Thinking Outside the box:

The world has some seemingly unsolvable problems: The Jews and the Arabs are incapable of negotiating an Arab state; Iran believes the United States is the Great Devil; China is part communist and part capitalist; Arab states treat their women like inferior beings; Americas are hopelessly deadlocked in respect to gun control etc., etc. Conservatives hate the United Nations.

Let’s address that last one first. Most really powerful corporations are international companies. They know sixth century fundamentalism is not good for business. So . . . If we can get international companies to help the United Nations, maybe we can get something done in respect to environmentalism, equitable division of resources, treatment of diseases etc.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Paul Anderson are already doing it, and they’re a lot smarter than most corporate heads. So, jump on the bandwagon.

Let’s take a look a fundamentalism in general. Sunnis hate Shiites because Shiites believe Ali, Muhammed’s son-in-law, was Muhammad’s successor; Sunnis believe the true heirs were the first four caliphs, albeit Ali was one of them. The Shia pray three times a day, the Sunnis five. The Sunnis fold their arms when they pray, the Shia hold their arms at their sides. There are many other differences; however a reasonable person would say, “Who the hell cares?” These differences have led to thousands if not millions of deaths throughout the centuries. Christian fundamentalists and most moderate Christian religions believe in the Garden of Eden and original sin.
Adam and Eve were told not to eat the forbidden fruit or from the tree of knowledge. Well, how stupid is that? Were they supposed to remain ignorant forever? Some might say their fate was the fortunate fall or Felix Culpa in Latin. We went from ignorant dodos to mapping the human genome. DNA evidence also tells us there was no Garden of Eden; we are descended from the San tribe in Africa, fifty of whom crossed the Red Sea on the southern end of the Red Sea, traveled along the coast of Saudi Arabia into India and from there spread all over the world. Simply put, fundamentalism is not good for business. They oppose scientific advancement. A state legislator in Minnesota would like to declare therapeutic cloning a felony. Of course she’s a fundamentalist Christian. Therapeutic cloning would allow for creating human organs, not the entire body; it’s called that because it uses the same process as regular cloning. People are denied livers, kidneys and hearts because they have to wait for people to die. The same goes for stem cell research. Fundamentalists would rather throw human embryos away than allow for research that could possibly solve paralysis and Alzheimer’s Disease. Once again I would appeal to the health care business. These people are not good for business. An intelligent person should notice that they also oppose public education. Home schooling gives them a better opportunity to brainwash their children in their beliefs. Michelle Bachmann was allowed to raise twenty-three foster children. She must’ve been successful; we heard not a word from them during her four election campaigns for Congress. Sex education was another reason for the home schooling popularity. The world’s population reached seven billion in 2011, over a billion in both India and China alone. We are running out of ways to feed these people. At least China is trying to do something about it. India doesn’t seem to care.

Education: Experts claim the United State is behind such countries as Finland in math and science and other areas. Well, that’s a matter of debate, but we can definitely do better. One thing is for sure: our children need to spend more time in school. Year-round school has been discussed. Most parents object because they wouldn’t see their children as much and it would interfere with vacation time, sports etc. But year-round school is usually set up on a nine weeks on, ten days off schedule with two months off during the summer. This gives teachers a chance to fix the mistakes they made in the first nine weeks and to plan better; it would also refresh the teachers and motivate the students. Some plans set the schedule at twelve weeks on, ten days off, but that might be too long a haul. As many of you know, students tend to forget what they learn during the three months off, and there’s a lot of re-teaching going on, wasting time and money. Researchers also claim that teaching certain subjects like algebra and grammar don’t do any good because students forget it or there’s no real use for it. Tell that to a businessman who gets an unreadable letter of application. He’s not going to hire that person. The problem is there’s no reinforcement going on; grammar can also be emphasized in other subject areas.

Corporations can also help by treating their employees like human beings, by forming a team rather than a hierarchy. These days we keep hearing executives say “My only obligation is to my stockholders.” Well, since some executives are paid in stock options that’s not hard to believe. Why is it that corporations lay people off at the first sign of recession? They seem to be imitating the corporate raiders they used to revile. Marvin windows refused to lay people off during the economic slump. They put some workers on part-time but they kept them on the payroll. Bremer bank has an excellent record in community service as does Target corporation. Give your employees a chance to invest in the company; give them a suggestion box; form a grievance committee, try flex time. I’ll bet my eye teeth they’ll work their tails off for you and they’ll spend the extra money you pay them. If business schools are teaching corporate raider nonsense, they should knock it off. The only possible explanation is that conservative professors are invading the classroom.

Corporate heads and economic theorists should be asking themselves why we keep having recessions every seven years or so. The last one almost sunk us, and it would have if our president had been afraid to pass a stimulus program. Let’s get on this now, rather than waiting for the next one. 

Dave Schwinghammer's unconventional mystery, SOLDIER'S GAP,is available new and used at Amazon.com.