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I am the inventor of VotePlusPlus, and the Vice Mayor of a tiny City in California. I was asked to run for office by a local bartender and minor celebrity, based on the success of her establishment and being a member of the City Council. She was recently appointed Mayor, which is how it’s done in California General Law cities. I had spoken to the Mayor about VotePlusPlus years ago, before the lockdown, and about my longing for better quality leadership in government as is properly owed to the people. Her proposal that I serve locally intrigued me. Would that be a distraction or an essential learning experience?

Here’s what I can say now: local American politics are as adversely affected by a broken election system as the top level positions and most powerful offices in the nation. It’s not just me saying so. Unlike most other Councilmembers, I RSPV’d to all invitations to meet and greet State officials. That taught me their perspectives on state and national politics, and their more pure motivations for improving public welfare and prosperity. Party affiliation seldom had anything to do with it. At every level, they seemed resigned, bewildered and cynical. Only when I suggested that the system that selected them and the fights they had to perpetrate or endure to win were irrelevant and wasteful of their actual contribution did they seem to exhibit any hope for the future. I can also say that when you are part of the pomp and ceremony of government service a malaise tends to settle in. If you read your lines and play the part then you can strike another day off the calendar. Nobody who is sincerely motivated to make a difference can be satisfied with that level of thoughtlessness.

I am more motivated than ever to see the VotePlusPlus system enacted. We don’t need any laws to change. We just need to build it and watch it run. It can start as an informational supplement to local or regional elections and grow from there. Someday, we should be ratifying a credible proposal for governmental structure and leadership posts, not having to select the most bombastic or toxic celebrity from the media roster. Please join me in promoting true reform, which will positively affect your personal lives more than you may realize.

What makes them tick? You’ve probably wondered about what’s wrong with folks and you’re told the world is populated with evil. Then, you can choose up sides and go fight. The problem becomes: “Then why are there evenly matched hoards duking it out on the battlefield?” This makes no sense.

When you declare something to be evil you are saying two things: you are condemning an action and calling for redress. Essentially, you want an adjustment of reward in the form of a punishment to be forcibly applied to the perpetrator. We call this zeal a “sense of justice” Most of us have it and long to see it fulfilled.

Therefore, you had better have a solid, practical definition of what constitutes good and evil in the first place. In that world, saints are praised and given gifts while scoundrels deserve far less of the spoils. In a civilized world where comforts and protection abound, the way we administer and apportion reward is by offering the size of your house, the numbers in your bank account, the quality of the food you eat, the scenery you see outside your window, and the fun you can have on your speedboat (or “no boat for you!”)

If this process were fair you wouldn’t immediately hate the billionaire on the yacht or the guy speeding past you in the Ferrari. At VotePluPlus we think this process of adjustment based on merit must be fair and you should demand it. Living in a world of corruption is misery.

Since we used civilized means to reward merit, then why not define good and evil to be logically related? In fact, we can do that in a way that does not judge and condemn others. Let’s start by agreeing that each and every person here has infinite, incalculable value. You therefore can’t buy them, you can’t own them, you can’t mistreat them – at least not fairly. You have to consider everyone’s inherent dignity and care for them when they can’t go it alone. Clearly, that’s a historically moral principle so we’ll start there.

That means that good and evil don’t reside inside a person and you can’t even tell anything about the part of them that looks out at you and reacts to the world. By definition, that essence is completely private and you’ll never truly know them as well as you know your own perspective. That’s called being an individual and that’s what makes all of us interesting.

What is “good” then is “anything that is thought to help the cause of our community, at a personal scale within our families and at a global scale within our countries”. Evil is just the stuff that goes down that clearly wrecks things, usually perpetrated by people who have unfairly acquired the means to do so.  All of the basic local and national laws we naturally agree with within our culture probably already exactly fit this definition.

