What are foibles? At the action level they are mistakes resulting from "weakness or minor character flaws" (Webster). Our foibles compete with our good intentions, yielding results that often follow Murphy's Law. Foibles receive some comment from popular speakers and writers, usually in the form of reminding us how to approach life effectively, both individually and in the company of others. For example, recall the "Points to Ponder" section in the Reader's Digest©.

It seems that our propensity to forget our values, while shouldering the burden of daily life, negatively affects our ability and motivation to be reliably objective in our reflections and decisions. This is particularly true when we must face or think deeply about issues outside our normal daily experience. This should be no surprise. We would like to be able to focus our energies in areas that promote our individual success, however we define that. We hope and expect that others will fill in the gaps if there is something we need in value reminders. So we absorb platitudes to help keep us on track, provided the writers do not directly insult us. Our religions serve in that role as well, giving us regular reminders of our foibles and exhortations to avoid them.

Foibles originate within the individual, based on less than perfect life experiences and individual aptitude limitations, and they spread across groups of people who share time together for almost any reason. We tend to associate with "like minded" people, i.e. those who think as we do about societal, metaphysical or epistemological issues. Thus, foibles are not limited to individuals or individual actions.

There is a common, expected result from foibles when groups of individuals essentially equal in levels of ignorance, but charged with a mission, attempt to influence other humans in a commanding manner. You receive an unbelievable amount of advice and rules from others. Some of it is good and/or useful. However, much is not. It is up to you to discern the difference and, if necessary, to determine your level of response to counter that advice, rule or proposition, particularly if there is a chance that it could become a law.

Our tendency is to be cooperative on social matters, especially when we are convinced of our own ignorance or in the idea that we do not have the right, as an individual, to say no. This means that our self-image in relation to society acts as a director who tends to still our natural tendency to question any form of authority. At a practical level, each of us is aware of some rules that we must obey to avoid the wrath of other individuals. We often demonstrate obedience based on trust also. Both of these situations are easy to understand and appear to be rather obvious. What is not so obvious is the critical need to identify and eliminate rules, practices, laws, etc. that reflect human foibles as opposed to valid knowledge.

We should expect human foibles to result in societal conditions that are less than ideal. After all, we are limited individually in experience and intellect. Sometimes we are deficient in social skills or human values. We make a serious error, however, when we assume that groups of humans designated to manage our larger affairs will be more reliable than each of us as individuals. We make the mistake of assuming they will be more aware of and responsive to the need for change. We do not perceive that they will become focused on themselves.

One of Isaac Newton's laws on motion, i.e. an object in motion tends to stay in motion, addresses the change issue, and the proper term for tendency to stay the same is inertia. It is very difficult to change any practice that becomes embedded in a society, whether its origin is religious, governmental or cultural. Changing fundamental perceptions, laws, etc., does not come easily, for power structures are built within and around these practices. Both the practices themselves and the power structures are maintained from the basis of both good intentions and from human foibles.

This means that, in actuality, nothing is sacred in our societal practices. Everything we do is logically subject to re-evaluation. To assume that re-evaluation will occur naturally, or be built into our social systems in an effective manner, however, is hopelessly naïve. We seldom overcome our inertia. Our avoidance or fear response to change is one of the greatest, repetitive human foibles of the individual. We want to believe that our status is the result of wisdom or good decisions on our part, or, the malignant behavior of others, and we will avoid obvious facts and events that counter our beliefs to prolong our illusions.

So it is that we enter the realm of things that people avoid asking about or doing, and we discover the nature and effects of individual and mass deception. For example, consider the 50 years celebration in Europe marking the end of World War II. Note that Germany was not invited to attend. Note also that even after fifty years, when virtually all the willful German participants of that war were long dead, that the remainder of Europe, via the parliaments, still felt it necessary to punish the German citizens.

