Man's Best Friend

Aussie Man's Best Friend

Dave, your interpretation of animal (and human) expressions is uncanny.  He follows my every move and learns my patterns to the point that he knows what I'm going to do next even before I do.  Aussie is the prototype of dog that spawned dozens of novels and supporting casts in novels of substance, and the moniker "Man's Best Friend."  All I need to do to obtain a top-notch image is to find him in good light, is to call his name and his attention is riveted on me until I finish shooting, say "good dog"; then he comes to me for a good pet and I tell him what a good dog he is.  IF he seems to want to go do something else, I say "You can go now, Aussie", he takes a few steps, and looks back at me to be sure it is OK.  What did I do to deserve such unconditional love?  The grace of God is the only answer I can comprehend.  Same goes for my wife.  It is oh so true:  "By the grace of God go I."  Amen.


March 27, 2012
Response to comment on this image on Flicker (mcreedonmcvean)

Aussie in the Golden Light

River of Hope

River of Hope

Dave, it is "high hopes" that once the nation sees the human suffering and the hundreds of miles of interstates filled like parking lots with distressed an dying people, that We the People will do what we do best, respond to the crisis, even though it could have been prevented, not the drought but organization of relief efforts since the scientists have made it very clear the catastrophic drought was coming.  Long term planning has always been a weakness of Democracy since one party can plan something and a few years later a change of power results in the new party in power can undo it all.  But we responded to the crisis of WWII,which wasn't even visible to our people, EVERYBODY pitched in without complaint, from the farm boys who had never been further than the county line, the Rosie the Riveters (my mom and Aunt did that when school was out during the summers and good workers they were---both farm girls---no one works better at repetitive tasks with their hands than farm girls---oh yea they picked cotton too), and even the rich, who payed 95% tax without complaint (hard to imagine isn't it!!!---FDR just told them "We loose this war and your fortunes are at great risk."---there was no public resistance to the tax rate after that.  They knew the American People would be so outraged their business would be ruined anyway as the owners would be labeled everything from "Traitor'  to "Freeloader" (a potent insult in population just recovering from the Great Depression).  So, the HOPE is that the spectacle of potentially more deaths than all the wars we have fought combined, right in our backyard will mobilize that American "Can Do" spirit, which I believe is still alive deep in the fiber of our nation.  Best of all, it would be non partisan, which we are all sick of, and what could be controversial than giving water to the millions dying of thirst when the nation has plenty of it.  This effort would even bring a great since of relief that at last we are unified and working TOGETHER---regardless of party, race color, ethnicity, social status, or education.  Just Americans carrying water and "doing the right thing" for the first time in sixty years without acrimony.  Might be a major turning point in history and  the event would revive a sense of unity and hope that we can work together to solve difficult problems.  And this effort would require creativity and imagination, because the logistics a first appear all but impossible.  So your hope theory is still alive.
Mo


March 24, 2012
Austin

Television an Social Deterioration

We are "on television" where ever we go. Big Brother is Here..

