I got a Kindle for Christmas and am in the middle of my first e-book, Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie. Catherine was the Empress of Russia at the same time George Washington became the first President of the United States.

Catherine was born in 1729 and died in 1796. George was born in 1732 and died in 1799. Both led their 67-year-long lives in agricultural-age countries about to enter the modern era. German-born Catherine was the supreme Empress of Russia for 34 years. George served 8 years as elected President of the new country, the United States of America.

Russia in Catherine’s day had around 20 million people. Half of them were serfs, tied to the land and bought and sold like cattle. The U.S. when Washington was President had around 3 million people.  90% were farmers and 20% were enslaved, tied to the land and bought and sold like cattle.

Catherine the Great was very rich. Riches in agricultural societies were measured in gold, land, and workers (serfs, peasants or slaves). Catherine inherited half a million serfs, hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and mountains of gold, silver and diamonds. She was richer than Bill Gates, George Soros, the Koch brothers and Warren Buffett added together.

George Washington was also rich—our richest president—though not in Catherine’s league. Accountants today have estimated his wealth as the equivalent of $525 million in 2010 dollars. Like Catherine his wealth was mostly in land (8000 acres) and slaves (316). Like his rich friend Thomas Jefferson, he was often short of cash. In fact he had to borrow money to attend his own inauguration in New York City in 1789.

The Enlightenment of the 17^th and 18^th centuries profoundly influenced both Catherine and George. The French writers Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire were favorites of Catherine. George (along with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers) preferred the English and Scottish sages John Locke, Isaac Newton, David Hume and Adam Smith. Catherine was an intellectual monarch who read widely. George was an intelligent president but not an intellectual. His genius was in leadership, military campaigns, and administration.

All of the Enlightenment thinkers advised breaking away from ancient regimes inherited from medieval times. They favored science, tolerance in religion and equal justice in society. As Jefferson put it, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Catherine’s teachers Voltaire and Rousseau were not friends of democracy however.

“Why is almost the whole earth governed by monarchs?” Voltaire asked.  “The honest answer is because men are rarely worthy of governing themselves … Almost nothing great has ever been done in the world except by the genius and firmness of a single man combating the prejudices of the multitude … I do not like government by the rabble.”

Voltaire believed in a benevolent monarchy, an enlightened autocrat. Catherine was a huge fan of Voltaire and when he was forced out of France she invited him to live and write in her palace in St. Petersburg. He chose Switzerland instead but the two remained avid pen pals for many years.

Rousseau thought there should be a “great leader” who somehow represented the “general will”—a kind of collective anarchy that would satisfy the “social contract.” His ideas were powerful in his day, and they still resonate in ours. (See Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Occupy Wall Street activists.)

Russia in the 18^th century was behind the rest of Europe. Under Catherine the despotism was enlightened and benevolent. Under the Czars after her, Russia lost some benevolence and enlightenment, but increased the despotism. In the 20^th century it turned into a totalitarian nightmare under Lenin and Stalin.

Russia’s European neighbors followed similar paths. Prussia (later to expand and become Germany) had an enlightened monarch, Frederick the Great. Frederick gave way to benevolent authoritarians like Bismarck in the 19^th century and then to totalitarian ones like Hitler in the 20^th century. Austria-Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, France, Spain, Italy, and Britain were all influenced by the Enlightenment to promote science, distance religion, and (with as assist from Karl Marx) stress benevolence from above for the common man (social democracy).

Some theorists, including me, think this is a major difference today between America (the U.S. and Canada) and Europe. We tend to favor freedom and entrepreneurial achievement. Europe tends to favor equality and social democracy.

The transition from agricultural ages to modernity proceeded at its fastest pace in North America, somewhat slower in Europe. Today it is taking rapid strides in the China and India. Islamic countries in the Middle East are still struggling. Some are trying to recreate the ancient clerically-dominated regimes that Christian countries left behind five hundred years ago.

All agricultural states and communities (including the native American tribes) lived in zero-sum economies where the only way to survive and prosper was to prey on your neighbors. Catherine’s neighbors were powerful countries like Turkey, Prussia, Poland, Austria, Sweden and Denmark—all competing with Russia for land, peasants and gold. Enlightened as she was Catherine could not escape from the patterns of her predecessors. She too led armies against Turkey, Prussia, Austria, Poland, Sweden and others in frequent wars to gain more land, more serfs, more gold and more access to profitable trading routes.

In one of many wars Russian was allied with Prussia and Austria against Poland. After the allies won the war the Prussian ambassador commented to Catherine, “It seems that in Poland one only has to stoop and help oneself.” She answered in a classic zero-sum way, “Why shouldn’t we both take our share?”

Washington too could not escape all of his agricultural age ancestry. His neighbors were Native American tribes. Some had a little agriculture but for the most part tribes in North America were still in the hunting/gathering era with zero-sum economies and limited trade. Like more advanced societies in Europe, Africa and Asia, American tribes fought constantly with each other to get more land, better hunting and gathering grounds, and more security.

Washington’s tribe was no exception. He personally led wars to “help oneself” to the land of the natives. He also looked the other way when ships brought people from Africa to till southern plantation fields as enslaved farmers.

On the progressive side Catherine wrote a great book called the Nakaz: Instruction of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Second for the Commission Charged with Preparing a Project of a New Code of Laws. It had 20 chapters and 526 articles. It featured many progressive ideas from the Enlightenment scholar Montesquieu (who also influenced our founding fathers when they wrote the U.S. Constitution). The Nakaz was purely advisory, never meant to be and never enacted into law.

George Washington led a group that wrote and put into practice a new Constitution for the United States. It was much shorter than the Naka and proved to be more practical and revolutionary. It included provisions that the Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith recommended if you wanted to become a wealthy nation—protect private property, enforce contracts and promote free trade.

George’s friend Thomas Jefferson made it more explicit when he wrote, “Agriculture, manufacture, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are most thriving when left free to individual enterprise. A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

This new Constitution brought the best of Enlightenment ideas—free speech, free press and freedom of religion, encouragement of science and commerce, and commitment to pragmatic democracy—into the reality that has made the United States of America the exceptional country and world leader it is today.

