Ardi Shook Science To Its Roots
by Bill Allin, author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don’t know.

“From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi, we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas.”
- Owen Lovejoy, a lead author of one of the 11 studies of Ardi that appeared in the journal Science.

Science labelled the discovery of Ardi (more accurately, the revelations of study results of Ardi) the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2009.

At this stage, the study of Ardi and the ramifications of the changes of thinking that will come from it are just beginning. This article will add a few important observations to what we in the general public should learn from the whole exercise. Different information to ponder.

First and foremost is that the lead author of a respected scientific study admitted that the theory (that human evolutionary models could be devised from ape models) that was cherished so long it became thought of as fact, was wrong.

As much as we look somewhat like apes, especially so in the case of young chimpanzees, we differ significantly. The theory claimed that our prehistoric and prehuman ancestors lived in trees and only emerged from the African jungle to walk upright, learn to run and hunt on the savannah.

Cats and birds, for examples, live in trees (at least cats are as comfortable in trees as they are on the ground). Cats and birds can hang upside down from a tree branch and their brains will adjust to the orientation so that they can understand the scene as well as if they were standing upright.

Humans cannot. Stand up now, spread your legs and bend your head down so you look between your legs at the scene behind you. It simply doesn’t make as much sense as it would if you were standing upright even though you know the components of the scene you are trying to look at. Your brain cannot adapt to what it understands as a scene that is non-conventional, that is not oriented to the way it wants to understand a floor or ground level scene.

Can you not bend that far? Interesting. Cats and birds can do that for their whole lives. Most can also keep their bodies steady and turn their heads almost completely around to face behind them (some can even do it more than 180 degrees). That would be useful for animals that spend a great deal of time in trees.

If you have observed a pet cat–perhaps one climbing on you–then you have likely seen it hang upside down (at least its head would be upside down according to common orientation) and yet have no trouble understanding everything in the scene. Birds can do the same. To a cat or a bird, there is no upside down, only different orientations of the head, to which their brains easily adapt and adjust immediately.

Monkeys and their kin can do the same. You may have seen one in a zoo, on television or in a movie hanging upside by a foot, or even by its tail. They understand the scenes around them no matter what orientation their heads have to view the scene.

We humans can’t. No matter how practiced we become, viewing a scene from a non-conventional perspective is always “not right” to us.

Why? If we did indeed once live in trees, we had no reason to lose what was once a critically important ability. We may lose body parts because we have no use for them (prehensile tail of the human fetus that disappears after the fifth month, wisdom teeth that will soon not appear in future generations, useless organs we can have removed and easily live without), but there is no example of humans or other animals losing inherent skills or abilities they once had.

We may no longer be able to do things we once did because our bodies have changed shape or configuration slightly, but we don’t lose the skill within our brain should we ever need it. The potential is still there. Yet we still can’t understand a scene that is “upside down” to our brain.

Even the reason science gives for humans losing their body hair is lame. The claim is that humans lost their body hair because it would have been too hot to run around the plains hunting in a fur coat. So we lost our fur coats so we could expose our bare skin to ultraviolet radiation from the sun (more direct, thus damaging, in Africa than in temperate zones) so we could contract skin cancer more easily?

That doesn’t make sense. Evolution has never been shown to work to create more health risk in any animal. That would be counter to natural selection. Besides, do monkeys not get hot from swinging around in the trees? I would, if I had that ability and strength, hairy or naked. But I don’t now and I didn’t as a child, though I climbed awkwardly (by ape standards) in some trees.

The claim that hair in the crotch and armpits helps to dispel sweat, which is why we still grow it in those places, would apply as well to hair anywhere else on the body. Sweat would evaporate more quickly from crotch and armpits without hair to slow down the movement of air across them. If not, then women who shave those places today would be sweatier than women who let their hair grow. I’m not an expert, but I have never heard of that being a problem of women who shave.

Why do we retain head hair? To protect us from the sun? That argument should give more reason why we should retain all-body hair, not lose it. We can wash hair and skin (cooling off in the water at the same time), but we can’t slough off melanoma.

Why do we like water so much? Never mind that most of our bodies consist of water as that applies to all animals and plants. Archaeologists looking for ancient human habitation almost always look near water. Or they look near where water once was in the prehistoric past.

Why? We can get enough water into our bodies the way monkeys and other animals do.

We also swim differently from most land animals that spend part of their lives in water. A dog swims using the dog paddle (elephants, excellent swimmers, swim the same way). A dog swims this way so easily because its face and nose are, compared to the locations of our own, on top of their heads. A dog doesn’t have to lift its head to swim because its nose is already above water as it floats.

That convenient location of the nose and eyes for dogs did not cause them to lose their fur because they hunt and basically live on land. Elephants, on the other hand, are naked, can find food in the water, and they have webbing between their toes like a duck.

It seems highly likely that our prehuman ancestors–in the Pliocene period–spent a good deal of time in the water. There we lost our body hair, retained it in crotch and armpits for warmth and on the head so our babies could hold onto it. Ever held out your finger to a young baby and had it grasp the finger naturally? For more on this see Elaine Morgan’s The Descent of Woman.

If the experts that study the history of our own species are so careless, so inexact, so arrogant about teaching theory that doesn’t even meet the criterion of common sense examination, as if it were established fact, how much confidence can we place in any scientific claims made with the certainty of experts?

Theory is not fact, by its very definition, though theory is often taught as if it were fact. Even the laws of physics bear questioning. Remember reading about when light was believed to travel in straight lines, when time and space were linear, when the earth was the centre of the universe and when an object was in one place it couldn’t be anywhere else? Not anymore. Evidence proves that these “facts” of science were wrong.

We may be wrong to adopt fantastic stories masquerading as religion (my story is always better and truer than yours), but we would be equally as mistaken to accept all statements by science as fact, no matter how confidently and passionately the statements are made.

