tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7500161685707670262024-03-05T04:10:38.559-08:00Solutions for New MilleniumPolitical thought on major issues of today and tomorrow.
<a href="http://www.globalwarming.org.in" title="Effects of global warming"> <img src="http://www.globalwarming.org.in/fightglobalwarming.jpg"> </a>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-67865891569932301782010-04-24T00:56:00.000-07:002010-04-24T00:56:06.604-07:00"New World Order" Conspiracy Theories and Related Big Lies<script type="text/javascript">
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3b3330; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">The phrase "New World Order" was first used in American political discourse by Republican President George Bush Sr. What he meant in the speech in which he first used the term was that the world was changing from one structured around the Cold War to one that is governed, in his words, "by rule of law rather than by the law of the jungle." The term was used by a Republican president to describe a world run by republican values. But that does not prevent the right-wing conspiracy theorists from using the term to claim that American people are being conned by some left-wing Satanic global conspiracy of the super-rich.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3b3330; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Now the people who use this term in that way are the same people that not that long ago were shouting "money talks, bullsh*t walks" and "America: love it or leave it." These people did everything they could to destroy everything in America - government, education, environment, unions, academia, media, human rights, arts, literature - except the money chase, which they claimed to be the true American value and the universal measure of rightfulness and success. And now suddenly they claim that the world is run by Satanic anti-American interests because they've been bested even at this money chase by the people whom they'd previously abused as "commies" or "nerds" or dismissed as "wackos" or "losers," and the money chase has not worked out for many of them even in the decade in which their own right-wing Bush Jr. regime ran America and imposed their will and attitudes on the country.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />These people have militated, and continue to militate, against having to pay tax. It doesn't matter to them that the high-tax Clinton economy produced 23 million jobs and the only balanced budget in 40 years, nor that the low-tax Bush economy put America extra $5 trillion in debt and into the worst economic crisis it's had since the Great Depression. They claim to be realists, but they continue to deny the basic reality: That for as long as they have the military and police that protect them, the roads and the Interstate that makes it possible for businesses to deliver goods to customers, the science that is the root source of all products sold by business, and the education that makes them employable, they will have the Government, whose bills either they or their children will have to pay. In their ignorant, destructive and failed quest to do away with this government that makes all this possible - and without which America would have none of what it has and would look like Somalia - they have put their children, and their country, $10 trillion in the hole. And then they go around claiming that they have family values or that they are American patriots or that they are responsible people, after they've done this horrendous wrong to their children and to their country.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Of course these people have not done away with the government. Their lives, their property, and their economy, irrevocably demand it. All that they've done is replace "tax-and-spend" with a far more irresponsible borrow-and-spend. And now their children and grandchildren will have to pay for the tax cuts and tax breaks that they have allowed themselves. Thank you, people of "family values." Thank you, "American patriots." You will be known by history as America's greatest villains and be the most apparent example of wickedness that is the direct result of your beliefs.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />These same people then like to attack "the elites" as they proclaim their way to be true America and to be the most successful way ever. Now if their way was the most successful way ever, they themselves would be elites, because that is what the truly successful people become. Instead they continue to blame these nonexistent "elites" for everything that is wrong with the world and with America, after their own people had been in the government for eight years and made the world and America exactly the way that they wanted it to be. Which means that their elite talk is nothing but scapegoating, and they have only themselves and their conmen and representatives to blame for the mess that America is in.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Many of these people then decide that they are "freedom fighters" who are fighting to get the government out of their lives. Their real reason for wanting the government out of their lives is that they are petty tyrants who want the unlimited license to terrorize and oppress the people in the communities in which they operate, and for the people in these communities to have no protection from them. The American government is obligated by Constitutional law to protect people's rights. Naturally, those who want people to not have rights have a problem with that and want the government out of where they operate. Far from being any kind of "freedom-fighters," these people are tyrants who want unlimited license to rape, murder, brutalize and oppress people. They want the government out of the communities in which they operate, so that their families and neighbors do not have protection against the violence, tyranny and corruption that they want to inflict on them.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3b3330; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />These same people then go on to portray global warming as a myth of "socialists." Never mind that thousands of scientists all over the world have been telling the public about this for decades; never mind that the atmosphere records the highest levels of carbon in 800,000 years; never mind that the oceans are turning to acid; never mind that the glaciers are melting, and island nations are being submerged under water; never mind that weather is becoming increasingly erratic, and thousands upon thousands of people are dying of global warming-related events. This problem could have been stopped in the 1980s, and if not for American Right it would have been stopped in the 1980s. Instead the Republican government of the time wanted to hear none of it - and the Republican conmen from Paul Wyerich to Pat Robertson to Rush Limbaugh claimed that scientists and journalists were fools and sinners, so who cares what they think. And now we're here, facing the predicted effects, and the scoundrels are still denying it or claiming that it is the God-ordained end of the world!<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Now if you believe that we are living in the end times, then logically you are not going to plan for the future, because according to your belief there is none. Which means that you are going to act in a short-sighted, destructive, and irresponsible manner, and not only sabotage efforts to extend and improve humanity's stay on the planet but will eat up all the resources with no sight for the future and destroy inheritance both natural and human-made. And it is time to say to the people who have such beliefs: You have no right to claim to practice responsibility. You have no right to claim to have family values. And you have no right to claim to be true America. America got great by working to create a better future, not by aggressive myopia that does not foresee a future and does what it can to make sure that there is none.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />These people then claim America to be the product of their efforts and to take credit for America's accomplishments. This is the biggest usurpation of all. America got great through efforts of hundreds of millions of people all through its history, and the greatest contributions came from the Left, not from the Right. It is the efforts of academic scientists, of whom the majority are Democrats and only 3% are Republicans, that have created all the knowledge that makes possible the products that American business sells. It is the Democratic administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt that gave America its greatest victories in, respectively, First and Second World Wars. The vastly Democratic computer industry was the true engine of 1980s and 1990s prosperity; the government-funded Interstate and Internet made possible respectively delivery of goods to customers and the information industry growth; and the Democratic Clinton administration gave America its greatest-ever peacetime prosperity, its greatest-ever wartime prosperity having been under Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. As teachers, journalists, professors, and social workers, it is the Democrats that do the heavy lifting to educate American people, to fight corruption, and to make people employable and off of crime. Which means that Democrats, not Republicans, deserve credit for America the most.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Whereas the Republican entities are for the most part parasitical. The oil industry that has for 30 years denied the truth about global warming and prevented progress in creation of viable clean energy solutions - the anti-government government-subsidized beef industry that takes the land that could feed 2 billion people and uses most of it for grain feed so that it would feed a fraction of that number - the truckers who want government "off their backs" as they depend entirely in their trucking upon the government-built, government-maintained Interstate and road system - and the industry of conmanship and deception that is the Christian Right - are all operating in manner contrary to national interest. It then comes as no surprise that the Democratic Clinton administration would bring America its greatest ever peace and prosperity, and that the Bush Jr. administration would result in economic and social catastrophe. The two administrations reflect the values and the beliefs of their voters; and the results are predictable by simple logic.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />Having destroyed intelligence in America - having gutted the primary education, defunded the academia, and subjected the students who took academic knowledge seriously to vicious abuse - the American Right has found its home in aggressive ignorance, which it now presses upon the rest of America as "righteousness" or as "freedom" or as true America. The party line of the American Right is none of these things; it is a Big Lie. As any Big Lie it is intolerant of fact and reality, and it is by knowing, remembering, and confronting its followers with fact and reality that this Big Lie can be overcome.<br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />At this point in history, true American patriotism demands nothing less.</span></div>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-54282480002816299202010-02-06T07:45:00.000-08:002010-02-06T07:45:24.186-08:00Problem of GroupthinkThe problem of groupthink happens in all closed systems. The people prevail upon one another to think the same way, and as a result of all thinking the same way arrive at the same errors. As they persecute people for thinking in any different way, they exclude crucial perspectives that have the capacity to check those errors. And the result, in all cases, is disaster.<br />
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We see that in a glaring example with the media in 1998, when it created a groupthink that attempted a coup against a legitimately elected president who had 70% public support, and then attacked an independent magazine called the Salon for "violating unspoken rules of media" with its revelation of the affair carried out for four years by Clinton prosecutor Henry Hyde. The "unspoken rules" here of course are the groupthink itself - the groupthink that decided it had the right and the power to depose one of America's most successful president against Constitutional law and against the will of the electorate. Whenever one sees "unspoken rules," what one sees is groupthink that seeks to bludgeon everyone into compliance with itself. And it becomes one's duty before democracy and freedom to destroy such groupthink.<br />
Another obvious example of groupthink, that has had more disastrous results, has been found in people who claim that the economical-political infrastructure is "the real world" or even "reality," and that the world in which it exists is neither of the preceding. As people associate this entity with "reality," they become oblivious to the rest of reality - such as, for example, the reality of the planet in which this infrastructure exist. The results of this groupthink are obvious, and direct function of the mentality contained within it. If thisinfrastructure is "real world" and the whole of "real world," then it must take a lunatic to think of reality as having any existence outside of it, whether it be the biosphere, the climate, or even the solar system and the universe outside of it. Unfortunately for those who believe this and now for everyone else, the planet is real world also, and one without which the infrastructure would have no existence. This oversight in the definition of what is real world, and what is reality, has been the direct flaw in thinking responsible for the present climatic catastrophe.<br />
Further examples of groupthink can be seen in professions, communities, and religions worldwide. The history of psychiatry shows going from one trend to another, with its concepts of what is health and what is sickness changing constantly as a result of the ideological underpinnings of the psychological thought of the time. Scott Peck, who was a Protestant, had a very different definition of what's wrong with the world than did Erich Fromm, Rollo May, Wilhelm Reich or Sigmund Freud. His influence was formative to psychiatry's errors in 1980s and 1990s, as it went from the humanistic purpose of uncovering and making the most of people's potential to suffocating and oppressing the same. As purpose of psychology became to bring about "social adjustment" and refer to anything else as a disease or a personality disorder, was completely left out of consideration the quality and the character of what it is to which the adjustment is forced. The predictable and inevitable result, once again: Perpetuation of groupthink, regardless of its actual character; silencing of all voices that had any capacity for checking it or showing its errors or its effects on the world and on the people inside of it; and unchecked, all-ensnaring, all-controlling perpetuation of whatever Big Lie bears the name of "sanity" and "reality" in the place and the time. The Big Lies including, but not being limited to, the following: that "real world" and "reality" do not include the reality of the planet and its inhabitants; that responsibility means poisoning the planet and having a $10 trillion debt; that "family values" is about working to create the end of the world before one's grandchildren have reached maturity; that character and loyalty and integrity is about never questioning anything one is told especially the preceding; that caring about such things is "whining" or "blaming" and not caring about them is personal responsibility; or that it is mental health to practice such beliefs and mental illness not to.<br />
In closed communities such as the small towns, the groupthink becomes the law, the sanity, and the reality, unto itself. With all external scrutiny as to its practices of human and civil rights, as well as Constitutional law, silenced under the name of "getting government off people's backs," the communitarian usurpation becomes not only formative but absolute. The result is neither greater freedom, as promised, nor an improvement, as promised, in people's character. The result is severe degradation of both the preceding; a destruction of all meaningful freedom and human rights; a subversion of the police and the social services to hide, silence, and destroy the minds and the lives of its victims; and the worst of abuses and corruption growing up under the banner of "family" or "community" values and under the banner of "freedom," entraining in people the mental habits of conmen, liars, bullies, rapists, and murderers, and using personal and community loyalties to maintain these habits and pass them on under the name of "values," "tradition," "community," and "what this country really is about."<br />
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In the courts, we see a very similar problem. Manifestly fraudulent concepts such as the Parental Alienation Disorder (PAS) not only find their way into the system, but become the staple of the system, with all discussion of it silenced and prosecuted. People with no professional training, under the CAFCASS system, are authorized to make fraudulent diagnoses and decide lives of children. Corrupt lawyers and corrupt judges with money signs in their eyes in UK use the fallacious "Munchausen By Proxy" syndrome to tear babies from their mothers' breasts and sell them for $5,000 a piece to adoptive couples that are corrupt enough to take part in such a despicable scheme. The children then are adjudicated to being brought up by the most corrupt of all possible people, whether they be men who would use a racket such as PAS to silence the facts of their violence and sexual abuse toward their children, couples who would take children away from their mothers and buy up government agents to help along, or government entities that take part in these and related rackets. The groupthink is allowed to grow and reach such manifestly monstrous dimensions because the courts are left to make their own decisions without scrutiny by free press and by the people at the receiving end of these decisions, who are discredited, silenced, have their children taken away from them, or go to jail for speaking.<br />
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The groupthink happens to businesses; to governments; to professions; to countries; to regions of countries; to towns, villages, cultures, subcultures, even such organizations as NASA, where everyone knew about the impending Challenger disaster but nobody dared to speak up. A classic example of where this leads at the national level is the Emperor of China telling the English monarch that his "celestial empire" had everything that it needed, and that there was nothing that the pathetic island of England could offer it. Another is the Reagan Administration being so packed with narrow-minded loyalists that it acted as if it did not realize that it was creating a climate disaster and a public debt crisis; the even more obvious example being the Bush Jr. administration that not only added hugely to these problems but created tons of others at the top. Much of the time groupthink hurts others; at times it hurts also the people who are partaking of it. China would not have gone down the ruinous road that it did following its rejection of English offers of trade if it had made more intelligent decisions, and Republicans would not have gone down in the flaming defeat that it did in 2008 if they likewise had thought and conducted themselves more intelligently. There are some who think that the root of all wrong is sin, and others who think that the root of all suffering is desire; but these examples prove that the root of most man-made wrong in the world is bad thinking. Groupthink is a very serious and pervasive example of bad thinking, and one which must be rigorously checked if similar and worse situations are to be avoided.<br />
There are people who claim, for example, that the Roman Empire was undone by its "decadence." The truth is that it too was undone by bad thinking. In 20 AD, Hero of Alexandria invented the steam engine. The Romans thought that it was uneconomical because slave labor was cheap and abundant enough for them. Had they exercised more foresight, they would have industrialized 1800 years early, created war machines that would have made mincemeat of any invading army, and been able to end the institution of slavery in which lived three-quarters of the population and which was the rightful ongoing source of hate and resentment against the Roman Empire and against "the world." The world would be speaking Latin to this day, and Romans would not be remembered as brutes but as creators of a great civilization.<br />
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In religions, the groupthink is at its most severe, with results of the worst sort. Religions come to believe that they are superior to "the world" - meaning of course the rational world, with such concepts in it as science, democracy, knowledge, human rights, women's rights and free speech - and then use the mechanisms of democracy that have allowed them freedom of religion to subvert this same democracy and deny everyone else not only freedom of religion and freedom from religion, but also every other right and liberty given to them by the same democratic system that they abuse for imposition of apocalyptic totalitarianism. Using fdenunciation of true scientific knowledge, family pressure, community pressure, fake psychology, spiritual fraud, and threats of eternal damnation, they then maintain this apocalyptic totalitarianism, with predictably destructive economic, political and social policies as its effect. In the same way as Hitler used the mechanisms of German democracy to impose totalitarianism, so do such groups as Islamists and Christian Coalition in the societies they inhabit. We have seen the direct results of both - the first with Taliban, the second with Bush, Blair and Howard governments - and both have been equivalently disastrous for their countries and for the world.<br />
To an Islamist or a Christianist, anyone who is not a part of the cult is a sinner, a heretic, a savage, a false prophet or an enemy; anyone who is born into it is, to them, a horrible traitor and sinner if they ever leave it or get other thoughts into their heads than what the cult forces therein. All influences not of the cult are attacked and destroyed as far as is possible in the time and the place. The awakenings of intelligence, passion, or anything else that has the potential to lead the person away from the cult's and mind control, are seen as a threat, and the person is dealt with through demonization, brutality, brainwashing, entrapment in deliberately impossible situations, and whatever other forms of ensnarement, mind-destruction or life-destruction whose burden it is to "prove" the party line is thought up by the members of the cult and the scientists, psychologists, business people, judges, doctors, policemen and politicians whom they coopt. The cults thus become immune to checks on their groupthink, whether they be external to the cults or internal to them, and the work of deception, fraud, and ensnarement of people into apocalyptic totalitarianism can go on unchecked from either within or without - until, once again, the groupthink becomes so big as to project its anti-life ideology on the whole of the universe and work for a cataclysmic destruction of life on Earth before their grandchildren have learned how to read. At which point it becomes threat to life of people outside of it as well as to life itself, and the world has a choice either to follow the cult's line and bring about an artificial Armageddon, or to reject the cult's line and work to create a livable future for humanity - a future that extends to all of humanity, whether or not they believe in a pedophilic tyrant who bedded a nine-year-old girl at age 84 being the rightful source of theological and moral instruction for all mankind; an omnipotent entity that was not adequately omnipotent to beget more than one son and no daughters and needs mere humans to fight his wars; it being part of "celestial Empire" and "divine moral order" of Confucianism to see "a wife taken is like a pony bought: mine to ride and whip as I will" and to make the son of a robber also be a robber; ugliness being brought into existence by conceiving of beauty and not by failure to strive for it; world being brought into being by a cow and 150 million people being rightfully damned to horrific existence for the terrible sin of being born in a wrong family; woman and nature and "flesh" as being the source of all evil and the people believing such things as not; all creations of nature and works of humanity being "hubris" or "sin" and wanting everyone who is not oneself to burn in hell for eternity as being neither; brutality, degradation and abuse against wives and children being "family values" and being good to one's wife and children as being unmanly or unpatriotic or against God; AIDS being "God's way of controlling the homosexual population" and 9-11 having happened because "God took away protection from USA because of feminists and liberals"; science and democratic government as being error and sin and people claiming such things while benefiting from science and using the democratic institutions to practice their apocalyptic totalitarianism as being neither of the preceding; it being "morals" and "family values" and "spiritual truth" to wish and work for an Armageddon before one's grandchildren have reached maturity; the carbon emissions climate change crisis being result of the sins of "humanity" - meaning the liberal influence that knew and talked about it for 30 years, and not the Republican Christians who aggressively denied it for that long; or the world being 6,000 years old and ending at year 1000 - then year 1900 - then year 2000 - then year 2012 - and extending into however long people believe such things.<br />
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Right now, the groupthink of some of these entities is becoming apparent enough to call, and the groupthink of some others are threatening the survival of humanity and of life on the planet. Which means that it becomes a vital necessity to show these mentalities for what they are and for what are their effects as the logical and inevitable fruition of the belief mechanisms contained within them. With these exposed, there is greater chance at clarity and at better thinking and better decisions. Which means that there is a greater chance that the children being born now will live to see maturity and a sustainable livable world for generations to come.<script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-1399660139430963002010-02-06T07:04:00.000-08:002010-02-06T07:04:02.559-08:00Suggestion for Japan: Log in Siberia rather than IndonesiaOf the causes of global warming, two - uncontrolled emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and deforestation of Amazonian rainforest - are well known. What is less known is another cause: Logging by Japanese companies in Indonesian rainforest. This problem is easy to fix, and is in fact much easier to fix than the other two. And the solution is simple: For Japan to stop logging in Indonesia and get their wood from Russian taiga forests.<br />
As anyone who is familiar with this subject knows, logging or ranching in rainforest is one of the most environmentally destructive things that one can do. Clearing rainforest creates a vicious cycle leading to deforestation and desertification of the land. As trees are cut, and are no longer producing evaporations, there is less rainfall in the surrounding areas, and trees start dying. The more trees die, the less the rain, the more the trees die, the more of the land becomes desert. And while selling trees provides some intermediate income to Indonesians, they are in fact destroying a treasure that stands to give far more income if managed properly.<br />
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Whereas taiga, not being a rainforest, does not operate in this way. Cutting down trees in taiga carries no lasting adverse effects, and the land cleared is capable of supporting new forests indefinitely. Since the taiga is closer to Japan than is Indonesia, shifting the logging from Indonesian rainforest to taiga stands to realize substantial economic benefit. This economic benefit will be accompanied by being less destructive to nature and less contributing to greenhouse effect.<br />
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But, some may say, what will Indonesia do to get money? Well let me ask this: How did other Asian countries get money? The answer is that they've worked with their people and made their people's work, not their natural resources, the basis for their development. Such is the only lasting way to achieve and maintain prosperity - one seen, for example, in Japan itself, which has very few natural resources but has risen to world economic prominence by the efforts of the Japanese people. United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo are equally endowed with natural resources; but while one country is by far the largest economy in the world, the other is the poorest country of any size on the face of the planet. If Indonesia seeks to develop long-term, it will do so through the work of Indonesian people - as have Japan, Asian tigers, and China in recent years.<br />
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The Russian taiga forest is vast, and located in the eastern part of the country. That makes it expedient for the Japanese - and of course for other nearby Asian countries as well, including China. Taiga forest grows back, and it can also be replanted - as has been the practice of American logging companies in American forests. Logging in taiga therefore carries no significant negative long-term effects, which logging in the rainforest does.<br />
I respectfully suggest that Japanese companies look into making this switch.<script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-66113334043237485552010-02-05T06:23:00.000-08:002010-02-05T06:23:07.655-08:00Hackers, Deniers and Real Solutions to Global WarmingRecently there has been a controversy about hackers who hacked into the UN site dealing with climate change and found some data fudging and sloppy research. Some have used that to claim global warming to be a fraud. There is a problem with that. The UN body is just one out of many bodies, academic, governmental, business, and private, that have conclusive evidence of global warming. And if some fools at UN have cut some corners, says nothing about the reality of global warming, which has far more credible evidence behind it than what was provided by that body.<br />
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These people are now claiming global warming to be a fraud. Tell that to the people of Malawi and Kiribati, whose countries are sinking into the sea as a result of the melting glaciers. Tell that to the people of New Orleans. Tell that to the people who died in Europe's heat waves and Australian forest fires. Tell that to the people in cities as big as Jakarta, that are now constantly being flooded as ocean waters rise.<br />
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There are some who see these events as not being related to carbon emissions and postulate other explanations, such as natural weather cycles. There is nothing cyclical about there being the highest amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in 450,000 years. There is nothing natural about ocean water becoming acidic and killing all the fish. When one cuts down the forests and raises carbon emissions, the carbon dioxide has only two places to go to. One is the oceans, where it makes the water acidic and no longer life-supporting. The other is the atmosphere, where it reflects sun's rays from reflecting off the earth's surface and into the outer space and bounces them back to the earth's surface, causing it to become hot. On planet Venus, whose atmosphere is largely carbon dioxide, this greenhouse effect is so bad that its surface temperatures are 500 degrees. And if this is not addressed now, then that's the direction in which we are going.<br />
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As for the people who are eagerly awaiting the Armageddon, I have hard news. Burning down the planet will not get you to heaven or anywhere near heaven. These people should not be eagerly awaiting the Armageddon; they should be terrified of it. They want to do away with their children's future and their children's right to a livable world in order that they could themselves have their selfish salvation. No god would look kindly on such a thing.<br />
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In 20AD, a Roman named Hero of Alexandria invented the steam engine. The Romans thought that the slave labor was cheap enough, and that there was no need for this invention. If they thought ahead, they would have been able to industrialize 1800 years early, abolish slavery, and create military machines that would have made mincemeat of any invading army, and the world would be speaking Latin to this day. Instead they kept the horrible institution of slavery that was the rightful source of resentment and hatred against Roman Empire as well as the world, and Roman Empire went down to flaming ruin. There are now technologies available to meet all of humanity's energy and water requirements in processes that are totally non-polluting. In choosing to embrace these technologies, or to keep the status quo, humanity faces similar choice but on a much larger scale.<br />
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There are real solutions to global warming. And I do not mean going to subsistence agriculture any more than I mean positive thinking or asking Jesus or aliens to save us. I mean real, technically and economically viable, technological solutions that will allow people to keep all that they have while drastically reducing the burden on the planet. What solutions are these?<br />
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Much has been written about solar power, wind power, nuclear power, and biofuels; but there is a technology that is superior to them all. It has not been in the news, but it should be. What if I were to tell you that there is a technology that will provide both the energy and the water needs of humanity, abundant, clean, round-the-clock, on-demand, and unlimited, using a process that only requires the sun and the ocean water and produces at the consumer end only clean energy and clean water to be recycled back into the environment? <br />
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What if I were to tell you that this mechanism will have twice the energy efficiency of the electric grid; will end the burden on lakes, rivers and ground water resources; will replace two systems with one system, realizing huge economic benefit; and will allow oil resources to last longer and be used for more profitable higher-end goods?<br />
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What if I were to tell you that this technology has been reviewed and found to be economically and technically feasible, and to be a vast improvement over the status quo?<br />
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There is in fact such technology. It is called the Hydrogen Transmission Network. In Hydrogen Transmission Network, solar power will drive electrolysis of ocean water, breaking it down into Hydrogen and Oxygen. Oxygen will be released into the air; hydrogen will be sent through pipes to houses, offices, farms, and places of industry and commerce, to be reacted using fuel cells with oxygen in the air to create clean energy and clean water at once. Hydrogen also will be piped to fueling stations to power hydrogen-based vehicles. All of humanity's water and energy needs can be met through a process that takes nothing that can't be replaced and creates nothing that is in any way harmful. And since transmitting hydrogen through pipes is almost loss-free, this mechanism will have energy efficiency over twice that of the electric grid.<br />
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There are other parts to solution that aren't discussed much, but should be. Sahara is a vast desert where no human or animal lives except in oases. It is not ecological anything; it is a manmade creation, put in place by Berbers who used slash-and-burn agriculture in what was then rainforest, much like the Brazilians are using slash-and-burn agriculture in the rainforest now. Right now, Sahara is the most empty, most worthless, most barren, stretch of land on the planet. What if it were converted into forests and farmland? How much CO2 would be taken out of the atmosphere, and how much food would be produced to feed the African people then?<br />
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How much CO2 would be taken out of the atmosphere, and how much human benefit would be realized, if the same is done to the deserts of Arabia, Mongolia, Rajasthan, Australian Outback, and the parts of the American Southwest that were deforested by the Anasazi?<br />
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These solutions not only realize benefit by reducing global warming. These solutions realize economic, technical, and environmental benefit in themselves. Even if there are other ways to address global warming, these solutions are beneficial both to humanity and to the environment. It is not faith that saves humanity; it is intelligence that saves humanity. And with application of real intelligence, a viable future for humanity and the planet can be on its way.<br />
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The solution to global warming is not denying it or misrepresenting it any more than it is doing away with the economy or the civilization. The real solution to global warming is using better technologies in place of the outdated technologies that have created the disaster in the first place. One stands to fear nothing from these solutions and has much to hope for from them. <br />
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It is time to put into place real solutions for global warming.<script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-73441051200622082512009-11-26T19:40:00.000-08:002009-11-26T19:42:09.474-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(59, 51, 48); "><h1 class="story-detail-title" style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 21px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 23px; "><img class="icon-va-bottom" src="http://static.nowpublic.net/graphics/sites/all/themes/nova/default/images/opinion.png" title="Opinion" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; 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font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; ">As racial tensions are rising in America, and both black racists and white racists are profiting from them in their desire to assert totalitarian control over the respective races, it is about time to put things into perspective for both groups.<br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; ">While the white racists continue to claim that the white race is the superior race, and the black racists claim that white people are oppressors against black people, history shows that neither is true. China had great cities and half the world's GDP at the time that Europe was a feudal backwater. At about the same time, Africa had a city of one million people, when Europe did not have a settlement larger than one tenth that size. As for the claim of white people being oppressors of black people: The African leaders collaborated in the slave trade. As for the present white people, the ones that live in the cities are the ones that are sympathetic to black people and have fought for civil rights, de-segregation, social inclusion, and election of Barack Obama. And while there are many white people who are in fact racist and hateful of black people, most vote Republican and live in the country. So if you are black, and serious about standing up for your people, the Democrats in the cities are not the people you want to get. <a href="http://my.nowpublic.com/culture/rising-racial-tensions-who-are-true-villains">Read more..</a></p></div></span><script type="text/javascript">var _sttoolbar = {}</script><script src="http://w.sharethis.com/widget/stblogger.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">stBlogger.init("http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=ca8ac21f-64ea-4fd8-a9b0-d84526d424a7&type=blogger&popup=true&embeds=true&style=rotate");</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-60835918806316903102009-10-30T06:09:00.000-07:002009-11-27T00:48:05.538-08:00Suggestions for Improving Inner City<div><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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</div>Having given much thought to the situation in inner city, based on both what is known in the media and much of what I gathered from the experience of good friends who have lived there, I would like to make some suggestions. While I do not see this as panacea, I believe it has the possibility of achieving positive impact for many. And it is as follows:<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div>Increasing interest among black people in business and technical fields;<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Setting up recruitment offices to direct young men who would otherwise join gangs into military service;<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Doing away with the anti-educational youth culture;<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Providing better guidance for the youth.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">I will go through these one by one.<br />
