THEORY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Theory of Human Behavior Part 1

Why do we do the things we do? This is a basic question that relates to everything in our lives. Without thoughts and actions we cease to exist. People explain their motives by saying, "It makes me feel good" or "It's the right thing to do". I am asking why. Why does it make you feel good and why do you think it is right? Most people I’ve spoken to on this subject respond with either, "I don't know" or "just because". Many motives have been identified and given common names in literature and popular culture such as jealousy, love, hate, revenge, a sense of justice, pride; but these simple terms mask the true complexity of the motive. What is the origin of the motive? Why do people feel things like jealousy, guilt, desire? Many have told me there are no answers and these questions are pointless. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to partially deconstruct a few well-known motives with you in order to reveal my point more explicitly.

Revenge: This motive is very prevalent in popular culture. Basically the idea is that someone has injured you physically or emotionally, taken something from you; or done this to someone you care about. This desire for revenge is described as a need to "take back" what was lost. There is an idea that by inflicting shame, or some other type of harm on the person who caused the injury, it will restore our sense of how the world should be. I think a large part of this desire for revenge stems from fear. The fear is that the person who caused us harm will do it again. We reason that if we can hurt our offender enough, they will fear us and we will be safe from them. We also fear that if other people know that we have been injured, they will view us as weak and take what we value. This is fear of loss. We reason that if we inflict enough harm on the people we fear, others will fear us and this will give us the security we crave.

Guilt: This motive is what many people believe motivates us to do what is right. If we perceive that by some action, or lack of action on our part, we have caused harm to someone we love, or someone who is innocent, we feel guilty. When we feel guilty we lavish attention and gifts on the object of our guilt in order to restore our sense of how the world should be. We feel sorry and often punish ourselves. Feelings of guilt are difficult to predict, people feel different levels of guilt for similar actions, some people feel guilty for nearly everything in their lives and some feel guilty for almost nothing. A person feels guilt when they violate their own personal code of ethics.

Patriotism: To understand patriotism you have to recognize competition among species, then competition within species. There is a very strong genetically implanted instinct that motivates us to compete. The reason we have this drive is so the best-adapted member of a particular group can dominate and propagate their ideas and genetic code. Without conflict, without competition, the best-adapted organism will never emerge. And unless the best-adapted organism dominates, the species will not benefit. This phenomenon has been identified as survival of the fittest. Currently, the ideals of capitalism and democracy have placed us as Americans as the richest, most powerful society on the planet. We are conquering the world with our ideals because they are so well adapted. As members of this society we have a genetically implanted instinct to fight to protect our homes and the values of our society. This shows the principle of "survival of the fittest" working on multiple levels, first we protect ourselves, the individual, then genetically similar (family), ideologically similar, geographically similar (city, state, country), and then there is competition among the species. Our country is an organism, we are cells within it. Our country’s ideas and methods are in competition with the world’s. This competition benefits the species by allowing the best-adapted ideas and genetic code to dominate.

It is important to understand that we often displace our motives. For instance, someone who seeks revenge may feel powerless to confront their offender and instead will displace their desire for revenge on others, abusing a child or some other helpless person for instance. This tends to continue the cycle of revenge. In the same way, someone who feels guilty may lavish attention and gifts on a proxy if they fear it is inappropriate or impossible to express remorse in a direct fashion. They also may fear it would be an

admission of guilt to openly display remorse. I would like to note that it is rare to have a single action that does not have multiple, complex motives.

If you wish to simplify, try looking at the motives of greed, laziness and fear. Greed would include desire for pleasure, recognition, and gain. Laziness is a desire to get as much benefit as possible for the effort expended, otherwise known as "value" or efficiency. Fear motivates us to protect ourselves from physical and emotional injury and to protect our possessions and the people we love. Human motives are a complex sea of

factors and dictate our lives as individuals and subsequently as societies, then as histories of nations and then as the history of the world. Human motivation is the one constant thread throughout history; this is why a modern audience can relate to both Shakespeare and Star Wars. Human feelings and motives are universal.

Theory of Human Behavior Part 2

Before I can delve beneath the motivations we have names for, I must digress. In order to understand my theory of human behavior we need to agree on a few points about animal instinct.