George was not as wealthy or as intellectual as Catherine. In the long run he was more successful.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S.  Don’t forget our January and February sale of Hawkhill DVDs. Dirt cheap. $9.50 apiece for programs to entertain and educate.

Inequality of wealth is a big issue in the elections of 2012. A spat between envy and greed. At the moment envy seems to be winning.

Seriously, in my view the inequality of wealth in this country is like overpopulation, resource depletion, chemical pollution, and climate change—another non-issue. I have written enough about the others. What about inequality?

The Occupy Wall Street activists are correct—the 1% at the top is a lot richer than the 99% below. And yes, over the past four decades that 1% has become even richer while the middle classes and the poor seem to have hit a plateau. This latter claim is debatable—see below. Nevertheless, the 1% at the top do have more wealth than the bottom 49% of the U.S. population.

They also pay most of the taxes. The top 1%, for instance, pays 38% of the income taxes in America. In 1970 when the top income rate was 70%, the top 1% paid around 19%.

Billionaire Warren Buffett does pay a lower rate than his secretary. That’s because, like millionaire Mitt Romney, most of his income comes from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a lower rate to encourage investment in productive job-creating enterprises. This income from investments has already been taxed once at a 28% rate (one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world). In effect the total tax rates for Buffett and Romney are 28% (corporate tax) plus 15% (personal capital gains and dividends tax) for a total of 43%. Their wealth will also be taxed a third time when they die. (Buffett supports laws that would raise his taxes but admits that he, his children and his charitable foundations would invest his profits more wisely than the government would.)

Some, including me, think that it would be fairer and probably bring in more revenue to move toward a flatter tax with fewer loopholes. The rich would still pay the bulk of our taxes but we 99% bottom dwellers would pay a bit more for the benefits we receive. Fair enough.  My wife and I, for instance, receive far more in social security and Medicare benefits than we contributed in our working lifetimes. Most seniors in this country, when you take into account the benefits they receive, are millionaires! This real wealth of seniors (and the disabled) is not included in the statistics that claim the middle class and poor have hit a “plateau.”

The statistics also do not include many other kinds of wealth that the 99% have today that they didn’t have 40 years ago. When I was a young student and teacher cell phones, computers, Google and iPads did not exist. Nor did copy machines, fast-foods, frozen pizza, Air Jordans, many life-saving drugs, cheap but good clothes and who knows what other goodies from China, India, Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific courtesy of supermarkets, Walmart, Penney’s, and Starbucks. All of this real wealth comes courtesy of the private sector and at remarkably low prices.

The statistics also do not include the thousands of other grants and good things and good services we get now from our governments, local, state and federal. Like Medicare and Medicaid; Social Security; better roads and bridges and airports; more national, state and local parks; food stamps, housing and transportation subsidies; environmental protections; better equipped schools (in my day we didn’t have a gym much less a swimming pool, soccer field or tennis court); teachers with fewer students (my sister had 75 students in her 3^rd grade class in 1950). All of these are funded in large part from taxes the rich pay. None are counted in the statistics that seek to prove the rich are taking unfair advantage by not paying “their fair share.”

Elizabeth Warren, the consumers advocate running for senator in Massachusetts gives envy a voice: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. … Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

But wait Ms. Warren—it was the profits of corporations and individuals that provided the taxes to pay for those roads, to hire the teachers to educate, the police and fire forces to protect, etc. etc. Those profits are due to free-market transactions and “the next kid who comes along” can thank the many profit-rich companies and successful individuals who did “pay forward.” Demand still more from these engines that power our entrepreneurial culture and you may end up having a social contract with not enough hunks of money to pay for it.

In earlier days there were much greater differences between the 1% and the 99% than there are today (for a vivid picture see the current PBS hit show, Downton Abbey). Sure the 1% today can afford to travel first class anytime and anywhere by private jet, helicopter, yacht or chauffeured auto. Most middle class folks do okay travelling anywhere and everywhere on comfortable jetliners, trains, buses, pickup trucks, SUV’s and RVs. Sure the rich can buy a luxury box to watch the Super Bowl or a season ticket to the Metropolitan Opera. The middle class (and the poor) can watch the same games and the same operas with better seats and better views on their TV sets. The rich can get a heart bypass or a hip replacement. So can the middle class and the poor. The rich can go to Harvard or Yale or Princeton—if they are talented enough. The middle class and the poor can go to Harvard or Yale or Princeton—if they are talented enough.  (See the current occupants of the White House.)

Leftists and OWW protesters will drown you in cherry-picked statistics to prove the rich are taking unfair advantage of us poor middle class oafs. Don’t buy it. I have lived a long time and I know from personal experience that the middle class and the poor (and I have spent a lot of time in both) are far better off today than they were in the 50s or the 60s, those golden years our President and his more left-wing followers wax enthusiastic about. Believe me, it’s not even close.

Most countries in the developed world have been growing more unequal in wealth in the last 30 years. (Interesting enough, the exceptions like Greece, Ireland, Spain, France and Italy are the ones in most trouble today.) Most developed countries, like the U.S., have increased their spending on social services far more than they have increased expenditures on everything else including the military. In many countries, including the U.S., the national debts to pay for these generous social services have soared to levels that threaten to bring down the whole social contract.

Does that mean that no one in the middle class is hurting today? Of course not. Does that mean no one today in this country is poor? Of course not. Does that mean the government has no role in making things better? Of course not.

But we need to face reality and that reality says—well, the truth is it doesn’t speak very clearly. It does caution that soaking the rich is unlikely to cure what ails us. In fact it warns that too much reliance on this Robin Hood strategy might make it worse.

Growing the economy is basic. Cutting back on debt and borrowing will help. Increasing our energy supply and our efficiency is essential. Reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is a must to ensure they will be there to help young people when they get to my age.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S.  Don’t forget out January and February sale of Hawkhill DVDs. Dirt cheap. $9.50 apiece for programs to entertain and educate. See Hawkhill.com or Amazon.com.

