(TMU Op-Ed) — Since most of us were kids we’ve heard the phrase Reduce, Reuse, Recycle repeated ad nauseam everywhere from on TV to ads plastered on the sides of buses, on recycling bins, on coloring pages, and a host of other places.

However, over the years it seems something was lost in translation. With less focus placed on reducing and reusing, our recycling bins are overflowing week after week. Sure, it might be better to have an overflowing recycling bin than it is to have an overflowing trash bin, but how much better is it really?

At the same time we’re finally seeing an increase of recycling outside of the home at places like schools, gas stations, airports, etc. we’re also seeing a dramatic cutting back of the acceptance of recyclables created in the United States. China recently started restricting the import of recyclable waste including mixed paper and most plastics. The news of this happening was the first time that many people in the United States became aware that a lot of our recycling isn’t actually recycled here. For an act billed as a necessity to saving the environment, the fact that it uses an overwhelming amount of time and resources including fuel to ship it overseas is a little concerning.

But more than that, recycling is only a thing because recyclables are valuable. According to a press release, “The global waste management market size is expected to reach $484.9 billion by 2025.” This means that when you toss something into your recycling bin and it is not able to turn a profit it won’t be recycled. Unfortunately this isn’t rare.

Then there’s also the people that are too hopeful about the abilities of the recycling industry and as a result they toss everything in the bin regardless of what the code on the bottom of the item says or what their local rules say. It only takes a little bit of the wrong thing from a “wishful” recycler to ruin an entire batch of recyclable material. And this too isn’t rare. In fact, according to Waste Management one out of every four items that ends up in recycling bins doesn’t actually belong there.

Here are 11 things that “wishful” recyclers tend to toss in the bin:

1. Plastic Bags — To some it may be common knowledge that plastic shopping bags, bubble wrap, cereal bags, food wrap, and more cannot be recycled in your home bin but they still find their way into municipal recycling facilities far too often. These bags can clog up machines and workers must remove them by hand. Thankfully plastic bags are accepted at many stores including local co-ops and chains like Target and Trader Joes.
2. Receipts — Unfortunately, most receipts that you receive while shopping are coated in Bisphenol A (BPA). While yes they are paper, the fact that they are coated in BPA means that it contaminates the paper product being made when they get mixed in with the pulp. If you don’t need a receipt just decline it at the store since you can’t recycle it and more importantly because the BPA coating comes off onto your hands and other surfaces. This is especially important information for parents who often hand receipts off to antsy kids during shopping trips. Skip the receipts if you can and if you can’t be sure to wash your hands after handling them.
3. Pizza Boxes — Takeout and delivery pizza boxes can’t be recycled, despite their obvious cardboard construction. Any paper product with even the smallest amount of food strains cannot be recycled and this always includes pizza boxes. Thankfully many pizza boxes are now made to be compostable and will say so on the box but remember: compostable does not equal recyclable.
4. Bits of Food — Just because you can recycle something doesn’t mean you can recycle it dirty. Rinse out glass and plastic before tossing it in the bin and if the container is still greasy use some soap and water. Even a little bit of food can ruin an entire load of recycling.
5. Coffee Cups — Even the greenest among us find ourselves out and about without our own cup when we crave a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, while those cups are paper, they’re lined with plastic film to keep the liquid from soaking into and then out of it which makes them impossible to recycle. The lids and the paper sleeves are recyclable but the cups never are. Next time you’re out without your own reusable cup, ask the barista for a “here” cup and finish your drink before leaving.
6. Wrapping Paper — Some municipalities accept wrapping paper but it is important to check your local rules. However, the popular shiny and metallic papers are never recyclable. If you are able to recycle basic, matte wrapping paper be sure to remove ribbons and bows. In lieu of using store bought gift wrap, try transitioning into using newspaper, paper bags, or the brown paper that sometimes comes inside of shipping packages.
7. Shredded Paper — There are good reasons to shred certain documents at home but unless you compost it’s better to stick to shredding only that which must be shredded because recycling centers just can’t handle those tiny strips of paper. In fact they can clog up the equipment because they’re so small! Thankfully shredded paper can be composted but make sure not to include envelopes with plastic windows or anything else that isn’t paper. However, some municipalities will accept shredded paper but only if it’s placed in a paper bag and stapled close so please check your local rules for this one.
8. Broken Things — Broken plates and glass shouldn’t be placed in your recycling for various reasons. One of the biggest is that they pose a hazard to sanitation workers. If you have broken items wrap them in plastic and carefully put them in the trash.
9. Old Dishes — Plates and glassware are not recyclable. If you have items that are in good condition take them to a thrift store instead of throwing them away. Bakeware has a much different melting point and chemical composition than normal recyclable glass.
10. Bits of Metal — Some things are too small to recycle. Just like how a piece of paper is recyclable but shredded paper is not, the tab from a metal can isn’t recyclable by itself even though an entire can is. And it’s for the same reason—these small things can clog up the machinery and slow down the entire recycling process. If a soda can tab does fall off, place it inside the can when you’re done. If you have little bits of tinfoil, keep it somewhere safe and add to it until it becomes a big ball.
11. Food Boxes and Containers — Most freezer food boxes are coated in plastic, much like coffee cups. And just like coffee cups it makes these otherwise paper products not recyclable. Unfortunately this is the same for cartons that contain nut milk, oat milk, juice, soups, and more. Some municipalities currently accept these cartons but it is not the norm. You can find out more about how to recycle those containers here.

