The Editorial By Scot Rhoads A Correction—of sorts A friend called me for perpetuating a myth in my last editorial about the NRA acting only as a block to gun control and not putting enough effort into alternative legislation to address people's fears. While I am hesitant to adopt mass media conspiracy theories (either real or "functional"), I admit I had no other source for my conclusion. For all I know, the NRA has spent most of their resources in the kind of campaigns I was suggesting, but news of them never reached me. I trust the person who told me this enough to accept that they've done far more along the lines I suggested than I'd heard about. In any case, this should not compromise my point about compromise (only my credibility)—you can consider my examples fictional, if you wish. It does take my original question a step further, though. What if one goes to extremes to compromise and gets nowhere? What if (for a possibly fictional instance) the NRA spent 90% of their efforts on non-gun-control legislation to increase public safety (real or perceived)? They still failed, even though they were following my ultra-sage advice—and I couldn't even tell they were trying. This would suggest they were facing considerable blocks. At some point, we may want to admit that we are swimming against a current too strong for us. Sometimes too many others want what we don't. Sometimes we cannot "educate" them out of it. Sometimes we cannot get the word out at all. We have to reevaluate our efforts, so that we can abandon ineffective means (no matter how good they look on paper or to our egos). We have to stop blaming those that won't help us and deal with what we have. We should not blame the media; though we should certainly work to improve them when we feel they're not working right, but that is a separate (if related) project. It is fruitless to blame anyone at all—otherwise you should blame everyone who is not exactly as you wish. (Straighten those people out, dammit!) So, assuming the NRA was going to extremes to compromise away the recent gun-control law, their failure should provide a new estimate of society's will—or at least the will of those in power. Under these circumstances, I would recommend that the NRA support gun control. If they have already put out their best effort to stop it, then it is starting to appear inevitable. They failed to convince that gun control is bad. The next step (whether they like it or not), is for gun control itself to do the convincing. If legislation is going to happen, they should consider solutions in the long term—a compromise in timing (also called patience). When you are convinced you have knowledge of a better course, but you see that society or its mechanisms are not yet willing to accept your enlightened view, it is better to let society screw up. Yes, that will bring down you, too; but if it's inevitable, it hardly seems enlightened to put off the Judgement Day on future generations. I say "Judgement Day" because our society has a kind of "end game" mentality. Thanks to millenary thinking, we too easily say: "To hell with the Earth and future generations, just get me to `Millionaire Acres' before the game ends. Time will end in the year [500/1000/1500/2000] anyway, so what's the point of planning any further." Even when we know better, it's a subconscious habit that's hard to break. When we do break that habit, we can consider a reality-check as a good solution to a society that insists upon something that (we are sure) is self-destructive. ?Sometimes my wife wants to move furniture. That means I move it. She will decide, for instance, that the couch should be in a space that is smaller than the couch is. I used to try to explain that things don't fit in spaces that are smaller than the things themselves, because it seemed easier tell her this than move the couch. Foolish me. I quickly learned it is much easier to move the couch and demonstrate the size difference ("see: six foot space, eight foot couch"), than it is to try to tell her. I let her take a reality-check. (Of course, she could talk about the times I was wrong, but I don't think they're relevant here!) Still, a societal reality-check can cause considerable pain to billions—not quite the same scale as moving a couch. The stakes are so much higher, that failure is unthinkable. But if we can't think about the unthinkable, we may not see when we are facing it. We may not recognize it is inevitable, and thus waste any chance to mitigate it. Our goal should not be to somehow dictate society's best path, but to see how we can best apply the resources we control at this time under these circumstances to shape the society that we have to work with. Under this paradigm, the NRA might do best to support gun control legislation that provides the fastest and most convincing reality-check, and the easiest way to reverse the legislation when it proves to be ineffective. After all, if every reasonable, intelligent person is busy futilely postponing the inevitable, then only unreasonable unintelligent people will be writing the laws. Embracing gun-control is a more costly (in many ways) and longer-term solution than the NRA wants, but if the alternative is