One of my favorite pastimes is “puttering” in our yard on weekends, working in the garden and doing a bit of landscaping, when needed. With so much of my time and work spent indoors in front of a computer, it’s nice to retreat outside once in awhile to venture into the outdoors and experience nature directly. And venture I did, just a couple of days ago.

I enjoy getting out into the fresh air and sunshine, tending to the various shrubs and flowers throughout our yard, and getting “up close and personal” to … spiders? Yes, spiders. And, boy, do we have some “big” garden spiders here in the Southeast U.S., including the beautiful yet startling black-and-yellow argiope (argiope aurantia). See some “startling” pictures and read about this species at this University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Animal Diversity Web page.

After working in the yard for about two hours, cleaning up the “cuttings” and gathering the garden tools to put back into the shed, I was approaching the side of our house where the garage door is, when “something” caught the corner of my eye, right above a bush, to which I turned and looked and gasped “Yikes!”

After I composed myself, I took a closer look, fascinated by such a large spider. I have seen the black-and-yellow argiope before, as they are fairly common here. But this particular one webbing “her” way between the bush and our garage wall was quite the sight. I say “her” because only the female of this spider species can get so large and so colorful, while the male is only one-third or so as big. She was just sitting there on her web, rocking in the breeze, spread out from leg tip to leg tip to at least three inches! Though they can bite if provoked, the bite is not harmful to most humans. Argiopes tend to mind their own business, and are not interested in the indoors. Which is just fine by us.

I immediately went to retrieve my wife from her own weekend activities, to witness this awesome sight, and also to let her know how close to the garage door the spider was. I didn’t think my wife would have appreciated being surprised by “Ms.” Argiope when opening the garage door.

Once seeing this beautiful specimen, my wife wanted to photograph “Ms.” Argipoe. So we got our Kodak digital camera and clicked away. I suggested to my wife that we should name our neighborly spider. We thought about it, and decided to call her Miss Scarlett, after another famous southern bell. Miss Scarlett just sat there on her web, completely undisturbed by our constant back-and-forth movements taking pictures. Actually, I think Miss Scarlett enjoyed the attention, though she wouldn’t let on about it. You know how these southern bells are.

Now, you are probably wondering why I call Miss Scarlett our Free-Market Spider. Well, after all the pictures were taken, and I finished cleaning up the yard and putting the tools away, I sat for a spell and thought about what had just transpired.

Here I was, enjoying some of my earned leisure time in the freest country in the world, using these marvelous modern gardening tools to care for our plants and landscape, including using a two-wheeled wheel barrel made of a man-made reinforced plastic material that is almost indestructible -– all made possible by the wonderful, competitive, division-of-labor, wealth-producing, capitalist “free-market” system (redundancy never hurts) -- all the while caring for various plants and flowers to beautify and add color to our yard, mowing the lawn with a wonderful Craftsman mulching lawn mower, all occurring around the very nice home we own, built on a wonderful piece of property we also own, when there “she” was, Miss Scarlett, the big garden spider. She was just sitting there, taking it all in -- and taking full advantage of, I might add, a nice, sunny spot, built and provided for by human beings –- by man, the thinking, conceptual animal.

I pondered how wonderful existence, capitalism, the division of labor, individual freedom, private property, and wealth production are. My dream world…

Then reality hit, and I couldn’t help think just how much unnecessary interference, regulation, mandating, taxation, and control there is by our “statist-socialist-communist-environmentalist” oriented dingbat, lunatic political leaders and government officials -- coming at us from every level of government, local-state-federal -- over our freedoms, rights, property rights, income, wealth, finances, including all commerce and business. From a personal point, I can only image how much more could be possible, and how much more I could achieve, if I were able to retain more disposable income and wealth to save and spend, even possibly establishing more personal time to spend with my work or pastimes.

Gee, if I could actually keep more of my earned income and wealth from being taxed to death, and have more of my personal time back instead of using it to earn money to pay taxes, what could I possibly spend more disposable income, wealth, and time on? Oh, I don’t know, how about:

- saving more money for my future security, benefiting a bank or investment company, or

- contribute more money to our favorite private charities, benefiting their activities,

- buying a bigger house and yard with more plants and flowers, benefiting the seller,

- paying someone to help care for my larger yard, benefiting a landscape company, while

- using the time I save from yard work reading and writing, adding to my knowledge, and

- buying more books to read, benefiting the book stores, writers, and authors, or

- paying someone else to mow my lawn, benefiting a lawn-maintenance company, while

- using the time I save from mowing my lawn playing my piano more, and

- paying for professional piano lessons, benefiting the piano teacher, or

- buying more meals out, benefiting the area restaurants and cafes, or

- buying a bread machine to make my own bread, benefiting the bread machine manufacturer, or

- buying better garden tools, benefiting the hardware store, garden shop, and tool manufacturer, or

- maybe build another “man-made” sunny spot providing a home for another garden spider, and

- spending more time with my wife, which would make her very happy.

There was a time when people were proud of using the correct definition of words when speaking and writing, and made every effort possible to apply those correct definitions to the correct context (of the subject matter in which they spoke). If honest mistakes were made and the wrong word was accidentally used out of context (usually due to not clearly understanding a word), apologies were made, the mistake was corrected, the dust would settle, and rational discussion would go on. Or, using the wrong word was a deliberate attempt at humor by purposefully using a word out of context.

For example, one cannot “inoculate” people against certain ideas, but one can “indoctrinate” people against certain ideas. Or for humor, one might say that they wear “stun” glasses, instead of sunglasses.