It is widely accepted that animals act largely on what we call instinct. This idea of instinct isn't very well defined, but it is assumed that the behavior is "pre-programmed" somehow, perhaps genetically (although this is only an assumption). No one knows exactly where these instinctive instructions are stored. No one has ever created a new instinct in an animal, or even modified an existing instinct. However, by manipulating the environment in which an organism resides, we can sometimes force it to adapt. It "learns" that if it co-operates it will get some reward. We call this, training or conditioning. Learned behavior is separated from instinct because it can be manipulated. I believe however that how easily an animal can adapt or "be trained" is based on its instinct. This is often referred to as an animal's "nature". Its "nature" does not change. An animal's ability to adapt is directly controlled by its instincts. This is why we can't "tame" many wild beasts, even if they are separated from their mothers at birth and never "learn" any wild behavior.

Human beings on the other hand, have a phenomenal capacity to adapt. This is because we have only basic instinctive directives. If we had complex or explicit instincts we would suffer from the same limitations as many animals on the endangered species list. Complex instincts always assume the creature is in its native setting. If a koala instinctively eats only eucalyptus leaves, the koala species will die without an adequate supply of nutrition from that one source. It has no capacity to adapt because instinct does not change. When their native environment changes their instincts are no longer valid. Because their basic nature cannot change they begin to die off. The more complex or specific the instinct, the less adaptable the organism is. Rats for example have only a rudimentary instinct regarding their nutrition, the directive is simply to eat, and does not specify any particular type or even category of food. This makes rats, as a species, very adaptable and consequently very successful.

If humans followed the model of the koala, there would be different sub-species of humans for each inhabited part of the planet. One type of human would not be able to survive outside of its native habitat. This is not the case. If we take a child from any race and raise it in another environment, geographical or technological, the child will fully adapt and even thrive. One example of this is when Native American children were caged and taken to Europe. These "Savages" began to imitate the spectators, learned the language and eventually were given the chance to be educated and exhibited the same capacity for learning as any other human.

So the question is, how much of human behavior is instinct and how much is learned? To answer this question in the space allotted here, I simplify all behavior to an idea of right and wrong. There has been research done that shows there are a few universal ideas of right and wrong that we share with every human culture. Where do these "universal truths" come from? I believe our ideas of right and wrong can be traced back to genetically implanted instinct to promote the propagation, health and advancement of the human species. A few examples of these accepted truths are, thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, and thou shall not commit adultery. Each of these laws serves to promote the health and propagation of a peaceful society, preserving the largest possible number of species members. So why do we break these laws? It is because of our genetically implanted desire to compete. We seek out conflict so the best-adapted ideas and genetic code will dominate in order to benefit the species overall. This is important because we are in competition with other species (including diseases and bacteria) and with our changing environment. The model of instinctive priority is first to protect the individual, then genetically similar (family) then geographically similar (city, state, country) then all human life, and then all other forms of life.

To sum up, we humans are highly adaptable organisms who have a conflicting set of directives. We are "programmed" to preserve life, but at the same time we have a primal need to compete and dominate.

Theory of Human Behavior Part 3

The conscious human mind does nothing but separate and categorize. This is an example of mental laziness/efficiency. The first time we experience something we create a mental cubbyhole for that item. We then file every subsequent similar item or experience in the same, predefined category. For instance, most people have a large category for men and one for women. There are then subcategories for friends, family, co-workers, employers, customers, etc. The more familiar we are with a subject the narrower the category is. Most people probably have close friends who have their own category all to themselves. Casual acquaintances and strangers we are often quick to dismiss, especially if their tastes don't obviously match our own.

The sub-conscious retains every experience of our lives. I hypothesize that our emotions are the way our sub-conscious communicates with our conscious mind. Every person has a unique accumulation of life experiences; every experience teaches us something about the world around us. Our sub-conscious mind can instantly review our entire life experience and then feed that information to our conscious mind as a combination of emotions. Our conscious mind then picks which feeling is the strongest, or most logical, based on current short-term conditions and represses or denies the rest. The ability to repress thoughts we perceive as socially unacceptable or without obvious value is what we commonly refer to as "self-control". Like most things, once we get into the habit of denying certain types of thoughts, it becomes effortless. The only problem is these repressed thoughts still manifest themselves as emotions. Our conscious mind can deny they exist but our sub-conscious is like a computer. It cannot forget anything. Our conscious mind only retains the information we believe is relevant at the moment. Part of the job of the conscious mind is to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. The conscious mind names and categorizes things and sets limits. It separates good from evil, rich from poor, husband from wife, normal from abnormal.