Despite my affection for the long view and the heavy thinking I realize that what happens in the next 3 seconds is what really matters.

Henry David Thoreau put it this way, “In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

It takes about 3 seconds for a smile to brighten your day. Or to say Hello, or Thank you, or You’re welcome, or I love you. The time it takes to hug a friend. The time it takes to take a really deep breath, or to listen to a song in your head or a beat in your heart. The time it takes to “improve the nick of time … to tow that line.”

For most of my life I have been a future planner. I have not given much time to dwelling on the past and I think now not enough effort to the present either.  Now that I am old I am beginning to realize how important the next 3 seconds are.

A scientist agrees.

Emese Nagy, a developmental psychologist at the University of Dundee claims, “What we have is very broad research showing that we experience the world in about these 3 second time frames.”

The “3-second rule” came to its greatest prominence in basketball. The rule there says you cannot stay in the free-throw lane under the opponent’s basket for more than 3 seconds. Another version says that for safe driving you should keep at least 3 seconds worth of driving time between you and the car ahead of you. Still another applies to dating. If you see a girl (or a guy) you think you might like to date, you have 3 seconds to make up your mind to approach her (or him). If you delay more than that, your chances of connecting fall off by powers of 10.

I don’t think this means you should never plan, or read, or work, or engage in a conversation that takes more than 3 seconds. Just pay more attention and punctuate your longer periods with 3 second phrases.

In my retirement years my wife and I get our exercise walking the dog and going swimming at a nearby indoor pool devoted to seniors. I never was a very good swimmer and still am not. But I enjoy and profit from the 3-second rule by swimming laps with a leisurely back stroke. I coordinate my arm and leg movements to deep breaths. Breathe in, reach-kick, breathe out; breathe in, reach-kick, breathe out; breathe in, reach-kick, breathe out. Every deep breath and cool glide takes about 3 seconds. Enough time to sneak in a bit of meditation and idea generation for the next week’s blog! It’s the time of day I feel most healthy.

How often do we really look at one another? Or really listen?

Thoreau wrote, “Could a greater miracle take place than for us too look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! —I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”

In my teaching days I once directed the perennially popular play Our Town. I still have to hold back a tear when Emily who died in childbirth in an earlier scene comes back from the dead in the final act to see what life was really like when she was living on earth.

“Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. … Let’s really look at one another! … I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye, Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every, every minute? … if only we really looked at one another! … People just don’t realize what a wonderful life this is.”

I hinted at this mystery of looking and listening when I quoted Samuel Beckett before the title page of my new book. As the first act of Waiting for Godot ends, a boy comes onstage to bring a message from Mr. Godot (who never appears). Didi is one of the two homeless tramps who are the main characters in the play.

(boy) “What shall I tell Mr. Godot, Sir?”

(Didi) “Tell him you saw us … (long pause)

You did see us, didn’t you?”

Then there is the story of Michael Gates Gill who had it all, an Ivy League education, a creative director at the world’s largest ad agency, a house in the Hamptons and a six-figure salary. After setbacks and nearing retirement age he ended up taking a job serving coffee at Starbucks where his boss was a young African-American woman, the daughter of a drug addict. According to him his unlikely descent in status and money turned out to be the thing that “saved his life.” Not sure he calls it that but one of the things he learned was the importance of living in the 3 second zone. Serving customers with a smile, relating to fellow employees and bosses with attention and humility, producing goods and services that customers liked, discovering a new respect for hard work.

Pleasure often comes in 3 second intervals. So does pain. Shakespeare, as always, knew what we are talking about when he wrote in Much Ado About Nothing, “There was never yet a philosopher who could endure the toothache patiently.”

There is always the agony and the ecstasy. The pain of a migraine headache. The delight in a vase of flowers. The chagrin when the other team completes a Hail-Mary pass in the last second. The pleasure when your team completes a Hail-Mary pass in the last second. The bitterness of a divorce. The view out the window in the morning after the first snow of the season. The loneliness of a dark night. The shiver when you hear a phrase of music you love. The desperation of unrequited love. The ecstasy of an orgasm.

I think part of my respect for the 3-second rule comes from age. In our long-ago nightclub act Jane and I included a poem by Helen Hoyt called RAIN AT NIGHT. Especially now as we touch in bed the last lines of that poem haunt me.

“One day it will be raining as it rains tonight; the same wind blow—

Raining and blowing on this house wherein we lie: but you and I—

We shall not hear, we shall not ever know,

O love, I had forgot that we must die.”

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. With affection, this effort is dedicated to long-time readers and good friends Ann and Paul Boyer.

Last week I featured big things we know but don’t pay enough attention to. Like the things Newton and Darwin taught us hundreds of years ago. I even claimed we don’t pay enough attention to my eye-opener—that we are at the dawn not the twilight of a new scientific-industrial-democratic age.

What about things we don’t know?

We know next to nothing about our place in the vast ocean of space. Are we alone or are there other intelligent creatures out there? Very recently astronomers have found that many, probably most, stars have planets. Since there are billions of stars, there must be billions of planets in our universe. Some of them probably have life. Intelligent life? We don’t know.

There is much we don’t know about energy, resources and climate.

Physicists tell us that there is a dark energy pervading space that so far we know nothing about. Current theory has it that the universe is expanding at a rapid rate. This expansion cannot be explained using current ideas about energy. It must be powered by a mysterious unknown kind of dark energy. Current experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHD) in Switzerland may give us some clues. Could it help with our local energy problems here on earth?

Dark energy is one part. Dark matter is also a problem with no answers at present. Einstein showed that energy and matter are interchangeable—e=mc². Scientists tell us now that all of the matter-energy stuff we see and know—that means every thing on earth and in the universe—is only 4% of what actually exists! Will the LHD or some new Einstein find hints on the other 96%? Will it make a difference? Einstein’s equations certainly did.

With some resource issues the story is promising. Doctors and nurses a hundred years ago had pitifully few resources available to cure anything that ailed us. If you broke your hip, as I did a few years ago, tough. You would probably die. At best it might heal itself after months of terrible pain and leave you a cripple. Metal was available, but the metal alloy that replaced my broken hip joint was not. Nor was the knowledge and skill needed to put it in.

