by Ethan Johnson
July 17, 2006

Back in the days when I had a personal recording rig (including 24-channel mixer - for little old me), I was having problems mixing down a finished song. I kept sliding the faders (pictured above) upward and turning the dials clockwise to compensate for either whatever was lacking, or was overpowering the mix. Hmm, vocal track is getting buried. (Slide up.) Hmm, now the guitar is getting lost. (Slide up.) And so on. Eventually, after hearing fatigue settled in, I did what I should have done long before: I reset everything and started over. I discovered that the drums didn't need to be so loud, the mid-range on track 4 was just fine as is, and only minor tweaking was needed on the vocal track. How did the mix turn into such a train wreck, anyway?

So it goes with life in these United States, if not the world at large. Time and time again, I see instances where one law compensates for the deficiencies of another, or one tax makes up for the shortcomings of another would-be revenue stream. Considering how complex the law has become these days from the Bill of Rights, or for some, the Ten Commandments, I wonder what it would take to "zero out the board" so that we can implement something closer to the ideal.

For example, consider the good old First Amendment. Among other things, it guarantees the right to free speech.

• Except, you really shouldn't shout "fire" in a crowded movie theatre when there is no fire.
• Except, you probably shouldn't burn the flag.
• Except, R-rated movies shouldn't be shown to anyone under 17 years of age.
• Except, if you want to peaceably assemble and protest something outside of a political convention, you have to do that in a designated "free speech zone". (Or, you need a permit from the city before you can peaceably assemble regardless of when, where, or why.)

These are just a few examples of how the faders and dials of legislation (and plain old rules) chip away at the original intent. The "neutral" position, as it were. By "zeroing out" the exceptions and tweaks to the First Amendment, we return to the "neutral" assertion that free speech is a guaranteed right, without exception. "Zeroing out" does not mean that there are no laws or rules concerning speech. But just looking at my short list of exceptions, is the "neutral" position truly the ideal?

"Zeroing out" is at the core of the expressed desire to make the Earth more "carbon neutral". In short, the idea is that if Factory A produces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per day, then enough oxygen needs to be produced (such as by trees) to offset this. But is this realistic? Here is my concern: What if we adopted a policy of "trash neutrality"? This would mean that for every square mile of trash, there must be a square mile of cleanliness to offset this. The problem is, the area with the trash is still, well, trashed.

Carbon neutrality sounds like a great idea on paper, and don't get me wrong, planting trees and/or reducing pollution is all good in my book. However, this really doesn't address the issue of pollution in the first place. This is a feel-good workaround instead of finding ways to clear the air. How do we "zero out" toxic emissions? Obviously, we're not willing to go back to the 800s or some other idyllic yet unadvanced state of living. Not in the aggregate, anyway.

And speaking of "returning to zero", I was thinking last night about the different views people have in the United States about what the ideal is, such as living "off the grid", or "going organic" or whatever. Or politically, being "liberal", "conservative", and so on. Yet I have yet to find anyone who has voluntarily given their land back to the Native Americans. "Zero" in US terms, it seems, is 1776, not 1620. (In fact, as I fact-checked myself before going to press, indeed, the argument against seems to boil down to "water under the bridge". After all, if everyone "gave land back" to whomever it was taken from, the world would be a very different place indeed.)

Finally, "zeroing the board" may seem sensible, especially when exceptions to the "neutral" position seem to run amok. However, absolute zero is hard to come by, as each factor is impacted by others, or in turn affects another. It is equally difficult (if not impossible) to reach the logical extreme across the board for any number of artificial variables, such as gun control/allowance, free/regulated speech, free/regulated markets, athiesm/theocracy. In fact mandating either athiesm or a theocracy necessarily means that speech is not entirely free. And so it goes.

Since "zeroing the board" is regressive by nature, perhaps the sensible solution is to work towards a more balanced set of rules and freedoms, organically, rather than to apply ideology and theory "off the rack". Whatever their faults, the Libertarian crowd is correct in noting the fallacy of traditional "left/right" labeling (and thinking). Moving in a linear fashion to the "left" or to the "right" does not result in any sort of tenable ideal. The world is more complex than that, and we do ourselves a disservice with mere binary thinking. <EM>