Every decision we make is based on our unique combination of accumulated life experiences. Every day, every minute, we are adding to and shaping our ability to make decisions. Our conscious mind has a set system of beliefs that we base our conscious decisions on but these conscious decisions are influenced by our "emotions" that are the complex communication of our accumulated life experiences held in our sub-conscious mind. Every previous experience of our lives is a factor in every decision we make and will ever make. Our conscious mind simplifies our experience and forms our ideals. We seek to confirm our ideals by talking to people who agree with them and watching entertainment that confirms them. Good conquers evil etc. Everything we say, everything we do, everything we wear, everything we own expresses some aspect of our life’s experience and consequently our personality and belief system, since the two are inexorably intertwined. The better an object or idea reflects our conscious mind’s picture of how the world should be, the more we like it. This explains why people like certain music, movies, TV shows, clothing, people, stores, restaurants etc. Everything a person desires, does, and has is part of a complex reflection of their unique accumulated life experience.

Theory of Human Behavior Part 4

Let's review: Human motives are a complex and contradictory combination of instinct, learned behavior, sub-conscious motives that are interpreted as emotion, and our conscious motives that are simplified summaries of all the above factors. Our conscious mind's quest to simplify the world is often manifested as a resistance to change.

Children instinctively explore everything around them. They correlate color and sound and movement with physical sensation. Children must first understand their own bodies before they can effectively explore the rest of the world because our perception of ourselves affects our perception of how the rest of the world relates to us. All perception is subjective. All perception is relative first to our physical bodies and then to our accumulated previous experiences up to that moment in our lives. Our ability to perceive the world around us is limited by our environment and by our five senses. Although every person is physically unique (even identical twins have different finger prints) and has a unique accumulation of life experiences we do share experiences that we perceive as similar to others. For instance, getting married, enjoying a good meal, losing a loved one, etc. This perception that someone fully understands our experience or that we fully understand someone else's is an illusion! We project our experiences on the people around us. We assume that because we experienced a "similar" situation that we "understand". We can never fully understand another human being's perspective because we have not lived their life. In order to fully understand, we must have full context. The more we know about a person the more context we have and the better we think we "know" them but we still make a lot of assumptions about the meaning of what they tell us and we fill in the missing pieces with what we perceive as similar context from our own accumulated life experience. We often ignore the fact that how we interpret other people's words and actions is colored by our own experience. This is why different people can have different opinions of the same experience or the same person. We often ignore the fact that our own interaction with a person influences them. The act of observing changes the subject or phenomenon being observed.

From childhood and into young adulthood we continue to test the boundaries of our experience to define our reality. We all learn how confidence and insecurity and pain and joy relate to us personally. When we feel we have reached the limits of our willingness to risk failure, pain and rejection, we decide what is "true" for us and we then gravitate toward other people and other situations that validate our concept of "truth". On our original quest to explore, we begin to find contradictory "truths" and when we question these contradictions, we are pressured to accept the values and "truths" that are held by the majority of the people in our society, or at least those in our immediate vicinity, and this is referred to as local "culture". Most of us recognize there is a difference between how things "are" and how things "should be". Generally the young want to change reality to match their ideals and the establishment wants what is in place to stay the same. The establishment wishes to maintain the illusion that they have all the answers, or at least the best methods to find “the answers” and there is nothing to be gained by further exploration of avenues they’ve already dismissed. The problem is that when we draw these lines, (social rules, and boundaries) people get left out. My "truth/reality" (my accumulated life experience, human instinct, based on my perspective and simplified by my conscious mind) is not your "truth/reality". People instinctively know this and stick to "small talk". Generally people can avoid conflict by talking about things that have very simple interpretation, for example, "looks like it's going to rain today", "did you catch the football game yesterday? We simplify, raining or not raining. Our team won or lost. This simplification makes it easy for us to agree with others, but it does not tell us the whole story. Why is it raining and how does that relate to me and the complex factors that make up my life experience? How did our team win and why do they play that game and not something else and why do people like watching it so much? We avoid conflict because we fear rejection, we make assumptions because we think most people believe what we believe, and we think there is only one "truth" because society teaches us there is only one truth. There is a pervasive idea that if one person or group is "right" that means that another person or group is "wrong". If a person or theory appears to contradict its self, it is thought to be false. In reality the universe is a complex matrix of truths, instead of contradicting or invalidating each other they balance and give us a view of the bigger picture if we are willing to take a fresh look.

