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True or false? Potholes on the Road to Truth

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Blog #4 in my non-binary series.

As one moves along the continuum from physics to biology to economics to sociology to history, the challenge of separating truth from falsehood or truth from error becomes greater. Truth is not sitting there like an apple waiting to be plucked, but deeply embedded in a web of people, places, customs, circumstances, and other dimensions. Truth must be coaxed, enticed, dragged kicking and screaming from its source.  It is a task which has become far more challenging in the era of social media and artificial intelligence, which makes every event or choice somewhat unique.

One of our currently popular true/false economic statements comes from President Donald Trump, who insists that the foreign producer will always absorb the tariff so that American consumers will not see any rise in prices.  Most of my fellow economists (and I) insist that this belief is wrong. Wrong not in the sense of either or, right or wrong, but rather wrong more often than right. Yes, there can be instances where world markets are very competitive and some part of the tariff will be absorbed by the foreign seller, but in most cases, the tariff is passed on to the buyer.

Scientific truth is a result of observation and statistical evidence that the medicine works, or the ball drops toward the earth, or anything else that combines credible evidence, repeated observation, and hopefully an explanatory theory.  But the scientific method sets the standard of truth very high.  A statistically significant number of observations must fall very close to the mean in order to be reasonably certain that the hypothesis is true.  The higher the standard (or the smaller the acceptable margin of error), the more likely it is that the hypothesis is true.  That high standard means that some true hypotheses will be rejected.  In lay terms, to keep any falsehood out, one must require a very strict criterion for what is let inside the gates. And that means  shutting out a lot of potentially very good and very useful ideas, possibilities or choices

Truth and falsehood are not strictly binary, especially as we move away from scientific methods toward the choices, analyses and decisions that guide our daily lives. Bob is an honest and dependable person–true or false?  Well, most of the time, but sometimes when he has had too much to drink, or is caught in an embarrassing situation, maybe not then.  Bob is mostly true.   Like the tariff, which is mostly passed on to the consumer, but there are exceptions. This medicine works in 95 percent of cases, but you may be in the other five percent, where it may fail to help or even cause harmful side effects.    This health insurance policy will cover all your health needs unless the company can find a good reason to deny your claim.  This house and yard are in excellent condition if you don’t visit it after heavy rain.

Perhaps the question of “What is the truth?” is most dramatic and challenging in a court of law. If you ever wonder why court cases are so complicated and use such arcane language, it’s because both sides are claiming to possess the truth.  A good legal system will recognize that there are few open and shut cases, so they rely on “preponderance of the evidence” in order to make a decision.. Along with physical evidence they must rely on the accounts of witnesses, which involve a mix of unvarnished truth, stretched truth, specious claims and downright lies. Placing the burden of proof on the prosecution and steep penalties for perjury are intended to increase the likelihood that the judge and jury will discern the most likely truth of the matter.

The next time you watch someone put a hand on a bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, take it with a grain of salt.  Especially the part about the whole truth, or the possibility that the witness has a faulty or incomplete recollection.  The mind is not a totally reliable instrument. Like science, law sets a high standard for conviction, because it is more just to let ten guilty parties go free than to punish one innocent person.

Mother’s Day: Choices for Women

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 I grew up in New England, in a state where birth control was illegal and the pill had not yet been invented.  My mother, my grandmothers, and my great grandmothers all accepted marriage and motherhood as their destiny. Not like many of our Catholic neighbors, though, they somehow managed to produce smaller families of two, three, or four. Birth control seemed to be highly correlated in my family with the departure of one spouse. My paternal grandparents divorced after four children, my maternal grandfather was killed in a motorcycle accident at age 36, leaving three children. My parents separated when their youngest child (me) was only three, and there was no child support.

My paternal grandfather got the children, promptly farming all four out, two to his mother, one to another family, one to an orphanage.  But my mother and maternal grandmother were on their own to provide for the children. Working outside the home became a resented necessity rather than a career, a vocation, a source of meaning and a chance to express their non-domestic gifts. From this distant perspective I understood my mother suggesting that I could be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary until I got married. Post-Sputnik, I said, “I think I’ll be an engineer.”  My generation had choices. The pill, which came on the market in 1960. When I married in 1962, the main point of premarital counseling from my minister was that I should get on the pill.  It was an important part of ensuring those choices as we were able to exert some control over our fertility. 