Now, let’s be even more precise about who’s here on the planet. Let’s form an estimate and feel free to form your own. On the spectrum between saints and scoundrels there are many sectors in between. Here’s one way to divide it up: 10-20% of the population are incorrigible and irredeemable, to a mild or extreme degree. In principle, we have a sufficiently comfortable cage for them so the rest of us can get on with things without fear of their behavior. It is not easy to administer justice through law enforcement but that is a traditional and essential social service. The next 20-40% are those who claim to be able to offer a service or contribution to the group but try to get out of keeping their agreements, chronically – bureaucrats, employees who show up late, workers who skip town after leaving a substandard project behind, dishonest salesmen, former chairmen of the NASDAQ who run fraudulent investment firms. Sure, you can simply get caught up in something and get in over your head, but you’ll be seen by others in a negative  light when the truth comes out. The next 20-40% have figured out what they want to do in life and strive to make that great – effective medical personnel, traditional healers, inventive technologists, punctual employees, accomplished scientists, writers, and artists. We celebrate them, and rightly so. However, as wonderful as it is to find yourself in this category you probably have limitations. You probably know how to run your own business but not necessarily other businesses or the business of the world. I say we should leave you alone and let you get on with what you do best, and hope you receive great reward for your most effective contributions. Finally, there remains the 10-20% of us who know we were born with a mission. Somehow, we got instructions somewhere along the line about what to do here. It might have been a garbled message, but we know we heard something. We are content to take the lowliest job possible: working for the people at large and having 300 million bosses shouting at us to do better, provide more, and get it right each and every time. We are the leaders. We have a calling. We deserve to be elected, appointed, and supported within a system that holds us accountable to our oath of office. We can expect private jets, a security detail, fancy meals, and a worldwide audience ready to react to our every “tweet”. If you ask me, that’s a weird life.

That final category deserves to be in office and wield power. If power and force are decided upon by anybody else outside that category then the rest of us are in deep trouble. Check this view against what you see in the world today. It’s a pretty clear lens.

Laboratory science is not political science. Good science doesn’t trust itself. Science itself is based on rigorous, methodical investigation and evidential confirmation, not blind “trust”. Good scientists will probably acknowledge that nature has not given up entirely all of her secrets just yet and there may be a surprise or two around the corner. That’s why civilizations generally mandate controls and review before its politicians adopt one of possibly many diverse scientific views and direct the populace into one behavior or another, or invest in monumental projects that are scientifically assured not to collapse at the time they were conceived. On occasion, not everything goes well. That’s regrettable, but probably forgivable and even unavoidable considering the risks associated with governance and the wielding of power.

What makes politics much harder than science is having to figure out what’s best in the absence of perfect information and eternal truth. When politicians “believe” that they possess these impossible advantages, through rigid adherences or allegiances of any kind, they are more dangerous than otherwise. A politician generally believes they were called at an early age to want to solve problems, relieve suffering, create prosperity, and leave behind a legacy. By the time they are left standing in the winner’s circle at the end of the bloodbath caused by a standard election cycle, they are often unrecognizable people. Unwind that debacle back to the beginning and you’ll most often find a thoughtful and talented person who believes themselves capable and well-intentioned. The rare and unique skill of leadership is to be able to find a ruling that is best for all and sustainable well into the future. This can be accomplished by considering all the angles, listening to all available points of view, considering who will be affected, and closing your eyes and doing your thing. At that point, magic happens – or it’s supposed to.

There is nothing wrong with scientists entering politics, or politicians entering the field of science, just as it is not wrong for a rock musician to become mayor of your city or for your mayor to play in a rock band on weekends. However, there is no guaranteed advantage when it comes to effective leadership. All disciplines bring a measure of enlightenment in their own right to be appreciated, but VotePlusPlus says “let’s not over promote your field of study or career choice in the private sector.” Science can be especially valuable if studying outcomes that affect our ability to control nature and defend ourselves from the deterioration of a civilized life. So, let’s definitely listen. It’s all part of the bigger picture.

Ultimately, having the best and brightest, not the worst and the brightest, at the helm when crises occur, as they are virtually guaranteed to do as time moves forward, is something for all of us to long for and look forward to.

Should we be suspicious of leaders with unstable personal relationships?

“A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement (commonly referred to as a prenup), is a written contract entered into by a couple prior to marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal rights they acquire upon marrying, and what happens when their marriage eventually ends by death or divorce.” – Wikipedia

VotePlusPlus believes in the value of experimentation, refinement, and continual improvement. When you’re representing the interests of others, or accomplishing shared responsibilities, your methods and participation must be rewarded. Fear is a terrible motivator for doing anything, unless it’s running headlong into the woods.

