Joelle Steele's Blog - SOCIAL ISSUES

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Relationships * Spirituality * Miscellaneous

06/17/2024: Grow A Backbone

I used to walk through the skid row area when I went to the flower market at 3:00 a.m. in downtown Los Angeles. I became accustomed to being panhandled by homeless people during my 18 years in southern California. I was twice mugged at knife-point when I was living in my car. My apartments in Venice Beach were burgled five times. I was living in Los Angeles during the time of the Rodney King Riots and the Northridge Earthquake. I've been stalked twice.

We live in a dangerous world, a dangerous planet. I know that even now, in my little neighborhood in semi-rural Washington state, I'm not completely free of danger. I woke up one night to the sounds of someone coming over my back fence, and when I yelled at him he ran across my backyard and over another fence. One afternoon, I went to the grocery store, and when I came home, there was a strange beat-up car idling in my driveway and there was a man trying to take the screen off the window next to my front door. I stopped my car, honked my horn several times in a row, and the man ran away from the front porch and got into the car where another man drove them away.

The important thing is to protect yourself the best that you can without becoming paranoid about it. If you don't want to be a victim, stop acting like one. Take basic safety measures such as locking your doors. Then go out and live your life. When I leave my house and am gone for an entire day, I always take my external hard drive with me, because if someone manages to break in and take my computer, I won't lose what's on it, and I have tens of thousands of files that I can't recreate.

Another important thing is to grow a backbone. Stop expecting someone else to fix your problems or those of your friends and family and society in general. Step up and do something. I once pulled a mugger off an elderly little Asian woman in West L.A. and on more than one occasion I have mediated disputes between my neighbors and the tenants in the properties I managed in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Los Angeles County.

Don't just stand there, DO SOMETHING. Stop being such a coward and at least try to make a difference. You don't have to be a crime stopper, but you can at least let the police know when something is going on in your neighborhood or your place of business/employment that is illegal or dangerous. Volunteer your time to help others in need, even when you are not any better off than they are. You, the individual, are the key to fixing what's wrong in the world.

05/23/2024: Navigating the Social Media Rumor Mill

In today's world we are faced with what many experts are calling an "infodemic," an unprecedented amount of false and misleading information that is adversely affecting the ability of many people to form rational opinions and make sensible and sane decisions because they can't easily distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies. Social media has become a great wasteland of rumors, conspiracy theories, fake news, fraudulent scams, hoaxes, and propaganda.

It's easy to come across all kinds of second-hand information and uninformed opinions. I have run into many people who spew out all kinds of anti-this and anti-that hearsay opinions when they have zero first-hand information or factual evidence to offer about the subject. In many cases, those people tend to believe what they hear from those they believe to be credible sources. Their good friend Josh posts or shares something and so they believe it must be true. Despite being literate people, they simply believe Josh and don't bother to check the facts for themselves. His opinion reflects their beliefs and that's good enough for them. This most often happens because in many cases the facts are simply far more complicated than the blurb on a social media post. Here's an example of just how complicated those facts can be:

Years ago, my friend Mark overheard an Apple employee on the phone saying that Microsoft stole the pull-down menu system from Apple. As a dedicated Apple user, Mark believed this and bad-mouthed Microsoft for years, until I explained to him how copyright works and what the courts uncovered in years of litigation in Apple Computer, Inc. vs. Microsoft Corp. (1992).

This lawsuit hinged on several elements of the Apple interface and Microsoft's Windows interface. The pull-down menu was just one small aspect of the interface, and that was part of the problem: Not everything can be protected by copyright, in particular an idea or a concept composed of many smaller or lesser ideas and concepts. In the instance of this particular lawsuit, despite the best efforts of Apple designers, there were aspects of their interface that simply defied the criteria that intellectual property requires to be copyright protectable. And, some of those same aspects used by both Apple and Microsoft, including the pull-down menu, had already been in use previously by Xerox in their Star Information System. In other words, they weren't Apple's or Microsoft's to copyright in the first place. Also mentioned in the lawsuit was the use of a mouse by Apple and also by Microsoft. Again, the mouse was not invented by Apple or Microsoft. In fact, its earliest incarnation was waaaaaay back in 1946 when the roller ball was invented and used with computers by the military.

