Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Futility of Arguing Morality With Quantity Reductionists and Other Fundies

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Arguing Morality With Quantity Reductionists and Other Fundies:
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Does the Universe define Consciousness, or does Consciousness define the Universe? What defines the definer? Does there abide a trivalent logic for a meta holism, which simply does not submit to bivalently quantifying logic of mortals? Does the Universe, as a Unity, exist? Presently exist? Synchronously exist? Can it be defined? Can it be defined hypothetically, in any way that is consistent, coherent, and complete --- for all perspectives, contexts, and purposes? Can a model of Universe be reasonably tested? In respect of what measure or conscious definer can it be reasonably and intelligently defined, either as a holistic thing or as a consciousness of abiding?
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In having capacity to model possibilities that have no known correlative experience in history, our consciousness, perhaps somewhat like God's, seems to stand outside or beyond the quantifying explications and confines of substance-based physics.
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Every conscious experience or recording of experience of the here and now necessitates a committment of some perspective of, or shared participation of consciousness in (either contemporaneously or pre-set), whatever local physical context and bodily avatar that then and there happens to find itself being committed to. Once freed of a presently unfolding and contextually physical avatar, each particular perspective of consciousness may simply be reabsorbed into the holism, perhaps from there to be sequentially reassigned. And so one. Each assignment of perspective will experience a qualitative share of happiness and despair. Yet, God may spiritually feel and be with all, to lift the load when it becomes unbearably heavy.
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Bottom line: We won't find meaning or good faith in attempts to reduce God and/or Universe to any single, quantifiably consistent, coherent, and complete model of physics. There is little point in arguing morality or spiritual logic with any Islamist or spiritually literalistic fundamentalist. We need instead to be receptive to a good faith, qualitative pursuit of good will. There is no objective way to prove subjective morality or spiritual good faith. Rather, there is vision and receptivity to pursuits in good faith of sustainable meaning, liberty, opportunity, and social decency.
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Monday, February 27, 2012

Evolution, Progress, and Epi-phenomenalism


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EVOLUTION OF THE FITTEST:  The notion of the "fittest" often seems like an attempt to explain a result by attaching a hindsighting label.  That is, whatever a niche selects to favor is labeled the fittest to such niche.  However, this begs a question from a group or holistic perspective:  What synchronizes or causes the niche to so favor the sum evolvings of its particular components?  Only by  blinding oneself to the feedback and synchronizing influence of the holism may one "explain" evolution by labeling whatever happens by chance to occur as the "fittest."  If one does blind oneself to the whole and the group, then one may conceptualize that a local population will be thinned of members that are not equipped with anti-toxins to innoculate themselves against parasites and predators that breed to feed on them.  Thus, surviving breeders will tend to be endowed with inoculations, while only those of their predators that happen to have the most potent toxins will be able to feast on them.  Only in this way, by blinding oneself to the feedback synchronization of the whole, may one label unfolding results as the expressions of "nature's fittest."
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PROGRESS:  The notion of "progress" may take on either a linear or circular bent, depending on how a person may alternate in conceptualizing which is superior: Marxist substance or Spiritual consciousness.  As one apprehends that consciousness, depending on one's perspective and context and purpose, may be conceptualized as being only epiphenomenal of inter-functionings of substance, one may conceptualize progress as consisting in the LINEAR increase in the relative amount of control over the substantive environment that is acquired by forms of life that exhibit consciousness.  As one conceptualizes that substance is only epiphenomenal of inter-functionings of perspectives of consciousness, one may conceptualize progress as consisting in more CIRCULAR accommodations among perspectives of consciousness, as they participate in fluxing pursuits of meaningfully expressive fulfillment.  After all, if all of substance is but cover for inter-permeating perspectives of consciousness, than consciousness-already-exhaustively-controls-substance, so that it becomes oxymoronic to speak of "increasing" the control of consciousness.  Thus, an idealist would model that no substantive thing is "really" increased, but that the music of qualities of apprehension and appreciation are only fluxed or enhanced.
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BRIDGING COMMUNICATIONS:  If substance is the epiphenomena of inter-functionings of consciousness, then what limits how the signposts of its energies may be organized and communicated?  Can sources of energy be organized to accelerate (push and pull) exchanges of organized matter, books, bodies, and information close to the speed of light (EMR)?  Conceptualize a flux between a Particular singularity and its Field perimeter.  Conceptualize that the singularity expresses itself in a way that can be interpreted as a constant Push (of gravitons), and that the field expresses itself in a way that can be interpreted as a constant, magnetic Attraction or Repulsion of polarizing and charging effects (of an outward push of gravitons).  Could a particular perspective of consciousness harness and redirect such innate, free, and perpetual sources of pushing and pulling energies, merely by altering how expression is given to forms of substance in respect of their organization, charge, and polarity?  May mortals someday harness the charge between the singularity and its perimeter, as essentially free energy for accelerating the transportation of matter?  Next step thereafter:  Spooky communication among avatars at a distance.  Instead of Fed-Ex. may we have Galaxy-Ex?  May notions of cause-effect give way to a notion of epiphenomenal apprehensions of polar coordinated forms?
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POLARITY, AVATARS, AND EPI-PHENOMENALISM:  If substance is inferior as being dependent for its relational reality upon consciousness, then may the experience of, and bonded bodily identification with, substance be epiphenomenal rather than causal?  May all of apparent substantive experiences be connected, so that each is merely an avatar for a  single, encompassing, holistic reality of consciousness that is beyond constraints of substantive time and space?  Is each perspective linked to experience an unfolding towards eventual enlightenment into the unity?  Does such experience exist in synchronized simultaneity, both eternally and presently?  Insofar as abiding with the perspective of a present particular, will/must each such perspective come eventually to the holistic enlightenment?  In respect of paradoxical trivalence, has each perspective already reached enlightenment?  Does each perspective already abide with the holism, even as it traverses through epiphenomenal incarnations of avatars?  Does eventual enlightenment entail such alignment of polarity as to avail absorption of the particular into the holism?  Such abstractions are the stuff of non-quantifiable daydreams.  Is God like a self aware computer that dreams and modifies the holistic and particular interplay and Feedback of its dreams, based on how it apprehends and appreciates its dreams?  To experience and communicate meaningful liberty, does God subject the dreams of holism to the orderly organization of particular contextual limits?
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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Synthesis of Death and Meaning