Remember: when in doubt, throw it out. It’s better to mistakenly throw something away that could be recycled than be an aspirational recycler and ruin an entire truck load of recycling. And always check with your local municipality at least once a year to stay up to date on the rules where you live.

Reduce, reuse, recycle—in that order.

By Emma Fiala | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

(TMU Opinion) — Governing the precept that the self is masks all the way down perceiving delusions all the way up, it stands to reason that one of those “masks” would embolden the self to question all delusions and break all masks. Indeed, one of those masks should embolden the self to the extent that it thinks it has nothing to lose. That mask is the mask of the trickster. 

When a person dons the mask of the trickster they becomes the personification of a trickster God in training. Playful yet ruthless. Foolish yet fierce. Contrarian yet cunning. Seductive yet demur. Enigmatic yet chaotic. Flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants yet free. The personified trickster is an anti-hero par excellence, a hero bound by neither code nor conduct, a hero with nothing to lose. Nonchalant, unruly, passionate, a dauntless maverick testing all boundaries and stretching all comfort zones, despite resistance from the petty, the prudish, the pacifists, from cowards and fence-sitters. Indeed. Despite even his/her own resistance. For the trickster must first trick himself into thinking he has nothing to lose. 

Trickster as Catalyst:

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

The task of a trickster hero is both Dionysian (passionate, artistic, ecstatic) and Sisyphean (unavailing and endless). 

It takes a unique type of courage to be a catalyzing agent. Trickster as catalyst is a planter of unwanted seeds, of difficult truths, and brutal motivation. These are seeds that promise to outgrow the stagnant culture with its antiquated laws and outdated beliefs. These are the difficult truths that bypass convention and face a mirror in front of the fallibility of the human condition. The kind of brutal motivation that kicks us in the ass for being lazy, shoves us into the abyss for being pretend-forgiving, and drags us kicking and screaming into either the self-improvement or self-destruction of our own unique adventure.

Trickster as catalyst is an existential alchemist. He/She bridges gaps from lead to Fool’s Gold, from Fool’s Gold to the Golden Shadow, from the Golden Shadow to the overman overcoming himself again and again. He creates and destroys God, and then rebirths God in so many forms that no human culture can keep up. He’s made an art of it, just as he has made an art out of self-transcendence, self-annihilation, and rebirth. The trickster hero would rather be ashes than dust.

A catalyzing trickster agent is a force to be reckoned with; a force of nature first, a human second. He/She turns the tables on entrenched power through shock and awe campaigns, pokes holes in inflated egos through mockery and high humor, flips the script on any “believers” who place all their eggs into a single basket and then cling to that basket for dear life. They melt down pedestals, knock down high horses, and topple thrones, revealing how nobody should ever take themselves too seriously. They are mighty social leveling mechanisms and nobody is so powerful that they are out of reach from their ruthless irony and unorthodox ire. Not even God.