Every individual has a unique perspective and set of assumptions about the way the world is and how it should be. This unique perspective is what we refer to as "truth". We gravitate towards other people who validate our beliefs. The more someone validates, or agrees with us the closer we feel to them. We categorize people we know according to how much they validate us. Enemies, acquaintances, friends and then close friends. Enemies try to embarrass, invalidate, discredit and injure us. Acquaintances may not agree with us, but they don't argue with us either, we assume they mostly agree with us and they assume the same. We both know there is a good chance that we disagree on things and so we choose not to reveal too much about ourselves, for fear of creating conflict. But without conflict there is no progress. These acquaintance relationships are stagnant. On the other hand our close friends agree with us on what we consider our "core values" and are open minded enough to debate the details without rejecting us as a person. These are the human relationships we value most.
Theory of Human Behavior Part 5

Every person wants to feel important. What does this entail? 1) We must accomplish something. 2) We must receive human recognition.

Generally you receive the recognition from the people who benefit most from your accomplishment. This system encourages and rewards apparently selfless behavior. One of the problems with recognition is, however, that people have very short memories. In order to continue to feel important you must continue to accomplish amazing things. After you've wowed them a few times you eventually raise people's expectation of you to the point that they are no longer impressed. This is also made more difficult because the more appreciation you feed your ego, the larger and more ravenous it becomes. Eventually it outstrips all reasonable supply of recognition and you are forced to face your feelings of inadequacy.

You see, this whole system is based on greed. Not for just for money necessarily. Greed for appreciation. We feel we need to be validated by others. The more people the better. This desire stems from the fact that we are part of the larger organism of the human species. Great accomplishment benefits the species and it rewards us with recognition. Acceptance by society means life and rejection is death. The species genetically implants each of us with a feeling of worthlessness in order to motivate us to great accomplishment. We gain appreciation from greedy people who want us to accomplish things for them. We appreciate greedy people who want our recognition to feed their ego.

We crave the adoration of others. Why? Do they have something we don't have within ourselves? I say no. We all have a nagging feeling that we are worthless. Many ignore or deny this feeling. No problem. Somehow we think that if we can get enough people to admit we are valuable it will give our lives meaning. Ask any "out of style" pop star or movie idol how they feel about this. People have short memories. They love you until the next hot thing comes along and steals them away. Can such fickle love truly give your life meaning? I say not.

We instinctively crave human attention. Some of us realize we don't have much chance to draw a large number of friends or fans. So we focus on a single fan. This is often called love. We think if we can get one person to devote their life to making us happy it will give our lives meaning. In a few rare cases this works, but only if both individuals pour their entire beings into each other. If either holds back or fails to completely accept the other, the relationship spins out of balance and will not provide the happiness we crave.

I admit I crave human attention. It feels good to be offered a beer, or a meal, or asked how I feel. The difference is I know what is going on. Most people say, I like being with my friends because they're cool. I love my wife. But they don't understand why. This is fine. I'm not saying they need to face their fears and understand their motives. I do.