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</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><b>Business and Technical Fields</b><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">One part of the solution that I see is getting more black people interested in business and in technical professions. American black people have done very well in politics, law, sports and entertainment; but they are underrepresented in business and technical fields. This results in black people remaining poor on the average even in spite of great successes by individual black people in America.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">There was a job flight in 1980s out of the inner city as businesses moved their production centers overseas. This led to many not being able to find jobs; but ultimately the question becomes, Why rely on white man to create jobs? A white businessman will only set up shop in a black neighborhood for as long as that is convenient for him, and will go elsewhere, taking the profits with him, when there is a more commercially attractive option. The only way to make sure that the money stays is to be in charge of the money as an entrepreneur.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">In a 1990s film, there is a scene in which a black man is demonstrating outside of the bank after the bankers have told him that he is "not economically viable." There is a real way to avoid this kind of scene. Black people should be learning business and finance, and they should be setting up shop and creating jobs instead of competing for them. And that requires black people to themselves learn business and banking and <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">practice it at a level appropriate to their share of the population.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, there were not enough qualified black businesspeople to take over the running of the companies that had prior to that been managed by white businesspeople. The reason was this: The anti-apartheid leaders were socialists, and they did not favorably look upon capitalist system. The people now do not need to make the same decision. The businessperson is the person who creates jobs while providing something that people want to buy. And that means that business can be a worthwhile and even noble endeavor when it provides a way for one's people to escape poverty.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">As for technical skills, these are always in demand, and someone who has them is far less likely to be economically nonviable. If enough black people learn engineering, computers, and related technology skills, then they will be competitive, in highly-paid fields, and will be able to get good jobs in different economic conditions. On the collective level, this will improve the mean income of black Americans and help many to rise out of poverty and to stay out of poverty.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><b>Setting Up Military Recruitment Offices In the Ghetto</b><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The inner city has many young men who aspire toward strength and toughness. The military cultivates strength and toughness; it also disciplines it. The same macho character that in the ghetto turns into gang violence, the military structures into controlled, principled strength that knows how to fight well enough to know also when not to fight. The inner city youths would be influenced by the military into not only being the strong men that they want to be, but also self-controlled, disciplined, <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">effective strong men who can both manage their behavior and exercise positive effect on their community.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The military has college scholarships, job skills training, and in case of an honorable discharge a recommendation that can take one to many places. To people in the inner city, that spells a ticket to better life. The habits that are taught in the military help make a person more effective and more employable. The black people who've been in the American military have done well - in many cases exceptionally well, going as far as to becoming the Secretary of State.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">With military training and scholarships and references, the person from inner city will have everything that he needs to be able to pursue a better way of life.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">A person from the inner city who goes to the military can then go on to pursue a middle-class or upper-class life outside the inner city; or, should he return to the inner city, stands to become a force for improvement of the inner city. With military training he would be able to stand up to the gangsters; with principles he would be able to steer them toward superior actions. A person with disciplined strength will be able to not only stand up to people with undisciplined strength, but to steer them away from <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">destructiveness and toward more responsible conduct - which is something that someone lacking either in strength or in discipline will find a lot harder to do. <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">There are of course downsides to the military. The military is tough and brutal; however the ghetto is also tough and brutal, and having lived in daily brutality the people from inner city would have an advantage of experience over other recruits. The people who serve in the military are at a risk of dying in combat; however the inner city is a war zone already, and one stands a greater risk of being killed or imprisoned for life if one remains there than if one joins the military. Most people who go into the military never see combat, whereas the people who live in the inner city are facing daily conditions of war. <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">For these reasons, for many residents of inner city, the military would be a major improvement over what they otherwise would be facing. And that - creating improvement over people's present condition, rather than expecting everything to be immediately equal - is the standpoint for constructive, workable social policy. Sweatshop labor would not be an improvement for most American citizens, but for hundreds of millions of Chinese people it has been a huge improvement over their previous lives. <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Similarly, joining the military would not be an improvement for everyone in America; but for many inner city residents, it very much will be. So that, when Beyonce says that she needs a soldier (rather than a gangster), she is speaking a home truth. The army people are not angels, but they do develop useful skills, habits and mindsets, and are more likely to work and to stay with the family and to teach the children to be <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">effective individuals. And while Beyonce stands to expect the military person to be just as domineering as she would expect the gangster to be, he would be a better influence on the children and will be more likely to keep them on a more viable path.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Finally, there are enough black officers in the military that those who don't want to take orders from the white man would be able to take orders from a black one. And with a black person being the president of the United States, the claim that they would be serving "the Man" is not as credible as it once was. Volunteering for the professional army would be, for a person in inner city, a ticket to a better life for himself and a path toward improving the lot of the inner city residents. I recommend stepping up military recruitment in inner city as a path toward improvement of the inner city and of the lives of its residents.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><b>The anti-education culture</b><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Finally, there is a cultural problem that apparently is shared between the inner city and the population known as "white trash." This is as follows: Total lack of respect for education. While the failure of inner-city schools is frequently blamed on their lack of funding, in fact that is not the case. The DC schools, for one, have high funding levels compared to schools in many other places. The problem is that the students do not want to learn, and those who do get savagely attacked for it by other students and <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">frequently by their families.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">It must be made clear that the students who take studies seriously are not "acting white" or "think they're better than everyone else." It is not acting white to study; it is acting intelligent to study; and Asians for one, not being white, are frequently better at it than the white. As for the "think they're better than everyone else" line, the world consists of 7 billion people, most of them nothing like the people who ridiculously believe they are "everyone else" and that the other 7 billion people aren't; and for <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">these people to claim that they speak for "everyone else" is a far greater arrogance than any of which they may be accusing the serious students. And from the perspective of most in the world, it is the people such as ones who believe such things - and, pursuant such beliefs, create a culture of brutality and stupidity - that are held in most contempt, and not those students in inner city who take studies seriously, have respect for knowledge, and want to have a better life than that of drugs and crime.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Money spent on inner-city schools is money wasted unless the children actually want to learn. There must be a profound cultural change among inner city youth for education there to be effective. Having seen black people do exceptionally well in highly demanding learning environments such as the Moscow State University, America's prime universities, and St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School, I can say with full certainty that there is nothing keeping black kids from doing well at school except for bad attitudes and bad beliefs.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The more black youth do well at school, the more they will be able to go into middle-income and higher-income economy. Also, the more the educational system will work for them, and the more the schools of the inner city will be a success rather than a failure that they are now. With more respect for education, the black people will be able to achieve a higher intellectual standard and be able to achieve in such fields as <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">science, mathematics, and medicine. This will give black people more presence in these fields - fields in which they likewise are under-represented at this time. The more black people win Nobel Prizes in science or pioneer great inventions, the more respected and <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">internationally powerful the black people will be.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The anti-intellectual youth culture must go. Nothing good has come from it, and it is a disgrace to every race - black, white or Latino - which it infests. Smart must be cool, and knowledge and ambition must be respected and cultivated. This is the only way that the black youth can avoid falling into the underclass and have a fighting chance at a better life.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><b>Better Direction</b><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">Finally, there is the problem of coercion among the youth toward gang involvement, drug use, and pregnancy as minors. The males end up in the prison or shot; the females end up working exceptionally hard to raise the children alone. There are those who think that the solution to this is "traditional values"; but the traditional societies of Afghanistan, rural India, central Africa and Middle East aren't better than the ghetto, they are worse than the ghetto. The real solution to this is better direction for the <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">youth.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The better direction comes from taking the interests and propensities and directing them toward a positive manifestation. Thus, the desire to be strong and tough can and should be directed toward military, where the recruits become disciplined and effective strong and tough men with the skills and the habits they need to be effective and to improve their communities. The desire to have money or status or power can and should be directed toward business and technical fields, where these are constructively earned. The desire to be validated as a woman, rather than having to express itself through teenage pregnancy, can be directed to artistic pursuits and professional fields that give the woman admiration. <br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">And the competitive interest can be directed toward achieving in school and then later in the economy in comparison to the white man, rather than into shooting the next black man and raping the next black woman.<br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0in !important;">The inner city youth does not suffer from lack of talent. It suffers from lack of direction, bad guidance, and self-defeating beliefs. It is this problem that must be addressed for the situation in inner city to improve significantly. I fully believe that this improvement is possible.<br />
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-23043461614243830562009-10-19T05:03:00.000-07:002009-11-27T03:40:20.967-08:00Who actually deserves credit for America?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJr1hqYqOn-rwuVoAbXGqWljVlhR3W5ImozoWpB-9ym2mE52hO2QslGDN1M5aMgtVzghNwGha7Eo-p7FquvbFtjwymQ5F-FH5uEyaFlXEviO8-ahQaDVVsouezXNAcgMjk44fM5BJEv47i/s1600/republicans.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJr1hqYqOn-rwuVoAbXGqWljVlhR3W5ImozoWpB-9ym2mE52hO2QslGDN1M5aMgtVzghNwGha7Eo-p7FquvbFtjwymQ5F-FH5uEyaFlXEviO8-ahQaDVVsouezXNAcgMjk44fM5BJEv47i/s400/republicans.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The Republican propaganda has had much effect in reaching people both inside America and without. Coming from Russian immigrants who settled in Northern Virginia, I saw the effects of this propaganda on both demographics. I am writing this to correct two commonly-held errors that resulted from this propaganda. One is that of comparing Democrats to the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU). The other is that of equating Republican Party with America and giving it credit for America and its achievements.<br />
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On the first I ask this: What labor camps have Democrats built? How many millions have they imprisoned and murdered for their political convictions? What countries have Democrats invaded and made their satellites by force? All evidence points instead to CPSU-type activity by Bush Republicans, who have used fraud and corruption to get into the White House; murdered over a million civilians in Iraq; instituted torture, even of teenagers; lied to Americans and to the rest of the world; and have consistently used bullying and deception to push their party line against public opinion while claiming that they are America and that the rest of America is not America, when they in fact not only not America but a minority of America and not its better part either.<br />
<br />
Another error is that of equating Republicans with America and giving Republicans the credit for all of America's accomplishments. It is largely for the sake of transparency that this claim put to rest. Here are the facts:<br />
<br />
- The Democratic administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt won, respectively, the First and the Second World War;<br />
- The Democrats form the vast bulk of America's scientists and innovators, with over 90% of its Nobel Prize winners being Democrats and only 3% of academics being Republicans;<br />
- Of America's 10 foremost educational institutions, 9 are in solidly Democratic states and are centers of Democratic Party's activities;<br />
- The computer industry, which has been the main engine of prosperity of 1980s and 1990s, is largely Democratic. The personal computer was invented by a hippie. The computer industry is located in solidly Democratic San Francisco Bay Area and Washington State, as well as in the Democratic-voting Northern Virginia. The Democrats make up the bulk of both its management and its rank-and-file.<br />
- The Clinton Administration gave America its greatest peacetime economic expansion (the greatest wartime one having been under Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Its policies created 23 million jobs, the first balanced budget in three decades, international peace and prosperity, and a revamping of the government to become efficient and user friendly (Reagan only whined about the government while being its head). It also brought about a significant reduction in violent crime - which grew under Reagan and peaked under Bush Sr. Meanwhile the Bush Jr. administration added $5 trillion to the debt, with no jobs created, amid collapsing family incomes, and at the end the worst economic crisis America has had since the Great Depression.<br />
- Democrats form the bulk of America's teachers and journalists, whose contributions are not easily measured monetarily but are of greater significance than those of many far higher-paid professionals.<br />
- Democrats have fought for civil rights, human rights, and women's rights, while Republicans have done all they could to sabotage all of the above.<br />
- Democrats have fought to bring to public attention the facts about global warming. Republicans have done nothing but aggressively deny reality - on this, as much as on federal debt.<br />
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The people who blame all things on "liberal government" or "big government" or compare American government to the Soviet Union know nothing of what they're talking about. Without the government Interstate, the anti-government truckers would not have the roads on which to deliver the farming goods, created by government-subsidized anti-government farmers, to the big liberal cities that are the market for their products. Without the government academia, the academic research that has been necessary for the hardware and technology that are at the core of business production would not have taken place. Without the government Internet, the computerization and Internet commerce that was the source of 1990s growth would not have been possible. Whining about taxes was a big trend under the Clinton administration. Being in the high-income bracket, I had a lot of taxes to whine about. I did not whine about my taxes, because I knew where the money was going and saw it as my civic duty to pay it. Under Bush I would have had less taxes to whine about; but there was a problem. Like many others, under Bush, I no longer was in the high-income bracket - or, for some of that time, in any bracket at all.<br />
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But beyond personal experience, let us look at the big issues. Who has given America a $10 trillion debt? Who has aggressively for three decades denied global warming? Who has done this to the country they claim to love, and to the children and grandchildren for whose sake they claim to practice "family values?" It wasn't the Democrats. It is the Republicans who have done this to America and to their children's and grandchildren's future.<br />
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So to put it shortly: Democrats are not Communists; Republicans are not America, nor do they deserve credit for America. Case closed.<br />
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-10221880512210919212009-10-08T00:36:00.000-07:002009-11-27T05:08:35.390-08:00Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, and American Character<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The character of Charlie Chaplin and the character of J. Edgar Hoover offers an insightful glimpse into the forces that were formative to American character of 20<sup>th</sup> century. With Charlie Chaplin, one sees ingenious, innovative, creative, iconoclastic character that is not afraid to shatter convention in order to show a different perspective, reveal facts not frequently known, or give a glimpse of the truth of people's lives. With J. Edgar Hoover, we see the invasive, oppressive, paranoid character that used blackmailing and extortion in order to manipulate<st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region>’s elected leaders under the stated claim of protecting <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The same characters have been seen in the last two decades of American politics, with the characters of, respectively, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. With Bill Clinton, we have seen the greatest economic prosperity in American history, the first balanced budget in 30 years, an overhaul of the government to make it efficient and user-friendly, a drastic drop in violent crime, international collaboration on matters of common import, and a serious effort toward achieving understanding and coexistence between different sections of American society. With Bush, we have seen an extra $5 trillion debt, no new jobs, wrongful wars all around the world, an aggressive inattention to the climatic disaster facing the world, bullying of all countries resulting in international isolation, and an economic collapse. That there was much howling about the character of Bill Clinton, but not about the character of George Bush, offers valuable insight into the character of the people who were behind the said howling and valuable insight as well into what they describe as their values and which values they wrongfully claim to be the values of America and use this false claim to bludgeon America and the rest of the world.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">In fact, America</st1:place></st1:country-region> achieved its greatness through innovation, ingenuity, and creative thinking. It leapt to the forefront of the world in early 20<sup>th</sup> century – a time of scientific and technological ingenuity; a time also of the rejection of the Victorian norms. It is in this time that Charlie Chaplin produced most of his work, and it is in this time that J. Edgar Hoover began his campaign against what made <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> great. And as the same character, refashioned in different times as psychology or religion or “traditional values” or “family values,” persisted through later history in destroying America’s genius, it is valuable to examine this character and its effects on America through its history, and examine also its validity as well as its merit to the country.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is one thing that character voters are right about: Character is of importance. The problem is that the character that has been behind most of the problems in American history is their own. The invasive, oppressive, paranoid character that would seek to remove an exceptionally successful and benevolent president for a personal mistake, but would accept a puppet being put into office through fraud and corruption and having this puppet bring America to disaster, is the only real ongoing problem with America. And it is this character that has been behind its greatest failures, from 1930s isolationism to the McCarthyist nightmare to the abuses of FBI under J. Edgar Hoover to the politically correct hysteria of 1990s to the unmitigated disaster that was the Bush regime.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">America owes its existence as the country, its technological and commercial success, and its greatest scientific inventions, to the people whom these voters would describe as evil. Thomas Jefferson, John Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Bill Clinton, Walt Disney, and everyone else who has been a major contributor to America, would be described by these voters as possessing a narcissistic or a sociopathic character. So would of course the ancestors of all white, Hispanic, and Asian people living now in America – people who have rejected their homes, their countries, and their traditional way of life, to seek a better way of life in America; something that people who have such beliefs would claim to be a narcissistic or a sociopathic action. For that matter, psychology owes its existence to people like Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung who likewise would be described as possessing the same character. And it is to these people that the modern America person owes not only one's country, but everything that one knows as American way of life.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1960s and 1970s, the fix-all solutions was more government. By the time Ronald Reagan ran for office in 1980, a case could be made - and was made - that the government had far outstepped its proper parameters and became the problem rather than the solution. More recently, the solution for all things was more social control, until the same was being applied not only to people's actions, but also to people's minds and personhoods, aiming to control all that could be controlled and destroy what couldn't, to the point of claiming people criminal by virtue of how they think. The result of this has been unofficial entities far outstepping their proper prerogatives and, as the government of 1970s, becoming a problem in themselves. These unofficial entities, from old-boy networks to small country towns to religious organizations to practitioners of "personality psychology" to self-proclaimed spokespeople for society or for America, being unofficial, unaccountable, unchecked and unbalanced, have the capacity to commit greater violation against people's lives and liberty, and to oppress them in far greater manner, than the American government is allowed to do.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Empowering these entities resulted in a de facto totalitarianism of these entities, along with the predictable and associated abuses: runaway corruption, aggressively enforced similitude at all levels, destruction of all meaningful liberty, inquisitions against ever greater numbers of people, aggressive fear-mongering convincing people to give up their freedom and to destroy freedom in others, and subversion of psychology and law enforcement into participating in these and related crimes against Constitutional law. Until the very freedom, originality, ingenuity and innovation that made America great in the first place became a danger to the power of these entities and, being falsely portrayed as "narcissism" or "sociopathy", itself became the target of their wrath.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1990s America, the young people on college campuses were faced with a manufactured hysteria that brainwashed young women into being afraid of everything and everyone. This resulted in a state of affairs that was injurious especially to young women – a state described by Gwen Stefani as “I’m just a girl, living in captivity.. I’ve had it up to here.” The panic thinking extended to the economy by 2001, as the investors who were burned by the collapse of the dot-com bubble thought that real estate was a more safe investment. It was not. The computer industry boom of 1990s resulted in real prosperity. The panic-driven real-estate bubble of the Bush decade did nothing but make life more costly while no wealth was generated and incomes declined. And as it popped at the end of the decade, the result was predictable: economic collapse. So much for the wisdom, the value, and the moral authority, of the security drive. It is Benjamin Franklin who said that the people who would sacrifice liberty for security are not worthy of either. And, as history shows, neither do they get.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>It is time that America remember what made it great in the first place. It was very much the innovative Charlie Chaplin character that has resulted in its greatest accomplishments, not the invasive, oppressive J. Edgar Hoover character that has resulted in greatest violations against American people. The character voters are right about one thing: Character matters. But the problem is their own character, not that of the innovative, ingenious people whom they want to demonize and to destroy.</o:p><br />
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</script>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-75068297930495634022009-08-10T00:16:00.000-07:002009-08-10T01:24:50.099-07:00Scientogists and Anonymous<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyt0xWNTw3BH6Hnsa8QnIH07rYzzas2cmDli4UVOn0KPeN8bIghbjlbQWoyk1oM3ESSMMo6owJ6pZKG9DGs0vZfYeOfKXwaw1s_U23Hh213PCHU1PUNadm3Hmnfaf4rO61n9oNQ1gE04lk/s1600-h/anonymousvsscientology.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyt0xWNTw3BH6Hnsa8QnIH07rYzzas2cmDli4UVOn0KPeN8bIghbjlbQWoyk1oM3ESSMMo6owJ6pZKG9DGs0vZfYeOfKXwaw1s_U23Hh213PCHU1PUNadm3Hmnfaf4rO61n9oNQ1gE04lk/s400/anonymousvsscientology.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368247647528009554" border="0" /></a><br />After a group of hackers who called themselves the Anonymous posted a video critical of the Church of Scientology, the Church of Scientology responded with a video claiming that the Anonymous had been sending them threats of violence and threats of arson.<br /><br />As someone who is neither a hacker nor a Scientologist, but bears some familiarity with both communities, I say with full confidence that these threats are made up.<br /><br />I know this for two reasons. First, hackers - and especially the kind of hackers who get involved in causes such as the Anonymous - would never threaten or commit arson. Such things are totally in contradiction to the ethic of the hackers such as ones involved in that organization. Such hackers are, for the most part, young idealistic people whose goal is to expose fraud and corruption, reduce organizational bullying, and protect people's freedoms. Nonviolence is very much a part of their beliefs. To claim that these people would threaten the Church of Scientology with violence and arson is ridiculous. One might as well be accusing Tibetan Zen Buddhists of threatening a nuclear war against the United States.<br /><br />The second reason is that fabricating such threats on the part of its critics is a tried and tested practice of the Church of Scientology. In 1995, a gentleman who called himself "henri ennui" was posting material critical of the Church of Scientology on Internet forums. A representative of the Church of Scientology then forged a post under the name of "henri ennui" threatening arson against the Church of Scientology. A representative of the Church of Scientology then went to the employer of "henri ennui," showed him the post, and got him fired. If they would do this to an isolated critic, they would most certainly do that and more to a collective - especially a collective of hackers which, in the mind of the uninformed, is synonymous almost with terrorism - but whom anyone at all familiar with the subject knows to be anything but.<br /><br />The video released by the Church of Scientology starts by claiming that "organizations grow and evolve." It is not encouraging to see that the Church of Scientology has failed to grow and evolve out of such corrupt, criminal and tyrannical practices after all these years. And while I, unlike the Anonymous collective, do not see the Church of Scientology as altogether evil and have respect for some of their efforts - one of them being the establishment of the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights that has been effective in fighting abuses in the mental health system - it is these kinds of tactics that get Scientologists branded as villains, conmen and criminals, and that undermine the credibility and viability of their more benevolent efforts. So if the Church of Scientology is serious about its claims of growing and evolving as an organization, it must put to rest such fraudulent practices. Such tactics do not increase the organization's strength or viability or moral authority; they undermine all of the preceding and reduce scientologists in public estimation to a completely despicable status.<br /><br />The purpose of the Anonymous effort is that of exposing and fighting corruption. And that is a very important purpose, especially at this time. As a result of public apathy, injunctions to not see injustice and evil or to blame the victim, and a communitarian ideology that gives unchecked, unbalanced and unaccountable organs unlimited power over people's lives, corruption has sprouted up everywhere. There is vast corruption in medicine; in legal system, especially as it relates to family matters; in mental health and aged care system; in small towns; in entities such as Jehovah's Witnesses. All these deserve to be scrutinized and redressed to the same and greater extent as is being done by Anonymous regarding the Church of Scientology. Indeed, fighting corruption - along with providing clean energy and protecting the world from terror - is one of the most important challenges of our time.<br /><br />To Anonymous: You are right to be fighting corruption, and I hope more people get similar idea respecting other forms of corruption than the one you have targeted, including ones listed above. To Scientology: It is time to put an end to the fraudulent and criminal practices such as falsely accusing people of threatening violence and arson. Ultimately even the more credulous will catch on to the deception. The sooner your organization ceases using such tactics, the better off it will be.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-879931687201716682009-07-23T07:05:00.000-07:002009-07-24T03:49:42.451-07:00Health Care: Problems and SolutionsAs the Obama Administration is considering health care reform, the question becomes not only "if health care reform" but "what kind" and "why." The following is an analysis of the problems with American medical system as gained from multiple standpoints, and some proposed solutions to the same.<br /><br />- The lack of basic general government care is a problem especially for the working poor, but now increasingly for the middle class and even wealthy Americans. People continue to lose all that they've worked for in order to care for a sick relative or themselves. There must be an option for basic general government-funded medical care that is available to all Americans.<br /><br />- The single-payer option will not be acceptable to people who want to choose their own doctors. People who want to choose their doctors and are willing to pay for it should be able to do so as they presently are.<br /><br />- I recommend the Australian model, in which public health care and private health care are available side by side. Everyone is taken care of at a basic level; those who want choice or extra quality can pay for it. This will fulfil the demands both of the need to provide basic health care to all, and of the demand for consumer choice by those who are willing to pay for it.<br /><br />- While this is not often discussed in policy circles, the main reason for the exhorbitant prices of health care in America is that the number of doctors is far too low to meet the demand for health care at a reasonable price even now, not even to consider the demands it will have when the baby boomers come to old age. This practice is a result of AMA not graduating enough doctors and not licensing enough foreign doctors to practice in America. As the demand for medical care continues to grow, the supply remains at an exceptionally low level. This leads to demand meeting supply at an exhorbitant price - the price that will remain exhorbitant, whether the government or the consumer pays for it, for as long as this problem persists.<br /><br />- The artificial shortage of doctors also means that doctors are overworked and overstressed. This leads them to make more errors than they would otherwise. These errors result in malpractice lawsuits, which then result in extremely high malpractice insurance premiums. This cost is then passed on to the consumer, adding more to the already outrageous prices.<br /><br />- This structural problem can only be resolved by there being more doctors in America. The growing demand for health care must be met with growing supply of medical professionals. This will result in more available health care; lower prices of health care; and a better lifestyle for doctors than their current overworked, overstressed, error-prone lifestyle which is just as bad for their patients as it is for themselves. America should graduate more doctors; it should also allow more foreign doctors to practice in America. This will redress the major structural problem with American medical system that is responsible for the overly high prices of medicine in America. The result will be in more available treatment; more affordable health care; and better life for doctors themselves.<br /><br />- American medical system has an added problem of being incentivized for expensive and wrongful practices. These involve: Lack of preventative medicine (as treatment of the disease is more profitable); needless expensive machines which need to be replaced with newer models each year; overuse of machines and machine-based testing; overprescription of antibiotics; forcing people against their will on life-support machines; and overdiagnosis and overmedication of mental disorders with expensive and dangerous multi-drug combinations (the latter, at taxpayer expense).<br /><br />- Preventative medicine funded by government should be available to all Americans. This will result in less need for catastrophic medical treatment, lower costs, and greater health of the population.<br /><br />- The prohibitive price and length of medical education makes it accessible for only a few people, excluding many others who would make qualified professionals. Students graduate with $500,000 in debt after putting in up to ten years of 18-hour-day education, not including living expenses. Very few can actually carry this burden, and it excludes many who would make good doctors. Those who do take on this burden need to pay it off; they must charge prohibitive costs to their patients; and the price spiral continues to rise.<br /><br />- There should be more medical schools in America, leading to greater competition among the medical schools and resulting in both more admissions and lower price of tuition. The lower price of medical education will make possible for doctors to pay off their loans by charging less exhorbitant prices for their services. <br /><br />- The practice of overdiagnosing and overmedicating mental disorders with dangerous and expensive multi-drug combinations at taxpayer expense is the case of pharmaceutical industry scamming the taxpayer. ADHD is overdiagnosed and over-treated in American children with drugs that are addictive and often carry severe, even lifelong, effects. People who get depressed for real-world reasons or who have a temporary life crisis are diagnosed with lifelong disorders and put on medication for life at taxpayer expense - frequently expensive and dangerous multi-drug combinations that do them more harm than they do good, including severe harm such as health destruction and early death. These practices must be put to scrutiny and, if not ended, then at least curtailed to a level that is significantly less expensive for the taxpayer, less harmful for children and less dangerous for adults.<br /><br />- Corruption in American medical system is a growing problem. Doctors cover up their medical mistakes and involve police, coroners, and lawyers and judges, in their coverups. There must be direct, insightful and uncompromising scrutiny of corrupt practices, leading to their exposure, punishments for those who partake in these practices, and the end of these practices that continue to result in death and disability of countless Americans.<br /><br />- Severe abuses continue to take place in the in-patient mental health system. The definition of patients as mentally ill and the resulting lack of credibility given to them in court of law, along with the unchecked credibility given the mental health professionals, creates an environment in which corruption, abuses of power, and injurious and destructive practices have the inherent capacity to reach extreme levels. There must be constant and diligent scrutiny of in-patient centers to balance and check this capacity for corruption and abuse that is a logical effect of this reality.<br /><br />- Severe abuses also take place in the nursing home system, including physical violence and even murder. These practices are rarely investigated and, if found out, are covered up. This system must likewise be scrutinized against these and other abuses. America's senior citizens deserve better treatment from their country than that.<br /><br />I am respectfully putting this to the attention of the voter and the officials involved in hope that this be taken into consideration.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-82439442552888720022009-06-29T04:50:00.000-07:002009-07-17T06:05:04.815-07:00Generations, "Niceguys," Darwin, Sheep and WolvesBoomers and Xers: Respective Errors<br /><br />One frequent criticism of the baby boom generation is that they thought that they were God. Having known many people of all ages, I knew only one person who actually thought that he was God. He was close to my age, and he stopped thinking that he was God when he got the right medication. <br /><br />The good ones among baby boomers, originally, believed that the universe itself is divine, and that beautiful state of affairs can be had here. For this reason they fought for civil rights, human rights, social freedoms, peaceful instead of military solutions, and better treatment of the environment. There were others later who did bring in wrong ideas. These came to believe such things as that "there are no innocent victims" and "everyone creates their reality" (so abuse and victimize as many as you can, as it is them doing it and not you); "positive thinking good, negative thinking bad" (so ignore all criticism of your actions, however wrong they may be); and that self-esteem is a prerequisite for and a determinant of good behavior (it is neither).<br /><br />Others, who were not hippies or New Agers and many of whom were not baby boomers, took these beliefs and used them to <br />silence the scientists and the environmentalists who knew of the coming climatic catastrophe, claiming that they were negative; to put America $10 trillion in debt, claiming that anyone protesting this was lacking in optimism; to destroy public service, claiming that unless one has everything he cannot be of help to anyone; and to make abuse the norm of man-woman relationships, claiming that those at its receiving end were causing it or were negative or were losers or were lacking in self-esteem. The wrongful beliefs were used to perpetrate a monstrous world-threatening evil, with most of this evil coming not from the Left but from the Right.<br /><br />The evil that did come from the Left was political correctness. A prudish hysterical love-hating beauty-hating sex-hating ideology took over America's centers of education and much of its media. This ideology not only militated against love and beauty; it militated against democracy itself. With standard of public discourse being "nobody can say anything that can offend anyone," was banished meaning as well as sincerity from public discourse. Anything that means anything will be controversial; and anything controversial will offend someone. With political correctness, insincerity, prissiness and hypocrisy became not only the aggressively imposed norm of public discourse, but also of people's behavior, people's thinking and people's lives.<br /><br />None of this of course is causally linked to the stated claim that baby boomers thought that they were God. This was a result of exploitation of wrongful beliefs by the American Right that would use anything to advance its rapacity, as well as of short-sighted thinking on the part of frumpy brainy women who wanted to lord it over other women without realizing the damage their actions did to women, to men, and to man-woman relationships. But there is an attitude common to baby boomers that is very wrongful, and it is as follows. They identify with their generational interest more than they do with anything else. And that is a problem for anyone who has to share a planet with them.<br /><br />I would describe it as bad-neighbor policy: bad neighbor to those before them and those after them. When they were young, it was "trust nobody over 30." When they had children themselves, they saw them less as their future and more as their competition. This led them to be ugly bullies, beating up on their children and later beating down on people one third their age and claiming them not to be as enlightened as themselves when their supposed enlightenment led them to act in such a despicable manner. First they were socialist, and everyone had to be socialist with them. Then they were capitalist, and everyone had to be capitalist with them. Then they were religious, and everyone had to be religious with them as well. No thought in either case was taken to any other generation.<br /><br />At any given time, the world contains people of all ages, who all have different needs. One must be mindful of all these if one is to create any kind of a livable world. With some great exceptions, the baby boomers failed to see this and acted accordingly. But people who are now living, including the baby boomers who are now living, have a chance to avoid and atone for this terrible mistake.<br /><br />Generation X had a different problem. They bought into the World War II generation's claim that their children - the baby boomers - were spoiled evil brats who destroyed the supposedly great culture. This is another major error. Yes, the World War II generation won the Second World War; they also fought the Second World War for the other side. And the dogmatic heavy-handed authoritarianism of that generation is just as responsible for starting wars as it is for winning wars.<br /><br />The fact is, if the Gen-X'ers were brought up in the 50s climate they idolize, they would have wanted something different as well. Many of them would simply not have survived such an upbringing; and if they did, would have more to say about it than they do about the baby boomers. So that while they worship their grandparents and see their parents with contempt, they know nothing of the reality that their grandparents created and in which their parents lived. It is a common practice for grandparents to be wonderful to their grandchildren when they had been horrible to their own children. And while the Gen-Xers are seeing the good face of the World War II generation, they have not seen its terrible face that their parents had - and still have - to endure.<br /><br />A lot of these people are pining for "traditional values." They have seen Leave It To Beaver and Ricky Loves Lucy, but they know nothing of the reality behind these decoys. The 1950s were not "happy times," and 1980s were not "happy times here again." There were huge problems with both decades, and baby boomers had every right to seek a different way of life - as much as the people now have every right to reject the short-sighted 1980s ethic that brought about the current catastrophe.<br /><br />For all these things there are real solutions. But they are no more about "positive thinking" or "self-esteem" than they are about blaming "the sixties generation" or damning the world "of flesh" and thinking that burning it will get one into heaven. The real solutions are not a matter of attitude or faith or psychology; they are a matter of applied intelligence. And it is this, and not any of the preceding, that has the chance of actually saving the world.<br /><br /><br />The Corruption of "Niceguys"<br /><br />The Internet can be a useful place to watch social trends. For a long time, on discussion forums dedicated to relationships, there was a group of young men who called themselves "nice guys." These young men claimed that women only went out with "jerks" and used the "nice guys" for comfort and friendship, but never for a sexual relationship. I watched this group become more and more aggressively misogynistic, as they went from "women only go with jerks" to "women make irresponsible choices in partners" to "women are stupid and evil" to "women must be played, abused and controlled." This stance was then used by men's organizations worldwide to press their agenda of brutality and oppression. Which of course is precisely what the actual jerks wanted in the first place.<br /><br />A wife-beater thrives on perception of women as stupid and evil. Such a perception allows him to indulge in unchecked unapologetic brutality against his wife and children; and if the woman attempts to leave, to claim her departure as further evidence of women being evil, and of the rightness of his behavior. Which behavior he then, in many situations, makes every effort to force on everyone around him, claiming that it represents true manhood or ethics or family values or righteousness. With males who had been originally sympathetic toward women having turned into haters of women, the agenda of the jerk was advanced by the "nice guys" without the jerk having had to lift a finger toward that end. The more people saw women as stupid and evil, the more the jerk gained in his ability to abuse women. So now, the jerks have been wanting to go all the way and take away from women all their rights, including even the right to vote.<br /><br />The sympathies of the "nice guys" having gone form women toward wife-beaters, the backlash against women's rights gathered steam and steamrolled over protections against brutality and child sexual abuse. All this, of course, benefiting the jerks. The "nice guys" became the lapdog of the brutes whom they had rightly despised in the first place and an accessory to their evil ends. They were losers at first, ad they became losers again - though now, not losers for feminism, but losers for barbarism. Meawhile the abusers became even more of abusers as they were empowered by these people as abusers.<br /><br />All this served dictatorial ends of those who wanted to see human nature as evil and to treat people accordingly. Bush, Taliban, Ahmabinejad, the Black Shirts, and others of similar character and agenda, blossomed through all these wrongs. And while many of those who shaped 1990s feminism were in fact misandrist and malicious, it is not them that got the wrath of the backlash, but rather the women who liked their men enough to be with them and were, by the men they chose, horribly punished for having made the error of liking them.<br /><br />This tragedy of errors can only be resolved by people gaining a brain. If one sees life as a battle between men and women, with <br />every person made to be loyal to one or another chromosome - and not to humanity, to life, to their individual self, or to the people they love - then one has no business having heterosexual relationships at all. To abuse one's wife is to piss in one's own pond; to want one chromosome to dominate everything is to deny the contributions, wisdom, and achievements, of one half of humanity. Neither of these are actions of intellect any more than they are actions of ethics. And both ethics and intellect demand better treatment of wives and children than one advanced either by jerks who have always been jerks or by the jerks that the "nice guys" became as they developed such convictions.<br /><br /><br />Misrepresentations of Darwin<br /><br />In "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," the author argues that evolution was the reason for the genocides and demicides of 20th century. Nothing can be further from the truth.