My Second-Best Tip From Driving, Ever!

When I lived in Tucson, AZ, I drove taxis, town cars, and limos, among other jobs. Later I owned my own landscape design/install company. The limo company I worked for did "kidnappings", and pub crawls along with regular business. One day I got a call to do a birthday party pub crawl. I prepared myself for the worst.

It was four couples. I picked up the birthday guy and his wife first. They are very nice people, and I feel somewhat relieved. We collect the others, and off we go. Well, they all had a hoot and holler of a good time, and all of them get smashed over the evening. Then it's time to go home, as it's clear that capacity has been reached, and passing out is the next stage. So I drop them off a couple at a time and arrive at the birthday guy's home.

Well, I have to help his wife walk him to the door. Okay, now you have to imagine a really really good actor doing a rubber person who can't pronounce even "a" or "I" without seriously slurring it, never mind more complex words......I wish I could do that typographically, but this is essentially what he said: "I had a great time, and you are a great driver! Thanks for keeping us safe! And helping me in...." You don't know this, but in the Summer I'm the captain of a salmon trawler in the Bering Sea. Now, next season, I'm going to come home with some big fish. I'm going to bring you a salmon". I again wish I could provide an imitation. The way he said "salmon" was priceless.

His wife nodded and said he's drunk, and I said "Thank you, that's excellent!" and left to turn in the car, which was surprisingly clean and gloriously free of human fluids. Months pass. I don't remember, but four or six at least. One day I answer the phone. I hear "Is this Anton?" I said "Yes, I'm Anton". He said "Hi! I'm John B.--you took me on a pub crawl with my wife and friends for my birthday. C'mon over--I've got your fish!" And damn if he didn't. So I shared it with some neighbors, and it was one of the best fish I'd ever had. And (by far) the second-best tip I ever got driving! It's a story I will never forget!

Now What? How Do We Heal?

I have done what I can in my life to support my family, friends, and neighbors, in spirit and materially. I love this country and its high ideals as expanded from the Constitution which contextually only considered rich white men to be "We the People". We've come a long way since then, and, on paper, at least, women and people of color are now included in that term where at its writing they weren't for the most part.

But we have been assaulted by a PoSter boy for making our country great "Again". Could it be, as it seems from his brutish exceptionalism, racism, and misogyny, that what "Again" means is code for eliminating the hard-won rights of women and those of color, even those who have made significant economic, scientific, and Artistic contributions to our wellbeing and progress? The small-mindedness and obvious prejudices or our PoSerdent would indicate just that.

The seriously tragic part about that is that he's become a PoSter boy for the legitimization and normalization of a sweeping movement of infantilism in our body politic. The denial of the legitimacy of a legally proctored election has become a movement of sedition even within our own Congress! How do we now heal ourselves, if we can, from the wounds inflicted by this egomaniacal slasher, his cadre, and his suicidal cult?

The importance of babies.

I got an email from an acquaintance who is a professor and a midwife. I wondered in passing about the wisdom of bringing children into the world at this time. She wrote a very long piece about how she finds her work important and satisfying. She said something about babies being the most important thing in the world. This is part of what I wrote back: 

I'm with Robert Heinlein, one of my favorite authors, who wrote women as strong and intelligent characters in his stories and novels. He said that "Any morality not based on 'Women and Children First' is a false morality". His idea of morality is rooted in the principle of survival, from that of the individual and inclusive of all the human race. In fact, on reflection, it's possible to derive every useful and civilizing principle from that one dictum. This is but one idea that enamored me of his literary output, starting with one of his novels for juveniles, which I received a bit earlier than one might expect, but I was an avid reader, somewhat advanced for my age. Interestingly, the first two books my dad gave me to read, also before an age one might expect to read those, were "1984" and "Brave New World". Those three set me on some interesting courses of inquiry. 

Another title was one I came across in high school, called "The Phenomenon of Man". Immediately on seeing that title, my life changed, as it occurred to me that if humankind is a phenomenon, then so was I, and I was a worthy object of impartial study by myself of myself. A remarkable incident not soon after certified for me that any thought one is aware of in a pattern called "self" is artificial and an ad hoc phenomenon relative to geography and levels of culture. It was the most freeing and disturbing thing ever to rudely and involuntarily discover and conclude. Especially for a 17yo who had no support system for such a revelation, given my Catholic background and the less-than-introspective nature of American society even in such a forward-looking region as the Bay Area. It took me a long time, maybe ten years or more to integrate that. In the meantime, I had to function. That's another story. At least whatever it was that happened to me sharpened my ability to do well at school, but it also made me not give a wit. So some of my teachers had that talk with me about why my IQ and percentile scores were so high and why I was nearly failing in anything other than what I enjoyed doing. 

All that, I guess, is a very long way of saying that babies are likely the most important thing we have. Sadly, and the part I'm concerned about, is that while they are bundles of astounding and unimagined potential, they are thrust, in the vast majority of instances, into situations that they will find crippling emotionally and intellectually. This happens as they are forced to adopt beliefs and attitudes they didn't come with and which are tragically required for their survival in a family and society. At least the overall picture for that is somewhat improving worldwide, though we may yet end up in a major Dark Age due to the accumulated trauma manifesting as conservatism, primarily. Not that liberalism doesn't have some drawbacks, but overall, it's far safer, as it tends to be more inclusive, getting back to the survival idea relative to morality.

There was a Hungarian who wrote a book on how to raise genius children. He married and raised genius children. I think his was a good start, but he didn't cover all the bases. There are at least eleven discernable intelligences. A true genius is a polymath in several of those. To be a genius in one is still impressive, but without the buttressing or other intelligences, it can be dangerous and prone to collapse or tipping over.