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JUNGLE LAW:  Is the superior law of which all change is derivative the law of the jungle?  Is cooperation only a subset  form of competition?  Are the values of the Ubermensch superior to the "slave" values of the Judeo-Christian tradition?  Does "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" invariably lead to decline in passion, energy, initiative, and creativity?  Are the longer-standing, hunter-based mores of capitalism superior to the agricultural-based mores of socialism?  I don't think so.  To me, such thinking flits between false linear poles.  This propensity for false flitting deludes many to believe everything can be progressively reduced to the objectively, particularly measurable.  However, our reality abides not just with inter-functioning of measurable parts, but also with qualitatively immeasurable, random, cunning, smudged out, inexplicable, and often sublime relations with fields and wholes.  Ultimately, there is no objectively material, external standard by which to measure reality-in-itself.  The only way "to apprehend" the ultimate aspect of reality is not with objectively measurable substance, but with subjectively qualitative and appreciative consciousness.  For seeking meaning and fulfillment, consciousness is superior to matter.  For every aspect and quality of consciousness, there is but one clear, true pole.  It is the perpetually receding pole that guides all partial perspectives of consciousness in what, for them, constitute meaningful seeking of fulfillment.  Periodically, one may survey:  How am I doing, Higher Reality (aka, "God")?  One resolves, a little more strength, Higher Reality.  In intuitive empathy for Higher Reality, one resolves:  Guide me as I-participate-in-reshaping-the-matter-that-shapes-my-ecosystem-that-shapes-my-opportunities-to-evolve.  How best may I cooperate as an eco-holism, in order to pursue the best among alternatively competing visions for ecosystems?  Insofar as human evolution entails parenting, I fail to see how any sane parent could want to raise a child on a moral diet that consisted exclusively of the values Nietzsche would attribute to an ubermensch.
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ECONOMICS:  As to the economics of reality, I don't think there is clear, dichotomous choice between free enterprise and socialism.  Rather, I think the clear, overarching choice is between availing decent middle-class civilization versus being sucked into a new system of serfdom.  As society becomes wealthier and machines take over more and more of our work, the day to day stuff will of course be availed to nearly everyone.  Soon, society will want every citizen to have an Ipad.  In that way, Socialism will spread.  However, the cutting edge should still be largely open to unfettered experimentation and enterprise.  As the cutting edge sinks back into the routine, more and more functions will be socialized.  And so on.  So I think Will and Ariel Durant had it right about Hegel:  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis does not mean that either capitalism or socialism is right.  It means they describe the ongoing, fluxing perimeters of a synthesizing process.  The same may be said about cooperation versus competition.
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BUSYBODY AGENDAS:  The main reason I loathe the agenda of Obama (and commies) is not because he's a socialist, but because he's plainly a one world socialist who has little respect for the desire of ordinary, competent Americans to be free of know-it-all regulators like himself.  I don't think of life's game as being mainly about linear, material acquisition and progress.  I think of life as being mainly about seeking immaterial, conscious fulfillment.  Since I don't believe in materially objective "progress," I don't believe ordinary, competent people should subjugate their wills to know it all materialist technocrats.  However, I can see how a technocrat would want underlings to believe the choice between ideologies is a matter of black versus white, in favor of whatever school best serves his/her interest.
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SUSTAINING LIBERTY AT THE CUTTING EDGE:  As humanity becomes more successful in stockpiling expressions of its intentionality, society will accumulate more wealth and infrastructure, more to distribute, and more need to distribute in order that people can participate, communicate, remain in touch, and preserve decent influence.  Liberty stands on top of the accumulation, at the cutting, innovative edge.  So, a people's law needs to live in order to spread accumulating wealth.  Especially in respect of inter connectivity that makes nearly everything more interdependent, no one can be said to be entirely self reliant.  Instead, everyone's wealth comes more and more to depend on social cooperation with everyone else.  Thus, it is false to pose the main economic challenge as entailing a choice between socialism and capitalism.  Rather, the main challenge pertains to how best to guide their blending. The accumulation of technological know how will keep the blend accelerating.  More social wealth will cause more to be socialized.  There is no mathematically quantitative answer.  However, there are qualitative factors and signposts.  Factors and concerns relate to the following:  How to keep sloth and genetic drag at manageable levels. How to keep numerically superior sloths from bringing the table down. How to keep elites from blowing the table up.  How to keep tech within limits of humanity's capacity not to destroy itself.  How to preserve incentives, especially among the most innovative and energetic.  How to preserve meaningful society against a world of loons.
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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Hegel vs. Mohammed vs. Marx

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I'm slogging through Plutarch's Lives (damn long read!), but I find it so centered on military campaigns as almost entirely to neglect other important human factors that were cycling through the times. Mainly, I'm reading Plutarch as a duty. Kind of like reading the Koran ---to see how it's not all that. That's what makes Durant so splendid! He shows how, in many respects, the ancient people of the Mediterranean were not so different from ourselves. His lessons point up the signs of recyclings to come.
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I suspect the "glories of Islam" had more to do with military spoils than creative thought. Anyone who takes Islam at face value has got to have some seriously loose screws. I suspect the creative thinkers of the Islam world, like those who groaned under superstitions of the West, had their own dog whistling devices. Islam remains Exhibit IA for coloring my protectionist viewpoint. I don't want to protect America from decent civilization, but I do want to protect decent civilization from mind control freaks, elites, cronies, and jihadonies. So I don't quite get the absolutist thinking of the "free trade people."
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I don't think the choice is between free enterprise and socialism. I think the overarching choice is between availing decent middle class civilization versus being sucked into a new system of serfdom. As society becomes wealthier and machines take over more and more of our work, the day to day stuff will of course be availed to nearly everyone. Soon, society will want every citizen to have an Ipad. In that way, Socialism will spread. But the cutting edge should still be largely open to unfettered experimentation and enterprise. As the cutting edge sinks back into the routine, more and more functions will be socialized. And so on. So I think Durant had it right about Hegel: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis does not mean that either capitalism or socialism is right. It means they describe the ongoing, fluxing perimeters of a synthesizing process.
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The main reason I loathe Obama (and commies) is not because he's a socialist, but because he's a one world socialist who has little respect for the desire of ordinary, competent Americans to be free of know it all regulators like himself. I don't think of life's game as being mainly about linear, material acquisition and progress. I think of life as being mainly about seeking immaterial, conscious fulfillment. Since I don't believe in materially objective "progress," I don't believe ordinary, competent people should subjugate their wills to know it all materialist technocrats. However, I can see how a technocrat would want underlings to believe the choice between ideologies is a matter of black versus white, in favor of whatever school best serves his/her interest.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012