Theory of Human Behavior Part 6

Science is the observation, measurement, and documentation of what we consider observable phenomenon. It is worth noting that science does not address why things are the way they are, it merely observes and documents the world as objectively as possible. If a theory can be tested and yields the same result a high percentage of the time, the theory is deemed to be fact. For example, if I were inclined to test the theory of gravity and released a 17lb computer monitor 5 feet above my outstretched foot, it will most likely crush my foot and cause serious damage to the monitor as well. Of course it is also possible that the peripheral may fall at such an angle as to cause no damage to my foot or to itself. This would be considered lucky. Luck is a complex set of random factors for which we have not accounted for. In a laboratory situation we try to eliminate luck by eliminating as many factors from the equation as possible. This simplification makes the result more consistent. However it has often been observed that what holds true in the laboratory is often not the same as what happens under "real world" conditions. There are always a massive number of unknown and unaccounted for factors that are outside our ability to factor in. Luck, good and bad, can happen at any time. The greater the amount of information we have the ability to account for, the more accurately we are able to predict the result of a given action.

We are all scientists. We spend our lives gathering information, forming and testing theories, trying to predict results of our actions. As children we learn that either, A) our parents will do what we want if we cry or throw a fit, B) our parents will not do what we want if we cry or throw a fit, C) one parent is manipulated more easily than the other, or D) depending on the demand and the mood of either parent, throwing a fit may or may not yield the desired result. This reasoning does not take place in the conscious mind of a child, but the behavior is learned as if it were. As we grow up, we continue to learn more behavior. We learn to be a good student because it gains us praise from our parents or teachers or classmates, or simply gives us a sense of accomplishment. Or we learn not to be a good student because it is not worth the effort and only causes ridicule and frustration when we fail to meet the expectations of those whose opinions we value. Every day, every experience and interaction we have either confirms or conflicts with the majority of the accumulated data stored in our sub-conscious. We all know there are exceptions to the rules we personally believe are true, however, our conscious mind discounts these exceptions as trivial and we make over-simplified blanket judgments about the world around us. For instance, "Most of the time homeless people are in a situation of their own making. By giving them money I will only be adding to the problem and rewarding the values that made them homeless in the first place." or, "Most of the time homeless people are vagrant because of factors outside of their control. Any of us could become homeless under the right set of circumstances. My gift of a couple of dollars will make them feel better for a few minutes if nothing else." When in fact every homeless person is a unique human being in a unique situation. There may be some common factors and both of the previous judgments may be partially true in many cases, but the similarities between people only mask the true differences between them. Categorizing people as "homeless" and "not homeless" or "rich" and "poor" or even "men" and "women" means you have stereotyped them. It is often very difficult to truly get to know someone once you label him or her with your preconceived idea of his or her limitations.

The fallacy of science is that it is limited to what we can recreate in a controlled environment and limited by our ability to perceive sight, sound, touch, taste, and our ability to inductively and deductively reason based on what we observe. Perception is reality. There are many phenomena that appear to break the laws of physics and defy science. We cannot blindly follow a dictum that only holds true a percentage of the time, no matter how high the percentage is. To clarify this point about perception, I give you the example of the man born blind. A human who is born blind does not simply have the same perception of the world as the majority of our society, minus sight. This is what we would assume. Our assumptions are based on our own experience, we very often project our assumptions onto other people until or unless we can be convinced they do not apply. We live in a three dimensional world. Any child old enough to walk perceives this three dimensional world. The man born blind lives in a one-dimensional world. When doctors first discovered they could remove cataracts from patients who had been blind from birth in order to give the gift of sight, they were stunned that these patients had no concept of shape, size, or distance. Their eyes were functioning but their brains only perceived meaningless blotches of color. Like when you or I look into a kaleidoscope. Many became frustrated and chose to close their eyes and return to the world they were familiar with; others took the time and effort to learn how to perceive this new world and this new dimension.