The insulin needed to keep diabetes in control was not available. The story is told that children in dying comas from diabetes were kept often in large wards with their parents and grieving family members nearby. In the late 1920s (I was born in 1926) research pioneers Frederick Banting, Charles Best and James Collip went from child to child in one such ward, injecting each child with newly discovered insulin extracts. Before they finished with the last child of fifty, the first to be injected came out of a coma to the ineffable joy of the family.

Insulin to save diabetics was first produced from cows, a widely available natural resource. Later chemists learned how to make cow insulin artificially in labs. Still later they found ways to genetically engineer recombinant human insulin. That is the kind used today to control diabetes in millions of children and adults worldwide.

A similar story with infections. Because operations a hundred years ago usually led to deadly infections, people rarely chose elective surgery (not to mention the lack of effective and safe anesthetics). Antibiotics to control and cure infections were unknown until my WW2 days in the Navy. This was so even though molds and bacteria, the prime source of most antibiotics, are one of most common living things on earth.

If you got tuberculosis (as one out of every three middle-age adults in Europe and the U.S. did) you might get some help in the cool air of a TB sanitarium (like the one where we walk our dog nowadays, long ago closed for lack of patients). Even so you would in all likelihood die (as did my grandmother in her early 30s, leaving my father-to-be a motherless little boy. Which made a big difference in his life and in mine).

Cancer is still a mystery. We now know how to control the kind my wife Jane has, CML (chronic mylegenous leukemia). She is in remission because of 21^st century advances in biotechnology. Will future advances provide the resources to control other varieties of this dreaded scourge? Will scientists find the resources to make an AIDS vaccine; a malaria vaccine; to regenerate limbs; to prolong the life-span; to prevent or cure Lou Gehrig’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases; a better way to prevent and treat mental disease; and a thousand other resource challenges in our age-old quest for health? Probably yes. Will we find better ways to pay for it? That is another question and the answers are not clear.

I emphasize here resources needed for health but much the same story holds for other natural resources like oil, minerals, forest products and food. Take note that available resources here, as with health, depend far more on human skill and knowledge than they do on raw stuff in the ground, air and water. Sand is plentiful. It took brains, education and freedom to make Silicon Valley. Resource availability depends far more on the quality of our educational and political system than it does on finding more stuff under the ground, in the water or in the air.

Even on the raw stuff level, we have only begun to search and retrieve what might be there. Not only on our planet but on satellites like the moon, the asteroid belts, Mars, wherever. And what about that 96% of energy-matter that we have never seen? All things considered the likelihood we will run out of energy and matter resources in the near or distant future is nil.

Lastly, what about the much talked about climate change? What do we or don’t we know about climate change? Is global warming (or cooling) going to do in our civilization as some claim?

“Climate change and global warming are topics that should be treated with extreme caution,” says UN environmental expert Steven Gorzula “… the short-term fluctuations in global climate are not a new discovery. What is new is that global warming has replaced nuclear winter, acid rain and saving the whales as the must-have buzz phrases for many scientific grant applications.”

I agree with Dr. Gorzula that climate change is a much-exaggerated threat today. We don’t know anywhere near as much about the earth’s climate as many are claiming. To me it looks suspiciously close to the population bomb threat a few decades ago. That scare turned out to be more a pop than an explosion. Or the resource depletion worry that is turning out to be another problem that isn’t. Scientists have a well-deserved reputation for scrupulous honesty, intelligent questioning and reasoned conclusions. But they are not much better than historians, poets, or religious zealots when it comes to extrapolating their findings into predictions for the future. Especially when it comes to incredibly complicated issues with millions of variables, like population, peak oil, economic trends, social programs and climate change.

True, we have to take care and we have to plan for a future no one can be certain of. The wisest course is to do the best we can in the short run, and hope for the best in the long run. When and if the worst happens, we will have to, as humans have always done, do our best to cope. The most promising short and long run strategy in my view is to stick with science and technology, freedom of religion and free-markets in a nurturing environment of democracy. It will be our best insurance policy. It has worked remarkably well for two hundred years. It would be foolish to abandon or weaken it now when we have only just begun to harvest its fruits.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. Naturally I am going to recommend my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free-Market Liberal Democracy, for your detailed consideration. You can get it on a Kindle for only 99 cents. If you prefer print copy you will find it listed on www.amazon.com and on www.hawkhill.com for a modest price.

P.P.S. I welcome feedback. Send your comments to billjane@hawkhill.com.

On first seeing tropical vegetation on his round-the-world trip Charles Darwin wrote, “It has been for me a glorious day, like giving sight to a blind man’s eyes. He is overwhelmed by what he sees and cannot justly comprehend it.”

Ah, if only we could experience such a sight as we awake to each New Year!

Isaac Newton must have had similar thoughts when he watched the apple fall from a tree outside his home in Woolsthorpe, England. He tells us it gave him the idea that later became a theory of gravitation and laws of motion which explained not only why the apple fell but also how the earth goes around the sun, how cannon balls, moons, stars, spaceships, and in fact how any and all objects in the universe move.

That apple fell from Newton’s tree three hundred years ago. We live today in a new world of science and technology that owes much of its existence to his discoveries. But alas, three centuries later his insights have not radically changed the way most people look at the planet and at the universe.

We know the earth is moving around the sun. But we still say it is the sun and moon that are rising and setting. We know we live on a spherical globe moving through an immensity of space where there is no up or down. But we still say we go up a mountain and down a river, as if the earth is flat and the sky is up there instead of out there. Many people still look at the earth as the center of the universe and believe someone up there will rescue us when we are in trouble down here and eventually will welcome us into a better place that, of course, is up there.

It is the same story with evolution. Darwin was overwhelmed by the diversity of the living world and in time he used his insights to create basic foundation stones for modern science. His insights, however, are less widely accepted today than Newton’s. Even otherwise well-educated people on the far right and the far left actively oppose evolution when it comes to sensitive issues in religion, education, race and economics.

