Coalescence Table of Content
A06N01 The Beginning
A06N02 Limits
A06N03 Conventional Wisdom
A06N04 Teaching
A06N05 Our Brains
A06N06 Killing
A06N07 PTSD
A06N08 PTSD Revisited
A06N09 Our Constitution
A06N10 Sacred
A06N11 What is Wrong
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N01 The Beginning
After returning home from my military
service my experiences, my thoughts, and what I had learned from my
reading began to coalesce and has continued to this day. Many things
that I thought were important or enjoyable were discarded as I grew
older. The first casualty was war movies followed by westerns and
adult movies. The war movies were so unreal and I understand why they
had to be, because if they showed combat as it really is more than
half the audience would vomit.
Almost every war movie ended with a
feeling the good guys won which gave a sense of accomplishment. I
never got a feeling of accomplishment from any of the stories I
heard. Most of the wounded vets had a guilt feeling, 'Why did I
survive and my buddies didn't'. Also, they had a feeling of
resentment, 'Why was I there in the first place. Damn the lying
politicians'. For the Vietnam vets, the last statement had very
bitter tone.
Recently, the TV reporters in Iraq claiming they were
under heavy fire when they were standing behind a dirt wall and I
could not see any bodies, what did they mean by heavy fire, two or
three riffles shots, ridiculous. Then they showed men shooting
riffles over their heads without aiming, what were they hitting
besides air and they showed men running from one side of the road to
the other shooting horizontal to the ground without aiming. If I had
been their enemy they would never have made it, I would have shot
them from the prone position while their bullets went over my head,
to me it was about as stupid as it could have been shown.
The
most important casualty was the truth. During the Korean war lying
increased and kept increasing and was out of control by '80 and has
never recovered.
The first major coalescence occurred after I had
learn the systems approach. I read a philosophical answer to 'If a
tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, is there
a sound?' After a moments thought, the systems approach gave a much
more satisfying answer.
The systems approach says every change in
a system creates bits. Sound can be bits, but if there is not an
intelligent observer present to create data from bits (the sound) by
assigning a value to the bits and then to create information from the
data by using the intelligence activity and then to create knowledge
from the information by using the wisdom activity, there will be a
sound, but no data, no information, and no knowledge about what
created the sound.
Then what I had learned about the computer, the
systems approach, and communication came together. I now had the
vocabulary and the knowledge to describe what made Captain Click
different.
I remembered reading about leadership, the authors
never used the same words, they could not define it. Then books on
management, half said something like 'Getting results through
managing people'. Captain Click never managed people, he led them, he
was leadership personified. The first sargent managed the battery
which led me to 'A manager manages a system, a manager leads people'
because people are independent systems and independent system can not
be managed, they must be led.
Captain Click followed four rules, 1
tell your people what is expected of them, 2 give them the training
and the tools to do it, 3 always show respect, and 4 get out of their
way, let them do their job.
It took me a long time to learn rule no
4, but after reviewing many memories I realized he only observed, he
never interfered with what anyone was doing. If they were not doing
it properly, he would make sure they were retrained, later.
Soon
after the tree in the forest, I realized I had to revise my notes on
communication, it was much more vulnerable than the authors I had
read realized because they did not have the advantage of the systems
approach. We take communication for granted and assume the other
person understands what we say without knowing how many errors can
occur.
First, we must convert our knowledge into information, then
convert it into data and then choose bits to represent the data the
other person will be able to recognize as bits and the other person
must reverse the entire process and we assume the other person used
the same definitions we used and how often do we consider the
channel, frequency, noise, band width, etc. Communication is very
error prone.
It is of little wonder why most authors said the only
way to know your communication was received with out loss of value is
to observe the receivers behavior, if the receivers behavior is not
congruent with the message of your communication, your communication
failed.
I returned to my advantage and a thought came. Life is
like a train, each one of us gets on at different station and gets
off at a different station. It is impossible for those who got off
before we got on to know what we know, but we think what we know has
always been. There is not a generation gap, it's a knowledge
gap.
Each us must live in the 'now', we can't live in the past and
we can never know the future, we usually think it will be the same as
today, but the future is always different in some way, always
changing.
After we take our seat on the train, we can only look
out our window, never another person's, everyone's view is at least
slightly different, never the same, yet we assume every one who is
looking at the same event, sees the same as we do. Perspective adds
another type of error to communication.
Most people are unaware of
how our brains deceive us, they probably had not read 'A mind of its
own' by Cordelia Fine. An excellent review of what the experimental
psychologists have learned or 'Predictably irrational' by Dan Ariely.
A more up to date combination of the experimental psychology and
economics or 'Searching for Spinoza' by Antonio DeMasio. An
interesting combination of philosophy and neurosurgery.
People
through out history have thought we are in control of our brains, but
it is actually the other way around, our brains control us. Our
brains create the best possible self image it can in an attempt to
keep us trying to survive.
Many people have a distorted vision of
themselves. Until I wrote my first program, I can't recall
encountering anyone with a distorted vision of themselves, thereafter
I met many.
This difference high lights the danger of coming to a
conclusion from a small data set. The small set many not be
representative of the larger population.
I interviewed many people while
on acquisition committees and the number increased dramatically. These
people shared many common characteristics. They said they were better
than someone else or were worth more and because of this they greatly
under estimated the value of everyone else. If they made a mistake it
was always the fault of someone else. If they did make a contribution
their contribution was always much greater than actual. Their
interpretation of any situation was almost always wrong and their
solutions seldom worked. It seemed to me they were greedy and had
very weak egos.
Everyone has an ego, it is our image of ourselves,
but I believe men have an extra one, the male ego. Notice: I used the
word believe because I am in doubt.
When our children were young I
could not recognize any difference in their behavior, but as they
grew older I could see they were upset when I said or did something
stupid. I tried to remember what had happened prior to seeing them
upset. I could not recognize any connection and my reading was of
little help. Then during one of my out bursts, completely out of
character, I could remember what I said and did. I was not rational
and I recalled over hearing women telling each other about the way
their men had acted. One said their egos are out of whack. Mine was
during those brief episodes. Many times I would stop and ask myself,
'Why did you do that?' and all I could do was shake my head and
apologize, but the damage had been done.
Over the next five years
my episodes declined and I can not remember ever having one again. I
had no clue as to what caused them or why they started or why they
stopped. I wished I did because then it could help someone else.
Ladies, you may live with a man with a male ego, but he has to live
with it and most men are unaware of what is happening in their
brains.
When a man has a belief, far from reality, and has a
distorted vision of himself and is combined with greed and an episode
of male ego it is a recipe for disaster. A suicide bomber is an
example.
The bomber believes a defender of the faith will
go to heaven if he dies killing infidels and he will receive 40
virgins. (far from reality in my opinion) His distorted vision of
himself is that he is the defender. The virgins is his male ego and
his greed is the number 40.
The bomber also discloses the greed
for power of the religious leaders who brain wash the bomber and I
would like to know what they offer the female bombers in place of the
virgins.
While none of this can be proven, it sure fits the
recipe.
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We have some very definite limits.
Logic is one of the oldest known limits and most people don't know
simple logic. When someone says you are either for me or you are
against me, they are a liar as far as I am concerned, they are
violating the law of the excluded middle. My opinion is the same for
someone who says statistics prove .... Statistics can not prove
anything. The same goes for correlation proves ... A correlation is
not causation. Again, a mathematical model (simulation) is not
reality, some give a very good estimate. Godel's theorem says if a
logical system does not have three undefined terms and one undefined
operation the system will be logically inconsistent which means our
language and our laws while useful, will have a contradiction in
them. The incompleteness theorem says that in every axiomatic system
there will be true statements the system can not create which means
we can never know the whole truth. The uncertainty principle places a
limit on how accurately we can measure the position and the momentum
of a sub atomic particle at the same time. Relativity indicates time
is relative and we do not have a preferred coordinate system only a
convenient one. Quantum mechanics is weird.