<br /><br />Anyone who has actual understanding of evolution knows that evolution is based on mutation, and that differences that crop up among specimen are the source of all richness of life. Anyone who has actual understanding of evolution also knows that life continues through ecosystemic balance among different species, all of which have adapted for the ecosystem and are necessary therefor. The two great lessons from evolution are therefore diversity and coexistence. Any ideology that militates against diversity, that tries to wipe out ethnic groups, that claims one race as being superior and all else as inferior, that destroys individuality and forces similitude, that wants to do away with "freaks" or "sociopaths" or "deviants," is a betrayal of evolution and its true lessons. <br /><br />"Social Darwinism" that claimed that the culture that's best in war is superior and deserves to dominate, Nazism that claimed that Aryan race was superior race meant to rule the world, personality psychology that wants to do away with anyone who has a different idea than the time and the place, and similar abortions of ideologies, thoroughly misconstrue evolution. True understanding of evolution is diversity and coexistence, not malignant narcissism that seeks to wipe out everything other than itself.<br /><br />Another major lesson of evolution is that there are many ways to get things done rightly. The tigers, the reindeer, the insects, the plants, and other forms of life, all are different adaptations, and all of them work. This refutes the Communist belief that Communism is the only way of getting things done rightly, as much as it refutes those in capitalism who think that capitalism is the only functional and ethical way. <br /><br />Nowhere in evolution is there conceived such a thing as "the master race"or a superior culture. Nowhere in evolution do we see there being a single right way of life. What we see is different ways of getting things done, from which humans stand to learn. In nature, we see just about everything: Competition, collaboration, self-interest, altruism, lone-wolf approach, teamwork, patriarchy, matriarchy, and a huge variety of functional forms that are functional through different mechanism. True interpretation of evolution sees all that and respects it. The brutalist ideologies such as Social Darwinism, Nazism, Stalinism, and personality psychology, are not Darwin's legacy; they are legacy of ignorance and deception by those who would use anything and misconstrue everything toward that end.<br /><br />As for Communism, it is not based on Darwin; it's based on Marxism. Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848; Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in 1859. And while Marxian interpretation of human nature is being that to benefit the collective, while that of capitalism is self-interest, evolution shows that both are part of nature, and both would be found in people now and at any other time.<br /><br />The fact that both are part of nature, means that both will be found in one or another form, anywhere, with differences in degrees among individuals, places and times. In places that have forbidden one or the other, the forbidden aspect will manifest itself sideways - typically in twisted, destructive ways. Thus, in places that have forbidden altruism or benefit toward humanity - such as for example America of 1980s - the other-interest manifested in intellectual, spiritual and interpersonal oppression that aggressively demanded to turn people at all levels into embodiments of the Reagan ethic and forbade all other possibilities under claims of them being commie or loser or dangerous or pathological or anti-American. And in places that have forbidden self-interest, the self-interest will manifest in corruption - as it did, for example, in the case of Soviet bureaucrats and black-marketeers who served their forbidden self-interest in corrupt and murderous ways under the lie of serving the state. For there to be complete, healthy humanity - for the benefit of people at both individual and collective levels - both of these directions - each of them part of humanity's evolutionary makeup - have to be acknowledged, accepted, and tapped into. And it is only through this that not only the fullness of human nature can be served, but also be able to produce what it has to offer the world - for humanity to supply, that is, what it is capable of supplying, and for its demands at all levels to be met through this supply.<br /><br />If there are any existing belief structures that are supported by evolution, it is Buddhism that believes all life to be sacred; Wiccan and Native American spirituality that value the planet and what lives on it; environmentalism that recognizes the irreplaceable quality of the natural treasures; and those who see human potential and want to see it produce for humanity. The latter is the case both for people in capitalism and in socialism, each of whom understand half the picture - the first, self-interest; the second, humanity-interest - and see each other as hostile when they are in fact complementary in what they describe. What is not supported by evolution is the belief that life is evil and that it should be destroyed, both inside people and in the environment. This is the true reason for opposition of Islam and Christianity to evolution. Given the underlying beliefs, it can very well be said that life-affirming ethic of evolution is far superior in its principles and its honesty to the ethic of necrophilic apocalyptic creeds that claim to have "family values" as they aim for a destruction of all life on Earth before the children being born now have learned how to read.<br /><br /><br />Sheeps, Wolves: Any Other Species?<br /><br />A common metaphor for human interactions in Christian and Christian-influenced areas has been that of the sheep and the <br />wolves. The sheep are seen as good, wolves as evil. My question: What about all the other species?<br /><br />Nature contains huge variety. To claim that people can only be one of two species of that variety is extreme folly. What about antelopes and gazelles? What about tigers, lions and leopards? What about dolphins, reindeer, koala bears, mongoose, elephants, lemurs, birds?<br /><br />The wolf-sheep paradigm wants to do away with all these, and such has in fact been the result of implementation of sheep-wolf thinking: A plundered planet and a culturally impoverished, homogeneized, humankind. The sheep-wolf thinking wants everyone to be at every level a sheep - and claim that, if one is not at every level a sheep, then a wolf. The foolishness that is behind this thinking is responsible for huge range of evils now faced by humanity.<br /><br />In personality psychology, anyone who is not at every level its product is seen as basically inhuman and irredeemably evil. This is the case regardless of how much good the person does. The Orwellian concept of crimethink has been introduced through claims that people can be made criminal by their personality - that is, by their thinking. And with that, has been introduced a very real totalitarianism - not one of government, but one of whatever unchecked, unbalanced, and unaccountable groupthink, usurps the power to run the place and the time, to shape people, and to define people in reference to itself.<br /><br />From the perspective of the rest of the world, sheep and wolves work together. The shepherd sends the wolves across the world to clear the land of all other species; the sheep come in and overgraze the place. That some wolves would start going after some of the sheep, should be expected. And yet such things are met with horror, which horror did not accompany the full-scale destruction of other, beautiful, species, all around the world, to make room for the sheep.<br /><br />The worst evils in the world have come from the belief that people are, or should be, the same. This belief is responsible for genocide, jihad, imperialism, Stalinism, and demicides, witch hunts, and holocausts of all kind throughout the history of the world. The demand that people must at all levels be sheep is totalitarianism that goes all the way to the core of the people. As such, it is a betrayal of life, liberty, and all that the countries subverted by this con against their original purpose are meant to be about.<br /><br />The sheep and the wolves are a false duality. One should be neither a sheep nor a wolf. One should think outside false thinking to allow more clarity. There are millions of beautiful species around the world, that are being brought to the brink of extinction by the sheep, the wolves and the shepherds. One should identify with these species and give them a real chance at a life, while also doing the same for the planet and its inhabitants.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-60110898229598552792009-06-15T04:53:00.001-07:002009-06-15T06:26:36.294-07:00Uplifting the Russian Humpty DumptyAfter the opening of the former Soviet Union to the West, the economy of Russia and its satellite countries came under control of criminal groups. The reason is fairly simple. The only people who knew anything about business were people who had participated in what was know as "the black market" during Soviet Union. And it is these people that took over the economic leadership of these countries.<br /><br />The black market obviously has nothing to do with black people, but rather with the secret, illegal supply of foreign products to Soviet customers. Although it was against the law, with heavy penalties prescribed for those who were caught participating, it became a huge market that some economists credit with having produced up to 50% of the Soviet Union's GDP. The people could not legally get the goods that they wanted because all supply and distribution of products was under command of the government. A person who wanted American jeans or Japanese television had to obtain it secretly and against the law. To supply this demand, was created what was known as the black market, and many people had regular jobs and made money secretly on the black market. It existed, on a huge scale, because of how lucrative it was. A person coming back from America or Western Europe with 1,000 Levy's jeans would be able to sell them for an equivalent of $300,000 American dollars and would be set for life. And if he had enough connections, he could avoid prosecution and instead make more connections in KGB or in the police or in the government to supply their own secret, illegal wants.<br /><br />The black marketeers therefore developed a very sharp business acumen through all their dealings. The problem with them was this: They were crooks. Having learned to do business at the time that business was illegal, they developed a criminal mindset and ran their operations in a corrupt and criminal way. So that when the Soviet Union collapsed, they, as the only people in the country who understood business, conducted their business activities in a thoroughly corrupt and unethical manner - running scams, murdering competitors and undesirables, and pilfering hrough connections the work that it took people decades of work to produce.<br /><br />Meanwhile the rest of the population had no understanding of business or marketing. And while many had high education, in-depth professional knowledge, great skills, and strong ethics, they had - and many still have - no idea how to make these work for them in the market economy. Many had, and still have, beliefs that business and marketing are criminal, or at least immoral, activities. And of those who do not have such beliefs, there are many who have deep-seated insecurities about their ability to do such things, as well as lack of knowledge and skill in these areas.<br /><br />The crooks got rich; everyone else got poor. And instead of realizing the prosperity that they hoped for from the change of the system, the Russian Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.<br /><br />There is a viable way to get Russian Humpty Dumpty up to where it thought it was heading at time of the opening. It is for the first group to realize that running their operations in an honest, ethical and responsible manner has much to do with their businesses' reputation and long-term success. Nobody wants to trade for a long time with a crooked businessperson who may sabotage one's organization, or to procure goods from a crooked enterprise that may create defective products that kill one's kids; and it is only those businesspeople who create a transparent and ethical business culture that maintain their success for any length of time. And it is for the second group to do away with beliefs and habits that inhibit their economic viability. Whether the employer is the government or a private company, if the work increases people's well-being and wealth, it is a work worthy of having been done. <br /><br />With these two changes in thinking and habits being put into effect, Russia will finally be able to get where it thought it was going, or at least go significant way in that direction. Given the outcomes, as well as the present state of affairs, these are changes that are well worth being made.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-50759500256248845052009-05-30T01:29:00.000-07:002009-06-02T00:27:04.219-07:00Hydrogen Transmission Network: Integrated Clean Energy, Clean Water SolutionAs most governments are considering harmful solutions like nuclear energy and piecemeal solution like clean coal, there is now an invention that stands to provide both energy and water to everyone, while in the process consuming no irreplaceable resources, generating no waste, and replacing two infrastructures - electric grid and water system - with a single elegant network whose efficiency is significantly greater than that of the electric grid. This solution solves two resource shortages for foreseeable future while significantly reducing their burden on the environment and having the potential to both stimulate the economy in the short term and realize great savings in the long term. <br /><br />The proposal is on the Climate change website of the Australian government, and it has been introduced to governments worldwide. It is called The Hydrogen Transmission Network (HTN). <br /><br />Here is a summary of what it does and how it works:<br /><br />How it Works<br /><br />Solar energy is to power electrolysis of ocean water. The oxygen is to be released into the air; the hydrogen is to be sent through pipes to every home, every city, every farm, every industrial and commercial installation, to be reacted on the spot with oxygen in the air to produce energy and water at once. The basis of energy will move from the electric grid, with its current mix of coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric sources, to the abundant energy of the sun and the energy of the ocean. Meanwhile water needs will be provided from the oceans, reducing the burden on the freshwater resources in countries where they are inadequate to meet the needs of the growing population.<br /><br />Environmental Advantages<br /><br />At the price of one, round the clock, people will get on-demand clean energy and clean water, without destruction of anything that cannot be replaced and without production of any harmful byproducts. More area will become capable of sustaining farms, human habitation, and forests, creating more food and clothing for internal use and export, accommodating the population growth, and creating green area to absorb atmospheric CO2. The sources for energy – currently mostly fossil fuels – and for water – currently freshwater, which is in many places inadequate and running out – will become the sun and the ocean, neither of which are polluting and neither of which are at any risk of running out for centuries. The process will produce as its byproduct only water, which will then go back into the environment to create greenery and replenish the water taken from the ocean.<br /><br />Economic Advantages<br /><br />The HTN will create huge numbers of jobs in the short term for its development and construction, putting back to work the people dislocated by industrial flight abroad. It also will lift the economy out of the financial crisis. In the long term, it will save huge amounts of money by replacing two infrastructures – electricity grid and water – with a single efficient network of hydrogen pipes. The fossil fuel resources will last longer and be used for higher-end goods. The greater farmland will be able to sustain greater population, reduce world hunger, and produce more farm products for exports or internal use. More forestland will become possible, creating more area for CO2 absorption and for regeneration of the planet. A sustainable, well-supplied, population will become possible in places such as Australia, Israel, the American Southwest, the Arabian Peninsula, and ultimately the deserts of Central Asia, India, China, and Africa. The deserts will become farmland and forest land, reducing hunger and absorbing the atmospheric CO2, and tipping the balance from disaster toward sustainability.<br /><br />Technological Feasibility<br /><br />The technology for all three parts of the HTN exists already. The energy efficiency of the mechanism has been computed at 50% to 70%, which is far more than the current electric grid. The RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) report proposes a special type of pipes – steel pipes with internal glass pipe – to make sure that the hydrogen is delivered safely and on demand. With solar-powered electrolysis plants at the point of input, and fuel cells or special engines at the point of output, this will create a single environmentally clean, economic, elegant and reliable infrastructure to provide for the energy and water needs of houses, cities, towns, offices, and commercial and industrial installations of any country that implements the Hydrogen Transmission Network.<br /><br />The original proposal was made for Australia and described for Australia, but it can be useful just about anywhere. It is found in greater detail on<br /><br />http://www.users.bigpond.com/adda1234/HP.htmIlya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-47270270692567727402009-05-27T00:42:00.000-07:002009-06-01T23:48:45.993-07:00Sri Lanka Genocide: What If It Happened In Texas?Imagine the following scenario.<br /><br />As a result of the Texas governor's call for succession from the United States, American government declares a war on Texas. American government raids people's houses, jails people who have expressed the desire for succession, and heavily discriminates against Texans residing on the territory of the country.<br /><br />A paramilitary group called the Texas Jackalopes forms to protect Texas. The Jackalopes gun down marketplaces and blow up buildings in American cities. At home, they demand of their people complete loyalty and execute those who are suspected of treason. The US government brings NATO troops into Texas, after which a member of Texas Jackalopes blows up the head of NATO in a suicide bombing. <br /><br />The Texas Jackalopes are named a terrorist organization. Now, every time someone thinks "Texan," he thinks "terrorist." People come to America saying what a lovely, peaceful, spiritual country - except those terrible terrorists in Texas. As the fighting continues and the conditions in Texas get worse, the international community is totally apathetic. Some say that it is an internal dispute not theirs to arbitrate. Others say that every country deserves its government, that every place and every person has their own journey, that what is happening is a result of negativity in the consciousness of the Texans, its karmic lesson, or a punishment from God for its sins.<br /><br />After two decades of low-grade civil war, the government puts in place a final solution. The army surrounds Texas while denying access there to foreign observers, killing two UN personnel stationed in Dallas to prove the point. It then sends missiles all over Texas, gasses Waco, and pounds all areas of habitation with rockets, ostensibly under the claim of fighting the Jackalopes. The people are caught between the bombing by the military and the extortion and brutality by the Jackalopes. Denied access to food and sanitation, people die in droves.<br /><br />The Texas immigrants living in other countries stage demonstrations and hunger strikes, but the media ignores the issue. The stories begin to appear in the news as the government has driven the Texans into a tiny area around El Paso, where they continue to be bombed. As some Jackalopes flee and others kill themselves, the government declares victory, while telling the world of the casualties on both sides of about 10 percent of the actual number. The Texan-run businesses all over America are shut, and Texans living on territory of the rest of United States are exiled abroad. <br /><br />Sounds far fetched? Yet this is exactly what's happened in Sri Lanka.<br /><br />Most likely the world will never know the number of dead in the ugly campaign of extermination of Tamils waged by the Senghalese majority of Sri Lanka. As far as genocides go, this one is quite clear-cut, more so than many other events that have been declared as genocides and prosecuted as such. The Serbs against Albanians in Kosovo, for one, do not begin to compare in the number of dead or in deliberateness of genocidal intent. The world needs to see this crime for what it is and deal accordingly. Genocide must not be acceptable in 21st century, whoever carries it out and against whom.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-31892983340368313802009-05-16T06:09:00.000-07:002009-06-01T23:50:29.268-07:00"Claire," Charmyne Palavi, and Australian Football Gang RapesAfter a woman who, fearing for her safety, called herself “Claire,” revealed the disgusting details of a gang rape that was perpetrated against her by an Australian football team, 100,000 people responded in support of the man who orchestrated the gang rape against her.<br /><br />Charmyne Palavi, who also went on TV to reveal the reality of the football gang rape scene, was denounced on the Internet as a “lying head case,” and hateful messages were written toward her both by women and by men.<br /><br />“Claire,” Charmyne, and everyone else who has experienced this and similar crimes: This is for you.<br /><br />In an Internet discussion, an Australian man referred to Muslim men who gang rape young women in Sydney as “imported Muslim scum.” While that is indeed a fitting description of those people, I pose a question. Why is not the same epithet – minus the imported Muslim part - being applied to Australians who do the exact same thing to Australian women and teenage girls?<br /><br />The people who are behind the “lying head case” statements are clearly abusers and liars. They are seeking to discredit and beat down the person who is coming forth to tell the truth. Telling the truth is a part of character and a part of integrity. So then why would the people who claim to have character and integrity be against it? <br /><br />There is a single reason for it. They have neither of the preceding.<br /><br />To women who have been joining in the attack on Charmyne and on “Claire”: Perhaps you deserve to go through what “Claire” had gone through. You would inflict it upon your fellow woman, so then why should it not be you that is being gang raped? This woman is somebody’s daughter, as well as a human being. As a man, and a father, I say quite clearly that if anyone did anything like this to my daughter, I will not rest until they all are in jail.<br /><br />Now there are many football types who think that they’re real men who deserve to do this to women, and there are many women who think that they are real powerful men who will protect them and give them status and power. I pose this question. What are they up against a nuclear bomb? The French, whom they see as cowards; the Chinese, whom they see as blockheads; the Russians, whom they see as losers; the Americans, whom they see as conmen; and even a tiny nation like Israel; has enough real power to wipe them off the face of the Earth. The Taliban in Afghanistan, who believed that a man who does not beat his wife “does not have a penis,” thought they were real men as well, and for the same reasons. They did not last very long against real power.<br /><br />And it is only the nobility, the self-restraint, and self-discipline, of those who have real power – the self-restraint and self-discipline which history shows repeatedly to be the necessary component of real power - that allow thugs like the Taliban, the military dictators, the “imported Muslim” as well as Australian football gang rapists, to get away with thinking that they are kings.<br /><br />This laissez-faire attitude on the part of real power allows for creation and perpetuation of all kinds of hideousness and absurdity. Petty despots, criminal organizations, terrrorist groups, paramilitaries, thugs, and all kinds of barbarians, then start claiming that they are the real men, or the genuine article, or the true culture of the places that they infest and use this usurpation to commit horrendous violations against the people whom they are claiming to represent. Gangsters start thinking that they are the true black people; militias start thinking that they are true Americans; Taliban starts thinking that they are true Middle East; and groups like the Black Shirts and the football gang rapists start thinking that they are the true Australian men. All of these are wrong. They are not the truth of the people they claim to speak for, they are the worst and the ugliest in the people they claim to speak for. And it is time that the people for whom they claim to speak stop letting them get away with this usurpation of their authority. There are far better men in Australia than Black Shirts or gang rapists, just as there are far better black people than gangsters, far better Americans than militiamen, and far better Middle Eastern people than Taliban; and it is time that these better men in Australia start to speak as true men of Australia and put these degenerates in their place.<br /><br />The people – and I use the term loosely - who think that it is part of manhood to brutally gang-rape teenage girls and young women – or to beat their wives, or to molest their daughters, or to assault women who've left men who beat them and molested their children - are not real men that they claim to be. What they are, is swine. And like swine flue is infecting people, so are these swine the leading cause of death and disability in Australian women. It is time that better men speak for Australian manhood and put a stop to this vile affliction that is eating away at the soul of this beautiful country and the people who live in it.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-8948119625363524122009-04-30T17:33:00.000-07:002009-06-01T23:51:19.534-07:00The Problem of GroupthinkThe problem of groupthink happens in all closed systems. The people prevail upon one another to think the same way, and as a result of all thinking the same way arrive at the same errors. As they persecute people for thinking in any different way, they exclude crucial perspectives that have the capacity to check those errors. And the result, in all cases, is disaster.<br /><br />We see that in a glaring example with the media in 1998, when it created a groupthink that attempted a coup against a legitimately elected president who had 70% public support, and then attacked an independent magazine called the Salon for "violating unspoken rules of media" with its revelation of the affair carried out for four years by Clinton prosecutor Henry Hyde. The "unspoken rules" here of course are the groupthink itself - the groupthink that decided it had the right and the power to depose one of America's most benevolent and successful presidents against Constitutional law and against the will of the electorate. Whenever one sees "unspoken rules," what one sees is groupthink that seeks to bludgeon everyone into compliance with itself. And it becomes one's duty before democracy and freedom to destroy such groupthink before it destroys freedom.<br /><br />Another obvious example of groupthink, that has had more disastrous results, has been found in people who claim that the economical-political infrastructure is "the real world" or even "reality," and that the world in which it exists is neither of the preceding. As people associate this entity with "reality," they become oblivious to the rest of reality - such as, for example, the reality of the planet in which this infrastructure exist. The results of this groupthink are obvious, and direct function of the mentality contained within it. If this infrastructure is "real world" and the whole of "real world," then it must take a lunatic to think of reality as having any existence outside of it, whether it be the biosphere, the climate, or even the solar system and the universe outside of it. Unfortunately for those who believe this and now for everyone else, the planet is real world also, and one without which the infrastructure would have no existence. This oversight in the definition of what is real world, and what is reality, has been the direct flaw in thinking responsible for the present climatic catastrophe.<br /><br />Further examples of groupthink can be seen in professions, communities, and religions worldwide. The history of psychiatry shows going from one trend to another, with its concepts of what is health and what is sickness changing constantly as a result of the ideological underpinnings of the psychological thought of the time. Scott Peck, who was a Protestant by conviction, had a very different definition of what's wrong with the world than did humanist Erich Fromm, existentialist Rollo May, behaviorist BF Skinner, or psychoanalysts such as Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud. And as purpose of psychology in recent decades became to bring about "social adjustment" and refer to anything else as a disease or a personality disorder, was completely left out of consideration the quality and the character of what it is to which the adjustment is forced. The predictable and inevitable result, once again: Perpetuation of groupthink, regardless of its actual character; silencing of all voices that had any capacity for checking it or showing its errors or its effects on the world and on the people inside of it; and unchecked, all-ensnaring, all-controlling perpetuation of whatever Big Lie bears the name of "sanity" and "reality" in the place and the time. The Big Lies including, but not being limited to, the following: that "real world" and "reality" do not include the reality of the planet and its inhabitants; that responsibility means poisoning the planet and having a $10 trillion debt; that "family values" is about working to create the end of the world before one's grandchildren have reached maturity; that character and loyalty and integrity is about never questioning anything one is told especially the preceding; that caring about such things is "whining" or "blaming" and not caring about them is personal responsibility; or that it is mental health to practice such beliefs and mental illness not to.<br /><br />In closed communities such as the small towns, the groupthink becomes the law, the sanity, and the reality, unto itself. With all external scrutiny as to its practices of human and civil rights, as well as Constitutional law, silenced under the name of "getting government off people's backs," the communitarian usurpation becomes not only formative but absolute. The result is neither greater freedom, as promised, nor an improvement, as promised, in people's character. The result is severe degradation of both the preceding; a destruction of all meaningful freedom and human rights; a subversion of the police and the social services to hide, silence, and destroy the minds and the lives of its victims; and the worst of corruption growing up under the banner of "family" or "community" values and under the banner of "freedom," entraining in people the mental habits of conmen, liars, bullies, rapists, and murderers, and using personal and community loyalties and a false groupthink-shaped concept of sanity to maintain these habits and pass them on. <br /><br />In the courts, we see a very similar problem. Manifestly fraudulent concepts such as the Parental Alienation Disorder (PAS) not only find their way into the system, but become the staple of the system, with all discussion of it silenced and prosecuted. People with no professional training, under the CAFCASS system, are authorized to make fraudulent diagnoses and decide lives of children. Corrupt lawyers and corrupt judges with money signs in their eyes in UK use the fallacious "Munchausen By Proxy" syndrome to tear babies from their mothers' breasts and sell them for $5,000 a piece to adoptive couples that are corrupt enough to take part in such a despicable scheme. The children then are adjudicated to being brought up by the most corrupt of all possible people, whether they be men who would use a racket such as PAS to silence the facts of their violence and sexual abuse toward their children, couples who would take children away from their mothers and buy up government agents to help along, or government entities that take part in these and related rackets. This groupthink is allowed to grow and reach such manifestly monstrous dimensions because the courts are left to make their own decisions without scrutiny by free press and by the people at the receiving end of these decisions, who in many cases are labeled with one or another fictitious disorder to ruin their credibility or else locked up in jail.<br /><br />The groupthink happens to businesses; to governments; to professions; to countries; to regions of countries; to towns, villages, cultures, subcultures, even such organizations as NASA, where everyone knew about the impending Challenger disaster but nobody dared to speak up. A classic example of where this leads at the national level is the Emperor of China telling the English monarch that his "celestial empire" had everything that it needed, and that there was nothing that the pathetic island of England could offer it. Another is the Reagan Administration being so packed with narrow-minded loyalists that it acted as if it did not realize that it was creating a climate disaster and a public debt crisis; the even more obvious example being the Bush Jr. administration that not only added hugely to these problems but created tons of others at the top. Much of the time groupthink hurts others; at times it hurts also the people who are partaking of it. China would not have gone down the ruinous road that it did following its rejection of English offers of trade if it had made more intelligent decisions, and Republicans would not have gone down in the flaming defeat that it did in 2008 if they likewise had thought and conducted themselves more intelligently. There are some who think that the root of all wrong is sin, and others who think that the root of all suffering is desire; but these examples prove that the root of most man-made wrong in the world is bad thinking. Groupthink is a very serious and pervasive example of bad thinking, and one which must be rigorously checked if similar and worse situations are to be avoided.<br /><br />There are people who claim, for example, that the Roman Empire was undone by its "decadence." The truth is that it too was undone by bad thinking. In 200 AD, Hero of Alexandria invented the steam engine. The Romans thought that it was uneconomical because slave labor was cheap and abundant enough for them. Had they exercised more foresight, they would have industrialized 1650 years early, created war machines that would have made mincemeat of any invading army, and been able to end the institution of slavery in which lived three-quarters of the population and which was the rightful ongoing source of hate and resentment against the Roman Empire and against "the world." The world would be speaking Latin to this day, and Romans would not be remembered as brutes but as creators of a great civilization.<br /><br />In religions, the groupthink is at its most severe, with results of the worst sort. Religions come to believe that they are superior to "the world" - meaning of course the rational world, with such concepts in it as science, democracy, knowledge, <br />human rights, women's rights and free speech - and then use the mechanisms of democracy that have allowed them freedom of religion to subvert this same democracy and deny everyone else not only freedom of religion and freedom from religion, but also every other right and liberty given to them by the same democratic system that they abuse for imposition of apocalyptic totalitarianism. Using false science, denunciation of true scientific knowledge, family pressure, community pressure, fake psychology, spiritual fraud, and threats of eternal damnation, they then maintain this apocalyptic totalitarianism, with predictably destructive economic, political and social policies as its effect. In the same way as Hitler used the mechanisms of German democracy to impose totalitarianism, so do such groups as Islamists and Christian Coalition in the societies they inhabit. We have seen the direct results of both - the first with Taliban, the second with Bush - and both have been equivalently disastrous for their countries and for the world.<br /><br />To an Islamist or a Christianist, anyone who is not a part of the cult is a heretic, a savage, a false prophet or an enemy; anyone who is born into it is, to them, a horrible traitor and sinner if they ever leave it or get other thoughts into their heads than what the cult forces therein. All influences not of the cult are attacked and destroyed as far as is possible in the time and the place. The awakenings of intelligence, passion, or anything else that has the potential to lead the person away from the cult's control, are seen as a threat, and the person is dealt with through demonization, brutality, brainwashing, entrapment in deliberately impossible situations, and whatever other forms of ensnarement, mind-destruction or life-destruction whose burden it is to "prove" the party line is thought up by the members of the cult and the scientists, psychologists, business people, judges, doctors, policemen and politicians whom they coopt. The cults thus become immune to checks on their groupthink, whether they be external to the cults or internal to them, and the work of deception, fraud, and ensnarement of people into apocalyptic totalitarianism can go on unchecked from either within or without - until, once again, the groupthink becomes so big as to project its anti-life ideology on the whole of the universe and work for a cataclysmic destruction of life on Earth before their grandchildren have learned how to read. At which point it becomes threat to life of people outside of it as well as to life itself, and the world has a choice either to follow the cult's line and bring about an artificial Armageddon, or to reject the cult's line and work to create a livable future for humanity - a future that extends to all of humanity, whether or not they believe in a pedophilic tyrant who bedded a nine-year-old girl at age 84 being the rightful source of theological and moral instruction for all mankind; an omnipotent entity that was not adequately omnipotent to beget more than one son and no daughters and needs mere humans to fight his wars; it being part of "celestial Empire" and "divine moral order" of Confucianism to see "a wife taken is like a pony bought: mine to ride and whip as I will" and to make the son of a robber also be a robber; ugliness being brought into existence by conceiving of beauty and not by failure to strive for it; world being brought into being by a cow and 150 million people being rightfully damned to horrific existence for the terrible sin of being born in a wrong family; woman and nature and "flesh" as being the source of all evil and the people believing such things as not; all creations of nature and <br />works of humanity being "hubris" or "sin" and believing such things and wanting everyone who is not them to burn in hell for eternity as being in neither; brutality, degradation and abuse against wives and children being "family values" and being good to one's wife and children as being unmanly or unpatriotic or against God; AIDS being "God's way of controlling the homosexual population" and 9-11 having happened because "God took away protection from USA because of feminists and liberals"; science and democratic government as being error and sin and people claiming such things while benefiting from science and using the democratic institutions to practice their apocalyptic totalitarianism as being neither of the preceding; it being "morals" and "family values" and "spiritual truth" to wish and work for an Armageddon before one's grandchildren have reached maturity; the carbon emissions climate change crisis being result of the sins of "humanity" - meaning the liberal influence that knew and talked about it for 30 years, and not the Republican Christians who aggressively denied it for that long; or the world being 6,000 years old and ending at year 1000 - then year 1900 - then year 2000 - then year 2012 - and extending into however long people believe such things.<br /><br />Right now, the groupthink of some of these entities is becoming apparent enough to call, and the groupthink of some others are threatening the survival of humanity and of life on the planet. Which means that it becomes a vital necessity to show these mentalities for what they are and for what are their effects as the logical and inevitable fruition of the belief mechanisms contained within them. With these exposed, there is greater chance at clarity and at better thinking and better decisions. Which means that there is a greater chance that the children being born now will live to see maturity and a sustainable livable world for generations to come.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-28981722157821618642009-04-20T21:58:00.000-07:002009-04-20T22:02:10.011-07:00Levels of Identification and SynergyEncoded in human genome is the totality of what it has taken for humanity to develop: Human beings themselves, the family or the ethnic group, humanity, and life. In all human beings will be found an orientation, in various degrees, to all of the preceding. Some will tend more toward one or the other orientation, and degree of participation in each will vary among individuals and during the lifetime of each individual. And each orientation will favor more of its orientation while seeking to exclude others.<br /><br />The more atomized levels will see the more general levels as betrayal or illusion. The more general levels will see the more atomized levels as short-sighted, selfish, primitive or ignorant. The tribe or the country does not like people to identify with humanity or with life, any more than it wants them to identify with themselves or their families or their ethnic group. The family orientation does not want people to identify with the nation or with the more general levels at the expense of itself. Similarly, humanity-orientation and life-orientation does not want people to identify with their nations, their ethnic groups, their families or themselves at the expense of humanity and of life.<br /><br />The people who have identified with the more atomized levels at the expense of the more general ones are usually detested, except of course by the members of the more atomized levels themselves of which they are a part. Hitler and Genghis Khan, who identified with their ethnicities and used their ethnicities to conquer and slaughter millions of people of other ethnicities, are hated by most people around the world - with the exception of course of the ethnocentrists at home who think that they were great leaders and people who hate the same people that Hitler or Genghis Khan wanted to destroy. English and Spanish imperialists, whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and far exceeded those of Genghis Khan, are hated by people of the broader identification as much as by people they conquered, but the hatred of them is muffled in countries that owe a large part of their existence to them. The leaders who favor themselves, their friends, their families, their states, the businesses allied with them, or their ethnic groups, at the expense of the countries that they lead, are known as corrupt. That is because they pilfer the more generalized entity to serve a more atomized entity, instead of serving the entity that they are entrusted to lead.<br /><br />Depending upon which level of identification is in vogue, are made judgments as to which orientations are better and for what reason. Thus, when ethicity-orientation or family-orientation is in vogue, the national orientation is seen as statism or oppression. When nationalism is in vogue, the humanity-orientation (internationalism) or the life-orientation (environmentalism) are seen as craziness or as treason; the self-orientation or family-orientation or group-orientation, as selfishness or as sin. When humanity-orientation is in vogue, the more atomized levels (national orientation, ethnic orientation, family orientation and self orientation) are seen as divisive, destructive, short-sighted and irrational, whereas life-orientation is seen as betrayal of one's own kind. Humanity-orientation itself, in its turn, is seen as incomplete, arrogant and anthropocentric from the perspective of identification with life. The more general levels engulf the more atomized ones and extend them. From the position of the more general level, the more atomized levels are seen as primitive and destructive; yet their presence is not likely to go away. <br /><br />What is of some interest is that the more general levels actually go back to a prior stage in the development process. First there was life; then there was humanity; then there was the ethnicity; then the family; then the person. Looking outward toward general identifications actually carries one into man's evolutionary past. But it is a past that is inextricable from what man is today.<br /><br />Among different peoples there is an identification that they foster. Thus, many Jewish people identify with the destiny of humanity as much as they do with Jewish people; tribal people identify with life and nature as much as they do with their own tribes; and populations in America that identify with America as much as they do with their own region in America. And of course there are people in all of these groups, and others, who identify wth themselves or their blood lines as much as or more than they do with nation or with humanity or with life.<br /><br />In addition to the biological levels of identification, come also artificial, man-made levels of identification. For example, there is no natural reason why men should identify with other men more than they should with women, or see it their duty before other men to control and beat down their wives and their daughters; yet this artificial identification takes place through manipulation of predespositions that are common to men. Similarly, there is no natural reason why a European person living in Europe and a descendant of European people living in America should see each other as enemies; this artificial identification takes place as <br />a result of divergent evolution of both places, with their different history creating different and in many respects hostile ways of life. Similarly we see identification with religions, identification with political systems and ideologies, identification with philosophies, identification with economical systems, and identification with cultures and ways of life. While none of these are biologically based, they become a large part of people's identifications through thought, conviction, generational transmission and coercion, and form identification that are frequently as strong as or stronger than those that are of biological origin.