“Together we can help create a peaceful, just, sustainable and healthy world.”
Deepak Chopra

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• May 13 2012

  Obama, 2012, and the Mousetrap Factor

  Category:  SF Gate

  Although pundits declared that Mitt Romney emerged from the contentious primary season in a damaged state, the Presidential race isn't as unbalanced as it should be. Romney is considered unlikable ,too rich to appeal to working-class voters, and he registers an "eh" from large swaths of the Republican base.
  
  But President Obama finds himself in a trap. Acting as the only adult in the room should have gradually shaken some sense into his critics. Obama doesn't name call or falsify the facts. He exhibits tremendous intelligence, flexibility, and a cool head in a crisis. Most economists would say that his policies saved the economy from a meltdown, and at this point, even with a sluggish growth rate of 2.2% (still three times higher than the growth projected for Germany), the country has done better under Obama than it could possibly have under John McCain.
  
  But the trap might still snap shut. Obama is in danger of being "Carterized." Romney is using a simplistic but powerful line: This President is a nice guy who is in over his head. What makes this tactic effective is that the right has seized the narrative and made a convincing case built on false claims. Here are a few:
  
  1. In his first two years, Obama got everything he wanted, but his economic policies failed. In truth, Republicans threatened to filibuster 80% of Democratic initiatives in the Senate in 2009. Entrenched opposition from "the party of no" crippled many necessary economic steps.
  
  2. TARP was a massive failure that ran up the deficit. In reality, TARP funds have been largely paid back. Detroit was rescued, and to begin with, the bailout of Wall St. began under the Bush administration. Both sides should be thankful that it did. In the transition to the Obama inauguration, there was literally no leadership from the outgoing administration. Obama had to confront governmental paralysis as well as a collapsing economy.
  
  3. Obamacare has been a disaster. In reality, the only provisions that have kicked in, such as forbidding exclusion from health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, are enormously popular. The real problem with the health care act is that the Republicans twisted it into an unworkable scheme that didn't cut costs, and thus engineered the very legislation that they now decry. Sneaky politics and unfair to the country, but so far a large sector of the public is buying the story.
  
  4. Fiscal stimulus has been a flop. In reality, objective analysis shows that Keynesian theory was right. Government dollars got multiplied in an effective way. The real problem was not having a big enough stimulus. Look at lagging, recession-ridden Britain for an example of what the right's favorite policy - budget cutting and austerity - actually leads to.
  
  5. Because Obama is unfriendly to business and entrepreneurship, the economy hasn't recovered. In reality, private hiring is more or less back to pre-recession levels (not the best news, however, since even more jobs need to be added to accommodate new workers entering the work force). The actual loss of jobs that plagues us comes from government cuts at the state and local level. The right's mantra that government doesn't create jobs is pure myth, since it certainly can uncreate them. Since the right's deficit binge promotes even more cuts in government jobs, adopting their policies would get us deeper into unemployment.
  
  6. The economy is on the brink of collapse under this administration. In reality, the gross national product, as of the last quarter, has reached its pre-recession high.
  
  
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  • I must admit, I was surprised to read what comes across as a glowing endorsement for any political candidate, from a man who preaches (rightfully) that love, and compassion are the pathways to peace, and enlightenment. Both candidates you mentioned have at one point or another sacrificed their own beliefs to appease an audience, and gain support for their campaign. President Obama received both thunderous applause, and scornful chants from the American people a week ago, when he came out in support of gay marriage, but the real issue isn`t whether or not gays should be allowed to legally wed; the issue is why, in a country that has separation of church and state, does the government have any place to sanction and regulate what should be a spiritual reunion between two souls? In doing so, the government perpetuates a social norm, that doesn`t treat everyone as equals, as it implies unions or other lifestyle choices it doesn`t regulate, are lesser options. I believe in his heart, President Obama does want equality, but how can we earnestly support any candidate who doesn`t embody the true spirit of equality?

    Shaun Seaman // 2012-05-14 23:37:32 // 49 Like(s) // Like

  • I am thrilled that someone I trust with honestly and guidance is attempting to give insight as to how he sees what I am finding confusing right now in politics. I am so caught up in the jargon and persuasions of SMOOTH TALK that I can`t hear anything. Thank you Deepak, for attempting to clarify some things simply so I can pull together some kind of focus on all of this. I think it IS your place to comment on this as a person, an American and an educated individual that supports the mind, the heart and the lives of so many going through this confusing and vital time.

