Sunday, February 27, 2011

When Nothing Makes Logical Sense

When nothing makes logical sense in itself, then to what, if not some superior kind of consciousness, does it fall to construct sense?

It would be nonsense to try to explain an idea of conscious free will as anything that could emerge solely from material that is bound through and through to nothing but rules of physics. It would also be nonsense to try to explain the physics or our universe as emerging solely from its own physics, as in a chicken birthing itself. That sort of bivalent reasoning devours its own tail when it tries to derive free will from physics.  Even so, there appear to be gaps in our notions of physics, which can never be closed by a unifying or standard model that is based on nothing but bivalent reasoning. I suspect bivalent reasoning becomes circular in either case, whether one wishes to believe in an emergent quality of free will or whether one wishes to believe that a quantifying model of physics can be superior enough to avail the derivation of every other aspect, both material and moral. I say we have no choice but to make choices. So, what's a materialist to say: That matter has no choice but to make choices? lol.

When it comes to the necessity of making choices, such as about how best to inspire and sustain a decent civilization, what's an intelligent materialist or moralist to do? What's a conscious being to reason (trivalently?), when reason (Godel?) shows unable coherently to exhaust a universal set of all the possibilities that are mutually exclusive?  I say, what quality of crap is this? Is it horsecrap, bull crap, unmitigated crap, or precious crap?

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From Dave:  The idea of free will as something beyond mentally tangible (conceivable) is nothing more than a human creation. A dog has as much or as little as we have - but doesn't ask why. The question therfore must be contained only within our minds and therefore depends upon circular reasoning.

From Dlanor:  Perhaps a notion of a singularity in intelligence may relate to an even more interesting (or ridiculous?) question:  What ought we consider the purpose, if anything, of conscious free will? Is it the mere accumulation of power through the application of reason? Is that which is the best which we ought to be about nothing more than a matter of the unfolding discernment of reason?

I received the following, which I attribute to an interesting source:

http://www.singularity.com/
The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

Accelerating change:
In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is a perceived increase in the rate of technological (and sometimes social and cultural) progress throughout history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future. While many have suggested accelerating change, the popularity of this theory in modern times is closely associated with the ideas and writings of Raymond Kurzweil, especially in relation to his theories about technological singularity.

In 1938, Buckminster Fuller introduced the word ephemeralization to describe the trends of "doing more with less" in chemistry, health and other areas of industrial development. In 1946, Fuller published a chart of the discoveries of the chemical elements over time to highlight the development of accelerating acceleration in human knowledge acquisition.

In 1958, Stanisław Ulam wrote in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Communal Inspiration vs. Elitist Lawgiving

In the absence of institutions for enacting and enforcing an all pervasive system of laws, people tend to come together of their own accord in order to seek and sustain shared sympathies. They often assimilate and bless the upshot as being divined in respect of a source of higher values. They may intuit that they were receptive to some kind of guiding function or field. They may even refer to its source as "God."

Some people want to take that away, to say no one should find inspiration or charity, except in respect of material and measurable facts, reason, and science. Perhaps, as the "science is settled," they mean to replace voluntary communal receptivity to God with a system of laws, migraine inducing in their intrusiveness, as reasoned and meted out to us by our elite betters. No thanks.

I prefer good faith receptivity to a shared idea or source of higher, guiding values. If, in some instances, that devolves into mafia like cults of religious abuse, the solution should not be in banning or ridiculing "God," but in bringing the wider community, with its own modes of pressure or law, then to rein in the abuses. That is the time to apply law and force: when religions, in their actions and incitements, become abusive. Not when they merely pay homage to a caring, guiding, higher Source of values.