<br /><br />All levels of identification can be applied either constructively or destructively. Destructive uses of general levels include, but are not limited to: Destruction of people's individuality in the name of family, community, ethnicity, nation, psychology or religion; severing of loving interpersonal bonds between people in the name of all these or other levels; prosecution of commerce or science or technology or art or personal freedom in the name of the country or its "values"; cultural, social, economic, political and religious oppression; and religions abusing, murdering and sabotaging all that is life and all levels of life in order to bring about an artificial Armageddon. Destructive uses of the more atomized levels include, but are not limited to: Destruction of the planet for sake of national interest or humanity's material well-being; sabotaging of international cooperation on crucial matters for the sake of national or communal interest; all that is known as racism and ethnocentrism; communities and families effectively taking away from their members the rights afforded to them by the nation, committing and covering up crimes against them, controlling their lives and denying to nation, to humanity and to life what they have to give.<br /><br />Identification levels can work together as well. One benefits life, humanity and one's nation by finding ways to provide for humanity's energy and water requirements in a way that is environmentally less obtrusive than present technologies. One benefits self, family and more general levels by doing meaningful, inventive, productive, creative or knowledge-producing <br />work. In optimum, is seen the levels feeding into each other for benefit of each level and of the totality. And in this, is finally found a thinking that has the capacity to produce a livable future.<br /><br />Life is not one of its components against all others. Life is all of its pieces working in unity. A tree is not the roots or the trunk or the branches or the leaves; it is all of these things at once. Nor is the tree the branch eating the leaves, the trunk tearing off the branches, or the leaves killing the trunk; it is all of the tree's components working together. And what needs to happen at all levels of human activity, as it happens in tree of life, is minimax optimization among the levels, arriving at maximization of constructive interaction among them and minimization of destruction done by all levels to one another.<br /><br />This has to start through replacing warring dualism with integrational approach to dualities. It is not nature or civilization, worker or businessman, intelligence or compassion, women or men, spirit or physicality, ideal or reality, technology or naturality, nation or humanity, government or private sector; it is all of these things at once that make life. In all cases, as we have seen, there is capacity both for conflict and for cooperation. The activities of thought, and the activities of policy and interaction, should be directed toward maximizing positive cooperation among the levels and minimizing violence, abuse and destructiveness between them. <br /><br />The model I have is that of minimax optimization through synergy within the framework of check and balance. Check and balance, as was first applied on a meaningful scale by American Constitution, means that no level is allowed to become totalitarian and abuse all others. Synergy means putting together the intelligence and work at all levels to create favorable outcomes. And minimax optimization means achieving scenarios that optimize the benefit while minimizing the wrong.<br /><br />Through this thinking, and through this mechanism, it is possible to create a livable long-term future that has a chance at lasting sustainability and lasting peace. To honor nature and keep it producing and living - to honor humanity's requirement for livable future for those now living and many generations to come - to honor distinctness of ways of life among cultures and of personhood among individuals - will put in place the checks and balances against the abuses among the levels, while allowing the levels to synergize toward common good. <br /><br />And then life can grow, blossom, and produce its greatest ever accomplishments, long-term benefit and life and liberty through thought and action that is affirmative to the truth of humankind.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-14301400565963259602009-02-07T20:08:00.000-08:002009-05-18T06:46:25.817-07:00Racket Existence and True HumanityAcid and Jooky<br /><br />Rackets of different kinds are at the basis of most wrong there is in the world. In order to keep a lie going, everything not of the lie, and everything that has the capacity to see through the lie, must be destroyed. This requires ever greater deception, sophistry, blinding, violence, ensnarement and abuse. These then become inextricable from the character of the arrangement and becomes the character of the society itself, coercing people through every means possible into believing and practicing the same. The character of the people becomes what is suitable for the lie's perpetuation - the character of blindness in some, slyness in others, and abusiveness, barbarism and deceptiveness required to keep the lie perpetuating from generation to generation.<br /><br />In 1960s, a chemical called LSD became popular for its powers of consciousness transformation. It allowed people to see, among other fantastic beings, such heavenly creatures as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. LSD went out of style after it was discovered that many of its takers ot only wanted to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, but also to remain there with her. After that, the work of transformation of consciousness went into creating different kinds of another chemical known as Jooky - as in “we are all different, that’s why we all drink Jooky.” And Jooky took many forms.<br /><br />Some forms of jooky got people to think that beating one’s wife and molesting one’s children is family values, and being good to them is not. Others, that putting America $10 trillion in debt and poisoning the planet is responsibility, character, patriotism and ethics. Other jookies have transformed people’s consciousness to believe that destroying half the world’s living beings is fine, but creating genetic cures and biotechnological cures is work of Satan; that abortion is murder but murdering millions of people is right; that scientists, writers, artists and journalists are evil and stupid, whereas people making such claims are true honest trustworthy good smart righteous Americans. Jooky has even led people to believe that intellectual perspective is worthless and the only thing that matters is bottom line, even as they forgot that the only reason the bottom line exists in the first place is the work of intellectuals such as Adam Smith, John Locke, Montesquieu, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin - all of them highly educated European or European-influenced intellectuals who made possible for there to be capitalism and America, and without whom the normal American would be a normal serf in a normal monarchy working a normal two-acre plot of land and being run over by normal murderers and rapists.<br /><br />Other jookies have led other people to think that democracy is about not offending anybody, and that for that reason one must do away with all meaningful free speech - speech that, being meaningful, will be controversial and as such would offend someone. There have been jookies that led women to believe that beautiful women are ugly inside, but that women having such beliefs and abusing beautiful women in their pursuance aren’t. There have been jookies that have led people to believe that art is irresponsible but driving SUVs and having full-screen TV’s and being 400 pounds is responsibility. Jooky has even led people to believe that there is no global warming, and that people who know to the contrary are Communists, idiots and sissies.<br /><br />One must admire the amount of mental work that goes into creating such powerful consciousness transformation devices. But ultimately Jooky is deception. As such, it leads people to do worse things in the long run than if they had simply been acid-heads. It is time to see Jooky for what it is and to provide antidotes. This is the purpose of this essay.<br /><br /><br /> Reaganized Lies<br /><br />One racket - called Reagan Republicanism - has slipped under the radar and then took over the country, under the name of "family values," responsibility and morals. The actions of its participants show neither of the above.<br /><br />True family values means attention to the needs of one's children and partner. It means treating them right, and it means leaving the world a better place for their sake. A person who truly cares about family will make sure that his children have a better future, and he will make sure that he is treating them and his partner well. And yet the self-proclaimed exponents of family values do neither of the above. Not only do they use family sanctity as cover for brutality, incest and wrongful control, but they have also done horrible harm to the future of their own children. And after having perpetrated these crimes they are demanding of their children and wives obedience to them under the rubric of family values. <br /><br />The Reagan Republicans have put the government $10 trillion in the hole. Having replaced "tax-and-spend" with far more irresponsible borrow-and-spend, they are putting this giant obligation on their children and grandchildren while ridiculously claiming responsibility and family values. The Reagan Republicans have for three decades denied global warming and have poisoned the planet for their children - once again, while claiming , ridiculously, the same thing. And while claiming progress, they have suffocated progress in arriving at high-technology, high-intelligence, high-job-creation clean energy solutions. Solutions that have a chance of providing for the energy and water requirements of the world of civilization that man has created, while treading lightly upon the world of nature that man has not. Solutions that stand to make possible ongoing prosperity while reducing its costs to the planet and its inhabitants. Solutions that use man's intelligence to provide for man's needs while treading more lightly on nature.<br /><br />Instead the Reagan Republicans have let Texas Oil run the energy policy, as part of the "family values" "responsible" "moral" coalition. What can be more ridiculous than to claim such entities to have qualities such as the above? We are dealing with pillaging, myopic, criminal, rapacious, irresponsible, scoundrels. These to define morality? These to define responsibility? These to define family values?<br /><br />That’s some excellent Jooky, and one must admire the amount of mental work that went into creating it. But its effect on the world have been far worse than that of crack, acid, and all other substances that it replaced.<br /><br />Another aspect of Reagan jooky has seen it attack the government for everything, while themselves having run the government for much of that time. So we have been seeing anti-government truckers using government-made, government-maintained Interstate system to deliver government-subsidized foodstuffs produced by anti-government farmers, to "big liberal" great American cities that they, as true "American patriots," want to wipe off the face of the earth - and which cities have been the true source of America's innovation and prosperity. We have been seeing anti-government conservatives using government Social Security and Medicare to keep them alive in their retirement. We have been seeing anti-government communities relying on government police to keep order, government military to protect them, and government FEMA to bail them out in times of natural disaster. We have been seeing anti-government businesses using government Interstate, government Internet, and government police, science, education, and military, at all stages of the production process. We have been seeing anti-government groups using government-made Internet to disseminate their hate propaganda. And these people are ones claiming that they are - sane, righteous, smart, responsible, Americans? <br /><br />And people have been believing them for much of that time?<br /><br />The same people have equated, and continue to equate, their liberal opponents with Communism and its abuses. And yet they have far more in common with hard-line Stalinist Communists who committed these abuses than do the liberals that they attack. In the exact same way the hard-line Communists, who equated liberal-minded people in the former Eastern Bloc with “Western imperialists,” had far more in common with the actual “imperialists” than did the liberal-minded people in the former Eastern Bloc whom they stuck with this label. The liberal-minded people in both blocs wanted human rights, far-reaching education, humane governments and social orders, institutional transparency, social diversity, respect for the individual, women’s rights, diplomacy before force, and respect for other cultures. Whereas the hardliners in both wanted unconditional “patriotism“ divorced from principle, suppression of all thought that is not of the party line, cookie-cutter similitude, persecutions against anyone not of the party line, and absolute control over the people of the country. The constituencies of American Conservatives - the social conservatives, the military, the country - were the same as the forces for hard-line Communism in the Eastern Bloc. And the constituencies for American liberalism - big cities, educated people, artists, social liberals - were likewise the same as the pro-Western forces in Eastern Bloc. The Soviet Union is gone, and it is time that the conservatives in the west stop getting away with equating Western liberals with Soviet Communism and its abuses. They - the Western Conservatives - have far more in common with the hard-line Soviet Communists who had committed these abuses than Western liberals ever did.<br /><br /><br /> Politically Correct Blunder<br /><br />The politically correct con has likewise had its disastrous run. The belief in the equality of all "truths" opened America to the people whose "truth" it was that America is Great Satan and must be wiped off the face of the earth. It opened it to the people whose "truth" is that they should brutalize, murder and throw vitriol into the faces of women and be made by so doing real men of God. It opened America to the people whose "truth" is that freedom of speech, democracy, and women's rights are evil and should be exterminated. And it opened it to entities on the inside whose "truth" is that science is rubbish, that scientists and journalists are liberal brainwashers, that there is no such thing as global warming or evolution, and that academia should be defunded until it is bent into practicing the ideology of people whose "truth" this is.<br /><br />Mortimer Adler referred to "suicidal philosophizing" on the part of those philosophers who denied validity of reasoning which is of course the basis of philosophy itself. With political correctness, we've seen suicidal ideologizing on the part of academia itself. What made academia possible and gave it its raison d'etre - pursuit of knowledge of all aspects of the Universe through empirical exploration - was destroyed by an academic movement that claimed that any "truth" was as good as another. So it comes as no surprise that the "truth" that aimed thereafter to supplant science - the "truth" of evangelical Christianity and the "truth" of jihadist Islam - claimed that science itself was wrong; that it did not deserve government funding; that there was no such thing as global warming; that evolution was a fabrication of sinners, that "secular humanism" was destroying American values, and that used these ridiculous claims to not only defund the academia, but to convince a huge chunk of American population that science and journalism were liberal brainwashing - and that those claiming such things were telling the truth. This, not only resulted in defunding of academia and in failure to include academic knowledge of matters that should have been tended to 30 years ago. It brought about the era of Paul Wyerich, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and conmen claiming to speak the truth and demonizing actual knowledge. <br /><br />That one allows other "truths" does not mean that the "truths" that aim to supplant it would allow one's own. That one is tolerant to them, does not mean that they will be tolerant to oneself. And so came the age of fundamentalism, as had been allowed by political correctness, to usurp from science the claims on truth. And it was not only academia that suffered from this foolish error, losing both its funding and its productivity. It also was the entities that political correctness had sought to protect: Women, other ethnicities, other cultures, and democracy itself.<br /><br />At the time that science began its explorations into such things as consciousness, as well as the experience of people who meditate or practice Zen or have near-death experiences, the orthodox academics claimed these studies as being unscientific or cultish despite the fact that they were done using the best of science and ultimately extended greatly the knowledge of the mind. So that while it is understandable to be angry at an establishment that is acting in a bigoted and hypocritical manner about an aspect of knowledge, the same does not extend to other aspects of science that have nothing to do with it and that have been the source of 20th century prosperity - aspects such as biology, chemistry, paleontology, geology, history, mathematics, engineering, technology, anthropology and political science. And while much benefit has been realized by bringing to light the knowledge obtained by other cultures, at other times, through other methods, none has been realized from Christian and Islamic fundamentalism that claims that it has The Truth, that science is a liberal fraud or a fabrication of sinners, that everything coming from science or from other cultures is of the Satan, and that claims to speak for family values, America, truth and righteousness as it plunders the planet under the claim that there's no global warming, puts America $10 trillion in debt, defunds and discredits the academia, takes away women's rights, persecutes meaningful free speech, sabotages democracy, and aims for an Armageddon before their grandchildren have learned how to read.<br /><br />In the end, political correctness did not lead to increase in tolerance or democracy; it led to undermining of both by the most intolerant entities on American and foreign soil. It was powerless against religious fundamentalism, which is one force with which it did not reckon having to contend. And that, was its own suicide; but far worse it was also a disaster for the country and for science and academia itself.<br /><br /><br /> Yugoslavia and Political Correctness: Suppression and Its Results<br /><br />Tito's Yugoslavia was widely regarded as the best country in the Communist bloc. With a standard of living sufficient for it to be included in Organization of Economically Developed Countries, an infrastructure adequate for it to host Olympic Games, universal high-quality healthcare and education, world-quality science and engineering, religious tolerance, and nowhere near the level of abuses committed in Soviet Union or its satellites, Yugoslavia had some of the best accomplishments and quality of life of all Communist countries. The events of 1990s came as a shock to many people, who thought that Yugoslavia,as the most civilized of all Communist countries, was in the best shape to enter the 21st century prosperous and intact. To people who tried to make sense of what happened, many conflicting explanations were offered.<br /><br />One was offered, to me personally, by Bush Sr.'s Secretary of State Larry Eagleberger, who came as a guest speaker to a political science class at University of Virginia and responded to a question I asked him about Bosnian war. He stated among other things that he had held negotiations with Yugoslavian people; that they were (in his words) "the nastiest people [he]'d ever known;" and that he knew there was going to be a war in Yugoslavia. I am not sure with which people he had negotiated, or in what manner; but the Yugoslavian people whom I have known personally and in my work as a tutor were among the most genuine, most ethical, most intelligent, most responsible people I've known in my life. And it was from one of these people that I have finally gained a more insightful explanation of the events.<br /><br />The Tito government preached national identity as a Communist country under an ideology of brotherly love. However what people actually thought and felt and talked about privately was entirely to the contrary of that ideology. And when the Communist party line was no more, the country exploded in ethnic hatred, which was what people had been thinking and feeling for decades - and to which they could not admit in public and therefore not be able to work through and find meaningful ways to resolve or move beyond. <br /><br />I can see correlations between the situation in Yugoslavia in 1990s and the situation in America today.<br /><br />The politically correct ideology has been telling people for over a decade what they could think, what they could say, what they could feel, what personality they could have, and how they could relate to each other, while maliciously exterminating all thoughts, feelings and choices that were inconsistent with their party line. The supposed tolerance preached by the politically correct was in no way matched by their behavior, and their extreme intolerance of everything that was not of their party line brought them to not only effectively destroy free speech in America but likewise free thought and any form of genuine feeling or genuine interaction. This resulted in a climate of extreme and suffocating hypocrisy - a climate destructive to development of either intelligence or sincerity, and particularly to sincere <br />intelligence. But there were even deadlier problems with this arrangement, and we have seen them play out in recent events.<br /><br />Political correctness, like Tito's party line, created a climate in which people could say only the party line, which was of course inconsistent with their real feelings and thoughts. This created a schizophrenic separation between what people could say publicly and what they actually felt and thought. People's feelings in such climates are suffocated and made small, twisted and hideous; and when they come out, they do so with an explosive and murderous rage. <br /><br />Eminem had a huge following, because he articulated sentiments that had been suppressed but that were felt by many people. Religious, cultural and national hatreds, that had likewise been brewing under the surface, exploded similarly in this decade with a murderous force. The people had not been allowed to articulate these things, but they were feeling and thinking them anyway. And when the Bush-style demagogues and Eminem-style misogynists came along to articulate or pander to these sentiments while taking them into a thoroughly destructive and ugly direction, they were seen as sincere and genuine people and a break from the coldness and insincerity of the previous decade.<br /><br />Of course, in cases of Eminem and Bush, the rightful question to ask is "sincere and genuine - as what?" As Martin Luther King stated, nothing is more dangerous than genuine ignorance and sincere stupidity. That, has been the historic lesson of Bush. But there are other historical issues here, with even more significant implications for education, public debate and political policy. <br /><br />The experience of both Tito's Yugoslavia and politically correct America have shown that is not wise, nor is it viable, to force down people's throats a line while suffocating what they actually hold inside them. The prudence comes in embracing what people are feeling and thinking and guiding it toward a place that is intelligent and constructive rather than one that is destructive and dumb. American Constitution postulates freedom of speech, for a very good reason. It's not just a personal right; it is an absolute necessity for a self-governing nation that hopes to be a democracy in any meaningful sense. Free speech - and that means meaningful free speech, whether or not it is part of a party line - makes it possible for people to express what they think, give perspectives that are not anticipated by others, tell crucial information that may be missed by any other group or any decision-makers, and reveal reality as it is faced by a person or by a group. And then it becomes possible for people to actually understand the conditions enough to create meaningful, informed, insightful and proactive solutions - both for their own situations and for the political entities that they represent. <br /><br />So that when a party line takes away from people the right to free speech, not only do the people never develop their actual thoughts and feelings enough to find workable ways to affectuate them, but the policy makers are likewise clueless. Sincerity goes away from the public discourse and finds a way to exist in most destructive and most ugly possible ways. And then the logical result is events in Yugoslavia of 1990s, or in America today. <br /><br />It is for this reason that the purpose of real education is development of both intellect and emotion, not suppression of the same. With these developed into genuine and mature fruition, people have better chance to become intelligent, sincere, genuine, healthy and wholesome individuals - with intelligence based in sincerity and the core of sincerity developed likewise into an intelligent and viable form. And what political correctness has done instead, is turn centers of education into centers of indoctrination, where minds and personhoods are not nurtured but broken, and neither intelligence nor sincerity are allowed to develop in any kind of a wholesome way. This has created a population of people fragmented, hypocritical, and intrinsically insincere, and has inflicted such population upon America as its supposed educated class. Meanwhile the people with less education have claimed to possess integrity - integrity to ignorance and stupidity, which by masquerading as ethics or guts or manliness or common touch or integrity has allowed ignorance and stupidity to take over the country and take it to a completely disastrous place.<br /><br />In similarly wiping out sincerity from public discourse, political correctness has likewise helped along the same stance. With no sincerity allowed in intelligence, it has been found in ignorance and stupidity. Which ignorance went on to control American government and trying to turn it away from science, constitutional rights and freedoms, and even democracy itself. <br /><br />That's not what makes great countries, nor is that what makes great citizens. Nor is this what liberalism, of which political correctness is a degenerate perversion, is about in any meaningful sense. The flaws associated with Democratic candidates - the wishy-washiness and irresoluteness of Kerry, the impersonality of Gore, the slipperiness of Clinton, the out-of-touch weakness of 1980s candidates - are all a function of disconnection made between intelligence and sincerity in American character. And the only way for people, societies and public policies to work in a meaningful manner, is to find ways to become sincere and intelligent at once.<br /><br />This has been seen in the actions of Bill Maher, then Howard Dean, then more mainline Democrats, seeking to break through political correct doubletalk, pinpoint matters squarely and sincerely, and based on that create solutions reflecting sincere intelligence, sincere understanding, and sincere will to affectuate solutions reflecting the preceding. Which means to be able to understand cultural matters enough to address them honestly and without distortion. This, we have seen done by Barack Obama, in telling black fathers to take care of their children and other black people to stop using victimhood as an excuse for everything, took up the less educated white people on their scapegoating hate-everyone-who-is-not-like-us ways, and addressed the ruinous anti-intellectualism of youth in all races that keeps them away from educational knowledge and leads them to create aggressively ignorant cultures that claim integrity - to a lie.<br /><br />The things that politically correct would not talk about, found the way to express themselves in reality. As always in such conditions, they did so in the ugliest possible ways. And now, it becomes possible to actually see those things clearly enough to address them rightfully and intelligently. Sincerity found a way to exist - as sincere destructive ignorance and sincere disastrous stupidity. Now it becomes possible, with the politically correct distortion that had kept sincerity and intelligence apart quite convincingly broken, to wed sincerity and intelligence and make sincere intelligence and sincere knowledge the basis of a better American character and a better American future.<br /><br /><br />Misdirections of Evolution<br /><br />The evolutionary theory has been taken in two major directions. One is that of seeing humanity as a whole and seeing the human nature as one of benefiting the collective. The other is that of seeing man as the individual and seeing man's destiny as one of bettering his own condition. In reality, both are true, and the only order that has a chance of benefiting humanity at both collective and individual levels is one that recognizes the fact of both and gives people freedom to work to effect both outcomes. <br /><br />This, I refer to as the philosophy of integrationism: One that recognizes both man's individuality and the identity of the species, and empowers people to make the most of both. And in the arrangement based on the fact of what is man, the two are unlimited and feed into each other to make the most of both man's life at individual level and of the benefit of the collective. <br /><br />Now there are many false directions taken by evolutionary theory that first must be addressed. One is that of social Darwinism. This is wrong for one simple reason: It wants to claim that a single direction is superior, and all else are inferior, when in all cases there are some directions that are good in some ways, others that are good in others, and the correct solution is not that of one conquering all others but that of all contributing what they have. In this way, the entirety of human wisdom and achievement is recognized and goes to the benefit of all the people and civilizations involved. And the true way toward any kind of meaningful superiority is that of all soils integrating what is both theirs and what has been attained elsewhere and thus enriching themselves, their people, and the humanity itself. <br /><br />Another false direction is that of seeing the world as a battle of all against all, or of competition as man's sole nature. In fact, studies of nature have shown that there is plenty of behaviors done by animals that benefit the species even at the cost to themselves, and also that cooperation as well as competition are part of natural world. If man has evolved as both the self and the species, then it is natural for man at times to do good to the species just as much as it is natural for man to benefit one's own self. Thus, both self-interest and species-interest are legitimate parts of human nature, and any complete concept of man makes genuine room for altruism and individualism both, as much as it does for both cooperation and competition. <br /><br />Another false direction is the direction of claiming that there is some single purpose of nature or of man. The true nature of nature is multiplicity existing in multisynthesis. A tiger is not a hippopotamus; a hippopotamus is not a frog; a frog is not a rose; a rose is not a sequoia; a sequoia is not a bacillus. They are all different - validly, rightfully different - and it is this multiplicity that is the reason for all the richness of life and of nature. <br /><br />Like in nature, also in humanity, it is this difference that makes human existence what it is: The difference of ability, the difference of temperament, the difference of appearance, the difference of life path and life choice. The world benefits far more from there being scientists, doctors, businessmen, engineers, writers, artists, farmers, and laborers, than it did by having everyone be a farmer. And given this multiplicity, it is to be reasoned - and found - that the bulk of manmade wrong in the world history has come from conceiving people as all the same, according to one or another necessarily false <br />definition, and bludgeoning them into being not only something other than what they are and less than what they could be, but also bludgeoning them out of what they have to offer others and themselves. <br /><br />Thus arrangements such as keeping-up-with-the-Joneses makes the least of people and of humanity. Not only are people denied the right to meaningful freedom over their selves, their goals, their lives, and their individuality, but the false conception of individual freedom - the freedom that is in fact denied to people in every meaningful manner - is used to keep them from addressing common good. To this wrong, there are two partial solutions. One is pure collectivism that sees man's destiny as one of benefitting the species and engages all in that pursuit. The other is pure individualism that sees man's destiny as one of beneftting self. <br /><br />The complete solution is one of recognizing both aspects of human existence and allowing both absolute freedom of self-definition and purpose as directed toward self - and the freedom of doing good as directed toward others. In this, the totality of the human beingness is served, and humanity benefits at both the individual and the collective levels, through actions of people directed toward both ends.<br /><br /><br />Freudian Mis-Analysis<br /><br />Freud has made several of the worst errors that were formative to 20th century. In his analysis of the female patients, he interpreted their memories of sexual experiences with their fathers as erotic fantasy, when in all likelihood they were actual memories of sexual abuse. These memories, along with accompanying symptoms, which he called “hysteria,” come across as classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – a traumatic event whose memory is repressed, which when it is recollected is accompanied by mental anguish and cognitive disarrangement. These memories, being a secret and one inconsistent with the pretense of “respectability,” “breeding” and “family pride,” created cognitive disturbances in the victims. Combine that with fake lives that they lived as part of “high society,” along with being completely dependent socially, emotionally and economically upon heartless misogynistic plutocrats, prevented from speaking their minds or even developing their minds, would drive any woman up the wall.<br /><br />These women went to Freud for psychoanalysis, and some fell in love with him. This Freud likewise misrepresented as transference onto him of their supposed feeling for their dads, showing just how wrong he was. They fell in love with him, because he was an (apparently) brilliant man who (supposedly) tried to understand them at a deep level – something that they were not granted by other men, either their plutocrat husbands or their authoritarian dads, but that many women crave. He parsed these feelings as transference from these other men for whom the woman most likely has not had such feelings, when they were a natural reaction to a man’s (apparent) attempt to understand them emotionally – something that many women crave and, even if they claim they do not, still find attractive when offered.<br /><br />The fact is, the therapeutic setting itself is conducive to creation of love feelings. In a scientific study, love was created in a laboratory by having male and female subjects share intimate details of their lives. Since therapy involves shares of extremely intimate details - though mostly by the client - it comes as no surprise that female patients would fall in love with male therapists, male patients with female therapists, and homosexual or bysexual patients with therapists of their own gender.<br /><br />The therapists, priests and gurus who act on these feelings are seen as abusers of power. But not as much furor is raised in situations such as one with which I am personally acquainted, in which a female patient fell in love with a male therapist and shot his wife. The feelings that take place, in either case, are therefore not rightly characterized as "transference." They are a result of the dynamics of intimate shares in the therapy setting, as much as they are a result of an attempt at an emotional understanding, of a woman, by a man. And in misconstruing these feelings as "transference," Freud set psychology on a wrong path from which it is yet to recover.<br /><br />What does this mean? Huge things. First of all, it refutes the source for a large portion of 20th century secular brand of misogyny, which was based in Freud’s erroneous depiction of women as “an incomplete sex” possessing “a penis envy.” These slanders against womanhood were used then to sabotage the women’s empowerment movement of early 20th century and force the women back into the kitchen in 1920s and in even more horrible ways during the three decades that followed. He led people to believe that women were hysterics and liars, when his patients were just this: Victims of sexual abuse and a corrupt and repressive society. They were telling the truth that was inconsistent with the pretensions of “respectability” and “decency” of the time, as well as with family loyalty; that as such were traumatic, maddening and contradictory to what was falsely known as “sanity”; and that as such wrought havoc with the mind of the victim as it began to stir out of its snares. As for their feelings of love for him, they were not transference at all, but a result of the dynamics of the therapy setting and of an attempt, by a man, to understand them and their feelings. <br /><br />Another famous Freudian fiction – this one destructive to both genders – is founded upon this underlying error. In transferring his false analysis of both the memories and the feelings of his female patient, Freud claimed that men’s romantic feelings for women were transference of supposed feelings for their mothers - and women's, for their fathers. And yet the basis of this belief was a false analysis of the female, in which he interpreted PTSD from sexual abuse as hysteria and intimate share-based, emotional understanding-based, love, as transference. Based on two false analyses piled on top of each other, was created one of the worst, most poisonous, and most enduring slanders against romantic love. As corollary of two false analyses, this idea is fallacious through transitive logic. <br /><br />Let me repeat what I have just said. Two false analyses, were used to create the most famous Freudian misanalysis. And by showing these underlying analyses both to be false, this misanalysis stands to be refuted.<br /><br />The false analysis behind Freud’s conceptions of both men and women has been one of the worst poisons of 20th century. It led the world away from awakening to beauty, love, arts, poetry and freedom that took place in the Bohemian (Edwardian) period and into brutal repression against the same. Men and women did not go away; neither did feeling or sexuality. Instead, denied their healthy expression in beautiful relationships, they were expropriated from people and used to fuel fascism – a phenomenon described by Wilhelm Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism – as well as a number of poisonous and oppressive usurpations of feeling, sexuality, and every other motive in human being.<br /><br />Freud’s false, ignorantly judgmental, and destructive and usurpatory, model, was only seriously challenged in 1990s, when it began to emerge through more honest analysis that sexual abuse by male relatives was not only real, but reality for one third of the females and one tenth of the males. And yet his wrong and destructive ideas continue being used to grave detriment of both men and women. Those bent on oppression, injustice and bullying will look for any argument to justify them, regardless of its dishonesty or its error. And the way toward freedom involves deconstruction of rackets used to enforce slavery, as I am doing here with one such racket.<br /><br /><br />"Self"? - Esteem and Inner Colonization<br /><br />Self-esteem psychology has also proven to be a highly effective form of population control. First, the person is told what to be, how to think, how to feel, how to behave, and what values to have. Then the person is told to learn to esteem himself according to this externally imposed mindset. Then he is told that it is his responsibility to strive to meet this "self-esteem" - which of course is not "self" esteem at all, but that of the people who have created these definitions. And then the person is made to be responsible for a life and a mind chosen for him by the same.<br /><br />This form of population control is quite impressive, as far as such go. There have been many attempts at duping the population, but this one is of a particularly excellent quality judging by the number of supposedly intelligent people who have bought into it without the need for labor camps or gas chambers. The people who have bought into it are not all obviously fools; but from the outside the extent of the con is quite easy to see.<br /><br />As an obvious example of what I am talking about, I bring up a scene I saw at a Virginia bookstore. A man was singing to a group of children, "You can be anything - a doctor, a lawyer." First he tells them what to be - a doctor or a lawyer. Then he tells them that they can be those things. Translation: "Johnny, be what I want you to be. You can do it." <br /><br />It merits little elaboration that the concept of self-esteem works the exact same way.<br /><br />Does anyone ask if America benefits from there being so many lawyers? As for doctors, have I got news for Johnny. He will have a $500,000 debt before he makes his first dollar. He will be working 12 to 18 hour days. He will be tired, overworked, and as such liable to make all kinds of errors that he would not normally make. He will be seeing all kinds of cranky people who are sick because of bad lifestyles and who will sue him if they thought that he made an error. His overhead costs and malpractice costs will be through the roof, and by the end of it he will have made less money in net than a garbage collector. Yeah, Johnny, go for it, be a doctor, you can do it. Sucker.<br /><br />And what if Johnny does not want to be a doctor or a lawyer? What if Johnny wants to be a scientist, an engineer, a teacher, a writer, a politician, an actor, a businessman, or (as would be in many cases an honest stance for people who are misinformed like this) does not know what he wants? Then the first step would be to convince Johnny that he is a loser and a freak. If that does not work, the next step will be to claim that he's arrogant, or that he "thinks he's better than everyone else," that he is dangerous or a sociopath or a narcissist, that he has "false self-esteem" - meaning of course that he esteems himself by a different code than the people who want him to be a lawyer or a doctor, which would be a fairly intellectually honest stance, and one that is in this (and in many analogous cases where any other false definition of health is being shoved down people's throats) quite rightful. Then the project will be to destroy Johnny's ability to have such thoughts, or Johnny's confidence in the viability of the mind that creates these thoughts, or other people's belief in the viability of Johnny's mind - or, if not that, then in his or other people's belief in Johnny's humanity. And then perhaps with his life completely destroyed Johnny will be ready to receive the brainwashing to make him think that being a lawyer or a doctor is the only possible way to a successful and healthy existence; but more importantly Johnny's contemporaries will be made to believe the same thing, allowing the con to go on for another generation and costing millions more people their freedom, their independence, their control over their lives, and their ability to give to the world what they are most suited to give.<br /><br />If Janie does not like what's set out before her and tries to find other alternatives, then she also "thinks she's better than everyone else." The project then is to destroy her life as well. As psychologizers claim that she's "disturbed," that's she's "damaged" or that she has "low self-esteem," others that she is evil, with the latter driving any potential partner that Janie may have to abuse her in the most hideous possible ways. If Johnny gets together with Janie, then he is supposedly a predator and an abuser, when in situations of real abuse - with partners who believed that Janie was evil and used that belief to engage in extreme physical, emotional and social violence while seeking to destroy everything that she was about, everything she created, everything she worked for, all of her thoughts and feelings and character, and everything that she sought to impart - these same people not only did nothing to help Janie but blamed her for her partner's behavior and claimed that she was getting what she deserved and did everything they could to keep Janie stuck in the true abuse situation and to continue to keep her there.<br /> <br />The self-esteem psychology does exactly this. It forces down the people's throats the concept of what to esteem themselves by, then pushes them to strive for health as a function of living according to that imposed and manipulated definition and achieving esteem according to it. As such, it is a con that eats lives. And nothing that would require such cons can dare to think to call itself sanity, or health, or ethics, or values, or reality.<br /><br />Learn to see through such cons. And then create a better way than one being forced into the heads of Johnnies and Janies of all ages around the world.