It took me two hours of reading legal transcripts to reduce it down to what I just wrote in the last paragraph. But here's how you can learn to distinguish fact from fiction in the information you encounter every day on social media. We'll start by defining two similar but very different forms of the most common types of inaccurate information:

Misinformation. This is false information that is spread, without intent to mislead, but rather because we hear something, misinterpret it, or simply forget the details. This misinformation can spread like wildfire in social media where it's shared with others, sometimes being repeatedly altered by the recipients who add something to it or share it outside of its original context. Most misinformation is hearsay or misinterpretation that's never been fact-checked. It spreads by word of mouth when you tell someone about the misinformation you saw, heard, or read about, and you unintentionally pass it along.

Most misinformation is ridiculously benign, such as a post titled "Mermaids spotted off the coast of Santa Barbara," accompanied by a Photoshopped image of mermaids on a beach or swimming in the water. But, misinformation can also be cruel and malicious when an unconfirmed rumor – again, hearsay – is spread and hurts someone.

Disinformation. This is also false information, sometimes called anti-information. But unlike misinformation, it is spread deliberately, with intent, to mislead, misguide, or deceive others into believing something which, if fact-checked, is very easily proven to be untrue. Disinformation is biased, consists of manipulated facts, and is essentially negative and even sensationalized propaganda. It can be spread to serve the purpose of a government, a politician, a business, or an individual, and in most cases, it is destructive and even dangerous.

isinformation is most easily recognized because it is almost always set within an "us" versus "them" context. In recent years, disinformation has been the propaganda playground of politicians throughout the United States.

Opinions can usually be recognized because they are most often of the "agree" or "disagree" variety. But some can sound like a person is stating a fact: "He's a wife-beater," or "She embezzled the funds," or "They take advantage of their employees," or "Their cars are death machines," etc. Opinions found in comment sections often lack any verifiable facts to back them up.

As you can see, not every social media post that looks like the truth is the truth. So, please don't be lazy and irresponsible by sending or sharing misinformation, disinformation, or opinions about anyone or anything unless you have some hard facts to back them up. Only you can clean up social media.

11/04/2023: Justice Comes in Many Forms

For most people, justice means that someone gets what they deserve. But that is only a small part of what justice is about. In the greater scheme of things, justice is an ideal. It is all about our moral values, a moral code to which we aspire to abide by for the good of ourselves and others.

To be sure everyone maintains the same moral values, we need to maintain law and order. This is where, when keeping the peace, justice must be achieved. This is known as Retributive Justice, which punishes people who break the rules. This is what shows like Law & Order are about.

But there are other forms of justice too, and not all of them are achieved throughout the United States or anywhere else in the world. They are only a dream for most people.

Environmental Justice. This means treating all people fairly when it comes to their environmental obstacles and burdens as well as their good fortune and benefits.

Social Justice. This means treating people equally in all aspects of life, regardless of their race, sex, religion. The U.S. Constitution attempts to achieve this type of justice.

Distributive Justice. This means distributing assets equally within a society. This is what socialism is about, and most countries, including the U.S., have at least a few socialistic programs to address the needs of their citizens.

Procedural Justice. This means making legal decisions in a fair and unbiased manner. This is what the U.S. Congress does. They are lawmakers who must make laws that uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Restorative Justice. This means to compensate people who have been treated unfairly. This is most frequently achieved through the Civil Courts (e.g., Small Claims Court, Superior Court, Supreme Court) in the United States.

Because justice is an ideal, and one that we can all agree must be upheld in one form or another, it is especially important to understand that when justice is handed out by a court decision or a new law or interpretation of a law, not everyone will always agree that justice was achieved. And so, we must all attempt to understand what justice means in all its forms, and then we must fulfill our roles in helping make justice a reality, particularly by supporting laws that are fair and just for all, and also by participating in our civic duties as jurors and exercising our right to vote.