Some of the above may seem obvious, but
they are no longer suppositions they are facts.
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'Suffering people tell the truth' is
one of the oldest and explains why torture has been used for so
long.
A CIA report said the information they obtained was not
reliable, they had to find other sources.
This should not come as
a surprise because when pain becomes to great the suffering person
will say and do anything to stop the pain and what they say and do
may have nothing to do with the truth.
If a procedure is
ineffective why waste resources doing it, it is beyond me, it is
stupid.
Several years ago a large bank used the
following add, 'We treat you like a name not a number.' This appeals
to our egos, but an experience changed my thinking. The Sr and I
visited Standard Oil in Chicago. As we walked down the hall we heard
a clerk talking to a credit card customer who had lost all of his
records in a fire and wanted another credit card. I didn't think to
much about it until we returned from lunch and heard the clerk say, I
am sorry Mr Smith, but we can't find you, he had moved several times
and had not updated his file and had not used his credit card, would
you give us the information to set up a new account?
I had to know
why and soon learned the customer's name was William J Smith. There
was more than 10,000 such names in their credit card file.
The
English language has more than 300,000 words, but even that many
words is not large enough to name all of the people in the world, but
each one could have a unique number.
A name may not be unique, a
number can be.
'What goes around comes around, a
stitch in time saves nine, a watched pot never boils, the bread
always falls to the floor jam side down'. The last one is a version
of the Murry's law, if something can go wrong, it will, at the worst
time possible. But if you invoke Murry's law you should also invoke
O'Toole's Law, Murry was an optimist.
'History repeats itself', no
history is never the same, people repeat the same mistakes because
they are unable to learn.
Someone said, 'In our country ignorance must be a precious commodity because so many people hoard it. Look how tenaciously they cling to it. Some people, politicians, pundits, and the media even promote it as if it is something everyone should have.'
Someone said, 'If the will to live was not innate it would be the worst of conclusions'. I disagree very strongly, I think it would be the best of conclusions, because only a living system can know.
Many people are anti science and these same people think technology will save us. I wonder where these people think technology comes from.
Some people can not see:
(The forest
for the trees)
(The message for the words)
As the poet said it does not matter whether you won or lost its how you played the game, so when the focal point of our discussions is who won and who lost there is something wrong with our focus.
Freedom and rights are only available under the laws that define them and with these freedoms and rights comes responsibility. As the author of 'The Fall of Athens' wrote, when the freedom from responsibility was the freedom desired most, all freedom was lost.
The right to life has been a hot topic for some time. No one has a right to life, if we did why do we die?
Technology is advancing very rapidly,
what we think we know today might be superseded, modified, or proven
false tomorrow. Having said that, recent brain scans indicate the so
called conservatives have different brains than the rest of us. If
this result is confirmed, it means we can not change their thinking
no matter what we do, a very discouraging result.
One of my best
friends is a capitalist. When I confronted him with the results of
putting money first, he replied, 'I don't have to worry about that
I'll be dead before it happens'. When I asked, 'What about your
children and your grandchildren?' 'That's their problem'. When I
responded, 'That is a very selfish point of view', he never spoke to
me again.
Greed and selfishness were the two common threads of
every capitalist I interviewed when on an acquisition committee.
Many thing make our country unique, but
one thing that is ignored by the people who advocate one size fits
all or it's my way or the highway is that our political and economic
system allows people, businesses, and corporations to use what ever
type of solution they can develop to solve their problems as long as
it does not impinge on some one's freedom, no
one system can solve all problems and nor can any one system solve
them efficiently. They can use libertarianism where
everyone works completely independent of everyone else or
totalitarianism where everyone does exactly what the boss says or
bureaucracy where everyone follows the rules established by
management or like a charity, a form of communism, where each gives
according to their ability and each receives according to the need or
democratic where everyone shares in the decision making or some
combination of them.
In fact some problems do not have a solution. The
best we can do it that case is to find some kind of equilibrium.
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My memories, reading, and observations
on sex didn't coalesce soon enough, I wasn't much more help for our
children than my parents were for me. Raising children is tedious,
trying, and tiresome, but the pleasure of watching them grow and
learn more than compensated. I had a ball with our children, it was
occasionally marred by my male ego, but even my male ego dissipated
with time. It should be obvious to everyone that our purpose in life
is to produce the next generation and we should be teaching adults
and children how to be effective parents. Currently we are placing
way to much emphasis on grades to get a job and teacher
accountability, when we should be placing the emphasis on becoming
effective parents. If we did that the grades and the jobs would come
as the result. We should get out of the way and let teachers do their
job, no one is capable of measuring teacher performance. Teaching is
a calling, it is very individual, each teacher does it their own way
and many are very effective, some aren't because they chose to be a
teacher to have a job, the wrong reason. No one can teach another, an
effective teacher creates an environment where the student can learn.
Because it can be done many different ways, who can measure it. When
I was in college I had learned enough to be able to tell which
teachers were the best and one measure was how they used testing. The
best teachers would give a written quiz every day, ten questions, one
at a time and then asked the class for the answer before asking the
next question which gave each student immediate feed back. Each
student was to grade their own paper. When the quiz was done the
teacher gathered the papers not for a grade, but to do a simple
statistical analysis to find out what the teacher needed to emphasize
in the next class. In those classes almost every student did very
well, many with an A. Our current testing is a waste of time and
money because there is no feed back, how can a student learn if they
can't see their mistakes.
I read a statistical analysis of the
factors that influence student performance. The most important factor
was reading, if the parents read to their child and also were seen
reading at home the probability the child would read was very high.
Next was parent involvement with the child's education. Next was the
teacher. I don't remember the next few, but race, economic status,
religion, and sex were near zero. I have seen other reports and every
one supported the first. This does not mean every child will be an
all A student, it means the child will a chance to approach their
full potential.
I have heard many men say why bother to educate a
girl and they would give some stupid reason. I say stupid because a
woman's education is never wasted if she has children or works with
children. Because women do most of the child rearing they have the
most influence on the child, what could be more important for
learning.
Another report said women are the stronger sex, men were
more powerful, but on all other factors women were stronger, they
lived longer, they were survivors. Women were more important than men
because they have a limited supply of eggs and only they could give
birth where as one man could fertilize many women, men are
expendable. This supported my view that it is genetic for men protect
women, women were more valuable.
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From my reading I knew our brains and body were dependent upon one another, they could not be separated. Even our intestines influence our brains, so if you have a gut feeling, go with it, it will be right more often than wrong and recently we have learned that our blood influences our brains, it does more than supply nutrients and remove waste. We will never have another body so we need to take care of it. Then I realized no one had any jurisdiction over what anyone did with their own body, nor did any person have jurisdiction to do anything to another person's body without their permission, no person, no group, no custom, no belief, no law, no religion.
The precautionary principle
revisited
The systems approach had the most profound effect on my
thinking. One of the questions the systems approach asks is 'How safe
are we?'. It didn't take much to recall that engineers have been
asking this question for centuries. Because 'How safe are we?' is a
question it tends to promotes thinking. The precautionary principle
says 'We should err on the side of caution'. What does that mean? How
do we apply it? Should we only be cautious when we make an error and
how would we know when we were going to make an error and why would
we want to make an error in the first place. If people followed the
precautionary principle everyone would stay in bed because it is
dangerous to stand, we would certainly not drive a car. In other
words the precautionary principle says 'Do nothing, maintain the
status quo'. Because it is a statement it tends to inhibit
thinking.
No matter how sophisticated we think we are, our
standard operating procedure is trial and error. We rarely think of
everything before we act, we try something and if it does not work we
try something else and oops, we shouldn't have done that. We must
learn from our mistakes, something many people can not do, even
better is to learn from the mistakes of others.
