Comments

P00 Comments Table of Content

P01 The Arsenic Factory Syndrome
P02 It Wasn't Pride
P03 Our Negative Positive Bais
P04 The Error of Allness
P05 Values
P06 Knowing
P07 Religion
P08 A Conversation Over Heard
P09 Grief
P10 Tsunami
P11 Thankful
P12 Information can Approach Objectivity
P13 What is a Conservative
P14 This is My Country
P15 The Victors Write History
P16 Money is not the Measure of All Things
P17 911
P18 What I Consider the Greatest Threat to Our Country
P19 Our Limits
P20 War and Slavery
P21 The Lily Pad Pond
P22 Another Reason
P23 Web Sites
P24 The Gift
P25 Is Starvation in Our Future
P26 The Rules of the Biosphere
P27 Evolution
P28 People
P29 People are Unique
P30 Propaganda

Return to Index Table of Comment

A08P01 'THE ARSENIC FACTORY SYNDROME'

Warning! Be on the alert for a syndrome more dangerous than Ebola and more pandemic than AIDS. It killed the cod fishing industry and has seriously impaired many other fishing industries and the logging industry. Congress has a chronic condition of one form or another. Most people are completely unaware of the syndrome because it occurs in so many different forms. I call it the 'Arsenic Factory Syndrome'.
The syndrome can afflict anyone at anytime with devastating results. I think S I Hayakawa wrote, "A way of thinking is at the same time a way of not thinking." Every way of thinking has at least one blind spot and if a person has only one way of thinking, the blind spot can become a prison because a person may be able to create only one solution and more often, no solutions.
The syndrome begins mildly, first the environment is neglected, next concern for others is abandon, then education is forgotten, then economic activity is endangered, and in the acute form, either suicide is the only solution the person can create or the most common form, complete paralysis caused by not being able to create any solutions.
Obviously, the cure is the most dangerous and difficult task a person can undertake, diversification, a person could have more than one way of thinking. With more than one way of thinking the blind spot of one way of thinking would be illuminated by the other ways of thinking keeping all blind spots small enough to skip over without being imprisoned. With more than one way of thinking a person could create more solutions preventing the syndrome. The cure is dangerous because diversity of thought can place a person in a position of internal conflict and enlarging one's mind is the most difficult thing a person can do.
The syndrome was brought to my attention by the following story. The personnel manager of an arsenic factory ran into the president's office yelling repeatedly, "I told you to stop threatening our employees."
"Calm down. Tell me what you're yelling about."
"All our employees are committing suicide."
"Why? How?"
"Every employee is seasoning their food with arsenic. A little each meal so they will consume two ounces in a year."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. A blood analysis confirmed each employee's story."
"Didn't you tell them to stop."
"Yes, but they refused."
"Why?"
"Each employee emphatically said the same thing, 'If sales decline by two ounces, I'll lose my job.'"

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P02 'It Wasn't Pride'

I was waiting for the results of my prostate biopsy, it was negative, when a thought crossed my mind that I had not considered before, why hadn't I used social services to help pay for my own physical? I thought nothing of it when my wife's doctor suggested she request help to pay for a mammogram her doctor insisted she have. I even drove her to the social services department and helped her fill out the forms, but it never crossed my mind to do the same so I could have a long over due physical.
It wasn't pride, it was a way of life, a way of thinking. My parents were married in 1934 and because of the depression, if we didn't have enough money we did without. I was raised to pay as I went, to be independent and not owe anyone. It became a way of thinking and every way of thinking has at least one blind spot. Because of my way of thinking, it never occurred to me to ask for help when our income, briefly, fell below thirteen thousand a year.
Our religion, our philosophy, our way of life restricts how we think. Our religion places to much emphasis on sins, such as the sin of pride. Our philosophy places to much emphasis on the individual, freedom, and independence. Our way of life places to much emphasis on the free market, it can solve all problems.
Because our thinking is restricted, we fail to see the blind spots. It wasn't pride, to much independence can shorten your life, and the free market cannot solve all problems. While I was pondering this, I recalled a story from my childhood that highlights all of these points.
Shortly after we moved to a new neighborhood, my brother and I split a newspaper route. An old man on my half of the route piqued my interest because he always paid me to deliver a paper to his neighbor. I became friends with him during the next summer after I learned his neighbor was not related to him, I wanted to learn the rest of the story.
The old man had been a wealthy person at one time, but was forced to move to this neighborhood because of his economic condition. Even so, he owned his own house and that of his neighbor, he paid the taxes, utilities, and maintenance for both houses. His neighbor was the doctor who brought him into the world sixty years ago in the poorest neighborhood of the city. His mother was widowed before he was born, but the doctor made sure his family and many others were fed, clothed, and kept as healthy as possible.
I only saw the doctor a few times before he died. He was ninety and lived a lone. He had white hair, watery eyes, and drool running down an unshaven chin. He spent all of his time reading and in spite of that fact and the fact that he could barely move; he, his old clothes, and his old house was clean and neat.
The doctor made house calls and would accept what ever payment was offered, most of the time nothing. The doctor came from a wealthy family and he spent everything and all he could borrow. Not only did he take care of the neighborhood, he raised and educated nine children, he out lived everyone of them, his wife died before the youngest left for college. He spent his entire life helping people until his health forced him to retire at eighty.
His own children deserted him because he was always asking them for money. Indirectly, they kept track and took care of him and so did many other people, including the bank which forgave all his debts long before he retired, but would not lend him any more money.
The surviving family members of the people he took care of, took care of him. Most of his caretakers were inconspicuous, they entered his house by the side door or came up the alley and entered by the back door, I had to be alert to notice their comings and goings, but notice I did with the help of the old man.
The first one to catch my eye was an old barber. The doctor put up such a fuss when he tried to shave him that he only came once a week, it was the fuss that caught my eye. The same thing happened at bath time. A different person brought each meal, a different one would clean the house and do the dishes, etc., more than a month would pass before I would see the same person again.
As the doctor's story unfolded, subconsciously I became aware that the doctor did not think of himself as any one special, he did not think of himself as a saint or a super do gooder or anything else, he only thought of himself as a doctor and he thought he was supposed to take care of the whole person. He refused all awards, honors, and special recognition. He truly could not understand all the fuss, he had not done anything usual, why was everyone else so impressed.
And that is exactly why his story was recalled, to the doctor's way of thinking he had not done anything unusual, he was just carrying out his way of life, his way of thinking. The blind spot in his way of thinking was finances, his wife, his children, his nurses, his receptionists, and the business people of his neighborhood took care of his finances as best they could. The others did what they could, vegetables from the garden, mowing the grass, doing the dishes, the laundry, etc. Their blind spot was that they could never repay the debt, in their way of thinking they owed more than they could ever repay.
The doctor was not thinking about pride, he certainly was not thinking about himself or freedom or independence, he was bound to his patients more tightly than any slaver's chain, and the free market certainly would not have supported him, he never made a profit.
You see, it wasn't pride or anything else, it was a way of life, a way of thinking and we must be constantly on guard to prevent the blind spots, of our religion, our philosophy, our way of life, our way of thinking, from blocking our view of reality because only when we can truly 'see' can we create true solutions to our problems.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P03 'Our negative positive bias'

Like most people, I remember negative events quite well, such as when my mother died, when my wife miscarried, and when my grandfather, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews died or were very sick. People may remember negative events more easily because many times they have survival value, like losing money, leaving an event before a fight breaks out, or narrowly avoiding an accident.
I can remember one set of positive events very easily, those involving our children. I enjoyed raising them. I can count the bad days on one hand and have fingers left over. All are in good health; all are intelligent, good students with masters degrees; all were active in school events; all are employed; and all are independent.
I like to play poker and the stock market. Addiction was never a problem because, I never thought of myself as being lucky. I knew I would never win, so I always quit when I lost my preset limit. At poker, I rarely hold a pair or better more than thirty per cent of the time and when I do, I rarely hold the winning hand more than ten per cent of the time. In the stock market I made money, but during one three year period I lost more than one hundred thousand dollars. I can remember each loosing stock and every gain that could have been much greater.
One in particular, I will never forget. The week before the crash of 87, I bought several different OEX puts for less than $700. I closed out all the expiring October puts before Friday and on Friday I closed out my November puts at a profit because the market had dropped two hundred points during the week and I expected the market to recover the following week. I sold my November puts for eight dollars and those same puts were worth one hundred dollars the following Monday. I could have made an additional $92,000 if I had waited one more day.
While doing research for this book, an author pointed out that people have a built-in negative positive bias. He used the following example, if some people bought $10,000 worth of stock and the value rose to $20,000, most people would sell, but if the same people bought $20,000 and the value dropped to $10,000, most people would continue to hold the stock hoping to recover their value.
From a second author, few people will risk what they have to improve their life, but look how much they will spend to continue living the most miserable of lives.
And a third, we say, 'Why me God,' when events don't go our way, never when they do.
Research, analysis, and reflection over the following years caused me to agree with the authors. This knowledge didn't remove my disappointment from those three years. I could recall very easily the lost $100,000 and the missed $92,000, but I had difficulty in remembering the profitable trades like the $8,000 gain on a $600 investment in the November puts that allowed me to lose the $100,000. I had to review my records to remind myself how lucky I had really been.
After the review, I could not stop myself from thinking over and over, again and again about the built-in negative positive bias. We do not treat negative and positive events objectively, we do not treat them the same way, we don't treat the same positive event equal to the same negative event. When analyzing and evaluating events, past, present, and future, we must constantly be on guard, to prevent this bias from blocking our vision. Even in the hindsight of a past event, when all ramifications are known, we must be careful or we will still see what we want to see and not reality.
One reason gamblers become addicted is because they continue to believe they can recover their losses quickly. Most people don't understand probabilities, but that is not the real problem, most people will not do the simple arithmetic that would dispel what they want to believe. People can become addicted to any pseudo activity (any activity that goes beyond survival requirements, such as, over eating, over exercising, over recreating, for example, computer games, etc.) because they are not aware of their negative positive bias. How else can you explain a person getting into an automobile and thinking an accident will never happen to them and the same person will gamble and think they will win.
We always think, 'I could've won, I could've won, I almost won,' never, 'I could've lost, I could've lost, I did lose.'
Another and a much more important example. I'm a male WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), in good health, born in the USA and in this era to good parents who provided a good home and education. So have millions of others, so what's the big deal. Turn it around and put it in negative terms and it is a big deal a great big deal.
I don't have any genetic defects. I don't have AIDS or any other serious disease. I didn't have drunken or abusive parents. I didn't have poor teachers or poor schools, I didn't live in the slums of India or Brazil. I didn't go to bed hungry. I didn't have to deal with prejudice against me, etc.
Very often we are not thankful for what we don't have.
The negative positive bias is very evident when agreement is required, such as contracts, laws, procedures, candidates for office, civic projects, etc. One negative will out weigh many positives when we disagree or don't want it. One positive will out weigh many negatives when we agree or do want it. The bias increases when we try to justify our actions and is greater still when we try to avoid responsibility for our actions. Destroy the destroyer, kill the courier, murder the messenger, but what ever you do, don't take responsibility for your actions. Pardon my venom.
For me, the original sin is not disobedience or any of the other much espoused sins, for me, the original sin is not taking responsibility for our actions. Adam blamed Eve, he even blamed God, and Eve blamed the serpent. Again our negative positive bias blocked our view and we misinterpret the story.
Most mature people are very careful to avoid justifying their actions and try to take responsibility for their actions thus avoiding these two pitfalls. The worst thing that can happen to a person who is not aware of their negative positive bias is to experience an event that reinforces the bias. Balance is lost and the extreme controls, we think we did it or we are in control. For example, a gambler winning, a wealthy person making more money, a poor person losing more, a depressed person's friend dies, etc. We must always be careful to take only the credit we deserve and not to accept responsibility for events we did not cause.
When I came to the conclusion that the authors were correct, I became very aware of my own negative positive bias and became more responsible for my actions. I hope you are now aware of your negative positive bias and will take more responsibility for your actions and like me realize, I'm not lucky, I'm blessed.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P04 'Remember the holocaust or remember the error of allness'