I don’t claim to be a Newton or a Darwin but I did have my eyes opened wider to societal evolution after a heavy bout of traveling and reading in history and science. Here is a brief summary of what I saw.

We’ve only just begun. We are still at the dawn, not the twilight, of a new era. As with the laws of motion and the evolution of living things, popular thought and practice has not kept pace with what historians and scientists know. Hangover memes from earlier ages populate, proliferate and often dominate our choices today.

For example …

We feel an organic need for wilderness—for living a life free of modern technology and anxiety. As a young man I too waxed poetic about a life of primitive simplicity and adventure. Maybe like the Nav’vi people in the movie Avatar. We resist facing reality—that primitive hunting/gathering life was a daily struggle to survive and extreme violence was the norm not the exception. As Thomas Hobbes put it, life in those long-ago days was “nasty, brutish, and short.”

It took the human species a few hundred thousand years to make the transition from hunting/gathering into the Agricultural Age. There was a more reliable food supply. Populations exploded. But for 99% of human beings the quality of life did not improve much. It was still nasty, brutish and short for the next ten thousand years. Only in the last few hundred years (led by the birth of a new country, the United States of America) have we emerged into a relatively prosperous modern era where science and technology, freedom of religion and win-win market forces have begun to provide an abundance of food, shelter and health for the 99%. Along with a vast improvement in quality of life and potential for happiness.

As a new book by the Harvard scholar Stephen Pinker points out, the world is much less violent now than it was in past ages. (It is even less violent than it was twenty or fifty years ago!) This is, in part, because supernatural religious memes are fading. We in the West no longer burn witches or go to war with our neighbors because they are Protestant and we are Catholic. Or vice versa. Unfortunately much of the Islamic world is still mired in that ten-thousand-year-old ditch. The terrorists of 9/11 were convinced they were doing the work of Allah and would be rewarded up there in heaven. Just as the Christian warmongers and heretic-burners of five hundred years ago thought they were doing God’s work and saving humans from the hell-fires down there.

Religion was important, but probably the more important reason we are less violent and more prosperous today is that the 99% of us no longer live in a zero-sum economy. For hundreds of thousands of years wealth and security depended on land, gold, and the work of slaves, serfs, or peasants. Since there was only so much land, so much gold, and so many human beings you could make into slaves, serfs, or peasants—violence was king. It was the only way an individual, tribe, family or kingdom could get rich or even survive.

Memes last a long time. We are living now in a new age where the absolute truths of religions and the zero-sum economics of feudal and hunting/gathering days no longer apply. But hangovers and destructive memes from earlier ages still retard our progress.

For instance …

Male supremacy and female submission; divisions of class and caste, lord and commoner, priest and laymen, subject and citizen; fighting to prove honor; violence to settle disputes, theft and murder to gain wealth; class wars with Robin Hood attacks on the rich; imperialist wars to gain land and resources; civil wars over religion and race; harsh punishment of losers and heretics; obeisance to heroes, artists and celebrities; overestimation of the virtues of good intentions and charity; underestimation of the virtues of self-interest and business; suspicion of science, technology and intellectual endeavors; security and comfort from a firm belief in absolute truths supplied by all-seeing and all-powerful religions. All these and more are in retreat today. They have not disappeared. Most are irrelevant, though, in a scientific-industrial-democratic world where families, individuals, communities and countries—if they are free—can win riches and security without harming others.

I realize this is taking the long view and does not on the face of it offer much help with specific problems today. We are still fumbling around at the dawn, not the twilight, of a new era. We’ll manage. Our best days are still to come.

The best example of major progress in the 20^th century was the post WW2 Marshall Plan. After WW1 the winning allies (still handicapped by outdated and destructive memes) imposed harsh punishment on the losers, Germany and Italy. The result was Hitler, Mussolini and WW2. After WW2 the United States led the way to help Germany and Italy recover. The result today is a prosperous Europe composed of valued trading partners, not bitter enemies.

One important ally in WW2 did not participate in that progressive plan, the Soviet Union. They stuck with zero-sum economic and absolute religious ideas (secular, not supernatural). They were the losers. As Ronald Reagan said prophetically, “I believe that Communism is a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.”

Substitute Radical Islam for Communism, and you have a clue how we can prevail in one major challenge today. Substitute left-over Marxism married (uncomfortably) to the new secular religion of Radical Environmentalism and you have clues for prevailing in another major challenge, what I call the Second Cold War.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. If you got a Kindle for Christmas your best post-New Years bargain might be my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free Market Liberal Democracy. It takes this longer view and explains in more detail the evidence that supports it. You can get it in e-book form now on sale on www.amazon.com for only 99 cents!

OK so far.

Happy New Year

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. Good luck to the Wisconsin Badgers in the Rose Bowl this P.M. See next week for a full blog.

Last week was poetry. This week it’s fun.

I am always impressed at how little people read (present reader excepted) …

Like at the health club where my wife and I go swimming regularly. The staff put a large sign on the door to the locker room last week that due to repairs there would be no water in the showers that afternoon. Wouldn’t you know, a fellow member comes out of the shower stalls that afternoon, naked and dry, shouting to anyone and everyone, “Help! The water’s not working!”

A New Yorker cartoon has four panels. Three of them show a couple driving down a rural road past three signs, all of them promising “Fresh Corn Ahead.” The final panel has the woman getting out of the car and asking the farmer, “Is the corn fresh?”

A woman bought a new laptop computer and couldn’t figure out how to install the batteries. When she called the company hot line for help the technician told her that the instructions for putting the batteries were on the first page of the instruction manual. She growled, “I just paid $2000 for this damn thing, and I’m not going to read a book.”

The poetry of the day is often found in one-liners on bumper stickers. For would-be scientists we have …

Astronomy is looking up

Biologists Do It Better

Eat/Die

Stop Continental Drift!

