds. I need to make my presence known in those markets and that takes a little money.
I need funds to continue rehabilitating Package Costa Rica. After 13 years in business, the leads just seem to come, mostly of the repeat and referral variety (which are the best kind). I still have no real Google search presence, but with time and a little money that could be turned around. I also need funds to help get Colombia Vacations from the idea stage to the income producing business stage.
I have personal issues that I need to take care of. To maintain my residency I have to pay into the Costa Rican social security administration, known as the CAJA. It also offers me government health care, which at my age, is pretty important. I have no medical coverage outside of that. I stopped paying when I went back to the U.S. and have not been able to catch up. That is an urgent and very important need. I also have some dental issues that are urgent. Other than that, my health is good and I am grateful for that.
I need to establish a new corporation in Costa Rica. With that I can open up a new business bank account and get a merchant service account that will allow customers to pay me with credit card. I lost my ability to accept credit cards when the problems befell me upon repatriation. I have been able to persuade customers to pay with bank transfers, but that is not the way people prefer to pay and it’s costing me business. I cannot afford to lose business.
There are other small items that need taken care of as well. For instance, I have been taking pictures of properties for new listings with my Iphone. I need a proper camera to do it right.
I’d like to pay back some dear friends who’ve helped me in this crisis.
I need a reserve for the future until I can get my economic engine humming again. I don’t have a crystal ball to know exactly how long that might take. In the meantime, I must keep moving forward.

Other than my dear wife and my 4 incredible kids, the one person who has shown me unconditional love and support through the long and dark tunnel is my mother. She has grown very sick. She is in a tunnel of her own right now. I do not want to burden her anymore with my plight.

So, I am doing something that goes against my pride and normal inclination. I am asking you for help. In return I’d like to offer something. I don’t have much, but I can offer something to express my appreciation for your helping me with a little light…

For a $25 donation – my deep expression of appreciation will be given on my Revolutionary Misfit blog and Facebook Page.

For a $50 donation – Everything mentioned above plus I will send you copies of my books The Revolutionary Misfit Manifesto, The Impact Revolution, and The Definitive Guide to Costa Rica Expat Living.

For a $100 donation – Everything mentioned above plus I will give you 10% off any of my Costa Rica or Colombia vacation packages.

For a $500 donation – Everything mentioned above plus I will send you a Boruca ceremonial mask.

I forgot to mention above that I have long worked with the indigenous tribes of Costa Rica, helping them market their arts and crafts. That’s a business I’ve put on hold as I pursue the things mentioned above. However, I still have deep ties with the Boruca reserve, which is located about 2 hours from where I live. I will send you one of their hand-carved and painted ceremonial masks. They are simply amazing and sell in San Jose shops for $200 and up. I purchase these directly from a family within the reserve. The Borucas seek to perpetuate their ancient culture by encouraging tribe members to engage in creating and marketing their ceremonial masks and hand-made cloth goods.

For a $1,000+ donation – Everything mentioned above plus I will serve as your personal guide on any Costa Rica vacation you purchase.

My goal is to raise $12,500 with this campaign and I’ve set a deadline of end of November 2016 for doing so.

Approximately 1/2 of that will go to the immediate needs described above. The other 1/2 will serve as a “working capital” reserve to help get me to that exit and into the broad daylight of economic stability once again!

Thank You for making a profound impact on my life…

and as we say in Costa Rica,

Pura Vida!

Looking for Light Crowdsource Campaign

Introduction to The Impact Revolution

May 23, 2016 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

A lot has happened since I published the Revolutionary Misfit Manifesto and launched the blog some 3 years ago. Things in our country, and in the world, have deteriorated, although recently some hopeful developments have appeared.

The earth has gotten hotter. The banks have gotten bigger. The rich have gotten richer. The system has become more corrupt. The crazies have become even crazier…

People are still, by and large, putting their self-interest over their impact. They’re still primarily thinking in terms of the small us. They’re still wearing those god-awful impact blinders…two of which have become especially egregious…nationalism and religious sectarianism.

The rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive republican nominee in the 2016 presidential race is a case in point. Here we have a guy with a real chance of becoming president, i.e., the most powerful human on earth, and whose entire campaign has been waged along the lines of small us, or us against the world, thinking.

It’s scary stuff.

Trump’s most likely opponent, heir to the Clinton political dynasty, may be better, but not by that wide a mark, in my humble opinion. Hillary may take a more inclusive tone, when it serves her, but she’s enmeshed in the neoliberal mindset that believes the best way to run the country is at the behest of a small ruling class of extremely wealthy campaign donors. That as long as they get what they want, the excess of their largess will overflow to the benefit of us…regular folk.

