Depression and suicide

There are ways to deal with depression on one's own, but they only work if you are kinda naive about yourself, and eventually will generally stop working.  Work and staying busy, exercise, "getting away" such as taking a trip or vacation, dealing with the immediate causes of the depression, if there are any, meditation, getting counseling, music and art, reading a stomping good novel, pondering the universe -- these and other tricks help a lot.

But the fact is that only some people tend to depression (I think most of the time the tendency is inherited) so most people don't understand it and think it's only normal mood swing.  This absence of understanding and compassion and the "buck it up" disdain one gets don't help.

I have found the only real way to stave off such periods of depression is to stay on medication.  The medical system doesn't like it one bit, for a variety of reasons, so one has to be prepared to fight with insurance companies and have to go out of pocket fairly often.  That doctors often compound the problem with their arrogance about it and their failure to really hear the patient is a cross to bear, but shopping doctors doesn't work, and is less and less possible in the modern bureaucracy.

Of course, this leads to drug use (the wrong drugs -- things that are addictive and illegal, such as heroine and of course alcohol).  About alcohol -- practically guaranteed to cause an early death for the depressive.  Marijuana is better, but of limited value.  Caffeine in the form of a nice cup of espresso or just black coffee or green tea is even better here.

In the end, though anti-depressives need be taken on a lifelong basis in fairly high doses and in several forms (at least both serotonin stimulators and anti-reuptake serotonin inhibitors.  Not being a pharmacist I probably have the terms wrong -- what are needed are drugs that both produce "happiness" hormones and that slow down their removal from the body.

I know from my personal experience, which I suppose is anecdotal, but also from what I can find out talking to others and doing research.  I suspect in some cases even this is not enough, but the difficulties I had and continue to have getting minimal treatment suggests to me that the real problem, and the real cause of the continuing suicides, is that most people just do not get it.  It is so out of the range of their own experience.  That includes the medical profession and the lawmakers.

Of course it is also in the interest of insurers to not "get it".  When the patient kills himself or herself they stop having to pay for treatments.

Robin Williams is dead.  I don't get teary often, but this did it.  His death is worth noting.

Turning now to look at dictatorships

Since it appears people don't read well, or maybe I should say they read too well and read things that weren't said, let me turn to what is wrong with dictatorships.

Obviously there is a danger the dictator will be or become the wrong person, in many possible ways -- sociopathy, insanity, paranoia (who wouldn't be in such a situation), excessively ideological and lacking practical sense, or just plain brutal.  Some legal mechanism for removing el Presidente will be needed, and I can't think of a way such a thing could be set up without the dictator being able to set it aside.

So don't have a dictator, have a central committee.  Let them make executive decisions and have figureheads (a monarch perhaps) for intervention purposes in situations of serious mischief.

There is another thing wrong with autocratic government, even if it is as humane and tolerant and sweet and nice as anyone could want.  When it makes a mistake it doesn't know it until things are really bad, and even then tends to blame other factors.

It's like an automated accounting system.  Hire hundreds of accounting clerks to do the sums and addition mistakes will happen and they affect one or two customers.  Let a computer run it and a mistake affects millions, and does immense damage.  Now it won't be a mistake in doing sums but in programming -- the point is that power to get things done efficiently brings power to mess things up efficiently.

There is another problem; the public is fickle.  A given set of leaders is popular for a while and eventually becomes unpopular and by some, hated just because people often decide "it's time for a change" about practically everything.  So terms have to be limited and retirements mandated.  Otherwise at some point you have demonstrations in the streets and the army having to decide whether to fire on citizens.

Tirade against democracy and maybe ways to fix some of the problems.

It's elitist of me to think this, but, regardless, I do think that the main problem with elections is the voter.  There are bad things like multiple voting and ballot box stuffing or losing ballot boxes, that can be blamed on politicians and corrupt officials, but those aside a larger problem remains the voter.

In the old days only landowners, who were presumed to have a stronger interest in good government, were allowed to vote.  This was of course, nonsense.  They voted in the interest of landowners.

There are five problems I can see with voters, that they vote selfish interest, that they vote prejudice, that they vote single interest, that they vote brand name (re-elect incumbents even though they know no more than that they recognize the name), and that they are easily persuaded by what is called negative campaign ads.  The five of them feed off each other to make democracy a bad way to run a country.