The best way to ensure proper government is to grow it from the local phenomenon, but recognize that any flaws that were invisible or negligible at a small scale must be corrected over time when they are amplified by multiplication at the national level. A working, functional family scales to the local neighborhood, then to the town council, then to the regional board, then to the state legislature, then to the national parliament, and finally to the chief executive. It would be best to see evidence of that path displayed in the conduct and personal lives of leaders. The adage “lead by example” implies that the social model, the figurehead role, is actually an important part of the job.

History provides some positive profiles for role models, but many negative ones. It’s not just the deeds that changed the course of the world, it’s the circumstances leading up to those changes that could have been predicted.

The VotePlusPlus system will invite all constituents to describe their preferences about the public personae of their candidates, including educational and personal requirements. For example, some might believe “character doesn’t matter” in favor of raw aptitude, while others might think reputation and image are paramount. Regardless, the best match for the general views of a community, even if diverse, varied, or polarized, will be considered when presenting candidates, roles, and reporting structure to the citizens for their ratification. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to elect government? We think so, and we think it’s urgent to build and run such a system considering what we have all endured throughout history and what is now demanded by the present circumstances of the modern world.

America is and was a one-time phenomenon. The land is lavishly endowed with natural resources, including the world’s largest supply of fresh water, 5 ocean coastlines, the highest production of oil and natural gas, and the largest amount of arable land in the world. Yet, it was a mere 80 years after its inception as an independent nation before the nation collapsed into one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. Why?

The mistake was presuming that what worked for the wide-open spaces must be good for the civilized infrastructure of a dominant national population. No way has that scaled.

There is nowhere left on terrestrial Earth, or in the solar system for that matter, just waiting to support life and habitation from sea to shining sea like North America in the 1700’s. If you want to try your hand today at setting off for Antarctica, be my guest.

Rough justice of the American Old West was infamously unfair and violent. Despite some of the best opportunities the world had to offer at the time, many perished trying to eke out a subsistence living. There was no cooperatively organized civilization on the frontier – no railroads, no mail, and in many areas “no nothing”. The pioneering spirit of exploration and survival is much lauded, and deservedly so. There are many famous examples of extraordinarily hardy and successful community efforts resulting in either temporary or permanent settlements. However, when you wander among the streets of Paris you begin to realize there is something altogether sublime about Old World cooperative aesthetics and the traditions that lead to those remarkable results.

The other mistake was not evaluating the criteria for success at a regional or national level. The U.S. Founding Fathers debated amongst themselves, asking “How will this system of government, ratified by the Constitutional Congress, affect our future society?” That was altruistic and intellectually admirable, but flawed. The real question should have been the negative, stated as: “How will this system of government protect us from tyranny and corruption, by ensuring our leaders will represent the people and are likely to be among the best and brightest the population has to offer?” Clearly, it is evident that there were holes in the original plan. The plan did foresee future refinements in the form of constitutional amendments, legislative precedent, and election outcomes, but not much guidance was given on how to ensure the purity of any of the processes involved.

Another major issue that was not officially addressed was how to develop reliable information sources. When relegated solely to the competitive private sector all journalism will deteriorate into tabloid journalism, because “smut sells”. Information is a precious commodity, along with reliable, diverse intellectual opinions that afford insight. We are all susceptible to mood swings based on being shouted at by advertisers and repetitive, one-note sensationalists. We shouldn’t be blamed for that; we’re all just trying to concentrate on making a living and getting along. Seizing the giant media microphone does not entitle you to pollute the information pool. History teaches that censorship is not a remedy for this problem and actually makes the situation worse. Nobody wants to be told to “shut up” before they are allowed to speak, and when that happens people will inevitably react. VotePlusPlus does not have any specific recommendation at this time but we observe that we’ll never see an effective solution until we appoint some great leaders to figure out how to implement voluntary and welcome alternatives. I wouldn’t mind listening to “U.S. Radio”, as long as I could freely comment, turn it off, or go back to CNN. One might presume that corrupt leadership is the root cause of misusing an official news outlet for state propaganda. Solve that one and there’s obviously less to worry about.

Let’s reinterpret the lessons of the U.S. phenomenon and make the entire world just as, or more successful, including the great land of America itself.

No.

VotePlusPlus would like to offer some possibly counterintuitive advice, considering the state of the world at this time.