We humans do not really know as much as we claim we do. We just act as if we know more, as if we are always right. It’s called hubris. We teach it to our kids.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don’t know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Big Business Manipulates the Climate Change Debate

by Bill Allin, author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who can think instead of simply accepting life as it imposes itself on them.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
- Maya Angelou, American educator, autobiographer and poet (b. 1928)

manufactroversy n. (neologism) A contrived or non-existent controversy, manufactured by political ideologues or interest groups who use deception and specious arguments to make their case.

Is the temperature of the planet really warming? No. The dirt and rock are not getting warmer.

Is the average temperature of the atmosphere above our planet warming? That’s the core of the debate. Is climate change real and based solely on human activity or simply a cyclical feature of nature? That’s the issue.

The arguments for climate change are based on computer models, which are based on sketchy facts from the past and questionable data from the present. Sketchy facts from the past because today’s technology was not available more than a few years ago.

Questionable data? A Canadian blogger discovered a simple arithmetic error in the calculations by NASA based on its satellite readings, making the atmosphere seem a fraction of a degree warmer than it actually was. NASA satellite readings form the core of most computer climate model inputs.

Read that story here. But don’t expect to find either the correction of NASA’s data or conclusions on its web site or an admission that it made the error. You won’t.

No one can doubt that the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean is thinning. Travelling by ship through the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, through northern Canada, is possible now. That trip that caused the deaths of so many explorers and their shipmates over past centuries of our history has not been possible for over a thousand years. Yes, the Northwest Passage was open in the distant past.

No one can doubt that some countries that usually experience hot seasons are having it hotter than ever, with a few actually desertifying, especially in the Middle East and the Sahel around the Sahara in Africa.

However, ask the people who live in Edmonton, Canada, how much warmer they feel. One Saturday night in mid December 2009 their overnight low temperature was -46.1 degrees Celsius. (At that temperature Celsius and Fahrenheit have almost similar numbers.) That record cold was 10 degrees lower than the previous record cold night. Not one or two degrees colder, but 10.

Edmonton is the capital city of a Canadian province, not a northern territory. It’s not sub-Arctic. It’s province, Alberta, hit new power usage records in two successive weeks as Albertans tried to keep from freezing. The whole Canadian west was a deep freeze for the first part of the winter of 2009.

Eastern Canada was different. Maritimers had their summer in 2009, but it only lasted three days. The whole of spring, summer and autumn were cool and very wet. The previous two winters had old timers claiming they had never seen so much snow, so many storms, so much rainfall in a single season.

Cool and wet. Exactly what the climate models should predict when the air warms. Warm air collects more moisture from the oceans, which results in more cloud (less sun to warm the earth) and more rain.

In the 1970s the prediction was that we might have a new Ice Age based on the same data being used today, but different climate models. Canada’s weather over the past two years would support that claim, though two years can never constitute a trend.

No one can doubt that those who believe in climate change feel strongly enough about it to fight for grants to study climate models and data more than their opponents. No one should doubt that some people, including a number of well respected scientists, believe that climate shift is natural and cyclical. Their work is available on the internet.

Why is there debate? The simplest conclusion is that there is money to be made. From scientific study of climate, not from climate change itself.

While few among us may know that industries puff out half a million different chemicals into the air, we all seem to know that carbon dioxide is the worst culprit for the greenhouse effect that eventually warms the atmosphere. We all know that breathing too much carbon dioxide is unhealthy, may even kill some of us.

We have not put together what we know, let alone figured out the debate most of us can’t understand. While we argue over whether or not global temperatures are rising, whether or not our atmosphere is warming, whether human industries and habits directly affect that change or not, industries and government continue to pour extraordinary amounts of carbon dioxide into the air we breathe.

They have no need to spend on changing anything so long as we fight over whether the atmospheric temperature might change by a portion of one degree over a few decades.

We continue to breathe poisonous air. Industries and government owned power plants puff out obscene amounts of poisonous gases into our air. And nothing changes because we are arguing over whether global temperatures are rising or staying steady.

Who wins that scenario?

Those who believe that nothing should change in nature are wrong. History is full of examples. The Mediterranean Sea used to be a plain and the Sahara Desert used to be a giant lake. That’s change. Tropical beasts used to roam what is now the north of Canada, Russia and Alaska until the last Ice Age arrived a few thousands years ago. That’s change. Changes that happened not so long ago by historical standards.

History should teach us that nature changes by itself. It doesn’t need our help. It will change with or without us.

Our own limited knowledge should tell us that we should not be arguing over whether climate is changing while we ignore manufacturing facilities putting millions of tons of poisonous gases into the air we breathe.

No one should doubt that life on earth today is different than it was before the Industrial Revolution. The main difference is not a small change in atmospheric temperature, but a huge increase in diseases that have never before been a problem on earth and the poisonous air we breathe that has caused them since the Industrial Revolution began.

While we debate a small change in atmospheric temperature, we continue to breathe poisonous air. Industries that are fundamentally sociopathic in their quest for profits benefit from our debate because they don’t have to change anything.

We continue to get sick. We continue to die. We continue to argue over climate change when the issue is massive poisoning on a global scale.

Who wins? Who benefits while we argue?

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who can think instead of simply accepting life as it imposes itself on them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
- Abraham Flexner, American educator (1866-1959)

If an alien from a planet unimaginably distant from here were to come to earth with the objective of studying life forms, what do you think he should do?

If he were to study the most abundant life on the planet he would have to look at microbes. We, for example, have more microbes in our own bodies than we have cells we can call our own–that is, that carry our unique DNA.

If he decided to look at life forms more advanced than a single cell he would likely look at algae or plankton in the oceans. If he looked for something more mobile, he would have to study insects. There he would find some well organized and advanced societies if he looked at ants or bees.