Is there a changeless yet changing standard, against which morality can or should be measured? May it consist in the human form? Or the well being of the human form? Or some imagined evolving apex of an organism? I doubt it. As pressures change, the change in our niche, form, and material appetites will accelerate in their changes. If the needed changeless yet changing standard cannot prevail against the withering rate of material change, then what sort of changeless yet changing standard may meet our need? May it consist in a standard that is merely intuited, beyond material, even qualitatively superior to quantitative material? I believe yes. I believe there abides such a standard, a sort of encompassing, synchronizing, field of present and stored conscious will, unchanging in its capacity, yet changing in its "mores" and in how it "appreciates," in feedback (prayer?), a quality of interfunctioning with various limited and inferior perspectives of itself.   Respect for that Source is vital, if we are to avoid the inhuman encroachment of law spouting oligarchs, who invariably confound our lives, all the while considering themselves above the law.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Peculiarity of Power


Selling green bonds may be just another ponzi scheme, meant to reduce us even deeper into debt enslavement. Is there no end to the need of ponzi artists to aggrandize their peculiar attraction to debt enslavement? The riches of ancient Rome were built on the backs of slave laborers, comprising perhaps 80 percent of the population. Independent people find ways to seek fulfillment in the sharing of beingness without needing to be slaves or enslavers. Co-dependent people do not. In one form or another, codependent types will always be feeding the peculiar institution of slavery --- not necessarily because slaves cannot be replaced by machines, but because machines don't feed the same need to have power over (or under) another. Hardly anyone seeks to pyramid machines just for the sake of pyramiding machines.


When shackles are forbidden, codependents (i.e., oligarchs and their serfs) will simply find ways to fashion invisible shackles. Look around. Don't we still have about 80 percent still functioning as slaves, only with invisible shackles?

How many youths are recruited early on to become perpetual slaves of issuers of interest bearing credit cards? Or borrowers of student loans for economically worthless studies? How many elderly are suckered into cons based on living wills or time sharing condos? How many cheap laboring aliens are at the mercy of coyotes and their corporate connections? How many young men have their future hopes dashed by a ridiculous criminal record, because we brand them rather than rehabilitate them? How many young girls are kidnapped into forced prostitution? How many teachers condition young students to believe "victimless crimes" don't lead to broken families and shattered lives? How many oligarchs fund politicians and their czars to teach students to believe they should fully experiment in the world of edgy and addictive gratifications? How many enlightened tolerators tolerate mafia like "religions" that cut off genitalia and cover half their populations under blankets? How many colleges make money off profitable law schools by recruiting more and more law students, to bring more lawsuits, to need more laws, to facilitate more lawsuits?

The heart of American self reliance in industry and energy is being eaten alive. Once it is consumed, how many desperate people will then be under the power of those who lust for the peculiar institution of slavery and control over others? Having lost our moral compass, that is, our American sense of self reliance and national independence, have we become so different from Rome, in terms of the percentage of our population that is being fitted for slavery?


Even given our nationwide economic crisis, is this really the time to put the moral issue of ponzi debt enslavement, leading to devaluation of individuals, on the back burner? Can we really hope to solve our fiscal crisis, even as we ignore our moral crisis? Isn't the moral crisis inextricably connected to how we came to abandon reason, absorb debt enslavement, and elect Obama? Obviously, we have lost an assimilating, intuitive faith, that helped many independent minded people escape some of the worst peculiarities of pyramiding codependence. Can science, entirely independent of higher faith, really be expected to fill that void, without leaving us prey to the materialistic depredations of those who most lust for power, at the top of the heap, for its own sake?  Among those working to temporarily put aside concerns about enslavement, in its myriad of related forms (addiction, abortion, indebtedness, purposelessness, faithlessness), how many are serving America as a city on a hill versus America as a "victimless" carcass for the exploitation of paying oligarchs?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

A Tale of Two Visions


A Tale of Two Visions

There are two competing myths or visions for America: The shining city on a hill, and the dying carcass of colonial abuse, to be cannibalized and sold to the gathering rulers and elites for a new world order or caliphate. Those who would serve the first vision need to depose the entire existing regime. The regime does not expect that will happen, because it has its own goals, its own estimate of the extent of its infestation and chokehold over the carcass, and its own strategy for dividing and keeping the carcass from getting back on its feet.