Television and Social Deterioration

Response to Flickr Friend Mark Shaw on March 1, 2012

We Must be Entertained Where Ever We Go

Great capture of a great work of public art.  The rapid ascent of the mural as acceptable art form is a wonderful addition to our cityscapes.  Blank or featureless walls are dead space in cities; people instinctively avoid them.  In the West we have had a long period of lifeless architecture since society has been dominated by the car.  Architects ignored the views from the pedestrians’ viewpoint.  After all, weren't we all supposed to be driving cars?  The end of porch culture came to a crashing halt with the arrival of the electronic heroin, also known as television.  Social life, once thriving and vital, died when suddenly people didn't sit on their porches and chat with neighbors and watch the parade of walkers, baby carriages ,and dogs.  Within half a generation, neighborhoods died socially.  People no longer even knew their neighbors’ names.  The power of the electric narcotic put America to sleep; and ,no one was even aware of it, except a handful of communications futurists like Marshall McCluhan (The Media Is the Message, c 1960).  His concept of electronic media overwhelming our nervous systems’ evolved capacity to handle new information caused us to cut the then- inappropriate  stimulation(interacting with people) to avoid insanity.  Being unaware of the effect of the electronic heroin ,however, which was universally accepted as benign, we didn't turn off the television. In fact, we watched more !  Just like a junkie, it took bigger doses to obtain the same level of numbness; thus, Instead we stopped interacting with those closest to us : spouse, children and friends.  The result: marital stress, couples stopped talking about their problems----too busy watching TV.  The TV moved into the bedroom and that was the final blow to marital intercourse both verbal and sexual.  Soon ,the divorce rate soared, kids floundered at school as parents lost interest, stayed home to watch the superior high quality heroin the "Soap Opera" instead of attending PTA meetings or parent teacher meetings.  TV spawned consumerism, creating a demand for stuff we didn't know we needed but bought anyway on credit. Soon the women were working, too ,to pay the bills.  Between TV and work ,we stopped paying attention to community issues, including the architecture and zoning laws which spawned the suburbs and further dependence on the car resulting in less walking and even less attention to the neighborhoods which now were built in such a sterile manner (every house looked the same) that who wanted to walk around anyway ? And finally we stopped paying any attention to what our politicians were doing, which is why we have governments full of rich people who care nothing for the people they were elected to serve, but only sought office because those in office were able to double or tipple their net worth in a few years.  Our vigilance was so poor hooked up to our IV electronic heroin nightly on "Big screen" TV's ,that politicians stopped following the Constitution ;and, even if we  noticed it,  we said nothing, did nothing.  The truthful "The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance", is now painfully true as we find ourselves with a completely corrupt Congress, a former President who attacked another country to protect the super rich's oil wealth, in spite of the Constitution specifically stating that ONLY CONGRESS can declare war.  We complained a bit, but still did nothing.

What does all this have to do with murals?  Murals get people back into the streets moving about, interacting, paying attention to the condition of their cities and neighborhood.  Anything  that offers an alternative to the evil electronic heroin contributes to the rehab of society.

Public art forms have never been more important than they are today. 

Look, paint , decorate.  Walk around; get to know your neighbors.  Get rid of your TVs ( the average American family owns well over one TV per person.  TVs are still getting bigger and more expensive; and ,the sound and resolution have turned the heroin into morphine.  AND we, as a culture are unaware of how destructive this habit is.

Electronic Morphine Example

Have you Brits had any weird weather lately?  The drought here in Texas is going to destroy the economy and reduce the population from 25 to <million people.  We are totally unprepared for such a migration.  With the world weather giving all signs that it is becoming more turbulent, more violent, and rapidly changeable, we must learn a much higher level of cooperation or our chances of survival will be greatly reduced.  The 20th Century was a fluke: the calmest weather in a 100,000 years or so.  But we thought it was normal and industrialized the world and the population soared to 6.5 billion from 3; which is not sustainable as we continue the transition back into what the real "normal" weather pattern is: violent and often catastrophic for millions of people with each major regional weather change.

This is a wild time to be alive.

Mo

Electronic Lullaby

Determined Americans

Self Portrait: Another Determined American

Self Definition for facebook

March 21, 2012

I am the observer, questioner of every thing (Why? Why? Why?), a life time cultural anthropologist, a student of human behavior since college, a bookworm who has not watched TV since I read Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" in 1968, a roaming image maker who breaks all the "rules", my alter ego is The Shadow watching and imaging everywhere and everything, a manic poster of images (>20,000 on Flickr), a defiant opponent of destructive behaviors, a retired physician who was never sued because I love people and listen to them, the son of parents who were raised on subsistence farms---the tough, smart, determined common sense people who settled the West and lived The Golden Rule, a pain in the ass for anyone who still has their eyes closed to the EVIL that threatens the values that made this nation an inspiration to the whole world when we saved the world from fascism and then for the first time in history as conquers rebuilt the nations we defeated instead of plundering and enslaving them.  By now you should get the idea of what I'm about. If you forget remember these images, self portraits.  If I'm giving you a hard time about some issue it is because I care. Remember that.  One more thing, I am by nature an introvert and this very communication does not come easy for me, but I do it because the world needs to hear what I have to say.  I've learned a lot in 40 years of studying this world and the people in it.  Please listen.  Disagree and tell me why, I'm still learning.  I don't know all the answers, but I do know some.  And most important I've learned how to learn, my mother, a first grade teacher taught me that starting before I was verbal.  64 years of learning, I'll share it with you.  Just ask.  I was born the day Gandhi was assassinated.  Maybe there is a little of him in me. Morris Creedon-McVean.  Watch out for my wife, Jan, and my son Jason; we're cut out of the same moral and ethical cloth.  