For political junkies in Madison …

Recall Walker

For political junkies outside Madison …

I Stand With Scott Walker

For assorted cranks and wise-guys …

Visualize whirled peas

Happiness is seeing your boss’s picture on the back of a milk carton

My karma ran over my dogma

Support bacteria—they’re the only culture some people have

Nudist families have more fun

We are the 99%

A protester in Great Britain claimed, “We’re fed up with being broke. … There are people here with nothing.”

“Nothing, that is,” said the psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, “except an education that has cost $80,000, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and shoes on their feet, food in their stomachs, a cellphone, a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, an electric stove, heating and lighting, hot and cold running water, a guaranteed income, free medical care, and all of the same for any of the children they might care to propagate.”

So far my new book has not sold many copies. I take heart from the Beatles …

In 1962 Dick Rowe, head of Decca Records, said, “Guitar groups are on the way out … the Beatles have no future in show business.”

Two years later a Newsweek music reviewer wrote, “Musically they are a near disaster; guitars slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah!’) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.”

Country western has always been popular with simpler sentiments …

I Got You on My Conscience but at Least You’re Off My Back

Did I Shave My Legs for This?

Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone

My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, and I Sure Do Miss Him

I Don’t Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling

You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith Too

The Darwin Awards are given each year to the least evolved of us. Here are a few of the lucky devils from last year …

“When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at the intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, the would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

“The Chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company, suspecting negligence, sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he lost a finger too. The chef’s claim was approved.

“The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. Frustrated, the man walked away.”

Did you get holiday letters reporting on how wonderful life was in 2011? Here is a classic from the late Ann Landers column a few years ago …

“Budget cuts at Ed’s company resulted in many layoffs, and he has been unemployed for 10 months. The mortgage company calls on a weekly basis to threaten foreclosure, but I am not worried because I was offered a part-time job at Burger King for $4 an hour. Our son Billy’s new business was doing well until his partner and best friend embezzled $25,000 and left with their secretary for the South Seas. Jimmy has many friends. Unfortunately, they are members of the Deadly Snakes motorcycle gang and wanted by the police. Suzy had her nose pierced for Christmas and looks like a freak. We had to replace the roof on the house after that hurricane destroyed it. When we called the contractor, we found out he went out of business due to many lawsuits. Our family vacation this year consisted of visiting the Christmas display on Main Street.”

“Cool” is one of the more durable adjectives. Not all of us oldsters get it right though. An older woman came up to Yogi Berra after a spring training game in Florida and said, “My, you look mighty cool Yogi.” He answered, “You don’t look so hot yourself.”

Final word of advice for the New Year from F. P. Jones, “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.”

Please have a Happy Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. If you got a Kindle for Christmas your best post-Christmas bargain could be my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free Market Liberal Democracy. You can get it in e-book form now on www.amazon.com for 99 cents!

P.P.S. For anyone who is home-schooling their children, or works in a school with a limited budget for media and would like to purchase great up-to-date DVDs at bargain prices—check out our selection on www.hawkhill.com or www.amazon.com now. We have a bloated inventory of super-good DVD programs that regularly sell for $54.50 to $98.50. All DVDs are new copies with 21^st century copyrights. I would like to see them get a wider circulation before I close down the company and pass on to the great unknown. In the meantime I could use the cash. To help this process along I have reduced the price to $9.50 a program. This sale price will be in effect through January and February of 2012.

P.P.P.S. All of our DVDs are also good entertainment and education for adult learners in science, history and politics. Especially many of the new and updated DVDs on Democracy, Biotechnology, Capitalism, Religion, Ecology, Environment, Radiation, and Nuclear Power. Wisconsin studies too. If you go to amazon.com just type in Hawkhill or Bill Stonebarger to see the rich selection available. On our hawkhill.com website you can see all of our DVDs at $9.50 apiece. Give them a try. You won’t be disappointed. I guarantee it.

Recent blogs have been pretty heavy going. It’s time for some holiday cheer.

See below for some worthy quotes on science and civics from sources far and near …

Christians are reminded of their earthy connections on another astronomically significant day when the priest on Ash Wednesday rubs ashes onto your forehead and says, “from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.” Astronomers and biochemists know that we are made of chemicals held together and powered by radiation. The late anthropologist, Loren Eisley, translated science into poetry when he wrote his version. We are made “of dust and the light of a star.”

Being an idea man I love big ideas like this one. I also recognize that important and interesting as ideas can be, they don’t hold a candle to individuals, to the concrete reality of the here and now. As some wise person said, “Education is fine but don’t forget to feed the dog.” Then there is Winnie-the-Pooh who argued, “You can’t help respecting somebody who can spell Tuesday, even if they don’t spell it right.”

For the here and now you have to turn to religion, to the arts, to literature—especially poetry. When I was a young man I drove a cab one summer in Colorado. I drove the night shift and when things got slow around three in the morning I would buy a cup of coffee and take out my copy of A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry. I memorized quite a few poems that way. Some lines from Conrad Aiken were among the favorites I still remember and recite to myself today …

“It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew

I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,

And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet

Stand before a glass and tie my tie.”

A little later I wrote some poetry and had published my first book, A Little While Aware. It was not a best-seller, but I did get a rave review from a newspaper critic who compared me to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet I had long admired. Here is one of his poems …

“Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.”

And here is one of mine that connects big ideas with the here and now …

When I return will the fish still swim,

Glide, dive and slowly turn in the far-off dark-down sea?

Will life still explode in seed and spore

And decay in time?

Will questions of great moment

Still be settled by childhood dreams and luck?

I think I shall return as rock.

My rhythm shall be paced slow

To the grand tread of the century’s boot.

I will be soil, and trees,

Sparrow and snakes,

Blue-bottomed whales, oak-ribbed barns,

skyscrapers too—

but not too soon.

Then when autumn returns again

I will have learned my piece.

I shall stand by my seat

And Yes I’ll answer,

Yes.

Just as there is a geosphere (inanimate matter) and a biosphere (living matter), so there is a “noosphere” (world of thought) that complements, interacts with, and sometimes dominates the geosphere and the biosphere. In the 21^st century, the Internet version of this noosphere is supplementing, expanding, and in cloud-like ways revolutionizing all of our lives. Perhaps that is why Facebook is so popular. Everyone wants to get in the act. Everyone wants to be more than dust and starlight. They want to, as I once put it in another early poem …

Add our increment of honest meaning

To the not-quite-finished universe.