merely forestalling an inevitable disaster, perhaps it is their best choice. Speaking for myself: I want to keep my guns and I think gun-control laws are a waste of effort. But I would gladly give up my guns as part of a respectable experiment in gun-control—as long as I could have them back when it was over. I am willing to sacrifice my sense of safety (and my real safety, if gun-control detractors are right) for such an important societal reality-check. And if it turns out that gun-control really does work, well? I suppose I'm willing to permanently give up my guns for that. Of course, it may fail and I won't get my guns back. That is the NRA nightmare. But no choice is without risk. And I am tired enough of the choices that presume so much evil in the world, that I am ready to embrace that risk. It is a bit scary. If I lose, I'm where I started but without my guns. (bummer!) But if it works, I trade my guns for a world better than I'd feared and everyone takes a step up (whether or not the gun control laws "work"). I'm ready for this, but many others aren't. Perhaps it is emotional, perhaps they know more than I do. It doesn't matter. I am only making suggestions. I make them not for others to follow, but for others to consider. For where we are unable to consider a possibility, there we are governed by emotion—we have given up that much of our rationality to no one's advantage. Rationality serves emotional goals (there is no such thing as a rational goal, only rational plans or descriptions of goals); but when emotions masquerade as rationality, then rationality is no longer helping us. There are many times when rationality can't help us, but it's better not to fool ourselves into thinking we are being rational. One way to find out when we are fooling ourselves is to see what we are willing to consider. (Then we should ask ourselves why.) I applaud those like Surgeon General Joclyn Elders, who can contemplate legalizing drugs to reduce their bad social effects. Whether it would work is up for debate, but the reactions I saw in the media suggests that many are so afraid of the idea that they can't debate. Joclyn is evil. Clinton's first nominee for (I think) Attorney General freaked out a lot of people, too. (Sorry I don't remember her name, but it's the illustration that's important anyway.) She had proposed some changes in voting to improve representation for voters and fairness for non-Democrat/Republican candidates. One suggestion I remember her explaining involved giving each person several "votes" which they could distribute among candidates they liked or place on a single favorite. The response was many shrill sound bites about violating the sanctity of "one man one vote" bestowed on us by the godlike Founding Fathers*tm (or so they say). But I heard no one explanation why her ideas were unreasonable. Certainly no one explained to me why they were so unreasonable that she couldn't possibly be considered for the post. But that is what happened, because she seemed to be questioning not our nation's goals, but its principles. Rights and principles are what we make them, not what ancestors or gods dictate (no matter what we may like to think). Certainly, we must pay careful attention to the past, and not adopt or abandon principles without great consideration; but we must also remember what they are for. When we it looks like our principles will only make the world a worse place, it's time to change them. We need to be able to consider the possibility our principles aren't helping our real goals; and we need to be able to consider every possibility to make the best choice when it's time for changes. Giordano Bruno was burned for science. Unlike Galileo, he did not recant (Galileo did not mutter "but it moves" and who cares anyway?). Also unlike Galileo, Bruno made no contribution after his conflict with the Church (apart, perhaps from heating up a few papal marshmallows). This doesn't mean martyrdom is always futile (perhaps Bruno's death made a contribution I don't know about), rather that Bruno's unbending principles do not seem to have served science (and the world) as well as Galileo's more flexible ones. If Bruno thought he was making the best choice, that's ok, he tried. If he chose death solely because of principles, that is less laudable, however impressive. Although we Pagans rarely face potential martyrdom these days, we often face threats to our religious freedom and civil liberties. When each of us faces such a challenge, we might do best to think in strategic terms. We must have goals. We must be dedicated to the Goddess, religious freedom, education, cooperation, peaceful coexistence, tolerance and all those other good things. But there can be so many threats facing us that we can best serve our strategic goals by sometimes caving in on a tactical level. We must choose our battles not based on blind principle, but careful circumspection. This leads to inconsistency. Some would call it hypocrisy, and it is—in the short term. But if we are up to the challenge of remaining true to our goals in the long term—not forgetting them, or setting them aside for convenience—then we will be serving future generations well. Blessed Be | 