    Foodie // 2012-05-13 23:56:14 // 43 Like(s) // Like

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• May 05 2012

  America`s Future, a Choice in Black and White

  Category:  SF Gate

  One thing makes this current depression, as economist Paul Krugman calls it, different from the Great Depression. The moral dimension has been left out. All the talk is about numbers. In the current debate over which priority is best for the economy, the right and left both promise job growth and reduced deficits. But almost no one is addressing the moral dimension, which focuses on doing good.
  
  The Great Depression was different. The plight of the little guy was starkly presented by bread lines and soup kitchens. Photographers and writers gave us heartrending portrayals of social suffering. Solidarity mattered. It wasn't just a numbers game. The nation's conscience was seared. Right now, there are moral issues that cry out to be solved on the same scale - everyone's conscience should be seared.
  
  When was the last time Congress or the states looked at prisons with a moral eye? America leads the world in the number of people incarcerated, more by percentage of population than in Stalin's gulag. A vast disproportion are black. A huge number are non-violent drug offenders, often condemned to outrageous time behind bars thanks to draconian state and federal laws with mandatory sentencing. A recent New Yorker article that outlined the grim statistics of overcrowding and skyrocketing expense called our prison system America's moral shame.
  
  Then there is the plight of black America. Dry statistics speak of soaring unemployment, crime, and family breakdown. In the Afro-American community, actual community is hard pressed to survive. Poverty is endemic. Seventy-five percent of black babies are born to single mothers. More young black males are in jail than in college. A hugely disproportionate number of black drug users and dealers are arrested and sent to jail compared to their white counterparts, even though actual drug usage is no higher in the black community.
  
  For forty years, ever since Nixon's law-and-order agenda gave the impetus, the trend in social policy has been skewed to eliminate compassion and focus entirely on rule breaking. Harsher sentencing, the end of most welfare programs, a rigid division between the black and white sections of town, the abandonment of the inner city by white flight, boosts in police forces, super max prisons, three strike laws, and on and on. Violent crime has dropped by 40% over the past two decades while sentences keep getting longer, prison populations keep rising, and states keep spending more per inmate than they do per student for education.
  
  The overall picture is of a harsh, punitive society where divisions have become black and white. I'm not speaking entirely of race, although Afro-Americans bear the brunt of almost every misery. But so do poor people in general. Life expectancy has risen steadily in America, but only for the upper half of the income split. Among the lower half you find the bulk of obesity, smoking, and diseases that shorten people's lives, exacerbated by lack of affordable health care.
  
  
  
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  • This is an important piece. Thank you for it.

    Mildred Lewis // 2012-05-06 13:25:41 // 14 Like(s) // Like

  • Just this afternoon I had a conversation over the growing disparity in our country. While I fully support the rewards of hard work I am saddened at the ever smaller increases given to the every day worker while CEO`s and Upper Mgmt continue to get multi-million dollar bonus and stock grants on top of their salary. The roots of the Me/Mine gluttony sinks deep. We as a society are so focused on the weed in front of us we fail to realize there is a systemic collapse pending. We are a society that is becoming ever more segmented and as the saying goes "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link". The collapse of humanity will result from our failure to pull together. The current news out of Greece and the rise of Neo Nazi political agenda serves as an example of this furthering divide. I am somewhat bewildered by our continued need for country boarders. Are we not all humans, do we not all live on the earth as a collective organism. Why do we need the multitude of political agendas dividing us. We know the earth can not continue to support the current rate of consumption of her resources. What do we do when we have raped and pillaged our natural resources continue to fight these bloody wars in the name of political agenda which is nothing more than greed. I so rarely focus on these issues as I prefer to focus on what I can do to make things better no matter how small the act, however, this weekend I have been repeatedly troubled by these thoughts. I don`t think I am the only one either. A political group can not solve this dilemma just as a virus can not cure itself of being a virus. I have no answer other than choices and actions of each individual will set the course we take collectively.

    Be the Change // 2012-05-06 23:29:59 // 9 Like(s) // Like

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• April 29 2012

  In Physics, the Arrow of Time Gets Bent

  Category:  SF Gate

  By Deepak Chopra, MD and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor of Special Projects and Director, Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics, Chapman University
  
  
  Out of sight, and for most people out of mind, the physical world has been vanishing. For over a hundred years quantum theory has shown that the solid objects of the physical world are made of invisible energy clouds. Atoms have no fixed physical properties until they are measured; therefore, it remains to be shown why our world of everyday experience feels solid in the first place. At the same time, other properties we take for granted are dissolving. Einstein described time as dependent on frames of observation. Now it seems that in the world of quantum phenomena it can appear to move backwards.
  
