My Choice

The other day I was discussing abortion with some Facebook acquaintances. Their basic viewpoint was that abortion is "not ok" but that it's not the government's business to make that choice. (While discussing this with my husband, he said something like, "Deciding who is and is not allowed to kill people is very much a role of government. Regulating doctors is also a pretty basic role of government." However, my purpose in writing this article has nothing to do with further debate.) While the Facebook conversation definitely did not change my mind or my vote (I'm not sure Facebook posts ever do), it did make me think about this.

In America we believe that the government is a representation of the people. So, if we really want to end abortion, maybe we should be looking at other ways to make a difference. I'm not talking about other political policies. We already decided that government isn't the answer. Maybe politicians or famous people can say "everybody should do this" or "the government should do that", but for little me, saying that "the world should be this way" is an exercise in frustration. We might as well say that the world should be paradise and have done with it. So, laying aside our political beliefs, working together whether we are pro-life or pro-choice, what is something that you and I can do personally to help people make good choices? I would love to see other people's ideas and comments on this. Here are a few things that I've thought of:

My life is pretty sheltered (though I prefer the word 'blessed'). Most of the people I know belong to the same religious culture I do. They are honestly striving to follow important commandments such as the law of chastity that make life so much simpler... and, though I'm trying not to be judgmental, better. And, as "the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them" (Alma 31:5), it seems to me that missionary work ought to be on the list of ways to help mothers make good decisions. Spreading the word of God is a way to change people's hearts, and let the laws and politics follow. Again, I'm not saying that "everybody ought to be a member of our church" or  "people should listen more to missionaries". I'm saying that those of us with good, moral lives should talk to our neighbors, talk to our friends, and try to help spread the principles that lead to happiness.

Another idea that came to mind is to use the spheres of influence that we have. I communicate best through writing. Sometimes words haunt my mind and do not go away unless I write them down (thus, I have this blog). I also just published my first book. Novels shouldn't be written purely with a political agenda (that's not a story, that's a soapbox). But I find that my beliefs and experiences do help me to write. Once I euthanized a dying baby chick, and even though my reasons in my head were solid, the second I killed him I had an instant emotional reaction I didn't expect. The experience became a part of my book, where the main character enters a battle and ends up killing someone. My feelings of horror when I hear about abortion came into the story in the climax, when the main character sees the result of prejudice that ended up killing many children. The theme of motherhood comes up continually, and I have a feeling that these thoughts on changing hearts instead of laws is going to be very prevalent in the sequel. I also feel that young adults don't have enough experience with parenthood or children, as families shrink and/or break. I noticed that young adult novels, if they have children at all, use children as heart-wringing props to show how evil the villains are. The dear children must be saved... but they aren't characters, and they aren't human. In my book I tried to show the children as characters. Some were hurt, you might call some of them victims, but I hope I showed that they are individual people, valuable not only because of who they can become but also because of who they are.

My last idea is the hardest. My thoughts on these subjects were interrupted as I needed to leave the house and run some errands, which means I needed to take my three little boys with me. I realized that one thing I can do is to show people the joy of motherhood. This is not easy when taking little boys in public. I'm usually trying to show people that I am not insane as I try to keep them in some sense of order. But maybe that reaction is making things worse. Maybe I can try for a balance, so that I'm still teaching my boys not to run in the road or disrupt other people, but I'm doing it in a way that emphasizes the fun and joy of it. Lately I've been trying to answer people who say "you have your hands full" with "and my heart's even fuller" (this is difficult for me because I struggle to talk with strange people). If you have ideas and tips on how to do this, please share.

So, there are a few thoughts that I've come up with. Again, I would love more ideas on how I could help people to make good decisions, not as a voter but as an individual. Thank you.

Population Control

I'm the oldest of a very large family, and I always wanted my own large family as well. I've also always been interested in learning about animals and conservation. As a child I never thought that the two might be considered at odds with each other. I read descriptions of habitat loss and ZooBooks' not-so-subtle hints that we have a human overpopulation problem without taking much notice. In high school my English teacher constantly liked to talk about our population problems and joked about programs to limit the number of children one can have. I felt that was wrong, and I knew my religion encouraged having children, but until college I didn't really have a solid position on the subject.

Lessons From Religion

The first concept I learned came from religion. The Doctrine and Covenants 104:17-18 states:

17 For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.

 18 Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.

It made plenty of sense to me. The Lord created the earth and made sure there were plenty of resources to care for the people he created. The problem lies with people who hog all of the resources instead of allowing others to take care of themselves. It reminds me of the agricultural fields around the city where I live--gleaning was banned because people would hoard all of the food and then open vegetable stands to sell what was intended to help everyone.