There were also more role models and mentors.  I had one beloved childless aunt who introduced me to theater, music, and gardening, along with bemoaning her inability to produce children of her own. There were Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Friedan and Bette Middler and Gloria Steinem and Valentina Tereshkova. There were teachers and professors who encouraged me, and a woman I never met who left her estate to my family congregation to provide scholarships, which paid my way through college.

 Our three carefully planned daughters took for granted that they were expected to go to college and would have options about work, career, marriage, children, choices that I and many of my generation had to fight for. All three have professional careers, and two of them have children. Their expectations were reinforced by a feminist Dad who supported their choices as he had supported mine.

And now the fifth generation is at that point, all in their twenties. Two are in relationships and contemplating marriage but not children.  One is married, teaching school, and hoping to become a mother. The youngest is still in college, plans to go to graduate school, would consider marriage but is not interested in having children.  

I tell this story because it is an amazing transformation in the 114 years between the birth of my grandmothers in 1890 and the birth of my youngest grandchild in 2004, a common story (with maybe fewer single parents!).  Mothers’ Day was created in 1908 when they were both young women in their childbearing years. Traditionally, it is celebrated with gifts and flowers and praise for the wonderful mother that one was, even if one wasn’t.

In our later years the care of aging parents becomes a responsibility for all, but mostly daughters. My sister looked after our beloved aunt and I took care of my mother even as she had taken care of her mother as a young adult.  My generation fo working women is somewhat more self-sufficient, both financially and otherwise, but we do turn to our daughters (and sometimes sons) to help us through the end times. That is something to celebrate on Mothers’ Day!

I am glad I was able to choose to do it all.  Every Mothers’ Day, if I remember, I send a thank you note to my daughters for teaching me how to be a mother. That holiday is now important to the mothers of my grandchildren, since the responsibilities of parenthood weigh lightly on me now.  They are happy that at age 83 I still live by myself (a widow of ten years) and manage my own affairs, rarely asking anything more than taking care of my cat when I am out of town.

I know that some of my generational cohort feel deprived of a right to grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. I am grateful for those beloved four young women growing into adulthood, but  lay no expectation on them to satisfy any desire I might have for continuing the line.  These are their lives, and challenging times and an uncertain future.  Perhaps it should be a holiday to celebrate all women, mothers and not mothers, mentors, role models, cheerleaders. workers. Community builders. And to celebrate their right to choose, and work as hard as we can to keep those choices open tor them.

Woman Without a Party

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment


One of the big binary polarities in the United States is the two-party system. You might think it was in the Constitution, but it isn’t. The political system evolved early into the Federalist (strong central government) and the Democrat-Republican (small and decentralized government) parties. Others have arisen, but unlike most other democracies, we seldom see any sign of an effective third party. Their official names are Republican and Democratic, but their identity labels are conservative and liberal. I freely acknowledge that I vote Democratic most of the time, but it is far from fully reflecting my values and priorities.
I am a civil libertarian, wanting to protect the rights we have under the Constitution, like free speech and due process and the right to bear muskets. And especially the right of women to control their own bodies. Neither embryos nor corporations embody the defining characteristic of a human being, which comes from being born of a woman. I do send money to the ACLU, but it isn’t a political party.
I am a fiscal conservative. I believe that we should decide what we want the government to provide and raise enough revenue (on average, allowing for recessions and expansions) to pay for it. Neither of the two major parties qualifies as a hospitable environment for a fiscal conservative. Democrats create too many entitlements with built in growth when they are in charge, and Republicans never met a tax they couldn’t cut, especially if it falls more on the wealthy.
I am a social progressive, believing in diversity and inclusion and respect, which come from my faith tradition but are essential ways to live together in peace in a nation of immigrants. Democrats do get some points there. Protecting voting rights and money in politics are two of my big issues as a social progressive. I may not vote the same way you do but I will go to the wall to protect your rights.
I am an economic populist, believing in strong unions as a counterweight to corporations, a more equitable distribution of income and wealth, and adequate basic public services like health care, education and transportation to give more people access and opportunity. Both parties claim to be “for the working people,” but when the chips are down, they depend on big corporate donors to finance their campaigns. I also believe in protective regulation to save us from the destructive behavior of large corporations who subscribe the belief that, as Vince Lombardi might say, “Profits are is not just the best thing. They are the only thing.”
Finally, I am an environmentalist. This is the only earth we have, and we have trashed it long enough. Let’s show Mother Earth some respect I love the Green Party but their platform is very focused.
If I can’t find between these two parties one that honors all those dimensions of my politics, what would be the next best thing? The two-party system is not embedded in law or constitution. Third parties could capture enough votes to be represented in the electoral college. The obstacle is the custom (nowhere embedded in law) that the winner of the plurality (not majority) of votes in a state gets all that state’s electoral votes. (It was Thomas Jefferson’s idea because he wanted all the votes from Virginia to become our Third President. Shame on you, Tom.) The chance to have some electoral votes to bargain within the Electoral College and create a coalition government would certainly make organizing a third party an attractive option.
I need more than two choices. I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. Can we “debinarize” our democracy and become a little more normal like other democrztic countries?