07/17/2023: Volunteering and Philanthropy

I wish I had a ton of money so that I could be a full-time philanthropist. I have only been able to afford donating money on a small scale, knowing every little bit helps. I have always believed in giving as much as you can of your resources and time without expecting anything in return. I believe that if you donate money or things and then write them off on your taxes that you are not giving in the true spirit of giving. To that end, I have never written off a donation.

I have often given when I really couldn't afford to give. There just always seemed to be people who need help more than I did. Some actually paid me back, not because I required it or asked them to do so. I also helped people who needed more education to find better jobs. In that regard, over the years, I have sponsored small scholarships at several community colleges that offered vocational certificates. I have also donated money and time to a variety of animal charities. In fact, for many years, I gave 10% of all the proceeds from my website sales to animal charities and vocational certificate programs at local colleges. And, I have also donated things, such as art supplies to young artists and three computers to individuals I knew.

I strongly believe that everyone should be willing to give whatever they can, because it is so important to help others. It is, very simply, the right thing to do. In addition to giving money, I have also done a lot of volunteer work. I probably got that from my mother since she was always volunteering to do something. My earliest volunteer efforts were from the ages of 12 to 14 with my mother when she was doing hearing tests through Quota International. She had some training in this and was one of the volunteers administering the tests, and I worked as her assistant. I also stood behind the tables and helped her sell baked goods and assorted things at white elephant sales. From the ages of 15 to 17, I was a tutor to my fellow students in reading and English.

As an adult living in the San Francisco Bay Area from ages of 20-22, I participated in several sit-ins protesting the war in Vietnam, and at the same time read and wrote letters for hospitalized veterans who had just arrived stateside from Vietnam. And from 24 to 27, I was busily fund-raising and picketing businesses, first for Ralph Nader's Consumer Action and later for a local group called Consumers Act Now. In southern California, from the ages of 31 to 35, I was volunteering with the homeless, battered women, and troubled teens, before I turned my attention to several non-profits, always doing procurements (getting "things" as opposed to money). In particular I spent fifteen years doing procurements for an organization that catered to the needs of other smaller non-profits.

I spent a lot of time going through the basements and storerooms of hospitals to find items that could be used by the free clinics supported by that larger non-profit. I was shocked at the perfectly good furniture and supplies that were cast aside by these large institutions – such incredible waste! No wonder hospital bills are so enormous.
From the ages of about 36 to 45, I did a lot of editing and typesetting of newsletters for a dozen or more small non-profits throughout southern California, including groups that supported animals, gays/lesbians, nature preservation, and the homeless. In the Monterey area, from ages 50 to 54, I donated my time tutoring students in English and English literature, and also provided editorial and production services for "The Quarterly," a newsletter of the Swedish Finn Historical Society – not a charity, but still a non-profit.

I also devoted many years of my life to the care of my own cats as well as to the welfare of other cats. I have written about and spoken out about my opinions regarding feline population control and breeding: Millions of perfectly adorable and healthy cats are destroyed in shelters every year throughout the world. This alone makes for an unarguable case in favor of spaying and neutering. Along those same lines, the deliberate and intentional commercial breeding of cats for characteristics appealing only to humans, and that carry known or potential health risks for the cats, should be abolished. Not only is this practice unconscionably cruel to these innocent creatures, but it is unnecessary and irresponsible given the innate beauty of cats and the enormous number of perfectly wonderful cats and kittens readily available for adoption everywhere. I feel exactly the same when it comes to spaying and neutering of dogs, stopping the breeding for characteristics and, of course, puppy mills.

And so, my biggest volunteer efforts have always been the ones that were closest to my heart: working with cats, the animals I love so much. I volunteered with low-cost/no-cost spay and neuter clinics because as many as 1.5 million cats are euthanized every year throughout the United States simply because their owners neglect to stop them from reproducing and creating an overpopulation of cats for whom there are not enough suitable homes. This is due to not having the money to do it or due to ignorance of why spaying and neutering are so critical. This is an important crusade of mine.