Indifference
Most people do not
understand that hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is. We
must be very careful when we are indifferent to others.
When our
thinking violates the laws of the cosmos our thinking is unrealistic.
To many people think to much of ourselves. We are unique, but we are
not privileged. We must learn the laws of the cosmos and obey them or
the forces that follow the laws of the cosmos will be completely and
absolutely indifferent to our demise.
First is very important to our
thinking, when we store a message as true and if we do not tag the
message as deceptive our brains will continually create false
conclusion each time it is referenced. But here is the most insidious
facet. Our brains will ignore all following messages that refute the
first one because it 'knows' the truth.
I am reminded of how our
brains work every time I type. I must reread what I type at least
three times and most times many more because my brain knows what is
supposed to be there and it ignores the message my eyes are sending.
My eyes can see the errors my fingers made, but my brain continues to
over ride the message sent to it by my eyes.
This is why we must
be very careful what we say and how we say it.
Shortly after a pipeline presentation
by Ed, I received a group email stating that some people left early
because the talk was to technical and some said it was to long. After
I read several replies I knew I had to reply as well.
I call
people who refuse to even try to learn wimps. I didn't know of any
way to shorten the presentation and still make the message
understandable. I had been there and all that can be done is to hope
that some of the message will be understood. Somethings cannot be
said at the third grade level.
After I pushed the reply to all
button I though maybe I should explain what I meant, but I was in no
mood to say any more.
The average American adult reads at the
third grade level, a sad commentary on our country.
The evening
was very enjoyable for me because three points were clarified, I
learn several things about the pipeline that I didn't know, mainly
about how it was constructed, and heard my language spoken.
Most
people assume that because they use the same language that they speak
the same language. Not true.
Every person's vocabulary is unique,
it may be very close to another person's, but never the same. Because
our language has many words with more than one meaning each person
has their own preferred meaning. In addition every person has their
own preferred connotation for every word in their vocabulary.
Idioms, jargon, and slang are activity
specific. We do not speak the same way to our children as we do to
those of others, nor at the garden club, meetings, social gatherings,
funerals, etc.
Our brains are built for language and our brains
switch so fast from one spoken language to another that most people
are completely unaware of what is happening. When two people do not
speak the same language it is a serious obstacle to understanding.
Our brains are very good at detecting cheaters. Young children and our primate cousins have this capability, so it appears that this capability is very old.
Our brains are very poor at detecting liars. Maybe this deficit is the result of language because only people have a highly developed language which indicates that this skill is relatively new and our capability to detect liars has not had the time to improve.
Because language is a major input to our brains, the misuse of language increases the chance of storing incorrect memories which decreases our ability to detect liars to almost zero, making it very easy for the liars to mislead us.
Math and logical semantics are in a
class by themselves, they manipulate objects according to very
restrictive rules. The hard sciences, physics, chemistry, biology,
geology, economics, medicine, etc., count, measure, and compare
physical attributes in an attempt to find out how things worked or
try to find a pattern in the data. Then create an idea to explain
and then tested the idea. They shared the results and come to an
agreement. They created building blocks from which others could add
to and ask additional questions and create additional ideas.
The
soft sciences, history, social studies, psychology, philosophy,
religion, etc., started with an idea from one person and then the
person tried to find data to support the idea. There was very little
sharing and seldom an agreement. Counting, measuring, and comparing
is very difficult in the soft sciences. Each of the soft sciences
made an attempt except for philosophy and religion making them the
least reliable. The experimental psychologists improved their survey
techniques so they could test their ideas in many different ways and
their results slowly became more reliable. The other soft sciences
except for philosophy and religion adopted their survey techniques as
best they could which improved their reliability.
Over many years the hard sciences improved the techniques to study the brain which led to data that supported the result of the experimental psychologists, neurology and neurosurgery were especially important, the advances in both increased at a very fast pace. Then came the improvements in DNA analysis, that area has exploded, with new ideas accumulating even faster. With each improvement the results of the experimental psychologists received additional support. This is why the results of the experimental psychologists has had such a large impact on my thinking and why philosophy and religion went to zero.
Happiness can not be pursued. Happiness
is a state of mind, you can chose to be happy any time you wish. The
following story is a good indicator that happiness is a state of
mind.
A friend of my dad grew up in a small town where everyone
spoke German. His grand parents came from Germany and said they were
to old to learn English, but they insisted their children learn
English and to speak it with their children. And so it was, his
parents spoke English to him and his siblings and German to their
parents. But monkey see, monkey do happened, all of the younger
generation learned to speak German at a very young age so they could
talk to their grand parents and they could do so without an English
accent.
During WWII his bomber was shot down over Germany and he
was captured and put in a POW camp. It was one of the smaller camps
and it was divided into two holding areas, one for the POW's and
another for Jews. The areas were separated by a twelve foot wide
patrol walk way. Only two soldiers patrolled the two areas each with
a dog on a leash. One walked clock wise around one area and the other
counter clock wise around the other and they timed their patrol so
they would meet at the path between the two areas. When they met they
would say to the people on each side in English for the POW's and in
German for the Jews, 'Stay back from the fence and do not talk'.
As
soon as they reached the end of the path and turned away from the
prisoners, the prisoners would return to the fences and talk to each
other. Several other POW's could also speak German, but they did the
best they could to keep it a secret from the soldiers. The Jews
wanted the POW's to send messages about where they were to their
relatives via the American Red Cross. They would write a message and
tie it together with a rock or any heavy object and throw it over the
two fences. The POW's would untie the message and throw the rock
back, with paper and pencil tied, supplied by the Red Cross and hide
the message.
My dad's friend noticed that one man was always
smiling as he threw a message over the fences. The man was mostly
skin and bones and could hardly move, he wonder how he could smile
and one day he asked him, 'Why are you smiling, how can you be
happy?' and he replied, 'They have not killed me yet'.
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I learned to kill slowly.
First it was fish at 11, then squirrels and rabbits at 14, followed
by pheasants, duck, geese, quail, and deer at 16. I cleaned and ate
everything I killed or gave it to someone who would. I stopped
fishing at 27 and hunting at 31.
Except for fish almost all of my
kills were what I call a clean kill, the animals died instantly. When
I was 12 my dad gave me a Beebe gun, I shot a small bird, but it did
not kill the bird. It could not fly, so I chased it and hit it with
the stock of my gun and killed it. I never shot the gun again.
At
42 I started to read the works of the experimental psychologists and
still do. I have learned a little about how our brains work. When I
reviewed my experiences with what I had learned, it was obvious to me
that killing was not an innate activity, it was a learned activity.
The biosphere is not 'Red with blood in tooth and claw' as some say,
most living things starve, are killed by pathogens, or their own
biology. Killing is not natural, except for carnivores and even their
young must be taught. The hunters I knew who had 'Buck Fever' settled
the issue for me. I never had 'Buck Fever', when ever I had a clear
shot at game I fired without hesitation.
When bombs, artillery
shells, and tank shells kill women and children it is called
collateral damage. If a psycho kills people he is considered insane,
but if a soldier does the same under orders and the stress of combat
it is called murder.
Something is wrong here.
An idea or a belief can not be stopped
by killing unless you are willing to kill all those who agree with
the idea or the belief, but this is next to impossible because ideas
and beliefs have a life of their own even if the idea or belief is
false. I wish there was a way to convince the true believers, if you
need to use force to convert others to your idea or your belief, the
odds are your idea or belief is false.
Until more people
understand they will vote for the wrong politicians and the killing
will continue.