Who were they punishing? The very individuals who played no part in the war and upon whom much of the future of the European Union depends. If you were German, how would that situation affect your attitude regarding the European Union? It seems counterintuitive that such stupidity would occur in the current period, for virtually all the citizens in all of Europe in 1994, less than age 65, were non-participants in World War II. Yet, that is exactly what occurred. Compliments of the various parliaments in European countries that are in action today. What a foible! What a perfect example of designated governments working against the interests of their own countries and, thus, against the interests of the individuals who live within those countries.

How could the above situation happen? The obvious answer is that the parliaments were responding to the wants of a class of individuals from the World War II era, still alive and in positions of economic and governmental influence today, either directly or through their direct descendants or appointees, and not to the general population. They revealed how government does cater to special interest groups and promote culturally discordant tribal behavior that lasts long after the precipitating events.

Power tends to be inherited. It is painfully evident that enough people in positions of power do not want to have a unified Europe that the realization of the European Union is not going to be easy, even though it is clearly essential for the long term economic wellbeing of European citizens. Longstanding contempt between European nations, due to their very long history of individual dominance behaviors, is a strong impediment to progress. It seems that the only kick in the tail that will unify Europe politically and economically is the matter of economic necessity in a global commerce environment. Do Europeans understand the fundamental truth in the statement from USA history that "United we stand, divided we fall?"

Nothing can justify the actual crimes against Humanity perpetrated by German leaders, and executed by their subordinates, before and during World War II. Nor is it fitting to dwell on the hideous results of those actions, like the Holocaust, today. It is fitting, however, to look at the fundamental causes to avoid future events of that type. When any culture starts with the precept that they are either the master race or God's chosen people, complete with covenant, there cannot be anything but future trouble for the rest of Humanity. We must get beyond self-centered human ignorance. It is sensible to get on with life, i.e. our future.

We thus proceed to recognize that virtually all nations and individuals within those nations can become unreliable and work to the detriment of others, internal or external, and the problem is found to originate in our foibles. We are not growing or empowering ourselves to resist the stupidity of conflict, armed, economic, or cultural. This foible is of the class of things we choose not to think about. You will note that your government does not want you taking individual responsibility for that type of thinking either.

Will the Internet remain freely available to everyone if large numbers of individuals outside our existing power structures start using it effectively to organize the general world population politically/ideologically to resist conflict? Look at the Internet policy of China. Is it not interesting how our legislative bodies in the USA and Europe have scrambled to insert themselves and their forced views of life into that open environment? The Internet is nothing but an open forum for sharing beliefs and facts, and all attempts to regulate its content or use are ill-disguised mind control tactics. Our foible is our failure to understand that we must demand global freedom of speech and the right to use the Internet freely, as an information infrastructure, to offset the weaknesses of our business and governmental leaders by keeping each other factually informed. Think how effectively the Internet, in one fell swoop, undermines the aggregation of power and subsequent content control that have occurred in the communications industry, i.e. newspapers, television, magazines, etc.

Will you watch CNN™ if you have timely onsite reports, including video, of any world situation from multiple, independent observers, who have no reason to control information content and every reason to share it? Will you read the newspaper, USA Today™? Why? Do understand that media giants, telecommunications giants and repressive members of government will do everything in their power to deny free Internet access to the entire population. This is another example of regressive evolution in power, but in this instance it addresses the global "printed" free speech medium, the Internet, which is the latest technological infrastructure to promote personal freedom. Will you allow the Congress to destroy it, by allowing telecommunications companies to turn local unlimited calls into toll calls, or by repetitively attempting to violate the First Amendment to our Constitution regarding content?

Note that Europeans must already pay toll charges for local calls to Internet service providers. The consequence? Far fewer Europeans use the Internet, on a population percentage basis, than USA citizens. Is it not a major foible for us to allow that practice to continue and to expand?

Now, you no longer have the ability to remain anonymous to protect your life and liberty. You are a member of the herd, but unlike the classical example of the weakest being culled by the predators, anyone can easily be singled out for individual attention. Simply consider the exposure of grossly unfair Internal Revenue Service practices in 1997 and you will grasp the point. It is the foible of individuals in powerful organizations believing, consciously or unconsciously, that they have an assigned right to impose their personal will in the manner of their choice. And that includes large businesses as well as governments and government agencies, globally.