The support doesn't have to be all internal. I give you as a consideration to support that idea, the movie called "Goodwill Hunting". The Robin Williams and Mini Driver characters were the protagonist's salvation, as they added perspective and nutrition he couldn't garner on his own. But generally speaking, geniuses are lonely people, even sometimes in a crowd of friends. This is, I think, particularly true of those who have what might be called transcendent or enlightened states of awareness. Hence, yet another title, "The Path of the Lonely Ones". They may be isolated, but back to Heinlein, he wrote a few paragraphs on the subject of human thinking ability which I personally found profoundly humbling, and made me much more respectful of my genius betters.

But back to babies: When we see as a society that they have astounding potential in so many ways, and that at last becomes the common knowledge of the stomach of society instead of fear, loathing, and hoarding, then we may at some time in the future enter an actual Golden Age. We will then have the way cleared to build upon a foundation that we now continuously bombard with the fears and prejudices of babies who grew up untrained and inexperienced in the ways of love, inclusiveness, affection, curiosity, and other things we may not yet know exist as our ability.

But as it is at the moment, regardless of our great strides forward, I predict that the historians of future days will look back at this time as one of astounding barbarism relative to what we could have had, given our resources and insights. We are so busy with trying to survive emotionally and economically that we have gone eccentric from our centers, continuously whipped and frothed by psychotic commercialism and sociopathic politics. And the churches, the alleged bastions of morality and higher answers all have failed in particular and in general, some to the point that their loyal members hold on to flotsam and jetsam as if they were solid ground. Meanwhile, the sharks and the cold that are their actual and needful points of attention go unnoticed, perhaps hidden by the warmth of their fellowship while hanging on to the same hatch cover bobbing in the waves.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, then we need a large group to come through as babies who can withstand the perturbations of the inculcations inevitably handed out by family tradition, churches, political parties, and even educational systems for the most part. We can look outward now and see that, like at night and in season in certain areas, there are flashes of wonder, insight, and inspiration like fireflies in the dusk we shadow around in. Those are the sparks that need to be fueled into the kind of campfires that we used to gather around to commune and protect ourselves from the unknown.

Except the biggest unknown is still ourselves, inside, alone and together. It's not the frontier, yet, anyway, of Kirk, Spock, Janeway, and Piccard. The place where no one has gone before, at least in significant and coherent numbers, is inner space, the depths of the human mindsoul. Individuals have thrown torches into those goldmines so we might at least see that they are there as passages to great open fields and forests fertile with Newnes. Many have ventured in and whispered out promises. We need to take courage and each other in hand and go together into Wonder. I'm guessing that the way is fraught with danger and even disaster. But it's what we're here for. We owe it to the babies. 

Our Flag

You know what? I'm kind of fed up with some people using our flag as a symbol of their exceptionalism, as if flying it or pasting it on their Facebook picture made them "special" or "real" Americans. That's the same flag which the people you don't like, or even hate, happen to pledge allegiance to. It's kind of like protesting too much. Or are y'all forgetting that all this is "U.S."? It's OUR flag, together, and you're not going to appropriate it for your particular view as if the rest of us aren't patriots.

Reply to "Our Military Are Saints: Go to the Middle East

What I used as a headline there was a reply to a comment I made to a woman's post exemplifying a few ways common usage could be adjusted to more clearly ascribe responsibility for rape. It included such things as changing "She was raped" to "He raped her", "Protect your daughter" to "Educate your son" and "We can't change society" to "We will fight for our safety until we get it."

My comment was "We have a serious problem with male culture in our society, regardless of other countries or cultures we may wish to "they do it too!" excuse ourselves by. Male culture in this country, however it might be in others, is a damaged, battered, crippled thing, and it's a massive ego problem on steroids, despite a few bright spots. How can it be otherwise, given the general tone of what we expect males to be like, and feel like? Look at so many of the utterly wrecked psyches in our government, regardless of Party. Look at the ignorance of simple facts, never mind humanistic values. It's been said that the growth of civilization is a battle against testosterone. But it's not that simple. We here have NO useful way of initiating males into mature use of force or power. We have no applicable rites of passage for young men, unless we go to the sad possibilities of "his first car" or "first score". How sad. And such things as our wild west gun culture and muscle car thing parlayed into militarism doesn't help. It's too bad, because had it been otherwise, the efforts we have put into defense and fear could have yielded a paradise on Earth for us and others many times over. There are a number of books which I would recommend, or make, everyone read if I was emperor of the world. Thank goodness I'm not--it's just a fantasy. But most of those books are on the ways of mental clarity in perception and cognition. The one book I'd recommend in this matter is Naomi Wolf's "Vagina: A New Biography". We might better ourselves overall if both men and women read it."

Then came a comment: Anton Z Nemeth go to the middle east.our men are saints. 

So I said:

Yes. I know. I made it a policy to hire Vets when I owned a business in Tucson, AZ. That was the Nam era. I did that after two physicals and 3 attempts to join one of the branches failed, so hey, I did the next best thing, in honor of those who did serve when I couldn't. I've seen many documentaries about how our men and women there have done good, and even great good in some cases. And just recently I just heard happy news about a translator who saved 5 American lives who gained his American citizenship. That's all great stuff.

More recently, in our area, I had a Vet break down in my car about things he did in Fallujah. He was in really bad shape. I listened and consoled him for over half an hour, till he got it back together. There were tear stains on my car seat when he got out. I have also done counseling in the past. Some of it was for Vets. So you might imagine that I have heard some stories? PTSD is rampant, and our military people suicide at about twice the rate of combat deaths. That is utterly tragic. And we hear about our women in the military being raped by our own. So while I have great respect and compassion for those who serve, now am glad I didn't. While we can claim, often legitimately, some military glory, there are accompanying horrors as well. It's what happens in war. And apparently, in the relative peace of our own land. I have relatives who lived through war zones in Europe as well. I have very great reasons to be grateful for our American military. But I'm also not blind to the humanity of men under stress.