Also while in southern California, I worked with three different feral cat colony management groups to trap, spay/neuter, and provide medical attention to feral cats before releasing them back to their colonies. The purpose of this was to prevent these animals from spreading disease among themselves and to neighboring non-feral feline populations. In volunteer work with cats, I often worked directly with handling cats, but I also did a lot of writing to draw attention to what these various non-profit groups were doing and how people could participate by donating things, money, and time towards those efforts.

After moving to Lacey, Washington, I decided I was done volunteering. But, oh no, not quite yet. A student of mine wrangled me into helping people who were downsizing and needed help moving. My volunteer job was to meet with the downsizer, find out what they wanted and needed to take with them, give to friends or family, donate to a charity, and sell at a garage or estate sale. I did this about four times a year for five years. And then, finally, I quit volunteering.

I don't miss working in most volunteer groups. It seems that in so many cases there are always some volunteers who don't take the work seriously. They treat it like a hobby that they can pursue when it suits them, as opposed to when it is best for the cause and for the rest of the volunteers. When I commit to a cause, I'm always going to show up, always do what's needed, never complain about what I'm asked to do, and always be respectful of the other volunteers. Wish others were more like that. It was my mother's chief complaint about volunteering. So, adios to volunteering.

09/16/2021: America Needs A Better Education System

Lack of education is at the root of almost every one of America's social problems. Ignorance and illiteracy are the primary causes of most crimes, of unemployment and poverty, and of racial and religious prejudice and intolerance. Want to make any nation great? Provide an educational system that focuses on the long term goal of getting young people self-sufficient and gainfully employed when they finish high school.

In the United States, the basic Kindergarten through 12th grade system is weak and ineffective. It has been on a steady decline since the 1980s and more so in recent years. As classes grow larger, teachers have more difficulty focusing on the needs of the individuals who are ahead of or behind the rest of the class. No two students will ever perform to the same standards because every student is different. That doesn't mean that we should doom the slower students to failure or bore the life out of the ones who are burning brighter. There are solutions for this and for almost everything else in school.

But the bigger picture is the structure of public and private schools. It needs to change, and dramatically so. We need teachers to have their fingers pressed firmly on the pulse of employment trends in everything from blue collar to white collar jobs and to incorporate that information into the curriculum. To make this happen, we need to change the way schools operate and what they teach.

Schools should be designed to accommodate the basic needs as well as the different goals that students have. This is my personal draft of how that might look:

Kindergarten through 6th Grade (Ages 5 through 11)
Emphasis: Basic Living Skills
Academics: Reading; Writing; Basic Arithmetic; Typing & Computer Usage; Foreign Language; Art; Music; Critical Thinking & Decision Making; Communication Skills (speech); and Physical Fitness
Life Skills: Health & Nutrition; Cooking; Laundry & Cleaning; Smart Shopping; and Money Management

High School, 7th through10th Grade (Ages 12 through 15)
Graduation for those continuing on to a mandatory 2-year trade school or community college to obtain a Vocational Certificate or Associate of Arts degree.
Emphasis: Prep for Trade School or VC/AA Degree at Community College
Academics: Reading (relevant fiction & non-fiction); Writing (grammar & composition); Practical Math  & Geometry (both for use in daily life and most jobs); Speed Typing & Computer Usage (more sophisticated programs and basic programming); Foreign Language; History & Current Events (US & World); Political Science (Constitution & Law); Comparative Religions; Cultural Studies; Basic Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, & Physics; Practical Art (design); Music; Critical Thinking & Decision Making (advanced); Advanced Communication Skills (public speaking); and Physical Fitness
Life Skills: Advanced Health & Nutrition, Cooking, Shopping, and Money Management; Career Planning; and Basic Job Skills and Job search techniques, including interviewing.

High School, 11th and 12th Grade (Ages 16 through 18)
Emphasis: Advanced Career Planning and College Selection
Academics: Reading (classics); Writing (advanced composition); Advanced Algebra & Geometry; Advanced Computer Programming; Foreign Language; Advanced Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, & Physics; Art & Art History; Music & Music History; Communication & Public Speaking; and Physical Fitness
Life Skills: Career Planning, College Selection; Scholarships & Financial Aid; Selecting Possible Majors; Leadership Skills

This curriculum is needed because over the last 30 or so years, most parents have failed their children miserably by neglecting to teach them basic life skills. These include the basics of health and nutrition; accurate sex education; how to interview, work, and hold a job; how to manage money; how to cook, do laundry, and clean house; how to plan their lives and careers; how to find a job, interview for a job, and hold a job. Every elementary school student should be required to take life skills classes in fifth and sixth grade taught by teachers who have these skills and are up-do-date on all of them.