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Vietnam produced the highest
percentage of PTSD vets than any other war with the Gulf wars a close
second. I blame the politicians, the military, and an ignorant
public. The military first. Their battle plan was out of date, they
wanted more planes, tanks, and chemicals all of which proved to be
ineffective. The troops were trained to fight a conventional war
where the front lines were well defined and the enemy always wore
uniforms, not for Nam. The military would not admit they were losing
until the very last. By the end of the war our public was sick of it
and many people believed lies, is there any wonder why the public
turned their backs on the vets? I heard a story and I don't know if
it was true, but a mother told her son not to come home because he
did not bring honor to the family because they lost the war.
I
laughed when a senator returned from Nam and said on TV he knew what
was going on because he had his feet on the ground. Obviously he was
to stupid to admit he only saw what the military wanted him to see.
He repeated the lie the military told the politicians who came to
Nam. The military claimed to have statistics that proved we were
winning the war. Shortly after the senator repeated the lie a
reporter did the math, the statistics implied and he found that if
the statistics were true all the people in Vietnam would be dead,
only our troops would be alive which obviously was not true.
The
military has always lied to the public ever since George crossed the
Delaware, but it increased during Ike's term as president and kept
increasing ever since. Plus the capitalist jumped on the band wagon
so they could make more profit and the lying increased even more.
This is why Ike warned about the military industrial complex.
If
you were paying attention during the Gulf wars a common way the
military lied was on display almost every night. They showed how
accurate their guided bombs were because they only showed those that
hit the target. When the true statistics were known the accuracy was
only about 30%, they never showed the ones that missed the target or
hit the wrong place, but that didn't matter they only caused
collateral damage.
Again during the gulf wars the military used
the wrong battle plan they were very concerned about a high body
count, so were the politicians. When will people wake up. Wars are
not about marching soldiers, bands, and heroic slogans and songs.
Wars are about killing, wars are won by attrition, the last one
standing wins, wars can not be won without a high body count. To do
otherwise only prolongs the war and increases the over all body count
not to mention the increase in the number of wounded.
When will
this stupidity stop.
The politicians and our ignorant
public
Almost immediately following Ike's warning, the industrial
military complex beat the war drums. We must defend ourselves. We
must stop the communists, they are a threat to our safety, we must
have a strong military. Many politicians joined in and the lie was
repeated over and over. Many times I heard, 'Better dead than
red'.
Because so many people were ignorant, they believed the lie.
We did not have to do anything, communism would have failed even if
we did nothing. Communism like libertarianism and all other belief
systems will fail because they ignore human nature. People lie and
cheat. Our government and our economy must have mechanisms to negate
the lies and cheating. Why do you think we have a treasury, it is to
prevent counterfeit money from being used. Why do you think we have a
bureau weights and measures, it is to prevent false weights and
measures from being used.
By setting up a mechanism to prevent
lying and cheating we have created a contention between individual
freedom and the need of government to have control. A contention
never has a solution only some point in between compete control by
the government and complete freedom for the individual. We must
choose the point.
To reenforce the lie, we must defend ourselves,
we must stop the communists, the following lies were added, free
market, free enterprise, capitalism made our country great, a free
market can solve all problems, etc.
We don't have a free market or
free enterprise, capitalism did not make our country great and the
free market can not solve all problems.
The main lie was repeated
many times, it was used to justify our involvement in Korea and again
in Vietnam. The lie was changed slightly later to justify our
involvement in the middle east, but it was the same lie, we must
defend ourselves against a threat.
We don't know our own strength.
The foreign students in my advanced organic chem class taught me what
made our country great, it was our generosity, our willingness to
help, and our willingness to change that made our country great.
Instead of fighting we should have invited the communists to come to
our country and live here for a year or two. What made our country
great is very contagious and the communists could go back home and
they could still profess to being communists, but they would never be
the same again.
Return to Coalescences Table of Content
During my military experience I
was never told about the effect of combat on my mental health or what
I could do about it. From the stories I heard this has not changed.
Most people know a little about combat, some understand, but most
people can not realize it until it happens. You can think about
something so you can plan what you would do, but until it happens you
do not know what you will do. Only in hind sight will you know what
you did, if you can remember. If what you did violates your value
system it can mess up your brain, the more severe the violation the
more severe your brain will be messed up. It helps if you can
rationalize your actions, this removes the guilt. The most frequent
statement I heard from the wounded vets was 'Why did I survive and
not my buddies?' They could not accept the fact that the forces of
the cosmos follow their own rules not ours and the forces are
completely indifferent to their effect on us. If we are in the right
place at the right time we will survive. They could not accept this
indifference. More on indifference later.
Another thing they could
not accept was the fact they lost something they valued even if they
were not involved, just being there is all that is necessary because
the one thing everyone of them lost was the feeling of safety, the
feeling of control and most could not regain the same feeling as
before.
When we lose something of value no matter how small we
grieve. If the loss is very small the grief is very small and we do
not notice that we have grieved, but as the size of the loss
increases the amount of grief increases. Grief is a very serious
activity, we cannot heal without grief.
We do not teach people how
to grieve. Partly because each person grieves in their own way, but
there are things in common. One of the worst things we teach our
young boys is 'Big boys do not cry'. Crying is the most common form
of grief release. I have seen many big boys cry, myself
included.
Grief is not like a fine wine, it does not get better
with age, so don't bottle it up, let it out as peacefully as
possible.
I have seen grief many times and if you have read my web
site you may ask how I could see grief in such a peaceful and safe
environment. Because my job was to create change and most of the loss
I caused was small and so was the grief, but it was observable. Most
of the time it occurred when the realization of the changes I made
went into effect, the people lost their usual routine, their usual
contacts, some times they had to relocate and when I was a member of
an acquisition committee I could see large numbers of people grieving
the loss of their jobs. Most were glad that Total was buying their
company because they knew it was going bankrupt and if Total had not
bought the company they would not get any severance pay and they
would lose their contribution to their pension.
Grief is very
common if you know what to observe. Even with observing a lot of
grief I still do not know how to help a grieving person except for
giving them a hug, words are meaningless.
There is so little we can do for one
another, but we can show our concern and we can share.
My wife had a very large extended
family. We were married in June and we attended our first funeral in
October. For the next 14 years we attended at least one funeral a
year and during one 12 month period we had seven deaths in the
family, her legal guardian, a cousin, and my grandfather were killed
in car accidents, cancer killed her mother and an aunt, and two
others I do not remember except my wife was asked by the family of
one to remove her belongings from her rented home and settle her
estate.
Many I had never met and many the only thing I knew about
them was their names. So for most of the funerals I was not
emotionally involved, I became an observer.
I learned many things
that should not be said to a grieving person. There was a common
thread linking what was said, but I could not identify the
commonality. I didn't know what to say to a grieving person and it
did not take much thought to realize neither did the other people, so
I adopted a passive approach. I did not say any thing, I gave them a
hug and listened to what they wanted to say. The grieving person had
lost a very important bond and a hug communicates many things, but to
me the most important one is it communicates the bond between you is
still intact.
Because of the number of funerals I began to read
about grief and this comment is the result of my reading,
observation, and my inept attempt to help the family members.
Some
time later after I attended the learning program on communication I
was able to determine the commonality of what not to say to a
grieving person. The common thread was each person was placing their
value on the grieving person's experience making the experience worse
than it should have been. For example one of the worse things I heard
said was, 'That was a horrible experience for you'.
Two more
things to avoid, do not remind them of what they have lost and do not
give advice until the grieving person shows some indication of
recovery from the shock of the experience which will be some time
after the funeral.
1961 It was a pivotal year for another
reason. I read three Freud biographies, the first author thought he
was the best thing since sliced bread. When I finished I wondered if
the author had read the notes in the back of the book. They were
copies of notes made by Freud, they did not support Freud's
conclusions and one data set refuted one of his conclusions. The
second author was about as anti Freud as possible. The third was more
objective, but his last comment was, 'A fool can make a profound
statement, but that does not mean the fool understands the
statement'. That was the end of Freud.