Trickster as Rebel:

“I rebel; therefore, we exist.” – Albert Camus

Trickster as rebel is the laughter in the whirlwind. He/She is the jest in the apocalypse. He neither cries nor quibbles at the fact that he is the punchline of an absurd cosmic joke. Rather than tremble, tremble, tremble; he laughs, laughs, laughs. Rather than fear the perceived power of authority, he gets power over power through high humor. The kind of humor that somersaults over itself, gaining momentum, picking up jest and ashes, smiles and razors, thorns and laughter. It’s a cutting humor, an unorthodox humor that takes both thesis and antithesis and smashes it into synthesis, shattering all perceived power constructs and paradigms. 

Trickster as rebel embraces the absurdity of existence and rolls with it, juxtaposing juxtaposition, moving into flow states so effortlessly he is overflowing, full of so much jouissance and insouciance that he cannot be contained. Neither by lovers nor jailers. Neither by himself nor God. He is full-frontal dissidence. Too busy transforming demons into diamonds and wounds into wisdom to pay base courtesy or obsequiousness to any perceived authority, whether arbitrary or legitimate. 

Contumacious to a fault, trickster as rebel aims to lay faultiness into all default power constructs. Earthquakes and upheaval is just his game. Turn everything upside down and let the chips fall where they may. For nothing is worse than power corrupting, except power corrupting absolutely. Preventing this from happening is the trickster hero’s raison daitre. He breaks all compasses so that nobody get so stuck on True North that they forsake west, east, south, or even more imaginary directions. Better to start from scratch filled with the knowledge of what not to do than to continue with either sickness or stuckness no matter how comfortable. 

Trickster as Genius:

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” – Dr. Johnson

Trickster as genius has a transcendent capacity for taking on trouble. Remember: he is not a trickster by nature, but by necessity. His/her trickster powers have been built from the quicksand on up to the summit of a house of cards so precarious that it’s perfectly imperfect. Here, summit and abyss are united as one. Here, the art of having nothing to lose merges with the art of losing everything to nothing. For as Anaxaguras said, “In everything, there is a share of everything.” This is the hard and tough lesson, both for those who take themselves too seriously and for those who are hoodwinked by a profoundly sick society: change your unhealthy ways or be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a healthier way. 

But it is nearly impossible to expect a moral awakening from humanity. To achieve a moral awakening requires a force outside of humanity. That force is precisely the trickster hero. It’s the madcap maverick who decides to stare into the infinite masks of himself and dares to come back wearing the mask which breaks all masks and destroys all delusions: the all-laughing, all-mocking trickster mask. 

There is no courage more courageous than the courage of someone who has nothing to lose. He has already been destroyed by the abyss and reborn into resilience. He has already been annihilated by a Dark Night of The Soul and reborn into robustness. He has already been torn apart by the absurdity of existence and the infinite nothingness of the existential black hole and put back together again by antifragility. No authority outflanks him. No God beleaguers him. It’s all a cosmic joke at best and a delusion at worst. So be it. 

The trickster hero is here to put the cartoon-in-the-brain of it all on blast. He/she is here to tip the scales in favor of laughter over seriousness, humor over power, and adventure over comfort. Most of all, he is here to force playfulness and lightheartedness down the throats of all prudes, goody-two-shoes, tyrants, psychopaths, cowards, and milquetoasts. Screw them all if they can’t stare into the cave they fear, the abyss they dread, or the God they bow down to and have a laugh at their own free-falling delusions of (non)grandeur.

By Gary Z McGee | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

(FEE) Opinion – Childhood exuberance is now a liability. Behaviors that were once accepted as normal, even if mildly irritating to adults, are increasingly viewed as unacceptable and cause for medical intervention. High energy, lack of impulse control, inability to sit still and listen, lack of organizational skills, fidgeting, talking incessantly—these typical childhood qualities were widely tolerated until relatively recently. Today, children with these characteristics are being diagnosed with, and often medicated for, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at an astonishing rate.

The ADHD Medical Dragnet

While ADHD may be a real and debilitating ailment for some, the startling upsurge in school-age children being labeled with and medicated for this disorder suggests that something else could be to blame. More research points to schooling, particularly early schooling, as a primary culprit in the ADHD diagnosis epidemic.