Politicians, of course, not being centers of moral rectitude (those who are, are defeated by those who aren't using the above factors) cynically act and campaign and vote accordingly.

There was a certain Senator from West Virginia who was thought of as a master of the Senate and a great Senator, mainly because he kept the pork running into his state.  How disgusting: he leads the fight against line-item veto (a proposal to stem such greed) and prevailed.  This was his reason for being re-elected over and over, and he boasted of it.

One of the problems is geographical legislation, which brings about pork and the representation of the prejudices of regional cultures.  At large representative bodies are therefore one obvious solution.  This also of course would reduce the chances for chicanery as there would be fewer really close elections and eliminates gerrymandering.

Of course it doesn't deal with the brand name problem and perhaps makes it even worse.  The idea of banning incumbency therefore has a great appeal.

One thing I've noticed is that members of the legal profession tend to dominate elective positions.  People accept this since they have a vague notion that these have been trained, but what they have been trained in is the use of the law to get things and deal with problems.  There is entirely too much dependence on law and litigation, but lawyers, legislating in their class interest, continue to see laws and legalism as the way to go.  It would appear that banning members of this profession (which in fact is the only erudite profession that hurts society more than it helps) might be a good idea.

Of course, elected officials need to win elections, and for this they need support and money.  At large elections would demand even more money, and although there really do exist un-bought politicians, and maybe most of them think they are, it is much easier to get someone to see your point of view if you have contributed money to him, and all businesses and special interest groups know this.

So if you must have elections to make the system seem legitimate, make the campaign paid for by the state and seriously restrict campaigns, violating free-speech and free-press out its ear.  It is not true that truth ultimately will out, and we all know it.  Even rules such as banning music in the background, or even non-mutual campaign appearances, suggest themselves.

You still have the basic problem of the prejudices of the voter and the ensuing danger of the dictatorship of the majority.  There is no way to get around this that I can think of short of severely limiting the franchise to those who demonstrate knowledge and unbiased approaches to things, in a vetting process that itself obviously would be exposed to corruption and so on.  Still, that might be better than allowing every idiot to have his or her vote.

Churchill has been quoted as saying that democracy is the worst possible system, except for the alternatives, or something like that.  One wonders if this is really true.  It seems to me a lot of possible setups simply have never been tried, and the propaganda for democratic systems nowadays would seem to rule out even a debate.  Even the autocratic systems call themselves democracies.

Distinguishing Reality, Illusion, and Delusion

We live our lives in a huge illusion, but we presume there is a reality "out there" which generates the illusion we experience.

For example, the sky is not blue.  The atmosphere scatters certain wavelengths of sunlight more than others, with the net result that what enters our eyes when we look skyward are wavelengths that causes our brain to generate a certain experience that our mind in English calls "blue."  In other words, colors are an illusion of the brain generated by the fact that when we look at things, whatever wavelengths of light they reflect (or in a few cases generate) are made by the brain into experiences (or color "qualia") for our mind.

I sometimes hear voices that aren't there (usually when half-asleep) that disturb me, but I long ago realized that if they are not there, then they are not there and it is something generated in the brain, no matter how "real" they sound.  Sounds are not real.  The brain generates sound qualia just as it generates color qualia, and in both cases, although they usually have some relationship to the reality of the external world, they don't always.

The difference, of course, is that the sounds of Bach in the background are illusions while voices I may hear from phantoms are delusions.  The Bach comes from sound waves from the speakers in my room from the CD I'm playing (an illusion generated by another illusion generated by another) while voices in the head no doubt have some source in my normal mental chatter that gets mistaken as incoming sound, but it has no external source and so is not illusion but delusion.

Illusions have something "real" under them, delusions do not.

Judgmentalism

We must avoid being judgmental.  It does no good and often ties us to attitudes and behavior that restrict us a lot.  But, of course, people do judge, and with some it is the automatic response.  This causes the judge unhappiness and stress, but I don't think it has much effect on those judged.  In other words disobeying the command only hurts ourselves.

I was recently conned out of a substantial amount of money -- more than I really could afford -- and all during the scam people told me what it was, but I felt I would give this person such a sum if asked, anyway, so I didn't worry.

