A Tale Of Two Species: Incremental Mutualism Ch. 2

A Tale of Two Species

Installment 2 of “Incremental Mutualism”

By Joe Petrulionis

To make any progress at all, we’ll have to answer questions like “what is a human right?,” “what are property rights?,” “how do we determine what is fair?,” and other such vexing questions. At one end of the possible spectrum are people who might insist that these things do not exist at all. Arch- materialists would say that there is no such thing as a human right; they are only imaginary traditions that might be changed at any moment. Likewise, property is just a way of describing possession, --another example of “the haves” keeping resources out of the hands of the “have nots”, fairness being just a rationalization by weaklings who want a share of what’s in the feed trough but who do not wish to fight their way to the front of the line. What I call “my possession” is only mine because I can acquire it and I can defend it from the encroachments by others. What is real for an arch-materialist is what is material. And for these folk, anything that is real exists at a particular place and time. You can point to it, take measurements and samples, and we are sure it is there because we can either sense it or we can sense evidence of its existence. Everything else is just imaginary and we should disregard the imaginary and get on with our project of accumulation. In a world of limited resources (food, water, air, living space) the most aggressive, lucky, innovative, powerful, and bold will get to the feed trough. Everyone else will starve or share what is left over after the feeding frenzy. You may have heard someone say something like, “Sharks and guppies. Those are your choices. Eat lunch or be lunch.”

Some arch-materialists think we are in an all out war. It is everyone against everyone and we are being sorted by a giant sorting hat called natural selection. The victors will prevail, the strong will survive, and the winners will accumulate more stuff. Anyone else having trouble supporting themselves will either fall into line in some appropriate status of servitude to the benefit of the winners, for examples, they can become slaves, employees, labor force, adjunct faculty, convicts, etc., or they will go off someplace and politely just die.

For some arch-materialists selfishness is even a good thing, good for society, good for the individual, and good for human history. Because the winners, by definition, are better adapted to the real world, they will be the ones who find nourishment and breeding partners, they will own property, and pass on their high quality genetics (also their innovations, viewpoints, and methodologies) to another generation. In this way the human population will get stronger and better adapted to the world as it really exists. And since the world’s resources will be overseen by better managers, the aggregate wealth of the world will increase. After all, isn’t that what we want? A stronger and better adapted species, living in a world with more resources?

Careful here, not all arch-materialists are selfish and greedy. Remember, arch-materialism is simply the idea that the material world is everything that is real, so we should not let imaginary things like the idea of fairness or politeness, or property rights get in the way of how we order our lives. Some arch-materialists, in fact, think that since only the material world is real, we should not permit any individual to lay claim to more of it than they actually need. Since we are all in this together, they say, and there is not enough to go around, at least we should make sure that we all get an equal portion. Most people who call themselves communist believe in this communal ownership of property enforced by strong governmental regulations intended to ensure that no individual gets more than their share. Since a share of a pie is simple arithmetic, there is no need for any imaginary nonsense like property rights, inheritance conventions, or even fairness to get in the way. Much like dividing up a pizza, if there are twelve people present, then each person gets a twelfth of the available pizza.

Would all of the arch-materialists out there, for examples, you communists, objectivists, anarchists, libertarians, and positivists, would you please wait at the back of the room for a few minutes while we sort out the rest of us? I realize that most of you back there had no idea that you had something so important as arch-materialism in common.

But for the rest of us, let’s take the example of the earthworm, simple little Lumbricidae, which populate most of our backyards in North America, Europe, and much of Asia. Please remember, the earthworm has been under the influences of evolution for just as long as have been those many species that developed into human beings. So we can’t use the terms, “more evolved,” or “less evolved,” can we? We can only say that these two animals, earthworms and humans, are adapted in different ways to the same environment, i.e. Earth’s temperate terrestrial zones. I wonder if we can even say “better or more” adapted? That all depends on what lies ahead of us in some future we can not imagine yet, does it not? If we head into a deep ice age and all earthworms perish, then humans will prove to have been the better adapted ones, presuming some of us survive. But if we head into a phase of global warming, ice melt, and moisture increase, then perhaps it will have been better to be an earthworm. Only time will tell. We can only, selfishly, hope that someone will still be around to tell time, because, [hint], time is only important to humans.