Competition and/or Cooperation?

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Binary series #2.

Our culture is obsessively competitive. We believe that competition forces people to learn, grow, and succeed.. Without competition, we would all be lazy and disengaged. Competition makes products better and people richer, and rewards excellence. Competition for customers makes prices lower and products and services better. Success is measured by rankings-sports teams, movies, best-selling books, colleges. States compete to rank high if not first for business climate, retirement, or health and wellness. They are often supplemented by lists of the ten worst–SAT scores, longevity, poverty. Parents pressure their children to compete academically, athletically, and in just about anything else that puts their offspring at the head of the pack. Collecting prizes, blue ribbons, t trophies, good grades are important to parents. Getting into the right preschool is the first step in getting your child a head start in the race to succeed. Even play is often competitive, whether it is wining at monopoly or the best score in mini golf. To quote coach Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

A cutthroat society of fierce and endless competition for supposedly scarce rewards (money, promotions, admiration, fame_ s not a nurturing climate in which humans can thrive. It also encourages shortcuts, whether it is steroids for athletes, misleading advertising, false claims, or other devious behaviors that can lead at least to a short-term victory (at the risk of being caught). Competition has a lot going for it as a motivator, but it also casts a big shadow.


So, what is the opposite of competition Collaboration. Working together. Teamwork. (Even if sometimes it leads to teams competing against each other!) Collaboration is also a skill we encourage our children to acquire, starting with helping around the house playing noncompetitive games, acquiring skills like playing a musical instrument or dancing or writing poetry or sewing or woodworking or acting. All of these are noncompetitive and many are collaborative. Collaboration makes it possible to accomplish things that take at least two, as my husband and son0in-law learned when they were building plywood canoes. The teamwork of a writer and an editor can do amazing things, as I learned over the years of writing some seventeen books.

Most nonprofits rely on teamwork, and activities like dance, sports, school projects, can help young people to identify their skills and interests and develop new skills for others with a mentor. Girl schouts, boy scouts, youth sports, sailing, gardening and martial arts are opportunities to learn in a noncompetitive environment. For the adults among us, volunteer work is a great opportunity to develop skills, to use your own skills, and to create something together. Habita for Humanity, food banks, coaching sports, and working with other volunteer organizations offers a rich and rewarding collaborative environment. I have volunteered (for 57 years) with the League of Women Voters and my religious community using and developing my skills in leadership, team building, delegating, facilitating, writing and teaching for the sheer joy of exercising those “muscles” and helping others to exercise theirs.

Like competition, teams have a shadow side. Shirking is the biggest challenge. Schools and colleges are increasing encouraging team projects but the efforts are not evenly distributed. Conflict among team members is another challenge. A temptation to parcel out credit or blame for a final product is discouraging for future tam efforts.
Competition and collaboration should be both/and, not either/or. They are both useful tools, one for building and rewarding individual effort, one fo building and strengthening community and doing the work that cannot be accomplished by a lone wolf. Ours is a society that tilts heavily toward individualistic competition, which carries over into team competitions in sports, politics, business and almost every aspect of life. What role does collaboration play in your life, and how can you encourage it in others?

Do consider sharing this post with a friend, and/or buying my book (kindle or paperback) from amazon, Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy.Do consider sharing this post with a friend, and/or buying my book (kindle or paperback) from amazon, Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy.