How to pursue the City on a Hill

.INTUITIVE EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY FOR GOD (City on a Hill): How best to cooperate as an eco-holism in order to pursue the best among alternatively competing visions for ecosystems?
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UPPER DESPOTS: Those who presume to know best
MIDDLE COMPETENTS: Those who mainly wish to be responsible for their own care and freedom of expression and enterprise
LOWER INCOMPETENTS: Those envious to be taken care of
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CITIZEN COMMITTEES:
Pressure Representatives to explore and report back regarding below listed current concerns; require explanations in detail for how or why each proposal will or will not be undertaken.
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NATIONAL INTEGRITY:
Enforce borders.
Verify identification of voters.
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GOVERNMENTAL CENTRALIZATION:
Make political candidates subject to recall, while providing for means to appoint a line of successors to finish each term.
Do not provide pensions paid for by taxpayers.
Vastly reduce staffs and lobbying.
Limit salaries for federal employees to be no more than three times the income of the average household.
Forbid financial investments by political representatives and policy makers except in blind trusts.
Shutter federal departments concerning commerce and education.
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HEALTH:
Maintain criminal penalties for unauthorized drug pushers while decriminalizing drug users, but provide for mandatory court supervised rehabilitation upon each third arrest for public intoxication. Require proof only by a preponderance of the evidence in order to authorize such mandated rehabilitation.
Phase out requirements for employers to provide health insurance by decoupling health insurance from employment; require that all health insurance policies be made portable to individuals.
Have government provide very basic, single-payer health care and do not allow public providers to seek reimbursement from persons who have their own insurance.
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TAXES:
Use rational taxes to incentive the establishment and sustenance of a society that defends and pursues decency, liberty, and opportunity.
Tax durable imports at same rate as same would be taxed by the exporting country if America had exported same to it, do not tax not durable exports.
Do tax financial out-goes, do not tax financial in-comes.
End farm price supports.
Phase to replace income tax with progressive tax on household consumption.
Establish a national progressive consumption tax on households.
Do not tax corporate profits or work salaries.
Do not tax corporations on income, wages, salaries, or consumption, except do tax corporations on certain financial consumptions that are not directly related to durable production, such as costs entailed with non-internet advertising and political lobbying. Do not tax internet-informational services.
Diminish property taxes on charities..
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INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY:
Without good reason, do not extend protection for intellectual property, copyrights, and patents beyond 5 years, and then only if marketed within 5 years.
Discourage international corporations from buying patents solely to hold hostage the improvement of common infrastructure.
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FAMILY:
Redefine status of “married filing jointly” to pertain only to joint filing under a cohabitation with a member of the opposite sex.
Moderate tax incentives to have children, to allow a tax credit of $1000 for each child, but only up to3 and no more.
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RELIGION:
Do not impede institutions that evangelize regarding an empathetic, loving God.
Redefine Islam as exhorted under the Koran as a terrorist conspiracy and authorize schools to teach that it is such.
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WELFARE:
Keep welfare low enough to discourage it as a chosen lifestyle.
 
PROBLEMS:
How to define a market for rewarding merit once cronies monopolize machines.
Genetic drag vs. Great society.
What should be the responsibility of government once regulations have distributed and licensed all the land, property, franchises, patents, and ways of making a living, so that is becomes unlikely that even those with gumption will find gainful employment?  At that point, will the ecosystem have so changed that decent morality should prompt government to find ways to redistribute income, even if by hiring people to dig and refill holes, do unskilled work on large scale infrastructure, beautify parks, help children and elders learn to enjoy pastimes and games, help rehabilitate and supervise committed addicts, or volunteer in zones of disaster or impoverishment?
FACTORS: Size of prison population; numbers of out of work youth; need to preserve incentives for those who are capable of doing better; relative smaller cost in availing respectful work versus paying welfare to empower continuations of slothful addictions.
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PANENTHEISM