Over the last several decades, young people are spending more time in school and school-like activities than ever before. They are playing less and expected to do more at very young ages. When many of us were kids, kindergarten was mellow, playful, and short with few academic expectations.

Now, 80 percent of teachers expect children to learn to read in kindergarten. It’s not the teachers’ fault. They are responding to national curriculum frameworks and standardized testing requirements that over the past two decades have made schooling more oppressive—particularly for young children.

The youngest children are the ones most often caught in the ADHD medical dragnet. Last fall, Harvard researchers found that early school enrollment was linked to significantly higher rates of ADHD diagnosis. In states with a September 1 school enrollment age cutoff, children who entered school after just turning five in August were 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children born in September who were about to turn six. Immaturity, not pathology, was the real factor.

The ADHD Fallacy

Marilyn Wedge, author of A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became An American Epidemic, sounds the alarm on ADHD over-diagnosis. In a Time Magazine article called “The ADHD Fallacy,” she writes:

By nature, young children have a lot of energy. They are impulsive, physically active, have trouble sitting still, and don’t pay attention for very long. Their natural curiosity leads them to blurt out questions, oblivious in their excitement to interrupting others. Yet we expect five- and six-year-old children to sit still and pay attention in classrooms and contain their curiosity. If they don’t, we are quick to diagnose them with ADHD.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percent of very young children (ages two to five) who were diagnosed with ADHD increased by over 50 percent between 2007/2008 and 2011/2012. As of 2016, data show that 9.4 percent of all American children, or over six million kids, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and almost two-thirds of current ADHD-diagnosed children were taking medication for it. A March 2019 report on ADHD by Blue Cross and Blue Shield found that among commercially insured children of all ages, ADHD diagnosis rates increased 30 percent in just eight years.

While the symptoms of ADHD may be troublesome, looking first at the environment, rather than the child, may be an important step toward curbing the ADHD diagnosis epidemic. In his book, ADHD Does Not Exist, Dr. Richard Saul, a Chicago behavioral neurologist, explains that individuals diagnosed with ADHD either have external factors that exacerbate normal symptoms or have some other underlying condition that should be identified and treated. In the latter instance, he finds that once the underlying condition is discovered and treated, the ADHD symptoms usually disappear. In the former instance, changing the environment is a key step toward improvement. This is true for both children and adults with an ADHD diagnosis. Dr. Saul writes:

Like many children who act out because they are not challenged enough in the classroom, adults whose jobs or class work are not personally fulfilling or who don’t engage in a meaningful hobby will understandably become bored, depressed and distracted. In addition, today’s rising standards are pressuring children and adults to perform better and longer at school and at work.

An Environmental Mismatch

Addressing an environmental mismatch for ADHD-diagnosed adults could mean switching one’s job or field of study or pursuing a true passion. Maybe you’re an accountant who wants to be a carpenter or a nurse who wants to be an entrepreneur. For ADHD children, changing the environment could mean removing children from restrictive schooling altogether. As Boston College psychology professor Peter Gray writes:

What does it mean to have ADHD? Basically, it means failure to adapt to the conditions of standard schooling. Most diagnoses of ADHD originate with teachers’ observations.

Jennifer Walenski saw firsthand how transformative removing her ADHD-diagnosed child from standard schooling could be. She shares her family’s journey at The Bus Story and told me:

Our kids were actually in public school originally. Our son also was diagnosed with both ADHD and autism while he was in the school system. And they wanted to medicate him. But we said no. Then we took him and his sister out of school and began homeschooling them. Fast forward several years, he has absolutely no need at all for medication. He is just a normal boy who did not belong in that kind of environment. And most of us don’t. Think about it.

Walenski’s experience echoes that of other parents who removed their ADHD-diagnosed children from standard schooling. In an informal survey analysis, Gray discovered that when ADHD-labeled children left school for homeschooling, most of them no longer needed medication for ADHD symptoms. Their ADHD characteristics often remained but were no longer problematic outside of the conventional classroom.

Self-Directed Learning

Gray’s analysis also revealed that the ADHD-labeled young people who fared best outside of standard schooling were those who were able to learn in a more self-directed way. He found that the

few kids in this sample who were still on ADHD medications during homeschooling seemed to be primarily those whose homeschooling was structured by the parent and modeled after the education one would receive in a conventional school.