And it's difficult to paint our military with the broad brush of sainthood, unless you are being sarcastic, Levi, or Jason. I don't think you are, especially if you have served and are talking about your brothers, and, I hope, your sisters in the service. You, personally, may indeed be saints, and is why you see the military made up of them. And for sure there must be many, or most, I don't doubt. We're just talking numbers here. The rape of American servicewomen by their own is and has been a rampant problem. I'm including one article, but you can find any number of articles from both military and civilian sources on the issue. If the perps who did this stuff to our women--and men, btw--are considered "saints", well, we just might have a moral and a morale problem to deal with. In the meantime, I am sure, also from the stories I was privileged to hear, that our servicemen are honorable and in some cases heroic. There is plenty of testament to that. Thanks for your comments.

https://www.nytimes.com/.../us/military-sexual-assault.html

Damn That Welfare Fraud!

 Did you know that no matter what we do, those people who are committing welfare fraud are going to be there pretty much no matter what we do? Should we try to educate or inspire them? Yes, of course. Or if there are useful sanctions that would stimulate them to not be leeches, then we could do that, too, provided we don't harm others in the process. Would it take taxes to support such programs? I'm guessing "yes". Did you know that just over 10% of social safety net payments are either improper or to fraudulent recipients? Did you know that as well there are fraudulent payments to schools and police departments? A friend of mine exposed such a scheme at a high school he taught at in a CA city and he and his family were targeted for physical harm, including assault and attempted murder. He and his wife discovered that up to 22 police "substations" were merely retired officers getting checks as if they were actual brick and mortar LE locations.

And what about the astounding tax breaks that corporations and some individuals get, or all that untaxed money overseas? Or the advantageous tax rates on investments as distinct from labor? How's that for not getting up off your ass and earning a living when you make your money on paper? So do you have a legit gripe? Yes, of course you do, as do we all.

But somehow, it seems to always come down on a class of people because of inflated perceptions of how much they are a part of the problem. You know, I'm sure, unless you are rather young, of the Reagan era witch-hunt, in part legitimate, fro "welfare queens". Well, what if the *real* welfare queens are those who avoid enough taxes or make enough money through leveraged pricing structures* to pay for several entire social safety nets? Why are we not going after them? Could it be, do you think, because they have the money by those and other means to have a voice and legal protection? Or better, could it be that they have money to pay for influence to have more laws passed in their favor?

So you see, Josh, I do agree with you. But I also see that the usual focus of such outrage as you seem to have is way too narrowly focused on a comparatively insignificant subset of those defrauding our government, i.e., ultimately, you and me. In the meantime, we can also remember that indications are that money given in SNAP programs generates $3 for every $1 "handed out". Also, it's been demonstrated that such programs indeed help some not only survive, but to actually get out of poverty. Now, isn't that an advantage? So while some of that money is obtained fraudulently, in the wash, it's a net financial advantage.

So if some bunch of damaged goods loafers are where you want to put your attention and energy, I guess that's a small help. But the big fish of fraud are ultimately elsewhere, and they have schools of barracuda lawyers to protect them while they sharpen their teeth to the point that you perhaps don't feel that they are the ones actually biting you. And they can make you look at their chum while sneaking up behind you.

Can we be self-critical?

Our out of self-control media is why self-skepticism is more than ever critical, as is some working understanding of epistemology. One has to A) know that they don't know, and B) know with their gut that what they think is content and training, not-self. There are simple, to protracted, thought experiments that lead to the latter understanding if one doesn't have it already through experience. If we define thinking, as Heinlein wrote in a short tract* I often re-post, as "integrating data and arriving at correct answers" we have to remember that that data needs to be as complete and accurate as possible. What used to be reportage and journalism has, at least in our society, become opining and emotionalizing to too far an extent. It seems that our adoration of self generated opinions has become far more valuable to us than dealing with reportage and facts as best we can gather them.

We have enshrined personal views as the highest value over the fields of facts and data. Like many do with the Bible, not reading and it all and being selective, we do that as well with the real world and arrive at an equally distorted view of the whole. Data and context are sacrificed for slant and emotional impact. If we don't engage humanity's greatest gift, the ability to self-observe, it's way too easy to be swayed by the riptides of suggestion. We tend most to abandon long term and worldwide system views, as well as not accounting for our own nature and that, in general, of being human rather than political.

Rant for religious (and other) sanity.

If some, or many, are *still* interested in a "religion" because of the innate need we have for explanations and consolation about the unknown, how about getting real and doing some actual research as to the origins and morphings of christianism and the phenomenology of religion as such? There are, you know, functional transformative protocols based on the actual nature of human awareness or Awareness as such. And there are very good arguments and possible histories that would make the original teachings of a Jesus, Jeheshua, or Isa based on those, to begin with, including words attributed to him in that beleaguered and bastardized collection of books called the Bible. It is highly probable that it is those teachings that have been adulterated into the sad multiplicity of christianisms we are forced to deal with today.

The problem, of course, is emotional addiction to a "way" which was for most deeply inculcated into unconscious conformity. There are also ways to deal with that. This is why we are coming to see that merely continuing in one's way of upbringing is an abdication of one's actual heritage as a human. Our work, past the touted "age of reason" is to grow up, wake up, and clean up. But what happens is that we are strongly encouraged and even coerced by several levels of pressure to continue in our trained ways of believing, without examining them. And so we have society behaving like an auto-immune disease, and some asking for forced exterior control. That has never worked and always ends in disaster. We will either mature as a Race, or perish with all the current systems of life on Earth.

|At the very least, if one is to keep their religion, do yourself the favor of reading two books which will aid in some perspective in the matter. One is an application of the discipline of General Semantics to religious thought. It is a somewhat contemporary book by Gina Cerminara and is often used in comparative religion courses. It is called by the awkward and misleading title of "Insights for the Age of Aquarius: a handbook for religious sanity". The other is more thorough look at our human nature than most of us have derived from simply getting older as we do. It is Ken Wilber's "A Brief History of Everything". I very highly recommend both. 