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PANENTHEISM:
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I take Whitehead to have been wise concerning panentheistic, morally-connected feedback that operates synchronously among various and particular levels of holisms, fluxing within layers of more encompassing holisms. That moral connection is amenable of reasonable enhancement when it is respected in meditations, prayers, ceremonies, and rituals that are intuited as appropriate to context and society. Understandings among members of societies that evolve consistent with like apprehensions may more likely sustain certain kinds of societies. A society whose members function in reasoned and empathetic appreciation of a panentheistic Source or sponsor — whose members are inculcated with high regard for individual responsibility, liberty, opportunity, and respect for social decency — will more likely assimilate and evolve to a meaningfully sustainable city on a hill. A society that is not so inculcated may more likely remain subject to perpetual noise, confusion, conscience-less duplicity, meaningless competitions with like minded neighbors, and unguided change.
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People who lack intuition or insight for believing in any basis for moral meaningfulness will less likely establish or experience a society that enhances moral meaningfulness. They will be unable to sense or condemn sociopathic, conscience-less chiefs. They will be prone to rationalize moral outrages, such as the morality of annihilating respect for morality. They will look for spiritual rightness in material specifications, but will blind themselves to this: that to want to do right deeds is rather empty unless one believes there are right deeds. They will acquire material wealth, but will remain unhappy and hollow in spirit. They want to force other people to envy their wealth, thus to enlist company in their misery. They will seek to found civilizations on amoral conceits and corruption of cronies. Their holy grail is to use the substance of signs to prove that no source of meaning, essence, or aspect of spirituality can abide except quantifiable substance. By banishing notions of meaningfulness, they hope to establish peace — the peace of brain having proved mindlessness. In short, they seek to establish the Inferno in order to disprove it.
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What distempers the conscience-less is a strangely twisted notion of evolution. Thinking people tend to perceive that evolution occurs, but do not necessarily twist to rationalize from such a trite observation in order to deem that all experience, artistry, and communication of signs and significations must therefore be devoid of moral meaning. Thinking people do not necessarily believe that human culture cannot be part of the feedback that is appreciated and factored into unfolding determinations of evolution. Thinking people do not necessarily believe that culture is mere epiphenomena of factors that operate entirely and determinatively at a far smaller, dumber, essentially meaningless level. Thinking people do not necessarily believe that all of culture can be accounted for purely in a terminology like “the selfish gene,” or the regeneratively recurrent pattern, or the polarized and charged particle or potential of a bubble.
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Rather, thinking moralists tend to ask: Does evolution unfold in synchronizing respect of relations of feedback among fluxing levels and layers of wholes and parts, such as qualitatively contextual fields and locally quantifiable particles? Do apprehensions and appreciations of qualities meaningfully factor in evolution, along with quantifiably measurable combinations of variously charged particles? Is the “selfishly” unfolding conservation of quantifiables co-dependent for the direction of its unfolding upon a synchronizing, interconnecting, and immeasurable quality of evaluative appreciation?
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At bottom, the main questions are: Is the unfolding path of evolution determined by (1) random happenstance, (2) predetermined settings, or (3) choices in respect of contemporaneous feedback and relations among apprehensions and appreciations? Must each attempted “explanation” remain incomplete and meaningful only in respect of qualitative interfunctioning among (1) holistic context, (2) individual perspective, and (3) cooperative participation and choice-making in respect of moral purposefulness? What is the quantifiable measure of God, and what is the qualitative im-measure of Nature? What is the sound of one hand clapping? Can a part enjoy a range of freedom (or selfishness, or charge), apart from freedom (or selfishness, or charge) that is innate to the whole? Those who intuit a connecting source of empathy, who seek to establish and defend a city on a hill, will tend to believe one way; those who do not will tend to go another. It seems best that they not live together more than is required.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Where the Graphs Finally Cross

Human technology is becoming generally “smarter” (more complex and potent), while genetic drag is making the human genome generally dumber. The effect is that more power to destroy is being put under control of persons less likely to be smart enough to keep such power under controlled management. Evidently, present civilizations are locked in a competitive state such that they exhibit willingness to reduce human intelligence, but incapacity intelligently to decelerate the unfolding rush of technological prowess. This state of affairs is not a sustainable balance!
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Each of us will certainly and soon be required to help effect choices from among three general alternatives: (1) Determined by Random and Predetermined Nature --- Leave things to random chance and continue as we are, thus allowing humanity to tip into chaos (trust entirely and cow-like to shibboleths, superstitions, and Nature’s God). (2) Determined by Participatory Choicemaking --- Establish a (least intrusive?) way to further the generally competitive intelligence and cooperative empathy of assimilable populations of human beings (establish defensible exemplars of Cities on Hills). (3) Determined by Predatory Elites --- Facilitate divisions of labor that are correlated with divisions in species and classes of genetically-assigned function and intelligence (establish a Brave New World Order of Big Mahdi Rulers and the ruled).
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The path we choose will make all the difference, such that, of necessity, our notions of moral hazard will be repackaged. According to class chosen (or assigned), we will re-categorize, re-color, and re-communicate our notions regarding that which is meritorious, earned, beautiful, and true. For those who consider the second alternative to be akin to the promised land, such land will not be earned without much sweat and devotion in the service of vision.
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Insofar as cronyism voraciously feeds on every ism, including capitalism and socialism, neither capitalism nor socialism, by itself, may be considered a sustainable philosophy. For either notion to point a way to fulfillment of self and culture, something must be added that is presently missing. What might it be? The constricted selfishness and cynicism by which many would replace god fuels the crony corruption that has always consumed capitalism, communism, and catholicism.
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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Beyond Charity

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Once government takes over health care, what functions shall remain for charitable and volunteer institutions to perform? Mental health care? Shelter, comfort, counseling to purposefulness and job rehabilitation?  What will remain of social relevance for volunteer and church agencies of good faith?  How much can government take over, without pushing volunteer agencies and churches into irrelevance?
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No Mind, No Matter