Next I read one book by
Jung and two written by Piaget.
I had had enough and turned to
reading the results of the experimental psychologists and I continue
to read their results. They changed my view of how our brains
worked.
Many people would say to me, 'Our brains are like
computers'. I would respond they are similar in that they both use
electrical signals, but that is as far as it goes because our brains
are superb multiprocessors. Our brains do not store memories like
most people think. Our memories are cross linked to other memories
that have something in common so when we recall one we often recall
many others as well. This means our thinking is modified with each
new memory and they cannot be separated, each one influences another.
A sound, a smell, a song, a picture, etc., can bring back many
different memories.
As I was thinking about this an odd thought
occurred, such recall never linked to one of my labels or beliefs.
The few who would discuss this agreed with my experience. I never
read any thing that would support it and I didn't pursue it.
Belief
Our brains work in two main
modes, slow and fast. In the slow mode input from one or more senses
is evaluated. In the fast mode the input invokes a response without
evaluation in order to save energy and time. Our brains consume about
20% of our daily energy intake, a large amount by weight or size
compared to any other part of the body.
Many different types of
input invoke a fast response and most of the time the fast response
is correct, but when not the response leads us astray.
The fast
mode may explain why habits are hard to change. Because both the old
habit and the new habit are invoked by the same input, our brains
invokes the old habit unless we make an effort to make our brains
invoke the new habit and only after a considerable amount of time
does the old link decay and the new habit is invoked without
effort.
When the fast mode invokes a label or a belief more times
than not the response is not correct, but unless we make an effort to
switch to the slow mode the label or belief is never corrected. Many
people refuse to make the effort because they do not want to give up
what they have even if it is detrimental. For some people, to correct
a label or a belief would be a very traumatic experience because it
would cause their entire belief system to collapse if they admitted
the label or belief was in error.
Because many people refuse to
correct the errors in their labels or beliefs they are least reliable
form of mental activity.
Many authors said we are story
telling creatures. We tell stories to explain our world and to
remember events we have in common. In our stories, we are always the
hero, never the villain and we always win. If we are confronted with
a difficult task we create a super hero to do it in our stories. We
want to believe our stories, but most are not supported by facts and
because they are recalled in the fast mode the stories are seldom
corrected. Because so many of our beliefs are not factual our beliefs
are not reliable which led to the following observation: The greater
the difference between belief and reality the greater the difference
between belief and behavior.
Realization
When
I said the word I knew I had to add more to my thoughts on the
military, war, and combat. The only person who could realize the
experience of wounded vet was another combat vet. The rest of us
would have difficulty understanding and we would not be able to move
to the last step: realization. Many experiences of others fall into
this category: If we have not been there and done that we can't
realize their experience.
Very quickly the word expanded and I had
to include: men cannot realize what women experience and women cannot
realize what men experience. Again the word expanded to include all
people. Every person is unique and at least one experience cannot be
realized by someone else which means we can never know another person
completely.
Indifference
The cosmos is a violent
place. The Milky Way is in a small local group away from most of the
violence. Our solar system is in the suburbs away from the violence
at the center. Our earth is in the 'Goldie Locks' zone of our solar
system where water is liquid.
Because of plate tectonics our earth
has violent forces, volcanoes, earth quakes, and tsunamis. Because
our earth is a water world, water vapor releases tremendous amounts
of energy as it condenses creating hurricanes, tornadoes, and strong
wind storms, accompanied by floods. All of these forces are
completely indifferent to their effects on us. If we are in the wrong
place at the wrong time we will be killed or injured.
Many people
are indifferent to their acts on other people and some do it
intentionally. We must be vigilant or we will be indifferent,
also.
Until radio, TV, and the internet, we were completely
unaware of the plight of many people. Today we are constantly
bombarded with the news of what has happened to people around the
world.
We celibate when we win and grieve when we lose. Most of
the time our loses are small and most people are unaware of their
grief, but if we were to grieve for the plight of all of the people
around the world every day we would be emotionally disabled, unable
to do anything. To prevent this from happening our brains make us
indifferent to the plight of most people. We only care for those who
are significant to us. We feel sorry for the others, but are
unwilling to do more.
For those who are aware of this conflict
between our survival and that of others an uneasy feeling of
frustration is felt, but we cannot change the way our brains work, we
can only modify our response.
Indifference is why bad things
happen to good people.
Greed
It occurs in many forms, the
three most common are: power (control), wealth (money), and
recognition (fame). The first two tend to occur together or in
combination with others.
When I combined the biographies and my
memories there seemed to be a pattern. The people who were greedy
followed three stages, first, they believed they deserved it, whether
they earned it or not, second, they wanted more, and third they
believed their way was the right way and everyone else was wrong and
their behavior and fortunes deteriorated very rapidly.
Greed also
seemed to occur when people received or gained some resource beyond
what they needed. A small excess didn't seem to make any difference
but as the amount increased a threshold was crossed from which there
was no recovery. The threshold was different for each person. Some
people were not effected by very large excesses and others by very
small excesses.
Those who suffered from excess power were the most
vicious, wealth seemed to be the most indifferent, and fame the most
paranoid.
Men, especially young men, believed they should be in
control or were in control. Since most of them could not be in
control at work they exercised control at home with disastrous
results.
I know my sample size is small so it is dangerous to draw
conclusions, but it sure seemed to be true.
A distorted vision
Many people have
a distorted vision of themselves. Until I wrote my first program, I
can't recall encountering anyone with a distorted vision of
themselves, thereafter I met many.
This difference high lights the
danger of coming to a conclusion from a small data set. The small set
many not be representative of the larger population.
I have told
the story of the person who first taught me to program and the two
obnoxious accountants, but two other programers had a very distorted
vision of their capabilities. They both bragged about how good they
were, they spent more time talking than working. Both left the
company when someone said, 'If you are so good, how come someone else
had to find the errors in your programs?'
After interviewing many
people while on acquisition committees the number increased
dramatically. These people shared many common characteristics. They
said they were better than someone else or were worth more and
because of this they greatly under estimated the value of everyone
else. If they made a mistake it was always the fault of someone else.
If they did make a contribution their opinion of it was always much
greater than actual. Their interpretation of any situation was almost
always wrong and their solutions seldom worked.
It seemed to me
they were greedy and had very weak egos.
Egos
Everyone has an ego, It is our
image of ourselves, but I believe men have an extra one, the male
ego. Notice: I used the word believe because I am in doubt.
When
our children were young I could not recognize any difference in their
behavior, but as they grew older I could see they were upset when I
said or did something stupid.
I tried to remember what had
happened prior to seeing them upset. I could not recognize any
connection and my reading was of little help. Then during one of my
out bursts, completely out of character, I could remember what I said
and did. I was not rational and I recalled over hearing women telling
each other about the way their men had acted. One said their egos are
out of whack. Mine was during those brief episodes. Many times I
would stop and ask myself, 'Why did you do that?' and all I could do
was shake my head and apologize, but the damage had been done.
Over
the next five years my episodes declined and I can not remember ever
having one again. I had no clue as to what caused them or why they
started or why they stopped. I wished I did because then it could
help someone else.
When a man has a belief, far from reality, and
has a distorted vision of himself is combined with greed and episode
of male ego it is a combination for disaster.
Ladies, you may live
with a man with a male ego, but he has to live with it and most men
are unaware of what is happening in their brains.
When I was a young man I swung a broad
ax. A very senior conservative friend patiently showed me the errors
of my ways. He said, 'When you disagree why swing a broad ax, what
good is the wood you chop, what can you build with it?' 'Why get
blood on you hands, when many people will do the job for you.' 'When
you are ignorant, keep your mouth shut, don't open it and prove it.'