Well, that idea hasn’t worked out all that well over the last few decades…now has it?

But, wait, hope is on the horizon. Hope in an old, well-worn, package. His name is Bernie.

Who would’ve ever thought that a 74 year-old, Jewish, self-styled “democratic socialist from Vermont, with unkempt hair and a curmudgeonly, yet grandfatherly, aura, could give the most powerful political machine in our recent political history a run for her SuperPac donated dollars?

Well, as of this writing, he’s doing just that. It’s a long shot, granted, but his emergence imparts hope.

So, what’s responsible for this “feel the Bern” phenomenon. Is it Bernie’s overpowering charisma, or unquestionable policy chops?

Not really.

Bernie has helped rouse awake a sleeping giant of youthful discontent.

Truth to be told, we’d already seen some fitful stirrings a few years back, in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. All of a sudden people, primarily young people, began to notice that economic inequality is a real and pervasive problem in our society. And that the collapse was a symptom of that underlying disease.

And what better place to pinpoint as “ground zero” for the epidemic than Wall Street.

So a group of young people decided to make a stand against inequality right in the epicenter of inequality. Their effort was derided by the predominantly neoliberal establishment as futile and infantile…but they persisted.

However, the Occupy Wall Street movement was missing a couple of components. First, a coherent message against the evil they were protesting. In other words, it was missing a clear message of what a society with less inequality could and should look like.

Perhaps, even more importantly, they were missing a viable leader.

Well, that message and leader have emerged in the form of the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. And the millennials, the ones derided as lazy, naive and basically inept, have risen to the occasion to give this guy an actual chance at the presidency.

In light of all these events, I decided it was time for a revision of the manifesto.

I still firmly believe in the principles of Impact Mindfulness first espoused. And I am enthusiastic to find such advocates as Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders. They may not couch things in the same phraseology as you will read in these pages, but their message is similar nonetheless…

And what is that message?

First and foremost, it’s that we humans have an obligation not only to ourselves, but to one another. We’ve gone astray with the mindset of me first…the mindset of rugged individualism, the Randian mindset, the neoliberal mindset of capitalism run amok. That’s really what has gotten us into deep doodoo.

The problem with self-interest, or greed, as the prime economic motivator are the power imbalances it inevitably gives rise to. Taken to the extreme, which is where we seem to be heading these days, these imbalances ensure that some will have it all, while others will be left with relatively nothing.

In a world where abundance reigns, it just doesn’t seem logical, and certainly not sustainable, for a handful of rich people to own more of the earth’s resources than almost half the entire world population. It doesn’t seem right because it’s not right.

The millennials are beginning to take notice of this anomaly…they are taking a stand against it. And that gives me great hope for the future.

The millennials are beginning to adopt the principle of impact over self-interest and therein lies their potential to change the world.

The Donald Trumps of this world want to lead us to believe that the small us is the only one we should pay attention to. The Fox News driven ideology of “American Exceptionalism” has helped elevate Trump to his startling status as presumptive right-wing nominee.

But the truth is that the world’s a very big place. There are exceptional humans in all corners of the globe, regardless of the particular national boundaries that encapsulate them. One is not made exceptional by birthright or birthplace. One becomes exceptional by impact. And all of us humans have that innate potential.

The idea of the BIG US is to see ourselves, as Bernie often likes to say, in this thing called life together. It doesn’t matter where you live, what color of skin you have, or which god you worship. We are all part of the human race towards a more dignified life for all members of our species. Impact Mindfulness suggests that we should be about expanding those opportunities for everyone, not hoarding them for the benefit of some human subgroup.

There are still some major barriers getting in the way of our impact. Gradually they seem to be eroding, but they are putting up a grand fight in the process, kicking and screaming as they fade from consciousness.

I call those impact blinders. The two that seem to be screaming the loudest these days are nationalism and religious sectarianism.

The Trumpet calls for “America First”, banning the entry of all Muslims, building a wall along the southern border, or deporting 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants, wreak of misguided nationalistic fervor. Horrible things have been done throughout human history in the name of nationalism. Do I need to remind you that Hitler rose to power voicing similar extreme calls towards nationalism that we’re now hearing routinely from Donald Trump.

The U.S. has made some strides eliminating religion as an insidious impact blinder. The recent Supreme Court decision that same-sex marriages be given the same legal respect as heterosexual ones is a major step in the right direction. Not surprisingly, the religiously blinded, the so-called “constitutionalists”, have declared war on such notions of freedom. Now we’re seeing state after state enacting “bathroom access laws” to make sure that a person goes to the bathroom that god intended him, or her, or whatever, to go to.