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CHANGELESS CASTER OF CHANGING SPELLS: Particular bits of substance in space, time, or space-time do not exist in themselves, but only in respect of a Unifier, which abides only in the context of its infinite, eternal, quantitatively immeasurable potential for the present. As the Unifier exists, so also abides the eternally present context of space-time, with which it construes its apprehensions, appreciations, and pursuits of meaningfulness --- all perpetually unfolding within the spatial context of the eternal present. In themselves, space, time, matter, and energy do not exist, except secondary to the Unifier. Quantifiable substance is not determinative of, nor determined by, the Unifier. Quantifiable substance has no real quantities, apart from appearance of quantity, as determined by the quality of the quantitatively immeasurable Unifier. Rather, bits of substance are the fleeting and unfolding appearances and byproducts of the pursuit by the Unifier of that which, to it, is sought as meaningful. Quantifiable substance does not in itself exist, except as byproduced illusion under the spell of the Unifier --- the changeless caster of changing spells. Within the Unifier-Field, particles collapse into apparent existence only in respect that the Unifier determines therewith to associate potentials for perspective.
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COMMUNICATION: No mind, no apparent matter. No apparent matter, no mind. Every thing that exists exists in respect of a present context. No present context exists except in respect that it is appreciated or recorded. No quantifiable thing is appreciated or recorded except in respect of a quality of capacity to appreciate and record. That capacity exists. That capacity directly knows itself, perhaps superior to its capacity to know, image, imagine, interpret, experience, or appreciate any other thing. That capacity knows itself from many simultaneous, synchronous, overlapping, interfunctioning, empathetically interconnecting, perspectives. A Unity of consciousness and empathetic conscience is coextensive with each interconnecting perspective, but each interconnecting perspective is not coextensive with such Unity. That Unity may be called "God."
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SIGNAL INTERPRETATION: Technologies abide to avail us to receive, count, measure, interpret, translate, modulate, alter, and transmit broadcast signals and pulses of EMR frequencies. Matter, radios, and minds receive, emit, and transmit signal pulses. Matter does not abide in itself, but only as relational energy, stored for potential pulsing to such receiving organizations of energy as happen to have capacity to quantitatively interpret such pulsing.  Capacity to quantitatively interpret signal pulses is secondary to a perspective SO HAPPENING to be assigned therewith to interpret.
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READING INTENTIONS AND MINDS:  It is possible for organizations of energy to evolve to produce brain centers for relating, experiencing, modulating, intending, and communicating feedback concerning interpretations of signal pulses. Means can be devised to enable brain apprehensions, intentions, and thoughts to be "read," to leverage such readings, and to deceive, misdirect, or reconfigure such readings.
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MORTAL REALITY IS MIXED IN SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY: My perspective is SUBJECTIVE, yet it is reliably OBJECTIVE that my Identity, i.e., my experience of I-ness, is separate and apart from the complete control of any other particular perspective of I-ness. Other than that, it soon becomes evident that there is no other reality-in-itself by which to objectify any other particular and non-trivial reading among mortal perspectives. Yet, may the record of each perspective's truth and reality be "meta-objectified" in respect of a synchronizing God? May such meta-objectification (judgment hereafter?) be subject only to the objective interpretation of a non-mortal Unity? Regardless, such meta-objectification would be for God, not for mortals while they are mortals. Rather, for us, much depends on (1) perspective, (2) changing context of space-time, and (3) evolving purpose.
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MORTAL LIMITATIONS: One cannot simultaneously bind one's perspective to identify solely with a mortal context and yet apprehend and appreciate the meta-holistic, harmonizing, synchronizing, connecting Unity. The capacity of the Unity --- to both connect us and to separate us, to flux between fields and particles, to morph its face (character and aspect) as we phase through the fuzz of perceptual boundaries, to flux among modes of determinism (from the substantively fixed to the randomly bounded to the subjectively chosen), to separate the spiritually qualitative from the substantively quantitative, to referee the relation between the infinite and the eternal, to abide as the changeless-changer --- is simply beyond the kin of our mortal logic or comprehension.
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CONNECTING THE OBJECTIVE AND THE SUBJECTIVE: Might the Unity avail to us some signal frequency to mediate relations among particular mortal perspectives and the Unity? Might such a frequency avail God and mortals to communicate quantitatively and objectively? Or must such a frequency remain ranged beyond the capacity of any mortal to receive, except in QUALITIES of empathetic intuition and metaphors, as opposed to perfectly correlative models of objective quantification? Does the demise of a mortal perspective and that which avails it to experience an illusion of separation from the Unity avail it to be reabsorbed into the Unity? Does the entire identity of a mortal perspective die with it, or does some aspect of such Identity reabsorb into the Unity? What is necessary to answer or believe, to conduce to a meaningful, moral life?
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Gross National Happiness

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A fundamental phase shift hangs in the balance. Until recently, it has been thought that those whose souls are a bottomless pit, who are most competitive in means, should never stop expending resources to acquire wealth and power. They have been so conditioned that, unless and until sufficiently constrained or taxed, they absolutely will not stop until they have converted earth and humanity into something perhaps not even they would desire. Such people abide. It becomes insane or suicidal to ignore them. Their need to reduce other people to have to obey or work for them is insatiable. They will come to own, control, regulate, and entitle all land, resources, jobs, and laws. There will come no choice but to pay them obeisance and to work for them. Likewise, they will come to have no choice but to compete against, or work for, others like themselves. That end is their highest calling. That is, unless society learns better ways for recognizing sociopaths and hollow souls and for availing general distribution of liberty and opportunity. Perhaps society will learn to establish limits against hollow sociopaths by deploying progressive taxes on consumption in order gradually to fetter and bound incentives. Until then, the problem is this: How can or should society balance incentives for those who are irretrievably pointed towards reducing all of nature to understanding and control? Alternatively stated, how can humanity overcome ignorance and poverty, without chaining the collective to abject control under corporate chiefs?
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A time approaches when populations will be reduced, and a system of machines and technology may be established such that no one need do much manual work in order to provide for most of his or society's basic needs and wants. A time approaches when most productive work will be done only by the very most technologically and scientifically skilled. Most others will be considered "useless eaters." Much of wealth and power will be agglomerated through inheritance. Merit will be redefined to equate, in main, to having been born into a rich and connected family, class, or situation. Then, unless society becomes dehumanized, those born into less fortuitous circumstances will need to be provided for. How shall they "earn" their basic keep? Shall they become the new class of sacred cows? Shall they be paid X dollars for living, breathing, eating, learning, consuming, and procreating? Shall municipalities finance competitive sports for digging and refilling holes? In main, shall further economic growth be stopped? Shall a new measure of economic health be adopted, such as gross national happiness (GNH), instead of gross national product? Then, who shall define GNH and administer the means of persuading and assimilating us to it? By what star shall they be guided?

