Proposition 8

It was semi-refreshing news last week that a three-judge panel of the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to declare that California’s Prop 8 violates the civil rights of folks like me. The “semi-“ part of this news is about the dissenting judge’s vote. Generally I approve of dissent. Democracy works best when we all can speak what’s in our hearts. However, I’ve spent much of my nearly eight decades overhearing the comments of folks who think folks like me should be snuffed, or at least denied the rights and privileges of ordinary American citizens. I quake at this glimpse into the thought processes of that third judge. I’d thought judges were folks who’d gotten farther along than most of us toward balance and fairness.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if a lot of this bru-ha-ha could have been avoided if we’d all understood two things. The first is that “Civil Union” is a very sweet phrase. It can describe a kind of marriage more rewarding than the “only-one-person-can-wear-the-pants-in-this-relationship” kind of marriage that all too many folks settle into. We might do well to adopt it as the defining phrase for the legal and financial aspect of marriage for all of us. If a couple seriously agrees to attempt the discipline of a truly civil union, with all the on-going consideration of the other this would demand of both parties, there might be less incivility in marriage, and fewer divorces. When divorce is unavoidable the parting partners might more readily be restored as friends.

This should work, if the license issued or cancelled gives us equally the thousand or so federally sanctioned economic and political benefits that married couples today get from the feds. Certainly it should not give some of us only what our particular state grants us, while others get the whole enchilada.

After getting that license, we might go to our houses of worship to share this pledge with beloved family and friends for a marriage ceremony, if those traditions are meaningful to us. Certainly we wouldn’t want to coerce anyone to marry us who would prefer to have us snuffed.

This society was, after all, from the time it was defined by our Constitution, one that claimed it would not coerce anyone into believing or disbelieving any particular religious doctrine. Though we have not always lived up to that fine sentiment.

This brings up the second thing that might have helped us avoid much of this mess, the beliefs of the “Pilgrims”. Every Thanksgiving we honor, in caricature, the Plymouth Colonists, who ended up contributing in a profound way to our Constitution’s First Amendment.

The Mayflower passenger roster was about 40% made up of church separatists (later known as "Pilgrims") who played a critical role in the middle of the Atlantic, averting a mutiny against the captain. The crew would have turned the ship toward disaster in trying to return to England across the stormy Atlantic in November. As a result of this skillful negotiation, at landfall our Pilgrims were put in charge of organizing the colony. The “Mayflower Compact” deeply influenced the writing of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. 

The Pilgrims were deeply religious, but their “separatism" was about keeping the secular affairs of state and the strictures of church separate. Mentioned specifically in their doctrine is belief that marriage is not a sacrament, as claimed by other Christian sects. It is merely an economic pledge to protect spouse and children. This was one of the “heresies” that brought persecution and imprisonment on them in England, first under a Catholic king, and then under Church of England and Puritan regimes. These Separatists thought of themselves as First Century Christians hewing to a doctrine preceding later accretions of more imperialistic intent.

Our democracy is trumpeted around the world as the best form of governance for all people whatever their religious bent. So we must include our forebears' insight that, whatever religious constrictions might apply, marriage is a secular matter that has legal and financial consequences impacting a couple’s inheritance rights, taxes, passports etc. quite separate from their religious affiliations. Not allowing some loving unions the same Federal financial and legal benefits as others makes no sense if this really is to be a model for governance worldwide, as our politicians claim.

We still have a long struggle ahead, all the way to the U.S Supreme Court.

Singing Candidates - Who's the Better Artist for President?

Whoopeee! Finally some of my ideas are being taken seriously at the highest level!

This past week both President Obama and his closest (for now) competitor Mitt Romney were auditioning for “Singer for President”. In jurying their performances it seemed to me that Prez Obama has the better ear, sense of timing and overall higher rating, but I’d like to hear from the other judges.

Of course in my suggested guidelines for a chakra-balanced Presidential Cabinet the art of song was assigned to the Secretary of the Department of Treasure. A fully qualified Artist for President would have to pass scrutiny in the arts of gardening, portrait painting, fine cuisine, sculpture, poetry and dance, as well as song, in order to have lines of communication fully open between the President and each member of his or her Cabinet. Therefore these two candidates will both have to submit to at least six more contests. Score so far: Obama 1, Romney 0.

The main focus of my 1983-84 campaign was the idea that if every citizen were truly an artist, any president we elect will by default be an artist. “The Nation is the Artwork; we are the artists creating it” and the only difference between being or not being an artist is that artists take aesthetic responsibility for what we create, and for cleaning up the messes we leave in the creative process. Ronald Reagan was an artifact, not an artist, a highly skilled practitioner of the art of persuading people to believe things harmful to public benefit, while ignoring the messy consequences of his artistry. Today there is so much mess around us because too few see ourselves as artists. Few are willing to take on the disciplines.

