What a Secular Society Looks Like

I have relocated permanently to Strasbourg, France, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. There are numerous small and large differences between life in America and life in France. I am not a tourist here acting like an American, but I am a new resident gradually learning what life in France is like.

Many Americans think of America as a Christian society, specially blessed by God because of their faith. In contrast, they think of France as a secular society which does not obey commandments of the Christian God. But I have found that French people, in general, behave in a much more Christian fashion, without calling it Christian. This is a big subject that could fill a book that I am not qualified to write. But here are some observations.

First, the French are, in general, less selfish than Americans. They take up less personal space, and are therefore able to share public space more smoothly. This is most noticeable on public transportation, which is often very crowded and the seats are very small. I am not a big man, and I could barely fit my butt onto a tram seat. Everyone politely yielded to everyone else, though there is no little channel through which a small French person would hesitate to slip. There are no pickup trucks. All the cars are small. Some of the streets are too narrow for a pickup truck, and these are the two-way streets, not just in the nineteenth-century part of town but even in the new part.

The French are more respectful of shared public space in another way also. There is less than ten percent as much litter (déchets sauvages) in France as in America, based on actual numbers that I have counted. If I said there was no litter in France, you would know I was lying, but the difference is at least ten to one. There are two reasons for this. First, people do not throw litter on the ground as much. Second, for the litter that does accumulate, there are municipal workers who go along on little tricycles and pick up the litter into baskets. This is a public expense for which the French are willing to pay.

Third, the French seem to see health as a public good. Oklahoma has about 30 percent obesity, but (based on my actual counts) in Strasbourg it is less than one percent. They walk more and eat less. The elevators are tiny, with a floor space of about a square meter. Obese people would have a hard time on public transportation. The French have a health care system that covers nearly every possible problem a person might have; but the French do not want to overburden their health care system. I wonder how much of poor American health comes from strife and stress, which I have hardly felt at all since relocating to France. It is as if my previous health problems just vanished.

The French do not have a different human nature than Americans. They have just all grown up in a society that values respect for self, for neighbors, and for the public. I think Jesus would feel more comfortable living in France than in an America where everyone is just a gunshot away from getting into someone’s perceived personal space.

Poverty and Blame: A Message from Fluff the Cottonwood

Hello, this is Fluff the Cottonwood Tree near Stan’s house in Tulsa. He has given me permission to post these observations on his blog. My previous message was on September 8 on Stan’s science blog.

The Dutch writer Rutger Bregman wrote a book called Utopia for Realists which is a best seller in English translation. Part of everyone’s vision of what a utopia would be like is that there would be no poverty or homelessness. But solving the problem/s of poverty seem hopelessly complex at least for you humans.

Bregman’s solution to poverty, however, is simple and realistic. It is simply to give everyone a guaranteed minimum income even for doing nothing. Free money for everybody, that is. It sounds too simple to be true, but something similar to this has been tried in many countries, especially in Europe, where Bregman lives. For example, in France, a country Stan knows something about. A guaranteed minimum income has not eliminated poverty, but it has greatly reduced it. France has much less poverty per capita than the United States.

The line of reasoning that makes sense to most people is that, if you guarantee a minimum income, then everyone would just lay or lie around and not work. But that is not what happened in France and other European countries. The reason is that most people do not want to just barely survive at the poverty level. They want to earn more money and are willing to work for it. There are a few people who are, however, willing to live in poverty without working.

Poverty, it seems to me (I am no expert; I am just a cottonwood tree) has three causes. First, the environment—simply not having enough money. The second is human nature. Some people are just lazy. These are often people who are mentally challenged. Third is the interaction. That is, when there is not enough money, the mentally challenged people will suffer more than the people who are capable of handling the complexities of everyday life. These mentally challenged people prefer to raid garbage cans and leave piles of garbage to mark their territories. I have seen this many times, since I live right at the ede of a ditch called Joe Creek in Tulsa. Here is one of Stan’s photos from 2018.

Giving free money to everyone seems like just a way of throwing away money. But here is why this is not true.

First. The American approach is to distinguish between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. What the United States does at all levels of government is to spend a lot of money, a lot, to hunt down the undeserving poor, such as welfare cheats. They even hire people to search Facebook to see if any welfare recipients are spending money on things that they should not. This is the approach upon which conservatives insist.

Second. If someone lies around without food or water or shelter, they might die. We will not let this happen. If a homeless person (or, as the French say, sans-abri, shelterless) is dying, we (usually the local government) sends out emergency rescue.

When you add those two things together, the costs of hunting down and penalizing the undeserving and of emergency rescue, add up to a lot more money than would be wasted by just giving everyone a minimum income. That is, the conservative approach (don’t give anyone free money) is more expensive than giving them free money.

Let me tell you a story of what I saw. A homeless man, who was obviously mentally challenged, was laying or lying down in a pile of garbage right at the base of my trunk. It was not clear whether he had passed out, suffered a stroke, or was simply sleeping. Someone must have called the emergency number, because a big fire truck came roaring and jangling out to him. He got up and started jumping and yelling and telling the emergency crew that he was just sleeping. They left, this time without sirens.

It is nearly certain that the administrative costs (keeping police and welfare records) plus the cost of those big fire engines must greatly exceed the amount of money that would be spent just giving the man a couple of thousand dollars a month.

Hunting down the undeserving poor and blaming them seems like the right thing to do. It seems unfair to give people money for doing nothing. Blaming lazy people may be the right and just thing to do, but it is more expensive than just handing out money. The right solution may be to kick lazy people off of public assistance, but the practical solution is just to give them enough money to barely survive.

A couple of days after the homeless man left his trash nest by my trunk, the city spent a few thousand more dollars to send out trucks to clean up the garbage he left behind. Three trucks and about six men. And they didn’t get all the trash. They left a lot. Your tax dollars at work!

Yours, not mine. I’m just a cottonwood tree. I make my own food from sunlight and from the nutrients that leach out from the garbage on the ground.

Thanks, Stan, for letting me post on your blog.

What Should the World Be Like? Republicans and Gun Violence

Republicans talk a lot about what the world should be like, following the example of the late hatemonger Rush Limbaugh in his book The Way Things Ought to Be.

I am living, at the moment, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nearly every day, there is a public shooting or a bomb threat. One of those threats caused an elementary school to shut down and the students to take refuge at a nearby church. Here in Oklahoma, you can do anything you want to with a gun except actually shoot somebody or point a gun directly at them.

This is the paradise that Republicans want to see. How do we know this? Because they support absolutely no further restrictions on guns, not even assault weapons. No matter how many mass shootings there are (Gun Violence Archive lists 533 mass shootings since 2013), they oppose any further action. This means the world is exactly the way they want it to be, in terms of gun violence.