Maybe he would want to communicate with another being. For that he might choose a chimpanzee. Or a dolphin.

Dolphins can understand and speak back, especially if given the opportunity to learn a new language. Chimps can’t talk because they lack the physiology to form most sounds we consider essential to language.

Why doesn’t he study us, you may ask. We live in more parts of the land world than any other creature–at least more than any other large animal, maybe not more than the cockroach. We are certainly the most destructive, which makes us the most powerful.

Surely a being from another world who travelled may light years to reach earth would want to speak with the most powerful creature on the planet. Or would he?

What language would he use? Remember, most of us know only one or a few human languages. Not one of us can communicate more than a few hundred words with any living being on earth other than humans.

We, who seek extraterrestrial life on distant planets, do not have the ability to communicate well with any other species on earth other than ourselves. Our solution to that problem, it might seem to an impartial observer, is to render other intelligent life extinct.

Now that’s power.

But why would an intelligent space being admire the power we use to destroy each other and other beings on our own planet? Only 20th Century science fiction had space aliens invading earth to kill everyone or enslave us. It doesn’t take much thinking to see that the “destructive space alien” scenario simply doesn’t make sense.

Are we really the smartest creatures on the planet? Sure, just ask us.

I’m going to ask you something. Two things, but they’re related.

(1) Do you think that if you asked 1000 people you meet randomly on the street in the next few days any of them would admit that they are stupid? Even one?

(2) Have you considered the behaviour of people you have seen and thought they “must be stupid”?

The most intelligent minds among us evaluate how brilliant we humans are, using human testing methods (we haven’t a clue how to test otherwise) and human result standards (such as IQ) have decided that we humans are the most intelligent creatures on earth.

Isn’t that a bit like asking an Olympic athlete who he believes will win the gold medal in his event? Or like asking a religious person which religion he believes is the best? The results couldn’t be more biased.

Assuming we could be shrunk to the appropriate size, could you survive and thrive in a bee or ant colony? Assuming you can swim and even given diving equipment, could you live the life of a dolphin? Or, make it easier, could you fit into a colony of chimpanzees well?

Why not? If we are so smart we should be able to adapt to different living conditions. But we can’t. Because there are things–many things–that ants, bees, dolphins and chimps know that we will never know. That we can never know. That we have no way of finding out.

As our quote says, we are the species that borrows billions of dollars for war (trillions in the case of the USA at present), but seldom borrows much to fund our education systems. We borrow money to kill each other, but scrimp when it comes to educating ourselves.

How smart is that? Chimps only fight to see who dominates, not to kill each other. Dolphins squabble over mates. No, wait, we don’t even know that much about dolphins. They may be smarter than us, we would never know. No, they live in the water, so they can’t be as smart as us.

So we say.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to know what to teach children to aid their intellectual, social and emotional development and when to teach it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

You Need It To Live, But Too Much Will Kill You

Seldom in history has a product worn the horns of the Devil and the wings of an angel at the same time. Loved and respected because it provides the energy we need to work, to play, even to breathe, sugar is so important to our diet our bodies take several things we eat and convert them into sugars.

However, eat too much sugar and your body will blimp up and your organs will slowly but surely break down. Never has “moderate consumption” been so important.

But what’s “moderate”? How can we tell what’s too much?

Let’s look at an example.

In our example you will eat 16 teaspoons of refined sugar all in one short sitting. Don’t worry, it will be in liquid form. Sound outrageous? That’s how much sugar is in a 20 ounce bottle of cola. In every bottle.

In general, if you look at the ingredient list of products before you buy them and see some that end in the letters “…ose” you have various different kinds of sugars. Sugars come with other name endings, but “…ose” tends to be the most common ending in packaged foods we eat. Most of them are complex sugars our bodies break down into simple ones so they can be used to burn as energy.

Sugars, along with starch, are the basic carbohydrates. Inside your gut they all become sugars, ultimately simple sugars. What your body can’t use it will expel through your colon or convert to fat for storage.

Because our bodies can only convert a limited amount of sugar into fat at one time, if you are going to eat too much sugar, eat it in a binge. Most of it you will enjoy in your mouth and you will get rid of it in the toilet the next day. Eat a little too much sugar on a regular basis and your body will store it in special cells in your body known as fat cells.

The average American consumes 61 pounds of refined sugar each year. About 25 pounds of that would be in the form of candy. That’s just sucrose, though, and the number doesn’t include amounts of any other sugars we consume.

Sugar may cause your skin to wrinkle. Called glycation, blood sugar in the skin binds to collagen so the skin loses its elasticity. Cut out excess sugar consumption and your skin may retain its elasticity. No good or easy or cheap method exists today to help skin regain its elasticity.

There’s nothing new about the kind of sugar we eat. When Alexander the Great invaded India over 2000 years ago he was shocked at how the people managed to create “honey” without bees.

Sugar cane is a plant of hot climate countries. That’s why people who live in the tropics have had it sweet for so long. Andreas Marggraf discovered, in 1747, that the sugar in sugar beets was the same as that in sugar cane. Sugar beets can be grown in much colder climates than sugar cane.

The first sugar beet factory opened in 1802. Over half of the 8.4 metric tonnes of sugar used in the USA this year–no, seriously, make that 8.4 million metric tonnes–will come from sugar beets. Sugar beets are a form of beet with white sweet roots. Only the root is used to make refined sugar.

Getting back to soft drinks, the kinds with artificial sweeteners may contribute to obesity rather than prevent it. A study at Purdue University using rats had one group consuming soft drinks with artificial sweeteners and another with sugar-sweetened drinks.

The group that drank the artificial sweeteners consumed more calories from other foods than the sugar group. The study did not consider the controversial belief that long term consumption of the artificial sweetener aspartame might cause major diseases. Rats don’t live long enough.