In more recent years, most parents don't really know what's going on in the world today. Their information is inaccurate, often due to getting their news from erroneous social media posts. Their information is also frequently out-of-date, often harking back to when they were in grammar school, or high school or, worse yet, based on some nonsense that was passed down to them from their parents or grandparents way back when. Every middle school or high school student should be required to take classes in the U.S. Constitution and basic principles of law; political science; comparative religions; and cultural studies so that they can fully understand the world they live in.

How many students have ever held a job? These days, probably very few. So when they graduate from high school or college, they don't really have any work skills. They tend to hop around from job to job, having difficulty finding a job in their chosen field. By tenth grade, every student should be required to take classes in finding out about different kinds of careers, how to find their career path, how to fill out job applications, how to find job openings, how to interview for a job, and how to conduct themselves on the job.

Of course, parents could be doing a lot more to prepare their children for independent living and working. Just giving them regular chores to do around the house would be an enormous help. Teaching them to save up or get part-time jobs to pay for their expensive wants would help too.

I can't begin to describe how grateful I am that my parents instilled the work ethic in me at a very young age, and that I learned all my basic life skills from them. Having chores to do and having part-time jobs before I was out of high school have made me a more productive member of society. As a result, I have never received any kind of government aid, not even unemployment insurance. The longest I have ever been unemployed is three weeks, and I was in the hospital for a good portion of that time. Whenever I needed work, I made looking for work a full-time effort. When I wanted a better-paying job, I re-educated myself by studying at the library or taking a class.

We desperately need an education system that can fulfill the needs of different kinds of students. We can't simply plan to ship everyone off to college and expect them to succeed. Not everyone is cut out for college. That doesn't mean they have to live a life in poverty. Regardless of what many people think, there are actually plenty of jobs. But there are not nearly enough qualified workers.

Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice state that more than 40% of prison inmates did not complete high school. That number is growing every day. It's time to start thinking seriously about the realities of life: the costs of college versus a trade school, and the availability of jobs to those who pursue academic educations without job skills.

Preparing students for life in the real world is what education should be about. And we need to start renovating our educational system to do just that. And we need to do it now.

03/14/2021: Living in My Car

Everyone has a chapter in their life that they wish they could forget. I certainly have a few of those, but one stands out above all the others, and it has had the greatest impact on my everyday life. The year was 1980. I was seriously ill and also suffering from serious injuries after being his by a truck. To make this the perfect trifecta of unforgettable life experiences, I had lost my apartment.

I didn't think I would be in my car more than one night. I was wrong. I lived in my car for eight weeks. It was the most frightening experience of my life. Try getting to any job and be presentable when you don't even have a bathroom. Try doing it when you are severely ill. I was mugged twice at knifepoint, was showering at the open-air showers at the beach in cold water at 6 a.m., and was also once harassed by a gang who pounded and bounced on my car with me in it. When I tried to park my car in a nicer, safer neighborhood for the night, the police came and asked me to move on. I have never forgotten how it felt to be so alone, so vulnerable, and feeling so abandoned by my parents.

But the greater trauma was the aftermath of living in my car, the years of living in Los Angeles, where I felt abandoned, unwanted, thrown away, cast aside by my father – and to some extent my mother since she always went along with whatever he said or did. I was trapped in the medical and legal turmoil of the automobile accident. And I was trapped in a place where I was lost in a giant crowd, overwhelmed by the size of Los Angeles, the noise, the traffic, the crime, and the constant turnover in the population. I no more than made friends with someone before they moved away to another state.

In time, I became hardened to it all. When a homeless man threatened me with a knife in the stairwell of the building I lived in, I didn't even flinch. I just held my ground until he backed down. But all I wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up. I was just so, so very tired of trying to put on a happy face and lead something that resembled a normal life. The only things that made me happy were my cats, my only stable base of friends.