The World is not Binary

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment


I am launching a new series of blogs on false dichotomies, encouraging my readers to think in terms of both/and rather than either/or. As I work through my list, I invite your comments and responses and stories to augment my own reflections, reading, and research for what will eventually be a book (I hope!).
We start with a classic from my own area of intellectual inquiry, economics (supplemented by ethics). That binary is the tension between the needs and desires of the individual and the needs and demands of the community. “The” community consists many overlapping communities from the family to the neighborhood, the nation, and the earth. Individual people or organizations (such as a corporation) can choose to satisfy only their own needs, wants and desires without regard to others or to the impact on the larger community. In an individual, that narrow-minded focus on the self alone is diagnosed as sociopathy. In law, that same focus, maximum profit for shareholders is the sole obligation of a business corporation. Regulations forcing them to consider the harm done to others (including the environment) are the only and often a weak constraint.
Unlike corporations, most humans have a moral sense and a social dimension to their overall well-being. They seek companionship, shared pleasures,and mutual respect as essential to their own life satisfaction, even if it means going without a big screen TV, an expensive house, a luxury car, or other extravagant forms of consumption. If they care about what other people think of them, of if they have an active inner conscience, they will be inclined to ask themselves “What is the right thing to do?” more often that “what would be the most satisfying thing to do?” Like a physician, they may feel called to “first do no harm,”
Parents, schools, churches and other groups try to socialize children to strike a reasonable balance between their own needs and those of others, to develop empathy, compassion and generosity. At the same time, we teach them a fairly strong version of individualism, that the world out there is a competitive environment, and your goal is to be a winner in whatever competition you choose engage. Each of us must parse those two divergent directives and figure how to live our lives while honoring both.
Success is the goal of individualism. Harmony I s the goal of society. We need not choose between them, but rather seek the right balance between them. Aldous Huxley once described the “merely muscular Christian” as a person who attempts the impossible task of continuously ladling from a bowl that is never replenished. We need tot sustain ourselves in body, mind and spirit, not instead of ‘ladling,” but as the nurturing that enables us to ladle.
In my faith tradition, s in many faith traditions, two core values are “respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.” There are no self-made men (or women). We are all nurtured and sustained by a larger community of people and the earth itself. It is our grateful task to contribute to sustaining communities and, as we approach Earth Day, the earth our mother.

The Taxman Is After You

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Many of my rr readers are South Carolinians. Even if you are not, a similar tax “reform” proposal may be coming to your state, as it has elsewhere. . So here’s the South Carolina version of the latest Republican plan to tax the middle class, and cut fores for the rich proposal.. South Carolina’s new proposal for a flat income tax, H. 4216, seems to be on the fast track for what is billed as a tax cut. Maybe. But not for most of us.

The federal standard deduction, expanded in the first Trump administration, would be cut for state tax purposes from $15,000 ($30,000 for a married couple) to a miserly $,6000 and $12,000, respectively. Then it is phased out until it disappears at an adjusted gross income of $40,000.

But wait, there’s good news. The tax rates would be changed from a two-step schedule of 3% and 6.3% to a single flat rate of 3.99% (just so we can claim to be lower than our neighbors). That’s a tax cut, isn’t it?
Yes and no. The General Assembly giveth and the General Assembly taketh away. The federal standard deduction, which was also followed in South Carolina’s state income tax, gives people at the bottom a little relief and makes the income tax just a little bit progressive.
That’s “economist-ese” for taking a smaller percentage of income in taxes for poor people than rich people. Our other state and local taxes on sales and property, and our fees and charges for government services, are regressive. They take a larger share of income from the poor than from the rich. So, the income tax has provided a partial equalization of the total tax liability across households at different income levels.
According to estimates by the S.C. Department of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, if your family is in the median income range of $50,000 to $75,000, more than 80% of you will discover that your income taxes will go up, not down. Less than 10% of households in the income range of $300,000 to $500,000 will have that same sticker shock, but most will see a steep reduction.
Revenue from the individual income tax is expected to decline by about $216 million in the first full year. Bottom line: This is a tax cut for the wealthy, plain and simple. And unlike the usual justification – attracting business – the personal tax rate will now be lower than the business tax rate.
That’s not the only problem with this bill. With no chance to itemize, citizens with heavy medical expenses and/or generous charitable contributions or lots of interest on their home mortgage and/or student loans will have to rethink their priorities. Medical expense deductions are important for many disabled or elderly citizens, especially if there is a family member in a nursing home. Medicare is not much help there—and the future of Medicare is uncertain.
South Carolina is riding a wave of revenue growth that is overdue for correction. The stock market is flailing, consumer confidence has dropped, tourism prospects (important to our state) are dismal as people from other nations are reluctant to come here, and tariffs are likely to revive inflation that has just returned to more normal levels (not counting eggs).
The state’s definition of income for tax purposes will still be tied to the federal definition of adjusted gross income but that may change if Congress, worried about ballooning deficits, fails to extend the tax cuts from the first Trump administration. The legislature has made a number of commitments, such as higher teacher pay and a larger state contribution each year to protect the soundness of the retirement fund. Legislators may not be able to fund these priorities if revenue from the income tax falters, as it does with either tax cuts or recessions.
This bill needs to go in the circular file and start again.