Like many popular discoveries artificial sweeteners aspartame and saccharin were found by accident. Lab researchers working on projects having nothing to do with sweetening mixed some test compounds and decided to taste them.

Ask yourself what kind of researcher eats his own experiment.

The artificial sweetener Splenda came about in an even stranger way. The scientists were looking for a new insecticide. [I'll just wait here while you process that thought. Prepare yourself for the next part so we don't have to pause again.]

A lab assistant had been asked to “test” the compound, but he thought he had been told to “taste” the compound. Remember, they had been looking for an insecticide. [Good thing you prepared yourself for that.]

Table sugar certainly isn’t the sweetest taste around. A compound called lugduname is actually 200,000 times sweeter. [Do you wonder where the lab assistant is today that tasted that stuff?]

Sugars are compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The simplest (simple sugars) are most commonly known as glucose, fructose and galactose. Table sugar (a complex sugar) consists of one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule fused together. Other complex sugars dance with different partners.

We don’t want to avoid sugars totally because they are carbohydrates, by far the most common organic molecules in all living things. [Unless you consider minerals to be "living," which is a whole different discussion.]

An eight-atom sugar called glycolaldehyde has the ability to react with a three-carbon sugar to form ribose, a major component of RNA (ribonucleic acid), which does the real work in living things while DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) takes all the credit.

Who cares? Glycolaldehyde has been found in an interstellar gas cloud near the centre of the Milky Way. [Stay with me here.] Glycolaldehyde may therefore be a precursor of life on our planet. If it’s in space, it might have been here.

That same gas cloud, by the way, contains ethylene glycol, which most of us think of as antifreeze. Which is sweet, but lethal, as many animals have learned when they licked up antifreeze leaks.

These are complex sugars. In deep space. We must at least hypothesize that they were synthesized in space. We haven’t yet guessed how that could happen.

Sugar can be used as more than a fuel for your body. Burn table sugar (sucrose) with some corn syrup and a bit of saltpeter and you have a popular amateur rocket fuel.

It’s also sometimes prescribed by doctors. Yup, you pay a dispensing fee to buy a product called “Obecalp,” a sugar pill made to FDA specifications. It may be prescribed for mild problems with a variety of symptoms but no clear therapy. [Spell the product name backwards.]

Not only is the “placebo effect” surprisingly real according to recent studies, the sugar itself may actually help clear up symptoms. Glucosamine works as an immunosuppressant (drug that lowers the body’s normal immune　response) in mice.

Immune system suppression is a mixed blessing because while it can go crazy sometimes, such as with allergies, it also protects us from viruses and bad bacteria. The sugar alcohol xylitol can be used to prevent ear infections in children.

You better have a dose of Obecalp and think about this.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents and grandparents who want to grow children who are healthy in all developmental streams, not just intellectually and physically. It’s a great gift.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

[Primary resource: Discover, October 2009]

Still Waiting For The Light To Change

We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.
- Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)

Sometimes all we can do is to roll with the punches, deal with the circumstances life throws at us, and look for the chance to enact change.

Many would call that powerlessness. After all, when your choices in life are outside your control, you can’t be said to have control of your life.

Do others have control over your life? Many times it seems that way, that if only someone else would do what you want or what they promised to do, life would be better. It’s hard to wait for someone else, especially when you know that the other person is giving your promised work low priority but its very important to you because you can’t progress with several other things in the meantime.

I confess, I allow disappointment to creep into my life sometimes. It’s always a disappointment with people. The vagaries of weather (no one’s is stable now, likely never was), the ups and downs of politics (the few honest ones get shot down more often than the crooks), illness, even being the next person in line after the last item on a great sale was sold don’t bother me.

That’s life. If I expect to find great pleasure in the good things about life, I must be prepared to accept the things that really suck. Without one, I couldn’t appreciate the other. The good looks good only by comparing it to the bad. “No pain, no gain” may not be true for athletics and exercise, but it’s true for emotions. The more and worse you experience that bad, the greater your opportunity to appreciate the good when it comes.

People who promise something but don’t deliver really get to me. The guy who delighted me when he said he could fix my tractor–he unstuck a valve and replaced a spring–has kept the parts at his place for weeks because he is too busy with his own projects to put my tractor back together. The computer expert friend who may have been able to help me avoid having a rootkit destroy my hard drive if he had given me the necessary advice in a timely fashion has kept my computer out of commission for weeks because he’s too busy to help, even though he has promised to do so several times.

I bought a snow blower for my tractor. I asked if the man could deliver it because I had no way to get it home. He said “No problem” and I paid him. He phoned that evening to ask how I planned to get the 750 pound blower off the back of his pickup truck. I reminded him that I had told him ahead of time that I had no way to get the blower down from a truck. He forgot. Now he has my money and my snow blower, because he forgot he couldn’t deliver what he said he could.

These people were not intending to lie when they made their promises to me. They simply didn’t organize their thoughts and plans to the extent necessary to avoid conflicts. They didn’t plan ahead. They got too busy to get all the work done they promised to others, but didn’t extend the courtesy of telling the others when they might be able to get to their needs.

Sometimes just coping with the problems life throws your way–whatever their nature–is all you can do. It’s called survival. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It’s always painful at first. Eventually, if you keep looking, you will find a way to circumvent what may be severe consequences of a problem.

Some say God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, though they wish God didn’t trust them so much. Some call it courage or perseverance or strength of character that people can get through their lives with burdens far greater than the average. It’s not really any of that.

Life is tough. Those who have it easy and don’t appreciate what they have waste their lives because they don’t accomplish much of real value. Those who slog their way through what seem to be incredible trials and tribulations, always looking to a brighter future find ways to enjoy life more because they appreciate the contrast between the bad and the good.

Moreover, the survivors act as role models for the rest of us. If it weren’t for them, our species would never have survived the long process of natural selection.