I will now give you an example of a foible within a foible. Specifically, I as a writer of concepts and ideas recognize the importance of remaining emotionally detached in the formation of the ideas and examples that I want to convey to you in an objective and logical way. Yet, I will now depart from that practice to demonstrate how unmanaged emotion can impede effectiveness in conveying straightforward concepts efficiently and objectively. Read the following five paragraphs about President Clinton and his detractors from two perspectives. First, decide whether or not you agree with the conclusions. Second, did I or did I not lose command of my style by allowing emotion to overwhelm my presentation? Finally, draw your own conclusion about the emotional communication style as a foible. Then read the review paragraph.

The blatant harassment of President Clinton is another fine example of the worst politically motivated behaviors, for each of us knows at a gut level that virtually all of us, especially our "leaders," routinely lie and engage in behaviors that deceive us and others. Our history is full of examples of deceptive practices by powerful individuals in government. Read newspapers or watch news clips from the 1940's and you will see countless examples of bald lies perpetrated by the USA federal government to enrage the citizenry to support the war effort. Even our encyclopedias were modified to dehumanize the "enemy," in ways that today would be considered grossly illegal. Shall we, similar to the Vatican with Galileo, posthumously declare President Franklin Roosevelt to represent the opposite of what we have been told? Was special prosecutor Kenneth Starr any different in his behaviors than Senator Joseph McCarthy, of the 1950's communism obsession? Do you recognize the fact that the general population in the USA has always been subject to complete political manipulation, and in particular directed to think about foolish bunk, based on the marketing skills and unadvertised intent of the would-be "leaders?" Do you believe that leaders in other countries are any different? You cannot trust leaders.

To use the media time wastefully, as happened with Starr's activities, is a national foible and an international embarrassment. Simply consider the sheer number of hours dedicated to that circus and you will quickly realize that you could have earned a college degree if you spent that much time exposing yourself to useful information. The media hopped continuously from one absurd issue to another; e.g., "can Clinton still lead?" Of course he could, if the media stopped demeaning him to the rest of the world. They were, de facto, the cause of the growing "leadership" problem. What the "people have a right to know" was nothing but a dodge for poor choice of programming material. And, I might add, boring and repetitious, shallow material, whose true information content and air time should have occupied less than 1% of the material actually presented and the time used to present it.

It is uplifting, however, to note the political polls in the USA indicated that the majority of citizens were sufficiently intelligent to relegate the charges against President Clinton into the trash bucket in which they belong. Most wanted truth, but they also cared not a whit about his sex life. Meanwhile, the media folks just did not get it. We did not care. The politicians who jumped on the bandwagon after the fact to condemn President Clinton for his "confession," re censure or impeachment, looked unbelievably foolish. Who or what did they think they represent? Could they possibly believe that we agreed that perjury was the issue? Do they think we differentiate the location of where a lie is told from the importance of the lie? Do they not grasp our knowledge that courts exist as mediums for twisting and obscuring the truth, on both sides of any trial? The entire Republican Party was so full of itself on executing their "solemn" duty to the people (what people?) that they were blind to their intellectual nakedness.

The single amusing aspect of that circus was that the ultraconservative Republicans who were behind the prosecution, which was more accurately seen as persecution, did not grasp their impotence in attempting to push their repressive attitudes on the general population. They were fools in their repressive cosmic beliefs, and contrasting hypocritical behaviors, and looked even more foolish for attempting to control the mood of the general populace by demeaning a popular president. There was not a national morality consensus even remotely related to the ultraconservative agendas. Nor is there about to be one. Alas, most of us are fully aware, as demonstrated by numerous polls, that the general population does not trust any part of the Washington political structure. Nor do we trust the rule of law in our courts regarding perjury; real life experiences show us that the entire process is infected with lying through deception. We do not care about any politician's sexual escapades unless they are guilty of blatant sexual harassment or directly impede the execution of job responsibilities. The entire issue is as comparatively important to our wellbeing as former President Bush's disdain for broccoli! The ultra-conservative Republicans will finally understand this truth in the coming 1998 elections. The self-serving, turncoat members of the Democratic Party will eventually lose their support within that party, even if they survive the current elections. Disloyalty is long remembered.