Saint Patrick Meets Ostara: The Living of the Green

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It is no accident that Saint Patrick’s Day falls in the same week as the vernal equinox, the holiday called Ostara by the ancient Celts. Ireland is the Emerald Isle with, as Johnny Cash reminded us, its 40 shades of green. Ostara had other names, Oestre, Astarte, and, of course, Easter, yet another celebration of revival, renewal, and resurrection. (I once was asked by a seminary professor why Unitarian Universalists celebrate Easter. I replied with my own question. Why do Christians name their most important holiday after the goddess of the dawn?

Some of the customs of the equinox holiday have migrated to the moveable feast of Easter, celebrated in the Western world on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring Equinox. They are supplemented by ancient Roman and Scandinavian equinox customs involving eggs and rabbits, agents of fertility.

What comes to mind about Saint Patrick, besides green beer and shamrocks? You probably know that he was born around 400 CE in Britain to a Romanized Christian family. Captured by Celtic pirates, he was hauled off to Ireland and worked as a shepherd. He escaped, returned to Britain, studied for priesthood, and was ordained. He chose to return to return to Ireland as a Christian missionary..

Like many such missionaries, Patrick adapted the Christian story to the local environment—a rural, earth-centered culture, He used the shamrock or three -leafed clover to explain the concept of the trinity. He planted churches and monasteries all over Ireland. It is appropriate that his day is celebrated during the season of preparing for spring planting. Like so many other holidays including Yule), the celebration of Ireland’s patron saint was part of the bridge from the old Celtic nature-based religion to what the Irish called the New Faith.

Initially the New Faith was welcomed to Ireland as an addition, rather than a competitor, but eventually it became its own wayward version of Roman Christianity. Today there is a revival of the Celtic version of Christianity not only in the two strongholds of Celtic culture, Ireland and Scotland, but also in North America. That culture and that way of being Christian was earth-centered, non-exclusive, and egalitarian, with a particularly strong affirmation of women as full participants in the larger community. Women in early Ireland had the right to choose their spouses, divorce if they wished, get an education, own property, and enter many of the professions. Many of those rights were not available to women in this country until the late 19th century. (A nod to another annual observance in March, Women’s History Month.)

Even after Roman Christianity forced the Irish to end their practice of co-houses of nuns and monks who were free to marry, have children, and raise them in the faith, there was still always a Celtic underground that survives today in some of the ancient holy places, especially the Scottish island of Iona. There is much wisdom in dedicating this pair of holidays to the re-planting of that vision in our own hearts and mind, As as we begin the season of fertilizing and planting, we can celebrate our oneness with the natural world that nurtures and sustains us.

Note: I am indebted to historian Peter Tremayne’s fascinating set of historicall novels about Sister Fidelma for background on the customs of the Irish in the 5th and 6th centuries CE.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments


In 1967, I was a 26-year-old newly hired part-time assistant professor of economics at a southern state university. I just happened to be in the neighborhood because my husband was a new faculty member in the physics department. Part-time was my choice: I had two daughters, ages three and one, and a dissertation to finish.
I sat down for a chat with my department head. Holley, he said, you know that you are the only woman among six men. I nodded, and he went on. “You are liberal, we are conservative. You are a Yankee, we are Southerners. Your degree is from a Northern University, we ae all products of southern Universities.” He paused, and I waited. Finally, he said, “You know, if you were just black, you’d be perfect.” I wasn’t a “DEI hire,” as far as he was concerned. I was just a blessing that had dropped unexpectedly into his domain, and he was grateful.
In the late 1960s, acceptance of diversity as a desirable situation was widely affirmed, especially in colleges and universities. What went wrong? What made DEI the official abbreviation for highway to hell?
Diversity is a fact, something that can be described and measured. Equity is a value, an affirmation that as a society we believe that everyone should have a fair chance at opportunities. Inclusion is an act, an effort to make everyone welcome in the candidate pool. Later came measurement and with measurement, quotas. What percentage of your faculty/staff/student population is nonwhite? Female? How do you accommodate people with disabilities? DEI became a slogan for governments, firms, and organizations. Look, we have a black CEO! You can trust us.
Then it became a game, and beyond that, a backlash. Many years after that chat with my department head, I had another conversation late in the evening with a younger male friend who felt that DEI had shortchanged him. He said, I wanted to go to Princeton, and I had a1300 on my SAT, but they gave that place to some woman instead. I paused for a moment and said, “I really wanted to go to Yale in 1959, and I had 1500 on my SATs, but Yale was not admitting women until ten years later.” There is no easy way to counteract the effects of past discrimination. Life is short, and changing attitudes, beliefs and misconceptions is slow work, with a temptation for governments to respond with mandates and measurements.
My own education was enriched by learning from professors and colleagues of a different culture (southern), gender (men), age, and political values. It was also enriched by student diversity, especially in the last 15 years of my long career when I was teaching students from all over the world in a Ph.D. program in Policy Studies.
The backlash against DEI has been a long time in coming, but today it is in overdrive. For those of us who believe that equity is a value that addresses the fact of diversity that is best served by efforts to include a more diverse array of employees, customers, investors, colleagues, etc., what can we do?
First, we can share our own positive experiences of diversity, and I do whenever there is an opportunity. What stories do you have to tell?

Second, as an economist, I believe in the power of money. We can shop with and invest in firms that are intentionally inclusive. The president administration has done us a great favor by making clear who is and who is not on board with DEI so that we can direct our dollars accordingly. We know that Target, Walmart, amazon, the Washington Post and Lowe’s do not share DEI value and have in fact deleted the ones that were once part of their corporate credo.

On the investing side, there are three kinds of positive signals from companies, mutual funds and other investment instruments> DEI, ESG, and B-corporations. ESG stands for environment, social, and governance—a commitment by the form to minimize environmental damage in their work, to be attuned to the needs of communities, minorities, workers, and suppliers, and to practice transparency and accountability in their governance. A B-corporation actually has environmental and social goals written into its corporate charter and is required to account for them annually to their shareholders. If you are interested in the investment side, google socially responsible investing and see what you can find. A number of mutual funds offer socially responsible investing in both their own management activities and in choosing what firms to invest in.

Third, there is money that we give away. Some of it can go to organizations who do good work among the “outcasts”—immigrants, former convicts, impoverished families, victims of domestic abuse, global giving to help people in other countries. Charity Navigator can help you evaluate which nonprofits to support. Other nonprofits like ACLU will direct your funds toward resisting the backlash, as will your campaign contributions to candidates who represent or support e inclusion as an action that acknowledges diversity and values equity.

Sexism, racism, xenophobia, ageism, and other forms of targeting marginalized groups is not new. It has been around at least since the Greeks referred to all non-Greeks as barbarians. But the facts of life can be changed by the determined efforts of good people who care about the world we are handing off to future generations. DEI backlash is only a symptom of a much deeper malaise, but for me, it is a good place to strengthen and deepen my work for The Resistance. I hope the same is true for you.

Weaponizing Your Wallet

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments


A dozen or so years ago, my sociologist friend Catherine and I wrote a book called Our Money, Our Values. We started with a presumed set of shared values—strong, healthy communities, social and economic justice, and environmental sustainability. We invited our readers to reflect on how their use of money promoted or worked against those shared values. Today those of us who believe in community, equity, and sustainability are mor challenged than ever by a contrary se of values under the misleading label of ”conservatism.”


Money is powerful. Money motivates, rewards, punishes, empowers, threatens. We need to harness, individually and collectively, as much of this tool to restore the good society we once thought we had.
How you spend or refrain from spending, how you save and invest, how you contribute to worthy causes and organizations all can be your voice in the larger world. Here are some thoughts on how to tweak your habits in ways that will help bend that arc of the universe so that it bends a little deeper toward justice.