Those two thoughts collided on a rainy Saturday. My wife was at a weekend girl scout meeting and the children decided not to come home while mom was gone. I worked Friday night and Saturday trying to rewrite my chapter on communication without success. More than ten years before I added a comment from an author about the error of allness, but something was missing. During dinner the error of allness kept returning to my thoughts. It even interfered with the evening news. The only other thought that came to mind was, 'There had to more to it.'
Suddenly, a burst of anger interrupted my peaceful weekend. I could not see straight, my body temperature rose, and my heart was pounding. Then as quickly as it came it left. I could feel a chill start at the top of my head and cascade down to my toes like a mountain stream. I was aware of a struggle taking place in my mind, I ran to my note pad and pencil. I've had this same feeling many times before and I knew what was going to happen next.
Before I reached my desk, my brain was reeling with many different thoughts. I tried to write one key word from each thought to increase the probability of recall later. There was no way my hand could keep up with my brain, fortunately, it recycled through most of the thoughts again and again. The error of allness returned and my thoughts came to a halt.
I quickly scanned the pad, every line was full. Many words were repeated at regular intervals. I could associate each word with a different place in time. I eliminated duplicates and put the words in chronological order and paused to rest.
Have you ever had an 'aha' experience? Many times I awake with a though, idea, or solution nearly complete in every detail and I can't go back to sleep until I write it down. When I'm awake, I am aware of the struggle and suddenly the nonverbal part of my brain connects with the verbal part and my nonverbal thoughts are converted into verbal format. The 'aha' comes when the conversion is complete.
Most of our thinking is done in nonverbal format, but we are not aware of our thoughts until they are converted, the verbal mind is the conscious mind. Many thoughts are never shared because we are unable to convert them into verbal format. We cannot share our nonverbal thoughts with anyone, not even ourselves, until they are converted into verbal format.
The experience I just described was an 'aha' experience, but it was different in some respects. It was the first time one was associated with anger and did not solve a current problem. The last word on my list was 'mad.' I tried to recall what triggered my anger. I was mad at myself for some reason. Then the last words of the news cast returned, 'Remember the Holocaust.' I didn't want to remember the holocaust, it was too gruesome. I hated the person who reminded me and my anger returned. Quickly I focused on why I was mad at myself and my anger subsided.
When no new thought was forthcoming, I returned to my list and let my thoughts return with each word. I was in my childhood living room listening to the radio with my family. A news bulletin interrupted the program, 'Pearl Harbor.' We followed the war as a family when my father was home and awake and without him when he was at work or sleeping. Many family members and friends were involved in the war. During waking hours, we listened to every news cast and read and looked at the picture magazines 'Life' and 'Look'. The pictures of dead bodies and wounded people repulsed me, but my child sense of fairness and justice was satisfied by similar pictures of the enemy.
When the pictures and words of the holocaust first appeared, I had a morbid curiosity which was quickly satiated. After two years of what seemed like a continual bombardment about the holocaust, I became ill after looking at one of the magazines. I closed it and never opened another magazine of any kind until I was a junior in college, eight years later.
I stopped listening to the news and I left the room when anyone began to talk about the holocaust, if I could not escape, I became violently angry. In the episodes I could remember and analyze, each had a common thread, I was angry at myself for being stupid. How was I being stupid about, 'remember the holocaust'? When I came to the next to the last word on the list, 'all', I knew. How could I've been so stupid for so long!
ALL I have to do is to remember the holocaust and it will not be repeated. ALL I have to do is remember an event and it will not happen again. How absurd.
To stop a serial killer, ALL I needed to do is remember his heinous crimes and he will stop. Ridiculous.
Hitler said, 'The Jews caused ALL our problems; therefore, ALL we have to do is eliminate ALL the Jews and ALL our problems will be solved.
How could I've been so stupid for so long. Now I understood my anger. I quickly reviewed the author's comment about the error of allness as written in my chapter. "Guard against the error of 'allness', that is, the communique contains only and all there is to be said about the topic," and as fast a I could write my nonverbal mind transferred to my verbal mind recollections about the error of allness that I had not included in my chapter.
Remember, for communication to be possible in the first place the time dimension had to be contracted, be sure to re-expand it. No one can possibly say 'all' in the short time span of communication, nor can anyone receive it 'all'. The error of allness is the most frequent error people make and we make the error most often during communication. We are guilty of the error of allness so frequently it boggles the mind.
Most errors result from the error of allness, 'That is ALL there is to the problem and ALL we have to do is ... and ALL our problems will be solved'. Allness leads to over simplification and the problem is never solved, the problem is forced to fit a solution. Politicians and salesmen capitalize on the error of Allness. Is it any wonder why government programs seldom succeed and require many changes if they do and why most things we are 'sold' turn out to be disappointments.
We need to develop strategies to prevent the error of allness. We need to have different ways of thinking, we need diversity without divisiveness. We need to avoid generalizations, be specific. We need to know our goals and remain focused. We need to know our problems and make sure the solutions we employ solve our problems. We must take responsibility for our actions and our actions alone, the problem we solve must be our problem.
The short statement, 'remember the holocaust' doesn't contain ALL about the holocaust in fact it doesn't contain anything about the holocaust. It doesn't point to a goal or a problem or a solution, not even the error. Such statements are worse than useless they are counterproductive, they keep pain, grief, bitterness, resentment, and hatred alive. They almost guaranty that the event will be repeated.
I don't want the holocaust to be repeated, so will you join me and remind yourself everyday,

'REMEMBER THE ERROR OF ALLNESS'.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P05 'Values'

Every four years the politicians remind me to return to the values of my ancestors, the values that made this country great. Each time I'm left wondering if they ever listen to what they say? Do they know what made this country great? To which values do they want me to return, those of my ancestors? Really?
I don't want to return to the values of MY ANCESTORS, at least not the values of some of them. For those of you who do not know, an island in the East River bears my family name. The island is known to most people because of a prison of long standing or for a mental institution. My family is both famous and infamous. We have had our share of pirates, bank robbers, highwaymen, and train robbers.
The prison and the mental institution are symbols of the values of our ancestors, greed and escapism. The large bulk of the immigrants came to this country to escape persecution or to seek their fortunes. These are not the values that made our country great and they are not the values I wish to have.
Greed is not 'good', never was, never will be. Greed leads to hoarding, parochialism, and arrogance. A hoarded resource is a wasted resource. The resource is not used to its full productivity and in the worst case it is not used at all. As we hoard more of a resource, we become parochial, we delude ourselves into thinking we must be smart because we have more of the resource than others. This delusion is self reinforcing, as we accumulate more of the resource, we think we must be right as well as smart. As we accumulate more, we think we must be the best and so on, until our egos are so large all else is blocked out and we can not think correctly at all.
Sadly, during this process we subconsciously know the error and are dissatisfied, we try to escape from the environment we have created. Escaping requires more resources so we accumulate more so we can escape more and a vicious circle is established. The effect of these two dominate values of our ancestors should not be under estimated.
Also, the politicians want us to return to the values of God, country, family, friends, honesty, and hard work. If that is so, why don't they emulate those values and what makes them think we don't have those values? Doesn't everyone, every where? What makes this country different? Why are the politicians so parochial, what makes them think we have a franchise on these values?
I believe, Clinton Goldman said, "Every company gets the labor relations it deserves." Is a corollary true, 'Every country gets the politicians it deserves?' If that is the case our problem is self evident, greed and escapism are so dominant, our other values are suppressed. To release our other values, we must change our behavior and eliminate greed and escapism.
Talking about it and telling ourselves how great we are will only keep us on the path to self destruction. A trend DOES make the future unless we CHANGE. Look at our country, the richest in the history of the world, the most unique civilization the world has ever known and we are trashing it away. We spend most of our time hoarding and escaping, gathering things and being couch potatoes, watching someone else do something, creating piles of waste in the process. Very few seek satisfaction and activity.
We continually tell ourselves how great we are and we don't even know how or why we are great. We think we did it, we're the greatest, we're the best, we are in control, everyone should follow our lead, we know how to do it, ours is the only way, the best way, the right way.
If anyone of intelligence could read an unvarnished version of our history they would vomit. We are squandering what we took. Yes, we have accomplished much, but have we accomplished anything near what we could accomplish with the resources we have taken and the fantastic good fortune we have had. Are you proud that we have incarcerated more people than the entire population of many countries, that we consume more than one third of the worlds resources with less than one tenth the population, that ninety per cent of our people are physically unfit, that more than twenty five per cent of our people are mentally dysfunctional, etc.
Wake up America and smell the coffee, the world is not our oyster. We are past the time to talking, of forming another committee to study the problem. We consume to keep our false economy going and ignore the path we are taking. Very few understand the laws of large numbers and geometric progression, our numbers are growing to rapidly and we are not taking care of ourselves or our children.
Most people pooh pooh the doom and gloom people, unfortunately much of their story is true. I'm not a doom and gloom person, I'm an optimist, I know we can change, but we can't wait any longer. Even if we start tomorrow, we may be to late, but we must try, we must give it an All American try.
We can change because that is what makes our country great, not the slogans we keep repeating. What other country in the history of the world developed a form of government that allows for peaceful change for all its people and for all its activities? What other country maintains as many degrees of freedom for everyone? What other country encourages innovation, development, and the pursuit of knowledge to the same extent, by and for all its people? What other country has created so much technology, so much change in so short a time? What other country is so generous?
Having said that, what I find so frustrating is that we are the only country in the world that promotes stupidity and ridicules wisdom. Politics and politicians do more to promote stupidity than any other person or group followed by congress and how we handle our history and our language.
We are so paranoid about opposing ideologies and terrorism, we poison ourselves, don't we know our own strength? We stand for freedom and we suppress it inside and outside our borders. We stand for free thinking and do not listen to the rest of the world. We stand for law and order and disobey our laws in every other country. We are the only country that rushes headlong into the future following meaningless slogans not knowing where we are going or what we are going to do when we get there.
We can change.
First, every citizen and every organization operating in this country must obey our laws everywhere in the world, not just inside our borders, no special privileges not even for the CIA. We must obey our own laws everywhere or our view of law and order is a sham.
Second, if our laws are obsolete or ineffective, lets dact them, lets stop complaining and talking, lets do the systems analysis, choose a solution, and do it, if it doesn't work, dact it again.
One law we should change is the base for citizenship. Only children of a mother who is a citizen should become citizens automatically. Everyone else must apply for a visa and then apply to become a citizen. No preferences. Marriage to a citizen does not grant citizenship.
Third, we must continue promote the free exchange of ideas. Secrecy should be eliminated, even for national security, and any person or organization that tries to force their ideas on anyone else in any way no matter how noble should be outlawed, government bureaucracies included. Even God gives us the right to choose how can anyone else usurp that right.
The abortion issue is an excellent example of how we promote stupidity. No one has a 'right to life.' God did not give us a special dispensation, God did not exempt us from the laws of the biosphere. We must identify all the laws of the biosphere and obey them. If we don't take care of ourselves, our children, and the biosphere, we will become extinct. If we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of anyone else. If we don't take care of our children there is no future. If we don't take care of the biosphere we will not survive.
The abortion issue will never be resolved because both sides, stubbornly, are trying to solve a symptom. Every student of the systems approach knows a symptom cannot be solved. A problem may have a solution, a symptom never. Is there any wonder then why so much heat and so little light has been created by the abortion issue. If we solve the appropriate problems we can reach a goal and reaching a goal provides satisfaction.
Making more money is the sleaziest of goals because the satisfaction received is so transient. The satisfaction received from an increase in wealth rarely lasts longer than the time it takes for the ink to dry on the check or the report showing the increase because as little as one more penny becomes the next goal and immediately negates the old goal making the old goal worthless, past history. For this reason, accumulating wealth without a purpose is of little value. Is it any wonder why so many wealthy people die disillusioned, they have accomplished nothing. Their names may be on buildings and endowment funds but their names are meaningless to those who use them and most will not give a moments thought or even a simple thank you.
Fourth, recognize that we will make mistakes, don't let fear and paranoia cause paralysis. Our country was built on change. If we make a mistake and we have made many, we can start again and we have, we've done it before and we can do it again.
Fifth, our welfare system should be a federal program so the poor can move or be moved out of the high rent districts, preferably to areas designed for people without cars.
All able-bodied adults must work. Everyone needs to work, unemployment causes abnormal changes in the brain, vacations are necessary, but idleness debilitates.
Eliminate all income tax exemptions except for one individual, their spouse and two children, no other dependents allowed. Everyone else should receive a private pension, private insurance, or public welfare. Put the unemployed to work at tasks for which society will not pay, such as recycling, picking up trash, child care, visiting invalids, etc. Encourage training and education by granting appropriate leave time. For example, school Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and work Tuesday and Thursday.
Taking care of children is work and it should be treated as such. Brains are the most important resource we have and the care and nurture of young and growing brains is the most important task we can undertake. Any debasement of this activity in any form is complete and unadulterated stupidity.
If any single parent wants to stay home and take care of their children, we as a society should insure their welfare. I mean take care, the home is clean, the children are clean, well fed, clothed, immunized, educated, etc. Have every caretaker sign a contract, if the contract is not fulfilled, stop the welfare check and take the children away from them. Pay the caretaker the equivalent of two adults and no more, with free sterilization after two children. Make sure the recipient understands no more money and the price of failure.
Sixth, we must reduce our consumption. Yes, our standard of living will fall on one side, but it will increase on another. We will have fewer things, but we will also have less pollution. Remember our measuring stick is warped, we continue to measure by comparing the amount of things we have and consume. We must include the condition of our environment and the quality of our lives in our measuring stick.
Did you draw the same conclusion I did from the thought 'Giving and sharing'? I have left many things unsaid, I was not explicit on purpose. First, because I had no intention of writing a text book, second, because it would require to many volumes, third, because I don't have enough time, and fourth, if you come to the conclusion on your own you are more likely to accept it.
OK, I'll make my conclusion explicit. We continue to measure the quality of our lives in terms of quantity. Only material resources have a quantity attribute; therefore, we cannot include our non material resources in our measurement. Unfortunately, material resources can't contribute to the quality of life, only our comfort. I know people who are so comfortable it is sickening, but their lives are meaningless and they know it and as far as I'm concerned their quality of life is zero and I know people who are very uncomfortable, in great pain, who's quality of life is at the maximum and they know it, they share at every opportunity and many people share with them.
So you see, not only is our yard stick warped, we are making the wrong measurement. What do you think the prophets have been trying to tell us?
Our goal should be to maximize the quality of life and to minimize our discomfort and our use of material resources. As we reduce our consumption we will have to reduce the number of hours we work to keep everyone employed. Our income will fall, but we will not need as many things and we will have more free time. We must learn to use our free time constructively and inexpensively.
I think our economists, bureaucrats, and politicians are overlooking many things. For example, we have reduced the weight of our cars by nearly two thirds and they wonder why our economy is not recovering as fast as in the past. The jobs that produced the lost weight are gone and those jobs will never return.
Another example, a recent report in the Wall Street Journal pointed our the deleterious effect of reduced government spending on our economy. How could a change in spending of the largest consumer in the world not have an effect on our economy?
Also, we must not delude ourselves, we cannot continue to supply the rest of the world. As the rest of the world increases their capacity, the need for our capacity will decrease, more jobs will be lost. The outlook for our economy as we now know it is very bleak, but it is not hopeless, we can change and I hope for the better. Maybe, just maybe, we will design and build our cities for people, maybe even our work. What a change that would be.
In addition, the rest of the world can not come up to our present level of consumption, pollution would suffocate us. The biosphere could not recycle the pollutants fast enough. Water and other resources would become scarce and prohibitively expensive. The entire world economy would collapse.
We must find a way to spread the wealth more evenly than we are currently doing. Concentrating the wealth in the hands of a few is a delusion. Yes, we need capital formation, but does it have to be with only the wealthy, what about the poor are they to be denied capital because of some accident of fate. Most unemployed have no control over their condition.
The hoarding of any resource causes inflation, we have been undergoing capital inflation for many years, but it does not show up in the CPI. We are spending much more for our infrastructure, land, buildings, housing, and other capital goods than ever before in the history of our economy. This unnoticed inflation is sapping strength from our economy and changing interest rates will not have a positive influence on capital inflation.
Plus, we are wasting resources, we are building to many monuments to our egos. Look at our building, our courts, our athletic facilities, our homes, our cars, our clothes, our jewelry, etc. No, you are not worth it. So little is used, so much wasted space, so many unnecessary symbols of affluence. Are our memories so poor and our egos so weak that we need to be reminded of our wealth all the time, everywhere? We are rich in things and poor in spirit and the former can never substitute for the latter.
Lets change now, while we can still do so in reasonable comfort, while we can make mistakes and still recover, while our economy can recover from the changes we have to make, before the tidal wave swamps us all.
We have two perversions in our values that need to be changed. First, we will not let people fail. Some people will never get the message unless we let them fail and the sooner the better. Propping up failures is a useless waste of resources. Give them help when they truly recognize their need for help, they will change their behavior.
Second, we continue to let men believe sex is a right. Any student of biology knows females were not designed to service males, males were designed to service females. Sex is not a male right, sex is a male responsibility. The male is responsible for supplying sperm when the female needs it. All other sex should be for the reinforcement of pair bonds.
Yes, men will be frustrated, I should know, I can remember my adolescent years very well, but that frustration is a man's problem, no one should assume another's problem. A woman should not be forced to have sex by any means, legal or otherwise, all such contracts and marriage vows should be null and void.
The politicians, ideologues, and demagogues like to quote meaningless slogans, such as 'A rising tide raises all boats and a bigger pie allows everyone to have a larger piece.' Did anyone consider that more than a quarter of our population doesn't have a boat and that no boat will survive the tsunami that's coming and the pie can't be larger than the world and everyone can't have a piece if some people continue to take two or more pieces.
We must change and we must start now. We, the supposed leaders of the world, must mobilize the rest of the world. We can't do that in a few years and we must begin at home. We have taken a few faltering steps and the reduction in the weight of our cars was significant, but we have not continued the effort. We must start again. If we don't start now, we will have a new name sake, the Dodo bird, and we will be just as extinct and just as dead and just as stupid as our new name sake.
The Dodo bird was a hapless creature, it could not learn. We are not hapless nor hopeless, we can learn, we can solve problems, and we can change our behavior. I wonder why the problem is not apparent to every one? A few of us look at the gigantic world with our telescopes, a few of us look at the invisible world with our microscopes, a few of us look at our world, and even fewer look at the biosphere. I have answered my own question. Very few of us are reading the book of life because it is not written in stone (diamonds, emeralds, or rubies).
Our ancestors crossed their river to the land of milk and honey and they killed the natives and raped the land. In time they built a temple and on its alter they placed an idol and worshipped it with meaningless praises. There were periods of repentance only to be followed with another idol, such as, sovereignty, destiny, profit, the white man's burden, capital formation, the Monroe doctrine, free enterprise, and recently, a great big one.
Our slogans followed, we have a sovereign right to this land, we have a manifest destiny, we have a right to make a profit, we have to convert the world to our way of thinking, big capital makes a right world, we are in charge of our hemisphere, the free market can solve all problems, and we're right, we're the best, we're the greatest, we're worth it, we're number one.
Aimlessly, we spin the wheel of our economy, apparently thinking speed will some how overcome a lack of direction. The directions are in us and all around us. Every living thing contains the laws of the biosphere, we only need to take the time and make the effort to read.
Our temple will be destroyed. We have a choice, we can let the indifferent biosphere do it or we can change, we can destroy our temple one block at a time and build a new with compassion and care. We must learn the laws of the biosphere and obey them. The laws of biosphere preempt all laws written by people. After all WHO wrote the laws of the biosphere? Those laws contain the values to which we should return, but we must be diligent to avoid our false perceptions of what those values should be. The greatest experiment in our history is taking place right now and we will know the result within thirty years, will you or your children live that long?