Against internal infestation, American technological inventiveness cannot save the first vision, because chokers will simply give every significant invention over to enemies and bastions salivating for the second vision. Economic industrialization cannot save the city on the hill, because international corporatists have infested citizens' minds with lies of environmental disaster, installed a regulatory strait jacket, and leveraged advantages overseas. Elites do not expect a rise of decent, middle class Americans to save the old America, because they have the big corporate funding and the means to agitate the zombie masses, reduced to slavering, useful idiots. The infestation is animated and coordinated. It expects to meet every reaction. If decent Americans try to restore fiscal sanity, it will simply tell each divided sector: Why should you be singled out or go along with the discipline, when (install here some version of Whitey) is still getting his? Why should you suffer a reduction in your AARP social security or medicare? Why should you be called "illegal?" Why should stock traders get gold plated bonuses while union members get little? In this way, NWO elites expect an easy path to smother the last breaths of the old America, to replace the "imperialism" of individual initiative with the "caring" of crushing international legalism and corporatism.

However, I suspect the game will not be that easy, and in fact will remain in doubt. I expect elites have underestimated decent Americans and the vision they share. Unfortunately, this does not bode carefree times. Rather, it bodes a long and calamitous struggle, during which, this time, I am deeply saddened that the homeland will not be spared. Regardless of the outcome, all who denigrate the value of faith, myth, and assimilated visions of moral purposefulness will soon be washed over.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Do correct answers to general moral questions exist?

Growing up entails reaching moral adulthood, to not claim entitlement to expect anyone else, including government, owes you much at all. It entails not expecting government or law to satisfy all your moral concerns, discharge your bodily needs, or avail you or your club with socially paid for special privileges that are inconsistent with generally assimilated values of your culture. It entails not expecting government should commission experts to "settle the science" about all general concerns of a citizenry.

Do empirically correct answers to general moral questions exist? Sam Harris imagines there is an objectively correct "answer," as a natural or factual matter, regardless of whether we know it or not, to each general moral question, such as: would the world be better off were the U.S. to destroy its nuclear weapons? Or, should government equalize wealth redistribution?

My intuition is that Harris is wrong. If correct moral answers "exist," I doubt they are in respect of nature. Rather, I think answers abide, ambiguously, within a field of possibilities --- not within a field of actual, manifested, measurable nature. Any "answer" would be good for a fleeting context only. This is because neither we, nor nature, know how our context will evolve from possible permutations of manifestations. Even if there is a synchronizing, choosing Aspect that interfunctions with nature, I doubt IT would know (assuming IT is not without power to change IT's mind, depending on appreciations of IT's unfolding interaction with nature).

That which consciousness/Consciousness appreciates as being "best" (or in its well being) depends on that which it chooses, wills, or determines to appreciate --- something which it, to the extent it is functioning from an unfolding perspective of consciousness, cannot with certitude predict. Why? Because consciousness knows it can change its attitude, point of view, and mind, if it chooses to do so, with regard to whether to appreciate any particular focus and whether or how to provide for the unfoldment of that which follows. In common sense, this would seem obvious to anyone not entertaining an agenda to rationalize a "science of morality" or a "liberal reality."

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Intuitively, for information to be stored in masses of manifestation necessitates a conscious beingness to which such manifestatioins, at least in potential, can eventually reduce to appreciation.  Otherwise, no field of possibilities would produce anything more than meaningless, ungoverned fuzz.  Morality, like numbers, does not in itself exist, except as concept, in a relation with a field of conceptualizing consciousness.  Consciousness, in itself, is neither moral nor immoral, but may function in ways that give relative expression to morality or immorality.  In whatever way numbers have always existed, in relative potential, so also has consciousness existed.  Qualitative consciousness does not exist as a derivative of quantitative nature.  Rather, quantitative nature exists as a derivative of qualitative consciousness.  You cannot weigh the consciousness in the quality by which you experience it, yet your consciousness is the one non-trival thing you can know.  All else that is qualitative (other conscious beings, a field of synchronizing consciousness, God) is intuitive.  All else that is quantitative is derivative, not by mathematical proof, but by intuitive dependence.  One can intuitively reason that nature is derivative of flux and feedback within a field of consciousness; one cannot mathematically derive the quality of one's conscious will or morality from the quantity of measurable nature.

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Answers to moral questions do exist.  But the answers are not empirical or final answers.  They are choices about answers.  They are choices for which perspectives of consciousness consider the moral effect.  That effect is unfolding, subject to continuous testing, perpetually subject to remorse, rededication, recalibration.  That effect is the most important aspect of our beingness.  A general guide may be summarized thusly:  Seek those mores and laws that seem best for availing a culture that maximizes the decently civilizing and unfolding expressions of individual freedom and dignity.