Impact blinders may be gradually falling to the way-side, but they still have potential to do quite a bit of damage before they’re done.

So, I am writing this as a revision of my manifesto, both to commend the progress of progressive millennials and to encourage and inspire them to continue on with the fight. The movement that began with Occupy Wall Street and that has found momentum with the Sanders’ campaign transcends the political.

This is not about power, it’s about what’s best for people and planet.

I hope the words on these pages encourage you to stay in the fight.

This will be the introduction to the new book: The Impact Revolution: How Millennials Can Change the World with Impact Mindfulness.

image credit: JenniferMedia via Compfight cc

On Ayn Rand and Neoliberalism

March 29, 2016 by costaricaguy 8 Comments

Lately I’ve been delving a bit deeper into the underpinnings of this neoliberal philosophy that so dominates american politics and government these days.

Neoliberalism is a political philosophy that supports extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.

As an economic theory, neoliberalism is the product of economists like Frederick Hayek in Europe and Milton Friedman in the U.S. However, its philosophical underpinnings, or the manner in which it has taken deep root in the American psyche, appears to be at least partly due to one person in particular, a lady named Ayn Rand.

You may know of her. She wrote two widely popular books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She also is the originator of a philosophy called objectivism.

Here’s part of the definition of objectivism from Wikipedia…

Objectivism’s states that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (rational self-interest) and that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism.

Rand’s philosophy of objectivism is rooted in the idea that reality and consciousness are separate things. Reality is something we perceive through our consciousness, but not something created by consciousness.

Rand eschewed altruism stemming from a sense of duty, or moral obligation. She believed altruism was only proper if the provider received something valuable to him or herself in return. And that the state should never be in the business of enforcing altruism, or taking away the property of an individual so as to enhance the “greater good.”

Rand saw as her arch enemy the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation. He did believe that each individual is possessed of a duty owed towards others, expressed by Kant in the categorial imperative…

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

To better understand how the categorical imperative functions as a logical argument, let’s take suicide, for instance. A single, depressed, person might believe that suicide is justified whenever there is a risk of future suffering, but once that idea is run through the rigorous test of the categorical imperative, the error of that logic becomes clear. If adopted as a universal law, the idea of suicide being so justified would spell the end of humanity, as everyone would have to commit it!

Kant believed that the duty implied in the categorical imperative, what many have likened to the “golden rule”, supplies the impetus for moral action apart from any need to turn towards religion.

Both Rand and Kant believed religion to be unnecessary as a guide for human action. However, Rand’s philosophy is a market-based one in which self-interest is the individual’s guide and in which any sense of duty is eschewed.

I believe that Rand’s philosophy of separation is a dangerous one. In fact, I believe it is at least partly to blame for many of the problems we face today.

For starters, her philosophy defies what science now tells us, especially the science of quantum physics. We actually do play a part in the creation of the reality we perceive. In fact, reality responds to our perception of it. This has been shown in the experiment by which particles, the building blocks of all nature, appear as waves in the moment they are measured, or observed. In other words, our perception actually changes the basic nature of reality.

The reality of manmade climate change had yet to become a global issue by the time Rand passed away in the early 80’s.

However, let’s take Rand’s ideas and apply them to the case of the global warming problem. Yes, in doing so, we do have to admit that it is a problem. If you are one of those who still wants to defy science and say that it is not…perhaps you might want to skip further reading and continue on with your Randian neoliberal nonsense…

Rand of course would say that the “oilman” has every right, in fact, the moral obligation, in the pursuit of self-interest, to drill and pump as much of that substance from the ground as humanly possible. And that government should not have a damn thing to say or do about it.

However, now that science has told us, unequivocally, that doing so threatens the very planet we live on, is it still morally repugnant for government to step in and apply some regulation to this endeavor?

If so, then we’re all doomed.

If you take Rand’s objectivism and run it through the categorical imperative you quickly see the flaw in her logic. If every individual, separate and apart from any notion of duty to any other, pursues his or her self-interest to the utmost, then the world must ultimately run out of resources. We can see this in the sheer fact that if the entire world consumed at the same rate as the U.S.A., we would need 3 more earth’s worth of resources to sustain it!

The fact is that no government has ever been instituted on a level playing field. When the constitution was first adopted, only those who owned property were given the right to vote.

There will always be some who have advantages over others…in terms of genetics, property, relationships, etc., etc. Those advantages create power imbalances.