Once we list those things which are important to an earthworm we find that they share almost all of these things with human beings. Remember, for this exercise it isn’t important if any individual earthworm realizes that something is important to its life. We are interested in those things that are important, even if the worms don’t know it. For most of the past, for example, the existence of oxygen was unknown to humans. During all of those years, however, oxygen would have always been high on our list of things important to earthworms and humans, even if there were no beneficiaries who even suspected oxygen even existed.

Now I want you to make a similar list for Human beings. Go ahead, list away. What you will discover is that almost all of the things listed for the earthworm are also important for humans.




Let’s not be ridiculous. I realize that few human beings would find well rotted rabbit droppings to be a delightful addition to their dinner menu. And an earthworm would certainly not consider a plate of barbecue spareribs to be dinner. But adequate nutrition is certainly important to an earthworm, as are warmth, moisture, a place to hide from the elements and nasty robins. In similar ways, human life depends on warmth, moisture, shelter and protection from predation. The two species seem to have lots in common.

But if you expand your lists; let us imagine that you could list every single thing that was important to each species, you will see some interesting patterns. In this list of things that are only important for humans you will find most of these things are constructs, things we made up.





These things that the arch-materialists do not believe exist, things like, love, truth, beauty, good, just, law, math, politeness, your own name, your family roles, the list can go on and on. These constructs are things we just made up!

Note that you have already admitted their importance to human life by including them in this list. Yet they have almost no importance to the life of an earthworm. So it should be clear by now that many of the things that are important to human life are things we make up. They were imagined, constructed, negotiated. Some of them, like human rights, we made up in order to create a better world to live in, to raise our families in. We will evaluate what exactly a right is, how they come about, and what keeps them in existence. But for now, let’s just admit that many of the things, including rights, law, justice, fairness, may be constructs. But the fact that we just made them up does not mean that they are unimportant. They exist. Human life as we know it and want it to be depends on these very same things that we make up.

So other than the arch-materialists still at the back of the room, the rest of us are a thing called constructivists. We believe in things like rights, law, justice, politeness, truth, beauty, property, not because they somehow pre-existed humans, but because we made them, we need them, and because they help. We understand that no two people may share the same views on these constructs, these things that hopefully make human life meaningful. See, even meaning is a construct. We can not live human life without them.

Soon, we will look closer at how these concepts like rights develop. Incremental mutualists think that many of these socially constructed ideas come about because we want their benefits for ourselves so we grant them to others. We will evaluate this mutuality in my next chapter.

In the meantime, please remember how important these things are to human life. The life of an earthworm does not provide us with a viable alternative, does it?

Incremental Mutualism: What is it? Ch. 1

What is Incremental Mutualism?
By Joe Petrulionis


Incremental Mutualism is a mosaic of ideas that strive to preserve several important human rights: the rights of individuals to select the patterns of their own lives, and the rights of people to live in orderly, creative, fair, and healthy communities. These goals of self determination and communitarian concern are often seen as divergent impulses. But a study of human history should have convinced us by now that nurturing both the freedom of individual choice and the maintenance of community bindings are not alternatives but are necessary simultaneous considerations in any attempt to sustain viable human cultures.


Incremental Mutualism is not a set of blueprints for some kind of utopia, nor is it to be considered any form of binding doctrine. These are two of the major aspects of the notion. Everyone should decide for themselves how their lives are to be structured, within some broad boundaries that are intended to protect the choices and opportunities that may be made by others. Over time, individuals will learn to work together with like minded people, aiming their efforts toward goals that they share. Through such voluntary and mutually coordinated projects, the ambitious and creative will find that they can amplify accomplishments and benefit from the rewards of their efforts.


These ideas will not germinate if Incremental Mutualism becomes some kind of doctrine to be immediately passed into law and enforced by the state. The respect for individual determination and choice has been rarely, if ever, bolstered through state endorsement. Likewise, state mandated altruism has been a self opposed construct, historically resented by all participants and rarely sustained by democratic processes. Incremental mutualism will come into existence as we seek alternatives to the tandem nightmares: being pushed around by ideologically motivated governments on the one hand and being subjected to dangerous eras of lawlessness and poverty, on the other. There are more choices. Incremental Mutualism is a rejection of the binary and an effort to select what works and then to replicate it, while avoiding sweeping changes and phases of violent coercion that have dogged human civilizations since at least as long as records have been kept.