Friday, February 17, 2012

The New Marketplace

.The problem is tying health care generally to employment and making employers pay for it.  That puts America in a competitive imbalance with other nations.  It also hands regulators broad scope for sweeping nearly everything under the heading of "health care."  So long as that's the template, most voters will prioritize by not wishing to allow religious exceptions to general secular regulations.  This is because most people are not of a particular religion.  Religious truth has become passe.  Indeed, even Americans who are of the religion are not of the dogma ... as dogma.  They are of the dogma as society, music, ceremony ... and form --- not as in itself true.  How else could one explain most American Catholics?  N Pelosi; T. Kennedy; S. Colbert; etc.  They are cultural Catholics, much as American Jews are cultural Jews.  Cinos and Jinos and inos ... everywhere.
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Many Republicans are miscalculating where most people will come down on this issue.  Most people sense that responsible stewardship and moderating population via general incentives are better than the alternatives:  imbalanced depletion, force, violence, and war.  The heart of the matter is this:  Humanity remains fundamentally confused about whether the Source (mind) of objective truth abides as matter or as spirit.  No mind, no appearance of matter; no appearance of matter, no mind.  Being confused about the source of rights, most people are easily stampeded to the whims of the most cynical.  Most sheep have consciences --- it's just that they have no guiding star.  Thus, our electorate does by and large as it's told by those who presume to wear the symbols of legitimate authority.  Many among our youth figure MSNBC is legitimate, and all who fail to see that are ignorant and greedy heathens.  So, among those who would rule, the competition is to buy and wear the symbols of authority.
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The ruling win-win marketplace is an off the books marketplace for cronies, corrupt promisers, kickback artists and sell outs.  And man how that marketplace has quickened!  That marketplace for corruption can be played or it can be fought.  However, there's no extant political party that's organized for the purpose of fighting it.  Nor can such a marketplace, mired as it is in corrupt rules and regulations, be fought with more mere rules and regulations.  Republicans and Libertarians constantly espouse "free trade" and "free enterprise," even as they remain dumb to the fact that there is no longer a relevant free marketplace.  The pretense of a free marketplace is now owned and operated by corrupt cronies and wannabes.  They will not be defeated by smart linear calculations that ignore the underlying reality.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Alliance of Hedging Cronies

The encompassing issue pertains to how best to dismantle our Rube Goldberg system of centralized regulatory confusion in order to revitalize the middle class and respect its political potency. I suspect few of those who fund either of our main political parties actually want to pierce through the confusion. They like being able to keep the middle stirred up, divided, at odds with itself, and diverted. During discontents, there's money to be made by hedge artists! So long as discontents can be so easily stirred, the middle can never become potent to counter: cronies from selling out the nation; taxes from tying workers to mortgages; promises like health insurance from being lost once employment is lost or corporations are repackaged; and education from being tied to centralized mind confusion. Thus, the middle class will never see obvious solutions, and it will instead remain mired in irresolvable cross purposes, impotent to stop the fleece machine.
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Indeed, the alliance of cronies holds all significant cards and coins, as it has held them for more than 50 years. Heads or tails, the fleece alliance hedges and wins either way. This is not the fault of advocates of any single issue! It's the fault of middle class leaders for allowing themselves to be divided by foolish concerns over foolish inconsistencies and for refusing to unite into a sensible third party in order to stop the general source of the rot. Case in point: diverting attention to bickering, as we go over the falls, as if nothing could be more important than that kids ought to be exposed to even more rot, drugs, and gender confusion --- as if sex, drugs, rap, and rot did not already becloud our vision of everything else. No, we must have more, and more, and more. After all, it energizes the easily misled, especially the youth.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Progressive Consumption Tax

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To better pursue solutions, we should better comprehend and prioritize relations among our concerns.  Many problems are not that hard to address, once their relations are identified.  Until relations are addressed, piecemeal solutions simply cannot work.  A boat with multiple holes in its bottom will still sink, even if all but one of its holes is filled.  A representative republic sickens into a walking contradiction the more it sinks its middle class.  It sinks into despotism pretending to contend for the best interests of its sheep.  The national scope of America's problems is less due to intolerance of the hubristic by the humble, modest, and decent than it is to intolerance by the hubristic for the humble, modest, and decent.  Less due to common sense of the experienced and insightful than to frenetic fascism of the callow and self professed elite.  Less due to advocates of individual responsibility than to advocates of international fascism, coupled with diversions into dopery.  The main problem now confronting empathetic humanity consists in clamorings of entitlementarians to force equality in mind and matter upon everyone else, accompanied by outrages against all decency and sustainability.  Our problem is not with education, health, or home mortgages.  Our problem is with Rube Goldberg styles of centralized regulation of education, health, and housing.  Our problem is not to discourage productivity, but to discourage sloth.  We fund our Rube Goldberg centralized system of regulation by taxing too much of what we want and too little of what we don't want!
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The idea of a progressive consumption tax fairly cries out from the wilderness!  Why hasn't it been paid more attention?  Well, until recently, the technology needed to support such an idea was not available.  Now it is.  Now, the fear is Big Brother.  However, Big Brother is already monitoring internet searches, purchases, indeed, our very keystrokes, and soon, our carbon emissions.  Big Brother will not be tamed by pretending he's not there or by declining to confront him on his own terrain.  We will either have a method for identifying our voters and citizens and for monitoring accumulations of economic activity, or America's identity as a nation will melt into the N.W.O., there to be ruled by international corporatists skilled at diverting attention of sheeple from fleece machines.  Technology has gone too far to allow anarchy.  Anarchy would only avail a short transition from mass mayhem to despotism.
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Check online for progressive consumption tax aspects in the idea of a Bradford-X tax.  Effect:  avoid double taxation of income.  However, think even further about what could be accomplished with a progressive consumption tax scheme.  Samples:  Encourage production by those who show talent to produce by not taxing corporate or individual income or investments in production.  Encourage cheaper prices secondary to mass production by taxing individual consumption progressively.  Discourage people from going into debt for what they cannot afford.  Discourage capacity to buy politicians as commodities by constraining corporate lobbying to fixed and highly taxed modes.  Do not allow corporations to make political or campaign contributions except as a form of highly taxed consumption.  Progressively tax lobbying by individuals as a form of consumption.  Discourage rise of despotisms and aristocracies by appropriate use of tariffs and death taxes.  Redistribute most taxes to states on a per capita basis.  Do tax financial outflows from country; do not tax financial inflows.
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There comes a point where increased resources spent on consuming results in decreased production, such that one cannot consume one's way to riches. One cannot print money to prime the middle class at the front door without availing those who cause the money to be printed to prime themselves at the back door. The proportionate wealth of the middle class cannot be increased merely by inflating money. Instead, the consumptive power of the money itself must be made disproportionally beneficial to all lower classes, by effecting progressive taxes against increasing levels of household consumption.
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Saturday, February 11, 2012