What we must fear, however, is the precedent that may be set if President Clinton is impeached and/or removed from office during 1999. Individuals of little or no power are the inheritors of governmental policy. If President Clinton is brought down for his foolishness, you and your friends, who also have affairs (come on, be honest, at least with yourself), are next. Do you want to live in a society where lying about an extramarital affair, in any context, subjects you to losing your job or criminal prosecution? Do you vote? There are numerous aspects of human life that have no place in legislative or court deliberations, due to their actual basis of either religious or other prejudicial beliefs. Will you allow this farce to continue?

In review, consider the earlier questions regarding the foible of emotional communication in the last five paragraphs. Note that a real national foible was discussed in strident, emotional tones. You were exposed to "preaching," which is designed to evoke your emotional response without corresponding rational reflection on contrasting viewpoints. Was that method good in promoting your objectivity? Could you sort out the mixture of truths, half-truths and outright bullshit effectively? Can we trust our conclusions when we allow our emotions to dominate our thought processes?

It is important to examine our individual propensity to shun reality and further our personal illusions. We have, at the outset, the combined effects of genetic inheritance and environment to yield the type of individual that each of us will become. There is no nature vs. nurture argument. There never was. It is both. Either can enhance or hurt the other in terms of the effectiveness of the resulting "adult." All other viewpoints reflect politics or religion, not science, and are hence unreliable as they express narrow-minded agendas or wishes instead of all the relevant facts. One of my favorite examples deals with the concepts of affirmative action and equal opportunity, as described below.

Suppose I decide I want to play professional basketball for the Philadelphia 76'ers. What is the problem with the fact that I am over age 50, relatively short and in out-of-shape physical condition? Why is my segment of the population not represented in professional basketball teams? Is it not enough that I, and others like me, want to play on those teams? We too want fame and money. Is this not a class discrimination problem?

The obvious answer is that I cannot compete effectively with my fabulous Black or White brothers who happen, somehow, to be on the team. Rational people would not want to watch me play basketball, or, pay for the privilege, unless they were into absurd forms of comedy. No professional basketball player would want to depend on my performance either.

Could it be that in real life that results matter more than wishes? If you think not, then I invite you to visit some remote, third world hospital the next time you need brain surgery (yes, I am aware of the surgery for congestive heart failure that originated when a South American doctor successfully went beyond known surgical procedures in order to try to save lives in a remote village). To point, when our expectations of life exceed our ability to contribute, there is a huge discontinuity, and it is the foible of self-deception. Essentially all of us are our own victims in that regard, so it is incumbent on us individually to counter that foible. How might we do that? You will receive the definitive answers in the chapters starting with Development and Application of Knowledge.

No discussion of foibles would be complete without consideration of our response to dying and death. Death is both highly personal and part of many of our societal rituals. On the personal side, we do not particularly care for the idea that we will, at some point, die. It seems we fear death more than anything else, for it appears to be permanent. We really do not want to "not be." Our response to that deep fear is to prolong life as long as possible and to invent afterlife scenarios, either of the Christian or Islamic variety or with flavors of reincarnation.

What makes that a foible? Simply our unwillingness to accept gracefully something both natural and, up to now, unavoidable. We know of no examples of any cellular life forms that escape death, though the recent experiments with telomerase, i.e. cell immortality, are rather intriguing. Thus, we hear the old saw about nothing being certain except death and taxes. We do not see afterlife forms of our departed friends and relatives cruising around, so our suspicion is that death is in fact the end of everything for each of us, regardless of what we are "taught" by our religions.