The means of this revolution, this incremental move toward a civilization that respects individual choice, community sustainability and human rights, this revolution will not be in the streets, nor will it entirely be conducted at the ballot boxes. Incremental Mutualism is a revolution that will happen in the classrooms of the world, the now limitless, student-centered, participatory, critical classrooms that have come into being on the back of new technologies and protocols of the internet. Will so called “educators” be able to control such a classroom? Absolutely not! That is one of the underpinning features of this approach to education. In order to be taken seriously participants in these seminars will have to argue rationally, persuade their cohorts, and thereby ally themselves with other participants with similar goals. That is how we bring it about, through the disciplines inherent in the subject, Incremental Mutualism. The challenges we face, as I will have to demonstrate in future posts, are problems of education and not availability of fire power, not an intellectually inferior population, and certainly not the challenges posed by “the other,” both domestic and foreign. Any answers we settle on are likewise to be considered incremental developments, tentative, voluntary experiments in human habitation, keeping what works and setting aside for now those features that will need tweaking and perhaps more education. These ideas are both incremental and mutual.


No “vanguard” will assemble to determine the platform of Incremental Mutualism, no secret society or majority caucus will certify these ideas. Nor should any excessive structure be imposed on the individuals discussing and implementing their innovations. It is important to the achievements intended that there be diversity of opinion and real opportunity for the platform to develop and to be amended as needed. Broad discussions will result from the situation wherein individuals make most of their own decisions and coordinate most of their efforts with the like minded. We will learn once again, that any progress toward the joint goals of individual liberty within a sustainable community will be achieved by voluntary efforts of individuals who can coordinate with others to create flexible structures and systems of their own making.


A parable of Incremental Mutualism - “Sharebook”


Before we get too much farther into term definition, allow me to provide one fictional example of how Incremental Mutualism might peacefully overthrow a Goliath institution, should that become the voluntary goal of some like minded individuals for whom this is an important issue. Let’s say there is a giant social networking company call it for these purposes, BlueBook.$ worth say, a hundred and four billion dollars in market capitalization. Despite the fact that this giant would like for you to believe that it gives away its products and services they somehow report annual revenues approaching., say forty-one billion dollars. That would be a formidable institution. And some objective observers might argue that the company came about through a form of Incremental Mutualism, five students born on the cusp of the Millennial Generation working together in a Cambridge dormitory seeking a better way to get more interesting dates.


But let’s say the company has done what most companies do. They sell out. (Retailers do it, Universities do it, Hospitals do it. Selling out is what profit making businesses do.) It becomes public that BlueBook.$ helps “The Government” snoop on its own citizens. Worse, it tricks people into disclosing preferences, which information gets collected, preserved, and analyzed. Then advertisers can purchase this information so that they can tweak their ads for the real individuals who consume their products and services, known only by the data vaults containing the deep secrets of the “I like It” button indications. The advertisers are paying big bucks (forty-one billion of them per year and growing) for these “I Like It” button indicators. So there is certainly a valuable commodity being sold here, namely the private thoughts of the users.


And let’s furthermore say that some Generation Z geniuses get together and decide, “enough is enough.” They create a blog, after they generate some donations they even buy their own server, and set up a social network called, Sharebook.:) Instead of just posturing that they will be leaving BlueBook.$ by clicking an “I Like It” button on the “Delete BlueBook” page, these five people decide to make Sharebook very visible. Open source architecture makes the system a little less hack resistant, but the hackers of the world are still, it seems, going after BlueBook.$, leaving Sharebook.) alone. Imagine that! When there is a problem, some fifteen year old in another time zone works on the code for a while, passing her findings over to someone in another time zone when it becomes time for the first one to go to bed. But by morning, the whole thing is up and running. And the amazing thing, Sharebook.:) seems to function in all respects as well as BigBlue.$. And they decide to make it transparent. The real costs, in audited and comprehensive form, of administering Sharebook.:) are posted on the “about us” page, where you can see a photograph of the founders who are saving money to purchase their first automobiles or to save money for college. The founders of Sharebook decide to run the business on a donation only (again, voluntary) basis.


Insurance Companies, Banks, Schools, Medical Care, Farms, Manufacturing, Shipping Firms, and Trade Unions can also reshape their various markets using Incremental Mutualism. Entire nations can incrementally muster these processes toward making a better political system for themselves, although if they succeed in doing this, their kids may decide to do things differently once the kids get in the driver seats. That’s just the way it all works.