Thanks to a loyal reader of my blogs, Andrea Battern, for two stories to grace this holiday season …

“During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: ‘What is the first name of the woman who cleans the classroom?’

“Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name?

“I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

“’Absolutely,’ said the professor.‘ In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’”

“I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned that her name was Dorothy.”

Finally, a tale of blood and sacrifice to touch your heart on the days when dust and starlight (of our sun at least) are in shortest supply …

“Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously recovered from the same disease and had developed the antibodies to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister.

“I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Yes, I’ll do it if it will save her.’ As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.

“He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, ‘Will I start to die right away?’

“The little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood.”

Please have a Very Merry Christmas.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. No commercials today.

The First Cold War lasted half a century. The West, led by the United States, won. The Communists, led by the Soviet Union, lost. During that Cold War we had many fellow travelers, sometimes called controllable Marxists. People like Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Charlie Chaplin, Walter Duranty, Saul Alinsky, Pete Seeger, Henry Wallace and hundreds of thousands of other entertainers, scientists, media stars, CEOs and union leaders, politicians and academics. Including me. New left heroes like Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Noam Chomsky, John Lennon, and Allen Ginsberg joined the ranks in the Vietnam War days. Not including me.

Most fellow travelers were sincere, intelligent, and had the best of intentions. They supported, and in many cases led, progressive movements that brought genuine progress in the West, including women’s liberation and civil rights. They were not communists but were sympathetic to socialist ideas. And they did their best to blunt efforts to combat the international movement that wanted to remake the world into a socialist utopia where Marxist-inspired command economics was supposed to bring freedom and prosperity to all.

The socialist utopia never arrived and the price for pursuing it was high. Over one hundred million people lost their lives. The price was paid in massacres, slave labor camps and government-caused famines. It added up to more misery and death than all the wars of the 20^th century combined.  As one French fellow traveler, Paul Noirot, wrote in honest despair after the Cold War ended, “At the end of the day we built nothing that lasted: no political system, no economic system, no communities, no ethic, no aesthetic. We wanted to realize the highest human aspirations and we ended up birthing monsters.”

Today in the West there is what I call a Second Cold War. This one unites followers of an environmental near-religion with at times uncomfortable bedfellows—left-wing descendants of Cold War fellow travelers. This potent combination makes claim number four—that most of our troubles today can be traced to corporate greed and globalization theft. It’s a not-so-new twist on an old Marxist theme—class warfare.

There is no question that there is inequality of wealth in the world. In past ages the inequality was much greater but it is true that the one percent at the top today have more net worth than forty percent at the bottom.

In the West, however, the 99% are pretty rich too. They are much richer than they were in the 1950s when income tax rates for the wealthy were much higher but the government got a much smaller percentage of its revenue from the rich than they do today. Even the bottom one percent today are richer than the top one percent of all previous ages. They have better food, less violence, longer life, better health, less pain, more travel, better shelter, more life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness.

In the socialist bloc countries of the Cold War there was less inequality, but 99% of the people were not pretty rich, they were very poor. As they are today in the two countries still committed to a radically socialist economy, Cuba and North Korea. In countries today with a watered-down version of socialism like Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Russia, Syria, Iran, Egypt and much of Africa, most people are also mostly poor.

On the other hand, major countries like China, India, Brazil and Mexico that in past decades relied heavily on socialist-leaning solutions are now helping the 99% to a better life by changing gears and moving strongly toward free-market capitalist ideas.

In Europe today most countries are still relatively free and relatively rich. But many are in increasing distress. After a strong recovery from WW2, countries in Europe fell for the siren song of command economy solutions: increase social services at the expense of the private sector; promote cradle-to-grave support for all; generously subsidize agriculture and desirable industries and heavily regulate them; don’t worry about deficits and debt. If obstacles—private property, greedy corporations or free trade—get in the way, pass laws to bypass or cripple them. For a while it worked pretty well. Today countries from Greece, Italy and Spain to Ireland, France and the UK are facing bankruptcy. Like people who have run up too much credit card debt they can’t pay the bills coming due.

I can already hear the critics howl: “So are you saying we should not have social security, Medicare, National Health Insurance, the EPA, public schools, and the thousand and one other benefits our government is now providing?”

No, I’m not. We are wealthy enough in this country to afford a modest safety net for all citizens. We are wealthy and smart enough to know we need to have reasonable regulations to protect our environment. We need the government to provide infrastructure and services it would be difficult or impossible to provide otherwise.  We need good public schools. We need a strong police and military to protect us from foreign and domestic thieves and murderers, and to enforce laws, guard the borders, protect private property, encourage free trade and foster justice.

But we are also wealthy and smart enough to know we should practice moderation in all things and be careful that in providing generous benefits we do not kill the geese that are laying the golden eggs. These golden eggs are the things that have made the 99% of us so rich, free, environmentally clean, and able to provide justice for all.

Who lays the golden eggs?

Creative entrepreneurs; productive managers in small and large companies; efficient workers in mines, factories, farms, hospitals, stores and offices; researchers in productive laboratories; good teachers in great schools; effective government employees; merchants and sales people; plumbers, electricians, truck-drivers, construction workers, fast-food cooks, janitors, etc., etc. In short, all the hard-working people who give a little more than they get and whose collective win-win transactions in an environment of freedom have made the rich world most of us enjoy today.

Globalization too creates more wealth for all. When we import goods and services from China, India, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America—China, India, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America escape from poverty and we get richer too. When we try to substitute subsidies, grants and fair trade, we get losers instead. Win-win trades are the very heart of what has made us such a rich country.

What makes for poverty? I choose my words carefully—a surplus of non-workers and a shortage of the freedom that leads to productive work and win-win trades.