According to Rand the government should be unable to do anything to help level the playing field. In that scenario, those power imbalances grow to monstrous proportions. That is exactly what we are seeing take place today in america, where one family owns as much wealth as the bottom 40% of all americans, as well as in the fact that our government seems to operate exclusively at the behest of the most powerful economically.

I believe the truth is that we do owe a duty to one another. That duty springs from the fact that we are all in this thing, or boat, or whatever metaphor you choose, together.

I like to call that a duty for impact.

That what I do does have an impact on others. And once you think of it in terms of the categorical imperative, you can quickly see the full extent of those impacts.

If I choose to act in a universally harmful way, yet not directly harmful to any other particular person, by, say, disregarding the environment, the impact becomes clear if you consider what would happen if everyone acted the same way.

The bottom line, we cannot act in ways that promote self-interest, or national interest, but that are destructive of the very things that connect us…our humanity and the one planet we have to live on!

It’s time we let go of Ayn Rand and neoliberalism and recognize our duty and connection to our fellow humans.

It’s time we started paying attention to our impact.

Justice Antonin Scalia – On Staying Grounded

February 14, 2016 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Yesterday the nation received sad news. Antonin Scalia, the conservative justice of the Supreme Court, who served our country for some 30 years in that capacity, died in his sleep.

Many things could be said about Justice Scalia. As a law student, who at that time leaned towards a very conservative worldview, I relished in the opinions, especially the dissenting ones, of this colorful justice.

Justice Scalia always stayed grounded in the idea that the constitution should be interpreted according to the plain meaning of the text, just as the founders intended those words to mean at the time they were written. That expansive interpretations that give rise to extra-constitutional rights, such as that of abortion, or gay marriage, were outside of the purview of the court and should be left up to the democratic process.

That’s a compelling argument to make and those who tried to argue against it with Justice Scalia were usually not very successful. That’s because he was grounded and many times his detractors were not.

My worldview has since shifted dramatically from those law school days. I no longer believe that the text of the constitution was intended by the founders to be “suspended in time” and that the only interpretation that can be legitimately given to the words contained therein are the very same ones that the founders themselves would have given to those words.

Yes words do mean things, but often what they mean today is far different from what they meant yesterday. For instance, the word gun, or arm, back in the day of the founders meant, exclusively, the musket, since that was the only available firearm at that point in history. Now, of course, it means a whole lot more…doesn’t it?

Would it be correct to interpret the constitution in such a way as to say that the founders meant for the word firearm to encompass all the weapons available on the market today, or only the musket?

Do you catch my drift?

You see, interpreting the constitution in the way Justice Scalia always proposed can lead to severe societal problems. Under his interpretation the constitution would never protect a women’s right to choose, or a homosexual’s right to marry. In addition to such restrictive results, there is also the problem of an expansive interpretation of the word “speech” to allow corporations to exercise it by injecting huge sums of money into political campaigns and thereby undermine the very democracy that Scalia so cherished.

I do admire, however, Justice Scalia’s “groundedness.” It’s good to be grounded. I just believe it’s better to be grounded in a way that has the best potential for positive impact on people and planet. And Justice Scalia’s version of being grounded often did not produce that result. He would say, well, that’s not his fault. He was appointed to uphold “the meaning” that the constitution actually has, not the one he might prefer it to have.

I too like to think of myself as being grounded. Grounded in the idea that what’s most important is not some rigid adherence to text, but a rigid adherence to an idea, or, even better, ideal. And that ideal is that were are all in this together and each of us has a responsibility to manage our impacts for the betterment of people and of planet. This ideal for impact mindfulness can cut across many aspects of one’s existence, including, of course, one’s political views.

We currently have a fellow running for President who tends to hold fast to a similar ideal. His name is Bernie Sanders. I am sure that, like myself, he would hold Justice Scalia’s intellect in great regard, while at the same time vehemently disagreeing with him.

How could it be that the constitution, the foundational document that defines our basic rights as citizens, should be interpreted in such a way as to deny basic rights, or as to undermine the very democracy that it gives rise to?

Could the founders really have intended such a result?

The conservative viewpoint seems to be, all too often, that what is correct is to rigidly adhere to ideology, whether it flows from the text of an historic document or ancient book, or the ideas behind a particular ism, even when such rigid adherence no longer serves people and planet.

Yes, it saddens me to hear of the passing of Justice Scalia. However, it does not sadden me to think that perhaps society has a chance to move beyond ideologies that no longer serve us.

Staying grounded is a good thing and Justice Scalia was a shining example of that. But I believe it’s best to be grounded in what’s really good for all of us, especially where the constitution is concerned.