I’ve certainly had, and occasionally still do have, my own share of using the wrong word in my writing or discussion, thinking that the definition of the word I am trying to use fits the context of the subject matter at hand, but it quickly becomes apparent that the word is wrong. As a musician, I know immediately the wrong note or chord applied, but since I am not a professional wordsmith, word application is a little more challenging. But I digress.

Obviously, not all of history was so innocent of misusing words, of course. But the purposeful skewing and mixing of words, and their definitions, to deliberately mislead and obscure, seemed to be the exception to the rule, not the norm of expressive behavior.

Not any more.

In the confines of this post, I limit the discussion to the latest, deliberate bastardization and misuse of language by the current political class and media in the popular phrase “America’s Addiction to Oil.”

To which I say, “What a crock!” Let’s start with a definition for addiction.

From Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addiction

Addiction - 1: the quality or state of being addicted [to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively] <addiction to gambling> 2: compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly: persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.

Now, I am no doctor or psychologist, but I think we can infer that an addiction is a certain type of psychological behavior that is associated with certain desires and needs that become compulsive, obsessive, or habitual, which may also develop into a physiological need. Because of this, I think we can say that addiction is a type of behavior that is irrational in nature. Thus, addictions are potentially bad for us because the irrational fixation for certain desires and needs may become destructive to our life; they represent subjective and negative forces against life. For example, an obsessive fixation on and abnormal fear of germs may lead a person to compulsive hand washing addiction, lasting for hours and damaging skin.

Conversely, we can conclude that the opposite is true, that a type of psychological behavior that is rational in nature – non-addictive, normal, healthy mental behavior - is associated with certain desires and needs that are not compulsive, not obsessive, and not habitual. That is, a rational psychological behavior associated with healthy and normal desires and needs is NOT an addiction, but a proper, objective, good, and rational process for living, enhancing, and enjoying our lives; it represents an objective and positive force supporting life. For example, a normal, objective awareness of germs, and what they can do, leads people to wash their hands for a moment after they handle raw meat, avoiding contamination.

Dependency is also another term associated with addiction that needs to be addressed. As with desire or need, to be dependent upon a thing does not necessarily imply “addiction” to that thing. Again, context is important. For example, we depend upon the sun to continue to supply plentiful sunlight so we can grow food and survive, but this doesn’t mean that we are “addicted” to the sun or to sunlight. This type of dependency is neither compulsive or obsessive, and is considered rational. However, being compulsively and obsessively dependent on the drug cocaine to the point where one resorts to crime to fulfill the irrational need for cocaine would qualify that dependency as an addiction, and therefore, it would be considered irrational.

For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to those desires and needs associated with addiction as irrational desires and needs for something, and those desires and needs associated with normal, non-addictive behavior as rational desires and needs for something.

In my opinion, a rational dependency, desire, or need for a drug or substance or resource is NOT an addiction, even if that rational dependency, desire, or need is for a substance that we know to be potentially harmful or dangerous to our life, such as the use of radiation for X-rays or fighting cancer, or the use of uranium to produce electricity inexpensively and cleanly, or the use of insulin to stabilize diabetes.

Here, I would continue to argue that our dependency, desire, and need for oil is rational – it is NOT an irrational desire or need – it is NOT an addiction. We rationally depend upon, desire, and need oil to help enhance and better our lives. We, as human beings, rationally and objectively depend upon, desire, and need all kinds of drugs, substances, and resources to help enhance and preserve our way of life, our health, our wonderfully high standard of living, our prosperity, our wealth, our property, our businesses, our careers, our happiness, our dreams, and ultimately, our very life.

Our rational and objective dependency, desire, and need for oil is no different. We use oil in the production and manufacturing of health and medical products, everyday home and food products, farming and agricultural products and processes, toys and entertainment products and devices, medical-scientific-technological research and development, and yes, the various fuels and gasoline to run all types of machines, equipment, trains, tractors, trucks, boats, and automobiles. All of these things benefit us and make our lives prosperous.

For politicians and the media to label our desire and need for oil as an “addiction” – implying that it is an irrational dependency, desire, and need, and, I think, a deliberate attempt to also imply that it is evil and immoral – is to imply that our dependency, desire, and need for all things that make our lives safe, healthy, happy, and productive are also “addictions,” and therefore, irrational, evil, and immoral.

This means that to describe our rational dependency, desire, and need for oil as an “addiction” is to directly imply that we also have an “addiction” - an irrational, evil, and immoral dependency, desire, and need - for all the other things that enhance and better our lives, things such as individual freedom, individual rights, property rights and our property, wealth, prosperity, good health, and happiness.

How “purposefully and deliberately” twisted, malevolent, sick, disgusting, and absurd an idea is that?

And yet, this is the type of venom that is purposefully spewed out everyday by the media, our politicians, government officials, and several cowardly, leftist-appeasing private businesses, corporations, and organizations. I don’t think these folks are innocently misusing words, and they are definitely not messing with context for humor’s sake.

Using the word “addiction” to describe our dependency, desire, and need for oil is not only an attempt to distort and skew the context in which we use and need oil, it is also a deliberate, despicable, conniving attempt to convince us that our dependency, desire, and need for oil is irrational, evil, and immoral. If these people can convince you to “feel” guilty, shameful, and immoral for rationally and objectively wanting and needing those things to make your life healthy, happy, productive, and prosperous, then they have succeeded in convincing you to build the gallows on which to hang yourself. Or, at best, live in a filthy, miserable feudal system.