We literally exist because those before us–at least many of them–survived rigors of life far worse than we can imagine. We don’t owe them anything. We do owe it to ourselves and to those who will follow us to survive and to improve.

Those who don’t struggle with life don’t improve because they don’t know how. They have never had to work their way out of problems and difficulties that might have destroyed them. The survivors know how. They learn as they struggle.

As individuals and as a species, we inherited much because of those who struggled and survived before us. It’s our job to struggle and survive so that future generations will know it can be done.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to teach their children the skills of coping, of surviving and of thriving in a struggling world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Our Own Shame

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
- Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

This would apply today to television and movies as well.

Instead of doing what we must to see that our countrymen avoid behaviours we consider shameful, we complain about the books, movies and television programs that show everyone who and what we really are.

We complain about what is wrong, but we don’t change our system so that we teach what we believe is right and good.

Changing our education systems would be easy, literally as easy as the stroke of a pen. We have lots of good people in every community that live the kinds of lives we consider ideal in a moral sense. They are the source for new curriculum material for schools.

And it’s cheap because teachers would not need new books, AV materials or computers to teach it. Teachers already know this stuff. They only need the authorization to teach it. All teachers would need is material provided in a curriculum guide.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to enact change in their education systems to address problems that run rampant in their communities and even in their homes.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Living Beyond Your Life Today

It’s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.
- Lyrics in The Rose, Bette Midler artist, Amanda McBroom composer

As often as my heart has been touched by Bette Midler’s singing of The Rose, and today when I heard composer and American chanteuse Amanda McBroom sing it, I have thought that I must write something about fear dominating people’s lives. But I didn’t write. I was afraid that what I wrote would not be as perfect as the song. Note the irony.

Realization of my own fear and how it has affected my reluctance to write about fear became my motivation to write this.

Fear is much more than an emotion, more than an enhancement of the instinctive caution native to each of us. Fear instructs our lives. It dominates the lives of many of us. It shapes us as individuals, as communities and as nations.

Along with everyone else I have watched business and investment leaders charged, convicted and imprisoned for lying out of fear. True, they embezzled millions of dollars from shareholders and investors. But why? They were afraid to tell the truth, that they had failed. They delayed admitting their failure by lying, which ultimately resulted in their incarceration.

Along with everyone else I watched the American public being hoodwinked by their president so he could finish what his father failed to do, and line the pockets of his benefactors with gold in the process, by taking his country into a second (simultaneous) war, this one in Iraq. The USA will be lucky to avoid the fate of its former rival, the former USSR, that went bankrupt and dissolved into chaos in the 1990s. Why would Americans allow themselves to be lied to, to go into an unwarranted and extraordinarily costly war? They had been taught to be afraid that a dictator who could barely hold onto power in his own country had international connections that would wreak havoc on US soil.

Americans believed they should be afraid, though they had no evidence other than the lies of their president. Fear is on the curriculum in every US school, those it is given various other names.

Having moved to the Miramichi area of New Brunswick, Canada, in 2008, I saw how apparently comfortable my new neighbours were toward the possibilities of losing their jobs and having to start over. In my native Toronto, some people would commit suicide or turn to addictive behaviour–at the least start toking marijuana–at the prospect of losing their job. Not because they knew they couldn’t start over but because of the fear of public recognition of their job loss as a personal failure. Miramichiers expect to lose their jobs at some points in their lives and they accept no stigma about it–and offer none against others–whereas people of Ontario fear the public disgrace.

The fear of losing their reputations as well as their jobs causes many people greater fear than the prospect of finding another job. That fear affects their lives, how they conduct themselves every day of their lives. Collectively, the fear of many people impacts whole communities and countries.

People become afraid to speak to each other on elevators or when passing on the street, likely because they fear ending up on the front pages of newspapers as victims of murder, mugging or rape. They fear letting their children out of their sight because they might be charged with neglect, that fear resulting in children who never grow out of their dependence on mommy or a mommy figure in adulthood.

In every case, fear is unwarranted. In every case, fear is taught by those who have something to gain and learned by those who will provide that gain. Fear is a way for a few to control the behaviour and lives of many others. How many Germans in the 1930s and 1940s followed Hitler, becoming murderers and traitors in the process, because they were afraid of Hitler’s power? How many wars have been fought–virtually every war has some association with religion–because the people of one side were made to fear people of the other?

The cosmetics–and to a large extent the pharmaceutical–industry exists solely because of the fear they have created in people, in individuals, that they are not perfect. The OTC (over the counter) supplement industry is booming because people fear becoming ill and disabled as they get older. Some will overdose and harm themselves in the process of trying to protect themselves.

Returning to Amanda McBroom’s lyrics, “it’s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.” How many people fail to find love in their lives, or mess it up if they do, because they fear a relationship breaking up? Media reports of marital breakup rates are ceaseless, while education systems never address the problem that people don’t know how to have successful relationships. People who avoid falling in love because they fear breaking up miss an important point about life. Falling in love and breaking up is part of how a person becomes complete, how a person learns to do it better next time. Taking chances is instinctive, while avoiding them is done out of fear of failure. It’s fear that’s not natural.

“It’s the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give.” By not trusting others out of fear that they will fail us or steal from us we become closed up emotionally. We become the kind of people that others don’t want to trust. People don’t want to trust others who don’t trust. Trusting another person with our emotions may be risky, but not trusting anyone with our emotions but ourselves generates much greater risk of poor mental, emotional and even physical health (suppression of the immune system).

“The soul afraid of dying…never learns to live.” The person who fears death becomes afraid of life. Everyone accepts that death is part of life: birth, death and taxes (thanks to G.B. Shaw). However, many fear death because they have no idea what to expect afterwards. They have rejected the obviously fictitious guesses of traditional religions about the hereafter, but have nothing to replace them with.