'When giving your opinion, do not state it as if it were a fact.'
'Always show respect. That does not mean that you will always respect
the other person. Showing respect sends a signal to everyone that you
respect yourself.' 'If you can not show respect for yourself, why
should anyone respect you'. 'Be aware and beware of self righteous
indignation.'
I have tried to be faithful to his advice. I wish
more people would heed the wisdom of a true conservative.
Always forgive. Again, like respect,
forgiveness is for us, not the other person. If we can truly forgive,
it increases the probability that we will pay attention to factors we
would have ignored allowing us to have a much more accurate point of
view of the offending person and their actions allowing us to be at
peace and to show compassion. Most of the time saying 'I forgive you'
serves no useful purpose, some times it is the worse thing we can do
because they did not learn. If you tell them they are forgiven you
maybe eliminating the only reason they have that would encourage them
to change their behavior.
Our body language and our actions will
send a message much better than any words anyone can say.
Again, like respect and forgiveness,
praying is for ourselves, it allows us to release our feelings about
ourselves and others and to ask for guidance, strength, courage, etc.
I have had a fantastic life so I cannot
ask for more, I give thanks at least once every day. The only thing I
ask for is for those in need to
receive guidance, strength, courage, etc.
Have you ever heard of the midnight
disease? I did not know what was happening to me until I read a book
with the same title. Its technical name is hypergraphia. During a
hypergraphia event you wake up shortly after going to sleep, usually
about one or two in the morning with a compulsion to write, but not
only to write, but to send it to someone.
Most of my events lasted
little over a week, a few much longer, and one lasted from the middle
of Aug to the middle of Jan. All of my stories except for 'My Wife'
were written during hypergraphia events.
The odd thing about the
events is that I can not recall ever feeling tired. The other odd
thing was that I am a non verbal person, writing is difficult for me,
but during an event the words just flowed, I could not type fast
enough. I didn't correct mistakes until after the event ended.
During
one event I wrote a very caustic email and pressed all on the send
button. I lost half of my email list, they responded remove my name
from your email list I don't want to hear from you again.
Not
wanting to lose any more, I changed to sending the emails to
myself.
I have not had an event since March of '09 , but I can
feel the compulsion increasing, but so far only during the day.
Several Face book friends have said,
'Both the Dems and the Repubs are responsible for the current
condition of our country'. It is impossible for me to agree with that
statement because many more Repubs are global warming deniers than
Dems. For me global warming is the most dangerous threat not only to
our country, but to the whole world followed by unregulated
capitalists.
Politicians have lied about other politicians since
the beginning. At the end of the depression when the chemical
industry started to expand, they lied to the public. The tobacco
industry joined them during the second world war, followed by the oil
industry after the war. About 1976 Karl Rove, et al, gained control
of the Republican party and became the most deceitful disinformation
group in the history of our country which led to the Reagan
revolution and it's false economics. Which was followed by Bush the
second who deleted sentences and changed the wording of scientific
reports, unforgivable, and now Trump.
I agree the Dems are using
the same false economics and are producing disinformation, but not on
the same scale. I keep hoping the grass roots Dems will clean house
at the national level, but I will not hold my breath. I agree with my
friend Bob we need integrity, openness, courtesy, truth, and fairness
at all levels of our society
Life is like a train, each person
boards the train at a different station and leaves the train at a
different station and each person can only see out their window which
means the bulk of what we learn is learned by communicating with
others which means we must cooperate.
Those who stress the
individual and competition are ignoring the attribute that made us
successful and by convincing others that what they believe is true,
by any means, is eroding cooperation and will bring about our demise.
Some one said agreement is not
necessary, but dialog is, because dialog exposes errors and
eliminates misunderstandings.
Another said when disagreement is
constructive, old ideas maybe reexamined creating the possibility
that a new method would be found, but if disagreement is not
constructive a poison will be created that will destroy everything in
its path.
I first became aware how important
logic was to my brain during an economics class. The teacher said a
farmer sells a future to protect from a loss if the price of his crop
declines, but if the price increases he gets the gain.
My brain
said that's not right, I didn't know any thing about futures and I
didn't have the vocabulary to explain my objection, I did the best I
could, but even today I have an uneasy feeling I did not use the
correct words or the correct construction so that others could
understand what I was trying to say.
The second time occurred
during a bar room discussion on religion when I was in the army. He
was trying to use logic to convince me to join his religion. I knew
something was wrong, but could not recognize it. Later I went to the
public library and checked out a book on logic. It was a fortunate
choice. In the first few pages I learned his error, he committed the
error of the missing middle.
The book was well written, I read all
of it including the first three pages of Russell and Whitehead's
proof of 1 + 1 = 2 using symbolic logic. It was to laborious for me
and I stopped. I had to continually look up the definitions of each
symbol.
During the 12 years I wrote programs, I used the the
logical operands, (not, and, or) and their respective symbols, plus
the conditional operands, equal, greater than and less than and their
respective symbols, in many different combinations, frequently every
day. Many times I could find the error in another programers program
simply by looking at the logical structure, I didn't need to
understand what any of the names meant.
It was the way my brain
worked. Logic is very important to my brain and it objects when ever
it recognizes an error. Sorry about that, but I can not change the
way my brain works. As I age I cannot recognize logic errors as well
as I could in the past.
After all these years I am still reminded that what I thought I should do and what I should have done are two different things.
We assume that when we read or listen to someone speak that we are receiving verbal format, but our brains do not see the light our eyes saw, nor the sound our ears heard, nor the odors our nose smelled, nor the flavors our tongue tasted. Our brains only receives electronic signals transported from our senses by our nerves. In other words our brain only receives non verbal format. But our brains can choose one or more of these electronic signals, the bits, and assign a value creating data. If enough bits are received and sufficient data created, the intelligence activity can create information and when enough information has been created the wisdom activity can create knowledge. When we want to communicate our brains will then reverse the process and create verbal format from which it can then create the bits to communicate. The receiver must then create data from the bits received by assigning a value, when sufficient data has been created, information then can be created. Communication is a very error prone procedure. Oh, how much we take for granted.
The person who can rise above the sordidness of others displays true strength
Choose your friends carefully. Genetics determines our limits not our potential and peer pressure determines how people will think and behave. Peer pressure is stronger than all other forces combined. So parents, teachers, and preachers take heart, it is not all your fault.
We are born into a group. Very few
women give birth alone. Children, the sick, the old, etc., survive
because of the group, we survive by group action. The assistance
given following earth quakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.,
can only come from a group.
In order to find employment our
families have been scatter to the four winds, we no longer have the
support of our extended families, many times they do not live in the
same state. Our tribes have been replaced by our government. Our
government is our group. So to say the individual should take care of
themselves without any help from our government is irrational, it
ignores our current condition. Ignoring a problem is not a solution.
Many people do not have a family, their
sole support comes from our government. What are we going to do, let
them die in the streets? Charities have never solved this problem.
I have stopped contributing to
charities because charities violate the ancient Chinese proverb,
'Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, teach a man how
to fish and you will feed him for a life time.' Most charities do not
teach, they only give. I have reached the point where I am tired of
talk and people trying to solve symptoms instead of the problem.
We are willing to help because if we
were in the same situation we would want someone to help us.
Charities can provide some money and a small amount of manpower, but
only the group can provide the resources necessary to implement the
help.
We have become the dominate species
because of group action. We have learned that the division of labor
within a group increases the efficiency of the group. Efficiency
improves our standard of living. We cannot have our standard of
living without group action, we cannot do it alone.
We would not need to be able to talk,
read, or write plus all the other forms of communication because we
would not need to communicate if we did not operate in a group.