Our response to that fear is evidenced by how our society applies inordinate medical care to save our elderly from natural deaths. This means major resources are consumed in the USA prolonging, in usually poor quality, the lives of every elderly person covered by Medicare and other supplemental insurance, who can be yanked from the jaws of death. Another reverse example is the death penalty. It is broadly and wrongly considered to be the ultimate put-down of a violent criminal. A third example, in western civilizations, is the illegal status conferred to personal suicide or to assisted suicide for terminal patients in severe pain.

Death for the elderly is unavoidable anyway, as yet, and the years and money spent trying to escape death are pathetic compared to the quality of life that a younger person might have. What is the point? Where did we get the notion that it is moral to prolong the lives of the aged, non-contributing infirm, at the expense of the healthy? That practice demonstrates our morbid and irrational fear of the natural event of death. Counter arguments related to the value of research into the aging process are mostly deceptions. One does not continue fixing old, broken down cars in order to develop new designs that will inherently last longer. You study the broken part to identify the weakness that led to the failure. Then you redesign it or you buy a new part or a new car.

The death penalty is also badly misunderstood. On one side we have prosecutors pushing hard to get death penalty decisions, and on the other, people who believe that assault by the state is no different from assault by the individual. Both sides fail to see the real issue within our present and overall primitive legal systems. The condemned criminal is getting off easy with the death penalty. Life in prison is a much worse sentence, given the fact that the criminal will never be allowed to live normally again anyway. Yet, we delude ourselves into believing that death is the maximum punishment. It is not. In fact, it is a free ride to escape the condemnation of society. It is where we all wind up anyway, just a few years later. Some punishment!

Suicide is the ultimate statement that an individual can make if he or she chooses to leave this life. That it is illegal is understandable when considered from the perspective of government. To point, individuals are not to assume they have the right to decide what to do with their own life. And the state does? Our religions in the western world also threaten eternal hell and damnation for those who would tamper with God's creation. In short, no organization of power wants individuals to feel that they own themselves. But, of course, you do own yourself. Who else could own you? Who, in the vast numbers of your fellow human beings, has earned the right to own another human life? Does it matter that an assemblage of a few hundred humans attempts to decide otherwise? Recognize that certain basic life issues are outside the purview of any human organization.

Assisted suicide is the purest form of humanitarianism possible when the patient is in severe pain with no hope of recovery, and clearly desirous of ending life. Yet, the Kevorkian opponents will not quit. We would think from their actions that their own lives were directly threatened. Those opponents are the least humanitarian people alive today, in that they promote humility, pain and emotional suffering as long as possible. That seems to me to be more of a crime than a foible. We recognize that euthanasia is kindness when our pets become aged or terminally infirm, yet we do not respect the rights of terminally ill humans to seek euthanasia.

Destiny has much to say about death later, with a view towards eliminating it in our future. In the meantime, death is not such a terrible destiny. If you feel pleasure falling asleep and you later recognize the utterly unconscious condition that you were in while sleeping, evidenced by the passage of time without you being aware of it, then death should not be perceived as such a terrible thing. Death is a tragedy, however, when it occurs by accident or disease to a young person or to someone highly active and otherwise in good health, who is not elderly.

The death foible is pervasive across cultures and through time across civilizations, and all for naught. We keep more physicians, morticians, lawyers and tax people busy than seems possible, not to mention grave maintenance staff and government archivists. And with the exception of dependent spouses and children, or parents who lose a young child, nearly everyone gets over the death of loved ones and friends, and cares little about the death of strangers. Eastern religions and cultural practices, however, won't even let the living get on with the business of the living, because of either ancestor worship or fear of shaming the dead person by marginal behaviors or less than perfect life results.

To conclude, human foibles are not only real, but they can readily be seen as a fundamental reason why our ancient ancestors and their social orders, and all the people in between and their social orders, failed to develop the human race in a reliable and positive way. In short, it is equally important to understand what happened, what can be done to effect change, and then to get on with the job. There is no place for blame and there is no reason to extend this chapter to include more examples of the obvious.