Let’s not be exceedingly fooled by talks of compassion at any societal levels: ours remains mostly a dog eat dog world, and many of the top winners of such a senseless survival contest appear determined to make it ever more unforgiving for the losers.

To the iron-willed conqueror, the weak is a burden…to those who espouse social Darwinism, and they are the majority at the very top, the weak is meant to be exploited, abused, and eradicated whenever deemed necessary and with nature’s blessing, since according to Darwin’s fantasies, the survival of the fittest is nature’s plan … It is incidentally extremely ironic that a culture would be so seemingly eager to submit to an imaginary natural law when in every other respect displaying contempt for nature, and being so antagonistic and hostile to nature as to strive to overcome it and make it obsolete.

Who is weak, and who is the fittest? In business as in life, generosity, trust, innocence, vulnerability, sensitivity, openness, compassion, respect, a spirit of cooperation and sharing and even having a conscience can be somewhat detrimental to wealth accumulation and preservation.

The successful top business model is predatory, more often than not ruthless, exploitative of the ignorance, misfortune, or weaknesses of others … at the highest levels the aim is no longer to compete but to eliminate the competition, as in an all out war.

Big business is indeed war, just as war has always been big business, the collateral damage being the majority of the world population. The fittest is then the successful predator, and the poor, the working class and increasingly the middle class, are its prey.

While most small businesses offer real, valuable, honest services and products, many large businesses and multinational corporations simply feed on the public the way a wood tick feeds on a mammal, or government feeds on the taxpayer. The problem with the law of the jungle, however, is not so much that so few get to exploit so many, this sickness has always been part of the civilized world ever since the Roman Empire, but that the acquisition of wealth and power for their own sake leads to the development of philistine cultures, where the focuses in living are no longer meaning and quality but survival and quantity.

Mostly gone are, for example, reasonable interests in art, poetry, literature, philosophy, unless the popular trash that passes for such leads to marketable formulas and significant corporate profits. The barbarians are no longer at the gate, they are in the temple, and are in a position to dictate, with an implacable logic that is exclusively grounded in the harsh principles of money making, the terms of the world enduring slavery, which is that of barely existing under the burden of society’s ever more oppressive commercialism.

The habit of an obsessive pursuit of money for its own sake appeals to people whose uneducated motivations cause them to be oblivious and impermeable to any kind of refinement, sophistication or higher aspirations, to display a hatred of even the slightest traces of intellectualism, to distrust imaginative, independent, creative, free-thinking individuals, to favor conformity, uniformity, blind group loyalty as in nationalism, and to delight and perhaps even take pride in idiocy, as long as it is group idiocy, as can be seen in the media and mass trends.

Let’s compare objects created in previous centuries, to today’s mass-produced junk: most old objects, antiques, bear the mark of their human makers, a rare and beautiful quality of heart and soul involvement and individuality. Today’s objects only bear the mark of speedy profitability, they are vacant of all humanity, as are becoming our lives: plastic, rushed, impersonal, increasingly insensitive and hollow, and ruled by the crass corporate model of profit at all costs, by the ideas that what is not profitable is irrelevant and what impedes profits is the enemy of human society.

In this regard, the true artist, the true poet, whose main motivations are anything but money, are suspiciously regarded as being almost seditious, adversarial to the norm, while the norm, first defined by the productivity of the assembly line, now causes workers and professionals to compete with an increasingly faster electronic standard of productivity, natural time being perceived to be a great obstacle to monetary gain, which is to say that our very own humanity is currently defined to be an obstruction to profit.

What kind of world is this, then? A world that, for those who reject the social conditioning that encourages relentless competition, the manic pursuit of material rewards and a drive to achieve recognition within the boundaries of limited social frameworks, makes no more sense than a treadmill would make sense to someone who would rather run free in the wild open prairie.

To make sense of a world that keeps people down, immobilized, functioning like robots and barely living, and whose only practical freedom is financial freedom, without which life remains, under any form of government, slavery, one has to become a willing and obedient hostage of conditioning indeed, and follow the vastly unintelligent social script as closely as a prisoner follows incarceration rules.