Just Why I Don't Have Religion.

Saints and I go way back. I used to read volumes of "Lives of the Saints". They were my fairy tales. Right now I might be able to write a book on the significance of such tales being held up as ideals for young people. I am no friend of the Catholic Church. And after at least two significant and profound transformations in my life, my view of religions and what it is has also changed radically. Not by choice, as I was at one time an enthusiastically proselytizing Catholic, but by the necessity of inner experiences and, now, decades of studying religion and philosophy structurally and as phenomenology. I'm kind of in the same position now as I am when asked to critique artwork. My first question is always "Do you want me to tell you what I see, or to tell you I like it?" The conversation about religion then becomes an exercise in determining what can be said that is kind and good, as distinct from stating what is, by all measures I can find to apply, true. This is especially tricky when talking with someone who is "inside" a religion, whichever it might be, as distinct from someone who is distant enough to see religion as such as a phenomenon, and it's astoundingly numerous varieties as curiosities of variations on a theme.

Yet believers are seriously sincere. And the good of that must be respected. What I find curious is that it's exceptionally difficult to abstract the idea of simple good, the kind we universally extend to each other familially, filallay, ane fraternally, from the vast and different and even in-one-stream of belief contradictory accountings and attributions as to why and how we are what we seem to be. This is why I choose to go with Universals rather than an organization. And that's sad in a way.

For instance. My next oldest sibling, a sister, converted from Catholicism to LDS. She is, perhaps, one of the most saintly people I know, and other than her accounting of religious attributions for many things which don't need such, is also remarkably reasonable and rational, and genuinely open-minded. Except in the particulars of her faith as to how things work "behind the scenes", and of course, as a kind of christianist, regarding the idea of a personal God as part of what can only be called, in that faith, a hyper-personal relationship.

As far as a social structure is concerned, I'd become a Mormon in a minute! As far as theological attribution, my conscience won't allow that, as I'd be a flaming hypocrite if I joined. Similarly with other organizations which do actual material good. It's the (how do I blend the words "theology" and "psychology"?) gestalt of real-world functionality and the literally tens of thousands of variations of attribution stories. To simplify, I will give someone a glass of cold water or a dollar, or help them change a tire without attributing it to anything more complicated than the Golden Rule of "Women and Children First" ALL civilized and civilizing behavior can be extracted and projected from those, without speculation as to the structure of an invisible kingdom and reward system, as especially, for me, all full and necessary reward is in the moment. One way or another. 　

So, sadly, I have to agree with Krishnamurti when he said that “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”

If I give someone a glass of water because they are thirsty, I am recognizing our essential unity. If I give it as a Christian, or anything else, I have created a division for no valid reason other than my need for assuaging my sense of lack of explanation, for which I need none, other than that someone was thirsty and it pleases me to aid in relieving that if I can. If there is a higher "person", as there likely is, as I can't' imagine we are the highest stage in evolution, it's difficult for me to believe that they care what I do. That impartiality as to outcome, in fact, is the hallmark of those we call "enlightened", as well as diplomats. And if the Universe as such is Conscious, it is doubtful it is so as a person. All indications point to an interest in nothing more than a magnificent and eternal explosion of experience--any experience and ALL experience without reservation or judgment or reward. It simply IS. And looking at the Hubble Deep Field photos, and considering the enormity of our Space, that seems more likely than an origin story thousands of years old from a speck just barely visible even from Mars, as we know.

Too often God is a measure of our insecurity and a lack of submission to simple and sheer utter personally debilitating Wonder,* and somehow, an inadvertence to our own actual Nature before our programing by experience and the imposition of memes on our minds. But who has experienced their mind without thought? It's a good trick, if you can do it. But it is fabulously revelatory if you can. An analogy would be the carrier wave of a broadcast channel. We are aware of it because it's modulated. An unmodulated carrier wave is perceived simply as silence on a radio, and a blank screen on a monitor. This carrier wave can be modulated to produce any sound of image. Any. It's that simple. When you know that you are that carrier wave, in essence, and that your thoughts are necessary modulations due to environment, impositions, and inculcations, it all changes. It's all the same, and all-new, in that "you" now understand that it's totally a construct. And you take it up each morning as "my body and my life". You, as awareness, as the Witness, are always already there to see "yourself" wake up.

In that understanding, you cannot see others as essentially different from yourself. You functionally, as far as your deep training allows, become the living Golden Rue, because why in the name of yourself would you harm yourself, and why wouldn't you want to do good for yourself no matter what that other carrier wave manifestation calls itself or looks like? Thus a "Person" which may have been worshiped as an external is seen as BEing itself, not separate, the substrate and substance of ALL THERE IS.

* This may be why, on "enlightenment", whatever that is, the experiencer wanders around blank, or sits, like Eckhart Tolle, on a bench for two years, while the brain re-wires. But even then there are problems with language and beliefs, and the change doesn't stop.

My Brother in the House of Saints

My brother, a remarkable character in travels and other experiences, had a recurring job house-sitting for a person who traveled much and was mostly blind. The house was simple and spare, and contained, due to the owner's theological interests, some number of antique statues of assorted Saints from the Catholic tradition, mostly Spanish, and carved from wood, and in various states of preservation. All were valuable.

My brother had done this gig so many times that he actually knew the names of the Saints the statues were of. I discovered this when I visited him "on the job" one day for some reason. He toured me through the house, knowing my appreciation of sculpture. He named each statue by name as we sauntered through the house, talking of the works there and relating our own relationships to religion, as both of ours, which is now very evident, had some deeply moving experiences away from.