<br /><br /><br />Why Winners Lost<br /><br />Another major racket that has come from psychology has been the misuse of Eric Berne's concept of winners-and-losers away from its original purpose and toward a complete perversion thereof. The original meaning of the concept is that some people, whose parents liked them, were imprinted to win, while those whose parents did not like them were imprinted by them to lose. That, however, is not nearly how the concept has been utilized.<br /><br />Winners became a club; a party line; a mentality that did not allow any level of dissent from itself. Anything different from the party line was made to become a loser (if he did not succeed), or, if he did, then a demon. This mentality then became a major source of control and abuse in America and ran millions of lives. Its extreme intolerance and aggressive bullying robbed America not only of intellectual and personal freedom but also of the contributions of anyone who had the sense to see through the party line or had ideas other than itself. It wanted not only to see everyone else lose, but to control everyone - for generations - while destroying, demonizing or denaturing anything not of itself.<br /><br />The lie at the core of this misuse was punctured convincingly in 2008 as the supposed winners' club lost big. And to these, the correct thing to say is: Good riddance, and how good it is that you have failed. Maybe after going through a fraction of what they inflicted upon the liberal constituencies in 1980s and 1990s these scoundrels will have some compassion and awareness. I would not hold my breath for that, but rather continue the victory against them and further discredit for sake of the living and the yet-to-live everything that they are about and everything that they believe.<br /><br />Another bad concept in psychology has been Alfred Adler's concept of adequacy. According to him, man's primary motivation is one of adequacy among "peers." In claiming this, Adler degraded humanity to the level of bonobos while doing away with everything that is human rather than bestial. No human being is an adequate physical match for a tiger. He uses better technology to outsmart the tiger and in so doing also advances the lot of mankind. To the Adlerian, that is pathological; which means that pathological to him is also all of man's innovation, science, technology, and everything creative, risk-taking, original and idealistic. <br /><br />The Adlerian would have all these things - and all sources of these things - destroyed, and humanity to return to the cave. Which means that he is pathologizing not only the science, political beliefs, and people's effort, that gave him the right and the tools to express his ideas, but also all that gave the world and its people their comforts, their longevity, their liberty and their prosperity and peace. And without the people whom the Adlerian pathologies, the Adlerians would be living in caves and hitting each other with rocks.<br /><br />Personality psychology, meanwhile, has been the modern equivalent of the Holocaust. Claiming to protect "normal people" from "sociopaths," was created an inquisition that paints evil everywhere and uses the claim to more and more tightly ensnare people in a noose. Sowing panic, dehumanizing ever greater chunks of the population, persecuting anyone not of the party line - all these are Nazi tactics. And the lie at the core of the concept - that ethics are inborn rather than chosen, and that some people are born without capacity for ethics - has lied to people who believe them in order to create a class of perpetual punching bags, while keeping others in self-perpetuating hysteria and control.<br /><br />It is time to see through such rackets and then create and follow truer psychology - one that sees human nature for what it is and gives it a path to impart of what it has to give to the world. <br /><br /><br />Good Ole Bastards<br /><br />A particularly pernicious perversion of psychology has been seen in the way it's been used by the goodoleboys. Claiming to represent society, they have went on to claim that anybody who has any disagreement with them is a sociopath and as such possesses the criminal personality. This is the same con as was practiced by Stalin, who claimed to speak for the people and branded anybody whom he did not like as the enemy of the people. And the result, at least the attempted result, has been a creation of de facto totalitarianism in places intended to be free, using the most corrupt and most deceptive of all possible methods.<br /><br />The false link is of course the false concept of what is sociopath. The psychological diagnosis of sociopathic character is not the dissenter from false and wrongful "norms" and beliefs and codes of behavior, but somebody who is essentially not human, cannot feel anything except anger, and lives by exploiting and feeding upon other people. This character would not above the chance rate be found among dissenters to a brutal, incestuous, deceptive and hypocritical order. It would be found much more among its most well-adjusted participants, especially ones who are dishonest enough to make such a false and misleading link.<br /><br />The people of intellectual honesty, insight and emotional sensitivity growing up in toxic, corrupt and deceitful societies such as American South face the hideous spectacle of being accused of the worst sins of their oppressors and being persecuted therefor. The society based on incest, brutality, spiritual and economic and political conmanship, denial of scientific truth, apocalyptic totalitarianism, coercion to false front of happiness disguising abysses of suffering and injustice, and fake decency manufactured to keep things from being revealed for their true character, must do away for its perpetuation with anyone who has the capacity to see it - whether the intellectual capacity to understand the dynamics with one's mind, or the capacity to feel them at the emotional level. Whether by demonizing such people, discrediting them, locking them up, or pumping them full of chemicals and spiritual poison, the lie can go on without credible witnesses. At which point it can then go on to assault the rest of the world by claiming ridiculously to speak for ethics, family, Christianity or true American values, and use the lie to bully the world into subservience to itself.<br /><br />It does not bother the goodoleboy in the slightest that America's true liberty and prosperity comes from its scientific and technological innovation that does not exist in the goodoleboy areas but rather in California, New York and Massachusetts - which cultures and institutions the goodoleboy consistently discredits, debases and demonizes and seeks to defund. It does not bother the goodoleboy in the slightest that his own lifestyle, which started as being parasitical off the slave labor, became parasitical off the rest of America. <br /><br />Parasitical through Texas Oil charlatans who have claimed for 30 years that there is no global warming, denied progress in abundant clean energy, and poisoned the future of their own children. <br /><br />Parasitical through conmen tele-evangelist and right-wing radio talk show hosts and writers, who have claimed for decades that hundreds of thousands of hard-working, brilliant people dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge have been lying to the public, while they, who have contributed nothing to this pursuit, were not lying to the public by making such claims. <br /><br />Parasitical through the government-funded beef industry, with taxpayer paying to make a high-energy high-waste high-health-hazard crop artificially cheap, making the nation sick, severely reducing the <br />productivity of American farming, and denying America huge revenues that could be realized by selling more efficient crops abroad - and huge international goodwill that could be realized by giving away more efficient crops in times of famine. <br /><br />Parasitical through goodoleboy-led international policy designed to maximize war and thus to power and credit militarism.<br /><br />The policies of the goodoleboy are legendary for their corruption. The worst of course has been the Bush administration. In 2000, Bush got his Republican nomination by spreading false rumors about John McCain. He then got put into power through corruption in Florida and lied to people consistently through his regime. And in 2008, the goodoleboys were seeking to hold on to power by calling voters and telling them more lies, such as that Barack Obama is a Marxist (which he is not) or that he is a terrorist (which he most certainly is not, but his attackers come quite close to being).<br /><br />There is in fact a direct reason for the corruption, abusiveness and barbarism of the goodoleboy areas of America. It is a function of its intellectual and emotional oppressiveness. All innovation - hence all prosperity, all improvement, all progress - is dependent upon free and creative thinking. Places that brainwash all minds into a lie cannot allow such things to exist or to take place, so they destroy people's capacity for the preceding since early childhood. Not only does freedom go - as well as insight, passion and honesty - but so does ability to create knowledge, prosperity and innovation. And then the place can only feed off the rest of the Western world. And it does.<br /><br />The goodoleboy is a true sociopath, who wheels-and-deals in corruption, deception and violence without conscience. Everything that anyone says, he finds ways to invert. So of course it was only a matter of time before the goodoleboys added this con to their already impressive sociopathic tradition. Tradition that includes such jewels as:<br />Silencing truth about global warming and then, as the crisis becomes more obvious, blaming it on "humanity" or on the end of the world;<br />Putting the government $10 trillion in debt, while running the government, and then blaming it <br />on "liberal government";<br />Claiming that they speak for "family values" as they aggressively persist in global warming and borrow-and-spend policies that ruin the world for their children and grandchildren;<br />Starting their rule by saying such things as "America, love it or leave it" and ending it by saying that Americans are sinners;<br />Starting with "money talks, bulls*it walks" and, as they get bested in money game by liberal states, Jews, Chinese, computer industry and some European countries, deciding that materialism is evil and turning toward skinhead or hateful pseudo-religious ideologies;<br />Persecuting Clinton, a legitimately elected president, for what is none of their business, while allowing a president into power through blatant corruption and supporting him through high-level criminal misdeeds.<br /><br />The person who dissents from the goodoleboy is not the sociopath. The goodoleboy is the very epitome of sociopathic thinking, lifestyle and behavior. And the more the people dissent from the goodoleboy, the greater the chances for true democracy and integrity in the United States. But even more importantly, the greater are the chances that the world, including the goodoleboys' own children, will survive well beyond the deaths of the goodoleboys themselves, instead of affectuating through the sociopathic goodoleboy economic-political-environmental policies - through their sociopathic blame-placing for the results of their policies on "humanity" - and their supremely psychopathic vision of violent destruction of the world in our lifetime - a very real, manmade, artificial armageddon before their own grandchildren have finished school.<br /><br /><br />Anti-Government Trojan Horse<br /><br />Another con has come in the name of liberty, but in fact has resulted in destruction of life and freedom to a far greater extent than it has in freeing anybody at all. Claiming oppression to come from the government, the anti-government movement went on to oppose and in many places to disempower government entities dedicated to protection of people's lives, rights and liberties, in the process allowing extreme corruption and extreme abuses to take place through the action of unofficial entities and societies.<br /><br />As unofficial, unchecked, unbalances and unaccountable organs of brutality and oppression grew up uder the banner of anti-government rhetoric, so did abuses committed by the same. This went on until these usurpatory entities became downright criminal and did not shy from any crime to keep control over those unfortunate enough to be under their sphere of domination. And that did not increase liberty any more than it increased honesty or improved people's character or give people greater control over their destinies. It resulted in extreme degradation of all of the preceding.<br /><br />The Western governments were entrusted with protection of life and liberty. The entities that came in to get government off people's backs, as had been their rhetoric, were not aiming to increase anyone's life and liberty. Their true purpose has been to remove government's oversight and protection of people's rights and liberties in order that they could dominate those over whose lives they had control, and not shy away from any crime in order to maintain their domination. As their power grew, outside the oversight by governments dedicated to protection of life and liberty, so did their abuses. In the name of community - in the name of family - in the name of tradition or God or freedom - was created an unofficial creeping totalitarianism in the countries whose founding intent had been liberty and human <br />rights. And as such entities became more emboldened in their abuses by communitarianism, libertarianism and "family values," so have come under immediate threat from them not only freedom, not only transparency, not only human rights, but democracy and rule of law itself.<br /><br />There is no sense in doing away with official tyranny if the result is tyranny unofficial maintained by brutality, deception and corruption in politics and in law. The unchecked, unbalanced, unaccountable unofficial organs of oppression are not only a degradation upon civil government in the Western civilization; they are also the entities that commit far greater abuses and make these abuses the way of life. The sanctity of family and community results in this only: Horrendous brutality, disgusting crimes against wives and children, corruption and conmanship at all levels not only not being cared about or rightfully investigated, but being made the status quo. And as these corrupt practices are perpetuated from generation to generation, it is not only the wives and the children that suffer. What suffers the worst is the character of the people and the character of the nation. With those who know what is happening being silenced in name of community or family or sanity or not being seen as a loser or a victim, what suffers is honesty and integrity. With those who have the capacity to assist told not to pay attention or not to bother with negativity or to work on themselves or to focus on spiritual development or that caring about such things is bad karma or reflection of wrong in oneself or mental illness, what suffers is openness and knowledge and understanding of the reality of people's lives, as well as the lives of those who are denied such help. And as the corrupt entities and societies grow stronger in their abuses through act of such attention being denied, what suffers is democracy and rule of law.<br /><br />As these usurpatory entities, claiming for themselves the voice of family or community - claiming to represent such things without people having given them such a right, and while viciously running roughshod or demonizing or destroying the people who have other ideas - continue to stomp over everyone in families and communities, and use these claims to maintain ever-greater stranglehold over people in Western countries, while not shying away even from murder to maintain their illegal dominion, what is destroyed and diminished is not only the life and liberty of people in these families and communities, but also the rule of law and democracy itself. And as such abuses spring up in the name of family and community and tradition and God, it becomes incumbent on people of principle who hold life and liberty dear to not only reveal the reality of the lives of those at the receiving end of such unofficial tyranny, but subject the same to the level of oversight that is applied to official organs of power. An unofficial entity, as we see again and again, can, and will, and does, violate people's lives, liberties and rights to an extent comparable to and frequently greater than the official, accountable, checked and balanced institutions of civil government. And that does not increase people's liberty any more than it improves their character. It results in severe degeneration of both of the preceding.<br /><br /><br />Communitarian Usurpation<br /><br />The business entities, from single proprietorships to giant corporations, are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of competition from other companies, as well as through scrutiny by media and law. The government entities are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of electoral system sustained by active and involved media and electorate. A corrupt corporation like Enron or WorldCom, like the corrupt officials in the government, are exposed and either lose their market, their status as legal entities, their electoral base, or their official position. But communal organs of power have no checks upon them and therefore have the potential to get away with far greater abuses than either of the preceding.<br /><br />Communitarianism - the belief that community is more important than individual and deserves to have power in itself - may sound appealing until one runs into reality of what communitarianism means. Community organizations such as tribal separatists, the KKK, militias, gangs, mafias, Muslim terrorists, old-boy networks, and religious cults, are the real-world manifestation of communitarianism - and none of them are benign. In all cases these are entities that arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of others and commit horrible violations of human rights, both within the community and without. These entities are not accountable to the consumer through the market, and they are not accountable to the voter through the elections. And that means, they become tyrannical, seeing it their right to control everyone in the community and to commit horrible violations to that effect.<br /><br />When communitarianism began developing, I foresaw the creation of effective totalitarianism. I recognized that the unofficial local organs of power are capable of at least as great abuses as are the official ones, and lacking the constitutional principles and accountability to the public that keep the official government from becoming despotic, they could, and would, perform greater abuses than the official democratic governments can under Constitutional law. And I recognized that those communities and organizations, lacking either the human rights and civil rights principles that these governments or the mechanisms of check and balance upon them, could, and would, do graver damage to people's life, liberty and existence than the governments that they were seeking to supplant.<br /><br />I foresaw this in America; and now I am finding it in Australia. A rural small town in the Australian state of Victoria, that prides itself on being a model community, shows exactly what the term means. My wife’s older friend, a lady who has achieved great professional success and raised a family of highly effective people, married a self-made millionaire from this community. When her husband had a stroke, his family, that wielded significant influence in the town, repeatedly claimed that she was not competent to take care of him even though she was a registered nurse. Unable to take custody over him, they poisoned the entire town against her, until she had to beg even cabs to come to her home in order that she could go shopping. They finally had their way when she had to go to a hospital for an operation, and her husband was placed in the town nursing home for a week. He entered the nursing home alive; he came out in a vase. During that week, he was not properly fed or given medicine, and nurses gave conflicting accounts of his death. When the daughter of my wife’s friend asked for an autopsy, his body was cremated before it could be performed.<br /><br />On the Internet, communities become so arrogant that they decide it’s rightful to commit real crimes. Forgery, harassment, slander and defamation are common; as are such actions as mailing someone a piece of manure; pursuing someone to career networks in order to damage their job prospects and reputation; sending viruses to people’s workplaces, web pages and home computers; and making credible threats of death. The community mindset takes over and deems itself more powerful than the law. And anything that is seen as threat by the communal mindset, is deemed to be exterminated by any means possible. This means illegal action and violation of human rights. And while the potential for abuses of power in government and business are checked by media, consumer, voter and other branches and levels of government, the abuse of power in communities - unofficial organs of power - goes on unchecked.<br /><br />In America, my friend C. had an aunt that went into a nursing home in New Hampshire. She was administered wrong medication that destroyed her health, after which she had a hole ripped in her back with a bedpan. When the nursing home found out that C., who has an M.D., was on the way, the nursing home murdered her aunt. Her body was still warm when C. showed up. Tests showed a six times the lethal dose of morphine in her body. C. has the photographs and the medical chart readings of the matter. But when she tried to go to court to get justice for what took place, her lawyer betrayed her. He was found out to be a part of the town‘s old-boy network. He since then continued to lobby other lawyers that C. tried to hire, who all betrayed her as a result. The employee who told C. what had happened was fired, and when C. had tried to call her last summer she was told that she'd had a nearly-fatal accident at her next workplace. That's the reality of old-boy networks; the reality of communitarianism.<br /><br />The same reality can be seen, to even greater wrongs, in the parts of the world where communitarianism has had a longer run of power. In Indian rural communities, the goal is to beat a young bride into submission, and it is a common practice to murder brides who are not completely obedient to the will of the family to whom she's been given. In rural Ethiopian communities, the most common way to get a bride is by raping a teenage girl - and as the family rejects her since they can no longer give her in marriage, and the rest of community rejects her since she is no longer a virgin, the only place she can go to is to the rapist. In both cases, the national law and the human rights law does not reach these communities; and the horrendous wrong goes unchecked by media, politics and law. <br /><br />It is likewise the communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan that hide the terrorists, using community codes and loyalties to protect people whose goal is to murder and fear-monger their way into unearned power. It is communities and families that are the root of the Mafia, and the community organization that is the Mafia wields power given to it by the families and the communities to terrorize and enslave the families and communities for which it claims to work. The community-based KKK and inner city gangs; the Southern old boy networks and fraternities; the survivalist militias; all commit horrible crimes under the name of community. <br /><br />And for as long as this is the ideology, they continue to get away with it. The co-founder of pioneering software giant Cisco, Sandy Lerner, found out the reality of communitarianism when she moved to rural Virginia and attempted to open a diner. "The problem with small towns," she said, "is that the mind takes the size of the town." She is a self-made multimillionaire with power and experience. Imagine what someone who's not a multi-millionaire, who's less experienced, and who is in a less powerful condition, will discover if she were to move to such a place.<br /><br />It is communities in America that create the phenomenon known in psychology as conspiracy of silence against the victims of sexual abuse. In order to keep up the lie that the community represents tradition, family and happiness, those on whose backs this pretence falls are silenced, slandered, demonized, broken and destroyed. The police does not do its job; it is co-opted by the community to perpetuate the deception. Mental health and social services do the same. And then the community built on brutality, incest, deception, and corruption goes on claiming that it is moral and the rest of the world is not moral and has its representatives usurp the values platform to bludgeon the civilized world into perpetuation of the community's barbaric, deceptive, corrupt, poisonous ways.<br /><br />In business, false advertising - presenting a product as something other than what it is, or failing to inform the customer about problems with it - is a crime that is punishable by law. But communities continually advertise falsely, claiming to have a wholesome way of life while in fact being places of extreme corruption and abuse. And at issue here is not simply a product; at issue here is people’s lives. How many are lost to false advertising by corrupt and brutal communities? How many find their lives taken by smilie-faced lie disguising a snakepit of brutality and corruption? How many cannot find their way out because the community is more powerful than the law, claims itself as the law, and is made that way by communitarian attitudes and beliefs?<br /><br />The women who fall for the siren song of country community find themselves stuck in a horrible situation from which they either get out with greatest difficulty or not at all. Far from idyllic existence, they become the town's and the family's acquisition, scapegoat, whipping girl, object of control. Like the brides in rural India, these women experience extreme physical and psychological violence from the families into which they have married, whose goal is to make her their own in every way possible and to never relent until she submits completely - after which, if she does, violence still goes on because violence in the country is way of life. <br /><br />The police and the court system refuses to acknowledge abuse but instead seeks to silence its witnesses in order that the community's big lie and selling line do not get punctured by fact of what goes on in the community behind closed doors. And if the woman attempts to flee, the community seeks to break her down entirely and to use all its representatives to completely destroy her as well as her children.<br /><br />This is what happens when unofficial entities hold greater power than official entities, and corruption, venality, deceit, and brutality perpetrated by communities is not subjected to openness, scrutiny, accountability, check and balance.<br /><br />Without such check and balance, the communities arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of people. I have heard from many people in Midwest that they kill people like me. Which means not only that they have adopted murder as way of life and must have killed many along the way, but further that they believe they have right to kill people by virtue of how they think. Which means that they create an effective totalitarianism and do not shy away even from murder to keep it going. And communitarianism, by sanctioning such a thing, is in effect sanctioning corruption, murder, and indeed every other crime, by way of creating de facto totalitarianism.<br /><br />This is not coincidental; this is inevitable. An official organ of power is subject to its official precepts; but a community is an unofficial organ of power and is therefore not subject to any laws. As such it becomes lawless - indeed it becomes a law unto itself. A law that is unwritten; that is not subject to checks and balances; and that therefore becomes despotic. A law that claims for itself all the psychological weaponry that comes with being associated in public mind with family and morality, and in so doing can silence any criticism on moral grounds and get away with extreme abuse against the ever-diminished individual and ever-more-discredited official power organs. And people, rather than seeing a freedom from oppression they have mistakenly identified to be based in “statism,” are bound much deeper, much harder, and much more completely by an entity that is far inferior to capitalism, and far inferior to liberal democracy, in ethics, legality, principle, vision, character or human rights.<br /><br />Another problem, and one that Sally Lerner has discovered, is one known in psychology as groupthink. Even when not deliberately intending wrong, people in closed systems prevail on each other to think the same way and control their thinking until it accords with the rest of the group. This problem has been responsible for Challenger disaster, when everyone knew of the problem but none had the courage to talk about it; and when even the people as smart as those at NASA are subject to this, then so is clearly any other closed system in the world. Besides the result seen in Challenger - the result of leading people to overlook crucial information, silence real perspectives, deny legitimate understanding, and thus make horrible and uninformed decisions - groupthink leads to this: Absolute similitude of mind that does not tolerate anything that differs from whatever lie it becomes. Which leads to extinction of freedom of thought, subversion of democratic process and due process, failure to honestly address and resolve endemic problems, and conspiracy of silence on matters that violate the community's pretence before the world. But even worse that that it leads to this: The collective hubris of the community that would judge it acceptable to murder people and to destroy people's lives in the name of the community - to create corrupt, venal, oppressive and murderous cancers upon the face of the Western Civilization - and, as if that was not enough, go on and aggressively claim on political scene to speak for values, tradition, and family, while in fact representing murder, oppression, corruption and deceit.<br /><br />As if that weren't enough, there is something here that is yet more sinister and far-reaching, and that bodes horribly for the future of democracy. And it is this: The moral and psychological power given to unofficial entities as vehicle for power-tripping as the supposed spokesperson therefor. As Stalin claimed to speak for the people and claimed that his enemies were the enemy of the people - and as the aggressive feminists claim that they speak for women and that their enemies are enemies of women - likewise those who claim to speak for communities portray their enemies as enemy of community and wield the power of the community to kill them or force them to submit. To speak for an unofficial authority is a power gambit that does not possess check and balance and therefore has the complete capacity for becoming tyrannical. There is no official code for a community, a society, a gender, a family, a tradition. Thus the people who claim to speak for these entities have nothing to check their words and actions against and can get away with any deception, any usurpation, any cruelty, any injury, any violence, any vileness, any violation, under the sun. All this of course has taken place at communitarian entities the world over and can only take place given the mechanism that underlies communitarianism.<br /><br />That an entity is unofficial, does not make it not real. Instead the power that it wields is unaccountable, unbalanced and unchecked. As such it becomes insidious as well as tyrannical; and far from fostering good character as many communitarian types would claim, instead fosters the character of treachery, deception, venality, subterfuge and corruption. Which undermines and degrades the character of the people instead of improving it, and also undermines and degrades the character of the countries in which they live.<br /><br />Communitarianism has been wrong from its inception. An unofficial organ of power, without constitution or checks and balances or accountability, can, and will, abuse power to a far greater extent than an official one that is by law forced to operate within official constraints or one that is accountable to the market or the law. If the communities are to be made organs of power, then it must be a power that is official, accountable, checked and balanced, and placed under the rule of law. Their rules and their ways must be codified and advertised precisely as they are, and then checked from both government entities from the outside and individuals from within in situations where either the rules or their enforcement violates human rights. Otherwise the result is absolute and unchecked criminality of whoever claims to speak for community; effective destruction of liberty and civil and human rights; effective destruction of honesty and transparency in the civilization; false advertising leading to lifelong ensnarement; degradation of character of the population toward venality and corruption; and mafia values, mafia tactics, mafia character, and creeping totalitarianism everywhere that such an ill-conceived ideology is given green light.<br /><br /><br />The Bullet Belt<br /><br />The society of American Midwest and South has been widely described as venal and hypocritical. I am here to show the mechanism by which this outcome is an inevitable consequence of the beliefs held by these societies.<br /><br />The belief that a person has to be happy in order to be a legitimate human being leads people to hide the pain and injustice in their lives. The people are of the conviction that if they are to let on that anything's wrong they would be considered invalid human beings; but far more fundamentally and far more sinisterly, they will be regarded as traitors. Traitors, that is, to the pretense from which the society at hand derives its claims of moral legitimacy - the pretense that people in it are happy; that all things are right and just; and that it is the Christian paradise on earth.<br /><br />What is the outcome? The people pretend to be happy while in their lives harboring all kinds of darkness, pain and wrong. This leads to an extreme emotional insincerity: A cultivation of smilie-faced pretense over abyss of massive misery and injustice. Insincerity becomes a way of life; indeed it becomes a survival tactic. I pose this question: What is it that a society of emotional insincerity cannot possibly handle? The answer is this: EMOTIONAL SINCERITY. Which, by being what it is, provides a frame for the hypocrisy and injustice and dishonesty of the arrangement - and that therefore must be stomped out at all costs.<br /><br />This leads of course to ongoing witch hunts and prosecutions. I have been told repeatedly by people from such societies that they kill people like me; and my question is as follows: How many have you murdered? Beyond that still: How many have you destroyed? How many are languishing in jails or mental hospitals for false and trumped-up accusations? How many were led to believe themselves evil and then picked for the role of scapegoating? How many emotionally sincere women are in horrible domestic situations - how many emotionally sincere men are in prisons - how many, at the long last, have you destroyed, in order to keep alive the lie of your society's honesty, righteousness, and happiness?<br /><br />From this then comes these societies' hatred of the artistic and the intellectual - which in effect are nothing more than hatred of sincerity. The artist requires emotional honesty for his work to proceed; therefore he (or she) becomes prime target of hatred. When insincerity becomes the law, sincerity is criminalized. In women's case, this results typically in horrendous relationship situations, sustained by community pressure and its choice to blame everything on the woman in question and put her through unbelievable cruelty and injustice. In men's case, this results typically in trumped-up criminal charges, character destruction, community ostracism, or - as I was told repeatedly - murder.<br /><br />These things are all of course connected; in fact they are causally linked. A pretense of happiness leads unavoidably to a society of insincerity; a society of insincerity unavoidably demands destruction of all that can possibly be sincere. The anti-artistic and anti-intellectual sentiment in such societies is a function therefore of such dynamics; and not only hypocrisy, but brutality, injustice, and tremendous emotional violence are an inevitable result.<br /> False Advertising and the Culture of Insincerity<br /><br />The racket in many situations either stems from or is perpetuated through this: False advertising in relationships and the culture of insincerity that results.<br /><br />The racket initiator presents a genial front and acts nice to everyone. Then when he has found the woman, and she is his, he turns into a monster. The people cannot believe that he does the things that he does, because according to the impression he gives to them he is a nice person. And the person against whom the perpetrator commits his abominations is blamed for all things that result, and is attacked even further if she tries to leave the perpetrator.<br /><br />In business, advertising as one thing while having a completely different product is known as false advertisement. It is a crime, and one that is severely punished. But in relationships there is no clause about false advertising. Instead, the person at the receiving end of the abominations is blamed for all things, and is blamed even further if she tries to go on her own.<br /><br />This of course results in tremendous ongoing hypocrisy and insincerity. And it is a hypocrisy and insincerity that requires for its perpetuation a destruction of sincerity wherever it can be found. Thus, the sincere woman is entrapped; the sincere man is seen as being fundamentally criminal. And it is through this attack on sincerity that the culture of false advertising and insincerity goes on.<br /><br />Insincerity, for its continuation, requires further destruction of sincerity wherever it can be found. Thus, any true feeling, any true idea, any true life, comes under vicious attack. And the result is a putrid swamp of falsehood and viciousness and hypocrisy that ensnares all the living. And then this swamp claims for itself the sanction of religion or of morality.<br /><br />For this abomination to end, it becomes requisite to see all false advertising for what it is, and to instead demand truthful portrayal of self, of feeling, and of attitude. And then one more obstacle to sincerity, passion and excellence will be removed, and it will be more possible for more people to live honestly and to live truly.<br /><br /><br />Real Men Don't Need Male Chauvenism<br /><br />One of the world's worst, longest-running and most entrenched rackets is known as misogyny or male chauvenism. What it is truly, is a particularly prevalent and pernicious example of what Eric Berne has described as "racket anger." A man goes into the marriage expecting the woman to do something bad; so he tears her down, controls her every move, and aggressively destroys everything in her that is not his, until she either does something desperate - in which case he claims that he was right from the beginning and that women are evil and should be abused and controlled - or she accepts the abuse lying down and, believing it to be the natural lot of women (and not tolerating any woman having what she does not have), inflicts the same on other women and supports policies dedicated to the same.<br /><br />At the core of this racket is the Greco-Judaic claim that woman is the root of all evil - in Pandora and Helen myths of Greece and in the Eve myth of the Bible. And yet history shows repeatedly that by far the greatest abuses have been done, and continue to be done, by men - mostly in the name of Christianity, Islam, civilization, tradition, family - all the same things to which the men perpetuating this racket are pledging allegiance. So how can these evildoers be claiming that women are at the root of evil, when any examination of history (as well as of these people's policies, attitudes and behavior) show indubitably that they and what they claim sacrosanct is at the root of most evil in the world?<br /><br />To believe someone a bad person and stay with her, is a racket. At least the women who leave their partners if they see them to be bad people are doing the honest thing. But if a man thinks a woman to be bad but remains in the relationship and keeps her from leaving, he is running a con. There is no excuse for such conduct. You with a bad person? Leave them. It is as simple as that.<br /><br />But no. They do not want to leave. They want to enjoy everything that the woman does for them without reciprocating, without respecting and without loving in return. They want the woman to be chained to them by a dog chain and to treat her and beat her like a dog. They get a lot out of being with the woman. But they are not willing to value her and treat her accordingly. Which means that these men are guilty not only of brutality and degradation, but of effective theft and dishonesty at the deepest levels. As part of this racket, the women get blamed for the violence done against them. And that is the ridiculous place to which this racket has lead humanity. The bigger, stronger party, in most cases the dominant party in the relationship, is absolved of responsibility for his actions, while the smaller, in most cases the submissive, party, is made to be responsible for his deeds. At societal level, this creates irresponsible men and neurotic women. And that, is a terrible place to take mankind as well as a terrible character to inflict upon it.<br /><br />These people then go on claiming that they speak for the family, for tradition, for fathers, for God even. They have no right to any of these claims. They are running a racket that has caused countless suffering and wasted potential and resulted in degradation of everyone's character, misappropriation of cause and effect, blame of the innocent, exoneration of the guilty, and a climate of suffocating dishonesty, brutality and hypocrisy that cannot tolerate any amount of insight, beauty and truth.<br /><br />It is time to create better, more honest, more loving, more intelligent and more principled thing to call family and fatherhood. And with this to get away from these ugly rackets and give one’s children a better life than what they would be subjected to if they are at the mercy thereof.<br /><br /><br />Misdirections of Feminism <br /><br />Both feminism and the reaction against feminism have begotten a large number of rackets as well. Of the more recent feminist stances, three were particularly destructive. These are: Gender feminism which wants to do away with everything feminine; anti-beauty movement that seeks to do away with physical beauty; and anti-sex and anti-love strains of feminism. As for the reaction against feminism, from the Sharia thugs to the so-called Fathers' Movement, the worst ones are ones that have taken the racket of mysogyny and subjugation of women into the new era.<br /><br />There have throughout history been many forms of feminism, and some have been better than others. I speak of a form that has been most loud and most destructive, having faith that people can recognize that there are better directions that women's rights can and should take. Gender feminism - the ideology that claims that all differences between men and women are culturally determined, and that there is nothing inherently different between women and men - is fundamentally misogynistic and totalitarian at the same time. First it attacks the woman's right to all the qualities that are natural to women more than they are to men - to female physicality and all that comes with it, which gender feminists claim to be a <br />cultural construct but which biology, anatomy, anthropology, social history and experience of anyone who's been a parent knows to have a natural component, and which natural component has expressed in it many beautiful, positive, profound and life-nurturing qualities that are not found - or not as easily found - in males. Then, having taken away from the woman the right to her physical nature, it goes straight for her individuality, using its claim of having liberated women from patriarchy to dictate what women can feel, what they can think, how they can behave, how they can look, and what kind of lives and relationships they are allowed to have. <br /><br />In the first step, such feminism disempowers women by denying them the right to their physical nature as women and to all the valuable, strengthening and positive qualities that come with this nature. In the second step, it disempowers them still further by denying them the right to their human nature - the nature as beings of volitional consciousness, capable of meaningful individuality, meaningful selfhood and meaningful choice over their lives. To such feminists, not only is expressed femininity loathsome but so is expressed individuality, both of which pose a threat - the first by threatening their central ideological claim; the second by threatening their claim that they represent the best interests of all women. And it is women at the receiving end of such ideologies who have been most injured by their self-proclaimed leaders - the self-proclaimed leaders who aim to take away from those they claim to be serving, but in fact are more interested in controlling, both the right to their physical nature as women and the right to their general human nature as beings of choice. <br /><br />That many aspects of "traditional" women's roles are wrongful, oppressive, insulting and inapplicable for many women, is undeniable. But to claim that there is nothing inherently different between women and men, is absurd. And while there are naturally tomboyish females and naturally effeminate males, the ideal of unisex is one that makes people into robots rather than into free women or free men. To abuse in the name of women's empowerment both the women who seek to express the feminine nature and the women who seek to practice meaningful individuality - in the process destroying beauty, culture, romance, passion, and freedom, without creating anything better - is something that would be expected from Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. And while this type of feminism has been branded by those on the Right as "feminazism," a more truthful name would be femi-Maoism; which, like Maoism, is misconceived and results according to its own nature in great wrongs. <br /><br />Not only do women deserve better representation, but so does America; and that means moving American feminism away from this direction and toward directions that are more democratic, more life-affirming, more based in human reality, and thus more capable of affectuating real improvement in women's lives. Feminism would do a far better service to women by working with instead of against the letter and spirit of American constitution and acknowledging, supporting and protecting, at every <br />meaningful level and to the same extent as for men, the women's constitutional rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The first clause (life) means being able to be themselves - both in their physical nature as women and in their human nature as beings of volitional consciousness with ability to choose who to be and how to live. The second of this (liberty) means freedom to express both natures without violence or discrimination, and with meaningful protection against the same. And the third (pursuit of happiness) means being able to strive for happiness and fulfilment - as a woman, as a person, as her individual self - likewise without violence or discrimination, either from men or from other women. This should fulfil all the rightful demands of feminism - the right for women to have equal rights and freedoms with men; the right for women to be in control of their minds, their lives and their bodies; the right for women to shape their own destiny; the right for women to have protection against all who would mistreat them - while doing away with the wrongs that have come with feminism as it has been practiced in recent years. At which point feminism will move away from a negative misdirection and become again a movement consistent in every way with America's founding principles. And then it could rightfully claim a place that it has had in the past - the place as part of the true progressive agenda of constitutional democracy and human rights.