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P06 'Knowing'

I was reflecting on the PBS series, 'Wisdom of Faith' by Huston Smith with Bill Moyers and the CBS series "Touched by an Angel,' I agree with the main theme of both and as always I disagree because I disagree with religions. Religions are man's attempt to convert God's nonverbal messages into verbal format, a task we are incapable of doing with accuracy. You see, to me, God communicates with us and we can communicate with each other by mental telepathy at the nonverbal level, but our skill has not been completely developed, we have not evolved far enough yet; therefore our translation into verbal format is never completely accurate and because of this inherent inaccuracy we do not have any document of the Word, only documents that contain some of the Word. I have come to the conclusion from my own faith and work that our religions have misinterpreted much of God's message and we have come to the wrong conclusion about God's cosmos. Our current task, as I see it, is to eliminate the junk from our collective religious wisdom and re-analyze the residual.
When I was a young man, I had great difficulty with miracles. After my recognition of a bit, I realized that the miracles were bits, after all a bit is any sign, signal, symbol, etc., one unique attribute of a resource. People have always asked for a sign so they could believe what they want to believe. We hope for a miracle and ignore the three greatest miracles because they are all around us and always with us. We don't have the eyes to see and we are not using our brains to understand.
Look around, what do you see? You see something; the sky, the earth, the trees, the bushes, the grass, the man made objects, etc. You see the greatest miracle of them all every time you open your eyes or use any of your senses, you sense SOMETHING instead of NOTHING.
Our senses respond to a very minute number of bits, we ignore the vast bulk of the material resources all around us all the time and in turn we ignore the message of the bits to which we do respond because they have always been there, they are not novel, we have sensed them before.
We take the second greatest miracle for granted also, life. How can we take life for granted. Don't you ever pinch yourself and wonder? How can you look around and not get excited and jump up and down with joy? We are included in the miracles, we are a miracle. We are SOMETHING, not nothing and we are ALIVE. How can we degrade ourselves or any other living thing. Look at what we are doing to the second greatest miracle, can you believe what we are doing? I can't and yet I can, but before I continue, the third greatest miracle.
Non material resources, experiences, love, thoughts, ideas, solutions, knowledge, information, data, etc., again we participate in the third greatest miracle, they are the products of a brain. Have you no awe for the power God has given us? Do you understand what we have and what we can do?
A brain can receive a bit and assign a value based on experience and create data. If the same brain has an intelligence activity it can create information from the data and if it has a wisdom activity as well, it can create knowledge from the information, knowledge of the three greatest miracles.
Now do you realize what we have and why life and living systems were created? Only a living system with the intelligence and wisdom activities can KNOW. We can know about God's creations. What more do we or could we want? Why are we spending so much time hoarding things? Why are we asking for more? Why are we not using and improving what we have?
We were created for this planet, the planet was not created for us, we came from the dirt and we will return to the dirt. We must keep our egos in check and remember how insignificant we are and at the same time appreciate our participation in the three greatest miracles, a difficult task for such puny creatures. We must always keep in mind that only by sharing do we have eternal life because only when we share our love and knowledge does the wellspring continue on it present path.
Another thought, 'Touched by an Angel' emphasizes why God can not interfere in our lives. Every episode ends as we think God would want it to end, everyone does as God wishes. Who among us would not do as God wanted or even hinted if we truly believed that God was communicating with us. We would not have any free will, we would not be able to make choices. Data, information and knowledge would be meaningless because for a finite system to know something, implies not knowing everything and we would be incapable of choosing what to know, so we would know nothing and the third greatest miracle would disappear.
God created a dynamic cosmos and allowed it to develop according to certain rules. We have been struggling to learn the rules and to interpret God's messages. God communicates on the nonverbal level so as to not negate what little free will we have. If we participate in the translation from nonverbal to verbal we can maintain some portion of our free will.
Every receiver has a responsibility that is often over looked. Every receiver must translate the senders message and convert all emotionally charged words or messages into neutral words and messages. Only the receiver can know the words or messages that affect them. Failure to take this responsibility and to do it quickly can lead to disaster because the meaning of the words or message will be distorted and will be misunderstood. Since we can not translate with complete accuracy we must concentrate on the spirit of the message, no one can know the Letter; therefore no individual can have authority over us, we must cooperate, we must contribute to our communal knowledge.
Concepts exist only in a brain. The cosmos is not and does not contain evil. Evil exists only in our minds, everything else, except God, is completely indifferent. Many times we are indifferent and because of our indifference we must be careful in our endeavor to improve our lot not to snuff out life on our planet and end two of the greatest miracles in our part of the cosmos.
This wide spread indifference is why bad things happen to good people. There is no plan or purpose for or against people in the cosmos only indifference. The cosmos follows its own rules completely indifferent to its effect on us and if we disobey the rules of the cosmos it will be completely indifferent to our demise.
God never told anyone to kill another. We do not need to kill to go to heaven or to defend the Faith. Your faith must be very weak if you need to kill to defend it. And how could we defend anything, especially anything from God, the Faith never needed any defense.
God never made any promises to anyone. God never gave anything to anyone. God gave us everything in the beginning, what else could God give us or promise us later?
Any religion that tells us to behave contrary to our nature is hog wash. We must learn our true nature and mitigate the effect of our selfish genes as much as we can. All systems are self centered, but we don't have to be selfish or parochial.
Every system is a bit at another level and a bit cannot be one with the universe. A bit is one unique attribute of a resource. To be one with the universe is to cease to be unique. Every system will always remain unique and separate until it dies. In other words, we may be isolated, but we are never alone, God is always with us.
We cannot sin against God. What on earth could we possibly do that God would not expect, anticipate, and forgive and who are we to define our own transgressions. Every error we make indicates a lack of knowledge and if we transgress against or are indifferent to the biosphere or ourselves we will pay a penalty before we die. The worst penalty is to isolate ourselves from God and the other systems. If we do not share we cease to exist. Knowledge is the essence of the Spirit (the Word). To create a child and not insure its welfare or to SHARE our knowledge with it, is to terminate our own existence.
God is communicating with us all the time, trying to teach us so we don't have to pay the penalty associated with trial and error in this indifferent cosmos. If we could and would listen better and translate more accurately our knowledge would increase and our pain decrease.
We focus on hoarding and seeking happiness when we should focus on knowledge and satisfaction. Happiness is a state of mind, you can choose to be happy anytime you wish. Being a state of mind, you cannot find, pursue, or acquire happiness, any attempt to do so is futile. You can gain satisfaction by achieving a goal. Revenge is never satisfaction, it is never a goal. Besides, how could we ever get even, we don't know what 'even' means. Revenge like happiness can never be attained. Revenge like stupidity leads to self termination.
Pray as often as you like, it improves our listening and translating ability. I give thanks when I reflect on what I know and try not to be discouraged by the vast amount that I do not know. I try to think and reflect at least once a day. I know this life can be very difficult to live, but when I reflect on the beauty of the system all I can say is, "Thank You God, it is a FANTASTIC SYSTEM."

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P07 'Religion'

I have always been perplexed by the difference between the beliefs of people and their behavior. I still am, but after I learned the difference between belief and faith, at least, I can explain the difference. A belief is something we want to be true, faith is something we 'know' to be true. Belief is where we would like to live, faith is where we do live. For example, 'the sun will rise tomorrow,' there is no doubt in our minds, we know the sun will rise tomorrow unless a catastrophic event occurs. The catastrophic event is the belief, we don't believe it will happen, but we are in doubt.
Another illustration, an extension of Rabbi Wine. Ask an atheist, "Do you believe in God?" and like so many questions it really is three questions in one. The reply will be, "The answer to the first question is, yes, I understand what you mean by your question, the answer to the second question is, no, there is no God; therefore the answer to the third question is, no, I do not believe in God." Ask an agnostic the same question and the reply will be, "Yes, I understand the question, but I don't know whether there is or is not a God, so I can't answer the third question." An ignostic will reply, "I don't know what you're talking about so I can't answer the other questions." A religious person will respond, "Yes, I understand the question and yes, there is a God, and yes, I believe in God." A faithful person will respond, "Yes, I understand the question, but I think you asked the wrong question, you see I don't believe in God," and the person, bored with the current discussion returned to communicating with God. It was many years later that I truly understood the faithful person's response, for the faithful there is no doubt, none.
Beliefs are our verbal guides to what we would like to become. Generally beliefs are objective and usually we can articulate our beliefs in great detail. We can and do share our beliefs. Beliefs can be held in common and these common beliefs help to hold a community together.
Faith is completely subjective, it is each individuals nonverbal description of how the world works. We may not be able to articulate our faith and we have great difficulty describing our faith, the best we can do is demonstrate our faith. Faith determines how we will behave. The greater the difference between faith and belief, the greater the difference between belief and behavior.
What we must keep in mind is that beliefs are not always well founded, sometimes the supporting data is rather flimsy at best, where as faith is usually founded on personal experiences that can be repeated and or on good solid data. But like all non material resources, including knowledge, faith, and belief, they are chosen or at least the data we retain to describe them is chosen; therefore they are subjective and arbitrary and we can dact them if we have the will. We must remember our limitations, we are incapable of knowing anything with complete accuracy or certainty.
Beliefs do not have to be complete, logical, or consistent because we isolate our beliefs from reality. If someone forces us to confront a contradiction in our beliefs we respond variously. Faith must be logical, consistent, and complete because faith must match with reality. If reality forces us to confront a contradiction in our faith we respond with shock, from a mild emotional disturbance to complete mental break down depending on how serious the contradiction.
Because our long term memories require fifteen to thirty years to mature, for our children's faith to develop normally, they need consistent, regular, and repeated experiences, such as parents coming home at the same time each day, meals and bed time on a schedule, etc. If parents fail to do so, a child's faith will be distorted or even destroyed. When a person's beliefs are abnormal, we call them eccentric, when a person's faith is abnormal, we call them insane.

Repetition, conditioning, etc. enhance belief.
Premise, prior, or axiom, i.e., cannot be and not be at the same time, enhances belief.
Ignore, deny, isolate, etc. negates belief.
Science is neutral.