The Spirit of the founding Fathers Will Prevail.

We the People Will Prevail

Birth of a Book: A Unified Theory of Biological Behavior and Human History

Unified Theory of Biology Behavior and Human History

March 14, 2012

neuronal cleft and neurotransmitter molecules

Last night the cumulative effort of observing human behavior as a physician, especially the past 8 years of work at Texas largest mental hospital, and the years of reading broadly hundreds of non-fiction books describing the latest development in many fields finally coalesced into a mental outline for a book that could make a difference to humanity in these confusing and chaotic times.  I envision something like Jarod Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, however I will go further.  I will not only present a different biological basis of history, but given the breakthroughs in neuorophysiology, genetics and ecology and the very recent discovery of the violent nature of our planet's "normal" weather, I will offer an outline for a path that will lead to some answers. 

What I've been seeking over the past decades came together in a way that explains why all our human attempts at governance have failed.  There IS EVIL in the world; and this EVIL has sabotaged all of our best efforts.  The EVIL exists in the form of the SOCIOPATH. These humans have inherited a genetic remnant from our days as animals.  They cannot tell right from from wrong.  Their world is themselves and objects that they manipulate in order to meet their base animals needs for food, water, sex, power, control, self preservation, and delight in dishing out pain and suffering.  Some of these desires are even reptilian in nature, like lust and eating other creatures alive.  We find the language used in the past to describe this as something akin to Black Magic, with phrases like "he's possessed by the Devil".  However quaint, this language was descriptive and correct, as far as our knowledge of the biology of behavior went at the time.  The sociopath sabotages our most modern attempts at governance.  Pure Conservatism, no government, results in the sociopaths taking control of vast amounts of wealth and power because they see nothing wrong with lying, cheating, killing ---even genocide. Too much government and they rise in the system and within the system take more than their share, again by cheating.  Communism proved this as the sociopathic leadership who lived like kings showed the same disdain for the people they ruled as their capitalistic counterparts.  So either ethical or Conservatism or Liberalism would probably work except for two factors: the sociopaths sabotage both, and the newly discovered reality of ecology---the natural limits of the planetary system to support our excessive consumption that the planet cannot sustain.  We can't change the ecological limits of the planet, but we can control our population growth and the way we utilize the earth's resources.  We can also learn to recognize the sociopaths and isolate them.  The next step is to eliminate their defective genes from the gene pool.  This will be very controversial since “genetic engineering” is an emotional issue for many, and I will leave it to others to decide how to carry out this obviously desirable step.

The climactic changes are the biggest threat to the survival of our speciess, and to maximize our chances we must have governments that are altruistic, flexible, and highly cooperative to aid each other and deal with the necessary mass migrations the climactic changes will dictate (as in the Sudan).  We cannot afford the profound capacity for sociopathic leadership to sabotage those efforts.  It is estimated that this source of EVIL (1% of the population,) causes 99% of the social misery.  They CANNOT be taught morality or ethics.  They are biological incapable; just you or I are incapable of running the 100 meters in 9 seconds.  So what was the survival advantage of this destructive bit of genetic code as described so insightfully by Wallace and Darwin 150 years ago?  None.  But, their hyper sexuality and joy in brutally rapping women and/or assembling large cadres of young women, which they impregnated by the hundreds or thousands assured the survival of their defective genes. Most of their offspring didn't manifest the antisocial traits but they carried the genes as a recessive trait.  Those that did express the antisocial traits were killed for their misdeeds or imprisoned and died there, but not before they passed on the traits by impregnating many women. And a critical few were smart enough to avoid punishment, and rise to positions of power in every powerful institution in human history.