If you plan to go on a hike into a wilderness area or national park where you haven’t been before, you go prepared. You take a compass or GPS, some form of shelter, you scout topographic and place maps, you take more food and water than you expect to use. You know where you are going, even though you haven’t been there before. Then why not do that with the afterlife: prepare.

Are you afraid of dying and as a consequence you don’t know how to live? Living well is your whole purpose for being here. If you are afraid of dying, you become selfish, as all fearful people become. They think of themselves because they tend to fear what others may introduce into their lives. That’s the complete opposite of what living is about.

Every animal and plant we know has the instinct for survival. We humans have it too. But if we depend on our survival instinct to give us direction for our lives, we live a life no different from that of any other animal or plant. Certainly no greater. And we can expect what happens on our death to be similar to what we expect happens to grass and oak trees, gerbils and frogs when they die.

If you want to live, you must not fear death. Death is simply the end of one phase of your existence before you move on. Prepare yourself for your death by living your life to help others. That is the only way you can be different from any other animal or plant. Only people help their own kind, more than simply to avoid starvation.

You have nothing to fear about death unless you allow yourself to be deceived by those who just don’t “get it.” People who believe that only what may be detected and manoeuvred by the senses really exists have put themselves into a box at which they are the centre. They may lead peaceful and self-fulfilling lives, but they do little to help others because they can’t see outside their box. They are, in effect, intelligent ants with only two legs.

Nothing in nature suggests that life ends with death. In nature, every atom that ever existed still exists today, unless it has been transformed into energy, which is simply another state of existence. Conservation of Energy and Matter is the rule of nature. Why should it not be the rule for life as well.

However, you must live your life outside the box. You must be more than other animals and plants or you can expect only to be reformulated as one of them at death. You must create a persona for yourself that is distinctive from that of any other person, while seeking to work with others for the greater benefit of our kind. Nature conserves what exists, so create yourself into something worth saving on the death of your cellular body.

You should not expect your aches and pains and earthly troubles to pass with you into a future life. Why would you want them? Yet how you deal with them while you are here will determine what kind of persona you create for yourself.

Don’t be afraid. Every other animal and plant on earth is guarded about its safety, about its existence in the future. They expect the end of their lives to be the ends of who or what they are.

You don’t have to be afraid. Fear requires too much selfishness, too much energy and too much life-time.

Live your life as if you want to continue with the next phase of your existence after you die and you will have created something worth conserving after you die. According to everything we know about nature and the “real world” we know now, what you create will continue after your body quits.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to teach their children how to live life without fear, but with powerful and effective guidance about how they should live their lives.
Learn more at

http://billallin.com

Who Is An Atheist?

“Samuel [Champlain] has seen other men of the church become as this one: to them, their own insight becomes dogma. Indeed it seems a perversion common to all leadership…”
- The Order of Good Cheer, Bill Gaston novelist, House of Anansi Press, 2008

An atheist is someone who can’t believe that something exists that is greater than himself and more mysterious than he can understand.

An agnostic is someone who suspects the atheist may be right, but is prepared to reserve judgment until he gets more evidence, though he usually isn’t prepared to look for the evidence himself.

Which is the greater sinner?

Neither. The whole concept of sinning was invented by religions whose main purpose was and is to control the behaviour of their followers. Establishing “superhuman” control over who qualifies as a sinner and who is a devoted follower who toes the line with regard to all rules of behaviour is one of the most effective ways to control the lives of others.

What’s wrong with being an atheist? For one thing, atheists are the objects of scorn and prejudice from those who profess to be religious. For another, atheists have no rules of conduct to break, so they can’t feel guilt at sinning, as religious people do because virtually every one of them breaks their religion’s code of conduct on a regular and frequent basis. The religionists can always console themselves that atheists are worse.

But are atheists terrible people? My experience with atheists is limited and the number of people I have spoken to about their personal experiences with atheists is relatively small, but atheists seem to be among the most spiritually healthy and morally and ethically straight and well balanced of all the people I have met in my life. In short, atheists stand among the most upright and civic minded people among us.

It is as morally wrong to hate or take action against atheists as it is to commit acts or speak prejudicially against people of a different skin colour, nationality or religion. Yet the most bigotted and prejudiced people are those strongly attached to their religion.

Atheist seem to say that “God doesn’t exist.” Yet what they really say is that the God that is portrayed by advocates of every religion ever created could not possibly exist. The God of the Christians, for example, is contradictory, indecisive, prejudicial, favours one group over others, brutal, aggressive and peace loving at once and vindictive, based on the Bible and Christian history. Atheists claim that doesn’t make sense.

Religionists make no attempt to associate what we in the 21st century know about the mystical and miraculous with their explanation (definition) of God. The Church of Rome designates saints, for example, based on events it cannot explain by any other method than as “miracles” after the death of a well known good person. Yet don’t try to find a non-Catholic among the saints, even though events of a miraculous nature occur in association with living and dead people who are not church members. How could the God of the Christians enact miracles through non-Christians if Christianity is the only means to salvation, as the Christians claim?

Religions began in the early days when humans gathered in small bands, then tribes. The religion of each tribe worked because it answered unanswerable questions. That situation in itself should be enough to tell everyone that the religion is or was fictitious. But it didn’t and it doesn’t today. Adherents are asked to “have faith” because the mysterious answers came through someone who claimed to have gotten them directly from God.

If claims such as those made by religions were made in television commercials, about any product or service other than something related to God, the advertisers would be stopped and possibly charged with making false and unsupportable claims. It’s a crime, unless your claim has something to do with God.

The atheist says “This is wrong.” The agnostic cries “Huh?”

While we try to expurgate prejudice from our societies, religions themselves are the sole sources and support systems for prejudice and bigotry. Each religion could easily eliminate prejudice from its teachings, but that would require it to admit that it is not superior to all other religions. Religions, like snake oil salesmen of the past, require their followers to believe that their product is the best, the only true, safe and superior one. This engenders and foments hatred and prejudice.