Quantitative from Qualitative

How is stimuli from the wider field that different --- causally, quantitatively, empirically --- from stimuli from the consciously expressed words of another person? Or, if not so different, then doesn't that indicate that the feedback of consciousness extends to the wider field itself?

On the other hand, if, and insofar as, stimuli from the words of another person does somehow present differently, qualitatively, then doesn't that indicate that the consciousness of such person is somehow apart from the mere quantitative stimuli of indifferent nature?

In other words, if Indifferent and unconscious nature accounts for all, then why does Caring consciousness abide anywhere? Alternatively, if consciousness does somehow abide apart from nature, then how can its complete explicaton be reduced to a merely quantitative account of nature?  May qualitative Consciousness and quantitative Physical Substance be of a same Meta Essence, receiving their qualitative versus quantitative aspects secondary to the locally fluxing purpose, perspective, and context of the Meta EssenceMay substance be a form of consciousness, tending not to be recognized as such insofar as it is morally inactive, indifferent, organizationally unimbued, dormant, undirected, or randomMay consciousness be a form of substance, not often treated or recognized as such insofar as it is qualitatively active, caring, continuously changing, morally directed, and defiant of being closely and completely measured?

Suppose neurologists, by targeting magnetic impulses at locations around or in skulls, became able to influence the thoughts and actions of conscious beings. Would they thereby be on a path for reducing consciousness to explanations grounded entirely in the quantitative? Or would they face an implicated and infinite regress: what controls and accounts for each of their decisions about whose skull to target, where, and how? What consciousness "decides" those questions --- if not consciousness from a wider field?

Consider the brain of a person who is contemplating morality in respect of what is needed in terms of mores and laws in order to sustain not just an individual person's immediate gratification or "well being," but the preservation and well being of a decent civilization for his progeny. Ask: what causes him to remain so stimulated, if not ongoing feedback from his wider field of participation among a continuous flux of other agents or perspectives of consciousness? In other words, is there not an intuited implication: that a fluxing quality of consciousness pervades the wider field, beyond the merely quantitative aspects of nature?

Is not a pervasive, fluxing quality of field consciousness a spiritual accompaniment, akin to a religious notion of God, to all that unfolds as quantitative regarding the manifestation of nature? Does not nature --- insofar as it is considered purely quantitative, not qualitative --- consist only as derivative signposts of the feedback and interfunctioning of perspectives of a qualitatively fluxing field of consciousness? Is not nature necessarily manifested to be dumb and indifferent precisely because it consists only of quantitative information that is stored for the appreciation, communication, and intuitive interrelation of perspectives of fluxing levels and layers of consciousness?

Is there not a meta quality of consciousness that is beyond the measure of nature, precisely because Whatever is the superior source of consciousness (moral purposefulness) is the even more superior source of nature?

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Millennial Fall of Decency

Millennial Fall of Decency:

American middle class producers (aka, Whitey, or minorities acting like Whitey) have failed to confront evil.  Now, they catch double hell.  We already know the middle class tends not to be effectively represented.  This is because an unholy alliance of Ainos (Dinos and Rinos) looks out only for (1) the cheaply bribed among the entitlement mongering class (Progs) and (2) the oligarchs who bribe them, using tax money (Oligs).

This is insult enough.  But wait, there's more.  Injury is added.  Know-it-all Progs combine with Oligs to represent America abroad, as if it were the American middle class that is the problem of discontent in the world.  This is hubris unbounded.  It's like punching your baby sister and then blaming your brother.

When our elites blame us abroad for acting imperial and profiting from selling arms, who, pray tell, is reaping such profits ---  if not our elite corporatist-military complex?  When our industry is sent abroad, our energy independence choked, our secrets squandered, our infrastructure left rotting, who, pray tell, benefits from the ensuing cannibalization and sell off?  When the Scandinavian and Low Countries are held up as models for moral socialism, pray tell how those models will survive, once the Oligs get on their scent, and begin dogging their cultures and institutions in earnest?  What will make their middle class any more resistant against the alliance of Progs and Oligs?  What lines will their representatives find the moral backbone to enforce?