This is the first time I have put this all together in a cohesive and thorough manner.  I think it not only explains aspects of history that have been previously mysterious or incomprehensible, but it also, as a result, gives us a clear direction to proceed.  This direction has been what has been so painfully missing in every human endeavor one chooses to look.  Chaos and confusion so overwhelming that we become paralyzed and out of desperation isolate our selves or put ourselves to sleep with heroin, from poppies or electronic media. This new understanding of the biological basis of human behavior gives us a path of action that will make our lives less stressful, less confusing, and less fearful.  It gives us a much greater chance of surviving as a species.  It has the power to give us hope.

Clouds of Drought Self Organizing

Morris Creedon-McVean, D.O.

Austin, Texas (the Great State with no water)

lonely Suburban Streets Everyone Is Watching TV

President Obama’s Respect for the Constitution and its provisions for the

Regulation of commerce., specifically as related to healthcare.

February 23, 2012

President Obama has been criticized by the GOP for showing disregard for the Constitution and the power of the government to regulate commerce.  "Obama care" has no meaning to me, except that the legislation regarding health care reform was weak and didn't change anything of substance. I do know the details of how the health care system works. It works pathetically. While our elite care is tops in the world, we have a profound problem of access. The waste in the system from health care corporations approaches that of the military industrial complex. We have discussed the waste and ethical vacuum for the very old and the very young (neo-natal bills in excess of a million dollars). Some ethical decision has to be made that draws a line on birth weights below which we simply can do nothing due to cost constraints This is especially applicable for young couples who can get pregnant again. Very thorough and repeated studies have shown that a very high percentage of miscarriages involve malformed fetuses. I can't quote the latest studies; but ,I'm talking about 60-80%. In other words, miscarriages, which is what super-preemies are,(they would die in minutes without a million dollars of high tech and highly trained intensive round the clock EXPENSIVE care, which is highly profitable for hospitals.) To put it simply, hospitals encourage this madness: an attempt at 100% successful pregnancies, which is totally against the laws of nature.  The tremendous profits help pay for the 50,000 + people who come to the emergency room and get what would be $100 patient care in a doctor’s office, for $1000 in the ER. This is no exaggeration.  I am not promoting that the government make these decisions, but panels of doctors, nurses and laymen, none of whom have any economic interest in the hospitals or the companies that run them. Common sense has been thrown out the window in medicine. Completely. Insurance companies, who make huge profits, make more decisions about patient care than do the doctors ! Doctors do more and more data entry, 98% of which is duplication ! Doctors are RAPIDLY being run out of the system; either by rules and regulations or personal choice---who can put up with a minimum of 7 years of grueling training to be a glorified clerk? I know that this is all true. There is nothing Obama could have pushed through congress, which is owned by the current entities that make huge profits from the status quo. I talk to many doctors, the great majority of whom are just as disgusted with the current system as am I.  They all say nothing has changed; and, there is nothing on the table in the foreseeble future to change it. The United States will continue to have the highest infant mortality rate of all modern countries and worse than some developing nations. This prooves that this neonatal nonsense is getting the people nowhere. It just makes profits for health care corporations. Our health care organizations have the highest profits in the world. How Obama is a threat to "freedom" in all this is totally beyond me.   These distraction techniques and tactics are nothing but lies and deception. They must be clever or intelligent people wouldn't buy it. I am an insider, and I know the truth and they are not telling it. I think to lie and mislead the public on matters as important as health care---life and death--- is criminal. It is political manslaughter.

Awakening to a Rainbow of New Possibilities

Morris Creedon-McVean, D.O.

March 1, 2012