Religionists never ask atheists why they do not believe the precepts of a particular religion. More importantly, they never ask atheists what they do believe, as that would be risky since the atheists may well have an excellent reply to which the religionists cannot offer a defence or counter argument.

For all the majority of people know, atheists may be the most spiritually upstanding people in the community. Some atheists may even have a better explanation about what God is and the mystery of what we exist than the religions have offered.

But no one will ask an atheist what he or she believes. And if someone does, the religions will make sure that the atheist is socially ostracized and “unfortunately no longer employable.” Historically, that’s how it works. Remember the trials of the “witches” of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692? The evidence, like the charges themselves, were totally fictitious. History abounds with similar and brutal examples.

The followers of every religion can give explanations for the same mysteries. They all believe these explanations equally strongly and fervently. Every religion is built on story upon story, each one created to give the teller power over the listener that he would not have otherwise. Those who make up the stories and those who retell them get paid for repeating them.

Unfortunately, reality is never allow to impinge itself on these stories, on these religions. Too bad, as the truth is so much more glorious and amazing than the religionists could imagine. Truth and reality have no major roles to play in religion. Religions ask their followers to have faith that the old stories are true, no matter how contradictory, how unsensible they are and how much evidence exists to disprove them.

We should not wonder that television has become such a powerful religious medium and its leaders such powerful manipulators of public belief.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who have the knowledge and skills to avoid having their beliefs manipulated by skilled propagandists.
Learn more at

http://billallin.com

When Should Children Be Taught Certain Facts and Skills?

In response to an article I wrote recently about teaching information, facts and skills to children much earlier than most adults think is advisable and possible, one of my readers wrote to ask me to elaborate on the “when.” When to teach children what is a critically important question, yet one that is seldom asked. The following was my reply to her.
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Many adults believe that timing of information given to children is extremely important. They think that if the timing of wrong, it may harm the child’s mind or morals. This is wrong in every possible way.

Teaching a child about drugs, for example, does not open the possibility that the child will adopt the taking of drugs. The whole purpose of teaching the child about drugs is to inform them about what harm can come to them by taking drugs other than under the supervision of a medical professional. Teaching a child about sex between man and woman does not encourage the child to experiment with sex prematurely. Despite these widespread beliefs, there is no evidence that early teaching about drugs, sex or any other matter that a parent should be teaching to a child affects the mind or body of the child as a result of being taught prematurely.

Despite parent supervision of internet use by children, the truth is that this is impossible. Kids are resourceful and will find ways to circumvent restrictions by the parents. One way, for example, is simply to visit a friend’s house, someone who does not suffer such restrictions. In other words, information on every possible subject is available on the internet. However, some of this information is wrong and some (in its wrongness) does harm. Consider how many adults have been fooled by urban legends and so-called Nigeria scams.

A parent should be teaching life skills about all subjects when a child is young. How young is too young? You know your timing is wrong when the child shows no interest in the subject, gets distracted easily. THAT is the only criterion for premature teaching.

Innocence in children is admirable if you want them to never grow up. But they do. Children who have been kept innocent by their parents tend to become ignorant adults. Ignorant adults don’t know what to do and when to do it. They have few coping skills when life throws them a bad curve, such as a personal assault on their person, a home invasion, divorce or death of a loved one.

The child, not the parent, should choose when he or she is ready to learn about a subject.Children learn about life in the womb, even before they are born. They have the ability to learn a language (a sophisticated and complex cognitive process) even before they can walk. Studies show that children study language before they even have the ability to make use of that learning through their own speech. Children have the ability to understand the most complex information we can give them at a shockingly early age.

If mistakes are make with early teaching, they would be with the adult, not with the child. The adult (usually parent) might not teach well for the learning style of the child. Imagine a parent using the lecture style of a university professor with a child of two years. No matter how fact filled the lecture might be, the child will not be interested because young children learn by doing more than by listening. They learn language by listening, but that has an incentive because the child wants to participate in family conversations. For most matters to be learned early by a child, they can learn is easier by doing something.

I most cases, children learn while they play. Play is their form of work. A parent can teach a child in the context of play. Make it a fun and enjoyable situation. Because kids want to learn, teaching them something that is given them as if imparting a secret is also a fun learning style. They often want to believe that they know something other kids don’t. And they should be in that situation at least once in a while.

Let’s take a teaching example. How many facts might a parent possibly teach a child about sex? Let’s say 50 facts. A child of three years has no need for or use for 50 facts about sex. The child will not be interested in learning 50 facts. But he might be interested in learning a few of them. It stops being fun for a child to learn when the learning becomes memorization. A child has learning limits. Those limits are more of total accumulation at any given time than of their ability to understand something.

How many lies do parents tell their children so that they can avoid teaching them the truth? A parent may tell a child that a new baby is delivered by a stork or an angel from heaven. The child will know that is wrong. The child sees the mother grow in the belly, then return from the hospital, with baby in arms, much thinner. Which does more harm, telling the child that babies begin with the joining of sex organs (every kid has a set) of mother and father, or telling the child a lie? Believe me, telling the lie to a young child makes the child mistrust information from the parent.

A lie told to a child by a parent, no matter what the intent of the parent, is a lie to the child, a lie that undermines the trust the child has in the most important adult in his or her life. A “white lie” is a lie and it’s understood as a lie by the child.

The message a child learns from a lie by his parent, no matter what the nature of the lie, is “I’m a bad parent who can’t cope with teaching you the truth, so I am making up this lie. We’re stuck with each other, so live with it.” Children recognize lies and diversionary tactics far more readily than most adults realize. They don’t know what to make of a lie, what to do about the fact that their most important source of information about life has lied to them. The child will still love the parent, but trust between them will have been undermined.