Most people find it difficult to believe a human being, born blind, could live in this world and move about, interacting with people and everyday household objects, without having any concept of size, distance, or shape. Most people reason that any person could measure distance with their footsteps, or with the movement of an arm, or a finger. Most people reason that any person could feel the edges and corners of a table or pencil and know its size and shape, like we could if we were blindfolded. You are assuming the man born blind knows what a finger is, or a foot, or any other part of a human body. Those born blind live in a one-dimensional world; they view themselves as one-dimensional beings. To understand how they perceive the world we must understand how they view themselves, because ultimately we only perceive the world as it relates to us. I imagine a one-dimensional being as a mass of tiny copper beads about the size of a human brain. Each bead is a one-dimensional point, with no special relationship to any other point. Each point is in its own dimension. This is very difficult to picture so instead, imagine the mass of beads is in a perpetual random swirling motion to make the point that the spatial relationships between the beads are immaterial. Each bead represents a nerve. What we consider our "hand" or "foot" the born blind perceive as an abstract set of nerves. If they have an itch, they scratch it. We see they are moving their hand to their chin and applying pressure with their fingernails. They perceive no relative movement of either hand or chin, but are simply replaying a variation on a learned set of muscle stimulations to produce a desired result, stop the itch. The same can be said for any other action, walking from one room to another, eating a meal, adjusting a radio dial and listening to one's favorite NPR program, all of these are simply variations on a learned combination of muscle stimulations to produce a desired result. Our brain sends signals to our muscles and makes adjustments based on past experience and on-the-fly feedback from our nerves. This system is very similar to a code written by a computer programmer. Signals w+x+y=z. The man born blind can perceive nearly all the same things that we can by touching them and smelling them and hearing them, but they have a completely different concept of the world around them. They live in a universe comprised of arrays of one-dimensional beads.

Is it possible that we are like the man born blind? The limitation by our five senses not only constrains our ability to observe and study the world around us, but also there may be complex concepts that we cannot comprehend because of these limitations. In the same way that the concepts of distance, size and shape are integral to our everyday life, these concepts that we are not aware of could be indispensable to those with the ability to perceive them. If we could understand these concepts maybe we could build on the theories and knowledge of the past, and come to a new understanding of the world around us.

Theory of Human Behavior Part 7

What are the primary motives that drive our society? There seems to be a lot of focus in our society on the ideas of fairness and blame. But before I get to that, let me bring up one other important point. Most people cling to an idea that they are a good person. Their definition of a good person is based on their combination of human instincts and accumulation of life experience. On the surface their definition of a good person appears similar to their peers but is in-fact unique to each individual. Being a good person means they feel they have value because they have value to their society. Having value to society means they have value to the species. But the other side of the coin is that in order for them to be a good person, there must also be bad people. You cannot have one without the other. Often what we perceive as a bad person is someone who does not fit into the mold that society pressures each member to conform to. Any member of a society that doesn't conform could potentially spread ideas that conflict with the larger society's values and become like a cancer, stealing more members from the whole, weakening it. Nearly all species members have a survival instinct to protect the life of the individual first, then the individual's relatives, then genetically and ideologically similar members, then the rest of the species. Society values actions and ideas that promote "the greater good" of a family, community, society, or mankind as a whole. However, this survival instinct can be, and often is self-conflicting. What is good for the individual, from their unique perspective, is not always the same as what is good for the society at large. Therefore we often associate selfishness with being a bad person. Society wants everyone to conform because it is an organism of ideas and genes, and the more members it has, the better equipped it is to compete with other societies. Keep in mind there are often sub-cultures within a society. Each sub-culture competes within the boundaries accepted by the larger society. This keeps the organism vital and dynamic. Competition and conflict strengthens the organism by allowing the best-adapted combinations of ideas to develop and thrive. The ideal of multiculturalism is particularly well adapted because it integrates genetically and ideologically dissimilar species members that would normally feel compelled to compete, into a larger and more complex societal organism. The wider variation a society is willing to accept, the larger it can become. The larger it is the better equipped to dominate or absorb other societies.

The more complex and strict the rules of a society are, the less adaptable the society is. For instance, strict regimes like monarchies or dictatorships are often shattered because of their unwillingness to accept new ideas or sub-cultures. Societies with more freedom and acceptance of new ideas are more flexible if procedures for reform and adaptation are built into the system. In a dictatorship, often the only way to produce reform is to overthrow the current regime and install a new government. The act of overthrowing the government is often so violent and catastrophic that it inadvertently sets the stage for the next revolt. My point is people are like societies, the more complex and rigid your ideas are of what defines a good person, the more likely you are to find disappointment both within yourself and others. The more flexible and adaptable your definition is, the better prepared you will be to survive in the ever-changing complexity of the real world.