The prison, the evil here is not money itself, but the utter fantasy that high artificial living standards create happiness and fulfillment while more modest natural living standards cause misery…why then do the richest people on earth are plagued by so many mental illnesses such as depression, bi-polar disorder, etc? Not to romanticize poverty and demonize wealth, but a simpler, calmer, more natural, authentic and cooperative way of life is in my opinion far superior to the mania of pillaging the earth to manufacture ever more toxic products and substances that are ever faster consumed and discarded while entire populations are exploited in every possible manner or even killed to keep this madness going.

What is today called material poverty becomes psychologically unbearable only within an environment that is culturally bare, alienating, and devoid of authentic human fulfillment, a cultural, spiritual and psychological wasteland. Where and when populations have very close family units, meaningful social roles and connections, essential values and a propensity to fulfill real, natural human needs rather than artificial desires and fancy cravings, a humbler lifestyle is not perceived to be anymore humiliating or unfulfilling than not having a 3000 square foot house would have been perceived to be damaging to the self-worth or well-being of a 19th century Inuit, or than not growing up in Beverly Hills and not going to summer vacation in the Hampton is damaging to the average American child’s psyche.

It is time to initiate new social and cultural standards to restore a sense of inner self to the individual, to understand that frantic productivity and consumerism are not conditions fundamental to fulfillment, and a quasi imperial standard of living is not essential to human happiness, so that the earth is no longer trashed and the future generations sacrificed to elevate the low self-esteem and fill the inner void of the neurotic and the spiritually vacant.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

In 2008 the nationally organized “Poetry Out Loud” competition was promoted in Lake County. Poet Laureate Sandra Wade and Lorna Sides circulated the promotional materials throughout our local schools and waited for the enthusiastic students to line up at the announced venues. It was a no show, except for one person. So they had their contest and declared our county winner and sent her off as the Lake County rep to the state level. The local organizers were just a little vague on the level of participation.

There was never a question about following through with the contest. The participant showed up and performed well. That was all that was required. There was no requirement that other students show up. She gained useful experience at the state semifinals while making valuable contacts. Lake County made the cut as a player for showing up also. The publicity encouraged a fuller participation by students this year, with a selection made at an Arts Council event.

As this year brought a successful second year to the “Poetry Out Loud” recitation competition after building on the first year, another contest was sailing into uncharted waters. The regionally advertised “Dream Weaver” playwriting contest was to be run by two Lake County Theater actors in their spare time. This was nothing like a previous playwriting contest promoted nationally with many volunteers. The subject matter was wide open with only technical constraints officially listed.

I saw this as an opportunity to write my first full length play, moving up from skits and short plays. Unlike writers outside the county, I knew something of the judging milieu. The theater board that would anoint a winner tends to favor producing light faire while recoiling from anything with a whiff of avant-garde.

With eyes wide open, I submitted my play “Yellowgrease” with the belief that it would win and be produced only if it were the only functional play before the judges. As this was the first half-hearted year of a regional contest, I knew this was a small but real possibility.

A month after the submission deadline the board took up the contest as an agenda item at their meeting. There was no announcement about what was decided after a week. A month passed – nothing. They did mail their planned upcoming season program but there was no mention of a play from the Dream Weaver contest or even that such a contest ever existed.

Finally, on May 26, one of the two reviewing actors called me because she thought I shouldn’t be left hanging any longer. The verdict was that there were only two functional plays entered that could be produced. Mine was one of them but there was no way they were going to produce it. It was good enough but good enough wasn’t good enough. It was … straaange, and Lake County Theater doesn’t like “strange.” Their solution was to cancel the contest for “lack of participation” without even notifying the contest entrants in writing that there would be no winner and no production. (Contest? What contest? I don’t remember a contest.) I feel those writers who sent in plays in good faith deserve to be treated better. In fact, I would describe the board’s behavior as “artless.”

So what should have been done? At minimum, if they decided that small town economics and values would absolutely prohibit producing the winning play they could have approached the winning playwright thusly:

“All right Shakespeare, you caught us. We gambled that we would get a good romantic comedy or murder mystery in the stack but it didn’t happen. We got you instead. So now you know that this theater community is not open to all types of theater as we led everyone to believe. In many ways we are a much smaller place. Now we have to deal. You want to be the winner? Fine. You’re the winner. Put it on your resume. We’ll alert the media. But we need an out. We will say that we couldn’t find a director that wanted to direct it or not enough actors auditioned for the parts. Since the prize money was coming out of ticket sales, which we won’t have, we will credit you as a life member in our theater company instead. Good luck shopping your play in the big city.”