<br /><br />The claim by the anti-beauty ones among feminists is that beauty is relative. And yet their own behavior belies their claims. If beauty is truly relative, then they would be attacking all women, not only pretty ones. That they attack beautiful women instead of all women, shows that they have no integrity in their claims. And while it is valid to reject exploitative media standards, it is in no way valid to abuse beauty itself.<br /><br />Another has been the anti-sex strand: the strand that claims that sex is degrading and that women are being seen as "sex objects." Taking the Catholic equation of sex with sin and secularizing it into equation of sex with degradation, the women responsible for this intellectual abomination have basically sold out a movement designed to free women into a movement designed to subjugate them in prudery and repression. And of course its biggest victims have been women who are beautiful, artistic and happy inside their bodies, as the feminist-influenced women abused them - and men, seeing the abuse and believing it, followed in the same vein with character assassination and brutality.<br /><br />As for the "sex object" concept, that meme deserves to be taken out and shot. Sex is a shared act, in which each party is both the subject (the doer) and the object (the done to). If someone does not want the object role, then the person wants to be only the subject without also being the object; which means that the person is only happy with sex if she is raping the man. And while this may sound ridiculous, more ridiculous still is the belief behind the sex-object concept: That sex is something that benefits man at the expense of the woman, and that the woman cannot herself be allowed to be sexual.<br /><br />If these feminists find that having a body is degrading, the question to ask is, “Would you be happier without one?” When asked of spiritually inclined people, many do in fact say just that: They would be happiest as spirits in heaven. But feminism does not conceive of a place such as heaven, and their anti-body doctrine is parasitical. The women do not benefit from such “feminism”; they benefit from those people, women especially, who have learned to affirm life in its physical as well as spiritual aspects and can teach women how to make the most of life as pertaining thereto.<br /><br />As for sexual harassment, it has been nothing but an excuse by the most malicious of women (and apparently even men) to get co-workers fired without legitimate cause. The failure to properly investigate such claims led to a culture of career destruction without due process. With the more legitimate cause that is prosecution of rape, there has been and still is a very intractable problem: The courts tend to believe the kind of women who are not likely to be raped, but not the women who are likely to be real victims. The women at risk - women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, women who take risks, women who are socially disenfranchised or seen as “disturbed“ - are not believed in the legal system. The women who are believed - ones who live protected lifestyles - are much less likely to be raped by strangers. Many of them are likely to be raped by relatives - and these are protected by family loyalty and reputation from having the rape revealed or prosecuted in court of law. Which makes prosecution of rape a very difficult and thorny enterprise, one that is fraught with potential both for not convicting the real wrongdoers and for wrongly convicting innocent men.<br /><br />The feminism took a poisonous direction in 1990s: The direction of poisoning every woman with panic, while doing nothing to confront the far more real and ongoing wrongs to which women are subject. The worse problem confronting women is, and has always been, domestic violence. But this issue was ignored, and in many cases the women going through it have been blamed for it, while feminism hyperfocused on minor issues and wrong issues. And that destroyed its credibility, as much as it gave fuel to those men who want to see women as evil and impose upon them horrendous social orders. <br /><br /><br />Masculist Barbarism<br /><br />From all this, men's groups may believe that I would support their agenda. Nothing is further from the truth.<br /><br />Men's groups want this: A restoration of patriarchy, with women losing their rights and being treated as second-rate citizens. This is not an improvement upon feminism, it is a degradation. Their claims are that patriarchy is at the core of civilization, that it is the best mechanism for creating prosperity in the history of mankind, and that women are evil. All of these claims are demonstrably false. <br /><br />The Western Civilization became the Western Civilization, largely through the efforts of several great women. One was Queen Medici, who was the political leader of the Italian Renaissance - a period that not only produced the Western world's greatest art, but also science and prosperity that was unheard of in the patriarchal Middle Ages, and that made Italy the beautiful place and the world cultural center that it has since then become. Another, even more important, figure was Queen Elizabeth I. Most of what is now known as Western Civilization started with Queen Elizabeth, who turned England from a feudal backwater into one of the greatest global civilizations the world has ever known - the civilization that not only became the commercial and political center of the world but also planted the seeds of America and Australia, and incorporated into itself the much more populous (and much more patriarchial) India, Africa, and later China and Middle East. <br /><br />Another woman who had great influence was Queen Victoria, who presided over the era that is idolized by these same men. Victorianism was the age of giant hypocrisy, and Queen Victoria led by example. As a single woman, and a monarch, she lived the feminist dream; yet she herself was militantly against feminism. The lifestyle that she wanted other women to lead, she neither led herself nor knew anything about. And as the social conservatives of all kinds keep hearkening back to Victorianism, it is quite demonstrable of their character that they be idealizing an age of such hypocrisy; but what is even more significant is that they are hearkening to an age that was led by a hypocrite who was a woman.<br /><br />As for patriarchy supposedly being the engine of prosperity, their claims are just as ridiculous. The most aggressively patriarchal societies in the world are in Africa and Middle East, and are also the world's most poor. And in the Western Civilization, the same is true as well in both historical and contemporary terms. The Western Europe's wealthiest countries - Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden - all have healthy representation of women in power and a culture respecting women, with Ireland also having a woman president. Its poorest - Portugal and Greece - are its most aggressively patriarchal.<br /><br />The same is of course true in America as well. Its two most mysogynistic populations - "white trash" and "ghetto blacks" - are also its poorest. As for the populations that have the most wealth - the so-called "elites," in particularly the Bay Area, Manhattan, DC, Boston, and the two most prosperous states (Connecticut and Delaware) - these are all solidly Democratic and are well advanced in women's standing. With their two bases of contention being demonstrably false, why would anyone believe what men's groups have to say?<br /><br />Another claim by these groups is that women are immoral or evil. I ask this: Did women start the Second World War? Did women poison the planet, kill hundreds of millions of people during Islamic expansionism, Africa slave trade and colonization of Latin America, aggressively deny global warming, create traffic in child sex slaves, impose Taliban in Afghanistan, put the government $10 trillion in debt under patriarchial Republican administrations? So how can these men be referring to women as being immoral, when not only is it men who have caused these true atrocities, but it is the same kind of men who have caused these atrocities that are now claiming to be speaking for men and bullying other men into being part of their psychotic barbaric movement?<br /><br />As for the “fathers' ” movement, of all entities I have ever examined it is the closest to Nazism that I've ever seen. Not only does it get its intellectual grounding - a fraudulent concept known as Parental Alienation Syndrome - from a pro-pedophilic conman named Richard Gardner with ties to the Nazi doctor Alfred Kinsey's institute in Indiana; but it has consistently used tactics and rhetoric very similar to those of the Nazis. <br /><br />The Black Shirts, who have been harassing, hounding and assaulting women who've left wife-beaters, are a split image of Nazi hooligan group known as the Brown Shirts, who did much the same thing. Their ridiculous and contrived claims that 90% of mothers are abusive, that child sexual abuse is something that is invented by deranged mothers, and that there is a feminist "terror" or "genocide" being perpetrated against men, is split image of Nazi claims that a Jewish terror was being committed against Germany, that Jews wanted to destroy Germany, and that the Aryan race was being threatened by women's rights, unions, social democrats and non-Aryan influences. <br /><br />And of course their claims of protecting "family" and tradition are precisely the claims made by Adolf Hitler in his campaign against the same kind of people that the fathers' lobby would like to see exterminated - feminists, homosexuals, Jews, social democrats, working women, single mothers, and everybody else who has different ideas than do they. And this time, I am not waiting for gas chambers. I am taking this fight on behalf of everybody who has a stake in a future free of tyranny official or unofficial - a future free of lies and corruption - a future in which their daughters have a chance.<br /><br />I am a man, a husband, and a father, and I say outright to these people, You do not speak for me, I did not give you permission to speak for me, nor do I want your services. And yes, I am a devoted family man. As such, I care about my wife's rights and my daughter's future. And I refuse to let the scum of the earth such as ones who run these movements to define the world that my daughter will be facing when she grows up.<br /><br />What kind of man would deprive his daughters of life and liberty in order that he have advantage over his wife? What kind of man would damn 50% of the human species to a subhuman existence? What kind of man would use rackets to hide the facts of their treatment of wives and children and inflict the corruption of these rackets upon his country? I'll tell you what kind of man: An abuser, a conman, a tyrant and a selfish short-sighted scoundrel. And it is time that all men of goodwill say to these creeps the same thing that women should say to the femi-Maoists: YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR US.<br /><br /><br />Economics of Abuse<br /><br />Economic thought is of enormous use in psychology. An economist knows when someone is being unfairly compensated, falsely advertised to, stolen from, or slandered and injured in order to keep them in a raw deal. And what we see in abusive relationships is one or all of these things. <br /><br />There are people who come on being nice when wooing, then turn into monsters when the person that they've wooed is theirs. In business, that's known as false advertising, and the same concept can rightfully be applied to relationships, where what's at stake is not a mere product but people's lives. If someone does that to you, they've deceived you, and you have every right for returning the product or leaving the relationship. You have been given a false demo. You've been deceived. Trying to make things "work out" only empowers the deception and makes more people believe that deception is the way to go. The only way to ethical outcome is to see the deception, know everything based on deception to be based on false premises and hence made corrupt, and leave on the grounds of having been given false advertising. <br /><br />There are people who want to make the partner believe themselves worthless, damaged, evil or insane. The correct response to such people is: "If I'm this way, then why do you want to be with me? What's wrong with you? Can't you find yourself someone whom you can respect, or did you want me so that you can treat me like rubbish? And what does that say about you?" Basically, if the person sees you that way, then for them to stay with you is an act of dishonesty. There is no reason why any sane person would be with someone he or she sees in that manner; and their act of remaining with that person shows the things they say for the lie that they are. <br /><br />The people who do the latter commit, basically, a theft. They fail to value what they want, fail to reward it, and want to feed on it without adequately compensating it for the utility that they get. So then they want the partner (and frequently others) to think that her value is low or negative, when their choice of staying with the person shows that they get utility from being with her that they would not get from being with somebody else. Which means that they are committing a theft, and that their actions are corrupt in entirety. Which busts whatever pretensions toward sanity or morality that they may assert. <br /><br />The greater the amount of bludgeoning the person into believing her as having negative value, the more apparent the injustice intended or committed against her. We see this on social level all the time. A valuable worker can only be made to work without adequate compensation if they or the market believe they are unworthy, or if they are threatened or menaced or undermined in one or another way. If the person were truly worthless, then the partner would not be with her. And if he is with her and wants her to think she is worthless, then his behavior of staying with her is a refutation of his claims. <br /><br />Psychological violence is preparation for injustice and way by which it is maintained. Not only is it violation in its own right - sometimes extreme violation; but much more apparently, it is a way to reduce in the person's mind (and that of others) the value of themselves, in order that they could acquiesce to an arrangement where they are given a raw deal. This is true especially in these cases: When someone is with someone who is not willing to treat them according to their merits; when someone is being treated like rubbish, whatever their actual worth; when someone is being bludgeoned - physically, morally, or legally - into a situation where they are treated for less than their merits; or when someone is being brainwashed into staying in cultures or situations where they are unappreciated. <br /><br />So if you find yourself being subject by your partner, or family, or community, or organization, to hounding, battery, character assassination and slander, you know that an injustice is being done to you. Not only are those things in themselves are injustice, but they are artificial ways to maintain injustice by twisting your view of self and others' view of you to be artificially negative. These things, when found in a relationship or in a culture, are certain evidence of a personal or a systemic injustice. The more these things are found, the greater the evidence of the injustice that they are used to maintain. <br /><br /><br />Misreadings of Beauty<br /><br />Feminist writer named Naomi Wolf wrote a book titled The Beauty Myth, which claimed that fashion industry creates a beauty standard that is used to control women. I am going now to address all the lies about beauty created by haters of beauty and used to abuse beautiful women and men who love tem.<br /><br />The first, and the biggest, is the line preached by 1990s feminists that beauty comes from the fashion and beauty industries and destroys women’s self-esteem. First of all, beauty does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry did not create all the amazingly beautiful life forms that pre-exist the fashion industry by millions of years. The fashion industry did not create the Luray Caverns, nor the ocean shore off Big Sur or Victoria, nor the stars above Nederland, nor any of the magnificent landscapes - from Fuji mountain to Iguazu Falls to the Serengeti - that exist in nature. Nor did the fashion industry create beauty manufactured by human beings, from Barcelona to San Francisco to Venice, Lhasa, Cuzco or Dubai. Fashion industry likewise did not create ballet, Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, Inca and Zen and Australian Aboriginal music, French, Russian or Chinese poetry. Nor is fashion industry in any way the last word on women’s physical beauty. Renaissance and Romantic art, as much as paintings from Orient and India, all reflect a far more profound ideal of beauty than what is found in fashion industry.<br /><br />“Profound,” you say. “But beauty is shallow.” That reflects very shallow understanding of beauty; indeed it reflects lack of understanding of beauty at all. Nothing is shallow about the works of Shakespeare, Modigliani, Li Po, Murabai, Keats or Akhmatova. Nothing is shallow about Russian or English or French or German poetry of 19th century. Nothing is shallow about all the living masterpieces of beauty such as the butterflies and the seashells and the baobabs and the daffodils and the sequoias. Nothing is shallow about the Sistine Chapel or comparable works in worlds ranging from India and Burma to China, Persia, Russia, France, or Incan and Aztec lands. The people who claim that beauty is shallow are people who do not understand beauty at all. Not understanding it, they want to trivialize and destroy it. And that, is as ignorant and as destructive a course of action as was Spaniards thinking that Moores, Incans and Aztecs were infidels and using that thinking to destroy the magnificent accomplishments of these great civilizations. Not knowing what they are dealing with, they go on to destroy it. And that makes such people not only shallow, but destructive and ignorant to the core.<br /><br />Another false claim is that beauty is patriarchal. And yet tigers are matriarchal and are amazingly beautiful creatures. Babylonian Queen had commissioned for her an extraordinarily beautiful palace; female poets from Sappho to Murabai to De Burgos to Tsvetayeva and Akhmatova produced magnificent works; female painters like Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe likewise produced beautiful art; and Epic of Gilgamesh was written n female hand. If some may make the case that these women were doing the bidding of patriarchal cultures, the same can emphatically not be said about art by modern neo-Pagan women, much of which is likewise extraordinarily beautiful. So how can beauty be patriarchal when - (A), it exists in non-patriarchal nature among matriarchal creatures; (B) it has been created by women, often better than by men; and ( C) it is being created by matriarchal women who believe in The Goddess? This claim therefore is manifestly ridiculous and holds no validity.<br /><br />Further claims - this time not by feminists - is that beauty is impractical. Impractical? But why then does it exist in nature? Why does it continue being born in human society, even among people who have such shallow and destructive beliefs? And why do people pay money to visit beautiful places and none to visit the ugly ones, the first having been made beautiful by people working to make them beautiful - and the second having been made ugly by people who are against beauty or do not care? Why do people hearken back to periods that created beauty - periods like Renaissance in the West, Tang Dynasty in China, the Moghul Empire in India, the Greek Golden Age - and not to the periods, like Middle Ages or Mongol Invasion or Inquisition or Reformation or Cultural Revolution, that sought to make beauty extinct? And why do people all over the world come to visit Barcelona, Venice, San Francisco, New Orleans, Prague, Paris and Montreal, and not to visit Dnipropetrovsk or Cheyenne? The practical value of beauty is that it enriches life, but even more importantly that it creates a worthwhile legacy of existence; and by creating manmade environments that are an improvement on nature and not a degradation on nature, do honor to people who have created such environments, instead of dishonor that comes and will continuously come to those who create ugliness.<br /><br />Then there are those who refer to people who favor beauty as being snobs or “pretentious” or “who-do-they-think-they-are.” And yet it was exactly “pretentious snobs” like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin - both highly educated, European-influenced, and possessing great taste - who have given these people their freedom, their dignity, and a country in which they could live, prosper, and not be at the mercy of kings and popes and rampaging “nobles.” And yet these same people, who owe everything to such “snobs” as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who then go on and destroy similar leanings in their youth and their neighbours - and then attack other parts of America and the rest of the world where such leanings are valued - while claiming themselves true Americans. What can be more ungrateful? What can be more ignorant? What can be more lacking in integrity, or in patriotism - which, in its true sense, means being true to what made the country possible: The great, noble, heroic and principled action of highly educated highly cultivated European-influenced intellectuals named Franklin and Jefferson, of the very kind that those who most loudly call themselves American patriots want to fry in their backyards?<br /><br />Then there are those who claim that beauty is something that women do to please men. Is that so wrong? And if you think that it’s wrong to want to please your partner, why should anyone in his right mind want to be with you? What, “men are pigs”? Fine then, don’t be with them, and stop brainwashing the good ones into your cult. Leave them instead to good women who do want to be good to their partner, but who, with men who are capable of the same having been guilt tripped and manipulated into serving the worst women on the planet, are instead doomed to abusive violent pigs.<br /><br />The same needs to be said to the preceding: The people who think that women are evil and must be controlled. If women are evil, then it is morally and logically wrong to share with them one’s life, or one’s accommodations, or to have their evil blood in one’s children. “Women are evil”? Is your mother evil? Your grandmother? Your sister? Your daughter? And if you believe that 50% of the world’s population is evil, then whose sin is greater: That of the people who are not what you want them to be for not being what you want them to be, or yours for playing God in branding them that way?<br /><br />As for the claims such as that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” they are refuted by the behavior of those who believe them. They attack pretty women, but not homely ones; which means that they know what beauty is and is not, and their claims lack integrity. In fact, science offers hard evidence both for absolute beauty and relative beauty; which should satisfy people of conscience on both sides. A face with particular proportions has been shown to be seen as beautiful by people across cultures, civilizations, age groups and generations. Meanwhile, a study of 20,000 people looking at 500 faces produced each face being picked as most beautiful by at least one participant. This reinforces the case for existence of absolute beauty and the philosophical case for the value of beauty, while giving everyone else a very viable proof that someone will find them beautiful, they just need to know where to look.<br /><br />There is a reason why nobody reads academic poetry. It has forbidden beauty and thus lost its raison d’etre. There is a reason that most people despise modern NEA art. It is not beautiful. With art having been perverted from creation of beauty to creation of tripe, art lost its place in society. This hurt art; it hurt artists; and it hurt America. And it is time now to recreate beauty in art and to again make art - and beauty - an integral part of life in the First World.<br /><br /><br />Fine Arts and the Modern World<br /><br />Fine arts and philosophy have been slandered as being luxuries of the elites. This slander is frankly ridiculous, and it exerts a degrading effect upon the civilization. <br /><br />At this time in the world history, the world has by far the greatest amount of material prosperity that it has ever had. It also has by far the greatest population, the greatest amount of information, the greatest amount of knowledge, and the greatest amount of media and political freedom in the history of humankind. It has enough resources for - politically correct propaganda, right-wing radio talk shows, supermarket tabloids, TV evangelists, Jerry Springer, and all manner of hideousness and inanity that we see on TV and the radio and the news. So why not then have likewise an abundance of world-class intellectual thought and artistic accomplishment? <br /><br />This question bears asking, for the sake primarily of the greatness of the civilization and the history of the world. That a Renaissance Italy, with three million people and an average household income of $1000 a year, would produce Michelangelo, DaVinci, Botticelli, Rafael and a number of other timeless masters, while the modern world has produced no known artist of similar caliber since Salvador Dali, does not say much for the modern world. Why, at a time when the world's GDP, population, information, knowledge and media reach far exceeds any ever created, are there not a thousand Michelangelos, Emersons, Tsvetayeva's, Platos, Franklins, Jeffersons, Li Pos, Rumis, Shakespeares and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's? Why, at the time of the greatest accumulation of knowledge and freedom of information and material resources and political liberty in the history of the world, is there not commensurate legacy and body of work - legacy and body of work of literary, artistic, philosophical and intellectual greatness? <br /><br />The things that were once unthinkable luxuries even to the kings and the queens, are now the daily aspect of the existence of the people in the most run-of-the-mill Western household. There are full-screen TVs and two-car garages in most working households in America. These, by any historical standard, are luxuries - luxuries that never previously belonged even to Queen Elizabeth the First. So why, then, are fine arts and philosophy - the flowering, the consummation, the blossoming, the culmination, the legacy of man's intellectual and artistic striving - the flowering and the blossoming that, compared to these things, take far less material resources to create and leave per unit of resources expended a far greater legacy and embodied value - not at a nearly commensurate quality? <br /><br />Are the moderns not smart enough? Are the moderns not talented enough? Are the moderns not free or educated or materially and politically empowered enough? Either of these explanations, given historical state of humanity, is absurd. There is something wrong with one thing and one thing only: THE PRIORITIES OF THE MODERN WORLD. <br /><br />Who indeed would see it as idle luxury to create fine art and fine literature - all things that require minimum resource expenditure but produce embodied greatness that contain inspiration and excellence, enhance knowledge and emotional wisdom, enrich experience of life, and give the country something to look back upon proudly over centuries of future existence - while not seeing as idle luxury the McDonalds's and poison-spewing SUVs, taxpayer-paid subsidies to farm corporations and giveaway of government money to pharmaceutical companies, the supermarket tabloids and TV evangelists and right-wing uglies congesting the media channels and politically correct fascists using the taxpayer money to play power games against disenfranchised, attack all beautiful sensibilities in the academia, and rob life of its richness and splendor (and humanity of its genius) while using for that evil purpose far greater amount of resources than would be required to produce a thousand Sistine Chapels? <br /><br />The problem is not with the West's economic or political system, which after all in both cases provide means for expression of people's values in the marketplace and in the government. The problem is with the values that are expressed through both systems. The problem is with the priorities and the ideas guiding these priorities. The problem is with the short-sightedness of the mindset that fails to look forward to history and to compute into the quantification of economic utility and political benefit the long-term greatness of the civilization, which lives through its literary and artistic accomplishments and bequeathes through them to future generation the brilliance and inspiration that once lived in it. The problem is with the failure to economically and politically quantify this: Historical interest; long-term benefit of humanity; the legitimate need for legacy; and the very true and significant need for splendor. <br /><br />Splendor that:<br /><br />Enriches experience of life; <br />Shows what is possible; <br />Inspires people toward excellence with sight of accomplishment; <br />Vitalizes the passionate and the inspired in human being, setting it free to impart of its riches and enrich the world, the lives of others, and the entirety of the human experience; <br />And imparts through both intuitive and rational channels the sublime and the magnificent to the living, directing and guiding them to passionate, beautiful, Inspired life. <br /><br />Splendor that is the accomplishment of humankind's excellence - source of its passion and inspiration - that the world requires again to be made a value, in order that greatness can live again - <br /><br />Produce magnificent and inspired legacy of its existence - <br /><br />And enrich the lives of the existing, justify and give legacy to the existed, tap into man's talents for good of humanity, and inspire and give light to the yet-to-exist. <br /><br /><br />Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck<br /><br />Scott Peck was to psychology what Immanuel Kant was to Western philosophy. In the same way as Kant had used philosophy, after a blossoming during Enlightenment and Romanticism, to affectuate a return to the Protestant dogmas that philosophy had sought to replace, so did Peck use psychology, after its psychoanalitic beginnings in early 20th century and its existential humanistic blossoming in 1960s and 1970s, to affectuate a return to religious dogmas that psychology had struggled to overcome.<br /><br />The philosophy of Kant - and the psychology of Peck - employed a device referred to by Mortimer Adler as suicidal epistemologizing and suicidal psychologizing. Kant claimed that the imperfection of human perception meant that it was only capable of apprehending the phenomenal (apparent) instead of the noumenal (the true); he also claimed that beauty was relative, illusory and insignificant ("in the eye"). With these claims he trivialized and denigrated both science and art. In creating in public mind the suspicion of both empirical and intuitive modes of cognition, practiced respectively by Enlightenment and Romanticism, he destroyed both Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the same manner did Peck, through his contributions, place in the public mind contempt for and denigration of both reason and passion, equating the first with Cartesian logic that was inadequate to describe his experience of synchronicities, and claiming the second an invalid basis for either relationship or meaningful interaction. The result has been contempt and invalidation of both reason and passion and the destruction, first by philosophy then by psychology, of both aspects of humankind.<br /><br />Both of course are wrong in all aspects. Reason is not limited to Cartesian dogmatism, and the intellectual and scientific pursuits, in higher physics, anthropology, and more advanced psychological studies, have uncovered knowledge that entirely exceeds Cartesian dogmatisms and its brainchildren - skepticism, behaviorism, logical positivism, and similar abominations. Beauty has been shown scientifically to exist both in absolute and in relative forms. As for romantic passion, it has been at the root of the best marriages I've ever seen - marriages that produced wholesome families, meaningful and lasting love between partners, beautiful and intelligent and accomplished children, and are still going strong 50 or 60 years down the road. <br /><br />In taking the stances that they did, Kant and Peck thus became destructive of both the intellectual and the passionate aspects of man - and destructive of all the greatness and progress and richness of life that these two aspects have produced. And in pursuit of their dogmas, was created a character that is essentially necrophilic (death-seeking) and seeks to destroy, in its relations, policies, thoughts and activities, all that creates and affirms and adds to life.<br /><br />In both cases, a pursuit that produced great improvement for many and at multiple levels was effectively destroyed by being used against its own foundations. With Kant, philosophy had destroyed itself -both Enlightenment philosophy that made possible Western science and Western democracy, and Romantic philosophy that made possible the world's greatest literature, cultural blossoming and richest interpersonal experience and relations - by claiming the mechanism for both to be imperfect or trivial. With Peck, so did psychology, in both its analytical and its humanistic aspect - by trivializing and denigrating the aspects of human being to which it spoke and which it worked to describe. And the pursuits that have given the Western world its greatest accomplishments - democracy, science, innovation, freedom, great literature and art, understanding of nature, civil and human rights, meaningful and beautiful relationships between men and women, and humanistic life-affirming values that went to a great length to make most of both accomplishment and experience - were subverted by the pursuit that had conceptualized them being used to destroy its own foundations. And in both cases, the result was an imposition, against a flourishing of life through affirmation of passion and intellect, of orders and character that were fundamentally anti-life.<br /><br />The Victorianism that followed Kant, like the three decades that followed Peck, were contemptuous of both intellect and passion - contemptuous as such of the life-enhancing and life-affirming aspects of humanity. It is a mentality that by its own nature can only lend to systemic violence, oppression, and war against both feeling and intellect, which lead directly to abusive, controlling and systematically destructive mental, emotional and relational habits in people who are a part of that mentality. But furthermore still it leads to destruction of all that thought and feeling make possible: science, democracy, freedom, ingenuity, innovaton, human rights, beauty, compassion, art, love, vitality, and every meaningful form of improvement in people's lives. This, of course, has been the essential character of both the Victorian era and its more contemporary equivalent. And just as Kant and Peck came to believe that the source of evil was hubris - which their followers use to damn both reason and passion and people who affirmed, cultivated and benefited from both - so has the far greater hubris of their own mentality made apparent itself in its values and its effects.<br /><br />In both cases, just as Kant used philosophy, and Peck used psychology, to destroy the ages of reason and passion, so have the concepts they brought in to replace them convicted the orders that they had ushered in. The Protestant morals that were used and then hideously misused to sustain the dark night of Victorianism were in the end employed themselves to convict as morally damnable an order that consigned the bulk of the people in it to colonization, child labor, brutality, squalor, suffocating formalism, hysterical prudery, internecine warfare, disconnection from life both within and without, and brutal, cruel, degrading, unforgiving existence. Likewise the concept of responsibility that was used and <br />then hideously misused for the last three decades is now making apparent the irresponsibility of suffocating innovation in energy sector to keep alive the stranglehold of oil cartels, giving taxpayer subsidies to beef industry that takes 10 times as much biomass to produce a burger than the vegetable industry to produce an equivalent amount of grain, consuming 4,000 calories a day and driving SUVs while millions are dying because of disastrous climatic events caused by ecosystemic destruction and accumulation of CO2 missions in the atmosphere, destroying with no thought for the future or for what made them possible the natural treasures that man cannot conceivably recreate, and ladening the future generations with trillions of dollars in debt, amid collapsing family incomes, in order to pay for an economic stimulus that never came. By applying at the collective level the characteristic that is demanded of the individual, is seen the corruption of the arrangement itself. Victorian moralism was rightfully used to show the moral wrongness of the Victorian order; and the more modern-day responsibility is likewise making apparent the irresponsibility of the present one.<br /><br />And just as personality psychology has been used and hideously misused in the period following Peck to target people who thought or felt differently from the social or communal entities of place and time, whatever the character of these entities or their intent or the actual substance of their beliefs and behaviors, so has it been used by others, rightly or wrongly, to describe business, politics, religion, psychology, media, and even the Western civilization, as possessing a psychopathic and predatory character.<br /><br />The same concept is now used by me to describe any communal or social entity that seeks unlimited power over the minds, beliefs, personalities and lives of the people within it - and then seeks to impose itself on others.<br /><br />To believe that an unofficial organ of power, that unlike official organs of power in a constitutional democracy is not subject to check and balance and official accountability, is somehow less prone to corruption and wrong and abuses of power than official organs of power, is ridiculous. Such an entity becomes law, reality and sanity unto itself and therefore is capable of the worst forms of corruption and systemic crime. And in countries where the power of official organs is checked and balanced and made to accord with constitution and bill of rights, but for some or another reason the power of unofficial organs is not subjected to similar scrutiny and is thus used to commit most horrendous abuses and most illegal abominations against the people within them and without them, these entities not only can be seen as unconstitutional, but in fact should be seen themselves as possessing the worst of these disorders.<br /><br />The sociopathic character that does not recognize law, is the character of the community or the social network that becomes law unto itself and thus not only perpetuates and then covers up systemic crime while totally controlling the people within it, but also commands of people inside of them unconditional loyalty regardless of scale of their crimes against people both inside and without. And it is these entities, not the people they demonize, that are the true danger not only to democracy, but to humankind as it exists at this time and as it stands to exist in the foreseeable future. The crimes and coverups of small towns, gangs, old-boy networks, cults, Islamists, Jehovah's Witnesses, paramilitary organizations, and corrupt networks and operations in medicine, law, police, courts, psychiatry, and politics, are a far graver threat to rule of law than are the works of any number of axe murderers - and they affect people's lives to a far greater extent.<br /><br />The same can be likewise said of religions that think that they are superior to both nature and to humanity - indeed to entire Universe - and denigrate then destroy all accomplishments of science, democracy, business, art, literature, human rights, and nature in all its richness, in order to make room for their supremacy over a world that they have inherited both from nature and from the people who had created and contributed to these pursuits. The people who claim the universe to be God's, and all accomplishments of mankind and the vibrancy of nature and all things lovable to be belongings of God, appropriate for the Church or the Mosque that had created none of these things - that destroyed them where they existed and resisted most of them every step of the way when they arose in the areas of their dominion - the credit for nature and for humanity and all things lovable and life-affirming, both natural and manmade. All things of course that the Church and the Mosque condemn, deny, sabotage and then, when created by others and coerced from others, want to claim as their own to wield as tools of control against the existing and yet-to-exist. Such an entity can by itself be seen as not only psychopathic and narcissistic, but totalitarian and indeed necrophilic. <br /><br />For such an entity to claim to define people, humanity, nature, and all that exists in the world, as any kind of evil or good, is preposterous. The evil belongs with these entities themselves and with the philosophers and psychologists - Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck - who brought them back into influence in these respective endeavors, after the mind and the genius of humanity in both these endeavors and their brainchildren had struggled to help humanity out of their grasp.<br /><br />The religious supremacism has become so complete as to war in the past decade, with effective and thoroughly disastrous results, against both science and democracy as well as constitutional law. In the same way as it has warred in the previous two decades against individuality, relationships, culture, eros, beauty and romance, it is now warring, disastrously, against science and democracy. First it destroys Romanticism; then it aims straight for Enlightenment. And it is then that is seen its true character, in all its psychopathic totalitarian apocalyptic horror.<br /><br />The extent of the necrophilic character of such a mind is seen in its future predictions. Its hubristic hatred of life at all levels is so complete as to foresee a violent destruction of the world itself. And the economics and politics practiced by those who most loudly claim to profess Islam and Christianity are all directed toward planetary destruction and global war. There is no future in this; the future in this is complete destruction of all that lives on the planet. And I see it as duty of man, as a being of life, to not only preserve nature but to preserve humanity, and to create a future in which both humanity and nature can live, coexist, blossom, and reach their ever-greatest fruition and accomplishment.<br /><br />This comes through thinking - and pursuant that activity at all levels - that is affirming of life at all levels and dedicated to its enhancement, enrichment and perpetuation. The necrophilic mentalities - and pursuant that the necrophilic effect on the world of all the activities that they inform - must be replaced with ones that are biophilic and make most of life - both human and natural - in short, medium, and long-term. With this change in mind, all human pursuits - business, politics, technology, relationships, families, science, art, education, spirituality - can begin to work toward a viable future. The people who truly love and embrace life, will value life, and will create demand for - and supply of - economics, technologies, policies, ideas, art, and modes of interaction that are life-affirming and that add to life, extend life, and make possible life worth living for their descendants and for humanity, as much as they will take care to protect life that they have not created. The people who think that destroying the world will get them to heaven, will and do take their political, economic, spiritual and interpersonal activities to the direction of violence, destruction, plunder, theft, torture, abuse, and death.