Do not stereotype the scientists, the problem, the science, the solution, or the goal. When science conflicts with belief, most people object most strenuously when science points out an error in the data or an error in a conclusion drawn from the data that supports that belief. Why do we hang on tenaciously to erroneous beliefs? They don't have any value, lets throw them away.
Ten years after I first wrote this thought I could answer my own question. We place a value on every change that affects us because we compare the before and after and evaluate the 'gains' and 'losses'. If the gains out weigh the losses, we celebrate, if the losses out weigh the gains, we grieve, we grieve the loss.
If the loss is very small most people will complete the grief process without knowing they have grieved. If the loss is large the grief process will be long and slow. Such is the case when we confront an error in our faith, the loss is so great that we go into shock and when we recover we know we must complete the grief process and correct the error in our faith or we will never heal, we will forever remain emotionally dysfunctional.
In some cases we may choose not to complete the grief process, those cases where the cost of completing the grief process is greater than the inconvenience of remaining in one of the first four steps of the grief process. This is why we hang on to erroneous beliefs, the cost of completing the grief process is greater than the cost of staying in one of the first four steps because we shelter our beliefs from reality, we limit the number of times the error will be exposed. We choose to hang on to the erroneous belief at the cost of forever responding with anger, denial, bargaining, or depression, when ever we are forced to confront the error again. We respond according to the step where we chose to stop the grief process.
Because we can choose to stop the grief process with very little penalty when we are confronted with an error in our beliefs this means to me that our beliefs are not as important to us as we would like to believe.
Many years after I learned the difference between faith and belief I finally learned that when I responded with anger (you stupid SOB), denial (its not my fault), bargaining (if I could do that then I would do this), or depression (I would if I could but I can't); they were warning signals to myself that I had made an error. Usually I was hanging on to the false belief that is was the other person's fault.
Every way of thinking has blind spots and so it is with religions and every religion is a system and all systems are self centered and self perpetuating. Another disadvantage, religions help us shelter our beliefs from reality and in so doing they prevent us from correcting errors, limit our growth, and limit our knowledge.
Life is a conflict of interest, the herd survives because the individual survives and responds to the herd. In times of stress the actions of the individuals, in order to survive, may destroy the herd. This anti herd activity is described as bad or evil by the ignorant, when it really is a conflict of interest. Every herd has a critical number below which it is only a matter of time until extinction, this means that any herd evolves in large numbers, contrary to most religions.
I feel the guilt feelings produced by the Judeo-Christian religions negates their value. We are over due for a new religion. The premise that man has fallen from grace and needs to be made whole again does not fit the data. It seems to me that we were never whole in the first place, could it be that the system is in development and is not yet complete?
I can not accept the doctrine of original sin, heaven, hell, the creation of man, the constant battle between good and evil, and that man is doomed to be evil. Why is sex such a large part of sin? Hell, what a waste of souls and I do not believe that punishment waits until death, we create our own punishment now, we create our own hell in our minds.
A dilemma, how do we know who is speaking to us, God or the Devil? How do we know God told another person to do something? We only know by faith, but whose faith is correct yours or mine? Neither, but if we share our knowledge maybe both of us can approach closer to the truth.
Remember, faith is chosen, free will. Is it? Maybe faith is fixed knowledge and is transferred to us by some unknown process. This would explain the commonalty of all religions and philosophies or maybe they satisfy a common need. We can choose to resolve the dilemma by choosing a faith. Remember religion is chosen, the bible is chosen, someone chose the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the books, etc. Why those and not others? What has been omitted? Remember the error of allness.
My choice, evil and the devil do not exist. We do not have any way to determine between God and the devil, every method proposed has a fallacy. Our only option when a determination cannot be made between two entities is to deny one of them, besides I can't fathom why God would create evil or that any one of God's creations would 'fall'. Most of the time what we call evil is indifference or a conflict. We say, 'Why me God,' when events don't go the way we want, never when events do go the way we want.
God chose to create a dynamic cosmos. Every system in that cosmos follows its own rules completely indifferent to its effect on other systems. When this indifferent activity has a negative effect on us we call it evil, when it has a positive effect on us we call it good, we chose, it did not have a value until we gave it one. We placed the value on it, not God.
We define as evil the conflict within the system, the conflict between systems or the conflict between a system and the environment, for example the snake, but what about the snake and the rat which one is evil or the python and the panther, which one is evil, which one will be the other's dinner, an insane person is possessed, etc.
God is God. We do not posse God, 'my' and 'of' are possessive. God is not my God and God is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, etc. Abraham, Isaac, etc. may be of God, but God is not 'of' any person; therefore there are no 'chosen' people. In fact there are no chosen creatures, why do we consider ourselves so important? Maybe we need to rein in our egos?
If we choose free will instead of predestination, then God can not interfere with the cosmos after creation or else our will would not be free. God could not talk to us because even the slightest suggestion would eliminate our free will, after all who among us would not do as God said or even suggested if we truly believed that God was talking to us; therefore if God is to communicate with us, we must accept that our free will is not completely free, it is modified free will or limited free will.
I choose limited free will because of the types of knowledge, fixed, variable, and chosen. Thus it is even more certain to me that God cannot interfere or that God's interference must be very limited or else the very gift that God has given us, a little, a very little amount of free will would be eliminated and we would not be able to accept or not accept the gift of grace.
If you have a belief that guides you to the good life, ethical action, to grow, and mature, follow it wholeheartedly, it is the one true religion for you, but if it justifies your action then you are a hypocrite and you are practicing blasphemy.
To love God, to know God, and to serve God is the answer some religions give as the purpose for human life. They also say God is infinite. We may know of the infinite, but the finite cannot know the infinite, and how can the finite love the infinite when it cannot even love itself. The finite may serve the infinite, but I think it will be without our volition and knowledge. We can know a finite amount about God and the cosmos that God created because knowledge is the end result of a complex system; however, the only knowledge some people will pass on is the knowledge stored in their genes.
Some people say they are doing God's work, I think this is the epitome of egotism, arrogance, and stupidity. Only God can do God's work. We may do what God has called us to do, but we cannot do God's work.
God is scalar, God is coordinate system independent, our religions are vector, they attempt to point toward God, but because our religions are coordinate system dependent we can never have a one true religion.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P08 'A Conversation Overheard'

"Our society is in sad shape and I think a required course on ethics
and morals for all high school seniors using the bible as the text would
help correct the situation."
"I agree with you, but may I suggest a slight deviation from our normal class schedule. I think six lessons the day before graduation would leave a longer lasting impression on our children. Each lesson should emphasize a different ethic or moral of increasing importance.
The first lesson should feature the prodigal son. This story would reinforce the life style of many of our students and encourage others to join them, lead a life of drunken debauchery and your parents will love you for it.
The second lesson should feature the coat of many colors. Since our students are getting ready to enter the work force, they should be introduced to the entrepreneurial side of our economy. If someone has more than you, take it and sell it, everyone will forgive you later because of your enterprise. Isn't the free market wonderful, you can even sell your brother.
The third lesson should feature the apple and the serpent. Never take responsibility for your actions, always blame someone else, a woman when possible, then the snake or the devil, but never yourself. You didn't want to live in that old garden anyway.
The fourth lesson should feature Pilate. Never take a stand on any issue, always defer to the majority and wash your hands of it as soon as possible. This story will reinforce the previous lesson and emphasize never stand out from the crowd, always do what your peers do, don't think for yourself, the majority is always right.
The fifth lesson should feature Cain and Abel. This story fits right in with our modern day thinking, material wealth is the only thing, so do what ever you have to do to get ahead (at this point you may want to add the story of Herodias, she is an excellent example of how to use all of your resources, she used her daughter's talents to get a head), but what ever you do, don't work for it. If necessary go ahead and kill your brother and take everything he has. Besides our population is to large and the level of violence in our country is too low, a great way to improve both.
The sixth lesson should feature Judas, his example will prepare our students for the information age. What ever you do don't share your knowledge with others, sell it to the highest bidder and if things don't turn out as you think they should you can always commit suicide. The suicide rate among our students is too low and we must ensure that our students adopt the values of their elders, money is not everything, it is the only thing."
"You don't have to be so facetious."
"If adults don't understand the message how could they ever teach it to our students? You see, the bible is not about morals and ethics, the bible is about love, redemption, and forgiveness, the gift of Grace."

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P09 'Grief'

There is so little we can do for one another, but we can show our concern and we can share.
Grief is the second most serious activity we can undertake, without it we cannot heal. Neither encourage it nor deny it, let it come and go as is its wont, but let it come out as peacefully as possible. Be as considerate as you can be, but do what you have to do to complete the grief process and don't apologize for what you do, for those who know, they will understand and for those who don't, no explanation will ever be satisfactory.
Review the unpleasant past only long enough to correct any inaccuracies in you memory and then forget it and remember only the pleasant past, but again do so accurately.
I pray that you and each member of your family can accept what has been and can work to make the future as best you can and may each of you be at peace.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P10 'Tsunami'

Many tsunamis are coming our way, you know the ones the doom and gloom people keep telling us about, the green house effect, not enough food, water, energy, clean air, etc. Now I would like to tell you about the three tsunamis that concern me the most, in increasing order of concern.
First, is the loss of land to urbanization, people need space in which to live, but so does the biosphere, especially the spawning wet lands of our food fish. The fish population is declining and we will need all the sources of food we can maintain. Already the competition for land is threatening many plants and animals, this competition can only get worse. The highways and parking lots for our cars are consuming way to much land as well as to many other resources.
Second, is the loss of land to the rising sea level. Most people do not understand the danger, as the ice shelves around the world break up the real danger is not rising sea levels because the shelf ice is already displacing its weight in water. The danger is the large amount of fresh water released during melting may disrupt the ocean currents because of the difference in density between the fresh water of the shelf ice and the sea water. The danger from a rising sea level will come shortly after the shelf ice breaks up and drifts away. Unstable glacier ice about a mile inland all a long the coast which was partially supported by shelf ice will begin to calve and it will do so very rapidly. Within months of this event the sea level will rise about twenty five feet. Now that may not sound like very much, but to many places around the world it will spell disaster. One area that is completely ignored is the location of oil terminals and oil refineries, twenty five feet of water would put ninety per cent of them out of operation. Those not under water by the raise in sea level would be swamped during high tides and storms. We could not build dikes fast enough to keep them in operation.
We are finite and a finite system can not know everything so we must be ignorant in many areas. Sadly our ignorance is vast and wide spread, and because of our linear western thinking we tend to ignore cycles, such as the water cycle, we take them for granted.
The biosphere has many cycles, you may be aware of some of them, such as, the nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, sulfur, etc., all the nutrients necessary for life. And of course the carbon cycle which is the most discussed cycle of the industrial revolution. Many of these cycles have a short term cycle through the biosphere and a long term cycle through the geosphere. Carbon dioxide forming limestone on the sea floor and returning as carbon dioxide and lava from volcanoes, for example.
The carbon cycle is one of the most interesting because it is the back bone of life. Plants take carbon dioxide and water from the biosphere and create carbohydrates and release oxygen. When the plants use the carbohydrates for energy, respiration, they take oxygen from the biosphere and combine it with the carbohydrates to get energy and produce water and carbon dioxide, forming a completely balanced cycle. If animals eat the plants for energy they take the place of the plants in the respiration part of the cycle and the cycle remains balanced.
Now if the carbon cycle is completely balanced, why is there an excess amount of oxygen in the atmosphere? Oxygen is a very reactive chemical and there should never be more free oxygen in the atmosphere than an amount proportional to the carbohydrates not used for energy by the plants and animals. I know the cycle is much more complicated than how I have describe it, but the statement should still be true. The atmosphere should never have more oxygen than an amount proportional to the amount of carbohydrates in storage.
So where did the twenty one per cent oxygen of our atmosphere come from? It came from all the plants that were buried eons ago which we now know as peat, coal, oil, and gas. A reaction which we do not completely understand, changed the carbohydrates stored in those buried plants into hydrocarbons and release most of the oxygen in the original carbohydrates. I doubt the oxygen released from this reaction ever reached the atmosphere, it should have reacted with minerals in the earth to form oxides.
Now do you have a clue to the tsunami which concerns me the most, it is the oxygen cycle. The amount of oxygen in our atmosphere has limits, it can not be much higher than it is at present or all organic material would begin to burn continuously until the oxygen level returned to near its present level. If you have ever witnessed combustion experiments with pure oxygen you would understand. In pure oxygen hot steel will burn, no ignition necessary. Organic materials will ignite at much lower concentrations of oxygen and at much lower temperatures, we refer to it as spontaneous combustion.
The amount of oxygen in our atmosphere will decrease if we burn more hydrocarbons than we or the biosphere put carbohydrates into storage. In other words WE must keep the oxygen cycle in balance, we are the ones who are consuming hydrocarbons at such a prodigious rate not the biosphere.
Unconsciously we have been putting carbohydrates into storage, look at the amount of paper, wood, garbage, cotton cloth, etc., that we dump into our landfills and the ocean. We also store them in all our wood buildings and wood furnishings and in our cotton goods in our homes and buildings.
The other tsunamis we will face are within our current technology so I'm confident we will survive them, some how, the last three are more troublesome because we do not have the technology to handle them, especially the last one. Only a change in life style will slow them down and we have a major obstacle to effecting a change in life style, to many people are still hanging on to the erroneous belief that we are privileged, the world was create for us, we don't have to change, the world must change for us. People are unique, but we are not privileged.
The oxygen in our atmosphere took millions of years to accumulate and we evolved for the present level of oxygen, we can not survive if the level of oxygen falls very much and I'm afraid once it begins to fall we will not be able to reverse the trend and it will not stop falling until the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is in proportion to the amount of carbohydrates and hydrocarbons left in storage.
The atmosphere contains a lot of oxygen and our consumption of hydrocarbons is small in comparison, but as our population grows and if all those people consume hydrocarbons at our current rate we will reduce the oxygen level at some point in the future, we can not keep consuming willy nilly.
As the carbon dioxide level increases the oxygen level should decline by one and a half times the carbon dioxide increase because hydrocarbons require more oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water than carbohydrates do. I would expect the oxygen levels to decrease more at high elevations than at sea level, but I have not seen any reports indicating such a decline and the reports I have seen cannot account for the missing carbon dioxide. Some people have tried to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide the industrial revolution should have added to the atmosphere. The records of the industrialized nations are accurate enough to yield a reasonable answer, but the answer is much higher than the present levels of carbon dioxide, so where did the carbon dioxide go? I don't know and I have not seen a good answer.
The missing carbon dioxide is important because if we keep removing oxygen and do not replace it with carbon dioxide we will also reduce our atmospheric pressure. Our lungs evolved for twenty one per cent oxygen and one atmosphere of pressure and they are efficient over a fairly wide range of oxygen concentrations and pressure variation, but if we reduce the concentration of oxygen and reduce our atmospheric pressure the efficiency of our lungs will be decreased. If this double reduction goes very far, millions of people with lung and heart disease will die and healthy people will tire quickly, we will behave as if we were at high altitude, we would not have the energy we now have. People would not be able to live as high in the mountains as we do currently.
We are changing the balance of nature, we know we are and just because we can't measure the change doesn't mean we should not be good stewards of our biosphere. We must change our life style until our technologies catch up with our consumption because if wait until we can measure the change it will be to late.
Drastic changes are not necessary, anarchy and chaos will not help. We need a slow controlled decline in our consumption of hydrocarbons so our economy and society can adjust, so we can experiment and try again in reasonable comfort. Lets set a goal of three or four per cent a year. We don't need half of what we have, but we do need twenty one per cent oxygen at one atmosphere of pressure.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P11 Thankful