See how easy it could have been? Apparently the goodwill of local writers is not something the Lake County Theater Co. values very highly. So be it. I will be signing up with online services for playwrights anyway. However, I will require that future contests by LCTC fully disclose their genre limitations to prospective entrants or I will.

Dante DeAmicis lives in Clearlake. To see an outtake from his play, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ND0IMcl9BA.

Congressman Mike Thompson. Courtesy photo.

Congress must act quickly to pass health care reform – the bottom line is we can’t wait any longer.

Across our country, 14,000 Americans are losing their health care coverage every day, joining the 46 million who aren’t covered by health insurance.

I’m as worried as anyone about how we’re going to pay for this overhaul. But the cost of doing nothing is even greater. We must address the lack of access, and the crippling cost of health care that is hurting our families and our economy.

The United States now spends twice as much per capita on health care than almost any other nation, and our outcomes are worse.

Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs and other health care costs now consumes more than one of every $6 we earn – that’s approaching 20 percent of our country’s gross domestic product.

The growing costs to employers, estimated at 5 percent in 2008, have forced many businesses to cut back on benefits.

It is even worse now during tough economic times. Before the economic downturn, 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in 2007 were the result of unaffordable medical bills. What's astounding is that three-fourths of those debtors had health insurance.

According to the numbers alone, our system is broken.

But the health care issue is about much more than just numbers.

I’ve heard from countless folks in our district who can’t afford health care, or are struggling to come up with the money to pay their rising premiums.

One constituent likened her health care bills to a second mortgage. Her middle class family has been paying nearly $15,000 a year for health coverage, which is not uncommon. She’s had to cut back on paying for other things in order to afford to keep her family insured.

Her story – and others across our district – underscore the need to act quickly to make sure that all families have affordable access to the care they need.

There is widespread agreement that something must be done. But as is usually the case when making public policy, the devil is in the details.

Changing our health care system will be very difficult, and much compromise will be necessary. No one will get everything they want and after it is done there will be more reform to do.

The American people want health care reform, but at the same time are afraid of losing what they already have – if they already have health care coverage. They want access to quality health care but are most concerned with being able to afford it. Of those who have insurance, few are interested in shifting from an insurance industry bureaucracy to a government bureaucracy.

We need to make sure that people who are happy with the coverage they have can keep it. We need to make sure that the American people will be able to keep their doctors and have a say in their health care decisions.

But we must expand the options, so that Americans who don’t like their plan, or don’t have health care coverage, have a choice. And we can’t afford to wait for an arbitrary “trigger” to be pulled to put this reform into operation. If that is part of the bill, reform likely will never happen.

A public plan that provides true competition will be an important part of this reform. According to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a widely respected nonprofit health policy research foundation, nearly two-thirds of Americans agree with me that we need to make sure that all Americans have access to affordable health care by providing an alternative to the private insurance options that are on the market.

We must ensure that every American has health care coverage, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and that we have adequate protections in place for the doctor-patient relationship.

And we must also make sure that people can keep their coverage if they change jobs, get divorced or their employer changes their options.

By streamlining health care, reducing fraud and abuse, ending unnecessary testing, discouraging overutilization, investing in smart reforms and emphasizing preventive health care, we can significantly bring down the cost of health care.

In addition to working for these changes, I’ll also push to expand access to telemedicine, which provides easier access to health care for people in underserved communities.

We also can make significant cost savings by encouraging more collaboration and patient-centered care by doctors. Rather than paying doctors for the volume of procedures they perform, we should reward them for keeping patients healthy.

Reform won’t be easy, but it is urgent that we act now to make sure that all Americans can access quality, affordable health care.

For the families in our district, and families across the country who can’t afford to go to the doctor or can’t afford the medicine they’ve been prescribed, it’s more urgent than ever that we reform our broken health care system as quickly as possible.

Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) represents District 1 – which includes Lake County – in the US House of Representatives.