But all that stopped when, in the living room, I pointed to a work depicting a kindly looking soul with his hand raised forward apparently in some gesture of blessing. Suddenly my brother seemed stumped and puzzled. But he recovered quickly. He informed me that "Oh, that's Saint Preposterous, patron of comedians!" We both cracked up. I got him to make a slide of the statue with the intention of producing a Holy Card, featuring "Wholly Preposterous" intended for wide distribution. Sadly, it never materialized.

I was asked to enter the El Dorado Hills Artist's Association Member's Show for paintings, photos and sculptures, at the B of A Gallery in the Harris Center in Folsom, CA. I submitted two pieces, and this one took Best of Show!

God, money, weed, and civility

Someone posted about how we can't use cannabis unless we give the government money. And if anyone knows the history of how it came to be a schedule one drug, they know why this is so. In the end, it's just a weed. I collect and use another one, Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon c.) for medicinal purposes. It grows wild in the area and is very effective. I've used it in trade and shipped it out of the area to friends who don't have accesses. I've even been observed by police while they were on other business as I picked it. There wasn't even curiosity as to what I was doing.

The difference is the potential for psychotropism. One of the greatest fears of many in power is that the people will actually think, or have a different perspective than the Party line. Or be, god forbid, awake. That's why there's a constant effort to make the public ignorant in a land where money is god. And money is god because that "substance" is a powerful drug in itself! And it yields the ability to use force. And force is necessary for those who are so empty and impoverished as selves, who are so disconnected from others, that they need to control what others think, say, and do in order to feel "safe". That is why I have said so often that a suppressive and repressive government is run by those who are in a state of fear and disconnection. They build walls and can't see the ways of relationship as a solution. Nor have they the tools or ability to make useful connections which are lasting and trustworthy. So they depend on creating chaos in order to control.

Look at the childhood and upbringing of any dictator. Look, indeed at the infancy and youth of our own. You will always find a damaged individual who never had the neural network of connectivity installed through the experience of being loved. And sadly, that's a condition rampant in our society, ours being one which is very much based on competition, forced leverage, and the disconnection from each other, education, and from different ways of seeing.

So it's really no surprise that those who have relied on ignorance to gain power will do anything to retain money as the sole drug and source of force and leverage over the population. And that can only lead to worse. It can only bring about conditions which even their staunchest public supporters will regret. They will discover that TV never portrays how conflicts actually go down and what astounding suffering they cause. We are poor students of history and reality. And our chief insulation and insulator is ideology. No idea in the abstract which is divorced from measurable reality will stand against the forces of Nature.

This is why attention to The Great Commandment, The Golden Rule, and to the idea of "Women and Children First" is so vital. Those are the ways of inclusion, of connection, of Reality. They are what in fact we are hard-wired for, as we are in fact communal beings. Conflict is our last and worst solution. Yet there are those who rely on it simply because they have no other circuits in their psyche to employ as methodology due to their impoverished past. And that's why they are impoverished now, however unimaginably gigantic their bankrolls might be.

And these are the ones we allow to govern us? While they are high on THEIR drug of choice? Is that wisdom on our part, who will take the brunt of any suffering, as we now take the brunt of taxation and declining relative incomes, while theirs soar on the backs of our labor? What kind of democracy or republic is that? I can get along with my politically opposite neighbors because we act like the block community we are. There's no sane reason we can't do that as a nation while we look for stable ground on which to base our policies. But I think I have proposed three that actually work. They work here. They are universal. They should work wherever we are. If that's what we want.

If you don't like "socialism", this might be for you:

Someone went off on me about the evils of "socialism" and how Nazis were "socialists" as it was part of their name, etc, etc. Here's what I replied.

Actually, _____, I lived through part of that history and my parents each escaped both Nazi and Communist regimes and occupations. I'm 71yo and did rather well in my history classes, which weren't merely from your handily dismissed "what some professor wished to teach you" which makes you sound like one of those who believe that facts, figures, and documentation in the hands of a professor automatically make them tools of a radical liberal left. In fact, my view of history, economics, and motivations is rather differently based than either that, or whatever else you might imagine.

I happen to somewhat agree with you about Social Security being a disaster, but less about the idea itself and more about how it was left in a state in which its funds could be plundered. Evidently, there are people who are reactive to any form of the word "social", as I was to the idea of "social dancing" which was required in my school. Perhaps it's a term, like "God", which due to overuse and abuse has left its arena of usefulness. "Social" merely refers to the fact humans are wired to act in groups and have a tendency to care for their own, and that trait can either be damaged or enhanced by upbringing and modified by circumstance.

"Social" thus refers to connectivity. And humans are so dependent on the kind and quality of their connectivity that it's being seen that most deviant behavior in individuals and groups is related to some breakdown in connectivity. Human maturity can also be measured in some kind and degree as to the nature of connectivity one feels. The arc of that might be said to range from the self-absorption of an infant to the very rare sort of identity which identifies "self" with all of humanity or even Nature, such as a Gandhi or Schweitzer, or even a Christ.

So on that scale, most of us are strongly connected on the level of immediate family. The things you personally might deny other members of society, you might not deny to members of your own family, depending on their condition and circumstance. As one matures there is the possibility of seeing greater patterns of connectivity and the resources, possibilities, and responsibilities which are inherent in larger groups. And in the same way that a cook doesn't use the same proportions or even ingredients for a huge batch than a small portion to get the same taste result, we must also adjust some things when dealing with larger groups. We do this because of connectivity, as in "to form a more perfect union". You do know where that comes from, don't you?