So here is what Peter Kropotkin, Henry Thoreau, William Morris, J.P. Proudhon, Jane Addams, Tolstoy, Gandhi, M.L.King, or even me, this is what we mean by mutualism and how it can work to overthrow systems, dynasties, oppressive regimes, and outdated apps.


In short, since what the future will be is all still up in the air. We will decide these things mutually as we go.


“How is that different from Libertarianism or even Anarchism?” Is a question I hope I am asked.


The answer will be about property. What it is, what it isn’t. Why we need to protect the right of property, and why if we do that, i.e. protect the right of property, why our communal property is a part of that protection. Communal property includes such things as clean air, clean water, wild spaces for recreation and natural preservation, historical treasures in museums, a social safety net for those among us who do not participate in market valued production, etc. etc. Most modern Libertarians think that the government’s job is to protect only private property. But the public and common property is also my property; I have a share in it, right? So common and public property is deserving of governmental protection as well.   This may be in a future installment. Stay tuned!

Stasi Tactics: Sometimes we must resist; if not for ourselves, for our unborn grandchildren.

By Joe Petrulionis

Posted originally on January 25, 2014by jmp479

This monument is not a monument TO something so much as it is a monument against something.   The notorious “Stasi,”  more accurately the East German Ministry for State Security, supposedly created for good reasons: i.e., society needs order, laws need to be enforced, security threats need to be minimized.   But once the powers of spying, force, secrecy, interrogations, eavesdropping, and intimidation become acceptable governance, the people who wield these powers do what such people have always done, they use them to increase their own importance.   Tyranny is deep inside the human genome.

This monument against Stasi type tactics, erected on the site of the torn down Stasi regional headquarters in the lovely and now free city of Jena in Germany, was erected by Jena Citizens two decades after the fall of the Stasi power with the reunification of Germany.

The monument is sculpted to look like small boxes, dossiers, and  many are labeled with the ideas that were victims of Stasi oversight, ideals such as “Free Speech,”  “Critical Thinking,” “Mutual Aid,” “Neighborliness,” “Friendships,” “Trust,” “Initiative,” “Cooperation,” you know, all of the things any organization, nation, or community depends upon from its employees and citizens. Those labels are interspersed on this monument with individual names, real people whose lives were destroyed by Stasi and their games.

One of my own favorites of these was a young man named Matthias Domaschk.  I never knew Herr Domaschk, he died under Stasi interrogation while I was stationed in Nurenberg West Germany. But had Matthias lived he likely would have been a neighbor of mine when I had the extreme good fortune of living in Jena Germany, many years later. He might have been one of the older men playing the piano and signing in the local pub, or reading a book along the Saale river park.  His birth home was right around the corner from my apartment. Instead, he was to me a name on a brass historical placard, attached to the door of that nearby birth home I passed during most of my daily walks.  That little brass plate incited my initial interest into the Stasi and their ways.

The Stasi were not all high ranking elite monsters, movers and shakers in the Communist Party. No, some began as simple police men and women or administrative officials who believed that they could improve their own lives and family circumstances by cooperating with the Stasi rather than by doing what we would today call, “rocking the boat.” This is how we all may become Stasi, we start small. Then we begin to obey only the needs and pleasures of those above us in our political or organizational networks. Next, as we realize we have lost the respect of our co-workers and neighbors,  we begin enjoying our authority and autonomy over them more and more. It becomes a way to punish people for not making us feel wonderful about ourselves as we move up through such  organization charts.

Boat Rockers, people like young Matthaias Domaschk, resisted these games, laughed at the Stasi pretense to importance and power, and failed to offer adequate praise and gratitude to the local Stasi officials.  The Stasi  retaliated by making Matthaias’ life increasingly unbearable.   They would bring him in for interrogations, on fabricated complaints that they did not even explain to him.   They pretended to want information yet they also claimed to have already any information that it would take to enable a conviction. They pretended to have state sanction for their increasing authority. And the Party Leaders? They were, themselves, so incompetent and so incurious about what was really going on that they never even saw the need to reel in the subaltern Stasi staffers.

Matthaias did not cooperate. In fact, because of his public resistance, more of the Jena public began to openly resist the Stasi routines as well. With numbers came courage, the local Stasi division head decided that something must be done.

And it was.