A friend said, 'If you don't read what the opposition writes how can you respond?' I did not give a good response. I should have said I choose to discriminate against any writer or speaker who is not courteous, who does not display integrity, who is not specific, who shows little or no knowledge about the subject, who indicates little or no understanding of the subject, etc. Why should I waste my time responding to such a person. I will respond to anyone who indicates a willingness to learn or wants me to clarify what I have said.
The civil rights movement implores us not to discriminate against race, gender, etc. This message is explicit, but it does not make clear its implicit message. What the message should have made clear is that we should not discriminate indiscriminately. All of nature discriminates and so do we. I have asthma so I discriminate against smokers and like most people I discriminate against substance abusers, liars, cheats, etc.
You can learn something from anyone.
This is true. But from some people all that you can learn is bad
habits. You can learn how to be discourteous, how to lie, how to use
a lot of words and say nothing, how to sound knowledgeable when you
don't know what you are talking about, how to get people to listen to
you when you don't understand anything, etc.
If all you can see is one tree, you
can't see the rest of the forest and if you do not understand the
tree that you do see, it is impossible for you to understand that
there is a forest.
If you do not understand the difference
between subjective and objective you will continue to confuse opinion
with fact.
A simple example, I feel warm. The
statement is subjective, it is an opinion. Everyone can agree or
disagree with the statement. The temperature is 72 degrees F is
objective, it is a fact. If you disagree with the statement it is
your responsibility to make another measurement to confirm or
disconfirm the statement. No one can have an opinion about a fact.
The number of people who agree or disagree or how much noise they
make or what they think about it will have no bearing on the out come
of the measurement, this is the difference between subjective and
objective. The results of the measurement is external and independent
of people.
A complex example, global warming is
real. The statement is subjective, it is an opinion. Everyone can
agree or disagree with the statement. The surface temperature of the
oceans has increased by 0.5 degrees C over last year is objective, it
is a fact. Again, if you disagree it is your responsibility to make
another measurement.
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
John Le Carre
Return to Coalescences Table of Content
'We hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness'.
Most people would
agree, but sadly it is not true. The writers did not have our
knowledge.
The first rule of the biosphere is 'Survive if you can'
which means no one has a right to life. No law, no belief, no prayer
can prevent the impact of the biosphere on us. We must learn the
rules of the biosphere and obey them or we will become extinct.
Next,
we must win the genetic lottery, we must chose our parents carefully.
Many people have a genetic defect which means we are not created
equal.
Next, happiness can not be pursued it is a state of mind we
can chose to be happy any time we chose, no one can prevent it or
take it away from us, it is our choice.
All rights are defined by
laws, we create the laws. We can only be equal under the law that
defines 'equal', we can only be free under the law that defines
'free', etc. People need to remember that congress writes the laws
for our country.
Until more people become aware of the above we
will continue to argue over meaningless semantics.
If we disobey
our laws we lose our rights.
Our constitution has two major flaws.
The founding fathers were aware of the first, but they did not know a
solution: that is how to keep ignorant people from being manipulated
by the greedy so the greedy could maintain power.
About 25 % of
our population is dysfunctional because of genetic defects, substance
abuse, depression, and PTSD; and these people stay out of
sight.
Also, many people have stopped learning, about half of our
students stop learning by seventh grade. Plus many people refuse to
learn, they know what they want to believe and don't want to be
confused by the facts.
All of these people are easily misled by
the greedy. This is why we must over turn Citizens United and some
how put a stop to all of the lying. I don't think the founding
fathers intended that free speech gives anyone the right to lie.
The second: the founding fathers
assumed like everyone else that people are rational. They did not
have the benefit of our knowledge. People are not rational so we must
create a political and economic system that will mitigate our short
comings. Evolution does not
create perfect creatures only survivable ones.
Ignorance
is one disadvantage of majority rule, but majority rule is better
than minority rule. The writers of our constitution were aware of
this, but they could not find a better way to choose voters.
Also,
the mathematics of voting indicates a two party system is the best we
can do, so we must continue to vote for the least of two evils or we
will continue to get the worst. We must change the rules of both
parties so they operate in a more democratic manner. The goal should
not be our party wins, it should be our country wins. Until more
people understand that we are not rational and know how group
dynamics works we will continue to have greedy people write our
laws.
The founding fathers never considered professional
politicians, their idea was that each adult male would serve one or
two terms at some level of government and then return to their farms
or businesses.
We need to over turn 'Citizens United' corporations
are not people and should not have the same rights.
When
we are born everyone is ignorant and we are finite creatures, we
cannot know everything so we are always ignorant.
Every person is unique and so are our
brains. Contrary to what the founding fathers said we are not created
equal. Very few people are aware, let alone understand and least of
all realize.
Few people can realize from the abstract, most need
help and this is what experiments help us do. What we learn is
usually in verbal format, it is abstract not concrete. By physically
doing an experiment, the activity helps us realize what we have
learned in the abstract. When we reach the last step our thinking
about what we have learned in the abstract will never be the same
again, we will have realized the truth about what we have learned.
The founding fathers of our
constitution were well aware of the communication problem because all
communication had to travel by horseback. Even our electronic
communication can not solve the problem. Can you imagine how long it
would take to read and answer 1000 emails? This is why the
politicians use form letter to respond. In a large group can you
imagine how long it would take to make sure everyone understood a
problem and then if an error is found, how long it would take to make
sure everyone understood the error and then to ensure everyone
received and understood any correction to the error.
Democracy can
only occur in small groups, less than thirty, because of the
communication problem, in the smaller government boards, committees,
and commissions.
We need to eliminate democracy from our thinking
and writing except when we are talking about the small groups
mentioned above. We are not a democracy, we are and always have been
a delegated republic. Until people understand we will not be using
our delegates effectively.
When a statistician uses the words 'the
average person' those words are a statistic not a person and no
person is 'the average person', no one is a statistic.
The same is
true for all labels such as Democrat, Republican, conservative,
liberal, etc. The label is not the person and the person is not the
label.
Don't use labels because if you do you are putting your
thinking into a box and you did it to yourself. That maybe, but our
brains
assign a label to any new experience after it analyze it. When the
next encounter occurs it saves energy by recalling the memory using
the label without reanalyzing. From my brain, murder and self
defense. Under murder, killing is prohibited, but under self defense
it is allowed. As long as each one is recalled individually, no
problem. This is why people can have very contradictory beliefs.
But
when both are recalled at the same time there is a conflict. For me
self defense always wins, but then how is self defense defined, where
do we draw the line? Under such conditions our thinking can be very
confused. So, be careful when using lables.
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Most people are oblivious to the fact
that our brains defines and assigns a value to all sensory input and
to all thoughts we create. Since every person is unique all
definitions and values are unique.
Our beliefs maybe very similar
to the beliefs of others, but because each person is unique our
definitions and our values of our beliefs are never exactly the same
as the other person's which means our beliefs are sacred only if we
chose to believe they are sacred. Belief implies doubt, we can never
know for certain, and if we can not be certain how can they be
sacred?
Beliefs, like all other thoughts, are non material
resources. Non material resources are only available to the brain
that creates them, if so, how can they be sacred?
In order to
share non material resources they must be communicated. This is a
very error prone activity which again leads to the other person not
having the same definition and value of the belief as we have. Again
how can the belief be sacred?
No matter how sophisticated we think
we are, our standard operating procedure is trial and error. We
rarely think of everything before we act, we try something and if it
does not work we try something else and oops, we shouldn't have done
that. We must learn from our mistakes, something many people can not
do, even better is to learn from the mistakes of others, we can not
make them all, by ourselves.
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N11 What is wrong with our country?
First:
an undereducated is a person with enough intelligence to be able to
learn, but they refuse to learn because they are unwilling to put
forth the effort.
An idiotolog is a person who uses their
intelligence to deceive others.