So from my perspective, being an American, I don't see our amazing Nation as a system which functions as an auto-immune disease, or as a mass of people who are meant to be either cash cows for a few hyper-rich and their insatiable needs and powers, or not even a land comprised of millions of competitors engaged in a free-for-all in which it's fine to step on your neighbor's face to get ahead. Now that's a simplistic description and I'm well aware that there are other dimensions to all that. But suffice it to say that from here "E Pluribus Unum" means that like we did during the war effort in the 30's and 40's and the years after, we can indeed pull together and create and have a well functioning and prosperous society. Roosevelt pulled that off and so did my favorite Republican, Eisenhower. But sadly, exactly the thing Ike warned us about is exactly what happened.

Now I'm someone who is very much in favor of profit and economic progress, mine and yours and ours. What I'm *not* for is the way that a republic can be brought down when those in power can vote themselves favors as Jefferson warned. So my way of seeing things involves a form of economic fairness which is based on the poverty line. Pursuant to the ideal of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" in a Nation which claims to be and is the richest on Earth, why do we have the highest rate of child poverty of all industrialized nations, the highest rate of incarceration of its citizens, the greatest economic disparity between CEO's and lowest earners, the most spent on military per citizen by an astronomical amount compared to any other nation, or should we have to pay 4 times as much for poorer medical care than the next most expensive nation? Neither should we be an elephant distracted by the flea-sized problem of "illegals". That's fucking embarrassing.

In other words, we are being taken advantage of. You don't like socialism? Bullshit. If you didn't you'd be screaming about the trillions gifted to corporations in tax breaks or the military for the sake of supporting banks and arms makers as Eisenhower pointed out. Our world expenditure on military action last year could have ended world hunger every eight days. Every fucking eight days. In other words, food for everyone for 45 years at this level of population from one year of military action mostly about protecting oil interests which are in fact detrimental to us at the scale we now use that material.

So what the people who profit from all that fear the most is that people like you might actually start thinking. Do you remember who said, "It's great luck for leaders that men don't think!"? That's why our education system sucks compared to other nations which actually have governments devoted in large part to the economic and social advancement of their publics. That's why we are being taught to distrust all news and all things intellectual and encompassing of anything more than one person's private gain.

If you're so smart, then you know that combat aircraft rely on instability to be effective. The Red Baron's plane had to be constant hands-on, and any modern jet requires a computer for steady flight. They aren't like a family Cessna in which you can take your hands off the yoke and not instantly go unstable. But that kind of stability is not suitable for tyranny. So look at what's going on now. Is it a building of connectivity between citizens from an alleged leader? Or is there the condoning and promotion of contention, separation, and distrust?

I'm a "Family American". You, however much I disagree with you, are part of my American family. And I don't want you to go down and if you have trouble I want to have your back covered because if you are well, so am I. You do know, don't you, that over 60% of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses of insured people? So I'm happy to pay taxes that you can benefit from as you now do. I'd even pay a bit more if I was sure that everyone could be healthy and have an education. That's because I consider you and others as resources, not liabilities. And I'm for stability, not friction and turbulence. And, as a capitalist, I'm happy to invest in resources. You might call it "socialism". I call it taking care of my own. And that would include you, like it or not.

Labeling Ignorance

It's convenient to label ignorance or brilliance, real or perceived, according to a Party affiliation or some other inculcation. But in the end, it's either ignorance or brilliance free of partisan labels when compared to the nearest accurate assessment we can make of Reality with as clear lenses as we can manage. If we don't, in our political, religious, social, or any other bearing divorce ourselves from the coloration of our unconscious and learned prejudices, we will fail in the most basic facet of authority. That facet is accuracy relative to an impartial and unbiased factual assessment of any situation as nearly as possible with the admission that error is inherent, especially in emotionally loaded situations where we or something we care about is at stake.

There is much that can be said about this that would for many require a thorough re-education in the ways and means of human perception, thinking, and feeling. Most of us can't do it very well at all, and if democracy has a serious failure it is this: it gives equal weight in popular decision making to fact and fantasy. And in many cases, fantasy wins, sometimes with tragic results.

So it's good in the midst of heated politics to remember that our views are not only limited, they are limited heavily by unconscious training that is indistinguishable from addiction. It can take an actual physical shock to bump one the inch or so out of their habits to see that they are merely thought patterns and not in any way equatable to the reality the "owner" who thought they were a thinker thought.

This is demonstrable by experience. It is what Plato's Cave Analogy refers to. In its extreme, there is possible a radical shift in the nature of one's awareness. That result is not advertised, despite its utter practicality as being a basis for a re-evaluation of one's real circumstance as a human. Such re-evaluation can take as long as two or even more years as the new perspective is integrated. It's why it used to be attempted only in monasteries and under tutelage. Yet it can happen spontaneously. I know of several such cases.

Even Heinlein in his fiction outlines a radical scale of intellectual ability and its consequences. Yet even he doesn't go the final step, though he implies it. That's because it is so different, that in the religious writings of the world it is cloaked in symbolism. Yet it is the one consistent thing in the matter of human awareness regardless of religion, culture, time, place, gender, status, or any other factor including contact with others who have experienced that shift.

But the essence of it is in clarity, a kind of clarity which is free from political, religious, social, or any other categories. It is the foundation of the beginning of actual work on oneself, if one is so motivated. It is also dangerous in the sense that one man said that "The search for Reality is the most dangerous undertaking; it *will* destroy your world". Why? Because we are taught what we are, and what the world is, in terms of necessary local beliefs which do not usually transfer to a universally true perspective.

That perspective is infinitely adaptable, but can be dangerous to the individual who sees that way, as it reveals much of how the locals, wherever and whoever they are, really don't see themselves clearly, and therefore mistake their environment as well, sometimes tragically while they believe they are pursuing their own wellbeing and that of others. That's only natural, as that's how we are locally trained. But what we are as awareness isn't local. Everyone is it, no matter who, when, or where or in what condition. It is the one thing in which all humans are equal: We are beings of awareness trained in minute detail to believe local things to be universally true. And they are not. So when local perspectives collide, we have actual drama. The definition of "drama" is "what's at stake". And that can be trivial. Or it can cast the fate of a Nation.