Another interrogation gone badly. There were reports to write and some slight explanations to concoct. But Matthaias died of mysterious causes while undergoing one of these interrogations.  So at the plot level of this true  story the local Stasi administrator won. That Stasi subaltern probably outlived the Stasi itself and then received a pension for a retirement comfortable enough for a working person.  His neighbors and family probably know of his prior career as a Stasi underling, but out of politeness they rarely mention it.

The loser in this story, Matthaias, got a little brass name plate on the door of his parents home on a busy street in Northeastern Jena.  He is also one of the individuals named in the Stasi monument as a victim of their methods. Matthaias lives on in the love of the Jena people in the stories they tell themselves about how and why they finally were encouraged to stand up against banal tyranny.   Fifty years from now, no student will ever learn the name of the Stasi flunky. But they will be visiting this memorial and writing essays about the importance of Matthaias Domaschk the boat rocker.

Don’t you wonder if that retired old man who conducted the interrogation ever walks his dog in Jena? Wonder what he thinks each time he passes this monument.

Tiz The Season: How did that Angel get up on top of the tree?

Tiz The Season: Why an Angel sits atop the Tree
--- By Joe Petrulionis

Halloween and all through the store,
Bing Crosby's _White Christmas_ played at a roar.
There just for candy, not decorations, not gifts,
but the store needed profits and the economy a lift.
The crowds were cantankerous, the cashiers rude,
To my, "Sir, Where's the candy?" the clerk said,
 "dunno Dude."
My temples were throbbing when I asked him the reason.
Sez, "Trick-or-treat candy was gone for the season."
"Its Halloween, surely you have candy to sell."
He answered in a language I don't know very well.
Then he pointed upstairs, with his middle finger;
and he growled so loudly I didn't dare linger.
Walked all around, never found the next floor;
But a half box of Snickers for sale by the door.
I snatched up a handful dashed to the express line.
A couple before me was having a hard time.
Their cards would not swipe, they needed a manager,
whose key would not fix it. I suggested a hammer.
The elderly wife looked sweetly in my face.
And blasted me point blank with pepper spray mace.
Then out on the lot there arose such a din,
run away shopping carts in hurricane winds.
I dodged and I dashed and I tried really hard.
Several carts broadsided my new smart car.
As I pulled into my drive and turned off my lights
some teenagers egged me and disappeared in the night.
As I stepped over the threshold I soon realized
that the snicker bars were still at the store in a bag.
So my mood was real bad when my wife got home
from her costume party she'd attended alone.
Dressed as a Victoria Secret Angel...yes, wings and all.
I stood there dumbfounded as she heeled down the hall,
dragging a fourteen foot scotch pine, yep newly cut.
She said only, "Darling, would you mind if we put the tree up?"
"It won't fit," I cried, "in our nine foot den,"
"So where do you want it," she asked with a grin.
And that's how that angel got up on the tree
all because Christmas does not start on Halloween!


This so called "poem" was first read at a Sigma Tau Delta (Honorary English Society) meeting at Penn State University--Altoona. Shown here are Joe and Sandy Petrulionis exhibiting their entries for the "ugly sweater" competition.

There is this place...

From a canoe looking North.

From the same spot looking West.

From the same canoe looking South.

From the same spot looking East.

So all around you, wildness. As far as you can see it is nature. This place...

But today was special. Oh, the fishing is always wonderful here. Even in bad weather, it is a beautiful place to just coast along in your canoe, watch the wildlife, and think about the busy school year to come. What will you do differently in your classes, which deadlines are already past?

Then you hear (this true story of my trip yesterday by the way) a rather loud splash right behind you. As you turn to see if it was a fish you hear a snort and some breathing. And twenty feet off your canoe's bow a Pennsylvania Black Bear emerges from the water lilies after his (her?) swim across this lake/bog.

Because he was in the water he must not have yet heard or smelled me. A black bear's ability to smell is much more acute than his eyesight. So there is this five second period when I could fish a camera from my vest and snap a photo--or two.

Look in the center of the water lilies. Might that be a snout?

What is making that snorting noise?

Is that a bear?

Yes it is. I didn't know they got so big! "Grandfather, Grandfather!"

I think he sees me here.  (I can't see it!)  Click on the photo to see the larger version!

At about the same time I realize that I am alone in a canoe between a 400 lb bear and his blueberry patch.


There is this amazing place called Central Pennsylvania by people who think in short time frames of less than--say, four hundred years. It has been traumatized before and will be devastated again. As I write, in fact, some major corporations are conspiring with State elected officials to destroy large tracts of this pristine wilderness.