Replicating school-at-home can also replicate the problematic behaviors found at school, whereas moving toward unschooling, or self-directed education, can give young people the freedom to flourish.

Ending the ADHD overdiagnosis epidemic depends on a societal reality check where we no longer pathologize normal childhood behaviors. Much ADHD-labeling originates from forced schooling environments with learning and behavioral expectations that are developmentally inappropriate for many children. Freeing young people from restrictive schooling and allowing them to learn and grow through their own self-directed curiosity can lead to happier and healthier families and children.

Kerry Mcdonald, FEE, Used with Permission.

(TMU Op-ed) — The Matrix is big money these days. Not the movie so much (although a 4th installment is planned), but rather the Simulation Argument—the idea that we’re living in an advanced computer program or video game.

And the resulting rabbit hole has inspired countless viral articles that accrue major page views all across the web, with the subject itself being debated on prestigious stages by some of the world’s most renowned thinkers and physicists.

Tech magnate and entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines in recent years when he openly stated he believed we live in a simulation. He was quoted saying he thinks there’s “a one in billion chance we’re living in base reality.” In other words, he thinks it’s astronomically more unlikely that we’re not living in a simulation. He said the game No Man’s Sky further convinced him of this reality. To him, the question is “What’s outside the simulation?”

In a 2017 interview, Musk expanded on his views with a tweet to the Twitter account belonging to the show Rick and Morty:

“The singularity for this level of the simulation is coming soon. I wonder what the levels above us look like.”

The singularity for this level of the simulation is coming soon. I wonder what the levels above us look like.

Good chance they are less interesting and deeper levels are better. So far, even our primitive sims are often more entertaining than reality itself.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 5, 2017

Where did such technomanic confidence in a real-life Matrix come from? The original Simulation Argument was penned by Nick Bostrum in 2003, though he started speculating on the end result of a Technological Singularity in 2001. He projected, that with our current rate of technological advancement, it is likely that advanced simulations will be increasingly common in the future, and thus it is likely we are actually in one of those simulations.

When the Simulation Argument first came out I was in college, around the time I already felt like I was living in some kind of dystopian movie in which war criminals could be re-elected to a second term as president and an unstoppable corporatocracy could suck the life and data out of a complacent populace.

Now, 15 years later, it seems we’re at enough inflection point, although this time it’s not just about one issue: with climate change looming, economic collapse imminent, and mindless nationalism seeping back into the global order, it’s as if we’ve hit a cultural singularity of destruction and apocalypse fetishism.

It makes total sense that such a hypothesis would become so popular in this environment. How could this reality be real? It almost makes more sense that this is a simulation. It’s soothing to think this is all some sick experiment by a sadistic posthuman AI or an extraterrestrial youth on higher-dimensional amphetamines and hallucinogens.

But it was hard to predict that such an outlandish concept could become so mainstream that actual scientists were subscribing to it—and actually running experiments to prove it.

However, in recent years, that’s exactly what has happened. A team of German physicists used a field called lattice quantum chromodynamics to create a mini-simulation of a sliver of the universe to see if it has the same kind of arbitrary constraints, such as high energy particles seen in the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin or GZK cut off.

Theoretical physicist S. James Gate claims to have found a surprising and highly unusual code in his research into string theory. He says that, embedded deep within the most fundamental equations that outline our cosmos, he found self-dual linear error-correcting block code. Essentially, he says there are error correcting 1s and 0s bound up inside the superstrings that constitute the core of our reality. Though Gate was a skeptic on the simulation idea, this discovery shook him.

A new book by Rizwan Virk expands upon Bostrum’s original idea and then takes it to the next level, as he wonders about the nature of our existence within the simulation.

“Probably the most important question related to this is whether we are NPCs (non-player characters) or PCs (player characters) in the video game,” Virk said in an interview with Vox.

“If we are PCs, then that means we are just playing a character inside the video game of life, which I call the Great Simulation.”

Virk argues that the mysterious findings in quantum mechanics—namely that the universe seems to be largely quantum potential and not fixed reality until a human observes it—are consistent with video game rendering logic. “The cardinal rule,” he says, “is the universe renders only that which needs to be observed.”