I'm not attacking christianity

People say sometimes "You are attacking Christianity!" Why would they say that? What is this "Christianity" which I'm said to be attacking? According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there are approximately 41,000 Christian denominations and organizations in the world. This is why Gina Cerminara wrote her handbook on religious sanity.** So what exactly is being attacked? That there are 41K+ versions of devolution from an alleged original teaching? Does anyone think that any one of these chosen at random, from some Catholic sect to the Westboro Church is, in fact, the original teaching of Jesus the Christ? Seriously? 

So if someone tells me I'm attacking "Christianity", what I hear is some version of this:

"I have chosen or have been indoctrinated from birth into one of 41,000 versions of someone's teaching we have a few contradictory lines about in a 2000-year-old book. That book also has other parts another 2000 years older yet, which contradicts both itself and the newer part. That whole caboodle wasn't compiled as a piece until some 300 years after the little known, if extant, original dispenser of a tiny fraction of it was gone. So I have, without original records and after 2000 years of alterations and changing interpretations, decided that the story my sect of an overwhelmingly turbulent stream of unverifiable beliefs is, in fact, the one true and only way to an end I postulate based on what these stories passed down and altered for two millennia claim to be "true" in the particular version I claim as mine.

"I do this not having looked into the origins and history of my beliefs, and without examination of the philosophies and mystic traditions my particular extrapolation of beliefs comes from, including, but not limited to, Zoroastrianism, Nondualism, Mithraism, or the Egyptian and Essene Mysteries and the teachings of Indian, Tibetan, and Oriental Masters who may have influenced the person of Jesus, and are traditionally and falsely discounted as relevant material to understanding words, works, and ideas attributed to him."

So for my part, I completely understand what Jiddu Krishnamurti said: "When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."*