Think of this: If we live as if the future will reveal itself as the consequence of rigorous art practice, it just might do that! 

Follow Up to : Science As Art

Last September CERN’s physicists announced they had observed neutrinos exceeding the speed of light by about 60 billionths of a second. Theoretically since 1905, light speed, 186,282 miles per second, has been the limit. Enthusiasts claimed this was proving Einstein wrong, but I’m not so sure. I think they forgot something that sci-fi addicts will never forget, once we returned to the planet of the apes only to discover a great deal more time has elapsed on Earth than it did for us while we were gallivanting around in space in our warp-speed vehicle.

In November CERN reported on a repeat of the test with essentially the same result. Questions remain. Might time dilation explain the difference? The receiving site is several hundred miles south of the originating site, at a latitude closer to the Earth’s larger wasteline. As the planet turns on its axis the destination site is traveling at slightly higher speed than is the more northerly origin site, thus creating a minor distortion in measuring the neutrino’s travel time.

My sci-fi question is a little different. At light speed, the hypothetical internal clock of each neutrino runs slower, so, in effect the neutrino is traveling faster than light speed as measured by clocks at either end. Wouldn’t the only way to measure the actual speed of neutrinos moving at or near light speed be to invent a clock that could travel with the neutrino? Probably this is out of reach of currently available technologies. How can Einstein’s limit on light speed be invalidated before someone’s calculation can show the 60 billionths of a second of excess speed is more than the tiny difference in what those stationary and moving clocks would have recorded?

Still, I kind of like the idea that the light speed barrier may have been penetrated, because this opens a door for study of spooky things I’ve experienced, like psycho-kinesis, extra sensory perception, entrained thoughts and images between people separated by great distances, karma and such. Some such things are hinted at in the private writings of quantum physicists as well as the public works of artists.

After all, science is the art of discovering really new things, not just the collection of data on what is already known, isn’t it?

Corporations as People

Stephen Colbert’s biggest issues so far seem to be whether corporations are persons and if money equals speech. As “An Artist for VP” I’m taking charge of the National Science Foundation, as well as a number of other things this nation rarely trusts artists with. I suggest we do some rigorous scientific research to resolve these daunting questions. We must stop them bollixing up the minds of the nation’s nine supposed wisest people.

First we have to attach an electro-cardiograph to subject corporations’ chests, to find out if they have heartbeats. Some care must be taken that a sneaky CEO doesn’t substitute his or her heart to be tested instead of that of the corporation in question. An alert technician may quickly detect the subterfuge, because many CEOs have bionic hearts that beat with a machine-like regularity, unlike the erraticism of the true human heart. However we all have to be en guarde every moment, because corporate subterfuge of our culture is ongoing in every moment. Citizens Unite!

In any case, if certified ECG machines determine the corporation has no detectable beating muscle pumping blood and love from its chest, throughout its circulatory system, an immediate operation should be performed. We must search for a heart, a) to determine if it is actually there, though stopped, and b) if there, whether it is stopped permanently or can be shocked back into life. If the corporation is found to have no such human heart we have proof it never was a person. It should never have had the rights and privileges of personhood, though I would argue it should still try to cultivate the personal responsibilities of being honest, forthright, etc.

On the other hand if the corp has a heart that is not beating and can’t be revived, it is dead, whether person or not. The corp is a corpse. So, should a corpse have the right to influence elections? Maybe we could forgive one or two or a small handful of dead people who influence an election now and again, simply because they forgot to pull their names off the rolls before dying. However, since corporations were first granted the status of persons in the late 19^th century they have tended to assume this unique kind of personhood is collective personhood, in the persons of all their executives, employees, shareholders and customers. Corporate persons feel they deserve much more political influence than the rest of us persons. That just doesn’t seem right. All those individual execs, company drones, shareholders and customers also have the right to cast their individual votes, in effect giving them multiple lines of influence, each as many as the number of corporations he or she is connected with, plus the one man one vote thing that the rest of us have. Doesn’t this sound like perversion of the democracy we are supposed to be so superior for?

And then the SuperPacs bring us the issue of money as speech, but that’s for the Artist for VP’s next blog entry.

Politics as Art

Someone asked me recently if I would consider running as Stephen Colbert’s Vice Presidential pick. I’m considering it, though he hasn’t asked me yet. I am prepared for any eventuality. Certainly aspiring to be VP is a step down from my former aspiration, but I console myself that the position is unlikely to be quite as thoroughly unpleasant as that of President.