The cultural influence is significant, too. As we careen toward a frighteningly uncertain future, the temptation to engage in newer, proto-technologist forms of escapism grows stronger. The downstream effects of the Simulation Argument are becoming more clearly defined as a traditional religious psuedo-science, with YouTube videos of people claiming you can hack reality and reprogram your mind to live in the universe of your choosing.

One hacker, George Hotz, is so convinced we’re living in a simulation that he’s created a church for it, his goal being to figure out how to hack the simulation and escape into a new reality.

“It’s easy to imagine things that are so much smarter than you and they could build a cage you wouldn’t even recognize,” George stated, adding that the solution is to “jailbreak the simulation,” and either meet our makers or destroy them.

It’s hard to say whether such ideas are productive or dangerous. It’s unlikely Bostrom—who claims he had not seen The Matrix before writing his seminal paper on the hypothesis—could have ever imagined his idea would become so firmly embedded in the zeitgeist. He also likely could not have imagined the all-encompassing, dystopian nature of the surveillance grid we would live in nearly twenty years later.

People increasingly feel like they’re losing control of not only their own realities, but the collective, consensus reality we live in. It’s enticing to believe there’s a larger mystery governing the laws of this insanity. It’s enticing to view consciousness as some kind of reality-hacking, non-biological buzzsaw slicing through the quantum ether.

But at the end of the day, perhaps our minds are just the unlikely interfaces between chaos and energy. Given the unlikeliness of existing at all, maybe that should be enough.

By Jake Anderson | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

Sometimes life mimics fiction. And sometimes life is so much stranger than fiction you have to double check the headlines to ensure they aren’t satire. The latest doubletake comes from New Jersey, where, under the guise of environmentalism, local legislators have passed a new tax on—wait for it— the rain.

Governments are known for a lack of creativity and an uncanny ability to think only inside the box. However, when it comes to getting creative with inventing new forms of taxation, they never disappoint. Chicago, for example, recently implemented a “PlayStation” tax on its residents as part of the city’s previously existing “amusement tax,” which, just as it sounds, taxes individuals on almost all forms of entertainment.

California, on the other hand, recently tried to get away with unprecedented levels of extortion when it tried to tax residents for their drinking water and text messages. The water tax is still on the table, but luckily, the Golden State did not succumb to the new ridiculous texting tax. New Jersey, though, might not be so lucky.

Blame It on the Rain

To be perfectly clear, while the new tax is being referred to as the “rain tax,” it doesn’t actually tax the rain itself, but that doesn’t make the context of the legislation any less absurd.

Bill S-1073 seeks to penalize businesses and homeowners whose property contains paved surfaces, like a driveway or a parking lot. When it rains, the rain acts as a medium, transporting any pollutants it picks up from paved surfaces, like brine and rock salt, and then depositing it into sewers and drains. And since the pollutants are thought to have originated from paved surfaces, the state has determined that property owners are responsible for any negative environmental impacts that result therein and should be penalized accordingly.

The legislation itself does not actually allow the state to collect any taxes, however. Instead, it allows each of its 565 different municipalities to create their own stormwater utility systems to minimize the runoff problem. Each locality will then charge each homeowner and business based on what the bill calls “a fair and equitable approximation” of how much runoff is generated from their property.

The legislation states:

Under the bill, a county, municipality, or authority (local unit) that establishes a stormwater utility is authorized to charge and collect reasonable fees and other charges to recover the stormwater utility’s costs for stormwater management.

As is the trend these days, supporters are praising the bill as a heroic move to protect the environment, though there is no real evidence that any significant harm is being done. Yet, legislators would have you believe there is a crisis at hand.

Senate President Steve Sweeney tried to convey the seriousness of the problem, saying, “With all the salt we’ve had on roads recently, that’s all running into the sewer systems, so you don’t ignore the problems because they don’t go away.” However, this winter has actually been mild for the state, with fewer snow falls than usual, meaning there has not been any sudden influx of rock salt pouring into the sewer systems this season.

A local writer, E.W. Boyle, highlighted the true idiocy of this proposed tax, writing:

Now, since our roads have been treated during winter storm events for over 80 years, with no apparent environmental impact, one wonders what took them so long to notice that there is salt runoff into creeks, streams and estuary rivers during subsequent rain events. No, rather what they noticed was the potential for yet another tax levy.