Another concept I came upon while in college was the idea that Satan, the enemy of all mankind, was fighting to destroy the place where we live. His goal is to make men miserable and to hinder the work of the Lord, and it makes a lot of sense that one of his targets is to make the earth uninhabitable or at least less beautiful. But I think there's enough information out there on this subject, and our culture seems to be erring from caring too much about the earth instead of the other way around, so I'll move on.


History and Innovation

People have been worried about over population for a long time. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich stated:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

If you look at the information he had available, you might be tempted to agree with him. In fact, the technology and practices available at the time were not enough to feed the world's growing population.

Obviously, the world did not collapse in massive famine forty years ago. What happened? At the same time Ehrlich was prophesying , a global movement called the Green Revolution was beginning.People made new discoveries and inventions which allowed farming to be much more productive.For example, Norman Borlaug bred new types of wheat. While "corn... as high as an elephant's eye" is poetic, it's not really that helpful: we don't eat corn stalks. Borlaug began breeding wheat that grows the same amount of food on a smaller plant, resulting in less nutrient and space requirements. While some of the effects of this were negative (widespread pesticide use and the crippling of the family farm, for instance), it also allowed us to support a larger population. More people means more innovators, and innovators help us to live better.


Economics

In order for a population to stay static, each woman needs to have two children survive to adulthood (one to replace her and one for her husband). Currently in the United States the birth rate is about 1.93 children per woman. Most developed countries are below, sometimes far below, this rate. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article claiming that America's baby bust will be the greatest threat to our economic standing (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578270053387770718.html). The number of children being born cannot support the number of people retiring from the baby boom of the 50's.


The City Mouse and the Country Mouse

Open a map on your computer, zoomed out so you can see the whole United States-- google maps works well. Close your eyes and point to a spot on the map. Now zoom in on your spot. When I did it, I pointed to a spot just east of the Gulf of California in Mexico. As far as I can tell, it's about forty miles from any human habitation. My second try hit the Halfbreed Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, about thirty miles from Billings. Chances are pretty good that you didn't hit any human habitations either.

National Geographic recently came out with an issue that highlighted the importance of cities. They explained that having people in a more centralized location lessens the effect on the earth overall. It uses less wildlife habitat, and less gas as people don't need to travel as far. My husband visited a place in Korea where the people living in the "country" live in high-rise buildings with their fields stretched out in all directions around them.

Beatrix Potter says in her retelling of The City Mouse and the Country Mouse, "One place suits one person, and another place suits another. As for me, I prefer to live in the country." I completely agree with her. I'd rather be in the country, but within a short drive of a larger city. In fact, when I was younger I suggested that the entire earth should be divided equally among all of the people, and each should manage and take care of the section they'd been given. I'm old enough to know this wouldn't work, but the principle holds true--no matter where we live, we need to care for what we have.

One way of solving problems on a personal level is the principle of homesteading, which is that each person should try to be as self-reliant as possible, especially in providing food and other goods for their family. On a city, this might mean a pot of herbs in the window. On fact, the best garden I've had yet was a tiny plot in front of our rented duplex, barely big enough for three tomatoes and a zucchini plant smashed between the owner's mandatory rose bush. In the country, this might mean goats, chickens, and a large garden (my eventual goal). The principle remains the same no matter where you live.


Effects of Overpopulation Fears

One of the biggest problems of fearing overpopulation is that almost every solution to the "problem" involve violating the rights of others. Some people do decide not to have children in order to keep from "adding to the problem", but others see fit to force their opinions on others. This includes the murdering of unborn children, forced sterilization, one-child policies, and eugenics. Eugenetics means that someone in authority will decide for the rest of the population who is fit and who is not, and remove those who are not from the population. Hitler's extermination methods are a very extreme, well-known example. Abortion clinics targeting minority races and doctors suggesting abortion for "disabled" babies are less-known examples.



Quality and Quantity

My favorite story came from a college friend. She was attending an event in high school and was assigned a roommate with very different views from her own. The roommate explained that she did not want to have children because of overpopulation. Then she paused and said to my friend, "I'm glad you want to have children, though. The world needs more people like you."

Raise the change you want to see in the world. This is what makes the most sense to me. I for one believe that there are a lot of problems in our culture. I can't change everything, but I can teach my children right from wrong. I can teach my children how to live a good life. And they will go out into the world and interact with others. I will do my bit, and they can do theirs, and goodness will spread, little by little, person by person. Lasting change for the better is never successful when crammed down people's throats. It happens on an individual level, one by one, person by person. And that's how I hope to make a difference.