Of course, nearing my 80^th birthday, these days I’m older than Ronald Reagan was when he started losing his mind as President. Maybe that’s what we really need today: A mindless person a heartbeat away from the presidency. Following Sarah Palin may not be such a bad career choice. Can I make as much money at it as she has? If so it would certainly help subsidize the book-giveaway program I’d like to launch.

I may have lost my mind already even before this campaign begins, so perhaps I risk less in the land of political suffering than do most of our best and brightest.

Go to www.amend2012.org to support a constitutional amendment to take personhood back for real live people!
"Robert Reich And A Scribbling Sharpie On One Of The Most Dangerous Rulings In America | MoveOn.Org" can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/yvcz1p

The Art of Economics

More and more I think about the grossly misperceived art form of economics. Some folks believe economics is a precise science of money, governed by mathematical formulas, the furthest opposite of art they could possibly imagine. They forget that ultimately all science is a form of art, and when science forgets that, it just becomes tyrannical nonsense.

I'm deliriously happy to see that top drawer economists Joseph Stiglitz and Jeff Madrick apparently agree with me. They did a teach-in for the Occupy Wall Street movement over last weekend. Stiglitz said "We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving." Although what I'd rather see than more regulations is just remove the money and let the traders instead spend their time gambling with paint and clay and stuff like that.

The ancient Greek word roots that eco- and -nomics come from mean "home management" or "dwelling place law" so the word really means study of the fundamental laws of sharing our beloved planet with all life forms. That requires a very high level of art skills. Money is not the measure, it's just a lubricant. Wall street, where this lubricant is slung around at excessively high speed, is a very slippery place.

One slippery idea is that the only healthy economy (personal or national) is one in which money is constantly growing. Such an economy just skids the rich into being richer, the poor poorer, and our shared air and water dirtier and scarcer on a global scale. I'm all for growth economies if something else besides that slippery lubricant is what's growing. Things like fairness, intelligence, creativity, ability to care, diverse kinds of identity, rewarding relationships, and knowledge of what is needed to preserve good things of this planet for our descendants. These are characteristics recommended for the President's Cabinet that I've redesigned, in the Appendix to my book. In my opinion that would provide the only growth economy that could really help preserve for us a healthy range of art resources, over the long term.

Science as Art

In the news last week was an announcement that physicists at CERN’s huge particle accelerator in Switzerland believe they have observed neutrinos exceeding the speed of light by about 60 billionths of a second, in traveling about 730 miles. Theoretically since 1905, light speed, 186,282 miles per second, has been the limit. With such a rift looming within accepted science, of course this announcement is provisional and the team is asking other physicists to test their results.

Well! I’m always thrilled when a sacred tenet of science is jostled on its pedestal, suggesting that science after all is the art of discovering really new stuff, rather than being a repository of unchangeable fact. After all it is a form of art, not art’s opposite.

In the 1960s and 70s, for seventeen years my life was entangled with that of an astronomer whose colleagues were leading physicists of the time. On hearing I was a sculptor, some of these esteemed beings would volunteer their opinion that science is actually a branch of art. Some would even encourage my inclinations toward trampling in their fields. So I take great pleasure in expressing my opinions about this new violation of the rules, for if the CERN observation is confirmed, it might open windows for some ideas proposed in my Artist for President campaign!

But first: that’s a big if … maybe the observation has an explanation. How about time dilation? The neutrinos get to their destination having traveled at least at light speed. The internal clock of each neutrino runs slower at that speed. Meanwhile the time recorded by clocks at either end indicate the neutrinos get from start to finish slightly faster than expected. Is this a false reading coming from relying on stationary clocks, when clocks aboard the neutrinos moving at light speed could be the only ones recording the correct travel time? The calculation needed, it seems to me, is whether the 60 billionths of a second of excess speed can be explained by the tiny difference in what the stationary and moving clocks would have recorded.

Hmmm. Have I just talked anyone out of the idea that the light speed barrier may actually have been penetrated? I hope not, ‘cause I do want to explore possibilities that are suggested if the barrier is permeable after all. Might we find out that spooky things like extra sensory perception, psycho-kinesis, karma and the like actually have scientific explanations? We need such spooky things to keep us on our toes, so we don’t sink as readily into conviction that we already know all we need to know.

Is there a difference between science (or politics) and other arts? I suggest the only difference is that each art has its own disciplines, and we get better at whatever art we practice by pursuing and growing its particular disciplines zealously, over time.