Boyle hits the nail on the head, and he is not alone in his opposition to the new tax. Republican state senator Tom Kean Jr. also criticized this proposal for the burden it places on New Jersey residents. Since each municipality is in charge of setting its own rules regarding the collection of this tax with very little oversight from any other governing entity, it is ripe for potential abuse. Keane said, “We all want to protect our environment. We all want to preserve it for future generations, but this is a weighted tax.” He continued, “The citizens of New Jersey…really [have] no way to defend themselves against tax increases at local levels.”

Since the bill gives local governments carte blanche to set the rates and collect the revenue, it makes it harder for residents to voice their concern if they believe they are being asked to pay too much. Keane later added:

…you shouldn’t create unfair authorities with uneven taxing practices…You’re creating a new layer of government that will not be regulated. The concern is uneven enforcement.

While uneven enforcement is certainly a concern, it is not the only problem the new rain tax inflicts on New Jersey residents. The legislation also comes with a hefty price tag that property owners will be responsible for footing.

From Bad to Worse

New Jersey is currently one of the most heavily taxed states in the country. And yet, it is going to burden its residents even further with the passing of this bill. According to the EPA, it will cost the state of New Jersey $15.6 billion to upgrade its storm drain system. However, the cost to Garden State taxpayers could end up being significantly higher.

New Jersey’s Office of Legislative Services, which usually determines the fiscal impact of state policies, could not shed any light on what this might actually cost residents. Since each local municipality is in charge of setting its own rates for each property owner, there is really no way of estimating the projected costs at this time. And given the nature of government, it is highly probable that taxpayers will end up paying more than their “fair” share of the burden.

Chris Sturm, a supporter of the bill and a water policy “expert” at the nonprofit organization New Jersey Future, attempted to downplay the impact this will have on homeowners. Sturm commented, “This will be negligible for the vast majority of homeowners. This is for properties that have large impervious surfaces.” While no one, including state officials, is sure of the fiscal impact this will have on residents, there is something else quite disturbing about his statement.

These properties with “large impervious surfaces” are places of business. They are the very institutions responsible for creating jobs, wealth, and prosperity within the state. And yet, rather than celebrating these titans of industry for their contributions, state lawmakers are attempting to impose onerous taxes on them. This is yet another example of governments using their taxing powers to turn private businesses into their personal coffers.

To make matters worse, any individual or business who does not pay their “rain tax” will be charged interest and have a tax lien imposed on them by the state, the very same type of action taken against those who fail to pay their property taxes.

New Jersey is, unfortunately, not the first state to attempt to inflict this type of tax on its residents. In 2012, Maryland instituted its own version of the rain tax, but it was not received well by the taxpayers. In 2014, Republican Governor Larry Hogan altered the law and allowed nine counties and the city of Baltimore to opt out of the state’s rain tax, so long as each municipality promised to address the Chesapeake Bay runoff issue on their own.

Hogan commented, “Passing a state law that forces counties to raise taxes on their citizens against their will is not the best way to address the issue.”

New Jersey does not feel the same way.

New Jersey legislators have done their constituents a great disservice by passing this bill. And now, the legislation is currently sitting on the desk of Governor Phil Murphy. It is expected that it will be signed any day now. This gives new life to the saying, “when it rains, it pours.”

Opinion by Brittany Hunter / Creative Commons / FEE.org

The more I ponder about life, the more I come to one solid realisation: The biggest curse and predicament of modern Man is forgetfulness. Like a creeping malaise, forgetfulness has seeped through all of Man’s being and doing. Individually, collectively, historically or culturally, we are spellbound to forget.

We haven’t only forgot our past but also our place in the present and our responsibility of the future. On a personal level, our ego-based state of consciousness is on a mission to keep us in this state of forgetfulness – to break the link to our being as a whole and to the interconnected web of life and universal consciousness. On a collective level, this forgetfulness is perpetuated and reinforced by social and cultural means – mainly by being tranced into a reality of unconscious consumerism, inauthentic lifestyles and a materialistic mindset.

The brighter side of it is that we all have the chance to re-member and re-connect to ourselves and the universe at large. The power of remembering is at the centre of the spiritual path to self-discovery and realisation.