Unless decent people rally in respect of higher purposefulness, those who know no decency, the Progs (brawn of abusers) and Oligs (brains of abusers), will continue to prey upon and reduce all influence of the middle class, everywhere.  Some among the middle class are finally waking up.  Can they assimilate in time to stop the indecency?  Can they find common ground, to fight the corruption allied against them?  They are massively out funded by the Oligs.  They lack the heavy handedness, the numbers, and the corrupt will of the Progs.  Unless they rally, they will remain handicapped by disorganization and their own sense of decency.

So what can they believe, to inspire or rally them?  The evil alliance against them ridicules and demoralizes all appeals to higher morality, and it constantly tells them that they must choose among corrupt gangs of political hoodlums, telling them, in effect, that wolf gangs based on self interest by abusing others are the only "higher morality."  Thus, the middle class may be destroyed --- economically, politically, and morally.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Towards A Rational Model of Consciousness

Towards A Rational Model of Consciousness:

There abides a perpetual Field, or quality, of potential information.

There abides a Meta means for extracting from such potential, to store such extractions as meaningful manifestations of measurable information, i.e., substance, or mass.

There abides a perpetual, inter-functioning Feedback between such Field and such Means.

Such feedback entails experiential, synchronized, appreciation and sharing of unfolding parameter limits.

The unfolding that is accompanied by feedback constitutes a process for driving the making of particular choices (of meta consciousnes) or determinations (of inanimate but animating meta forces) regarding both the direction of the whole and the flux of its sum of overlapping layers and levels of patterns and components.

There is no empirical explanation for why the Field and the Means "ought" so to abide or function. That they not only abide, but perpetually interfunction, may be considered as inexplicable, or miraculous. Their interfunctioning feedback gives constant and continuous expression to a quality of appreciation. That is, the Means apprehends the Field, effects choices, appreciates such choices, and, in feedback, continues to make further choices, and so on. The feedback is appreciated, perhaps meta-emotionally. The feedback is also synchronized, availing a shared, parameter driven, ground of being.

Result: In semantics, all determinations may be conceptualized as being made manifest in concert with "meta conscious choices" or "inanimate but animating meta forces." That is, a role for metaphysics cannot be banished merely by wishing it away. Whether conscious or animating, the Means is necessary precursor to the kind of consciousness we associate with complex, brain-stemmed, living organisms. Its quality for availing expression of "meta consciousness" is innate to its interfunctioning with the Field of potential, extractable information, and, perhaps, inherent to beingness.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Homunculus of Consciousness


Consciousness consists with a qualitatitve experience of identity (either holistic or particular to a context), even if not necessarily apprehended, as a self, by the identity with which it is associated. Mortal (transitory living) experiences of consciousness are associated with a physical body/nervous system/brain/organism. Every physical body, whether or not organic, receives, stores, processes, and transmits quantitative, empirical information ... based on how the parameter limits that define it inter-function with a field that gives effect to choice making.

Mortal consciousness tends to be conceptualized in respect of a qualitative experience by an organism of quantitative information. Mortal consciousness entails feedback between qualitative experience and quantitative sensation or measurement. However, the qualitative aspect of that relationship does not emerge solely because of evolving relationships among purely, empirically-based physical phenomena (Nature). That is, some meta phenomena (God) plays a role in the feeding back of an unfolding experience of consciousness with each synchronized perspective of it.

Each particular perspective of consciousness, in respect of its synchronized unfolding with all others, is joined with all others in respect of a reconciling, holistic field of consciousness. From a holistic perspective, each experience of consciousness is "caused" by some aspect that synchronizes or causes all. From each particular perspective, it may seem as if an experience of consciousness, identified or imbued with a physical body associated with that perspective, is assserting its own independent free will, to participate in the unfolding causation of its own experiences. However, every local event and sequence is willed, decided, determined, or defaulted a split sequence before a local body/brain associated with it even knows it.

That is, the brain (or central coordinating function of an organism) will already have been assigned each decision at least a split sequence before such brain is even able to represent such decision to its conscious awareness. The brain takes each decision or thought to be its own, but it really is only sensing a delayed feedback that is caused in the parameter-limiting association of its body with some meta aspect that is beyond empirical-based physics. All such experiences of willed decisions are synchronized among all bodies that receive and store information relating to physical interactions.