Today, when I think too long or too deeply about my daily life in Los Angeles, I remember the reality of where I've been and what it felt like. Was it all bad? No. I made a few friends, I worked in my own business, I made a life for myself despite being in the worst place I could even begin to imagine. Today, I'm extremely grateful that I finally found a way to leave Los Angeles and go first to Monterey where I could at least partly recover from all the trauma of living for 17 years in that hell hole. And after eight years in Monterey – which was not a bad place at all – I moved to a great life in Lacey, Washington near my brother, my niece, and my cousins.

But I will never forget where I've been. When I see homeless people or hear people talking about them as if they were all worthless people, I remember that I was also homeless too. There are so many reasons why a person – even an entire family – can become homeless. It can happen to anyone, and it happened to me.

09/27/2020: Your Country is What You Make it

Your country is what you make it by the way you vote. Yet most United States citizens don't fully realize or understand what an incredible privilege it is to vote for our leaders. In the United States, every citizen of voting age has a right to vote, and this is very clearly stated in more than one Amendment in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution:

15th Amendment, Section 1. [Passed and Ratified by Congress in 1870.]. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

19th Amendment [Passed and Ratified by Congress in 1920.] The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

24th Amendment, Section 1. [Passed and Ratified by Congress in 1964.] The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

26th Amendment, Section 1. [Passed and Ratified by Congress in 1971.] The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Our leaders have long recognized the importance of the vote and they have used all their powers to set forth our voting rights in the Bill of Rights. Yet in the 2016 election, voter turnout was shamefully low. The following statistics are rounded off: Out of 240 million voting-age adults, only 157 million were registered to vote. And, of that 157 million, only 117 million voted.

This means that the leadership of all 323 million U.S. citizens (as of 2016) was determined by only 117 million voters – a mere 38 percent of the 240 million voting-age adults! Do you really want your life as a U.S. citizen to be determined by only 38 percent of all eligible voters?

Here's what happens when you don't exercise your right to vote. It's all about the Electoral College, which is not without its flaws. But that's a topic for another time. The Electoral College consists of a group of 538 electors (the total number of senators and representatives in all the states). It determines the final outcome of an election based on the popular vote in each state. A candidate needs at least 270 of these electoral votes to win an election, and if you don't vote, your state may not have enough popular votes to support your candidate of choice.

The number of electoral votes varies among the states. For example, Florida has 29 electors and Utah has only 6. So, if the popular vote in Florida is for John Smith, he gets 29 of the 538 electoral votes. If he wins the popular vote in Utah, he will only get 6 votes. So, the popular vote determines the outcome by way of the Electoral College.

The bottom line is this: YOU make the difference in the leadership of our country. Get registered now! Then carefully study the candidates – not their mud-slinging TV ads – to make sure they have the credentials for the job, and that they will do what benefits ALL citizens, the entire country, not just you and yours. And, when the time comes, mail in your ballot or get out to the polls and vote!

06/13/2020: What Causes Hate and Racism?

What causes hate and racism? Lots of things. To begin with, we have to understand that hate is all about fear. Yeah, that's right, fear. People "hate" what they "fear" the most, even when they don't recognize the relationship between the two emotions. They also hate what is different or unknown to them. And hate is almost always the effect of generational brainwashing and ignorance, a "them" vs. "us" mentality, and/or a single bad experience magnified and multiplied over time.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that our ancient ancestors, the hunter-gatherer tribes, for example, stood to benefit from keeping their distance from "other groups." But this is a questionable theory on which most experts – including anthropologists who study hunter-gatherer societies – do not agree. In reality, hunter-gatherers welcomed others into their communities, intermarried with them, and worked together for their mutual benefit and common good.

So why do we have so many people these days who are filled with hate and rage against people who don't look like "us" or believe like "us"? Generational brainwashing is the insidious root of most hate and racism. We are not born to hate each other, nor are we born hating others who are different than we are. We learn to hate from our family members who teach it to us by their own hateful behaviors that were passed down to them by their ancestors. Generational brainwashing can be rooted two generations ago or ten. The modern-day descendents in a family go into the world and perpetuate that hatred throughout the course of their own lives by spreading the hatred around, building a case against someone or something without ever taking the time to find out if the cause of the general hatred was even true or valid – and it never is.