Here is a list of what I believe we have forgotten, or more importantly, a list of things to remember:

1. We forgot our place in the natural world:

In the last couple of hundred years we have detached ourselves from nature. We have exploited, ravaged, consumed and attempted to control nature to appease our greed driven by self-absorbed madness. We tried to distance ourselves from the natural circle of life. We forgot how to listen to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth – its signs and languages. We forgot to follow nature’s path and live in balance with it.

2. We forgot our connection to life and the cosmos:

By detaching ourselves from nature, we forgot that we are deeply connected to it and to the cycles of the universe. Some tribes on the outskirts of ‘civilisation’, and who still follow ancestral ways, have preserved this connection with respect and reverence. We, on the other hand have instilled a sense of separateness which drove us out of balance and in dis-ease.  We forgot how all consciousness is interconnected and weaved into a delicate and beautiful dance.

3. We forgot our ancient wisdom:

We forgot our ancestral wisdom. In the quest to gain scientific knowledge through the rationalisation of our mind, we forgot the wisdom through the opening of our heart. We forgot the ancient stories and folk wisdom that was handed down from from seers and wise men of antiquity who lived in harmony with the universe.

4. We forgot our path and our dreams:

By stirring away from our inner path we forgot to dream the dream of life. More importantly we forgot how to awake in that dream and see our true nature as co-creators of life – as the dreamers. We forgot that we have the power to weave dreams and use our power of intention to direct those dreams into manifestation.

5. We forgot our purpose:

With too much chatter, noise and distraction in this dense reality we forgot what we came here to do. We forgot our purpose. We are caught in the mass trance of fabricated consensual reality. We lost sight of our authenticity, that inner spark that drives us towards our happiness and self-realisation. We forgot that we are here to be realised as spiritual beings embodied in a physical form and embedded in a congenial universe.

6. We forgot that everything is Love:

This is perhaps the deepest mystery of all that only some seers came to understand it as an all-embracing truth. That truth however is hidden somewhere deep inside of us. We knew it at some point but have lost touch with it. We forgot that everything is ultimately energy and consciousness and that love is the fundamental fabric of existence that runs through all energy and consciousness.

7. We forgot to Forgive:

By being made to believe that we are separate and disconnected from the others and from everything else, we forgot to forgive. In its deepest sense forgiveness is the act of reminding ourselves that we are one with everyone and everything and that there is no victim or perpetrator. It’s just all of us together moving together in a dynamic web we call life.

8. We forgot to be Free:

Remind yourself one thing everyday: You were made to be free.

We were born and raised in a ‘reality’ where freedom is only a concept. We were bound to the shackles of fear, misconceptions, false ideologies, material reward and held ransom to rules and laws laid down to safeguard the interest of the few. We were made to forget that we are free agents of change. We are free to be who we are without fear or guilt.

9. We forgot our real power:

Living in fear has made us forget how powerful we are. We forgot the massive power of our will and intention to change our reality. We have been tranced into sleepwalking and following the ready made signs like automatons.

10. We forgot our lessons from history:

If there is something that history has taught us is how fast we are at forgetting our lessons. Time and time again we keep on repeating the same mistakes, stuck in the same patterns of greed and self-destruction. We cannot be blamed individually for the mistakes done by humanity in the past but we are responsible as individuals to to remind ourselves of the past mistakes and pass it on to the collective psyche.

11. We forgot to be simple:

Human life got more complex and complicated. We are seduced by the glitter of more and not by the power of less. We forgot to be simple and the meaning of simplicity. Life is simple really. Simplicity means discarding all the inessential stuff and ideas that clutter the view to our life purpose and the other truths we have forgotten.

12. We forgot to trust, believe and wonder:

We lost our enchantment with the world. We forgot to be wondered by the miracle of life. We do not stand in awe at the majesty of it all anymore. Our skepticism and cynical view of the world has made us lose trust in ourselves and the magic of the universe. We forgot how to believe. This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all. It weakened our spirit and impoverished our soul.

Credits: “The 12 Biggest Life Secrets Forgotten By Mankind,” from myscienceacademy.org, by The Mind Unleashed Contributing Author Gilbert Ross

Featured image: “Watchmen”