We have to many of both. Sadly,
many capitalists are idiotologs and they use their money to pay
professional liars to deceive the undereducated and they work both
sides of the street. By doing so they have the undereducated arguing
among themselves about something they do not understand because they
refuse to learn.
The arguing distracts the undereducated from what
the capitalists are doing, the capitalists have bought our
politicians and have the professional liars tell the politicians what
to say and the undereducated elect the lying politicians because the
lying politicians tell the undereducated what they want to hear and
the lying politicians are changing the rules in the capitalists
favor.
Production is limited by demand and the resources
available. Demand is limited by income and income is limited by jobs.
The number of jobs is decreasing because of robots and mergers and
acquisitions. But even with surplus income people have a satiation
level beyond which they will stop consuming.
People are the
economy and if the number of people is increased the economy will
increase, but it does not increase the average amount per person. And
there is a limit to the number of people, we are already beyond the
number of people that can live comfortably.
This worst lie is
commonly stated as follows: The liars say, 'We are going to grow the
economy by giving everyone a tax cut and that will increase the size
of the pie and everyone will get a piece'. But what the liars don't
say is that the capitalists are going to take several pieces each
before the rest can have a piece so when the balance is divided among
the rest, our piece is much smaller than what the capitalists got and
the piece we receive will not cover the loss to inflation caused by
the tax cut. But the undereducated can not understand this because
they can not do the arithmetic that would disclose the lie. Plus the
liars have convinced the undereducated that paying taxes is a fate
worse than death.
The undereducated can not understand what is
happening and are mad because their lot is not improving and they do
not know what to do so they vote for any liar who tells them what
they want to hear.
The founding fathers were aware of this danger,
but could not find a solution that would be fair to the most voters,
so they did not eliminate the danger of the unscrupulous from taking
advantage of the ignorant.
If you do not know what the problem is
you can not solve it. This is why we must continue to learn and we
must eliminate Citizen United.
A year ago I predicted we would have $4
gasoline by Aug. It didn't happen. I cannot predict the future any
better than anyone else, but we have several advantages that the
framers of our constitution did not have. The framers could not
predict the effect of personal and corporate greed, short term
thinking, over consumption, over population, ignorant voters,
resource limits, etc., so they did not include a specific statement
about preventing our common destruction, they included words about
our common defense and general welfare and relied upon the diligence
of our voters to elect politicians who would protect us from our
common destruction. The framers could not find a solution for
ignorant voters and neither has anyone else. A democracy cannot
survive unless it has a large, well educated, well informed,
politically active middle class.
We have a lot of data available for
analysis and we have the tools to analyze the data. Anyone who makes
the effort can find trends in the data.
Our oil production is and has been
decreasing at a steady rate, a very serious trend that very few
people paid any attention. While my prediction did not come true, the
trend did. Idiotologues say a trend does not make the future,
implying that trends don't mean anything, but a trend does become the
future unless we change, the trend in lying, political blame game,
ignorance, short term thinking, greed, over consumption, etc., will
insure our common destruction.
I agree with the statement 'Freedom is
not free', but it is usually accompanied with a picture of a soldier.
An armed response is the price we pay when we do not pay the true
cost of freedom which is that every person must stay continually
informed.
During an open house I had shown a
small group what I had done to reduce my carbon foot print and was
telling them what they could not see. At the end of my talk I said
the average person does not understand the magnitude of the problem
and a woman said you are not average.
After everyone left I
thought about her comment, no I was not average, I am certainly
different, but so is everyone else. Every person is unique, but we
are not privileged. We should celibate our differences not revile
them because differences allow many different solutions to be created
one of which maybe effective. Differences are the key to survival, if
we were all the same one disease could kill all of us, but because we
are different some will survive.
We are finite creatures with finite
capabilities which means we can never understand and know everything
which in turns means we must learn our limits and proceed the best we
can which means we must use the understanding and knowledge of other
people. We must take responsibility for our actions. We should
arrange our economic and political systems to mitigate our limits as
much as possible.
Don't confuse government with
politicians, politicians are a segment of our government. Our
government is a mixture of laws, the bureaucracies created by some of
the laws, and politicians. Our politicians have made many very bad
mistakes and to many people blame our government for the errors of
politicians. Just because our politicians made a mistake does not
mean our laws and bureaucracies should not regulate our actions.
Confusing a part with the whole leads
to paralysis because if you can’t define a problem you can’t
solve it.
For example, many people make a big
fuss over government waste because they confuse government, the
whole, with politicians, a part. Its the politicians that make 99% of
the waste not our government. The politicians didn't do their job in
the best interest of the country. Fortunately, our form of government
has the ability to correct errors. It is our responsibility to make
our politicians correct the errors so that our laws and bureaucracies
do what we want them to do.
Because bureaucracies are limited by
the laws that create them, the bureaucracies many times can not do
what people think they should do. For example, the role of the coast
guard during the BP oil spill. Many people blamed the coast guard for
not doing what they thought the coast guard should do because they
did not understand the limits the politicians placed on the coast
guard. By law the coast guard could not do what some people wanted
them to do.
When people interact with our
government most of the time they are interacting with bureaucracies
not the politicians or the laws. If you do not realize the difference
you will blame the wrong part for the errors. Put the blame where it
belongs on the politicians in congress.
Without respect dialog can not occur. Agreement is not
necessary, but dialog is because dialog exposes errors and eliminates
misunderstandings.
False statements are worse than useless they
are destructive. False statements are rampant in our country and many
people do it on purpose to deceive the rest of us. Make sure your
brain is engaged before putting your mouth in gear.
The Third rule
of communication is: Seek common ground. Again this should be obvious
because without commonality there can be no dialog.
The fourth
rule of communication is: Stress what the receiver will gain, not
what you will gain.
There are more rules but these four will
improve your possibilities of success.
Most people violate these
rules and then wonder why they cannot influence others. Most
protesters do not understand how the fourth rule applies to their
actions. When attempting to influence any government body they should
use a different approach than when trying to gain popular support.
The gain the government body should receive from the protesters are
facts, not a catchy slogan, that will allow the government body to
justify giving the protesters a favorable ruling.
Many protests are trying to solve a
symptom of a problem instead of the problem. A problem may have a
solution, a symptom never. The best we can do for a symptom is to
provide relief and when the relief stops the symptom will return
because the problem was never solved.
Talk, talk, talk, I am tired of talk
To
many people are talking about only one side of the equation, they are
blaming the sellers and omitting the buyer. Every economic
transaction must have a seller as well as a buyer, so when people
blame the fossil fuel industry for global warming they forget that as
buyers they are driving the fossil fuel industry. As Pogo said many
years ago, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' If you don't like
fracting, refineries, and pipelines: STOP BUYING GASOLINE
It makes
no sense to protest anything if you do not have an alternative or a
solution.
The reason governments are subsidizing the fossil fuel
industry is because we demand energy as buyers and alternative energy
can not meet our demands. World oil consumption is now over 100
million barrels a day and here is another side of the equation that
many people ignore, they focus on carbon dioxide and ignore the heat
released by burning fossil fuels. Every barrel of oil releases about
6.3 million BTUs when burned. We are heating the planet by burning
fossil fuels, not the fossil fuel industry. LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
Plus
the politicians are not subsidizing alternative energy correctly. We
should be subsidizing output not installation. It makes no sense to
subsidize solar panels that do not produce electricity, we should be
subsidizing the electricity the panels produce and that would make
the market forces operate because the return on investment would be
greater encouraging more people to make the investment in the solar
panels if they have good sun exposure where they install the panels.
By subsidizing installation we are wasting our tax money on panels
that do not produce a sufficient amount to pay for the cost.
Also,
I keep hoping the economists will recognize their error, they are
still touting supply side economics, demand creates jobs not money,
you can increase the supply as much as you want, but if there is not
a buyer you are wasting your money and your time.
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