  This is a fascinating topic, and one that raises more questions about things we take for granted. Quantum physicists at the University of Vienna were looking at particles of light that are either entangled or separable. These are technical terms going back to the era of Einstein and Schrodinger. If two particles are entangled, they will exhibit synchronized behavior no matter how far apart they are in space. As soon as one particle is measured, its exact counterpart will show up in the entangled twin state, even if they are far, far away from each other. In other words, this "action at a distance” defies the speed of light. Einstein could not accept the consequences of quantum entanglement, and so he added the word "spooky" to action at a distance.
  
  Yet quantum behavior is frequently spooky, and experiments have validated entanglement very soundly. In a recent article a useful analogy was given. Two entangled particles are like a pair of tumbling dice. If you stop one to see which number comes up, the other dice must show the same number; it has no other choice. If the two dice are separable, then the measurement of one doesn't affect the other. Being separable seems normal to us. We never expect two dice to exactly match. If they did, Las Vegas would go out of business, since chance would disappear.
  
  Now on to time. We expect time to move forward, the so-called arrow of time. Past, present, and future constitute the normal progression of events. For the same reason, cause precedes effect. It would be bizarre to bleed before you cut yourself shaving or to hear a car crash before the two vehicles collided. In the quantum world, however, certain phenomena have arisen known as retro causation, and exactly as it sounds, a future measurement appears as if it is affecting a past event. This would be a form of entanglement that reaches backward in time, a new form of spookiness.
  
  Physics has depended for decades on "thought experiments," where a new concept predicts what will happen before a physical experiment proves or disproves the predicted result. In this case, the Viennese team was working to prove "delayed-choice entanglement swaps." As a thought experiment, this has existed for over a decade. Let us follow the team's description closely:
  
  Four photons, made of two entangled pairs, are produced (think of them as four tumbling dice waiting to be measured). One photon from each pair is sent to a physicist named Victor. He will be assigned the task of measuring them. The two remaining photons are put in separate packages, one sent to a physicist named Alice, the other to a physicist named Bob. The three physicists now have their sealed packages of photons that have not been measured yet.
  
  Victor can choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then Alice's and Bob's two photons also become entangled. But if Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice's and Bob's photons end up in a separable state. This is a point that Einstein was stuck on. He couldn't believe the assertion made by Bohr and Heisenberg that the mere act of measurement by an observer determines where a particle will be. But accepted quantum theory has shown that particles have no physical characteristics until they are measured. For a long time this has been true for position in space. Now it seems that where a particle is in time also depends on measurement.
  
  
  
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  • And please let the mystery remain. Because otherwise life isn`t an adventure anymore. Let us al find out for ourselves by experience what is valuable. Good luck with your obsession Deepak!!

    heartphone // 2012-04-29 07:04:41 // 17 Like(s) // Like

  • Mysteries don`t become any less mysterious by understanding them; the more we can understand the perceived reality we`ve created for ourselves, the more mysterious it will be. As Einstein put it, `the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that that it is comprehensible.`

    Gregory // 2012-04-29 19:41:53 // 11 Like(s) // Like

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• April 22 2012

  A Hidden Benefit of Afghanistan: Peace

  Category:  Politics , SF Gate

  
  America, like every other nation, speaks peace and makes war. In its role as policeman for the world - a role performed spottily, with many arbitrary choices about when to fight - this country cherishes a reputation for peace-keeping. It hurts and baffles Americans to discover, as it did in the Bush era, how hated and disliked we are internationally. Countries that we think we are protecting turn out to view us with fear and suspicion. Since the end of World War II, America has been on a constant war footing, labeled as defense, and we have entered dozens of conflicts.
  
  
  It would be a major step if the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan created a significant change in this. As the world's largest arms dealer, with a war expenditure higher than the next sixteen countries combined, America has found new rationales in every generation for not reducing weapons expenditure. At this point, most of the pressure is political. The right wing is more or less a permanent war-friendly party. Hugely expensive weapons projects that the military doesn't need, and often doesn't think will work (e.g., much of the "star wars" missile defense system) are kept alive because they bring jobs and money into a congressman's district. The right pumped up terrorism into a war on terror instead of dealing with it sensibly, as a police action, the way counterinsurgency experts recommend and the way that Britain dealt with the I.R.A.
  