1. The discussion should become more general during a crisis, not less. When your village is being shelled you clearly need to get out of the way and cope. However, the ultimate solution to the crisis should not be about precisely how to run away, fight back, and survive. Better to get started right way on finding solutions that avoid the problem in the future, hopefully forever.
2. Find the root cause that explains what is happening. Go back in time as far as necessary to find out. Become convinced of one point of view or another but remain open to all. The more surprised you are at current events the more you should have seen it coming.
3. The more needless suffering and human tragedy the more likely there are no heroes on any side among those pulling the strings. Don’t join any opposing side unless you are forced to in order to survive. Refuse to be put into “lesser of the evils” or “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios. That’s usually nothing more than a predatory tactic to obscure the obvious “third alternative” that’s staring you in the face. Don’t join the team who craves dominance and advantage. Remember, they can turn on you as well someday.
4. Don’t misinterpret the silent lessons from nature. Yes, you are an animal but clearly of a special kind. Your purpose is to rise above running naked and killing anything that moves. Learn to get along under one roof and you won’t freeze to death when it rains. That’s what nature wants. It presents this challenge not so you’ll imitate what goes on out there, but so you’ll solve it.
5. Anarchy is one extreme and has never performed well for society. Absolute despotism has failed similarly at the other extreme. That’s a clue. There is some geometrically organized structure that will allow a good word, a smart proposal, a welcome relief, to originate from a central location and have a wide positive effect. Staffing such structures with unqualified, venal, or corrupt individuals will ruin them. Any system that is not specifically designed to protect you from bad leadership and does not employ constant refinement is actually dangerous.
6. Don’t be tempted to think that taking away luxuries from leaders in high office is going to fix things. Similarly, don’t be tempted to think term limits are the answer. If some charismatic, intelligent, and well-meaning leader is nailing their job and providing the direction that is needed for the community why boot them out arbitrarily or make them drive to work on a scooter? The issue is merit: lots of merit = plenty of reward. There’s nothing wrong with that unless the situation becomes unfair. What we see around us today is mostly unfairness and disparity so we’ve become angry and jaded.
7. Don’t be tempted to think that only the most aggressive and egotistical among us actually want to run for office. If that were so, things would be far worse. There are plenty of individuals in your community born to lead and capable of performing well in some position. The problem is that most of them never get a shot, or by the time they’ve struggled to get elected through competing, raising money, and pandering to the wealthy who control the media and the status quo they have made many gradual choices along the way. They’ve been forced to choose between proceeding within some form of personal compromise or dropping out. I have heard this first-hand from politicians and you can too if you ask the right questions and appeal to their former idealism. The current world-wide system rewards entirely the wrong approach and encourages a gradual decent into derangement, for those who were once formerly intelligent, visionary, and ambitious.
8. Don’t be tempted to think that depopulating an area, or removing an unwanted subgroup of the population, is going to make life better for those who remain. This mistake can be perpetrated through violence, social policy, mismanaged economic resources, or social demotivation, but they all cause destruction. Just ask Detroit, U.S.A or the country of Japan. If the birth rate falls far behind the death rate that’s a call to action for governments. In short, unattended or dismantled infrastructure can be more of a liability than none at all. It’s true that an unmanageable concentration of unmet human need can indeed be miserable, but if accommodated in a sustainable manner under responsible leadership, the growth and the advent of new generations generally propel the advancement of society.
9. Don’t engage in racism or exclusion of any kind, but be able to explain yourself. All traditions and close-knit cultures have aspects that are enormously beneficial for an integrated and diverse society, depending on what they are and the time and circumstances specific to the society as a whole. It may be unfortunate that borders were forced upon geographical areas which divided homogeneous cultures, but if we must live with the consequences we can embrace the lessons of mutual respect, cooperation, definition of and reward of merit, and common ground. At the very least, such rhetoric should be coming from the offices of privileged leadership. Anything else leads to eventual war mongering whereby the innocent ultimately pay the price.
10. Unless you can find a better proposal, VotePlusPlus would like to request your support. The sooner we try something that makes sense, the sooner we can look back on history with less regret. If you do find a better proposal, please let us know. We’ll support it.

The meaning of life does not mean making life meaner. Elon Musk thinks “There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality”, meaning this odd little video game we wake up in every day was probably created by a gamer, whose game studio was created by something else. It’s a telescoping and mind boggling confusion trying to figure out how may turtles carry each other on their backs, according to Hindu mythology, before you reach the world.