I was watching a spider, outside my window, dying from hypothermia and starvation like so many people around the world when the following memory returned. I had a unique and lasting experience involving my classmates in my advanced organic chemistry class '56 that encapsulates my thankfulness.
The class was a very time consuming class, lab started at eight, five days a week, and on a good day we could leave by two. For those who didn't brown bag it, the others would watch your experiments for you while you went to eat or to go to another class.
Of the twelve in the class, six were foreign students. Six of us decided to go to the student union for lunch, two girls, one from Sweden, she was a blond as she could be, the other from Columbia. Four guys, one from Nigeria (he was blacker than the ace of spades), one from South Africa (a milk chocolate colored black), myself, and another white from the US.
As we left for the student union, a group of blacks tried to encourage the Nigerian and the South African to join a black advocate group. They walked along side our group giving them a number of reasons why they should join.
Finally, the South African had had enough, he stopped walking and said in a very loud voice, 'You niggers don't know what discrimination is'. The girl from Columbia said, 'You Americans don't know how lucky you are, you're healthy and well fed. In my country, you either have a maid or you are one'.
With that said, the US blacks departed and we continued to the student union. The girl from Columbia cried all the way. She found the lack of opportunity for her countrymen so intolerable. I can't remember her exact words.
In addition to trying to console the girl from Colombia, the South African and the Nigerian told personal stories about the more vulgar forms of discrimination they had suffered in their country. At first the girl from Sweden was shocked, even though she was well traveled, she had led a very sheltered life. As the stories became even more vulgar, she became very agitated, she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She couldn't believe that anyone could be so vulgar and so cruel.
Then as I was paying for my food, the man behind me said, 'Isn't that awful.' 'What do you mean?' 'Well, look at that', and he pointed to a large round table where the girl from Sweden and the Nigerian were having an animated discussion. What could I say? I was at a loss for words, I simply turned and walked away. I often wondered what the man thought when he saw me and the South African join them.
By the time she reached our table, she was talking very loudly. The people near by could not help but over hear her, but they could not hear the Nigerian so they came closer. When I arrived at the table she stood and asked other blacks near by if what the Nigerian was saying was true.
Before the other two classmates came to our table, the other students in the room began to gather around listening to our discussion. The two hot button topics back then were racial discrimination and who should control nuclear weapons. The first hydrogen bomb was detonated about a year earlier.
When it became apparent that she was not going to calm down someone changed the topic. Among students, the foreign students were not bashful, in fact they were very vocal. When they stated their position on who should have nuclear weapons, the crowd around our table increased in number and moved closer.
I'm positive that our citizens were very surprised at their position. Every one of them were dead set against nuclear weapons, they didn't want their countries to have them, but all agreed that if anyone was to have them, they wanted the US to have them and they felt we should be more open about what we were doing and going to do, they didn't like the secrecy.
More people gathered around our table when the foreign students began to share how they viewed us. They thought the US was a great big arrogant obnoxious bully. Our freedoms ended at our borders. We didn't pay attention to the rest of the world, our way was the only way, and we were wasting our money, we did not give them the help they really needed.
But they were continually amazed at our willingness to help, our generosity, our willingness to change, and we championed the underdog. Most had suffered discrimination in our country, sometimes just because they were foreigners. But many times they were surprised when they were discriminated against by some Americans, other Americans would defend them, assist them, or offer them aid. They found our spirit contagious. It infected them and they didn't want to lose it.
An odd fact about the discussion was that the other people around us didn't interfere with our discussion other than to answer her questions with a yes or no or to ask us to speak louder. When we finished eating, we had to fight our way through the crowd.
This event occurred either the sixth or the seventh day of the class. By the second day of class we had become a close knit group. This event dramatically increased the bonds of the group.
The class was evenly divided between male/female white/non white foreign/domestic. The other two foreign students that I didn't mention were a girl from Germany, her family survived the bombings, etc. of World War II, and a boy from China, his family had survived the Japanese occupation and later escaped to Hong Kong from the communists.
All the foreign students were from wealthy families, the girl from Columbia was from a very wealthy family, even so, all were very aware of the inequities of their own society. Every one of the foreign students wanted to stay in the US, not one wanted go home except to hear their native tongue spoken. All spoke beautiful English, not American, we could understand them, they had difficulty understanding us, we use to many idioms.
I learned more about the world, the US, our role in the world, how the rest of the world viewed the US, male chauvinism, discrimination, language, sex, etc. during that course than the rest of my life combined. The animated discussion between the girl from Sweden and the Nigerian became a never ending discussion. The discussion was not continuous, but it didn't conclude until the wake we held in the lab after finals, complete with chem lab cocktails. Not a dry face in the group, but we were never to meet again.
The foreign students were uninhibited and when the foreign girls talked frankly about sex, the American women became uninhibited. Our discussions were no holds barred discussions and no topic was prohibited. The class was time consuming as I have said, but the discussions were captivating, no one wanted to leave. Many times we stayed even after we had finished our experiments.
99% of our people can not even begin to comprehend the power we have, our influence on other people. We don't have to flex our military might or spend billions of dollars. We just have to be ourselves. We have an esprit de corps that is more powerful than any thing known to mankind. It is this spirit that I want to keep alive. It is this spirit that makes us Americans. It is this spirit for which I'm most thankful.
This spirit is our greatest strength and at the same time our greatest weakness. We have committed many atrocities defending the spirit against real and perceived threats. In defending our spirit, we rally around a leader or a group and if that leader or group makes an error or perverts or allows the perversion of the ideals of the spirit, our nation commits a grievous error in spite of our ideals and even contrary to our ideals.
Unfortunately, the media plays an exaggerated role in creating a leader. For example 9/11, we would have rallied around a newspaper boy that day if the TV cameras had focused on one. This is why the importance of a free press cannot be over emphasized. We must have an instrument that forces us to examine our motives, our actions, and the results there of.
Our current situation is a continuation of what began under Eisenhower. Ike was not a leader, he was a politician and he could not break his loyalty to the military and disclose the liars. A true leader would have had the strength to do so. And we have been fighting the pseudo threat of communism ever since.
Today terrorism is substituting for communism and a misguided country is not paying attention to the most pressing problems of our day. We will pay a price for our inattention, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
In the past the time lag between the error and the penalty has varied from less than a year to as long as twenty. So don't become complacent if the penalty doesn't come quickly, it will come.
I hope you will join with the others who are trying to prevent the destruction of our spirit. We can only destroy ourselves, no other force is strong enough to defeat our spirit. If we lose our spirit, we will lose the fourth greatest gift mankind has ever received and it maybe lost forever.
Like the girl from Columbia said, we don't know how lucky we are.

P.S. Thanks Giving is my favorite holiday

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P12 Information Can Approach Objectivity

Data is objective, but the value of data decreases as the level of abstraction increases. Information is subjective, but it can approach objectivity as follows.
I feel hot.
The statement is subjective because the word 'hot' is at an undefined level of abstraction and different people will have a different opinion or point of view.
The temperature is 85 degrees.
The statement is almost as objective as is possible. There can be no difference of opinion or point of view. Why? Because all of the words are at the lowest level of abstraction and the sentence is at the lowest degree of freedom.
Some examples of statements that can be converted into information in decreasing order of objectivity.

Logical statements: p or q, 1 + 1 = 2, A + B = C, etc.
Counting statements: we have twelve eggs.
Measuring statements: The temperature is 85 degrees.
Comparison statements: He is taller than me.

Each subordinate clause and abstract word increases the degree of freedom of a statement. Don't confuse variable with abstraction, i.e., A + B = C, the symbols are variable but they are not abstract. When the meaning of a word relies on context the degree of freedom also increases.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P13 What is a Conservative What is an 'Idiotologue?'

Contrary to any impression you may have gotten from my writing, I'm a very progressive conservative. I was one of the Mt Pleasant Jaycees who helped elect John Engler to his first term in office. The conservatives I have known were not liberal with the truth and shared five common goals. They wanted to be practical. They wanted a smaller efficient and effective government. They wanted less government spending and a balanced budget. They wanted a strong defense. They wanted more individual freedom and less government interference.
When I read 'global heating was a liberal hysteria so universities could get more government grant money', my blood boiled.
The statement implied many things. First, I can make a very good case that the universities were soft peddling environmental issues so they wouldn't lose grant money. Second, it implied that there was no scientific basis for global heating. Third, it implied that all who affirmed global heating were liberals. Fourth, it implied that we don't need to change. Fifth, it implied that the writer was a conservative.
When a scientist examines the data and says, 'This is dangerous, we should change what we are doing to be on the safe side'. Who is the conservative and who is the liberal?
When anyone intentionally violates the rules of logic and intentionally exploits the error of allness to deceive other people, they are using idiot logic and are 'idiotologues', they are not conservatives, they are nothing, they are liars. The ends do not justify the means.
Look at what the 'idiotologues' gave us? Star wars. The largest government in our history, even more so, if you count all the contractors and subcontractors. They are outspending the liberals. Look at the inefficient and ineffective spending in Iraq, the hurricanes Rita and Kitrina, and home land insecurity. A shortage of troops and equipment for the Iraq. Wire tapping, denying due process, want required prayer in school, want to limit the reproductive freedom of women, limiting the reproductive knowledge of both men and women, no family planning, limiting the rights of gays.
You can have more individual freedom or you can have more government requirements, restrictions, or limits, but you can't have it both ways.
It's no wonder that the native Americans said, 'White man speak with a forked tongue', the idiotologues want it both ways when it is to their benefit.
If you are paying attention to what the 'idiotologues' are doing and trying to do, how can you call them conservatives?

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P14 This is My Country...

I'm not proud to be an American as you will see below, but I would not live any where else. We are the most unique, most powerful, most dynamic society in the history of the world. We can change our political control without death and destruction. Our willingness to help, our generosity, our willingness to change, and we champion the underdog is contagious.
We adapt rapidly. Change is a part of our lifestyle; new technology is incorporated very rapidly, mostly to our benefit.
I have witnessed the beauty of our society, and we should enjoy it. I have lived a comfortable and mostly pain free life, and we should keep it.
I don't think of myself as being special, nor do I think my experiences are out of the ordinary because they are mine. I did have many more excellent teachers than our children did, the impact of the foreign students on me cannot be overstated, and my military service was unique.
I have learned from many people: strangers, neighbors, friends, and family; and I'm ever grateful that I didn't have to experience what they did. In addition to my study of military history, the veterans of my family and friends of my father taught me about the Second World War. The veteran college classmates and the veterans when I served in the army taught me about the Korean War. I know of some of the atrocities we have committed.
In addition to my study of our political history, I have spent many hours listening to survivors of the Holocaust and Japanese and German concentration camps. I have walked through the mud, sewerage, and garbage of the cardboard box slums along the Mississippi and Missouri flood plains and the Dallas railroad yards. I have been in the slums of many large cities within walking distance of the fancy hotels and convention centers I have visited. The hotels were reclamation projects. We reclaimed the land, but did we reclaim the people.
I have been in homes with dirt floors. Friends have told me of their travels to the rural areas of China, South America, India, etc. I have visited my friends in nursing homes. I have handled dead bodies. I have bandaged bloody people. I have seen the ugly side of life and our society.
I'm an American, but I'm not blind.
We are unwilling to admit we have made a mistake. We lie to ourselves and create fantasies to avoid facing our mistakes. We are obsessed with winning. Greed and escapism dominate our thinking, our history, our actions. We are right. Our way is the only way. We are number one. We must always have our own way. We have a sacred 'cow'. We worship our own 'idol'. We have our own 'myth trilogy'.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P15 'The Victors Write History' and 'all History is Interpreted History.'

The writers of history have a vested interest in what they write, sometimes their own survival, but, more often, what they choose to write about is determined by how popular the people or events are. They want people to read what they write; people avoid reading unpopular topics.
Our history involving the Indians and slavery is an example of the victors and interpreted history. The history of Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton is an example of popularity. At the end of his career, Nixon was unpopular and the commentators didn't treat him very kindly. Clinton was popular, but his sex exploits were very unpopular, and that part of his life was not treated kindly. Reagan was very popular and his grievous mistakes are almost completely ignored.
Because of the bias of history, I must reject all religious and political statements until the truth of the statements are supported by at least one other independent source. All the writers of religion and politics have a vested interest.
For example, who told us that the ancient Hebrews were the chosen people? Who told us that God gave them Israel? I cannot accept the implied assumption that God was parochial. In fact the New Testament says that God was not parochial. Do you call that consistency?
Look at our churches -- we have the biggest choir, we have the largest band; we have the most people in our congregation. We entertain you. But where is the Word. 'Seek the truth and the truth will set you free.' 'The new has come, the old has passed away.'
Truth is ignored. Look at the Laffer curve and Creation Science. Science is suppressed, only to be used if it can create more money. Truth is sacrificed to our idol, money. God did create us, but not how the creation stories tell it. We won't let the old pass away.
Large segments of our population refuse to examine their own fantasies and the rest are co-conspirators because they allow the fantasies to continue unchallenged. Who told us we are great? Who told us our cause was just? Who told us we are righteous? Who told us we are doing God's will? Who told us our way is the right way? Who determines our values?
Have you ever read your child's history book? Look at the pseudo truths we perpetuate. 'I cannot tell I lie, I chopped down the cherry tree with my little hatchet', but does the same book tell that he ordered the Army to massacre the Indians of the Hudson River Valley and up state New York because they helped the British. That was the excuse, but the real reason was to open the same area to the settlers.
What about good old Ben, 'A penny saved is a penny earned'. A wise and upstanding man; a leader of our country. He probably had more illegitimate children than any other significant historical person. Lincoln freed the slaves, but only as a last resort. We dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to end the war!
These pseudo truths are not innocuous, they allow our thinking to be warped and once implanted they are extremely difficult to correct. We made deals with ruthless dictators and warlords to prevent Communism and other pseudo threats. Our dealings with Central and South America and many other countries are a travesty. If we included our mistakes honestly in our history books, our children would not be able to finish reading them before they graduated.
Why do we continue the fantasy? We hate to lose. We don't want to look at anything unpleasant. We must maintain the appearance of perfection at all costs. We don't want to admit we made a mistake. We don't want to see ourselves, and, if we don't maintain the fantasy, we would be forced to look at ourselves, heaven forbid. Look at our entertainment. We are constantly kicking the 'bad guys' in the ass. Doesn't that make you feel good, but are we willing to look at ourselves? Many times, we are the bad guy. So we create a fantasy, so we can avoid it. We got the bad guys didn't we?
Look at our advertisements. We sell sex. We sell ego status. We sell appearances. We sell the 'Madison Avenue' image. We sell the American Dream. We sell 'things' to keep our false economy going. Greed. We have sacrificed truth and honesty to our idol money.
Our sacred cow plays a significant role in our economy. Most of our lifestyle revolves around our sacred cow. We kill people with our sacred cow, but that is the price of progress, but if people die from some other cause that is horrible. When the market raises the price of gasoline we grumble, but we pay it. But if our government raises the gasoline tax, people are killed. (Snipers shot and killed several truckers who didn't join a boycott of a proposed gasoline tax increase.)
Look at the rotten deals we have created to keep gasoline prices low to feed our sacred cows. As much as possible we have paid foreign producers as little as possible in the name of a 'free' market. Free for who? Free for our capitalists to exploit them.
Are we better off than we were last year or the year before, etc.? No. We refuse to do the simple arithmetic that would dispel our fantasy. We would rather escape than face our problems. We move to the suburbs; we watch sporting events; we watch plot less movies; we exercise our throttle and brake muscles; we use recreational drugs; we refuse to face ourselves; therefore, we cannot solve our problems.
We brainwash ourselves to avoid facing ourselves, but worst of all we brainwash our children. What kind of a future are we creating? What happens to our children when their fantasies, their religion, the American dream, the Madison Ave. image, I must win, I must look good, clash with reality. How many psychotic and depressed people have we created? How many people die disillusioned, robbed by our fantasies of the satisfaction of having lived a good life?
We spend way to much time working and commuting. We spend much of our lives in a car. To make up for the time lost with our children, we substitute things. I agree that a rich environment stimulates brain development, but tender loving care is much more vital. Things can never replace TLC. The damage done is irreversible. Our children adopt things as their goal.
What an empty life we are living. We have many things, we have more quantity but less quality. We have very little personal contact, very little dialogue, very little time to read, very little time to reflect.
People are killed to prevent abortion. We deny other people the knowledge of family planning because some won't let the old pass away, and, at the same time, many people die from AIDS and starvation.
For most people their only source of information is from the media, and the media is owned by the capitalists. How warped can we and our children become?
Talk about the ends justifying the means. Our political arena is a prime example of how warped we have become. Nixon was cheered as he left office after he resigned. And the Republican Party has been trying to make the Democrats look bad ever since. Look bad because they were unwilling to face the fact that they had made a mistake. Carter was crucified by the Republican spin machine and the media. Do you remember what he did to deserve such treatment? But worst of all, we made a hero of a drug dealer.
Only in America could this happen. Our myth trilogy distorts our thinking. More is better. Bigger is better. Money can solve all problems. If you steal on grand scale, you will become famous, you made money, you became rich. But if you steal on small scale, you go to jail. If you tell a small lie to gain political advantage, you will be shunned. But if you tell a big lie, you will be granted power and become a status symbol. If your actions injure a few, you will be persecuted; if many, you will become a saint. If you transport an ounce of marijuana you go to jail, but if you transport drugs by the planeload you become a hero.
Truth and honesty are sacrificed to our idol, money, and to keep our fantasy alive. Reagan disobeyed Congress and ordered (directly or indirectly, it doesn't matter, as Commander in Chief he was responsible) the CIA to ship drugs to his own people. But this was quickly swept under the rug, and he became known as the 'Great Communicator'. What did he communicate, the equity of our judicial system?
He should have been brought to justice, but, with the memory of Nixon still in the minds of many people, very few had the stomach to even think of such action. We were completely unwilling to face the fact that our leader had committed a horrific error in judgment, way beyond any reasonable bounds, and we created a fantasy to avoid facing the facts. And now we must keep the fantasy going because facing the facts now would be very ugly.
This fantasy has allowed capitalists to take control of our media and government and to distort the facts to the point that we are now living in fantasy land, nearly divorced from reality, 'Don't confuse me with the facts, I know what I want to believe'. A persuasive argument is not even necessary. Any statement we want to believe is all that is needed.
Deceit and deception are at an all time high. We do not allow leading statements or questions in our courts of law, why do we allow them in our politics?
We talk about truth and honesty, but are we? We talk of educating our children, but are we? We talk about saving our environment, but are we? We talk about improving our lives, but are we?
What do we talk about? We talk about how much money we can make in our 401K's. We talk about how well we can retire. We talk about cars. We talk about sports. We talk about the big house we may buy away from the slums. We talk about THINGS. We don't talk about people or ideas. Least of all we don't talk about our problems.
We don't seek knowledge for it's own sake. If it does not show a return on investment, we shun it. We can't solve our problems if we don't know, and a return on 'investment education' rarely solves a nontrivial problem.
Must we suffer a catastrophic event before we remove the veils that blind us?
We must learn the opposite of our myth trilogy -- bigger is not always better; more is not always better; and free enterprise cannot solve all problems. We must put our sacred cow, as we now know it, out to pasture. We must reduce our idol back down to what it was meant to be, a medium of exchange. We must remember at all times the difference between material and non material resources.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P16 Money is not the Measure of All Things.