Fellow travelers today, as in decades past, are right to want the poor and oppressed to have a voice, a vote, and a chance to get rich. They are right in supporting industrial and trade unions in their fight to get a fair share of the profits. They are right in fighting discrimination and injustice wherever found. Environmentalists are right to want to protect our air, soil and water. But both environmentalists and fellow travelers are wrong to want to expand the ranks of non-workers and to curtail the freedom needed to get productive work and win-win trades.

In practice fellow travelers and environmentalists are also wrong to demonize the rich; to bad mouth oil, gas and coal companies; to pit Main Street against Wall Street; to promote consumption while handicapping production; to demand regulations that give questionable benefits at enormous costs; to promote dependency on the government and condemn as racists those who seek to encourage self-help and independence; to claim that demand is more important than supply. (On this last issue the sustainable greens are uncomfortable bedfellows with their Marxist colleagues. Greens want to reduce both demand and supply to save the planet.)

It may be an exaggeration to call it a Second Cold War. Or maybe not. The stakes are high. Let’s hope it is decided by education and elections and not by street protests and violence.

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. For more evidence and detail on the Second Cold War, see my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free-Market Liberal Democracy. (Part Four, pp. 218-280.) It can be found on www.hawkhill.com or on www.amazon.com. Also available now in e-book form.

The green sustainable movement is built on the three claims, all of them false: (1) resources are rapidly dwindling; (2) our industrial system is destroying the planet with pollution; and (3) there are too many people. I addressed the first two over the last three weeks. Now comes the third—population.

Like everyone I worry about overpopulation when I get into a horrible traffic jam; when I have to wait in a long line at the checkout counter; when I drive around Chicago or up the eastern seaboard from Washington to Boston; when I see riots, famines, oil spills and OWS protests on my TV screen. What are these people doing for heaven’s sakes? Why aren’t they working … or … well … whatever?

On the other hand when I drive through the plains of Nebraska, Kansas or North Dakota; the forests of Michigan, Wisconsin or Maine; the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico or California; the mountains of Colorado, Utah or Wyoming—I wonder, where are all the people?

Jane and I have also been fortunate to visit the rainforests of Brazil, Thailand and Puerto Rico; see the wildlife in South Africa, Kenya and Ecuador; trek in the mountainous and the agricultural regions of China, Morocco and Turkey; and explore the surprising wild spots of Germany, Italy and France. Beautiful. Where are all the people?

Personal experiences are on thing, serious data another. Here the story is clearer. The wealthiest, healthiest, best fed, best educated and most creative parts of earth are also the most densely populated. The poorest, least educated, most disease and famine-ridden parts of earth are the least densely populated.

How many people can the resources of planet earth support with a decent life style? According to some ecological gurus like Howard Odum, John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, only one billion at best. An anonymous writer in The New Yorker wrote in 1992, “Almost everyone now agrees that if people in the South [the Southern Hemisphere] tried to live as we do in the North, the result would be ecological disaster.”

Almost everyone does not include me, or an increasing majority of scientific and economic experts. We already have seven billion neighbors and more than half of that seven billion do have a decent life style. A smaller number are still poor but moving rapidly in the decent direction.

Is there a theoretical limit? Of course. The earth is finite and can’t support an infinite number of anything. But that useless exercise in logic is itself the basic fault in the doomsday whine. It is based on Malthus’s claim that people multiply geometrically and resources can only increase arithmetically. The facts show that historically we have not multiplied geometrically (today populations in developed countries are decreasing, not multiplying) and resources have not grown arithmetically (today resources are multiplying geometrically). All this error came because Malthus (and his followers today) left out the most important part of populations and of resources—the creativity of the human mind.

Populations in the wealthy countries of Europe, Japan and North America have plateaued and in most cases are decreasing today. In poorer countries in the tropics, the Southern Hemisphere and parts of Asia and the Middle East populations are still increasing, but at a much diminished rate. It is as near certain as anything can be in history that as these countries get richer and move into the modern scientific-industrial-democratic era their populations will do the same, plateau out. We are in no danger, and never were, of having to cope with infinity of people.

We are still living at the dawn of the scientific-industrial-democratic age of earth. Populations have exploded in the past two hundred years just as they did when humans moved from a hunting/gathering life style to an agricultural one. And they are leveling off now, just as they did in the early centuries of the agricultural age.

In our case not only has the number of people increased dramatically in the past two hundred years, so too life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has improved even more dramatically for billions of people. This progress, both in numbers and in quality of life is unprecedented.

Unless you are an incurable misanthrope how can you want to return to the one billion level? Do you want to deny the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to six out of seven of your family and neighbors? That’s what it amount to unless you are also an incurable racist and just want to get rid of six out of seven Africans, Asians and Latin Americans.

The earth now has more intelligence and creativity than it had in all of its past ages combined. And most people everywhere—even the ones with limited intelligence and creativity— are better off now than they have ever been before in human history. Less violence, less poverty, better environments, better health, more food, more years of life, more pleasure, more leisure, more travel, less pain, more possibilities for … anything and everything. Instead of bemoaning the dramatic increase in populations we should shout hoorah and halleluiah. It is the greatest story of progress ever told!

It is true that more people means more demand for food and other resources. As the late economist and pioneer researcher on population issues, Julian Simon, wrote, “a human mind seldom comes unaccompanied by a human body.” Recent history has clearly shown how powerful creative minds have been in expanding the supply of food and other life needed resources. As a result, seven billion people are better off than one billion were two hundred years ago.

“Resources,” claimed Simon, “come out of people’s minds more than out of the ground or air. Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average. It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species. These [Malthusian] models simply do not comprehend key elements of people—the imaginative and creative.

“This is my long-run forecast in brief, the material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards.

“I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.”

Which, dear reader, are you?

Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill

P.S. My recent DVD program, Resources, Populations and Climate Change gives more detail on all these subjects. You can read and download the complete script free of charge. See also my new book, TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free-Market Liberal Democracy. (Chapter 18 is on populations.) Both can be found on our web site: www.hawkhill.com.

P.P.S. If you want to read an excellent summary of the contrast between doomster and boomster versions of resources, pollution and population, I also recommend an article from Wired, “The Doomslayer,” by Ed Regis.