So I am not attacking an unspecifiable brand of christianism, for I cannot call any current thing which calls itself "Christianity." I cannot, because it is all derivative and based on feasibly demonstrable misinterpretations. What I am doing is asking for a conscious re-evaluation of beliefs by anyone who has the moral and emotional courage to do so, and come out the other end retaining their faith if they wish, but doing so on a foundation of self-awareness and history. 

~~~~

*Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, chapter 6

** The book is one used by many denominations in their study of comparative religion, and has many interfaith recommendations. It is called "Insights for the Age of Aquarius: a handbook for religious sanity." 

Someone asked me "What is you higher power?"

Sorry, I couldn't adjust some of the spacing here! ~~~~ I personally "have" no higher power, as that usage denotes possession. There is a fundamental Principle. It has me, and you, and all of manifestation as its expression as the Cosmos which It permeates, and is not separate from, and in fact IS. It can be pointed to, but not spoken, as it is Ineffable. It is not a person or Person, yet is the power to and source of either.

Simply stated, one can say:

Consciousness is fundamental

Consciousness is the Light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts.

What one is conscious of, as awareness, constitutes experience.

All are aware, few are consciously aware and thus mistake their thoughts, memories, senses, physicality, "self", etc, for their actual immutable untouched Self, which is equatable with such words as Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, Principle, and Mind. I would add "God", but that has become one of the most abused and wrongly understood terms in any language. There is a simple reason for this and it is the cause of much tragic misunderstanding and wrong teaching.

 One is trained to be aware "of ", as subject/object

experience and mistakes the objects of that awareness for Self, mistaking the self-constructed by parochial indoctrination as real. In fact, that constructed self, wherever and whenever it is may be functional or not. In any case, it is in fact merely programming. This is demonstrable by a number of experiential means, some spontaneous, some induced. In fact, it is possible to go past the extremely and most common state of the human, that being the subject/object state. Going beyond it yields a basis for actual and useful work on self in a way which is inclusive of Universals as distinct from local or parochial constructs of explanation. This is demonstrable and experienceable.

Operationally, all of this means exactly what has been

succinctly stated for ages in many ways. The most familiar to us today are three:

 One is the Golden Rule. Foundational to the Golden Rule is the

experiential and gut understanding that the other IS oneself in essence, despite appearance.

Second is The Great Commandment. Foundational to the Great

Commandment is the experiential and gut understanding that the other IS oneself in essence, despite appearance.

Third is "Women and Children First." Foundational to

"Women and Children First" is the understanding that they are the means of transmittal and expression of the first two if properly educated. Any morality, or civic system, or economic system, not based on Women and Children First is a false, detrimental, morality or system at worst leading to collapse and societal suicide.

From these three flow all of the connective and salubrious

considerations and actions, private, familial, civic, and other, which foster the highest possibility of all individuals and the various aspects of society. It is on these that Civilization and Culture of the highest sort might be built.

An additional note:

Because of both the emergent nature of human awareness as

pointed to in christianism by the sadly misunderstood story of "The Fall", it is the Nature of the human awareness to NEED to know. And to do. And to protect what it thinks is sacred. And all of that is well and good. IF it is done consciously. Usually, it is not, and it is done from personal and parochial ideas. That's natural. And it works very well up to a point. That point is when other explanations understood by their holders as beliefs, usually sacred beliefs, clash in the practical world.

Of course, the Prime Directive of the human being survival, even

beyond the grave, the SYSTEM ONE WAS INDOCTRINATED INTO AT BIRTH AND THROUGH CHILDHOOD IS PERCIEVED AS ABSOLUTE AND FUNDAMENTAL REALITY. And that is the root of the persistence of "faith". But it is not Real. No matter how real it feels and how much sense it makes. It is not. It might have actual elements of Truth in it which keep it afloat, as do the thousands of versions of christianism today, but they lack the leveling factor, the leavening which would bring them to Life and allow them to naturally shed their differences, their parochialisms, and all of that, while retaining the feeling and actuality of Sacredness which is Real. This can happen as naturally as graduating to the next grade up, or as easily as a snake sheds its skin, or a butterfly emerges from a cocoon.

I Don't Hate Trump!

I need to make something clear here. I don't hate Trump. What I utterly despise is that the Race of Man is so utterly immature despite its great advances on many fronts, that it is still utterly enslaved to the mentality of survival. It is so enslaved to this the easily triggered emotionalism of hard-wired survival mentality that it is completely unaware of when it is operating and moreover of what its causes are. These causes are pre-verbal and pre-cognitive by their nature. They are enforced and enhanced by poor upbringing, and/or by parental neglect and abuse regardless of economic class. This neglect and abuse may not even appear to be that to the casual onlooker, but it most assuredly is.

The results of this neglect and abuse are the sense of not being loved and not being worthy of love. And as we know, these two factors are at the root of everything from addiction to dysfunction and from fear to greed. In other words, infants who feel unloved and unlovable in their own degree and manner manifest compensatory behavior for their unfulfillable need of being wanted, loved, and worthy. This need is at the root of "seeking" behavior. "Seeking" behavior is the emotionally energized and unsatiable pursuit of some imagined external succor for the starvation of the soul experiencing the need. The seeking will be for god, money, drugs, sex, power, anything which for some reason appears to the seeker to hold relief from the unutterable emptiness of the emotional devastation of not feeling wanted and worthy of love.

This seeking will never be, and cannot ever be, overcome, fulfilled or satiated. It can be sublimated, perhaps, and turned around, if and only if it is clearly and unequivocally demonstrated to the seeker by life or circumstance that their seeking is self-destructive beyond compensation. That can happen sometimes, but not often, because a chief feature of seeking is that the object of relief is imagined to be outside of oneself. And very sadly, accompanying the seeking is the empty toolbox of emotional and intellectual sensibilities which might serve as navigational or applicable tools helpful and healing of their condition. Those, if they can, must be supplied from the outside, if possible, until they are found to already exist in a neglected state within the seeking individual.

The handmaiden of seeking is belief. Belief is something which we are all installed with and belief also operates pre-cognitively and pre-verbally. Beliefs are permanently installed before about the seventh year and are buried thereafter by the emerging sense of a separate self. That self up to the point of recognizing itself in the mirror as an "I" discreet from sensations and feeling operates in a receptive state of hypnotic suggestibility. When the discrete "I" appears the previous time is then obscured by linguistic and cognitive ability. And yet, most therapies rely on talk and reason to access these formative modalities which, to them, are necessarily opaque.

So if I despise anything, it's the inaccessibility of the region triggered in those who see an external salve in the impossible and absurd notion of Trump being a useful solution to actual and real problems misidentified as political by his enablers. And Trump is, himself, a flagship example of the very dysfunction necessary of healing and being educated into useful mental and emotional tools for effective dealing with the vast swaths of human possibilities now invisible to him and others like him.

It's the deadly and destructive impasse of this situation which I hate, and why I rail against the obvious and clear deficiencies of someone enabled into office by astoundingly unimaginable amounts of money controlled by those in our own Nation and others whose prime interest is the dissolution of the ideals of American society as a Democratic Nation. They would assault the foundations of Democracy itself to bring about yet another feudal society of power and wretched excess for the few. And to that end, they have enlisted the loosest most unpredictable cannon imaginable of being accepted by the most afflicted parts of our American society of whatever economic level.

That's what I hate, and that's why I call him T-rump, as he is the symbol and expression of reptilian fear and predation on a world struggling dearly to hold on to its meager advances and attempts at, in the future. That would be some actual manner of civilization where the kinds of deficiencies he suffers and perpetuates either cannot happen or will be treated before they wreak personal and societal devastation. And more importantly, that such a devastatingly unfortunate individual will not have such a cryingly sad and disturbed base which can be manipulated into enabling him.

My hate, and love, is for that kind of pathetic condition which now exists. This is a cusp of maturation for us, where the underbelly of our own makeup and made up is on the table for all to see. The question is how do we see it, why, and in the face of people shaking that table, do we yet build another card house of more stable and civilized culture and democracy, but on a base insulated from and curative of the destructive forces now having free reign/rein in our fragile world. How does Love, as so many who have advocated for the healing and elevation of the World, come into play.? If there is a shining Knight or a Horseman in a white hat, Love would be in the saddle guiding the horse of the mind.

Homo Novis

Not mentioned here is yet one more step. But as far as it goes, this is amazing, and as far as I can tell, accurate:

".....We define thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued 'either-or' logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can't use any sort of logic and will discard observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

"That is why there is always room at the top, why a man with a leetle more on the ball can so easily become governor, millionaire, or college president--and why homo sap is sure to be displaced by New Man, because there is so much room for improvement and evolution never stops.

“Here and there among ordinary men is a rare individual who really thinks, can and does use logic in a single field--he's often as stupid as the rest outside his study or his laboratory--but he can think, if he is not disturbed, sick, or frightened. This rare individual is responsible for all the progress made by the race; the others reluctantly adopt his results. Much as the ordinary man dislikes and distrusts and persecutes the process of thinking, he is forced to accept the results occasionally, because thinking is efficient compared with his own maunderings. He may still plant his corn by the dark of the moon, but he will plant better corn developed by better men than he.

"Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masks himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; a pink monkey among the brown monkeys--a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he gets caught.

"The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

"Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalamic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption and non-fact. Such men exist, They are "New Man"--human in all respects, indistinguishable in all appearances or under the scalpel from homo sap, yet as unlike him in action as the Sun is unlike a single candle.”

~Robert A. Heinlein, excerpt from Gulf, in the anthology Assignment in Eternity