In general, racists and xenophobes react to anyone or anything that is different as being a threat to them, to their very survival. This is because psychologically, racists and xenophobes are insecure and afraid. It is easier for them to identify with and feel complete around other racists – those who are like "us" – because their group identity makes them feel safe. It allows them to hide their deepest insecurities and feelings of inadequacy beneath a cultural or religious belief system that is shared with others and allows them to condemn whatever or whoever is not like "us."

Taking pride in your religion or your national origins is very normal. But excluding anyone who does not share your religion or ancestral heritage is not. And when that exclusion turns into anger, hatred, and aggression towards those who are not like "us," we're talking about serious psychological instability. People who are unstable in this way are generally found to be narcissistic, lacking in self-esteem, and are often paranoid. They tend to strengthen the bonds within their own group and use the others outside of their group as scapegoats for just about anything and everything. They may even attempt to take revenge for wrongs that they feel these other people are perpetrating on good people like "us."

Prejudices like this revolve primarily around stereotyping. But stereotypes are ridiculous constructs. They are the stuff of urban legends, conspiracy theories, and modern mythology. I have worked with and been friends and neighbors with many people from diverse walks of life. I was a residential property manager for several years, and from first-hand experience I learned that not a single stereotype – positive or negative – is true when it comes to any race, religion, nationality, gender, etc.

In the end, it is extremely important that we all understand that humans are biologically and genetically a single species: Homo sapiens. Our species has no subspecies because none of us has sufficient variations in our genetic make-up to be classified as such. The word "race" was formerly used in place of the term "subspecies." But it's not a biological term and Homo sapiens does not have any subspecies. So the word "race" has been misused to describe the physical characteristics of humans that developed and evolved over tens of thousands of years, back when all humans migrated from Africa to other parts of the world and needed those physical characteristics to adapt to their new and different environments.

And that brings us to "racism." This is most commonly found among people who called themselves "white." Well, surprise, surprise. There is no such thing as a "white" person, only people with fair skin who look white. My best friend is about as white in appearance as anyone could possibly be: fair hair, white skin, blue eyes. But guess what? She has a set of grandparents who are Black and she aso has Hispanice and Native Americans in her ancestry. And that brings us to DNA.

If you haven't yet had your DNA profile done yet, I strongly suggest you do it, as it is an awesome and eye-opening experience. For example, by nationality, I am half Italian and half Swedish-speaking Finn. But my DNA tells a very different story: I am 39% Western and Central European; 30% Finnish, Saami, Russian, and Siberian; 18% French, Italian, and British; 5% Arabic; 4% Celtic; and 4% Ashkenazi Jew. Solid scientific proof that there's no room in anyone's DNA for hate and racism!

03/05/2020: The Reality Behind Social Media Posts

The widespread use of social media formats for information is an amazing phenomenon. We can find out what our friends and family are doing on a daily basis. We can see what's going on in the political arena every day. We can see what's going on all over the world instantly, as it is happening.

While social media has the potential to do all of these things, the reality is that the majority of people who look at their feeds in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., are not critical thinkers. They read only the surface post, believe it to be true, and completely ignore articles that are attached or linked to the post. Many posts are just "grabbers," somewhat sensationalized statements that are not exactly true. In fact, many of the "facts" in these kinds of posts are not sourced (cited). That's because some can be amazingly inaccurate. The grabber is meant to lead you to a hyperlinked article on the poster's website. Grabbers are rarely factual, and if you do click and go to the poster's website, you will probably find an article that is mostly composed of misinformation (false or inaccurate information) or disinformation (deliberate and often malicious misinformation). Or, you might just hit the "like" icon and move on to the next post in your news feed.