The Science of Religion: Truth and Fact

While reading comments online and talking to people, I have found that many seem to think that science and religion are incompatible. This feels rather strange to me, as a science graduate from a religious university. Science and religion are completely different things with completely different objectives, and a blanket assumption about their relationship (or lack thereof) is often overly simplified and inherently untrue.

Some people will reject anything called science in favor of their religion, while others will disregard anything religious yet accept anything as long as it's called science. One major cause of this apparent incompatibility is that people do not understand the difference between truth and fact.


1: Truth

Truth is.

In the book 1984, a government leader explains how his organization views truth. He tells the main character that if he believes that he has flown around the room, and the only other person in the room also believes that he has flown around the room, then he has indeed flown around the room. If a trusted leader says that he is holding up four fingers, then he is holding up four fingers, no matter what he is really doing. If a piece of evidence is forgotten, it does not exist.

Obviously, this is not true. The reader knows perfectly well that this man has not flown around the room, that he is holding up only three fingers, and that the piece of evidence does exist.

What is truth? To be brief, truth is.

I think all of us have the capability to understand this. We all accept that some things are. Truth is unalterable, and it exists independent of belief. If everyone in the entire world believed that the earth is flat, it would not change the truth.

Religion is an institution of truth. Of course, not all religions are true--this is impossible, since most of them consider themselves the one and only truth. However, the purpose of religion is to teach truth. Whether correctly or not, religion teaches what is and what is not. Perhaps some individual religions are fact based--perhaps some will claim "we have made many observations, and as far as we are able to understand, this is how things are", but I do not know of any. Sometimes individual teachings will come into conflict with well-established or widely-believed fact, which does create a separation between that particular religion and science, but it does not mean that all religions and all science are incompatible.

How do you know what truth is? This is a very personal, and a very religious, matter.What you accept as truth and what you do not is up to you, but it is important to realize that your acceptance does not make it true. You will have to find things out for yourself. And how do you find out what the truth is? The process most often used for discovering truth is science.


2: Fact
       
When you go to a science class, chances are you will be given a long list of facts that you are required to know. Especially in the early grades, these facts are presented as truth. Students will accept these as truth, and many people still think this way. If science says it, it must be true. As long as some piece of information has the big label with "science" stamped on it, than it's truth. But defining truth isn't science. That's religion. People who think this way will often find that their "religion of science" clashes with other religions. And really, that's not surprising. Religions are rarely compatible with one another.

In science classes, we learn facts, not truths. Caterpillars turn into butterflies. Cells divide to make new cells. Electrons surround atoms. These are all facts.

Most of us accept these as truth. But, as I've already explained, truth is not based on acceptance.

But everyone knows that caterpillars do turn into butterflies, you insist. I've seen them do it.
No. You have seen one caterpillar turn into a butterfly. You may have seen many caterpillars turn into many butterflies. But in order to say that every single caterpillar will turn into a butterfly, or even that every single caterpillar would turn into a butterfly under ideal conditions, you need to make an assumption. You must assume that because this has happened many many times, it will happen in other situations as well.

Science is what makes that assumption. Science says that the more times an individual thing has happened, the more likely it is to be true. When one thing has been proven enough times and under enough different circumstances, it is called fact. Fact is not truth. Fact does not say that something is. It says that something probably is, or that it is as far as we are able to observe, or that it certainly seems that way. But it does not claim to be truth.

Science is a process used to help people decide what is truth. Remember those science projects in elementary school? Those come closest to explaining the true nature of science. You have a statement that you want to prove, so you design an experiment. You control as many factors as you can, and you run your experiment. You get a result. Is that result truth? Maybe. Is that result fact? Well, it's on it's way. You've learned that your caterpillars did turn into butterflies. But what about other kinds of butterflies? What if your caterpillars were unusual? So you run some more experiments, and other people run similar experiments, and after a whole lot of experimenting  you decide that the evidence shows that your statement is true (or false), and that many other people agree with you.

Congratulations. You have a fact.

Is your fact true?

Probably.

The process of science helps us decide what is true. We decide how many experiments it takes for a statement to become fact. We decide what facts we accept as truth, and which we do not.

This process is not limited to caterpillars and cells and electrons. It can be used for anything. In fact, this process is often used in religion. We tell people to "experiment on the word". Pray about it, we say. Ask, and listen for an answer. Try living the commandments and see if they are the correct way to live. These are all scientific experiments. Conduct your own experiments, do your own research, and decide for yourself what it takes for you to accept something as truth. Then you can stand by it and be sure for yourself.