We are not talking about "bad people." They think they are doing the right thing. But like most of us, when profit is involved, the "right thing" is easily rationalized toward self interest.

Their idea is interesting. You take, literally, billions of gallons of surface water. Mix it with chemicals like solvents and other toxic stuff; then pump it into deep shale deposits. The explosive intrusion of this hazardous chemical into the deep underworld will release pockets of natural gas. This gas will be sold to gas companies on the cheap for several reasons. First, the drilling in Pennsylvania would be done with almost pathetic drilling fees and with extensive tax benefits on the revenues. Second, the lax regulations of the Commonwealth will make it nearly impossible for anyone to assign the blame for environmental damage to any one company. So the taxpayers of the Commonwealth will have to bear the burden of the clean up. Third, the energy companies are getting these gas rights at pathetically low prices. Since much of the drilling will happen in places like State Forests, Undeveloped School Properties, and hunting lands (in Pennsylvania we call these places, "the woods,") the auctions of the drilling rights are only interesting to energy companies. Much of the pumping of water will happen on private lands. But the royalties will be paid to the owner of the land where gas is extracted, not so much where water is pumped. Tricky, right?  So who else but drilling companies would want to purchase drilling rights? So why don't these companies bid the prices up to some reasonable amount? Well, we are assured, they could bid up the prices. But each company only wants to drill in a particular region. So it only bids for the drilling rights in that region. Without any collusion at all, we are assured, very few of these regional preferences overlap. So in many cases, one company is the only bidder and the price remains extremely low.

Is this a license to steal? Well, perhaps. But the point is that the gas in those underground pockets is a valuable property (once the Commonwealth sells the rights.) It is only the citizens of the Commonwealth who are being harmed. (If people are the only beings that count.) And the people seem not to care one way or the other. They are in the streets over gun rights or abortion rights or mosque building in Manhattan, or the war related budget deficit that everyone would prefer to chalk up to excessive spending on things like "entitlements." But anyone who seems to want these drilling rights to be sold at a fair price, with adequate regulatory oversight (paid for by use fees like drilling license fees), those few people are called "tree huggers" and easily ignored.

But what happened with the bear?

Oh, the bear. Yes, well a bear is an ethical being. And people who study ethics realize that notions such as "right" and "wrong" are just human ideas and opinions. There is no objective "right" and "wrong" that can be scientifically determined and/or proven through a logical or mathematical proof. Like a hawk and a bunny, the act of a mother hawk tenderly placing bits of bunny into the beaks of her hungry chicks, the same act can be "good" or "evil" depending on perspective.

But what about the bear, Joe?

As I was saying, a bear is an ethical creature. It does not need to kid itself that what it is doing is "good" or "bad." It is self interested, but it does not take more than it needs. And it does not look for trouble. In fact, it avoids conflict where possible. So this bear that weighed more than twice what I might muster, realized that I was in the way of its beach head. So it did what any ethical creature would do. It went around me. It did not need to stand and show me its claws and teeth. It did not make a speech about "Bring 'em on!" and it did not have to explain that I had "no place to run, no place to hide." It just went around me.

There are those who believe that since "Right" and "Wrong," and "Good," and "Bad" are only opinions and perspectives that they do not exist. What matters in a world without right and wrong is power. And I would like to point out that "power" and a constant struggle over resources does not provide us with a fun, safe, and interesting life. There are lots of things that do not exist in some physical way...things that are just "made up." These things include property rights, civil rights, money, good, bad, evil, beauty, right, wrong, and even language itself. But this does not mean that they do not exist. We made them up because they help. They are useful so we keep them as long as they are useful.

One of the interesting realizations that come from the study of the Humanities is that most of those things that make human life meaningful, beautiful, and purposeful are things we just "made up." Some would call these things "constructs."  Wild places are perhaps the one big exception.

A lesson in Virtue Ethics from a bear. (Move over Alasdair MacIntyre)

As the bear disappeared over the bank, I wondered how my grandchildren would be compensated for the lack of this kind of experience in their lives.

I am not hopeful that the effort to Frack up the Pennsylvania wilderness for a couple years worth of natural gas can be stopped. It's down there, it's valuable, and it will continue to nag the profit dreams of energy companies until it is pumped out and sold. Any elected official that gets in the way will have a very well funded opponent in the very next election. I would bet that Pennsylvania will be Fracked Up... it will happen.