In '77 a truck driver was shot and killed because he didn't join the boycott on a potential five cent increase in the federal gas tax. The above is an extreme example of what happens when our politicians try to raise the gasoline tax. We go bananas. But when OPEC increased the cost of gasoline by a dollar a gallon all most people did was bitch.
Bitching about the price of gasoline is counter productive. It does not stimulate thinking only more bitching. We need new ideas. We need to change what we are doing. We need to change our life style.
The only way to bring the price of gasoline down is by conservation because it will be at least five years before any new technology will have any impact. To bring the price down by conservation we must bring demand down below production.
Shouldn't we be conserving gasoline? Wouldn't an increase in the gasoline tax tend to promote conservation?
We continually place our bias on another person's words. We must change. We must seek the truth. We must let the old pass away. We must eliminate greed and escapism and let our other qualities take control before it is too late.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P17 911

I'll bet that the 911 commission never implicates the parties most responsible for the 911 disaster. Let me set the stage.
Every organization has its own unwritten rules, Total Petroleum (North America), my employer, was no exception. When I first became a frequent flyer, I learned that if a pilot didn't greet me in the waiting room of the company hanger, to go into the flight room so as to let them know that I was there.
The second thing I learned was that if a pilot asked a question, I was invited to join them, otherwise they had something to do and I was to return to the waiting room.
One day I followed the above procedure and when I entered the flight room one of them asked me if I had heard about an irate passenger that almost brought down a commercial airliner. The three of them had been discussing three incidents in six months where a passenger broke down a cockpit door and entered the cockpit and interfered with the operation of the plane.
The latest one required all three of the cockpit crew to subdue the man. The navigator and the copilot managed to keep the man away from the pilot until the pilot put the aircraft on autopilot, then the three of them held the man down while a flight attendant sedated him. The entire event took more than fifteen minutes and the plane lost five thousand feet of altitude before the pilot could set the auto pilot.
This event triggered the pilot's union to request the strengthening of all cockpit doors. The FAA and the airline companies said they would look into it. That conversation took place more than thirty years ago!
Also, more than twenty years ago when terrorist struck Europe several times, the European airlines adopted strict rules as to how the cockpit crew was to enter the plane and once in the cockpit they were to lock the door and not open it, until security clearance was givin after they were back on the ground. The EU urged the U.S. airlines to follow the same rules. Has anything happened?
That's why congress passed the survivors act to compensate the victims of 911, if this had come out in court, two airlines would not be in business today and the rest of the airlines would probably be still grounded, with the possibility that we would have had an economic collapse.
Why else do you think a 911 family gets more money than that of a killed or wounded vet from Iraq. The vet has little or no effect on the economy.
Don't say that money doesn't talk!

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P18 What I Consider to be the Greatest Threat to Our Country and to Peace

I'm glad I'm an American but I'm no longer proud because I'm appalled at our ignorance in seven areas. I find it incomprehensible in five areas because we are so dependent on all five; democracy, mass production, free markets, energy, and science. In two areas I can understand our ignorance, knowledge of our limits and ideologies.
How many people can name the advantages and disadvantages and or the requirements and limitations of the first five areas
I will only comment on three of these areas. First I will compare science with ideology and both with idiotology and in the process mention some of our limits and end with more on our limits.

science                   Ideology            Idiotology

Independent           Ideologue          Idiotologue

testability                a chosen truth   actively

repeatability            a belief              perverts

predictability           guides               the truth

can be disproved    action justifies    justifies action

objective                 subjective          perversion

Science is independent of the person who performs the science, independent of the institution where it is performed, and independent of the equipment used. If it can't be tested it isn't science, if it can't be repeated it is not science, if it doesn't predict it is not science. Science can always be disproved when new data is discovered, in other words science has a mechanism for change.
This means that anyone anywhere performing the same science can come to the same conclusion using their own equipment, in their place of choosing.
The next statement is very important.

Science can not answer all questions.

In fact, science has proved it cannot answer all questions.
Science does not have to completely determined to be good science, much of science is probabilistic. The accuracy of science is determined by the following, counting, measuring, comparing, observing. Counting can be completely accurate, measuring can be accurate within limits so it is less accurate than counting, comparing even less accurate, and observing the least accurate.
Some people talk about the industrial age, the jet age, the computer age, the space age, or the information age. Well, since '76 I call it the idiotologue age.
I blame the media for this new age because they have allowed advertisers, politicians, pundits, and religious groups to abuse the media. The media did not expose their lies or hold them accountable. When money is the only concern we lose everything.
An ideologue is one who holds blindly to an ideology. All people need and use ideologies, even scientists. Ideologies are the basis of our beliefs and provide answers when science can't. Ideologies guide our thoughts and actions. Our thoughts and action justifies our ideologies. Ideologies held in common help bond a community together. Remember, ideologies came first, then science.

'The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.'

Leonardo da Vinci

An idiotologue is one who intentionally perverts the truth, they lie. Idiotologues restrict their thinking and actions. Idiotologues think their thoughts justify their actions. So if you believe an idiotologue what does that make you.
More than one third of our population expect to be lied to, in fact, they don't trust people who don't lie to them. Many people think it is OK to lie provided they lie in the right way.

Does the first amendment give us the right to lie?

What a reversal, the truth becomes a lie and a lie becomes the truth and they know the truth and if you know the truth what more is there to learn.
All ideologies have downsides, one of which is the uneducated and the unthinking tend to think that their ideology is ALL they need to know, (restricted thinking). Very few ideologies have mechanism for change, most limit exposure to errors, most restrict the introduction of new ideas, etc.
When ideologies become exclusive instead of inclusive the people involved tend to become self righteous, a very dangerous condition which tends to limit thinking even further.
Restricted thinking reduces the number of ways a person can think and the result is fewer ideas for solutions to problems, sometime so severely restricted that suicide is the only solution available.
The most common ideologies: religion, politics, and economics. Most people think of religion as being good, but it has all the limitations of any ideology.
Obviously, no ideology can be science and idiotology is a lie.
We are not as rational as we would like to believe. We must know our limits and the limits of our tools.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P19 Our Limits

Our brains do not receive the sense signal that our senses do, our brains only receive a nerve impulse, an electronic signal, a bit, from our senses.
From shortly after our brains begin to form, they are receiving these signals and from then until we die, our brains assign a value to each of these signals, creating data which our brains store or reinforce data already stored. When sufficient data has been stored our brains analyze the stored data creating information, we call this process learning. As we mature our brains analyze the information creating knowledge, we call this process thinking. When people use knowledge well we call it wisdom.
Much of the data our brains create remains stored for life, some data are replaced when a significant event occurs to cause our brains to replace it, some data is very transient. The vast bulk of the bits receive by our senses is ignored otherwise our limited brain capacity would be swamped with bits and would stop functioning, a condition erroneously called 'information overload'. It is actually 'bit overload'.
Information and all higher levels can not be shared with anyone else, it is only available to the brain that creates it. All of the higher levels must be reverse processed back to data before they can be communicated to another brain, a process I call sharing.
Our brains are divided into separate areas with each area performing different tasks and most areas are in turn subdivided. All areas are interconnected in some manner, some more directly than others. Likewise our thinking is partitioned, we use different methods in different areas to think about different things, this why people can believe contradicting ideologies.
Most people can only think about five separate data elements at one time, a few can handle seven, very few more than seven. We are pattern seeking creatures and this limitation restricts the number of data elements from which to discern a pattern. In most cases this does not cause a problem. For example, the seasons to determine when to plant our crops, the habits of the animals we hunt, the fish we catch, the leaders we chose, the alliances we form, etc.
But this is a serious limitation when much more complicated patterns need to be analyzed. We compensate for this limitation by partitioning data and storing it in different areas of our brains. Then with difficulty we attempt to analyze the patterns across the areas. We have drawn the wrong conclusion in many such cases: how an economy works, global warming, systems, etc.
I think restricted thinking is the most serious threat to our country and to peace. We must have more than one way of thinking, most people do, but a large number of people don't. Most people think politically when dealing with politics, mathematically when solving math problems, etc., some people only react.
What most people don't know is that truth is limited to the system that proves it. Truth is not absolute and neither is it relative, it is limited. What is true for one system may not be true for another. For example, the sum of the angles in a triangle equals 180 degrees in plane geometry, but more than 180 degrees in spherical geometry and less than 180 degrees in hyperbolic geometry.
A simple example, start at the north pole and go strait south until you reach the equator, then turn 90 degrees following the equator until you go one quarter of the circumference, then turn 90 degrees north and you will end up at the north pole 90 degrees from the direction you started and the sum of the angles will be 270 degrees.
In the late 1940's Kurt Godel stunned the world of mathematics by proving (Godel's theorem) that every formal logical system must have at least three terms and one operation not defined by the system or else the system would be inconsistent. In other words, at some point the system would prove something like, two plus two equals some number other than four, but no one would know when such a result would happen. This means that we can not use our language, our laws, our ideologies, etc., for proving anything because all terms are defined in these systems and these systems will be contradictory at some point in their use.
The corollary, a system will be consistent, if it does have at least three terms and one operation not defined in the system, is not true.
A few years later he proved that a logically consistent system can not create all the true statements possible within the system. In other words, there are statements that are true within the system, but they can not be created by using the terms and operations of the system. This is known as the incompleteness theorem.
Uneducated people are not aware of the many other such examples in science that prove the limits of science. The number of examples and their ramifications are so numerous that I can't remember and don't know all of them, so I will not even attempt to list them and I don't know a reference that contains them.
Most people don't know their own ideologies and follow idiotologues without question. For example, Osama bin Laden. Osama violated a very important stricture in the Koran when he decided he could excommunicate another Muslim and therefore he and his followers could kill them and still go to heaven. Many other Muslims also violate this stricture.
It is this blind unquestioning by followers that is the greatest threat to the world, the followers have severely restricted their thinking. We must always question and check what our leaders say and do.
When values conflict, there is no solution. One or both sides must change. A simple example, when our children were teens the big issue was hair style and when they chose one style and it differed from ours there was an argument. The same thing happened with their choice of clothing, etc. A more complicated example would be Israel or Iraq.
If one or more people place a certain value on something and one or more people put a different value on the same thing there will be a conflict and there is no solution. Problems may have a solution, but a conflict in values never does. Conflicts in values can only be resolved if one or both sides change their beliefs, their values, their meaning, or their interpretation of the thing involved.
People don't understand that we place the value or the meaning on things, the values are chosen, the thing does not have the value they assigned to it, the value we assign is arbitrary.
But it came from GOD.
If it did then explain why there are so many different interpretations of what came from GOD. There can be only one answer, different people put a different interpretation or a different meaning or a different value on it. We placed the value on it, not GOD. We assumed that it came from GOD because that is what we 'WANT' to believe, we refuse to accept the fact that what we want to believe is chosen by us and no one else.
Until people learn the difference between bits, data, and information conflicts in values will continue to be a fact of life. We assign the value to bits creating data and only after we analyze the data is information available to the person who did the analysis.
I hope this will help you understand why we must continue to learn and to question. I hope you now understand the danger of the idiotologues. Their actions have contributed to global warming and certainly have delayed our response to it. When followed blindly they are the greatest threat to peace.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P20 War and Slavery