Children can handle truth at any age, even as young as age one year. No child knows what to do with a lie told by a parent, no matter how well intentioned it was. A child’s life revolves around trust, and since the young child’s life revolves around parents, for a parent to lie to a child to avoid telling the truth helps to destroy that environment of trust between them. It shatters the child’s life.

Bad parenting does far more harm to children than teaching them too early has ever done.

Please consider these thoughts carefully. Put them into action yourself and tell other people you know. There is nothing private about this information. You and they are not too young to learn. Nor too old. There is no young age limit to learning just as there is no upper age limit.

Invite others you tell to join our group.

Children, more than adults, are built to learn. They are learning factories. Young children process an alarming amount of information daily, far more than adults do and far more than most adults realize.

Do not hesitate to write back with more questions.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know when, what and how to teach critically important information and skills to children so that they can grow up healthy and truly well balanced.
Learn more at

http://billallin.com

The Value of PowerWhile that may seem like a strange title, think about it. What is power? When people seek power or have power, what is it they seek or have?http://billallin.com

How do we know if we have or lack power?

I believe I have distilled the concept down to something manageable. Power is a potential.

Power is the potential to hurt others of our own kind. Wealth, in itself, does not bestow power directly. Yet we all know and reluctantly accept that those with money can commit crimes–can hurt others in some way–and buy their way out of punishment.

Sometimes that potential is realized. Hitler had power that he used. He killed, maimed and otherwise harmed millions of people. For that Hitler will forever be considered one of the most vile devils humankind has produced.

To have power as potential and not use it is one thing. To have power you use is quite another. Using power is socially unacceptable. Having power you don’t use might get you anything you desire.

Does a president or prime minister of a country have power? Perhaps just the mention of the name George W. Bush would be sufficient to answer that question. The man started a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives (many from his own military) and destroyed untold numbers of families based on a lie. The war itself has even harmed American citizens who never left their own country, whether they believed the lie or not. If nothing else, they will pay taxes for the rest of their lives to cover loans made to pay for the war. And the quality of their health care will be reduced because the money will not be there to pay for something better from the public purse.

Power is the potential to be physical. It’s not really intellectual in nature. It’s the potential for sheer, overwhelming might.

Those with power can never be intellectually satisfied. They can never be satisfied in any way. What could Hitler do, for example, after he had exercised his power over so many of his own people and the people of countries he conquered, other than to keep going? Once power is exercised, it may not be stopped. President Bush (the second) was stopped only because the US constitution insists that one person may only hold the top job in the country for two terms. We might wonder what he might have done if his term had not ended. Iran would almost certainly be next on his attack agenda. Then North Korea?

Those who are intellectually satisfied have no need for power. Intellectual satisfaction itself is a form of potential. Those who are intellectually satisfied have the potential to move on to greater and more challenging thoughts, projects and ventures.

Does Donald Trump have power or is he intellectually satisfied? I suspect he would say he is intellectually satisfied because he can accomplish new business ventures repeatedly. I would maintain that Donald Trump has power, but not intellectual satisfaction. He has the money to buy his way out of trouble, but success in business should not be equated with intellectual satisfaction. Trump, like Hitler, is driven to continue his business conquests. Donald Trump is a warrior with power, even though he doesn’t use guns.

I am reminded of a program currently on television, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? I know there are children in grade five who are intellectually more satisfied than Donald Trump. Not that they are smarter than Trump. They have more intellectual potential than Trump, thus can be excited and enthusiastic about life.

As life objectives, we can strive for power–with its potential to hurt others physically– or we can strive for intellectual satisfaction–with its potential to benefit humankind and give the users satisfaction unimaginable to those with power.

While the better choice may seem obvious to you, an intelligent reader, I submit that as societies we tend to put greater emphasis on power than on intellectual prowess. “Get a good education so you can get a good job” is the mantra chanted by so many parents to their children.

And it’s working. Children are getting education that will make them good employees, good followers of prescribed business and human resources plans. Much evidence suggests that children are not gaining intellectual satisfaction in school or in the jobs they hold as adults. In fact, away from their jobs, where they have considerable expertise, many adults are stupid, so much so that a grade ten dropout may have a more rounded education in life experiences. Donald Trump likely pays someone to change a washer in a leaky tap, something a grade ten dropout could do.

Those who do not strive for either power or intellectual satisfaction become human puppets. They dangle on strings pulled by others. When no one pulls their strings, they hang limp and useless. When they get laid off from a job, for example, they seek another employer to tell them what to do and pay them to do it. Few attempt to use their intellect to become self employed entrepreneurs. Ironically, the post modern world is primed and ready for entrepreneurs, but they can’t be found.

We don’t teach children the value of independence, of entrepreneurship, of intellectual satisfaction. As a result, we don’t find many adults with these values.

We make our choices, as parents, as teachers, as neighbours and as citizens, and we live with the consequences. We should not wonder, then, that people follow those with power, even if those people have evil intent.

We get as adults what we teach to children. If we teach the value of power, we get followers and power seekers.

We don’t really know yet what we might get if we taught the values of intellectual satisfaction. A few schools teach this, but they are rare, they are considered “different,” out of the mainstream.

These few schools tend to produce children who become adult geniuses. The kids are not necessarily born with genius, they have intellectual opportunities offered to them constantly as they respond with delight at their own intellectual satisfaction. They grow intellectually without feeling the need for power, the need for potential to hurt others.

Our children are not our future, as such. They are our potential for the future we would like our societies, our countries, our communities and our families to have. The potential becomes reality only based on what we teach our children.

Teach right. Teach good. Teach peace. Teach often.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents, anyone who wants to know when and what to teach children so that they grow to become independent and well balanced adults who have the ability to achieve intellectual satisfaction.
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