All I would dare to hope is that we can somehow hold the energy companies to high standards of environmental ethics. Take the gas, but leave the unpolluted waters and wilderness. To accomplish this we will have to be alert to pollution, and demand that our governmental leaders be held accountable to our grandchildren. Any President who signs a waiver for this industry to disregard the "Clean Air and Water Act" should be quickly impeached and certainly not re-elected. We owe this to our children.

Because the biggest problem we face is not "capitalism." Capitalism is a very productive force. Like natural gas it is volatile. When the burn is controlled gas can power an engine. Out of control, like an explosion in a gas line, the problem with capitalism comes from when the corporate "profit motive" runs our government. When politicians legislate and regulate an industry like natural gas based on the large extent of political contributions from that industry, we are in trouble. That partnership between business and government, along with the big doses of nationalism and populism that it takes to get the working classes to approve, that is called fascism. So the biggest problem we face is ignorance.

I could take you to this special place and show you the potential costs we are prepared to pay for a few years of heat. I might be able to replicate for you some of the wilderness experiences that are possible in such places. But until you realize the value of your common interest in wilderness, you may be confused into believing that your self interest is tied up with energy companies' profits or campaign contributions for your elected officials; until then we have an educational problem on our hands...not a political problem, nor an accounting problem, nor an energy shortage. First we have an educational problem. And the first step toward that solution is for you to take a trip to some place wild.

Do Fish Have Rights?

This is "Moshe," a black bass living in local waters of Central Pennsylvania.

Moshe is on the "Catch & Release Program" so he was able to pose for this snapshot, but for only a second. Then he was returned to the pristine waters in a place that this writer will, of course, not be too specific about. (It's kind of like the human "witness protection program," but for fish.)

Human ethics seems to ignore any rights of beings like Moshe. All animals, it is argued, belong to humans, either as individuals or as a common possession. Few philosophers have attempted to explain this viewpoint, it is just accepted as a kind of founding stone of moral philosophy. I think, but can not demonstrate, that the whole notion of nature as a possession of one species has its origins in monotheistic religions. But for traditional reasons, Moshe has no intrinsic rights, if you buy this line of argument. He can be eaten (and believe me, there are few meals to compare to fresh bass fillet), he can be moved to other waters by State Fisheries Officials, and he can be repeatedly "Caught & Released" as a sort of recreational activity for humans who live in packed, city conditions and need a little Nature in their lives to remind them that they are still alive.

It seems that rights are something granted to new recipients because of the convenience those grants offer the broader society that will enforce those rights. And this gets complicated very quickly. To get rights, a thing has to be both dangerous enough to pose a threat to broader society AND it has to be reasonable enough to participate in the mutual enforcement of rights, once it has joined the collective of the right holding, broader society.   Just look at two examples:  the lion and the porpoise.  A lion is very dangerous and poses an extreme threat to the village peoples living near their wild habitats. But a lion is not granted rights because even if those rights were given, the lion would remain dangerous and would continue to prey on the villagers. So a lion is hunted.  In a parallel way to this argument, a dolphin may be more intelligent than many people. But since a dolphin poses no threat to people, there is no motivation on human beings' part to respect any rights of dolphins.

Rights are granted to someone because they are both dangerous AND have the cognitive abilities to respect those rights of others. So humans do have rights.  Violent criminals forgo many of their rights because they have proven unable to be reasonable.

Some of these rights are protected by law and some are so self evident that they do not even need defense. For example, what if someone were to walk into a room full of people and take possession of all of the air in the neighborhood? Air and Water can not be possessed by individuals and sold back to other persons. That would just not be right because it would not be good for the broader group! To further protect Pennsylvanians, the Pennsylvania Constitution (Article 1 Section 27) makes clean water and air a right of all Pennsylvanians and a responsibility of the Commonwealth leaders to protect.

Since only a small percentage of Earth's water is in a form that can be used by people and Moshe, we must protect what we have. It may be worth ten minutes of your time (for your grandchildren and their grandchildren) to look into this "Hydraulic Fracking" process. We can either have a few years of cheap heating by Marcellus Shale natural gas.(To be precise, the gas company will have cheap gas to sell us and even to export at market prices.) Or perhaps Moshe's great great great grandchildren will still be around for your grandchildren, who also may need periodic reminders that they, too, are still alive.