The nature of reality is impossible to state because it calls into question the nature of proof. Proof is a result obtained from a system of premises. Change those and proof goes out the window. Opinion, however, is something else entirely.

Belief is like proof, and often mistaken for it, when you decide you want to play nice with others. If you choose to become a recluse instead, you still think about nature, the animals and other living things. You might not like humans but it’s impossible to ignore life. When we agree, we agree to take turns. I talk, then it’s your turn. That’s called a conversation. It means you have to wait for me and hear what I have to say, then I must wait for you. Your thoughts change in the process, and so do mine. Therefore, time goes forward turn by turn, thought by thought. Seems like you’d lose track of time completely with no one to talk to. There is a reason we call “up” by a name and think it’s different than “down”. Same is true of colors, tastes, and emotions. If you are familiar with your community and locality, some of those ideas are accepted as normal. Sail away to foreign lands and suddenly all become very, very strange.

VotePlusPlus likes to recommend that personal belief, or disbelief, is your prerogative and your right. However, some good general advice is to choose something to believe that not only makes sense to you but has a proven positive effect on your well-being, as well as those around you. Looking backward at the beliefs that took hold during notable times in history it seems that we’ve seriously erred on numerous occasions, with disastrous consequences. One way to choose a belief is to think about the odd nature of reality. It’s as if by association with our everyday experience that you could imagine everyone suddenly disappearing, leaving you entirely alone. Would the stars go “poof”? There are debates in the scientific community about that, and there is no definitive argument against it. Therefore, the elusive “meaning of life” becomes much simpler: it’s social, stupid! If you believe that nature thought all this up, well nature probably wants us to get along and show the rest of the universe the way forward. Not sure we’re getting the highest possible marks at the moment, but we could. If this entire serious dream we can’t seem to avoid, with its continual breathing in and out nonsense, is a giant conversation with others swimming in the same soup, then we had better be mindful of our part in it. It’s one thing to be a good neighbor but it’s another to ensure a better world. Good personal intentions must scale, and I would like to see the definition of government altered to embrace the notion that it should be comprised of the best possible neighbors to the world that can possibly be located, promoted and empowered.

VotePlusPlus is going to have to explain this one. It’s not what you think.

The sole and primary responsibility of the rich is the same as for the poor: to thrive, there should not be a limit on thriving, so there should not be a limit on income, means, wealth, and the power of successful survival. We have been brainwashed into thinking that the abuses we observe that cause needless suffering are the result of unlimited wealth. If you stop to think about it, when wealth is utilized properly – plenty of food, clean water, transportation, conveniences, medical treatment, enriched arts and culture, and a generally improved quality of life – how could that possibly be a bad thing?

Yes, the rich get richer. That’s excellent, we say. So what’s the downside? The terrible part is when the so-called rich get away with egregious misdeeds and clearly demonstrate as individuals that they have zero regard for the public welfare, especially affecting the nearby people and communities surrounding them. Then, things lurch in entirely the wrong direction. This creates the ruination of the word “wealthy”, just like the word “government” being ruined. Perhaps we should come up with another name for a council of benevolent, articulate leaders who work diligently day in and day out for everyone’s collective interest within a structure imbued with the principles of representation and service. You’d probably respond: “Nice, but never seen that”.

When government attempts to limit abuse by limiting wealth, they’ve made the problem worse. if the best and the brightest leaders were installed into positions of prominence in the private and public sectors, the public sector being the specific focus of VotePlusPlus, they would “on schedule” call into question and receive an account from the world’s top companies and wealthiest individuals, asking them “So, what have you done for the people lately?”, starting with the cities and regions in which they reside and operate. Why don’t we ever see that? To us, it’s a natural consequence of simply reading the manual which explains your oath of office.