I trusted them, and they were my friend.  It really hurts when trust is violated like that, but I will not be bitter and I will (do already) forgive.  I want them back as a friend and I suspect only their shame prevents it.  It is not the loss of the money, but the loss of the friendship and the betrayal.

Others, of course tell me I should abandon the contacts and the person is not worth it and I know others who know about what happened who have done as much, even thought they were not personally hurt.

I guess I'm foolish.  Forgiving doesn't help: I'm still unhappy, just in a different way -- sad rather than angry. 

Do I seem too certain of what I post?  I guess it might be worthwhile to repeat what is in my profile: it is all just one person's opinions.

I like to draw a technical distinction between "opinion" (things you think are probably true) and "belief" (things you know are true).  This distinction is not often made and the two words are close to being synonyms, but it is how I would use them.

Beliefs come about various ways, mainly though indoctrination or propaganda.  (That explains why the churches are so eager to control or influence children's education -- get them while their critical facilities are not mature.  It also explains why children are generally the religion of their parents and culture). They are accepted emotionally and often we aren't even aware of them as being there.  They are furniture we sit on without noticing, but they hold up our world view.

When a belief is challenged, the typical response is incredulity -- you must be insane or joking.  No, I think Nazareth is a myth.  Unbelievable that someone would actually think that.  What about Jesus?  Well, yes, him too.  You are crazy.

Of course the evidence will never be seriously looked at and given even the remotest chance of being correct in someone who has such belief, even though they will admit huge ignorance about the subject.  This is belief -- they even make their unwillingness to question into a virtue and call it "faith."

Now I don't "know" that Jesus is mythical, even though I'm persuaded of it, in spite of previous belief, by fairly simple evidence for which there are many web pages one can go to to check it out.  I really don't care either.  He is unimportant from the respect of actual physical historicity (although of course, his church continues to function and do things that are important).

The simple fact is those who believe will die believing, and maybe they are better off that way, although I have difficulty respecting such things.

I tend to say "I think" rather than "I believe," and I know I have changed my views on  a gazillion things here and there -- we all constantly evolve (except of course those who cling to beliefs and become mentally ossified).

So when I say such and such, what I really mean is, "In my view," such and such.  It interferes with smooth writing to constantly repeat such expressions, so I have to trust the reader to understand this.

Medicine sans prescription

One of the things I like about Vietnam (and most third-world countries) is the ability to obtain most medications without a prescription.  To be sure, you are supposed to have one, but its absence seems to bother no one.

I think vested interests in other countries causes this serious limit on freedom.  Drug companies and doctors want people to have to incur the additional expense of getting medical approval.  They use the argument of protecting the public, and I suppose they are protecting the stupid and uninformed, and these types continue to agitate in Vietnam for restrictions.

What you do instead is limit advertising.  I would prefer they even eliminated brand names.  A trained pharmacist can deal with almost any set of symptoms the customer describes, and the government can impose rules about this to boot.  Bulk competitive buying by the state (or local manufacture if the foreigners persist in being too greedy) can do a wonder for prices too.

Today I read how metformin could extend everyone's lifespan several years.   It is a low-cost drug supposedly for type-2 diabetics and prediabetics, but it appears everyone would benefit from taking it routinely.  Of course with such mass use some side-effects would probably appear, especially with long-term use (mainly allergies), so alertness would be called for, although reading the posted comments that went with the article, I can see how some people blame anything that happens on whatever they are taking.  Such people should be allowed to die early.

There are, as I see it, two extremes in this pill-popping debate -- those who think taking medicine for what ails us is dangerous or even sinful, and those who pop whatever new nostrum shows its head making wonderful claims.  A middle path is called for.

There are of course drugs that I suppose have to be surrounded by legal safeguards -- things that can kill you and things that are addictive and things useful in suicides come to mind (although this last might be overkill since there are plenty of ordinary products that can do the job).  So safety before a product can even be marketed should be necessary.

Also, I think going through a pharmacist, who, regardless gives you what you want, but also gives you personal advice and warning, is  advisable.  And of course the doctor needs to be told.  No point in hiding things, even if he is going to lose his temper, from a professional you are paying good money to for advice.