Right, now as I was saying earlier, I believe there are two dominant false ideas, which cause a great deal of conflict in our society; fairness and blame. From the playground of the elementary school to the board rooms of international corporations we see both of these ideas in play. People are obsessed with the idea that they should be treated equally, that they deserve fairness and justice, but we rarely question exactly what that means. The idea of blame is always used to explain why there is a problem. There is an idea that if we can find all the elements to blame, we can prevent all possible failure in the future. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Fairness seems so simple a concept. As children we form our idea of what is fair and unfair. Fairness seems obvious from our perspective, but when we start to question other's ideas of fairness it gets a little more complicated. To make my point I turn your attention to certain aspects of our nation's system of education. For example, is it fair for homeowners who do not have children, to pay taxes that fund local schools? Is it fair for families who live in apartment complexes to send their children to public schools since they don't pay property taxes? Is it fair that children in an area with low property values go to a school that does not have the same equipment and resources as a school in an area with high property values? Then again, is it fair for rich people to fund the education of the poor? Isn't it fairer for everyone to pay for their own children’s education? But if that were the case why do we even have public education at all? It all looks different depending on who is asking the question. In order to be considered fair, every school in the country would have to have the exact same facilities and teach exactly the same things, and have exactly the same student to teacher ratio, and, oh yea, have the exact same students! You see, true "fairness" is impossible. Every student is unique, every teacher is unique, and every school district, town, and city is also unique.

If the stated goal is to give every American an equal education, I would propose that an equal amount of money be allotted to each student, that way, a school would always have funding in proportion to the number of students they are expected to serve. This would eliminate "rich" schools and "poor" schools; there would simply be schools with more or fewer students. This proposal may seem fair on the surface, but there are inherent complexities that don't fit the fairness model. For example, the costs associated with building a school may vary widely from one town or city to the next. The cost of living is different in different parts of the country, therefore teacher, and other employee pay cannot be equal, and this affects the cost of running the school. Even the cost of utilities is not constant. Besides that, the cost of educating a single student is not constant, if a student has special needs or is diagnosed with a learning disability, they may need special classes or a tutor. Many people would argue that it is not fair for a student with special needs to receive more money to fund their education. I would point out that it is not fair that some children learn more easily than others. If we held as strictly as possible to the fairness model, we would inevitably either under-educate all students for fear of leaving someone behind, limiting and frustrating many students, or over-educate all students and doom those unable to keep up the pace by labeling them as failures. The more strict the rules and structure of the system, the more people fall through the cracks. On the other hand, the more simple the directive, the more flexible and adaptable, the more we trust the teachers to make decisions based on their knowledge of each student as an individual, the fewer students are left out. The false ideal of fairness would force us all to be exactly the same, same pay, same food, same job, same apartments, and same possessions. Only then could we achieve true fairness! If we embrace the variety of life and the beauty of our unique personalities and expression, we must reject this broken concept of fairness. Our minds are perfectly capable of treating every person as an individual and every situation as unique. The more we think, the better we can adapt to new situations. Rules let us turn off parts of our brains. If something goes wrong we can blame the rules. I was only following procedure; the light was green, just following orders sir, that's against company policy. The blame then gets placed on the people making the rules, so they make more rules. At a certain point there are too many rules to remember and the blame moves back to the individual because they didn't follow "the rules". Now on to blame.