It is not advisable nor responsible for the rich to give to the poor. It’s like having concerned citizens hand out medicine. Most of us don’t prefer that; we prefer experts to handle the distribution of pharmaceuticals. Of course, our broken institutions, staffed by predatory maniacal individuals who are still in a state of extreme bloodthirst and self-promotion from having won their electoral media spectacle can’t possibly serve the needs of the people in that state of mind. So, given the choice of having a homeless person starve or applauding instances of individual charity, of course we’ll choose human relief. However, let’s be clear about it: there is a better way that deserves to be enacted, which is more predictable, reliable, and scales better without being dependent on having to constantly shame the rich, who generally turn a deaf ear or make overly celebrated token gestures, perhaps with ulterior motives. VotePlusPlus is committed to bringing about a world where the needs of the public are met by their leaders. The way to arrive there is through reforming elections, where the best and brightest can be promoted to represent you in the daily course of executing their appointed duties.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”, said Professor Marvel while operating the wizard machine in Oz. In the 1953 film “Lily” a young girl is comforted by puppets, until she remembers they are controlled by a carnival puppeteer. We don’t have any real idea of whether the voices we hear and the humans we interact with every day are actually all one voice with many faces, or some clever robotic images, or phantoms of our own imagination with no substance. Yet, we prefer not to be disconcerted and afraid, so we make some comfortable assumptions. In order to create a civilization, we must do this so we can agree on the outcomes of our personal interactions. “Faith” and “trust” are therefore considered mentally healthy, and for good reason.

When these ideals go wrong, we might end up adopting someone else’s fundamental truth about the nature of reality and forget our own assessments. If such beliefs cause us to be blocked by an ostensible deity who said “No!” to something good, or whose messages to us trickling down from the chain of privilege are punitive or shaming, we tend to lose hope, stop acting and cease striving for the greater good. To me, that’s a tactic perpetrated upon society to serve the competitive advantage of a few. It is difficult, or even impossible, to train oneself to ignore this type of shouting from on high, but it is perfectly fine to bang on the ceiling and tell them to be quiet.

VotePlusPlus makes this point: since it’s ultimately impossible to pin down an absolute interpretation of reality and how you fit into it, why not pick something nice? Something that will work well for you and the people you care about? I would find it disturbing to believe that the people around me are somehow unreal or all being manipulated by an unseen force with no free will. I could not prove otherwise, but that’s an icky scenario. I prefer to interpret each and every person I meet as having intrinsic, sovereign worth and to try to explore ways in which we could come to mutually beneficial agreement. That makes me happy so, why not?

I think the essence of democratic representation is to collect the ability to wield force and impact in such a way as to help facilitate, coordinate, enhance and defend our pursuits as individuals of a civilized life. Some people claim we would imitate nature and act out our inner “call of the wild”. I prefer to think that nature is telling us instead: “Get outta’ here, you silly humans. Learn how to build a house and get along with your neighbors. Otherwise, you won’t survive out here. You weren’t meant to.” However you see it, it’s still nice to know we can send a rescue helicopter when things go wrong in the outback.

When people sing together in a choir, they don’t lose their individuality. They just make a mighty and beautiful noise no single person could produce alone.

1. Propose some logical moral framework that is not predicated upon overriding anyone’s personal conclusions.

2. Invite unhappy people or antisocial individuals to voluntarily join a group that consistently practices that type of framework.

3. Let the social influence of immersion do its work.

The more aberrant or troubled the individual, the more they should probably be isolated from others like themselves with similar problems. Concentrating individuals in this condition to congregate in violent hospital wards, homeless camps or prison yards is a bad idea if it can possibly be avoided. Civilization might have gone wrong in dealing with this pervasive issue that some are declaring rampant in modern society. Following the framework principle, it’s obvious that there’s a necessary social and community component to finding a better treatment. A single family or concerned citizen alone probably can’t handle an acute situation with a family member or neighbor. Therefore, tackling this thorny problem calls for more sound information to become available that recommends any number of workable moral frameworks, and more people to begin practicing in them while proving the benefits for themselves and others along the way.

VotePlusPlus asserts that general mental health will improve if the electoral system is reformed. That’s quite a claim! The logic goes like this: when leadership speaks, it’s deliberately louder than the soft chatter of the daily grind. That’s how direction and coordination is disseminated among a constituency. If leadership is acting in a truly representative fashion, there is a correlation to some nonjudgmental moral framework. The public trust is motivated by the idea that cooperation and inclusion is best for the advancement of society. If that actually begins to function, the social pressure to obtain one’s personal reward while others are also getting their fair share can be enormous, and quite natural to absorb. Within a healthier community, outliers who are struggling should have a better time of it. Wherever they turn, it is more likely they will find an opportunity to relate without distress, provocation and combative conflicts. Better practices are “in the air” at that point, and I for one long for a better atmosphere.