The Meaning of Food

Once when I was a teenager, my family decided to look after a pregnant goat, to decide if we wanted a goat for ourselves or not. Unfortunately, she died while giving birth, but one of her kids, a cute little boy, survived. We raised him by hand and named him Frost. Unfortunately, male goats are not very useful--they don't give milk, they cost a lot to take care of, and if they aren't fixed they become smelly and aggressive. When our baby grew up, he was sold to a family acquaintance who resold him to a family who had him for dinner. I was devastated.  I even replaced my hamburger patty with french fries in protest (my vegetarian stint lasted a single meal).

In college, my plant physiology professor enjoyed making allusions to people while explaining how plants work. "When you're eating a peanut or a pea, you're eating a tiny baby plant that never had a chance to live," he said. The students chuckled and went home to eat their peanut butter and canned peas without a second thought. While not as dramatic or emotional as butchering an animal, I have felt a quick sense of sadness when harvesting spinach or carrots. We nurtured that plant, and it beat the odds of surviving in our infertile backyard, only to be killed now.

The facts of life are simple: in order for us to live, something must die. Some people try to skate around this by assuming that certain species are more important than others. Most don't even think about it. But the fact remains. We cannot create our own energy--we must take it from something else. This is where the homesteader philosophy comes in--the idea that our culture has lost something vital by separating itself from its food source. If your meat shows up wrapped in plastic, or your dinner shows up in a cardboard box, you forget where it comes from. You don't have to think. You don't have to feel.

If you do think about it, you might find that eating is a very religious thing to do. Doesn't it bring to mind Someone else who sacrificed His life so that we could live? My religious teachers taught that the earth is a school and the Atonement is the subject. They would say that every time you eat a meal, you are being taught about sacrifice.

Whether or not you are religious, when you accept that other living things have died so that you can live, it brings to mind one very important question: what am I doing with my (and their) life? I remember as a teenager thinking about the sacrifices that parents make for their children. I knew that repaying them was impossible, but I was not bothered by this. I thought that the way to repay them is to make that sacrifice myself someday and pass on the gifts I had been given. As we continue eating and continue living, the solution becomes as simple as its cause: If something must die for us to live, let us live in the best way we can. Let us make their sacrifices worth it.

Every once and awhile, people may stop to wonder about the purpose of life and what they are doing with their own. Perhaps we are offered the chance to reflect at every single meal. What are we doing with the life that so many have sacrificed to create?

In addition, we have a holiday to reflect on the previous year and to be grateful for our blessings. Harvest celebrations are an important part of cultures all over the world, but ours has been degraded to a day of gluttony. Thanksgiving is not Turkey day any more than Christmas is x-mas. Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on the lives that have touched ours, including the bounty that nature and nature's God have given us. It is a day to remember our own dependency. It is a day to connect with family and friends, who are after all in the same boat. Repayment for our blessings is impossible. This Thanksgiving, I challenge us to ask ourselves what we are doing with our life, and to determine what we need to do to make our lives worthy of the sacrifices they have been given.

Atypically Ordinary

When I was a Freshman in high school, I started a new journal with these words: (spelling and grammar copied exactly): "I'm just another Freshman, maybe a little quieter, but that isn't true anymore (the just another Freshman part) because all of the other High Schoolers try not to be another ordinary Freshman, so the average Freshman girl probely has at least two earrings in each ear, a color of hair that isn't naturally grown, clothes that wouldn't be allowed at mutual, and a swear word for every sentence."

I still find myself thinking the same thing. I think of myself as rather ordinary, yet I know that what I consider "ordinary" is far from the average. I was stunned to learn that less than half of babies are now born in wedlock. An even smaller percentage of mothers are full-time moms, and even fewer families consist of a working father, stay-at-home mother, and children. Perhaps ordinary isn't so common after all.

I define myself as a traditionalist. This shapes a lot of my views, especially those I'm likely to blog about. The basic points of this include:

• For every bit of "progress", we must leave something behind. I find that often, what we give up ends up being more valuable than the things we gain.
• People do not know everything. The closer to nature things are, the more I'm likely to trust them, because I trust nature and nature's God more than I trust people meddling with things.
• Our modern culture, for the most part, has been corrupted, and so we need to look carefully at the things we do to make sure they really express our values and ideals.
• One of the most important things to consider is how we affect future generations.

I started this blog mainly to get down in writing some of the things running around in my head.Writing helps me figure things out. I also hope that writing things down might stop me from composing articles like these in my head when I need to be sleeping. I might be rather blunt, but I do not intend to offend anyone.

A few things about me that might give some background for future posts: I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have been all my life. I'm the oldest of eleven children and the mother of two (one more on the way). I graduated from BYU with a degree in Wildlife and Wildlands Conservation.