An early example of blame comes from the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam is caught with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and he blames Eve for giving it to him, Eve in turn, blames the serpent for seducing her. Did you ever think that the serpent could have blamed God for putting the tree there in the first place? Blame is slippery stuff. Depending on one's perspective blame can be pointed in nearly any direction. Adam can be blamed because he could have chosen not to taste the fruit, Eve could have chosen not to listen to the serpent, and the serpent could have chosen not to seduce Eve. Each choice listed is a link in the chain of events. I think it is interesting we try to assign an amount to blame. Who do you think is the most at fault? Is it Eve, or Adam? Is it the serpent, or God? I believe that blame is binary. In order for the concept of blame to hold true, we must believe that because of one action, every subsequent action or event was inevitable. If the sequence of events had been broken at any point, the tragedy would not have occurred. This makes every party involved, equally responsible. Blame cannot be assigned a value. There is one more sticky point about blame; you are assuming that if the guilty party did not take the action they did, the result would definitely not have happened. This may not be the case. We cannot go back in time and try to stop a criminal in action to test this. In the Garden of Eden example for instance, we assume that Adam wouldn't have been seduced by the serpent, or that either Adam or Eve would not have tried the fruit on their own, given enough time, or under certain other conditions. We instead choose to blame the serpent because his action was chronologically similar and in sequence with the tragedy. The serpent may have affected the timing of the transgression but it is impossible to say if the serpent caused it. Blame is credit. When you blame someone you are giving them credit for a result of an action they have taken. The paradox is we often blame people for results of actions they did not foresee. This is like when a pool player hits the cue ball as hard as they can and succeeds in scoring a point for his opponent. Is he to blame for the mistake? He did not intend to score a point for his opponent. Would he deserve credit if he had by some stroke of luck, scored a point for himself even though he did not intend to sink that particular ball in that particular pocket? I say if our society is going to blame people for results of their actions they did not intend, we should also give full credit to results of their actions they did not intend. There is no such thing as partial credit. Every participant and every event in the sequence leading to a conclusion (which is part of a larger sequence) is of equal importance. We try to compensate for this idea of credit by attempting to weigh motive or intent by assigning a value to the blame. If we can prove premeditation, we enforce stricter punishment. Three people murder. One kills in a fit of rage, one carefully plans and executes; another is a victim of circumstance and is charged with manslaughter. The result is the same, one human life taken. Yet we judge each differently. We judge them by their proximity to the tragedy. Do we blame the gun or knife, or automobile? Do we blame the manufacturer or marketing department of the weapon used in the crime? We discount the thousands of other factors that led to the person's death. If a child commits a crime, we blame the parents. Some propose that the values or lack of values we are taught as a child shape our view of the world and maintain subtle influence over our every action. By this standard, shouldn't we punish the parents of the murderer? Murderers are members of society also, they have jobs, they buy food, enjoy popular entertainment. Does not each of these factors play a part in their ability, if not their desire to commit the crime of which they are accused? Where does the blame stop? The parents? The grandparents? Perhaps a teacher, a friend, or a lover influenced them directly or indirectly, are they to blame as well? Why do we feel compelled to distill guilt down to a single suspect? We create a scapegoat and pretend the problem is solved. Did you know it is against the law to tell a joke about terrorism in an airport, or speak about killing the president of the United States? Are we so afraid of words that we would declare anyone who even spoke of a crime as guilty? Do we blame society for creating the environment in which crime exists? And if we do, whom do we lock up? Everyone? I understand why we blame. We blame to maintain an illusion that there is some order in the universe as it relates to us, limited by our understanding. Like scientists we quantify our beliefs by measuring situations with statistics, 4 out of 5 doctors agree, 80% this, 93% that. We tend to ignore the minority report, 1 out of 5 doctors agree something completely different, 20% this, 7% that. We also ignore the fact that statistics are only of use when dealing with large numbers of people. I would like to stress this next point. Statistics are meaningless when applied to an individual case. There is absolutely no way for you to know if the individual you are encountering falls into the 80% or the 20%. When dealing with an individual there are myriad unique factors that are difficult to gauge the importance of. What seems significant in one case may not be in another. This is why an individual smoker has never won a case against a major tobacco company. Class action suits are won for large groups because statistically they can “prove” that common factors led to common results. These common factors include over-simplified survey demographics that account for factors such as race, income, and age. Explain to me how well I would know you if I only knew your race, income, and age? Obviously real human beings are much more complex than any survey could imply. I would also like to note that, in the interests of accuracy, the results of surveys should have a printed qualifier explaining the inherent limitations, "X% of people who responded to this unsolicited, ten minute long telephone survey, designed and sponsored by General Motors..." in order to be perfectly clear that depending on who you survey and what questions you ask, you can make the numbers say whatever you like. There is no such thing as an “objective” survey. The results will always reflect the interests of the sponsor. As the great Samuel Clemens is credited with once saying, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics!" We base our justification of blame on statistics. Our society is built on some pretty shifty soil.