I read an essay that equated war with slavery and that is fine as far as it goes. It gave a very brief account of how it came about for the author.
From the time people came together as tribes, killing and war has been justified by calling anyone who wanted the same resources we wanted, enemies, enemies were not people therefore they could be killed with impunity. The victors made slaves of the vanquished, if not physical slavery, taxes were extracted from them to pay for the war they lost. As the economy of the tribe progressed to our current state, we had to create new enemies to justify our actions and the 'golden chain' supplanted physical slavery, we have to pay our debts, our possessions own us.
The essay implied we should change because of the untold misery caused by war. I do not envy any who experienced it. The stories of those who have was more than enough to convince me war should be eliminated, our goal should be peace as the essay also implied.
The essay was correct about slavery to this extent: all but the top one per cent are wage slaves. While the same people do not stay in the top one per cent, some fall out and others rise to replace them, thus keeping the American dream (lie) alive. We deceive ourselves so we can continue to live the 'lie', we continue to spin the wheel of our economy which in turn perpetuates the deception, we think we are getting 'ahead', what ever that means. Because people resist change, very few are willing to do the simple arithmetic that would dispel the deception.
Our economy is based on a lie, it must continue to grow forever, in order to grow we must consume, consume, consume. It is easier to keep our consumption increasing if we continue to increase our population, increase inflation, and increase our spending on a war machine. We must have an enemy, we have to 'get' the bad guys in order to continue the deception. While we have become more sophisticated, the veneer of civilization remains very thin. If we have an enemy we can continue to justify killing and war.
The lie was easy to keep alive as long as there was a frontier because the constraints of a finite world could be easily over looked. The Great Depression was brought about because the loss of the frontier finally caught up with our economy, easy expansion could no longer take place.
We needed a new paradigm to continue the lie. Subsidies became the new solution and Hitler provided us with an enemy. Following W.W.II Senator Joe McCarthy supplied us with a new enemy with his communist witch hunt and Eisenhower allowed the war machine to grow by not exposing the liars and tax cuts gave us more money to spend and we have followed this path ever since.
When the communists fell, tax cuts increasingly became the new rallying cry. Spend, spend, spend, consume, consume, consume, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, keep the wheel of our economy spinning, it does not matter if anything of value is created, ever onward, to where ever that is. It does not matter if our resources are dwindling, our environment is becoming polluted, tomorrow will be better, the politicians and pundits said so, how many people bother to check.
Now the constrains of a finite world are beginning to close in on us and we don't have an enemy to blame. Look in the mirror America, look in the mirror. We don't want to look in the mirror and see ourselves, we are the bad guys. 'We have met the enemy and he is us', Pogo.
Inflation is rapidly enslaving the 99% of the population. As our resources are depleted, anarchy will be the end result, desperate people do desperate things, and anarchy is certainly not peace.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P21 The Lily Pad Pond?

It goes like this: A retired fisherman bought his own private lake. One day he noticed one lily pad, he had never seen any on his lake. He didn't think much about it. The next day he saw two, the next four and so on. As his lake became covered with lily pads he became concerned, but he thought the winter frost would kill them back so he forgot about them until several days later he noticed that they covered a fourth of his lake, the next day they cover half of his lake and the next day all of his lake and a week later all the fish were dead because the dying lily pads were consuming the oxygen as they decomposed.
This story illustrates the difference between arithmetic progression and geometric progression. In less than a month his lake went from viable to dead because of the geometric progression of the lily pad growth and that is exactly what is happening to our population, our consumption, and our polution.
Arithmetic progression and geometric progression can be compared using numbers and it would look some thing like this:

Arithmetic 1 2 3 4 5 6

Geometric 1 2 4 8 16 32

Fortunately, our doubling time is measured in years not days like the lily pad story, but the time it takes to make changes is also measured in years. This means we can't wait until the doubling time equals the time to make changes because the next doubling will wipe us out before the change is completed.
If we don't wake up and recognize what is happening the end will come very quickly before we can do anything about it.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P22 'Another Reason'

Flashing red and white lights brought my thoughts back to where they should have been. A quick glance at the speedometer told me the reason for the lights. I'm a very competitive person, I hate to lose. The thought of losing money to a speeding ticket galled me. I slowed, put on the brakes, pulled on to the shoulder of the highway, and waited.
My attention turned to the actions of the officer. I looked into my mirrors, but I couldn't see him, soon a bright flashlight beam scanned the interior of my car. In this era of drugs and road rage, the reason for all the bright lights was obvious, an officer needs all the advantages possible. An officer shot during a routine traffic stop is a frequent story on the nightly news. Occasionally a driver is shot by mistake when the officer misunderstands the drivers intentions.
"May I see your drivers license." I couldn't remember which pocket, I tapped first one then another until I found my wallet. I handed him my license, he looked at it. "Were you paying attention to your driving?"
"No." I was returning from my weekly duplicate bridge game, my partner made four errors during the session and I was reviewing each hand to make sure I had not made any mistakes and I did, I made one mistake, I violated a bridge maxim, I let my partner make a mistake. I could have played my cards in a different order, if I had done so my partner would not have had the opportunity to make a mistake and we would have come in first, instead I gave him a chance to make a mistake and he did and we came in second.
"Do you have any violations on your record?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"One moment please." The officer returned to his vehicle and after short time returned, "I'm going to let you go with a warning this time, be sure to pay attention from now on." He returned my license.
"Thank you," and he left. The officer was courteous and efficient as usual, I was back on the road in less than three minutes. I was mad at myself, I had made the same mistake twice in the same night.
Where I live it would be very unlikely that an officer would misunderstand my intentions and shoot me, but that is not the point. The police are our partners, they try to protect us from ourselves. We should NEVER give them the chance to make a mistake no matter how small that chance is because the results could be a lot worse than second place, it could be disastrous. Now I have another reason to obey our laws, NEVER GIVE YOUR PARTNER A CHANCE TO MAKE A MISTAKE.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P23 Web Sites

I become very perturbed when a web site causes my old communicator to abort because it could not handle the bells, whistles, or glitz used by the web site. I have been working with computers since 1964, I wrote my first program in 1967 and I have learned that the value of data produced by a system is inversely proportional to the amount of bells, whistles, and glitz used to present the data.
The bells, whistles, and glitz should aid in the rapid, easy, and accurate conversion of data to information and if they don't do that, they are pure crap. If I wanted to work with crap I would clean out a dairy barn and put it on my garden, that way it would be of some use. I certainly don't want to work with crap on my computer, TV is about all I can stand.
When bells, whistles, and glitz are used to an extreme the output is devoid of content and has an insidious side effect, the uneducated assume the bells, whistles, and glitz are the content. Scientists have been decrying the dumbing down of America for decades and the misuse of bells, whistles, and glitz are contributing to this result. The same criticism can be made of the advertising, the marketing, the media, and the entertainment industries.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P24 The GIFT

We ignore the GIFT, the gift of the three greatest miracles because we take them for granted. We have studied the first two (physics, biology, chemistry, etc.), but not the third even though we use it every day. Let me explain.
Look around, what do you see? You see something; the sky, the earth, the trees, the bushes, the grass, the man made objects, etc. You see the greatest miracle of them all every time you open your eyes or use any of your senses, you sense SOMETHING instead of NOTHING.
Our senses respond to a very minute number of bits, we ignore the vast bulk of the material resources all around us all the time and in turn we ignore the message of the bits to which we do respond because they have always been there, they are not novel, we have sensed them before.
We take the second greatest miracle for granted also, life. How can we take life for granted. Don't you ever pinch yourself and wonder? How can you look around and not get excited and jump up and down with joy?
Non material resources, experiences, love, thoughts, ideas, solutions, knowledge, information, data, etc., are the third greatest miracle.
Let me use seven words to describe the third greatest miracle, four resources and three activities. The resources are: bit, data, information, and knowledge. The activities are: assignment, intelligence, and wisdom. I'm quite sure you are familiar with five of the words and I'm equally sure you are not familiar with two of the words.
A bit is any sign, signal, symbol, etc., the smallest quantity of a resource that can be recognized by a system, it is one unique attribute of a resource. For our eyes, one photon can be a bit, for our nose and tongue, the smallest number of molecules, for our ears, the smallest number of vibrations in the air, that will cause a nerve signal to be sent to the brain. Also, our alphabet, punctuation marks, music, art, etc., can be a bits.
Assignment places a value on one or more bits to represent something else. For example, to the letters C A T, we assign the value cat, to the letters D O G, we assign the value dog. Why do I use the word assignment instead of the word definition. Because the word assignment is a broader, more general term. Most of the data we create is non verbal and obviously I can't describe them, but I can describe some data elements that are in between verbal and non verbal. For example, the faucet, OFF, we assign the value of no water, ON, we assign the value water. The same is true of the light switch, ON, means light, OFF, means dark. When we assign a value to one or more bits we create data.
Information is created by the intelligence activity when it analyzes three or more data elements containing the minimum dimension for information, subject, verb, object equivalent data. Knowledge is created by the wisdom activity when it analyzes information.
I hope you noticed data is very distinct from information. Data is not information and information is not data. They are NOT synonyms.
An incident with a coworker convinced me the distinction between data and information was more than an intellectual conclusion. By choice, I use a red pencil to mark errors because the red contrasts very well with the black and white of the page preventing uncorrected errors. But my coworker missed my red circle around an error I found in his report and he distributed his report with a major error, much to his embarrassment. When I saw the uncorrected error, I went to him to find out why he had missed my circled mistake on his rough draft. He exclaimed, "I can't see that, I'm color blind, I can't see red! It appears black, I can't see the contrast you can!"
Obviously, his bits were not the same as mine so his data and information could never be the same as mine, but it is also true for people with normal vision. Our eyes can only detect three wavelengths of light yet our brains 'see' all colors. We can point to a color chart, the bits, and we can assign an agreed value, a name, to each color creating data, but the color on the chart is not the information the brain 'sees'. The brain creates information from data, it cannot 'see' the color on the chart, it only 'sees' the nerve signals, the data from the eyes corresponding to the intensity of the three wavelengths of light, the bits the eyes can detect. The color, the information, the brain 'sees', is not the bits the eyes saw. The color, the information, my brain 'sees', is not the same as the color your brain 'sees'.
If you doubt this, ask anyone who has replaced a fender on a car how many people agree that it matches or watch two women trying to match the color of a skirt and blouse.
Oh, how much we take for granted.
A brain can choose one or more bits and assign a value based on experience and create data. If the same brain has an intelligence activity it can create information from the data and if it has a wisdom activity as well, it can create knowledge from the information, KNOWLEDGE of the GIFT of the three greatest miracles.
I have a conjecture as to why we empathize with anyone facing a life threatening event. First, we don't want it to happen to us and second, we would want someone to help us, but neither is the main point. The main point is we are subconsciously aware of the GIFT and we don't want anyone to lose the GIFT.
A man once said, 'If the will to live was not innate it would be the worst of all possible conclusions'. I hope you will agree with me that because of the GIFT it should be replaced with, 'If the will to live was not innate, it would be the best of all possible conclusions.'
Now do you realize what we have and why life and living systems were created? Only a living system with the assignment, intelligence, and wisdom activities can KNOW.
We participate in the GIFT of the three greatest miracles, we are SOMETHING not nothing, we are ALIVE, and our brains can choose one or more bits, assign a value based on experience, can analyze data,(subject verb object equivalent data, the minimum dimensions of information) and create information, can analyze the information and create KNOWLEDGE, knowledge of the GIFT, knowledge of the three greatest miracles.
Now you are consciously aware of the GIFT of the three greatest miracles, now you are aware of the power we have, use it wisely.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P25 Is Starvation in Our Future

How long does it take to gain consensus and mobilize a nation, a world?
If the man in the street waits until the meteor can be seen instead of listening to the astronomers it would be to late to do any thing.
When I first went hunting and fishing, my brother and I would be alone in the forest or the river. Later I could see another person with every step I took. I stopped hunting and fishing more than thirty years ago because there were so many people in my favorite spots. My father and grand father had made the same complaint, now I understand.
Many places where we hiked and camped are now covered with houses. If the DNR didn't plant fish there would be very few fish in many rivers and lakes. We have more than enough deer because they are living in town where they can't be hunted and are eating flower beds and corn from surrounding farm fields.
While we decry the loss of jobs, the 'free' market may be doing us a favor. The single most important factor in reducing population is the increase in the status of women. As our jobs go over seas, more women will be working that ever before outside of the home. As more women work there will be a tendency for them to have more buying power which in turn will increase their status. With an increase in status women tend to have fewer children.
We made some progress when we started to recycle and made our cars more efficient. The US population growth is below even the most optimist projection of the sixties. We have removed lead from paint and gasoline. The ozone hole is shrinking. The Alaskan salmon has made a come back, sadly the salon are in trouble again.
Since 1980 we have retrogressed and my calculations indicate that we are in trouble, if not this coming sun spot maximum what will happen at the next one eleven years later when our population will be over or approaching 20 billion.
I originally made my calculations because I couldn't believe the numbers that were put forth at the time, there was no agreement. My calculations are simple, it's the assumptions that are difficult. I took the arable land from the encyclopedia multiplied by the corn yield per acre and by the kcalories per bushel and divided by 2000 kcalories per person to find the number of people that could be fed (2200 for men 1800 for women). At that time my estimate was 22 billion people eating corn three meals a day. That's field corn not sweet corn.
Why corn, because it yields the highest calories per acre except for rice and this assumes we can supply enough water to grow the corn. Rice will be grown where there is plenty of water and the other cereal crops will be grown where there is not enough water for corn. All cattle would be gone and most of the hogs, maybe a few chickens, goats, and sheep would still be left. We would not be able spare any grain or water for cattle.
Now this sounds like a grossly simplified estimate, but when I refined it for different crops, growing season, water, fertilizer use, etc., the number didn't change very much. The amount of arable land and yield per acre made the most significant changes, both of which cannot change very much and we are losing land every day to our cars, homes, etc. Except for rice all other crops and animals decreased the number of people that could be fed. We don't have much to work with, plus the food fish population is in dire straits, only three species are holding their own.
I have seen sleepy towns like Lansing and Colorado Spring grow to over 300,000. I have watched the farm land around Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles disappear, I have flown over them many times. The wilderness shore line of Michigan's lower peninsula is almost gone. The cherry orchards of Traverse City have been relocated to make room for houses, etc.
I have seen the population of our country grow from 151 million in 1950 to over 330 million in 2000 and the world population grow from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 4 billion in 1980 to 5.5 in 2000 to and 6.6 in the fall of 2003.
So I ask, how can I be optimistic? People are not paying attention to what is happening to our environment. The media and the politicians are in never never land. Even the scientific community is low keyed.
So what can I do? I'm attacking what I think is the largest impediment to change, that is, our false assumption that we are the chosen ones, we don't have to change, the world was created for us, the world has to change for us. This false assumption creates an attitude that permeates all our thinking and activity. Look at what we are doing, we are behaving as if tomorrow will be the same as today, it's business as usual.
Well, wake up people, the world is changing and it is changing faster than most predictions. The Yellow and Rio Grande rivers have stop flowing in some parts for some period of time. A quarter of the arctic ice sheet has melted. The ice shelves around Antarctica are disappearing. Glaciers around the world are disappearing. The air and ocean temperatures are rising. So is the carbon dioxide level of each. Water tables are dropping and the battle over water rights is getting more heated, etc.
If we have a major drought or some other natural disaster, how many people do you think will be coming across our borders. The disaster doesn't have to occur in our country, we live in a global community. Not to help our neighbors would invite world wide epidemics. We must help our neighbors so we will not be flooded with people we can't feed.
We will need all the oil and natural gas we have to make fertilizer, pump water, and transport our food. We must slow down the world population growth and hydrocarbon consumption so as to put off the day of reckoning as far into the future as we can, so our technology can catch up with our population.
If we don't do it soon, it will be to late, the population meteor will hit us.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P26 The Rules of the Biosphere

1. Survive if you can.
2. Find a mate if you can.
3. Have children if you can.
4. Raise them if you can.
5. Help them survive, mate, have children if you can.
6. Help your neighbor, city, state, etc., if you can.
7. Use all the data, information, knowledge, that is available.