Shopping. This one has had a lot of press lately as firms kowtowed the Trump administration over DEI. Amazon.com, Target, and Walmart were among the many firms who meekly withdrew their commitment to being intentionally inclusive of all varieties of people—age, gender, gender identity, disability, color. Pocketbook language is something that the owners will understand. (When the Washington Post started backing away from its traditional progressive stance, it lost some of its best writers and also 250,000 subscribers overnight. I was one of them.) Shop local. (That helps with building strong communities). Find firms that support positive social values and shift your spending there. And forgive yourself if you can’t find (as I did) Blue light 275 readers anywhere except amazon. Cancel your amazon prime, your streaming services that do not support your values, and seek out others that do. Sorry, X (not really), Facebook (don’t miss it), and lots of others which spout anti-environmental and anti-justice. See if you can find a B-corps firm, one that has a commitment in its corporate charter to pursue specific environmental and justice goals and be respectful of the needs of the communities where’re they are located. B-corp is one label. ESG (Environment, social and governance) is another. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is a third indicator. And waste our time, a resource worth much more than money.

    It matters not only where you shop, but what you buy. Look for products whose production or consumption doesn’t overload the solid waste stream, involve harmful chemicals, require practices like fracking and strip mining, or are produced under unhealthful conditions by cheap labor (often children).

    1. Investing—this is a key place to express values. Avoid the big banks who rip of low income customers with monthly charges and fees (especially on credit cards), minimum balance requirements, justice rhetoric. Read the prospectus for any possible investment. Look for mutual funds that endorse and actively promote your values. Green Century, for example, s one of my favorite mutual funds because it invests in clean and renewable energy. Here the acronym is SRI—socially responsible investing. Some economists would have you believe that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth. It isn’t. Profits should be the reward for providing useful goods and services to households and other business firms. If your retirement savings are under your control (mine were not), explore your options for investing in assets and management philosophies that affirm your values,

    3. Giving—use your money to support political candidates who share your values and to support local, national, and international organizations who are working to affirm and promote a just, peaceful, and sustainable human community that respects our fellow beings and the earth. Check Charity navigator to see what they support and how much of their revenue goes to marketing, promotion and top-level staff rather than direct assistance to those in need or support for actions that make people in need safer and healthier..


    Make this the year of the moral consumer—citizen-worker-investor. It takes effort. It takes a village, so encourage your family, friends and neighbors, to do the same. The world will be a better place for it.

      A Gratitude Alphabet

      ~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments


      A while back, there was a fad for keeping a gratitude journal. It didn’t last long. People’s grateful imagination was not well-developed. One dropout wrote that he was tired of being thankful for his cat. Even my own energy for gratitude, I have been doing for years, was flagging. In these challenging times

      I took some training in teaching journalling a fw years ago. The training offered a variety of prompts to ensure that your journal isn’t just “yesterday I saw, I thought I heard, I watched…today I plan to ….). I adapted one of the prompts, the alphabet poem, to gratitude with surprisingly good results.

      The alphabet poem starts with writing in the margin the 26 letters of the alphabet down the side of the page.When you come to X, you can cheat with a word staring with ex,, because the e is more or less silent. The letter in the margin starts the first word of each line of a poem. Free verse is fine; it ,doesn’t have to rhyme. You can have one word per line lone, which is hard, or you can write several words on some and one on others. You can use other poem starters,like your name,, or just a nice longish word, like beautiful or happiness or democracy. Try it, It’s fun.

      So how does it adapt to gratitude? Start by writing down your gratitude with A on the first day and think of three things you are grateful for that begin with A. Apples, ancestors, America, asparagus, adults, animals. I am now on the letter T and so far have been thankful for such oddities as radio, Celts (my ancestors), poetry, rainbows, and Stoicism.

      Gratitude is always a good way to start and/or end your day. Acknowledging gratitude is a good antidote to all seven of the deadly sins (pride, greed, sloth, anger, gluttony, envy and lust, in case you don’t keep a list handy) and replacing them with humility, generosity, patience, joy, trust, moderation, and compassion. (And also constructive action, the antithesis of sloth, but that’s for the next blog). Keep that latter list handy to use when you come to the letters c, g, h, j, m, p and t.