The Beginning of Time and there was no Time before Time

This is something that to me seems blatantly obvious, that time had to have had a beginning, but I so often get that it could extend backward infinitely.  I think those who insist so are afraid one is giving creationists and first causality types an opening, and maybe one is, but their stuff falls on so many other grounds there is no need to maintain an erroneous notion just to defend against them.  Aquinas was right when he said the idea of there being no beginning of time is absurd.  What he didn't understand is that it is absurd to assert that anything could be without beginning.

Now, first, I don't know what "time" is: this is an unsolved question, and tend to think of it as the illusion of past passing into future because things change and events happen, but the only thing here that really exists is the present.  Regardless, one can use the idea of time as a flowing river or something along those lines to help with understanding it.

Now let us say the doctors really get their act together and stop disease and aging, and the engineers do the same thing and stop accidents.  We will then live forever.  Well, no.  No longer how long we live it will never have been forever.  It may be a million or a billion or some unimaginable time, but never forever.  Infinity is not a countable number that way.  You never reach forever, even though you never die.

For the same reason time cannot have "always existed" as it is so easy to say.  One cannot climb out of a bottomless well.  That applies to just not us, but to existence itself.  The mistake of course is in thinking time is a sort-of beginning of the number line.  It is not.  The number line has neither beginning nor end.

So time had a beginning, maybe the Big Bang, more likely something else much earlier, who knows, but it had a beginning, and there was nothing before the beginning of time.  This is an interesting sort of nothing -- there were not eons and eons of emptiness -- that would be time -- there was nothing and then there was space-time.  It just happened.

There is a sense in which one might say time has always existed, but that "always" is necessarily finite.  The when of things can only be measured from after the first event: talk about "before" that is meaningless.

I have a notion that before time was like the space between two adjacent irrational numbers -- except you can stick an infinity of numbers between any two, so there is no space there, just as there is no time before time.

Underwhelmed

I can't figure out why it is that people, including maybe scientists, certain science reporters, and popular science, authors, make such a big deal out of the fact that most of the atoms of the universe other than primordial hydrogen and helium and a trace of the others were made in stars that later exploded, or shed material in a planetary nebula, and so on, spreading the stuff around.

The events of the Big Bang didn't last long enough for nuclear synthesis (what this is called) to get far, so where else could they have been made?

I observe that the awe about this is always expressed in the context of the stuff of life, but really it is the stuff of everything (again, except hydrogen, helium, etc., which is really the stuff of most things).  Well, you almost certainly cannot make life or anything like it out of just hydrogen, etc., so star stuff gets used by default.

I think this is a residue of thinking in terms of life as something magical, elan vital or along those lines.  It is not.  It is just aggregations of organic chemicals that reproduce, in complex ways, but mechanically.

The real mystery is where sentience and consciousness come from, and they were probably not spewed about the universe in supernovae and whatnot.

Afterlife (or not dying)

We don't want to die (become extinct when our body terminates), although this does seem likely and we can't, with medicine as it is now, do anything about it.  I think at some point this will no longer be the case, but that seems a ways off.

There are of course alternatives on offer, although some of them don't seem much better than dying and a few are fearsome.  I see no point in joining some cosmic ocean, or being reborn with few, if any memories of a previous existence.  These may as well be personal extinction.

And then of course there is a Heaven or some variation.  My personal heaven would be an outdoor life on horseback and fishing, living in a tent and making fish and eggs and coffee on a fire.  However, the work parts of this, such as chopping wood or grooming the horse, as well as the unpleasant parts, such as bad weather and insects, would not be part of it.  I and others would also sit around at night before bed and sing and talk philosophy and psychiatry and religion and tell jokes and have sex.

In an earlier blog I talked about why I think the mind is a process, not thing, so the question is how does this gust of wind or flickering flame survive the brain's death?  That would seem to depend on what it is, what "mind" is, and we don't know.  We don't even know what sentience is or where it comes from.

Maybe it is something "mystical," or at least as yet undiscovered by science.  Frankly, I suspect its discovery will have to await the passing of modern scientific physical materialism and the insistence on experimental evidence to a time when scientists work with inference and reason without physical confirmation.

As process it may be like other processes we observe, and have both "wave" (process) and "particle" (matter, etc.) properties (this is misleading derived from our ways of thinking and requires a lot of mental work to really conceive, but I put it as best I can to be understood).  In that case sentience or mind, probably just forms of the same thing, could be conserved much as mass/energy and charge and momentum are conserved.