  
  Now Afghanistan has turned the Democrats into a war party, mostly against their will and certainly against the inclinations of President Obama, who is obviously of a new generation that has no taste for continuous conflict. The pain of personally waging war has been diverted to a very small percentage of the population, by some estimates around 1%. Without a universal draft of the sort that created a vocal antiwar faction in the Vietnam era, it's up to the center-left to pronounce the truth: America should scale down its military on all fronts. We should become more peaceful in deed rather than just in speech.
  
  
  In their budget-balancing zeal, the Republicans' proposed plans leave the defense budget untouched, which is the same old thinking inherited form the Cold War. Such thinking was outmoded over ten years ago when the 9/11 attacks incited a flagrant and disastrous return to military adventurism. It is even more outmoded today when the only real threat to America is non-state terrorism against which battleships and nuclear weapons are worse than useless.
  
  
  
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  • One heart at a time, we can work toward peace, beginning with our own. <3 Nice article, Deepak! I enjoyed reading it!

    Ryan Schumacher // 2012-04-22 18:16:10 // 17 Like(s) // Like

  • It is an evolutionary thing and will happen by itself. Internet has taken care of our awareness, brought many things to light, brought many people together. Innernet will do the rest...... Perseverance is the inner key to the kingdom of heaven....

    heartphone // 2012-04-23 16:33:45 // 11 Like(s) // Like

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• April 15 2012

  Divided Politics and Bad Marriages

  Category:  SF Gate

  Whether the Democrats and Republicans like it or not, they are in bed together and may as well be married. Neither has a majority in both houses of Congress that can impose one-party rule. The filibuster provision in the Senate allows a minority to stymie the majority. The Constitution doesn't guarantee that political bedfellows will get along - there were no parties when the Constitution was written, and now we observe a marriage from hell. Unlike civil marriage, there's no chance for a divorce.
  
  
  Is it possible to approach the situation in the role of a marriage counselor? There are several aims when a counselor faces two spouses whose relationship has become rocky.
  
  
  - Provide a safe place for honest discussion.
  - Air grievances without becoming obsessed by them.
  - Find an opening for compromise.
  - Encourage adult behavior rather than impulsiveness and a desire for revenge.
  - Find a renewed basis for the relationship to move forward.
  
  
  These aims aren't always reached, and in the end the marriage dissolves. But since the Democrats and Republicans can't divorce, our only hope is that reconciliation is possible. For that hope to materialize, the points I've listed must become feasible. What they imply is a process. One of the biggest problems in Congress is that both sides want to skip the process and jump straight to the results.
  
  
  The results are also familiar from bad marriages. Both sides want to win, to be proven right, to make the other eat humble pie, and to bypass compromise out of a sense of self-righteous certainty. We hear the word "ideology" applied a lot to the most rigid partisans on the left and the right. But I think ideology is a mask for being a bad spouse. This marriage will never work when one or both spouses insists on getting their own way, no matter what.
  
  
  Another problem with refusing to start the process of reconciliation centers on posturing. The term "political Kabuki theater" applies here. both sides say and do things for ritualistic purposes, like passing a budget that has no chance of being enacted, accusing the other side of being totally at fault, making demands that are stalking horses to satisfy the most extreme wing of the party. This resembles nothing more than two warring spouses fighting through their lawyers with wildly inflated blame, knowing all the while that the actual settlement will be a compromise.
  
  
  I don't think that compromise has become a dirty word, especially among the Tea Party, merely because of extreme intransigence or the vaunted ambition of making government less corrupt. Congress is no more corrupt than human nature and no less. The reason compromise is a dirty word is that when it is reached, neither side is satisfied. When Solomon offered to settle a dispute between two mothers by cutting the baby in half, the compromise was deliberately outlandish in order to bring the true mother to light - she would be the one who selflessly gave up her claim so that the baby might live.
  
  
  
  
  
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  • Great article as always. I love it that you speak your mind 100% on any topic you are asked about. I respect that alot. Yes, the relationship between the parties is seemingly unhealthy and in need of healing. How can we do that?

    virgocurtis // 2012-04-15 16:05:06 // 6 Like(s) // Like

  • Good one Deepak!

    Glenda Starn // 2012-04-15 14:13:46 // 3 Like(s) // Like

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