But that's a mistake. Liking a post without reading the article is just what the people who post these grabbers want. Liking their posts is not the same as liking the message in the article. But, those kinds of likes still lend strength to that message, whatever it is. It helps them prove that what they say in the post and the article is being supported. This perpetuates misinformation and disinformation across the broad social media platforms until enough people believe it to be true. This can ultimately lead to a plethora of conspiracy theories and to people making all kinds of decisions based on shallow claims that are not fact-based. The bottom line: Read the article, or ignore it and don't "like" it.

When you do read the article behind the post, use the guidelines in the [insert hyperlink] previous article about researching online to help you determine the credibility of the author and the accuracy of the information. One way to help you with determining accuracy is to use a service such as Newsguard. They do the fact-checking for you, and they put a small green shield next to the sites that come up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that they deem as reliable sources because they meet Newsguard's high criteria for accuracy.

Where do you get your information? If you're like most people these days, you turn to the Internet for the answers to your questions. But, there are some serious drawbacks to researching online, because most people can't tell whether or not the information on a site is accurate. Being a critical thinker will help you navigate fact from fiction on the Internet.

With the exception of a very few news sites, the majority of all online informational sites generally have no editorial oversight at all on the articles they publish. Their articles are mere window-dressing. These sites exist solely to either sell their own products, or to make money for the website owner via ads posted throughout the site. The ads can be pay-per-click, affiliate ads, paid ad space, or any number of other money-making advertising schemes.

These online informational articles usually consist of opinions and theories adapted from the latest headlines and sensationalized to attract the most attention and get people to visit. The articles may be written by people who can string words together coherently and sound very convincing and authentic in the process, but they rarely stand up to deeper scrutiny.

Here's an example of a website for a popular product advertised on TV and online. It's purchased by people who suffer from symptoms of cognitive decline, which includes poor memory, problems concentrating, and problems processing information. The product is called Prevagen and it's made by Quincy Bioscience. Its key ingredient is a protein called apoaequorin, which is derived from a certain kind of jellyfish, and which the manufacturer states has been clinically tested.

On Prevagen's website, they claim that after many years of research and development, their non-prescription product was released in 2007 and demonstrated the ability to improve memory and cognitive function in people with mild cognitive impairment. Prevagen retails for $60-$70 per bottle of 30 tablets – a one-month supply. They state that Prevagen was named the #1 Pharmacist Recommended Memory Support Brand in 2020. In Pharmacy Times, a leading publication for pharmacists, a survey by the magazine found that Prevagen was the top recommended brand, with 73% of pharmacists recommending it to their almost 2 million customers each month.

What do you think after you read all these things about Prevagen? Sounds like a very reliable product, doesn't it? Well, not really. First, there is nothing that explains their "many years" of research and development or their "clinical testing." There is only one study, the Madison Memory Study performed for Quincy Bioscience. The study was performed about seven years  after the release of the product and the study report is dated August 2016. There were only 218 participants aged 40 to 91 in the study, of which 211 completed the study, which compared the effects of the apoaequorin to a placebo. Only 105 people got Prevagen and the others got the placebo. So we're really talking about a study of 105 people taking Prevagen.

And second, what about those pharmacist recommendations? What does that really tell you? It tells you that pharmacists want to sell $60 bottles of Prevagen, that's what. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission, an independent government agency, along with the State of New York, filed a complaint against Quincy Bioscience saying it made false claims about the product. The judge ruled on behalf of Quincy Bioscience, and the Federal Trade Commission and State of New York filed an appeal in 2018 which was just denied in 2019.

There are quite a few articles published online by entities such as Harvard Medical School, which state that Prevagen has not been adequately studied, that there is no scientific proof that the  jellyfish ingredient is capable of working on the brain, and that their advertising is fraudulent. This is a strong indicator that experts in cognitive impairment are looking for hard scientific evidence that Prevagen really works and that those who take it and say it works aren't just improving due to a placebo effect in which they get better simply because they believe Prevagen works.

This is just one example of the kinds of problems that occur when you research online and take things at face value instead of digging a little deeper to get at the truth. Think long and hard about everything you read and who wrote it. Then keep on digging a little deeper until you have all the facts. And once you have all the facts, you'll be on your way to thinking critically about any subject you research.