<br /><br />Romantic attitudes are a logical consummation of rational ones and their further development. The mind is contemptuous of nature until it actually studies nature and finds in its workings the mechanisms far more intricate and intelligent than any that it itself has yet known how to contrive. By the time the science can actually create anything of similar quality or complexity as a living being, it has full respect for natural life; at which point it can learn to build on it, improve on it, create sustainable agriculture and development, recreate some of what was blindly driven into extinction, and even create new life. Similarly, the mind has contempt for - "instinct," feeling, passion, eros, sexuality, nurturing, reproduction - until it actually studies the mechanisms of these things long enough to find in them similar intricacy and intelligence - at which point it realizes the extent of its complexity as being superior to anything that it itself knows how to create. At which point it likewise develops respect for what it would by itself see as inferior function, and then actually becomes capable of creating and building and even improving upon humanity. True natural science, like true psychology, build understanding enough to achieve respect for what they study. And it is only then that they can replicate and even improve on these givens. At this point, the mind becomes an intelligent creator instead of a dumb destroyer. And then - only then - can man's rationality be said as itself having legitimately earned respect. <br /><br />To tip the balance for life, man must become a creator more than he is a destroyer. At all levels of thinking - and all levels of action - man must do more to enhance life than he is to destroy it. It is then that there is a better future in view than that of the Apocalypse. And it is then that man can be said to be equal to nature and even possibly an improver. <br /><br />The period after Victorianism saw electricity, telephones, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, women's rights, middle class, Panama Canal, national parks, higher physics, film, psychology, Harlem Renaissance, Fitzgerald, Akhmatova, Modligliani, and an open, livable social climate that directly enhanced both the quality of people's lives and accomplishment of civilization. What this period of innovation and freedom was for 20th century, can be accomplished on even greater scale for 21st at this time. Solar and hydrogen energy, space travel and colonization, nanotechnology, biotechnology, economics designed to maximize intelligent creation and minimize destruction of what one has not created, prudent resource management, intelligent collaboration between private and public sectors, affirmation and rigorous defense of human rights, values favorable to innovative and creative thinking, positive regard for and affirmation of both the feminine and the masculine and a mutual understanding between one another allowing beautiful and happy relationships and marriages, respect for and cultivation of both feeling and intellect, affirmation and cultivation of both individuality and dedication to benefit of the species, and political and economic policies designed to maximize intelligent creation and minimize blind destruction, can be a seed of a renaissance with unlimited potential both for the currently living and for the yet-to-exist.<br /><br />This can only come from this: An understanding of and respect for life at all levels, allowing man to see and feel life at all levels and, enriched with this understanding, to become an organ of life-creation, life-perpetuation, and life-enhancement, making possible livable long-term future for both the planet and humankind. Necessary is a concept of human being as an integral entity with relation to self, species and nature, that leads to an affirmation of individuality and an affirmation of humanity and an affirmation of nature, allowing people maximal self-definition, maximal contribution to good of the species, and appreciation of nature resulting in minimal damage to it. Necessary is a recognition and valuation of all aspects of life in both natural and human forms, creating a life-affirming mentality that finds expression in people's thoughts, feelings and actions, and thus their effect on the world as well as the covenants they create. The values, perceptions, cognitions, and consequently arts, science, economics, policies, and relationships, all stand to be improved by transition to modes of thinking that are affirming of life at the natural, individual and species-directed levels. And then all these pursuits will direct themselves to creation of life and enrichment of life instead of its destruction, while having respect enough for what man has not created to minimize damage to it.<br /><br />The future can and should be better than present, and there is a way of making it so. It comes from embracing the modes of thought, feeling and relating that recognize and make most of life at all levels and moving beyond destructive, necrophilic mentalities and orders, to ones that are biophilic and creative, resulting in similar transformation in all activities of humankind. It is time to embrace nature, humanity and life itself, and to create for all these a viable future. The choice is about nothing less than artificial destruction of the planet and all its inhabitants, or a sustained improvement in life human and natural for as long as the informed genius of humanity embracing and building upon the givens makes it possible for nature and for humanity to flourish, grow, and reach ever greater achievement and ever richer experience and fruition of life.<br /><br /><br />Apocalyptic Totalitarianism<br /><br />We come now to the biggest racket of all American rackets of recent decades, and that is: The Christian Right. The movement that ran American society on multiple levels since 1980 finally took it over officially in 2000 and led it to its most disastrous place since the Second World War. The results were only logical, given the beliefs of the movement. And they will be with America and the world for decades to come.<br /><br />In order to convince the nation that Bible is One and Only Truth and that all else is a lie or an evil, the first step that needs to be taken is to destroy people's ability to think conceptually, their ability to think empirically, as well as their access to every other source of information. The last two results in the deafening of the population; the first two result in its dumbening. Both of the preceding create a population that is unsuited for democracy and instead pushes for authoritarianism, while destroying capacity for intelligence, thought, creativity, insight, and intellectual honesty in its youth. Maintaining this destruction requires extreme control, bludgeoning, abuse, brutality and degradation, with the worst directed at those most capable of thinking past this wrong - meaning of course those of the greatest intelligence and sincerity. And it also requires a gutted primary education system, in which America falls far behind other high-income countries in the quality of the primary education given.<br /><br />The deafening and the dumbening having been done to the population groomed to be sheep, everyone else must be portrayed to be wolves - meaning, that they must be claimed to be evil. Thus the claim of evil liberal scientists, evil liberal media, evil pretentious Europeans, evil limousine liberals, evil NEA artists, evil single mothers, evil welfare blacks, evil socialists, evil granolas, evil Internet, and evil "sociopaths" who of course are not actual sociopaths but anyone who has any other ideas in their heads than the Christian Right. The sheep-wolf duality, further, cannot allow for there to be anyone other than sheep or wolves, which translates into: You are either with us all the way through and at all levels or you are evil. The project at that point becomes to destroy everyone who is not at any level a sheep, however minor the disagreement and however honest and rightful the reasons for having it.<br /><br />The direct result: A population paranoid, invasive, toxic, brutal, and viciously and barbarically assimilative - and most malicious persecution against anybody, both within the community or without, who has the capacity to deviate from the party line - meaning anybody who has the capacity to contribute anything insightful or anything meaningful. <br /><br />Further, the public must be convinced that only the way of Christian Right works, so considerable energy must be expended to destroying everything else that exists or to create an illusion that it is unworkable or evil. That includes, but is not limited to: Science, journalism, technological progress, human rights, labor rights, personal freedom, free speech, literature, art, beauty, left-leaning societies, California, New York, Jewish or atheistic or New Age communities, Europe, and ultimately democracy itself. Everything that gave America its achievements, becomes the enemy of Christian Right; which then claims everything good to come from God while destroying the very things that made these things possible in the first place.<br /><br />An entity pulling this size of a con cannot tolerate anything that has the capacity to see it as a con. This requires destruction of critical, empirical and conceptual thinking, as well as closing channels to anything telling a different story - and sabotaging those that do find their way. The result is destroying in people the cognitive habits that are necessary for insight, for innovation, for individuality, for free and creative thinking that make possible not only these things but also scientific and technological prosperity. At which point the sheep, made incapable of doing this, have to live parasitically off the liberal parts of America that allow and cultivate such cognitive habits, while demonizing those parts of America and claiming them to be evil. Tis, requires even more conmanship and deception, which requires even more "faith" to sustain. The result is leaders becoming ever-more-skillful con artists - and the "sheep" becoming more and more removed from capacity for intelligence.<br /><br />To believe that hundreds of thousands of brilliant, hard-working people dedicated to pursuit of knowledge are liars and sinners, and that those claiming such things aren't - to believe that AIDS is "God's way of controlling the homosexual population," that 9-11 was God removing his protection over America because of feminists and liberals, that dinosaurs were dragons and died out in the Flood, that fossils are tests of faith, that Internet is tool of Satan, or any one of a sundry ridiculous statements of Christsian Right, people must be brainwashed quite thoroughly indeed. The character that is demanded by such a thing is the character of skilled conmanship and deception on part of some and unthinking compliance on part of others; which is not character suited for democracy at all, but rather for totalitarianism.<br /><br />So that when Christian Right types start attacking your character or claim that they are speaking for true American values, know that they are stating a Big Lie. Their character is that of liars who cannot allow anything else to exist - whether truth or any competing fallacy. And the amount of conmanship, violence, and abuse that they require to maintain a con of this size would put to shame anything that came out of Stalin's or Hitler's propagandists. And just as Stalin demanded absolute fear-driven similitude while portraying as "enemy of the people" and targeting for extermination anyone who had the capacity to be a threat to him, so has the Christian Right exerted similar degenerative effect upon the United States.<br /><br />They claim to have family values; yet they poison the world for their children and hope for its violent end before their grandchildren have learned how to read. They claim to have ethics and honesty; yet they lie for 30 years claiming that there is no global warming and the planet is facing catastrophe - at which point they lie again and claim that what is happening is Armageddon. They claim to have responsibility, then they place America $10 trillion in debt before baby boomers have even started retiring. They claim to want government off their backs, then create the biggest, most invasive, most anti-constitutional government in US History and base their economy on entities - government-funded beef industry and Texas-Oklahoma oil, which has used deception of people and lobbying of government to deny America progress in clean and renewable energy. They claim that cloning, genetic cures, bio-engineering and resurrection of extinct species is evil, yet wiping out millions of existing species is not. They claim that homosexuality is a perversion, but incest isn't; that single motherhood is a sin, but brutality against wives and sexual abuse of children by male relatives is acceptable; that abortion is murder, but sending people to die and kill for false reasons is perfectly rightful, as is dooming the world to overpopulation by denying birth control to the third World, as is denying and trivializing the truth about global warming and the world's fastest-ever extinction - claiming that those who see such things are sissies and fools - and then blaming the whole thing on "humanity" rather than on themselves. They blame everything on - media, intellectuals, academia, single mothers, feminists, Europe - and then claim that they are responsible and strong and honest people.<br /><br />The question is not why the policies of the Christian Right have led to the current disastrous state of affairs. The question is why this monstrosity was allowed to become as big as it did. And for that, responsibility does not belong solely to Bush, Wyerich, Pat Robertson and similar workers of evil. It also belong to those who took part in this directly and those who did indirectly by dissuading people from confronting it - those who told people that politics doesn't matter, that they should be positive and not pay attention to negativity, that they should respect others’ beliefs even if those beliefs are not tolerant of them, that they should "clean their own house" or "tend to their own garden" or "change self instead of the world" or "have the serenity to accept what they cannot change," that that they should not meddle in others' business, that they should only act locally, that what they see in another as a reflection of themselves, that they should "see no evil hear no evil," that "there is no such thing as society," that paying attention to such things is “whining“ or “blaming,” or that the world will “take care of itself.”<br /><br /><br />Integrative Conception of Man<br /><br />The deeper problem with the traditional forms of such religions as Buddhism and Christianity is that the spirituality is seen as divorced from physicality, which leads to similar separation in social reality. The people with spiritual inclinations go into monasteries or into ministry; the women have to share their lives with people who men believe that women are evil and that their duty is to control their every action and every thought. The world, being seen as one of illusion or one of Satan, becomes that way more convincingly by being shorn of the attention of those who have it within themselves to want to improve things. And the concept behind these convictions becomes self-fulfilling and then becomes reality for the people living under such beliefs.<br /><br />This is not accidental; this is an inevitable, logical result of the beliefs themselves. To conceive spirit as being forever divorced from flesh, or of human nature as sin, or of desire as root of all suffering, is to rob the real world of the spiritual riches and to damn it to ever-perpetuating, ever-consuming darkness. In all such cases, the injury done to mankind is monumental. And in both cases this does not have to be.<br /><br />Christ and Buddha had to adopt the attitude that they did toward the world, because of where they were in the world, what the world wanted from them, and what the world at the time was like. Jesus had to decide that the world "of flesh" was evil, because his flesh and his world was owned by an alien militaristic empire that ruled with crosses and whips. He had to reject the world and damn it as being a world of sin, because the world belonged to his enemy. He had to reject - women, money, politics, power, even his physical body - because all this was in the hands of the Roman Empire, which could do anything with all this anything that it wanted. So he had to actually transcend the flesh and then resurrect, in order to prove that his true self was not owned, that the power of the Roman Empire was not absolute, and that there was a light at the end of the darkness - the light of heaven, over which the Emperor and his thugs had no power.<br /><br />There were many people who could very well believe at the time that the world was the world of sin. The Roman Empire was a brutal militaristic organization where three quarters were slaves and endured constant brutality and humiliation. It was not an ethical enterprise, and many people made the mistake of conflating the slavery and the brutality in the Roman Empire with its religious diversity. The truth is, the two had nothing to do with one another at all, and while Christianity offered a promise of eternal life to people living in slavery or under the Roman yoke, it offered less than nothing for people's earthly experience.<br /><br />With Buddha, the circumstance was not the same, but analogous at a mental level. He was the son of a king, and at his birth his parents were given a prophecy that he would be either a great king or a founder of a major religion. His parents wanted him to become an emperor and kept him from fulfilling the prophecy of his becoming a founder of a major religion by lying to him, keeping him from knowing anything, and removing all sights of suffering out of his eyes. So first he saw real world outside the royal compound - people sick, dying, in torment - and found out that his education was a lie; then as he left the city to meditate under the tree, the king kept luring him by his desires - dancing girls, tasty fruit, friends, wife, power - back to the kingdom hall that had deceived him. So what would it be logical for the meditating mind to decide but that the world is one of deception (maya) and that desire is the root of all that is wrong with the world? He had to reject both his education and his education- shaped mind along with any desire that he may have had, in order to find any kind of truth. That was because his education was a lie, and his desires were being tempted to go back to the powers that had lied to him.<br /><br />Buddhism preaches non-attachment; there is a good reason for that. All attachment - emotional, physical, intellectual, personal - was being used to tempt Buddha away from his pursuit of the truth and into the maw of the people who wanted him to serve their will for him - the will that he had found out to be a deception. He had to break all desire for everything that the kingdom had to offer - from nice food to dancing girls to his sweetheart to adoring friends to political power - as well as his family bonds and his personal friendships and loyalties and romantic attractions, and destroy everything in the self that was vulnerable to these things or that wanted or required these things, because all were used to control him and lure him back into deception. Buddha is offering a path that he himself had to go in order to achieve freedom. That path meant moving away from all that desired - because the desires were used to tempt him to that which had deceived him. It also meant going away from ego - because all ego's wants and longings and attachments were used to entrap him in the kingdom that had deceived him and that had absolute power over everything - money, fame, power, status, admiration, respect, validation - that an ego might want. It meant spending many years silencing, deconstructing and transcending the mind - because the mind was falsely educated and falsely conditioned and made to think things that were not true. It meant what he had to go through to free himself from false things; but it does not mean that all suffering is based in desire, or that ego is a piece of dirt, or that mind is evil, or that life is an illusion, or that spirituality is forever divorced from these things.<br /><br />To damn the world, or to claim world as necessarily one of suffering, or to remove from the world desire, is in no way a way for making a better world. Instead it is the way to remove light from the world and plunge it into self-feeding and self-perpetuating darkness. So while many people in monasteries have successfully and effectively followed Christ's or Buddha's paths to freedom and wisdom and spiritual power, their social advice has been absolute disaster for the societies that followed their guidance in matters of life. In both cases, relationships, science, education, business, politics, - everything - has been damned and have been therefore carried out in the most destructive possible manner. And that does not make anyone or anything holy. It makes life on earth an unnecessarily and self-fulfillingly toxic hell.<br /><br />Christ's advice on the best way to have a relationship is not to have a relationship. That flesh is sinful and that therefore there cannot be at the same time a sexual and a spiritual love. That sex is a dirty thing and that anyone who elicits sexual desire or erotic passion deserves not love but physical, personal and spiritual violence. I'll pass on that one. I love my wife, I treat her lovingly, and if I have to go to hell for that I will do so willingly and make things better for others damned in that way.<br /><br />With both Buddhism and Christianity, there is contempt for intelligence; for fact; for nature; for reality. So it is no surprise that application of both theosophies have eradicated learning, prosperity and accomplishment from the world in which they were applied. Roman Empire had great inventors, great philosophers, great scientists, great doctors, great engineers. They had a steam engine 1,700 years before the Industrial Revolution. And while religious people claim that Roman Empire was undone by its "decadence" (reality check: It was conquered 200 years after it Christianized) the true reason that it was undone is that it listened to Roman-day Republicans who thought with their pocketbooks instead of their brains and believed that the cheapness and abundance of slave labor made the steam engine uneconomical. If they thought ahead, they would have realized the promise of that invention and not only created real prosperity that they would have never dreamt of, but have also been able to invent war machines that would have vaporized any invading army - as well as being able to end the horrible institution of slavery that was the true moral outrage of Roman Empire and the real source of hatred and resentment against it.<br /><br />In choosing whether to embrace high-technology, high-intelligence, job- creating clean energy, or to go on with the ruinous policies of Texas Oil, the present-day world faces a similar choice.<br /><br />But that is a different matter, no matter how crucial in significance. The Romans had great science and engineering and could have had a world we have now, two millenia before it came about, if they had been smarter about their economic and political policies. Nothing of that sort existed in the Christian world until it was shaken to its core by European Enlightenment and American Revolution.<br /><br />So it is no surprise that, in order to find intellectual, political, social, personal, sexual, physical freedom, many people have made the same choice that Christ and Buddha have made, in reverse. Like Christ and Buddha rejected the physical world, they have rejected the world of the spirit, because the world of the spirit was under control of mentalities that were hostile to intellect, nature, prosperity, science, human rights, sexuality, beauty, and all else that affirms life on earth. The European Enlightenment grew out of that, as well as a profusion of secular mindsets - rationalism, pragmatism, capitalism, realism, scientific materialism, economics, psychology, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, and many others.<br /><br />There is a problem with these mindsets as well. They stake their central claim on denying the world of spirit. So any spiritual longing, or any appreciation for or expression of splendor,or anything loving and warm and tender in people, is by them brutally and maliciously suppressed. Their supposed rationality becomes so overbearing, so controlling, so abrasive and horrible and destructive, that people flee from them even if it means disastrous consequences for themselves or living in poverty or losing their minds or their rights or their comfort or dying early or get brutally raped, tortured and killed. Denying spirituality to people with the same violence with which the religious deny physicality, these mindsets become just as cruel and just as horrendous as the ones that they seek to replace. And then what is left for people, is choice between one semi-life or another semi-life - the life of spirit without flesh, or the life of flesh without spirit. Both of which, in this situation, become lives of destruction and decay.<br /><br />The process of evolution from rationalism - any rationalism - whether it be Enlightenment, or Victorianism, or the 50s, or the 90s - is quite similar. Genius struggles, laboriously, painstakingly, passionately, through the maze of rationalistic obstruction, to produce refutation and to bring into life some kind of splendor. Then more follows; struggle ensues. The world of the rationalist becomes less apparently certain, less apparently rational, less apparently noble, the more abrasive and terrible and hysterical it becomes in its attacks on what threatens its orthodoxy. And then - light at the end of the tunnel: A liberation. Which once again comes under attack from all sides, but shows a way for as long as it lasts and remains through history in its art to inspire those in the future generations who hunger for life to go as far as did they, and then further.<br /><br />I know this from history, and I confidently give this prediction. A rationalism - any rationalism - will always be followed by a romanticism of one or another kind. Romantic period after European Enlightenment, Bohemian period after Victorianism, the 60s after the 50s - these are not accidental; these are inevitable. In all cases, we've seen the walls of false life-negating rationality refuted by people who have seen something more, or who have dug deeper, or who have used rationality itself to get to a more profound understanding than what is preached by the theories and that refute its conceptions and its implications for the world and for mankind, or who have experienced and studied learning from other cultures, or who have achieved powers of insight, or who have decided to feel instead of to only cognate and were able to see what the rationalist does not see himself or does not want people to see. An Einstein who as a scientist applies science to a place that transcends physical determinism that dominated the 19th century conception of the universe and its resulting structures and institutions - the 60s existentialist psychologists who refute the behaviorist dogmas and arrive at a concept of man as a human being rather than a machine - a Rousseau, Thoreau, Emerson, Byron, Wordsworth or Elizabeth Barrett Browning who open people's minds to the world of beauty and passion that in the Cartesian conception of universe could not exist - a Nash who in his work on game theory arrives at refutation of orthodox economics and gives place in the world for compassion and interest in the good of one's fellow man - will always pop up through history to refute any kind of rationalistic determinism. And this will go on, for as long as the rationalists of one or another kind try to construct a world out of their dogmas and to trap the minds, spirits and lives of their children and those after them in those entrapments.<br /><br />With religious supremacism, we will see the same thing happen as well. A Luther who uses Biblical teachings to show the corruption of Roman Catholic Church, or the Enlightenment scientists who used intelligence to show the falsehood of the Biblican cosmology, will exist for as long as do both human intellect and the Bible. Intelligence will always continue to come along and refute dogma that denies intelligence. And if the theological dogmatists want to do away with or to subvert intelligence, as Bush administration did, as Puritans did, and as the Muslims appear intent to do, then it will come at them and their societies from without.<br /><br />There has to be a better way than either of the preceding. A positive way is an integrative experience of life, in which both the physical and the spiritual exist and work to each other's benefit. It is a way in which both the physical world and the spirit world are affirmed and find ways to enhance one another and exist in synergy rather than disintegration. And it is a way in which life as a human being - a being who combines the spiritual and the material aspects - can be affirmed in its entirety, allowing for lifestyles and covenants in which the totality of humanity can exist - and achieve greatest human experience, greatest human accomplishment, and most complete and integrated manifestations of human beings themselves. <br /><br /><br />Manifestation of Cruelty<br /><br />One fairly large movement in recent years has claimed that one’s beliefs manifest one’s reality. Question: What about the beliefs of other 6 billion people? What about the things that are true, regardless of whether or not one believes in them? What about all the people who have effect on the world through their actions in one or another way?<br /><br />The practitioners of this line of belief want to get everyone “thinking positive” and advocate that as the solution for everything. Naturally, they want to claim “negative thinking” or anger or fear or hatred to be the root of all that is wrong with the world. But the world’s worst problems - pollution, debt, global warming, environmental destruction, overpopulation - are not result of negative thinking. They are result of wrong choices that people have made. And in claiming that anyone focusing on such things is thinking negative or adding to the problem, they are denying the problem the real solutions that actually stand a chance of making the world good enough in the long term to justify positive thinking not only on their part but on that of others.<br /><br />The same people believe that injustice or wrongs or pain that people endure are things they have caused, or “a karmic lesson,” or something they’ve “manifested in their consciousness.” This leads to not only accepting wrongs of all kinds, but to systematizing and perpetuating them. Not only do beliefs such as these lead to crimes unredressed, but rather to further stigma against the victim. And what it leads to on social level, is cruelty and shallowness and coldness. Cruelty and shallowness and coldness that lead people to beat up on those who are down, while looking up to those (including these same people) when they are up.<br /><br />If World War II happened now, these people would say that it was meant to happen or was a karmic lesson or a function of “negativity ” of the 50 million people who were murdered. If they lived through Islamic expansion or trade in African slaves or Spanish imperialism, they would say similar things about hundreds of millions of people who were slaughtered or enslaved by these wrongs. These beliefs by their own inner mechanisms beget extreme injustice, coldness and apathy. All these are breeding grounds for evil. And the best way to refute such convictions, is to turn them against themselves: Change the status quo, and then the same people will have to accept the new status quo as likewise spiritually caused and something that is there by will of universe, or of God, or as lesson to currently living, or as reality manifested - by them.<br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to support those who are up, but not the same people when they are down. This is known as being a fair-weather friend. <br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to believe that nobody can interfere in anyone's life from idealistic motives, while people do (and have always done, and will always most likely do) interfere in people's lives from non-idealistic motives. This is known as hypocrisy. <br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to do nothing to prevent wrong. This is known as moral supinity. <br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to deny support where it's needed and think that nobody can be of help to another person. This is known as cowardice. <br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to avoid things that are either shared responsibility or that involve emotional share. This is known as selfishness. <br /><br />The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to blame those who are down for their misfortune, while doing nothing to those who are causing the problem. This is known as evil. <br /><br />And while many beautiful and intelligent things have come out of New Age movement, it is these wrongful beliefs that ultimately led to its undermining, discrediting for many people also the positive things that have come out of the New Age movement and injuring those who did true good in its name.<br /><br /><br />Skepti-Bigotry<br /><br />A more minor racket - ostensibly opposing this one, but lacking any of its creativity - has been that of "skepticism." Founded by James Randi, the "skeptic society" has made it its mission to exterminate use of - hypnosis, astrology, psychism, telepathy, consciousness science, and everything related to the same. It claims to be doing its "work" for sake of science, but there is nothing remotely scientific in its goals or methodology.<br /><br />The scientific method is one of impartial inquiry into the universe through testable theory. The scientist knows that the inquiry is never complete, and that some explanation does not exclude the possibility of another explanation coming along that would complete, reframe or extend the current theory. He also knows that there have been throughout history and in all kinds of places smart people who, whether or not they used scientific method, came up with valuable and worthwhile knowledge. The "skeptic" however has no such knowledge. His claim is that some things absolutely cannot exist, and that anybody who thinks that they do is a conman, a kook or an idiot. This makes the "skeptic" not only unscientific, but the very thing against which science has had to struggle for centuries - a dogmatic bigot. And that does not make him an ally of science. That makes him the very essence of what has forever stood in the way of all true scientific inquiry.<br /><br />Believing the people he attacks to be kooks, conmen or idiots, the "skeptic" then makes it his mission to harass and discredit them. This founds his entire approach on another completely unscientific and illogical device - the ad hominem. In logic, as well as in science, ad hominem is known as illogic, for a very simple reason that how someone is characterized has no bearing on the validity of his findings. They should know. The greatest minds of science - Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Watson, Hawking among many others - were subject to most malicious character attacks by the societies they inhabited. And yet without their contributions those societies would have very little of what they have now, and many of those who attack these people would be serfs. <br /><br />In his reliance on ad hominem, the “skeptic” develops the character of the abuser. And this results in great degradation not only in his character, but also in the character of anyone who adopts his beliefs. <br /><br /><br />Culture of Character Smear and Character of America<br /><br />The predominant claim by political entities that campaign against the character of the opposition candidates is that they are protecting the character or integrity of the office. In fact, they degrade the character of the office as much as they degrade the character of the voter. Political culture of character assassination does not improve character of the office or of the country, but lowers it to the level of pettiness, nastiness, ugliness, maliciousness and vileness. And that does not improve the character of the office or of the nation; it degrades both. <br /><br />To create a political culture of character assassination, is to create a political culture of vileness. Vileness then becomes the way of the political process, putting into office the people who are most skilled at abuse - and frequently at nothing else. That leads to wrong people being in the office and implementing wrong policies - in many cases, given the way they got into the office, policies that are completely destructive and injurious to the people. . <br /><br />It is not only the ones in office that end up being encouraged toward wrongful action. The politicians' abusive behavior also trickles down to the voter. It influences people to behave in abusive ways to the people over whom they have influence. And that by itself is a source of needless suffering for millions. <br /><br />The constituencies that are abusive, or that want to be abusive, thrive on such politics. The more abusive the constituency, the more drawn it is to the politics of character smear. The level to which an individual or a constituency supports character smear campaigns is a good measure of the individual's or constituency's embrace of abusive practices in their own lives. And the more political life is based on nastiness, the more people take the example, the more nastiness becomes the reality of people's lives. At which point not only is the character of the political discourse diminished, but people's own character gets worse and worse, as does the lot of people at the receiving end of their behavior. <br /><br />That, is the true degradation in character that has taken place in politics of America. And the way to restore both statesmanship and American character, is to see through abusive smear tactics and demand dignity in the political process. The people who practice character smear campaigns, are themselves the worst character in the country and commit by their actions a far greater wrong than anything that the people whom they attack could be conceivably accused of having committed. Not only do they bring abusive behavior into politics, but far worse they influence people of the country to become abusers themselves. And that not only injures the credibility of America; it also injures countless millions of people who stand to be at the receiving end of vile behavior by people influenced in such a way. <br /><br />So whenever one sees character smear campaign, it can be said with accuracy that the person doing such campaigning is an abuser, just as it can be said that someone who supports such campaign is likewise possessive of an abusive frame of mind. And bringing dignity and respect back to America requires growing beyond such despicable tactics and creating a culture of dignity in the political process. A person who truly is interested in character will concern himself with character which he encourages in the people. And if he campaigns abusively and influences people to be abusive, then it is him that exhibits the truly unworthy character and does true violence to the character of the political office and of the country itself.<br /><br /><br />Oil Character and Clean Energy Character<br /><br />The basis of the economy percolates through all levels of human activity to become the basis of the character of the people in the economy, which then becomes the character of the societies and policies that the people create. In the same way as the Roman Empire built itself on slave labor - and made the basis of Roman character cruelty, brutality, conquest, predation, short-sightedness, laziness and oppression - so the oil economy fosters in people a character that mimics in its mentality the character of oil industry itself. This character is toxic, extractive, destructive, short-sighted, polluting, and ensnaring. And its poisonous influence can only be significantly reduced through a greater use of clean energy - and greater influence for life-affirming, intelligent, provident, and socially and environmentally responsible character that its development and widespread use stand to foster in humankind.<br /><br />The oil character is the character of extraction and exploitation, but that's not remotely the end of it. From combustion of oil, are encouraged worldviews that see the world as being given, and of man as only there to burn it without consideration for the rest of the world or for its future. The planet is seen as there for people to burn; the people are seen as there only to burn it for present consumption. Which means that anything that cares for the given world that man has not created, like anything that cares for the future of the civilization that man creates, is a competing interest that must be wiped out by any possible means. Since the oil resources are finite, the oil character does not see nor plan for life beyond the time that oil runs out. Any mentality that sees this, looks for alternatives, or stands to create alternatives, is mortal enemy to the oil industry. Not only therefore is the oil character is short-sighted to the point of being apocalyptic and as such foresees - and effectively works to bring about in its spirituality, politics and economics - an artificial end of the world; but far more significantly it is aggressively, imposingly and overbearingly so, and seeks to stamp out by all measures all that is not itself.<br /><br />As people are made dependent on oil industry for their lives and their livelihood, the economic foundations of life and liberty are likewise destroyed. All thought systems, spiritualities, psychologies, are manipulated by this interest toward forcing assimilation into the oil-industry way of living, but more profoundly into the oil character. These then are directed directly toward destruction of qualities that might influence people to not quite like this state of affairs or be motivated to look for or seek to create better alternatives: qualities such as knowledge and respect for the planet and nature in all its complexity and diversity; caring for humanity and its future; ability to create innovative solutions; and all in the human being - intellect, curiosity, natural wisdom, compassion, love of life, humanitarian orientation, and capacity for creative and innovative thinking - that might make these possible. Which means that destroyed is not only life and liberty, but also all in people that seeks and makes possible the above. First the order destroys life and liberty at economic level; then at spiritual, intellectual, and psychological levels; then finally at the political level. And then the oil order sets humanity careening toward planetary destruction while in the process destroying everything that is of life and liberty in its own ranks.<br /><br />The extractive oil character is one of destruction of nature with no sight for the future and no creative role for man. It pits the interests of the industry against both what man has not created and everything that man has created and that he stands to create. Which means that both nature and mankind become enemies of the industry; and that creates the most destructive of all conceivable orientations. At social level, we speak of oil-based mentalities and their orders subduing, exploiting and driving into extinction all that is life-affirming at both natural and human level - controlling, expropriating and deceiving what can be controlled, deceived and expropriated; demonizing, abusing and destroying what cannot. At the political level, we speak of oil-funded Texas Fundamentalists claiming ridiculously to speak for America and then seeking to destroy and enslave everybody who are not oil-funded Texas-Oklahoma Fundamentalists, both outside of America and within.<br /><br />All that is life in nature, and all that is life in man, are targeted for contamination, discrediting and destruction with eye toward eternal damnation. This is true for all that is physical and emotional; it is also true for all that is of the mind. Science, business, politics, art, relationships, are there to be conquered, subdued, eviscerated, and made through force and deception to serve the agenda of artificial Armageddon. Anything that is life-affirming, is sabotaged, corrupted, contaminated, slandered, defunded, discredited, undermined, in order that people can be led to believe the explanations that want to portray life as sin and all its manifestations as evil. Which people then want to bring about an end to life as such.<br /><br />To that end no lie, no cruelty, no violation, no atrocity, is unacceptable. This is the case among oil-funded states claiming to profess both Christianity and Islam. The puppet of oil-funded Texas Fundamentalist acquiring Republican nomination by spreading false rumors about his opponent, getting in office through corrupt dealings, putting the government trillions dollars in debt amid collapsing family incomes, silencing truth about global warming, deceiving America into a war, and doing what he can to destroy the true greatness of America - its constitutional democracy, its ingenuity, its scientific knowledge, its affirmation and preservation of rights and liberties, its foresight, its humanitarian orientation, its willingness to lead through true diplomacy rather than barbarism, and the freedom of speech, thought, and way of life, that has made possible its accomplishments - even as he was claiming ridiculously to be making America stronger and greater - this, is only the political manifestation of the oil character. Its effect on the people within and on the world without, are even worse.<br /><br />The oil character does not see man as a creator but only as a destroyer; thus it destroys man's capacity to create. Its hatred of nanotechnology, biotech, stem-cell research, genetics, is of the same mindset as its hatred of innovation, of ingenuity, of individuality and of art. By sabotaging and eviscerating man's capacity to create, it destroys man's capacity to create a long-term and livable future. It is as such the worst possible way to relate both man and nature, destroying nature while also destroying man. And from this mentality, outgrows a toxic, necrophilic, destructive, totalitarian and apocalyptic character - which then becomes the character of the oil arrangement, and shapes their economics, their politics, their spiritual life, and their inter-relations. A character that feeds on life, poisons life, inhibits life, and seeks to make life uninhabitable - and uses man's intellect, emotion, physicality, spirit, everything, toward not merely abusive and totalitarian but in fact apocalyptic ends.<br /><br />Driven by oil mentality man destroys nature; then he destroys the foundations of his own existence. And in the process man's mindset as well as man's activities mimic the worst practices of the oil industry - short-sightedness, expropriation, aggressive ignorance, violence against life at all levels, criminalization and demonization of all thoughts and characters that may see to the contrary, destruction of liberty, and apocalyptic totalitarianism. The past life that is fossil fuel is burned; so through poisoning and global warming is life present as well as life future. The inheritance of the past is squandered, the present is poisoned, and the world is set to slide toward an artificial end. The character that burns dead dinosaurs also makes dinosaurs of the living while destroying anything that is not a dinosaur and anything in people that may lead to clarity as to the character of the dinosaur ways. And just as dinosaurs died out in a mass extinction, so has the order based on the burning of the dead dinosaurs created the fastest extinction in the history of the planet - the order that now threatens the existence also of humanity itself.