Don't get mad, get even. A very stupid statement, it promotes conflict.
Don't get mad and don't get even.
First, most people do not transgress against another intentionally, it is usually a mistake. Tactfully point out their mistake, no one will change their behavior unless they realize their error and some people need a lot of help.
Second, if the transgression was intentional, remember, given time, all heels will be wounded and the best way to get even is to lead a happy life, because the transgressor will become frustrated when their transgression did not have the effect they desired. If you get mad or try to get even, you are letting some one else control your behavior, why are you giving up what little control you have over your own destiny?
Speed kills. Another stupid statement. What about our rotational motion of about 1,000 mph and our motion in orbit of about 20,000 mph, both are very large compared to our usual speed in a vehicle, if speed kills why are we still alive. Sudden stops kills, so slow down so you can avoid sudden stops.
Ignorance is bliss. No, ignorance of our ignorance is bliss. If people know they are ignorant they are seldom happy.
Rules are made to be broken. No, they are not. Rules, laws, etc. are made to be guides to quick, efficient, and effective modes of action. They should only be broken when there is a very good reason to break them. If they are inappropriate, out of date, or wrong lets dact them.
Laws do not maintain order, attitudes do. Laws only prevent excessive punishment. To enforce laws by punishment is just socially acceptable revenge. Order is maintained by individual respect for the rights, privileges, and freedoms, written or unwritten, of others. We can be free or equal only before the law that defines free or equal.
The structure of economic and political systems have bearing on their success, but the attitude of the people toward the systems will make them work or destroy them.
The difficulty with all political-economic systems is they require people to behave in an idealistic manner, one that is contrary to our nature, the systems demand that we live as a group when the biosphere demands survival of the individual.
To persuade, speak of interest not reason.
A busy person has few idle visitors.
Life with fools consists of drinking and gambling, life with the wise consists of thinking and reflecting.
Reading makes a full person, meditation a profound person, discourse a clear person.
The wise and the brave dare to admit a mistake.
A wise person will desire no more than they may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
I have never found a good definition of progress. My own observation is that progress is perverted into 'being fashionable'.
Every person is like an entertainer, they must play to the audience that will listen to them.
I preach what my audience is willing to hear.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P27 Evolution

Different individuals within the same species differ from one another in physiology, morphology,
and behavior. The principle of variation.
The differences are in some way heritable, so that on the average the offspring resemble parents
more than others of the same species. The principle of heredity.
Different variants leave different numbers of off spring immediately or in later generations. The
principle of natural selection.
Differences that favor survival in competition with other organisms and in face of environment stress
tend to increase reproductive success and so tend to be preserved. The principle of adaptation.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P28 People

Most people are like mirrors, they reflect current problems. Some people are like windows, they allow the light to shine on current problems. The purpose of education is to change people from mirrors to windows so more light will be shed on current problems.
Another goal of education is to make our minds a pleasant place to spend our idle time.
Education is the sum total of our experiences, school is formalized experience.
Learning versus brainwashing
Training A system cannot learn if it cannot analyze and cannot change its own reference points.
Don't waste time learning facts (data), learn to understand, to think as rationally as is possible, to use the tools available, and where facts (data) can be found. Education will not solve today's problems unless we stop ignoring the tools, data, information, and knowledge we have available to solve them right now.
We learn from the ancients what is best, we learn from the moderns what is fittest.
We learn by constant repetition over a life time, is it any wonder then why it takes a generation to correct a fallacy. Each generation must test the conclusions of the past and keep only the conclusions that pass the test. I hope the test is rational and the conclusions kept are not contrary to our nature. To make the test we must have at least one reference point, a yard stick, and we must remember that we can never be completely sure of the measurement or the yard stick because the reference point, the yard stick, may change.
Because an opinion or statement has been made, this is the way I feel or think about a subject, does not make the opinion or statement true or false because every person is an individual system and each will have a different reference point. To accept another's opinion or statement without question is like standing on quick sand. Every receiver must determined the validity of every message received, this responsibility can not be abdicated and here we have a conundrum. How can we ever know the truth when everything is seen from a different perspective by each individual?
He knows the book but he has no common sense. Usually made by an uneducated person. If the book is wrong lets rewrite the book or replace the saying with the French proverb, that man knows everything and understands nothing.
The man in the street says he needs practical experience, he followed the book and it didn't work. If the book, law, theory, etc. does not work lets dact them. Man made laws are not inviolate.
I wonder how many people realize how many theories Einstein discarded. He still was not presumptuous to say his final theory was correct, only that it fit the data available. Einstein is not great because his theories are correct, but because of the method he used to create his theories, a mathematical approach to physics. His theories were not sacrosanct, when they did not fit the data, he threw them out. Only late in his career did his ego over rule his previous method.
What time is it? There can never be a time that is, only a time that was or is to be, for every instant time is moving. We can only say approximately what time it was or is to be and then only in terms of some other relationship.
What day is this? Generally, we include the month and year as well as the day. The day and month is determined from some arbitrary point on the ecliptic. The year is another matter. We commonly use the birth of Christ to count forward and back, but what year was that?
This example shows that we do not have a preferred coordinate system available to us.
The faults we criticize most severely in others are our own. When we hate other people it is because we see in them a part of ourselves that we cannot accept.
Why is an emotional reaction mistaken for seriousness? If we are serious we will be less emotional and more rational.
Why is a smiling person not taken seriously? After all who was more serious than the melodrama villain and they were always smiling.
Youth is cynical because they have clear cut solutions to clear cut problems. They have not observed long enough to know that there are no clear cut problems.
It does not matter nothing can be done. Have you tried?
I am what I am, who could I be but me. I should grow and change, oh, what a shame to stay the same. To stay the same is to waste a brain.
Me sure knows what to tell myself, what I want to hear.
From the dust and dirt our heroes rise, from where they have always been, before our eyes.
Are the blind so blind, they can see as well in front as behind.
Our imagination compensates for what we are not and what we would like to be. Humor allows us to tolerate what we are.
The only exercise you get is running down my friends, dodging work, and pushing your luck.
There are two jobs which only amateurs fill, parenthood and citizenship.
When the freedom from responsibility was the freedom desired most, all freedom was lost, Edith Hamilton, a Greek historian, on the decline of Athens.
We can have as much freedom as we are responsible for.
Violence, aggression, being a bully are signs of weakness, real strength can afford the luxury of gentleness.
Languages cannot be logically consistent because all words are defined. According to Geodel's theorem if a system does not contain at least three undefined terms and one undefined operation it will not be logically consistent. We have abstract words, but no undefined words; therefore our language cannot be logically consistent.
We are like a computer, we were programmed before birth by natural selection, heredity. This program is modified by the environment and our free will. Our genes are our undefined terms and their mode of operation is our undefined operation, but we cannot communicate at this level. Will we ever have a logically consistent communication system? Is there any way out of this morass?
People are not alike, they have the same desires and frustrations but differ in the intensity of the desire or frustration, in the manner in which they choose to satisfy these desires and eliminate these frustrations, the degree of success, and which ones have priority.
To understand people, remember that every living species survives only if the individual survives. Only by our power of reason do we realize by sacrificing a few, many may survive.
We think of ourselves as immortal, God like, can do no wrong, independent, free, but our life can only exist within very narrow bounds, dependent upon many things, living and non living. In order to live we must kill, destroy, change, and grow. We must evaluate our laws, mores, and morals in this light, otherwise we are hypocrites, contradicting our very nature and life.
We have prevented natural selection from eliminating undesirable traits from our gene pool by medicine, education, sanitation, etc., but the aggressiveness, quick to anger, etc., that brought us from the apes to civilization may return us. Those traits were necessary in a violent environment, but will destroy us in a peaceful one.
We have the same desires and frustration as the other animals. We are more adaptable to our environment and can control our environment more that the other animals, but we are still animals, by our own definition; therefore we must obey the same laws and rules as the other animals.
The number of all animals is controlled by the food available and by predators. Why do we deny our animal existence, why is it a major disaster when people starve, drown in a flood, die in a storm, etc., because it could happen to us and we don't want it to happen to us and it reminds us that we are not privileged.
Dying is not peaceful, the struggle to survive is a conflict, the struggle may not be visible, but it is always present.
We live by love, we survive by activity, how peaceful that activity will be is our choice.
Death, the inanimate, the non living, is the rule, life is the exception. People expect to much out of life and they don't even know what they expect; therefore, they don't know when they are happy until they loose it.
Death is necessary for evolution to proceed, with death evolution can change a population in a few generations. Without death many generations would be needed before a change in the population average would be come significant.
Peace and happiness is having our own way; therefore to have peace among two or more people, our own way must be modified. Then peace becomes a subjective point between no activity, death, and much activity, violence.
Even though life survives by violence, it must also have tender loving care, especially from birth to adult. Without TLC the full potential will not develop, maybe this is the counter balance to the violent world.
I use the word violent, when I should probably use active. All systems must be active, but the degree of activity is determined by the individual. The activity of one system may interfere with the activity of another system, the systems are in conflict, but the action can be as peaceful as possible or as violent as possible, the choice is ours.
The five stages of grief are really the five stages in human reaction to any loss, the degree of reaction is proportional to the severity of the loss. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P29 People are Unique.

Physical.

The hand - opposed thumb, can grip. fingers with feelings, the sense of touch.

The heal, hips, and ankle - lifting. biped - the most efficient animal to carry heavy loads over rough terrain.

Physiological.

Symbolism - language.

Communication - verbal and nonverbal.
Rationale - learning, adapting behavior.
Social - integration and organization.
Self awareness - of ourselves and our actions.
Sharing - we can share non material resources. Aware of the other.
Concern for the other - even our prey, we are the only animal to do so.
Caring - without concern caring would not be possible, we care for ourselves, family, friends, neighbors, etc., in 
             effect we are preserving our genes and our knowledge.

Men are more rational than women, men rationalize their feelings more often than women and women are less rational than men, women cannot rationalize the illogical acts of men.
I'm not everybody because, obviously, I'm only one person. I'm not anybody because I've overheard people say, "I'm glad I'm not like him," so I must be different. I'm not nobody because I am here and because you showed respect by your applause (or by being silent or by turning to see who I was or ...), so I must be somebody. Not someone who thinks they are better than you, not that kind of 'somebody', not a VIP or someone who throws their weight around or demands special privileges, but somebody, a person who is recognized as a unique individual by others.
By showing respect for another, in any manner, you are showing respect for yourself, a nobody does not show respect for anyone, not even themselves; therefore you are somebody, too!

Retun to Comments Table of content

A08P30 Propaganda

If you can not recognize propaganda you will be a victim of it. A dictionary definition is 2. the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause or a person. 3. ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause.
I left out the first definition because we seldom use it , you can look it up. The following is a consolidation from an encyclopedia, a communication education conference, and several books and articles.

The tools of a propagandist are 1. name calling, 2. glittering generalities, 3. Name dropping, 4. testimonial, 5. plain folks, 6 card stacking, 7. bandwagon.

Name calling

People summarize and store whole areas of their experience under labels in separate compartments. Our brains do this to save time. When the labels are heard or read our brains focus on the content of that compartment. Each compartment has its own logic and it may be completely contradictory to the logic of another compartment. For example, in the compartment, 'murder', most people would not kill another person, but under the compartment 'defense of our country', most people are willing to kill or at least condone it. Unless we consciously over ride the logic of the compartment associated with the label we will react as the propagandist wants. Labels such as, 'Commie', 'Red', 'Hippie', 'Red-neck', 'liberal', etc.

Glittering generalities

This is similar to name calling except an abstract, ambiguous, or vague word replaces the label with the intend to get the listener to agree with the propagandist. Such words as, freedom, defense, free markets, democratic, American, Christian, efficient, friend, etc. Such words have many definitions and you are lead to believe that propagandist's definition is the same as yours. Obviously, the propagandist may have a completely different definition than you do.

Name dropping

The propagandist will use the name of a person or the name of their work, or the name of an organization or the name of their work and never say that the person or the organization or their work supports the propagandist's point of view. By simply using the name he hopes you will infer that they do. Many time those named have a completely opposing view, but you may not remember that , but you may remember that you view the named favorably. If that is the case the propagandist wins and you lose.

Testimonial

This is similar to card stacking but with an even smaller data set, only one or two people or events, three at the most. The implication is that the testimonial is a true picture of the whole, no contradicting stories are given.

Plain folks

We are more willing to accept the word of a person who seems to be very much like ourselves, so the propagandist will do things to make himself appear to be one of us. A liar can't be one of us.

Card stacking

Or data mining or cherry picking or any name you would like to use, is when the propagandist presents only the data that supports his position, again it is presented as a true picture of the whole. A very sophisticated propagandist will include a small amount of adverse data to make the data presented appear unbiased.

Bandwagon

The propagandist is trying to get you to follow the herd which we naturally tend to do. The propagandist will say that many people or everyone agrees with him. Children learn this technique when very young, 'But, mom everyone is doing it.'
It should be obvious that almost all advertisement, most political views, and most economic views are propaganda.
Since '78 the amount of propaganda has more than doubled and the level of sophistication increased. Sophisticated propaganda is very difficult to detect, the lies and distortions will be interspersed with true statements. Unless you have a very good background or take the time to check you can very easily be deceived.
More than a third of our population had been duped. To make matters worse the media has done a very poor job of protecting the public and many times they have engaged in propaganda. A sad state of affairs.

Retun to Comments Table of content