He Who Frames The Issues

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All of good faith are betrayed, and most of ANY SIDE are too easily misled to care. Simply put, the middle class is not represented. Why?  In main, it has been divided to be served as the main course, rather than to be served in its own interests.  The game is now about competing for turns for overlordship.  Issues aren't addressed in terms of middle-class common sense. Rather, issues are reframed to appeal to oligarchic cronies and unionized gangs intent on fleecing the middle class. Crony hyenas reframe issues in terms of freedom to capitalize, while gang-banging wolves reframe issues in terms of redistribution of material equality. Neither side frames issues in terms of what's needed to avail ordinary citizens with decent freedom of expression and enterprise.
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Most people, were they not subjected to steady drumbeats of misleading noise, would readily intuit common sense, that: (1) both defense of civilization and environmental stewardship call for general incentives for moderating populations; (2) as much as practicable, ordinary citizens should be allowed to decide for themselves whether and when they wish to practice both contraception and religion; and (3) health insurance and housing should be more portable and less tied to employment or mortgages. Yet, those are not goals of those who fund and run our contending cronies and gangsters. Any astute observer will notice how common sense goals are continuously reframed and stalemated by hyenas and wolves.
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In effect, "leaders" who contend to fleece us unite to urge that nothing is feasible without first consenting to have our borders erased, our self reliance infantilized, our modesty outraged, and our respect for religious practices nullified. The between-the-lines message is: National health care is not feasible; national defense is not feasible; national economic competitiveness is not feasible. Given the way our leading contenders frame our situation, the only important things feasible are the demise of faith, the destruction of America, the outraging of modesty, and the sell out of middle classes to international corporations. This won't stop until perpetual fleecing is made irreversible --- unless the middle class as a whole soon wakes up.
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Chattel versus Children, Rights versus Definitions

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One hardly needs a piece of paper to engage in all the free expression of genitalia one likes, so long as within bounds of modest decency so as not to scare the wildlife. One can call such activities by whatever name one wishes. Marriage, significant other, fornication buddy, whatever. One can invent cults and religions and label favorite practices whatsoever names one desires. And one can contract with other adults, within bounds of enforcible contracts, and call those contracts by whatever label one favors. But one does NOT have a legal or moral right to contract so as to treat children as chattel. A child is a special ward of the State ---not a chattel of the State, not a chattel of parents.
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Those who choose to remain citizens of a civilization, governed under the form of a State, have an interest in preserving their civilization for themselves and their posterity. They have, and will take, power to moderate incentives for preserving and replacing demographics for sustaining their civilization. They can favor presumptions regarding how best to foster succeeding generations. Should parents be accorded tax breaks? Should parents be accorded presumptions of fitness to have and raise children? Should judges and orphanages be accorded discretion to weigh factors in assessing how orphans should be cared for and adopted? OR: Should political correctness require all children to be thrown to the first bidder, as of right? Should traditional families not be presumed superior, absent showing of disqualifiers? Should parents not be availed special certification as "married" in the eyes of the law?
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In itself, marriage is not a person. Marriage itself does not have rights. A State certificate merely indicates clearance for presuming participants to be generally qualified and favored for having and raising children. After all, there are persons unfit to have custody of children, and it must fall to government to assess such situations. An assault on government certified status of marriage easily morphs into an assault against protecting children from being treated as chattel. There is no "equal right," per se, to obtain the supervision of a child! Wider civilization will retain power to stop what the majority consider abuse. That interest is not to be destroyed by giving every person who may be adult in body but not in mind some presumed "right" to lordship over any child. Against such governance, the only check is availed by respecting a broadly assimilated society of decently qualified and relatively modest parents. To undermine interests of ordinary parents, to create a "right" in everyone to treat children as chattel, is to hurry the time when State elitists, as a matter of course, will assert superior and arbitrary power to control all significant details regarding the raising of the next generation. When it comes to asserting "equal rights," too many brains are blinded by their genitalia. Their ill considered implication is that hormone addled adults have rights, but children are chattel.
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Monday, February 6, 2012

Retch

If you want a republic that establishes generally decent rules for all, then you need citizens who are brought up to think in such terms. In most countries and most times, most aren't. Most are brought up thinking it terms of short term winners and losers. Decent people have souls that expand to identify their self interest to encompass far more than narrow, temporary opium fixes. When it comes to self interest, their idea of "self" extends beyond the constricted perimeter of their skins. Unfortunately, these people who think in terms of the good of their country and posterity also tend too much to project, to believe there are more like them than there are. When they let down their guard for too long, corruption soon surrounds, like wolf packs. That's where decent thinkers now are, mainly marginalized and targeted for fleecing on ALL sides. For a long time, the easy profit has been in fleece pacts. The fleecers who run mass media don't need to make money tied to media. They make it tied to their fleece machines. The people with stock in media will have stock in scams that media can tip to their favor. Arabs invested in Fox are interested in keeping America from becoming energy independent. They're about conquest and deception. Decency and truth are not what they're about. The centralizing franchises are not where anyone is going to find much truth or decency. Thinkers who want to preserve a viable, decent, representative republic will have to establish their own connections and alternatives. A good start would be for profs who heretofore have served socialists and sociopaths to suddenly retch away from what is being vomited on America. Has tenure made them independent enough, or has it just allowed academia to be filled with easily indimidated and conditioned kool-aid drinkers, now preparing the next generation for its final fleecing?