Of course that wouldn't prove much.  Energy is conserved, but degrades in a way (entropy increases) and readily changes form.  It does to my mind, though, hold a conceptual way in which rebirth might work.  A lot depends on the nature of sentience, and, if, as we infer, sentience has a tendency to persist as it is, then you would have it.

Another possibility, and one I would not be at all surprised at, would be that our life is some sort of dream or entertainment or punishment or education or even reward and when we die we also wake up to the reality above us, assuming it too is a simulation.

Motorcycle helmets as a cultural artifact

Having been trained as a cultural anthropologist, even though I never actually did any anthropology afterward, I still find cultural changes that I notice in Vietnam of some interest.

One of these has been the universal adoption of a helmet when riding a motorbike.  Vietnam is a motorbike culture, and when cheaper motorbikes from China appeared several years ago, it was a day of liberation for the rural population.  I dare say the main form of entertainment in the big cities for young people is tooling around all over the place after work or school for a few hours.

At least it was until the coming of computer games: they now give its major competition.  Motorbikes are, in my view a much better way to organize transport in a big city that hasn't been paved over with freeways than our cars.  A couple of cars and a bus conspire and block traffic for hours; the motorbike riders maneuver in and around them and are hardly at all even delayed.

But motorbikes are deadly.  Helmets are an essential minimum, along with traffic enforcement and getting off the road the drunks and the idiots who carry more than imaginable on the bike.  (I once saw six guys, all utterly smashed, on one small Japanese bike, weaving around trying to stay up.  Fortunately, they only made it a few meters before upending.)

I remember the first time I rode as a passenger on the back of one.  I sat there and chanted, "Please let this be over" over and over, wanting to close my eyes but not daring.  Now it doesn't phase me.  Amazing what one can get used to -- but from day one I always wore a helmet -- they could be bought in Vietnam because the government was encouraging them, but no one except a few frightened foreigners used them.  It's a tropical country and helmets are a bother and hot.

But they really aren't so hot once you are moving, and they help in a population determined to keep their skin from the sun so as to be as white as possible.  Women can wear scarves and so on but men can only wear caps, and they blow off.  There was a business of recovering and selling such hats.

Now that the police seriously enforced the law and everyone is in helmets, no doubt deaths have dropped, and a lot of men no longer have in their budget buying a new hat once a week.

Water waves and candle flames

One does not need to meditate (do the postures and breathing and all that) to watch one's mind -- to be mindful.  Some, of course call any mindfulness state, a sort of meditating, even when driving down the freeway, although I tend to do it in safer places.

I think the reality is that mindfulness is really just paying attention to the state of our head a few moments earlier, I would think using short-term memory.  There is no need to posit some separate entity doing the watching.

What does one see?

Well, if you have been really meditating and have reached a point of mental silence, then one doesn't see much.  An empty mind is an empty mind and a silent mind is a silent mind.  This is a wonderful state, but not what I'm about today.

Otherwise a lot I think depends on the person.  The excitable person sees a lot more confusion than the peaceful person, a lot more activity, and probably has higher blood pressure.

We all, however see much the same thing -- a flow of consciousness -- we think about this and the thought jumps to that and then to something else, usually somewhat linked but not always.  Of course other things also intrude -- sounds, itches, memories, worries, thoughts of obligations, and, if you are at all sleep deprived, you may fall asleep.

One thing most people don't notice, because their religion tells them otherwise, is that there is no "self" there -- no soul, no little homunculus doing the watching.  The process itself watches itself.

That is what we see -- process, not thing.  It moves like a wave moves on the water or a flame on a candle (both analogies here are helpful, but don't draw too many conclusions from them).  Mind is process, not thing, that we presume happens in the thing we call brain, but there is nothing inherent in itself to tell us that.  That is something neurologists think, for pretty good reasons, but still I wonder -- a good topic for another blog someday.

The best proof, over and above the fact that being mindful in and of itself, once one is aware of what to see, proves the point on its own, is the fact that if there is a thing doing the observing, the question arises what is watching the watcher, and one ends with an infinite regression.  That's grounds for rejecting almost any theory.