To decide or determine entails a particular decision or determination from among an array or field of choices or possibilities. Insofar as those aspects of such field that are not selected for determination or manifestation, they remain unexpressed and beyond particular empirical analysis. That is, they remain, at least in their particular aspects (not necessarily in their holistically weighted aspect) beyond physical analysis, i.e., metaphysical. That is, they are beyond the empirical appreciation of mortal perspectives of conscious will, but not necessarily beyond the qualitative apprehension of a meta field that somehow effects choices from among the field of possibilities. If there were no field, for effecting choices or determinations, to interrelate with the field of possibilities, then the field of possibilities would never manifest anything other than fuzzy, unrealized, potentiality.

It is interesting to consider how the meta field that effects such choices may experience some quality (appreciation, interest, caring) of meta or holistic consciousness. Is such meta field conscious before it effects each choice, or only as a feedback consequence of each choice? Is God noun, verb, gerund, or mere feedback? To experience consciousness, must the meta field rely on feedback that unfolds from the experiences of particularly imbued perspectives of organisms of physically-stored, parameter-limiting, empirical information? Likewise, must each particular perspective, for its experience of consciousness, rely on feedback that is generated as a result of the synchronized choice-making of the meta field?

For a particular perspective to experience higher levels of self awareness and control over empirical manipulations, it seems the body/brain organism with which it is imbued, and the context with which it is associated, must evolve to such more complex organizations of matter and information as are compatible therewith.

CONCLUSIONS:

Consciousness may be an emergent quality. If so, its emergence arises out of interfunctioning between two meta fields, i.e., a "nature field" of possibilities and a "god field" that effects choices from among possibilities. Experience of the quality of consciousness may occur at local levels, where it arises in respect of interfunctioning among local fields.

Intuitively, some thinkers may conceptualize that consciousness also occurs at holistic level, in respect of capacity for synchronizing all local field interactions and experiencing the quality of holistic/summing feedback that seems requisite to such synchronization. If so, each level -- local and holistic -- may need the other (at least in potentiality), and, in relation to such other, may experience qualitative apprehensions that arise to the level of identity investment, emotional involvement, and feedback and projection of empathy and caring.

Insofar as consciousness appears necessarily to entail meta aspects, the efforts of empiricists to give a complete accounting for it, in terms that are entirely measurable, seem a bit like a superstitious notion of a homunculus inside the skull directing the activities of the brain. To try to explain consciousness as being entirely derivative of mere physics of brain (synapses, nerve impulses, electromagnetic pulses) is to try to capture the "homunculus of physics," i.e., the Higgs Boson. Philosophically, I sense no good reason to suspect any such an ultimate particle-in-itself should suffice for a complete modeling of existential reality, or for a mature model for a philosophy of morality based on inherent empathy and emotional caring for other expressions of consciousness. In other words, emotion, caring, empathy, involvement, and appreciation are not solely derivative of physics. Rather, they are qualitative aspects that are innate to physics and inherent to beingness.

When we talk about consciousness, we need to be mindful of the aspect in which we are discussing it and the various divisions in approaches, i.e., between the metaphysical and the physical, the qualitative and the quantitative, the mind and the brain, the inherent and the stimulated, the holistic and the particular, the unbounded and the finite, the willed and the pre-willed, the the choice maker and the choice offerer, the system-definer and the parameter limits of the system with which the system-definer is involved in unfolding.

In a way, "stored will" may be like stored energy or stored information. That which seems to be empirically determined may simply be expressive of those signposts or placeholders of material or substance which have been pre-willed. Thus, the results of an expression of will are empirically measurable, at least in potentiality. However, the quality of interest, caring, and appreciation of will is not empirically measurable. Although a person may sometimes be confident of how he will soon give expression to himself, his confidence is always inferior to his apprehension that his perspective is of limited influence within the field as a whole. Thus, he may, in prayer, appeal his unfolding cares and empathies to the synchronizing will power that abides with the field as a whole. It is not unreasonable to believe that such field, in reconciling all, may weigh the quality of the cares and concerns of all.