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Non-Profits

The theory has been that non-profits are needed to avail a social safety net, so that charitable functions can be decentralized away from corrupt and inefficient political power mongers. Unfortunately, corruption knows little of decency or modesty and quickly learns how to overcome the politics not only of governments but also of charities. Once charities are reduced to much the same centralized corruption as government, then it becomes ridiculous to hope to replace inefficiency and corruption by relying on charities. Nearly every other institution of significance has been corrupted by cronyism, so it's only to be expected that opportunities respecting money and power in non-profits cannot remain unexploited. Crony power secondary to self worship has us in an evil vise grip. So the kind of reform that's needed will not be undertaken by powers that be. Those powers will not dis-establish themselves. The reform that's needed must be undertaken not by an ocean of new regulations (which would only be corrupted to service cronies), but by sensible and general measures calculated to restore common sense and decency. That will not occur, however, unless and until there's a general awakening. There's every chance such awakening won't occur until the cell doors have closed to the last chance. We may be seeing the last vistas of ordinary decency and liberty, as faux gods of crony self interest finish extending their overlapping spider webs to the very last of our material hopes. If the income tax cannot be repealed and replaced with a progressive consumption tax, then at least the deduction for charitable contributions should be repealed. Moreover, the talk of ending death taxes calculated to limit the progressive rise of an aristocracy is fundamentally misguided. Most likely, however, the noise machine will continue to drown any awakening to common sense.

Friday, February 3, 2012

The Establishment

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REGARDING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF, BY, AND FOR CRONIES:  Of course Americans are becoming more and more distrustful of the Establishment!  Consider who runs our institutions of significance and how they are run.  Banking, media, academia, political funding, corporate control.  Look at the stuff that passes for news and analysis on MSNBC.  Does anyone with the intellect of a goose fail to see how slanted it is?  Consider the political alignment that has pretended for more than 50 years that it is impossible to enforce the border.  Look at how fast American industry and the American middle class have hollowed out.  Look at millions losing jobs while billions in bonuses are funneled to cronies.  Look at cronies playing pay to play, choking domestic energy production after crony corporatists have finished placing their hedges.  Look at crazy, frenzied enrichment of almost every congressperson.  Look at free trade of technology with despotic regimes that cannot be trusted to keep WMD out of hands of pirates and terrorists.  What person of the least intellect who is not corrupt fails to see how corrupt and devoid the Establishment is of any value higher than constricted self interest?  Class warfare?  For what reason, apart from corruption, should any person who holds no value higher than his self interest, leveraged by gang support, ridicule any other for playing for his own self and gang interests ... by accusing him of playing for gang interests?
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CONSERVATION AND WEALTH CREATION: Since before dawn of recorded history, humanity has promoted hierarchies to direct its variously contending tribes. Masses have always been taxed to accord great sacrifice and effort to their chiefs, in order to preserve and redistribute liberty and wealth among tribes. Liberty and wealth were often obtained by imposing enslavement and extracting spoilage. At the end of each contest, the relative liberty and wealth of the combined masses was not likely improved, although the current of power to direct the hierarchy would be diverted. The main agency for promoting liberty and wealth was coordinate with spoilage, enslavement, and death. To considerable extent, the pie was made bigger by squeezing life in ways that banished many from the party.
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Now, instead of face to face military campaigns, we have face to face political campaigns. At the end of each face off, the relative liberty and wealth of the combined masses often seems not much improved, although the current of power to direct the worldwide hierarchy is diverted. (Yes, there is accumulation of access to technological diversions, if same are to be accounted "wealth," but often at price of unmentioned dead and diminished. In material terms, the law of conservation DOES impose a zero-sum environment, although the zero-summing is experienced as directionally accumulative. Thus, we accumulate stuff upon shoulders of the departed and diminished, and we convert earth to stuff at expense of altering previous balances.)
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Nowadays, the main agency for redistributing the conservation of liberty and wealth is less coordinated with the organizing of military expeditions than with the organizing of corporate and taxing expeditions. The pie is temporarily fluxed bigger FOR SOME by harnessing the many and then telling them to toil and wait on hope and change. Despots savvy in newspeak always rule by inspiring, organizing, and forcing masses to wear harnesses in order "to win individual liberty by accepting organized slavery."
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DECENTLY CIVILIZED LIBERTY AND OPPORTUNITY: To enhance liberty and opportunity for the masses, it's no answer to coax or force them into corporate or communal collectives in order to compete against the cheapest serfs for the opportunity to be ruled by elites. The longer the masses fail to apprehend, the more tightly their harnesses will be cinched. The answer is in (1) assimilation of common-sense respect for spiritual, qualitative, non-quantifiable empathies, (2) appropriate decentralization of governance, (3) general protection of borders, infrastructure, and industry of homeland, (4) re-balancing of prerogatives of international corporations, disloyal elites, and callow cannibals, and (5) general apprehension of zero sum conservation of material wealth versus appreciation of qualities of non-quantifiable values.
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SPIRITUALITY ---- OF META WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS: Why do post-analyzed, seemingly crazy dreams, visions, and meditations often seem to have been so real and logical before one wakes? it seems some meta-material aspect of The Axiomatic of which brains or minds are derivatively identified must have imaginative capacity to image all manner of fuzzy relations. In that respect, worlds abide within worlds, expanding, contracting, and conflating. The further one fuzzes away from the humdrum of the manifest, the closer one identifies with the meta Source of axioms. In that state, the usual logic of the materiality of the manifest tends to fall away, leaving one to image and adduce from the Source in respect of all manner of imaginative potentials. The reality that supports the logic of that altered state is not of the same quality of dependence upon assumptions of any particle of matter, as if matter could in itself constitute some kind of independent and unconscious "thing." The more one's waking self remains UNAWARE of one's dreaming self, the less one apprehends that materiality, as a mathematical extension of linearity-in-itself, is an illusion borne of happenstance of identification with imagination, and the less one is open to a non-quantifiable quality of empathy in consciousness, which is NOT constrained to the merely linear. Entropic directionality in the unfolding of an expanding universe of measurable matter is secondary to happenstance of identification with perspective of material linearity. Linear directionality is not predetermined secondary to meta-matter constituting some kind of measurable matter-in-itself. Alternatively stated, happenstance of identification with perspective of material linearity is not derivative of entropic directionality in the unfolding of an expanding universe of measurable matter-in-itself.  Rather, directionality of material unfolding is derivative of identification of conscious imagination with perspective of material linearity.
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