Vietnam beaches

I noted a travel reviewer today praising Vietnam's miles and miles of clean sand and blue-water (except around the Delta) beaches, with practically no one on them but a few Westerners.  As the reviewer noted, this is because the standard of beauty in Vietnam is whiteness -- as little tan as possible.

Indeed, it is funny that a resident of a tropical country is diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and advised to take a supplement.  Especially the women, but even the men cover themselves when they go out -- really cover themselves -- so much that it amazes me they can see where they are going -- and not for religious reasons but for beauty reasons.

Ever hear of "whitening cream?"  I don't know that the stuff works since I think I could well stand to be less white.  Practically every cosmetic sold makes some sort of claim along those lines.

A typical American or ANZean or European landing in Vietnam finds themselves categorized as "beautiful" or "handsome" if they have a big nose and big ears, things that of course most Westerners would rather correct.  The same of course applies throughout Asia to having round eyes.

Being overweight is also not such a big deal, and age is far more respected (although the Vietnamese will admit they, like everyone else, think youth is more sexy -- I think that is a genetic trait so not as culturally set).

In short, here is a place where it don't hurt at all to be ghostly pale, have a big nose and ears, be a bit sticky and even a little long in the tooth.  Do, though, have your teeth as straight and white as possible.  This seems to be something all cultures agree on.  Do also be clean and well-groomed and dress up a little.

Just observing

One thing that reportedly happened when the Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi tree, achieved enlightenment was that in the second stage of his meditation, he became able to access memories of all his past lives.  It is interesting because in his other teachings he doesn't much refer to this -- just observing.

The problem here is that if you look closely this ability would seem to remove the founding principle of Buddhism, that to live is to suffer, since the suffering spoken of is not pain or nausea or even frustration, but the realization that we are nothing, that we live and die and even though we are reborn what is reborn is not really us but a new entity with its own experiences and genes.

Memories are a function of physical brain tissue.  Damage it or let it suffer disease and memories go away, as they do with death and rebirth, if this actually happens.

To be sure, we also die and are reborn from moment to moment.  What gives the illusion of self is that we have access to memories, fallible though they may be, of our previous current life.

The Buddha's experience suggests that there is another place where memories are also maintained -- a non-physical place -- and he was able to access that and perhaps transfer information to his living brain.

The implication I get is that once one has achieved enlightenment one no longer needs to stop the rebirth cycle.  One's total insignificance becomes something else and we no longer suffer in this way.  Then, if we work on making the Earth a nice place, all suffering can be abolished, but regardless the main suffering is dealt with.

It may be that enlightenment doesn't always bring with it this ability, in which case entering bliss would seem to still be the way to go.  At any rate, there don't seem to be many around carrying with them the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of millions of past lives.

I got a letter from my health insurer in the States telling me they noticed (it probably popped up in a computer scan) that I hadn't had a stool blood test in a good long time (I have had negative colonoscopies so I personally don't see the point).  As I understand the research these tests cause more trouble from false positives and regularly miss many problems anyway and so in sum are of little value and a lot of hassle for the patient (although of course not nearly as much hassle as a colonoscopy).

So I ask myself what is going on.  Rarely will this particular insurance company pay for a test unless there is a clear standard calling for it, and then they only do the very minimum found in the standard.  In short, I am skeptical here, and the answer is pretty easy to infer -- they don't want to do colonoscopies and negative results on these stool exams gives them a legal excuse for not doing the more rigorous and much more accurate real exam in case a cancer and ensuing lawsuit takes place.

Health services in the States are so outrageously expensive that no sane person goes without insurance.  Still, it practically guarantees that I have no right to use my own judgement about treatment -- that the underwriters or claims managers can decide to refuse treatment if it is not in the "standard," even if the doctor and everyone else thinks otherwise, and they have a strong vested interested to behave in this way even if the patient is going to die as a result.

I guess it's a balancing act since there no doubt are many who would milk the insurance company dry -- both patients and doctors -- if they don't behave this way.  Still, I don't like it one bit and think both the high cost of health care in the States and this quandary are both brought about by the very institution of insurance.  People don't shop so insurance companies have to, and laws get passed by the doctors restricting their ability to do so, and legislators agree for obvious public interest reasons, so there is little if any competition holding down costs.  The system is a huge monopoly, aided and abetted  -- or maybe "amplified" is a better word -- by the malpractice legal system.

In Vietnam if some treatment goes wrong, you are not going to be able to sue your doctor, even if he makes some egregious mistake (there are criminal consequences though that has a considerable influence).  Further, while you can buy insurance, the cost of health care is so reasonable that you don't, but this does lead to your shopping around a bit and asking certain questions an American doctor never hears.  It's a "pay cash in advance" system, which also neatly deals with the bad debt problem so many hospitals in the States seem to have.

That would not work in the States because the charges are so high it would create serious social equity and moral questions.  In a society where the bureaucrats keep tabs on medical (and pretty much all other costs) and where there is effective competition anyway, you end up with better care at less cost and to my mind a grossly superior system.  (I leave out describing the details of the system, except to say it seems rationally designed rather than to have grown up mainly in the interests of the doctors and hospitals and now the insurers).

The problem one might think the Vietnamese have is what about the truly indigent.  Are they just to die?  Well, it doesn't seem to happen when costs are in bounds.  Charitable impulses from family and neighbors and religious groups and organized charities can far better manage the issue.  You may have a huge ward for your bed and things may not be as pretty and hospital-looking, but the care is what matters, not the esthetics.

The Buddhist maxim about dealing with the world is to be "wise" compassionate.  In other words, don't be naive, even though one is non-judgmental and forgiving and always as helpful as possible.  Such wisdom in my mind includes looking at systems to see where the incentives are.  Most people manage to rationalize their behavior to meet what is best for them, and this creates a fairly good system in Vietnam and one that is not so good in the States.

Why I'm a poor Buddhist

There is a sense in which we can say we are all Buddhists, as they say, we have "Buddha nature," if we want what is right and true, except maybe sociopaths.  Many who even do what we see as evil are motivated by their Buddha nature, deluded though it may be.

When Gautama sat under his Bodhi tree and persisted in meditation until he hit upon it (became Enlightened), what came of it is what is called the Four Noble Truths, which, to summarize crudely, consists of the assertions that to live is to suffer, the cause of this suffering are our desires, especially our grasping desire to continue living, that this causes the cycle of rebirths (reincarnations as it is miscalled in the West) and so we continue to be born again and again in life after life of suffering, and the solution is to break the desire to live and hence avoid rebirth.

I must interject that this is by no means a summary of Buddhist teaching, as there is much more to it.

Up to the point where the teaching gets into being reborn, most people readily accept the idea that we suffer because we have desires.  After all, we either get what we want, in which case we have to hold onto it, and that is not possible, and sooner or later we will suffer loss, or we don't get what we want, in which case we suffer frustration.  I have to say this insight is profound and important and useful, but also is common sense and hardly unique to Buddhist thinking in history.

Does that mean that by accepting it and acting accordingly (watching our desires that they don't get control over us) that we are Enlightened.  It would not seem so since at the time the Buddha became enlightened all sorts of miraculous things happened, including a visit by Brahma himself.

This is often the case with myths -- things are out of proportion.  The story of how the teaching came into the world, with the meditation and miracles and so on, is out of proportion to what it is.

Still, the insight is helpful and important.  We suffer because we want things and have other desires.  We of course want sex and food and so on, and we also want to be admired by others, to be loved, to be successful and have a lot of face, to have comforts and luxuries, to be secure and safe and healthy, to have friends and family and a place in the world, to be entertained and able to learn new and interesting things, and so on.

The thing is the pursuit of these things sometimes leads to trouble or our doing things that are wrong, and often leads to frustration, since we obviously cannot have everything, and of course sometimes we necessarily must as a result experience grief and other times experience pain.

However, and here is where I think maybe I make a poor Buddhist.  There is the other side of all this -- that we also experience satisfactions and pleasures and even from time to time are able to help someone else and inevitably experience the gratification of that, even if that was not our intent. 

So while the truth of the Bodhi Hill insight is useful and undeniable, there is a further truth that it is not the entire story.  When we experience frustration, we have to remind ourselves we probably are over-reaching: when we experience true pain we remind ourselves to do something medical about it and if that is not possible then it is not possible.  When we die, well, then we die, and I don't see the point of making this fact the basis of an entire life philosophy.  To be sure death plays a role in how we approach things, but while we are alive it is less important than that we are alive.