<br /><br />Clean energy, on the other hand, is not based on extraction or on combustion, nor does it work toward a planet-wide poisoning. Clean energy is based on transmutation, by high technology, of abundant energy into usable energy, while generating in the process no poisons or waste. This process fulfils the energy needs of the civilization, while being itself non-obtrusive to the planet and its inhabitants. The achievements, knowledge, prosperity, of civilization, are made possible through tapping into abundant energy of such sources as the sun and the oceans, without producing any toxic byproducts and without poisoning life present or sabotaging yet-to-come. The creative, constructive uses of human intelligence make it possible for both nature and civilization to exist - for nature to be accepted and left as <br />nature, and for man to make the best of man and his world. <br /><br />This makes the best of the given and the created. The world given that is nature is known, respected, and left as much alone as possible; the world created that is the civilization exists in all of what it is capable and reaches, through maximization of intelligent creation and minimization of waste and destruction, to greater heights with no end in sight. The mind is not used to blindly destroy, but to intelligently build on the givens, to provide sustainable long-term existence for the civilization that man has created, while treading lightly upon the nature that man has not.<br /><br />The sun and the ocean water are not at risk of running out for thousands of years; which means that, with clean energy, the world can be counted upon to be there for a long time. This allows the people to conceive and work toward a future that is indefinite rather than one that will end when the predatory oil-funded dinosaurs extinguish the life on the planet while telling people that it is punishment from God and using that to suffocate them still more. Life can go on, in both natural and human aspects, and people can plan and work towards a viable long-term future for themselves and for humanity. This builds in people the habits that are prudent, responsible, viable and conducive to life. <br /><br />Clean energy recognizes, validates, and respects both nature and man, and makes most and not the least of life in both aspects. Nature is not just resources to be burned for consumption without regard for the future; it is something that is respected for its variety and richness and life-generative capacity - while man, rather than being merely a short-sighted destroyer, becomes an intelligent creator who builds on the knowledge of science and technology to create a livable future and livable world. Prosperity is not sacrificed; it is enhanced and extended. And so is livability of the planet, as well as of civilization itself. <br /><br />The high levels of technology needed to put in place solar beams and similar devices encourage and validate the view of humanity as intelligent beings responsible for the destiny of both humanity and the planet, while also drawing on - making constructive use of - and fostering - in people inventive intelligence, long-term perspective, generative capacity, responsibility for the future, eye toward maximal benefit and minimal destruction, and greater understanding of, respect for, and caring for, the world - both in the given, natural aspect, and in the human, man-created, form. The mentality and character that is encouraged, both in people and in their social and economic and political activities, is therefore one that makes most of these virtues. It is the character that not only makes possible to indefinitely power the civilization while being minimally obtrusive to nature, but also fosters a nobler, more prudent, more responsible, more creative, more nonobtrusive, and more life-affirming and life-extending character in the people who would inhabit such a civilization - and, pursuant this, in the character of the orders that they stand to create.<br /><br />Not only does clean energy therefore lead to a viable future, but it also fosters a more viable character in the people and consequently in the economic, political, and social orders that they create. From predatory destroyers eating alive the world and engorging themselves in the process, people become intelligent human beings who work toward a sustainable future in which the natural world can keep living, as civilization remains existing and achieves ever greater heights. The qualities of clean energy economy - responsibility toward the future, high levels knowledge, inventiveness and intelligence, use of mind to create, sustaining and growing the civilization while taking care to tread lightly upon the planet, life-affirming character that uses mind for constructive solutions that maximize creation and minimizes destruction, and respect found by intelligence for what man has not created as well as respect earned by intelligence for opting for and implementing this arrangement - will become more and more the substance of people's characters and percolate more and more to their social and political interactions to impart to them greater levels of these virtues. And that is a positive influence not only for the chance of the world to have a viable future, but also for the character of the people who stand to inherit the world.<br /><br /><br />Originality and Will<br /><br />My friend, who works as a teacher and counselor at a school for troubled kids, says that the school policy is to defuse student romances by reminding the students of whatever relationship problems their parents had and leading them to believe that they will have the exact same problems. <br /><br />My response: People have choice over what to do, and whatever the accident of training or background it becomes possible for people to do right deliberately out of their own values and choice. And it is in this ability to do things proactively and directly that is the saving grace of humanity, and its potential for liberation from tyranny of all kinds. <br /><br />Without the volitional consciousness, the people become dragged down to the status of animals. Being an animal may seem appealing to some, until the animal tribe does what the animal tribes do best and starts plucking out the distinct. The animalistic drive for racial purity takes over, until the tribe turns into a Nazi horde. In psycho-fascism, the goal has been to destroy the people that they believe to be wrongly made. Beside the horrendous human rights violations, what happens is still more sinister: <br /><br />The original mind (to whom the world owes all it has) and the original makeup (the reason that life has evolved past the stage of microbes) come under the worst of abuse and are assaulted, degraded and torn down. <br /><br />And it is beyond hypocrisy for the living, human, beings, inhabiting a highly advanced civilization, to attack and destroy the mechanisms to which they owe everything from representative democracy to higher physics to the poetry of John Keats. <br /><br />Would an original mind have difficulty in a tribe? Absolutely. His own mental processes, being unique and distinct from the party line of the tribe, will grate against the sociocultural context and cause internal and external difficulties of one or another kind. But it is the original, creative, inspired, passionate minds that are at the root of all improvement we've seen in human history. To look beyond personality adaptation and into the nature of things-as-are - makes possible manifest human value. And rather than plucking out the pearls, the man begins seeing their splendor and giving them a place in the necklace adorning the neck of the beloved - <br /><br />And a way to be anything other than indiscriminate addition to sedentary mass. <br /><br />Now faced with this dynamic, which incidentally explains according to its own mechanisms the supposed stereotype of tortured artist or innovator (which some in psychology want to equate with narcissism), the ideology of postmodernism has been preaching that there is no originality in the human being and no originality in realm of thought. This was an excuse for the postmodernist's own lack of inspired genius, and perhaps an excuse for the academia and the media to be taken over by ones who are least capable of making real improvements and robbed of those who are. The result has been a drastic reduction in Noble Prizes won by American scientists, and a stupendous degradation in the quality of American art and literature. Without originality in nature, we would all be bacteria; and without originality of heart and mind, the normal people would all be normal serfs in one or another normal hidebound monarchy working normal 16-hour-days on a normal two-acre plot of land and getting run over by normal murderers and rapists. <br /><br />And it is to that state of affairs that the anti-originality movements have been seeking to return humankind. <br /><br />And the first step has been plucking out the people who are capable of originality - as well as those capable of excellence, inspiration, wisdom, and passionate love. <br /><br />No, it is not elitist to pursue excellence; it is making the most of the potentiality embodied in human being. No, it is not pathological to cultivate passionate love; it is sharing emotional riches of which one <br />is capable with another human being who would appreciate such a thing. No, it is not narcissistic to come up with new ideas; it is the centerpiece of all human improvement. No, it is not patriarchial for <br />women to be tender, feminine and artistic; it is empowering of what women can be as distinct in what men are capable of being, and as such dignifying, enriching and ennobling to any woman who would pursue that path. <br /><br />And in attacking such things, what is attacked is anything that is ennobling - and that as such by its own quality refutes the atavistic postmodern worldview. <br /><br />But what is attacked still more thoroughly in the process is liberty. <br />Liberty which means first of all freedom of thought, freedom of feeling and freedom of self-definition - <br />Which is the corollary of will and deliberate choice - <br />Which is the only climate in which any kind of improvement is possible - <br /><br />And which the conman's totalitarianism that is a result of projection of animalistic interest through psycho-fascism cannot allow to exist lest it by its own beingness refute the interest's big lie. <br /><br />When psychology first became big, preaching that people are driven rather than driving (instead of the far more healthy worldview that people, being human and animal at once, are both driven and driving, <br />different people to different extents and in different endeavors), many rightfully felt insulted by this argument. Among mistaken reactions were “love under will” and the far more ruinous "nevertheless I will." The correct response is: I WILL - period. And that means: <br /><br />I craft. I create. I invent. I produce splendor and innovation. <br /><br />Allowing complete manifestation of humanity and its path to accomplishment. <br /><br />Which spirit, being driven into extinction by the aforementioned-fascism in realms of academia and the media, ended up reluctantly going into business, resulting in business growth against the backdrop of media and academia wilting away. <br /><br />I am of the belief that active, engaged, smart, benevolent, principled media and academia are essential to liberty and civilization. And that if they are to regain influence, it is essential that they return to the spirit of innovation and excellence that allowed them in the first place to exist. And that means, recognizing the fact of all that makes possible excellence and innovation - <br /><br />Which is the human; the will; the passionate; the ingenious; the inspired. <br /><br />Which spirit is the embodied refutation of the postmodernist nastiness, and the salvation from unofficial tyranny embodied therein. <br /><br />With recognition of will - and of its corollaries of freedom and choice - it becomes possible to again resurrect beauty, dignity, excellence, and all the other great virtues. And then it becomes possible for people to be human again. <br /><br />I do not seek to deny the animal. I seek to also remember the human. I seek to remember intelligence, because intelligence is at the root of all that man has created as well as it is his protection from tyranny, conmanship and injustice. I seek to remember brilliance and ingenuity, because that is what made all the true innovation in all areas of life as well as capacity to see through rackets. And I seek to remember beauty, because beauty is brilliance and intelligence manifest in nature and in the works of humankind.<br />javascript:void(0)<br />And through the integrative synthesis of existence and essence - nature and man - heart and mind - the drives and the driving - to make viable the modes of cognition that recognize the totality of human existence and make it possible for humanity to be all it can be, and for the world to be all it can be as the result of its creation and unfoldment. <br /><br /><br />Freedom from Rackets: Path to Livable Future<br /><br />With freedom from rackets, is made possible transparency at a profound level that makes it possible for people to see what they are dealing with and know how to work with it in a way that produces beneficial results. And the more the rackets, at any level, are seen through, the greater the chance not only of creating people and societies possessing integrity, but also of seeing conditions for what they are and impacting them, knowledgeably and responsibly, for the benefit of the existing and the yet to exist.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-71986240238113191472008-11-25T03:07:00.000-08:002009-06-01T23:53:59.682-07:00Sustainable Development vs. Artificial ArmageddonIn 1998, after observing activities of the Christian Right in California where I was living and working, I predicted what was going to happen. And it did. I knew what they were up to, and I described them as Nazis of America. I knew that they were going to seriously undermine, the country, and they did just that. And now it is time to pick up the pieces.<br /><br />To be fair, the ideologies of the 1990s that they have replaced were full of hideous error. Political correctness made it impossible for people to say what they thought, resulting in massive hypocrisy and strangulation. The idea that everything is about self-esteem created an inverted value system in which those who have lowest standards for themselves and thus find self-esteem most easy to come by dominated those who have higher standards and thus find it less easy to think as well of themselves. The brain-dead concept of adequacy dating from Alfred Adler, and the perversion of the concept of winners and losers from Eric Berne, turned people into enemies of one another, kept people from doing good to others, and allowed entities to play divide-and-conquer and to ensnare both those who thought themselves winners and those who were seen as losers. The war waged by worst elements among feminists against beauty, love, tenderness, warmth and goodness made the climate so toxic and horrible that people flocked to any ideology that might protect them from it, including ideologies that were completely destructive. The DSM-II psychology with its erroneous concept of what is health - and consequently erroneous concept of what is sickness - aimed to - and, where implemented, did - rob America of its sources of creative thinking, ingenuity, risk-taking, passion and greatness, reducing the productivity of its science, impoverishing people’s minds and relationships, and keeping true innovation from taking place. And the New Age idea that everyone makes their own reality – that no one can either help or injure another – that everyone is in control of everything that others do to them – and that someone to whom bad things have been done caused them and will be bad for everyone else - stopped people from doing good, denied assistance where it was needed, kept people strangulated in bad situations, and supported corruption, cruelty, crookedness, callousness and conmanship all around.<br /><br />What followed however was not an improvement but degradation. What followed was a totalitarian misogynistic apocalyptic cult that warred, with predictably disastrous results, against human rights, liberty, peace, prosperity, science, reason, women's rights, and democracy itself. What followed was the darkest hour in American history since Second World War, with none of its glory. What followed was a Giant Leap Backwards to 19th century and an undoing of the accomplishments of civilization that took place since then.<br /><br />There was - and is - another totalitarian misogynistic cult attempting to war with this one and with the rest of the world. And to both of the preceding, it is time to say: You do not have the right values to lead. If you believe that it is OK to conceive - and work toward - a world that ends before your children or grandchildren have reached maturity, and where the bulk of the people wind up in hell, then you do not have the right moral values to lead the great countries of the world. Having gone into one of these cults - and having had close personal relations with people from the other - I have come out having made a moral decision. And the decision is this: I would rather burn in Hell than conceptualize and work toward such a future, or be a part of any entity - secular or religious - that does.<br /><br />And I hope that more people of goodwill and intellect - and ones of either of the preceding - make the same choice.<br /><br />It becomes incumbent to move away from both errors - those committed in 1990s and those committed in this decade - and work toward a sustainable, peaceful, beautiful, long-term future. To use high-technology, high-intelligence, high-job-creation abundant clean energy solutions to provide for the world of civilization that man has created while impinging minimally on world of nature that man has not. To fully fund nanotechnology, stem-cell research, and genetic cures for cancer and congenital disease. To create synthetic life-forms to eat the plastics and clean out the landfills - to replant rainforests - to support both public and private space travel, resulting in colonization of Mars and Moon and eventually long-distance space travel. It is time to develop and put to work human brilliance, passion and inspiration and create a long-term beautiful sustainable future for humanity.<br /><br />It is time to create true family values - values that allow in relationships for men and women to have meaningful roles suitable for who they are; that teach men to respect their wives, and teach all parties to have the attitude, respect and goodwill to negotiate among themselves and work together to better future for both their daughters and their sons. To create beautiful, loving relations between men and women, where women are respected as being women and do not have to act like bad men in order to gain equality or respect. To teach men how to treat their wives nobly and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law domestic violence and child abuse.<br /><br />It is time to create better social values - values that celebrate and make room for the fulfilment of beauty, intellect, caring, insight, and benevolence, both in women and in men. It is time to create better psychology - psychology that affirms, accepts, and allows to manifest and constructively implement, human genius, insight, brilliance, greatness, ingenuity and love. And it is time to create better moral values - values that accept life, celebrate life, and reward what adds to it and leads to its richness and continuity.<br /><br />It is time to create covenants that respect all these things and tap into their endless resources in humanity to avail of their riches and employ them for benefit of the present and ages to come. It is time to sustain such covenants by values and ways affirming and hospitable of the above. It is time to move away from oppressive, destructive, malicious mentalities - secular or religious - and replace them with mindsets affirming of life, in its natural and man-created aspects, allowing a replenishment of nature, continuous prosperity and accomplishment of the civilization, and affirmation and constructive fruition of both natural and creating aspects of human being.<br /><br />It is time to use intellect not to divide but to create, and to strive for win-win scenarios. It is not nature or civilization, reason or feeling, love or equality, spirit or body, business or government, doing good or doing well; with true use of mind, it is both in every duality. And by being employed to do the tasks necessary to make possible the preceding, intelligence - now a tool of combining and creating instead of dividing - becomes a path to true peace, to constructive sustainable integration, to life being seen and given path to benefit at all levels. At which point intelligence - which has at all times been the true saving grace of humanity - becomes saving grace once again and a basis for a long and beautiful future.<br /> <br />It is time to look at the inherent logic of the beliefs - secular and religious - and trace them to their logical consummation. And by doing so, to predict their effect on the world. Whether a secular belief that claims that creativity, ingenuity, passion, originality, inventiveness, greatness and love are pathological - or a religious belief that claims that women are root of all evil, that nature and physicality is of the Satan, that the only good in the world comes from the belief and that all else is going to hell - can be traced and easily found out for their results. The first being, stagnation and decline and graying of the world - and the second being, a totalitarian misogynistic abusive world-gobbling apocalyptic cult. And then it becomes possible to create better ways, better values, better traditions, that tap into instead of suppressing the genius and beauty and greatness that lives in humanity, and apply them toward creating a beautiful livable sustainable peaceful world.<br /><br />At this point the choice is really nothing less. Will humanity bring an Armageddon upon itself before the babies born in this baby boomlet have learned how to read, or will the future extend indefinitely and reach ever greater beauty and ever greater accomplishment. These are momentous times in world history, and it is up to us to decide which world will be bequeathed to our children and theirs and ones after them. <br /> <br />This, is the true moral choice facing this generation. And it is a choice that will resonate - on earth or in any conceivable afterlife - for ages to come.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-85229786818756134832008-11-17T23:43:00.000-08:002008-11-19T01:14:35.233-08:00Refuting ReaganismAs America wakes up to the ruin that has been forced on it by Reagan-Bush Republicans over the last thirty years, it is time to look at the basic tenets of Reaganism and show them for what they are.<br /><br />I deal here with Reagan’s economic policies and Reagan’s social policies and show them for their error.<br /><br />Tenet One of Reagan economics is that the government is a tax-and-spend operation, and that cutting taxes leads to economic growth. That has been solidly refuted by the last two administrations. The high-tax Clinton economy produced 23 million new jobs, soaring family incomes, and the greatest prosperity that America ever had. The low-tax Bush administration - with Republican Congress for six out of its eight years in power - produced collapsing family incomes and no new jobs.<br /><br />The governments prior to Reagan were regarded as being "tax-and-spend." The Reagan-influenced governments however were something far more irresponsible. The Republican administrations starting with Reagan produced Borrow-And-Spend policies that put America ten trillion dollars in the hole.<br /><br />This debt is now being passed on to the children and grandchildren of Reagan Republicans. And I ask this of the people behind this: How dare you speak of family values when you are doing this to your own children? How dare you speak of responsibility while you are passing on this crushing burden to those who have not had any part in making this problem or any voice in how it is dealt with? How dare you speak of fighting crime or being American patriots when you have committed this giant criminal misdeed against America?<br /><br />The Reagan borrow-and-spend economics are not just wrong morally. They are also wrong economically. Government debt takes investment funds out of productive sectors of the economy, making it harder for businesses to start or expand. High levels of bond debt leads to rising interest rates. In both cases, economy falls. It did in the second way under Bush Sr; and it did the first way under Bush Jr.<br /><br />The borrow-and-spend economics is also wrong in its basic contention. With government, it's not pay or not pay; it's pay now or pay later. For as long as you want roads, military, police, courts, schools, fire engines, jails, garbage pickup, you pay. Or else your children and grandchildren will have to.<br /><br />Perhaps the people behind Reaganomics are working toward a 10 trillion dollar government debt default. Perhaps they are thinking the world will end before it is due. More likely, they just don’t care what they are doing to their children and to their country. In either case, the attitude is totally unacceptable.<br /><br />The next tenet of Reaganism: "Get government off people's backs." And yet the most solid Republican constituencies - Texas and Plains States - exist solely by virtue of government. The economic bases for these constituencies are Texas Oil, beef industry, and the military. The third is part of government. The second is heavily subsidized by the government. And the first became and remained what it is by virtue of lobbying the government and deceiving the public. <br /><br />Oil interests have deceived the nation for decades, claiming that there is no global warming and that nothing man do can affect the environment. They are responsible for the current climatic crisis. Without their conmanship, America and much of the world would have by now converted to high-intelligence, high-technology, high-job abundant clean energy such as the energy of the sun and the electrolysis of ocean water - technology that can provide for all of people's material requirements while minimally impinging on nature. Instead it was - "liberal academics this, liberal media that" - well. Now we know who has been truly brainwashing the public, and who truly has been stealing from the people their most precious commodity – their future.<br /><br />The beef industry in its present form is likewise parasitical. It takes ten times as much biomass to produce a pound of beef as it does to produce an equivalent amount of grain. Government subsidies to the beef industry that make beef artificially cheap keep the country producing an inefficient, unhealthy, environmentally expensive foodstuff when it could have produced ten times as much healthy food. Food that it could have sold on world markets, reaping huge revenues, and given away in famines, reaping great international goodwill, instead of reaping disease and debt.<br /><br />The true sources of American prosperity are and have always been the Democratic areas of the country. The greatest source of 1980s and 1990s prosperity - personal computer - was invented by a California hippie named Steven Jobs and put in place by Democratic constituencies in California, Washington State, and the DC area. Another big source of prosperity - Internet - was a government project. Of America's Nobel Prize - winning scientists, 90% came from Democratic states, and of its Ivy League institutions of learning, all except Duke are in solid Democratic states. America's richest states in per capita terms are DC, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York - solidly Democratic. There is a reason for all this, and it has to do with the thinking habits that are required for innovation and for generation of true prosperity.<br /><br />Innovation in science, technology, and organizational and business practices, depends on free and creative thinking. The authoritarian-minded red states cannot tolerate such a thing and suppress it wherever they find it. The Democrats on the other hand are open to such things and encourage it, nurture it, and bring it to constructive fruition. Which means that Democrats develop habits of mind needed to innovate and create true prosperity, while Republicans feed off of them, demonize and attack them, and the steal the credit. The Democratic thinking is about how to create; the Republican thinking is about how to bludgeon, deceive, steal credit and place blame. Which makes them parasitical economically as much as they are parasitical in other respects.<br /><br />Another major tenet of Reaganism has been aggressive inattention to the environment. Now we all know exactly where this leads. Even the Republicans are waking up to the reality of what they have done to the world. And that is a belated big Duh for people who were so certain that they knew reality and common sense, and that everyone who thought to the contrary was a fool or a crazy.<br /><br />The social policies of Reagan have been just as disastrous. Abortion and “family values” are a ruse – a false issue used to distract the public from real social issues of the day. Domestic brutality and abuse of women and children in families is and has always been the true social wrong facing the people. The Reaganists sought to silence these truths – by portraying women as losers or crazy for being in the abusive relationships and portraying them as evil if they left; by abusing the concept of personal responsibility to blame people for wrong that others did to them while exonerating the wrongdoer; and by claiming that America was losing its “moral fiber” as more women left situations of abuse. And in neither case was there anything moral in these policies. The purpose was and remains to perpetuate abusive, brutal, incestuous ways from generation to generation, and portray these horrendous practices as morality or tradition or family values. <br /><br />The family values and morality that I have shown above that Reaganists have the least of, as they have forced federal debt and environmental catastrophe on their own children and on the children of everyone else.<br /><br />In making major issues of nonissues, while failing to address true wrongdoing, resources were distracted from where they were needed and engaged them in battles where they could be portrayed as being against morality. This paralyzed the women’s rights and human rights agenda and kept it from being applied where it was most in need. The result has been ongoing incest, abuse and brutality all over America. And that is the true reality of Reagan conservatism – the true reality of the so-called traditional family values. Quite simply, a parent or a partner who truly practices ethics treats the partner and children in such a manner that they do not want to leave him. Whereas a parent or a partner who uses “family-value” theme to keep them from leaving is the one who is unethical in the values and actions he practices toward his family and least merits to lay a claim on the concept.<br /><br />Further policies – Reagan’s anti-education, anti-academic, anti-intellectual and anti-media propaganda in particular – resulted in the thinning and hollowing out of institutions of science and education, greatly reduced levels of Nobel Prize winning work, denying the media scrutiny to matters that were of most import, and allowing corruption to go on without strong and active media and academia being there to check it. It also resulted in turning of red-state America into a morass of aggressive ignorance and violent stupidity. In Reagan society, intelligence was despised and bullied, abused, demonized, trivialized, or even criminalized and pathologized. This resulted in dumbening of the population, in America overrun by cons and cults, and in degradation in the character of American people. It also resulted in loss of what media and academia exist for – cultivation of knowledge, education of youth, scrutiny of all levels of society, checking of corruption, and address of issues of public concern.<br /><br />The refusal to include birth control in population control initiatives made sure the gross overpopulation of the world. The support for militant Islam against Communism created the terrorist threat facing the world today. The “war on drugs” led to two parasitical infrastructures: Brutal gangs and cartels to deliver the forbidden goods – with most drug-related violent crime related to its distribution instead of consumption – and expensive police and prison infrastructure to keep imprisoned people who have availed themselves of drugs or were falsely convicted of having done so.<br /><br />And the concept of personal responsibility was abused to blame people for the wrong that others have done to them - to blame wives for brutality by their husbands, to blame poor children for their heritage, to blame the disenfranchised for despotism and oppression against them, to blame people around the world for actions of despots, to blame "humanity" for global warming and federal debt accumulated by Reaganists – as much as it was abused to discourage people from pursuits such as teaching and science that are not well monetarily compensated but that hold supreme social value. If every person is responsible for themselves and solely for themselves, and success is measured in monetary achievement, then it is against the ethic of the times to do anything for the children, or for the country, or for the planet, or for justice and peace. This Reaganist ethic sowed not only corruption, violence, deception and sociopathy at all levels of America, but also prevented action to redress and prevent the same. This directly led to these great wrongs becoming way of life in America, when there was tons of knowledge and resources that, with better values and leadership, could have been used to correct these wrongs.<br /><br />As for the nonsense of liberal-media-and-academia-are-brainwashing-you (and the people who claim such things aren't) - who indeed is more worthy of being believed: hundreds of thousands of brilliant, dedicated, hard-working people working on scientific pursuit of knowledge, or Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson style blowhards who claim them all idiots and sinners while they themselves are contributing nothing whatsoever toward that pursuit? In defunding America's scientists and teachers and discrediting its journalists and professors, Reaganists have deceived, debased and dumbened America. And that, along with global warming, federal debt, sickening of America, domestic brutality, world overpopulation, Islamic terrorism, and deterioration in American character, is a crime that Reagan “conservatives” will have to wear for decades to come.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-60589906209448130142008-11-01T05:23:00.001-07:002009-06-01T23:51:19.535-07:00True family valuesFor a long time the concept of family values has been completely misconstrued. It was used to mean a return to 1950s-style arrangement and exclusion of all innovation that came after 1950s. As a father, and one dedicated to the well-being of my family and my daughter, I say this: That is not family values.<br /><br />True family values is about bequeathing to one's children a better world than what existed when one has found it. True family values is about making sure that one's children have a chance. True family values is about providing for the future. And that means, a long-term, sustainable, livable future, and not one that is supposed to end at the time that the baby boomers have died.<br /><br />True family values is about preserving the planet in all its richness and splendor, and using intelligence and technology to provide for material needs while minimally impinging upon the world's climate, air quality, water quality, and biospheric diversity. It means using high-intelligence, high-technology abundant clean energy solutions to keep the civilization running while preserving what man has not created and does not know how to recreate. It means sustainable agriculture, sustainable industry, sustainable energy, and sustainable technology, using the best of man - his intellect, effort and dedication - to power the world of civilization that man has created while being nonobtrusive to world of nature that man has not.<br /><br />True family values is about creating institutional transparency, so that one's children do not have to live in a snakepit of corruption, deception and cruelty that takes place when this does not exist. It means ridding institutions of rackets and cons that are used to silence people from telling the truth. It means creating media, court, and political cultures that practice transparency and integrity and are not afraid to confront corruption in whatever form it may take.<br /><br />True family values is about creating covenants in which one's daughters have a chance at a life worth having, and do not have to worry about abusive partners, corrupt and ensnaring communities, bullying in school and in workplace, and religious, social and institutional abuse. It is about making sure that one's daughters can attain to their potential and not be undermined in it by entities or individuals hateful of women's advancement or of human rights. It means full enforcement of human rights and civil rights and standing up to all things that are hateful to the preceding. And it means protecting meaningfully people's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, even when and especially when this is not popular.<br /><br />True family values is about putting the future ahead of the present, rather than making the future pay for irresponsible borrow-and-spend policies and planetary destruction of the present with no eye toward posterity. It is about doing what needs to be done, now, in order that there is a livable future for one's children. It is about fiscal sanity and environmental sanity, and about using intelligence to make possible the preceding.<br /><br />True family values is about imparting to children real education that gives them understanding necessary for good citizenship and for avoiding rackets and cons. It is about making primary education sufficiently strong that the children come out of it with knowledge and with intelligence that allows them to be better citizens as well as better workers. It is about making college education more affordable, so that those who seek to rise to that level can, regardless of income of the family.<br /><br />True family values is about recognizing and giving the way to fruition of human genius, goodwill, intellect, love and beauty, making it possible for these endless sources of good to flourish and to impart to the world and its inhabitants of the magnificence that they have to give.<br /><br />True family values is about creating an honest society and ending corruption, whether it be in law or medicine or government or business or small town or society itself. It is about making things clear and making that clarity and integrity the basis of social covenants and interactions, with no room for corruption, oppression, deception or abuse. <br /><br />It is about creating a livable society for one's children, as well as a livable planet.<br /><br />And that, is the true family values that are at stake in the world at this time.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-64549085467012447422008-10-20T03:50:00.000-07:002008-10-20T05:04:56.285-07:00Character Smears and Character of AmericaThe predominant claim by political entities that campaign against the character of the opposition candidates is that they are protecting the character or integrity of the office. In fact, they degrade the character of the office as much as they degrade the character of the voter. Political culture of character assassination does not improve character of the office or of the country, but lowers it to the level of pettiness, nastiness, maliciousness, vileness and ugliness. And that does not improve the character of the office or of the nation; it degrades both. <br /><br />To create a political culture of character assassination, is to create a political culture of abuse. Abuse then becomes the way of the political process, putting into office the people who are most skilled at abuse - and frequently at nothing else. That leads to wrong people being in the office and implementing wrong policies - in many cases, given the way they got into the office, policies that are completely destructive and injurious to the people. So that, when a Rick Santorum claims that "sometimes it's good that people struggle" as he votes for a bill to make it harder for single mothers to have their children in babysitting while they are working, we see the product of the abusive character in politics and what it stands to do to the people. <br /><br />It is not only the ones in office that end up being encouraged toward wrongful action. The politicians' abusive behavior also trickles down to the voter. It influences people to behave in abusive ways to their families and to the people over whom they have influence. And that by itself is a source of needless suffering for millions. The constituencies that are abusive, or that want to be abusive, thrive on such politics. The more abusive the constituency, the more drawn it is to the politics of character smear. The level to which an individual or a constituency supports character smear campaigns is a good measure of the individual's or constituency's embrace of abusive practices in their own lives. And the more political life is based on <br />abuse, the more people take the example, the more abuse becomes the reality of people's lives. <br /><br />The abusive character of the political culture trickles up to the office-holders and down to the regular people. And then not only is the character of the political discourse diminished, but people's own character gets worse and worse, as does the lot of people at the receiving end of their behavior. <br /><br />That, is the true degradation in character that has taken place in politics of America. And the way to restore both statesmanship and American character, is to see through abusive smear tactics and demand dignity in the political process. The people who practice character smear campaigns, are themselves the worst character in the country and commit by their actions a far greater wrong than anything that the people whom they attack could be conceivably accused of having committed. Not only do they bring abuse into politics, but they also influence people to become abusers themselves. And that not only injures the credibility of America; it also injures countless millions of people who stand to be at the receiving end of abusive behavior by people influenced in such a way. <br /><br />So whenever one sees character smear campaign, it can be said with accuracy that the person doing such campaigning is an abuser, just as it can be said that someone who supports such campaign is likewise possessive of an abusive frame of mind. And bringing dignity and respect back to America requires growing beyond such despicable tactics and creating a culture of dignity in the political process. A person who truly is interested in character will concern himself with character which he encourages in the people. And if he campaigns abusively and influences people to be abusive, then it is him that exhibits the truly unworthy character and does true violence to the character of the political office and of the country itself.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-84819724230953422892008-10-15T16:35:00.001-07:002008-10-15T16:35:34.709-07:00Obama: Better man to fight terrorismObama is a better man for the war on terrorism, for a very simple reason. It is not just bombs that deter terrorists, but also improvement in the condition of the lives of people in Middle East and better view of the Western world. Terrorists feed off two twin problems: Bad living conditions and ill will toward the West. And it is by addressing the two, convincingly and effectively, that the spell of jihadism can be broken over the people of Middle East.<br /><br />The Australian army has figured this out, and is doing the right thing in Afghanistan. Not only are they involved, as all armies on the ground, in the military operations against Taliban, but they also are building schools for children and training adults in skills such as carpentry. In this they are tackling the two root problems. They are giving people a chance at a better future, and they are building goodwill in the people toward the West. That makes them a lot less likely to believe or join entities such as the Taliban.<br /><br />Whereas Republican policies are completely blind to this obvious dynamic. They just want to come in, bang up the place, and declare victory. Then they want to claim that the hatred that Middle East has toward America is because of its freedoms. That is false. While the jihadists do in fact hate everything that is not Sharia, the people support them because of the blindness, arrogance, greed, irresponsibility and stupidity of Republican policies in the region.<br /><br />The Reagan administration encouraged Islamism in Middle East as part of its war against Communism. What made them believe that Islamists would be more partial to USA than the Communists? Either it was a huge oversight, or we are seeing something sinister. And why would McCain, who has similar ideas on these matters as did Reagan, solve the problem instead of adding to it?<br /><br />Another misconceived policy was in regards to Afghanistan. America armed and trained mujahedeen against USSR. When USSR withdrew, American policymakers forgot that Afghanistan existed. It was not long before these same people turned their guns away from USSR, which no longer was on the map, to USA, which was. The people felt used and betrayed. This gave a fertile ground for jihadists, whose tactic has been to feed off any sentiment against the West or any part of the West and use it to turn people into terrorists.<br /><br />Indeed the terrorists have done this: Infiltrate any constituency that has a problem with West or with Israel or with government. Goal? Turn them all into Sharia thugs. Republican policies do not begin to address this problem, as they are focused solely on military action. But to truly end terrorism, it is necessary to also remove the true infrastructure for supporting terrorism: Ill will toward the West, and bad living conditions, of people in Middle East.<br /><br />To succeed over the long term, any anti-terrorist action requires that people in Middle East be given good view of the West as well as a chance at a better existence. And while nobody is advocating that the war against Al Quaeda and Taliban be brought to a halt, in order to create and win the peace it is requisite to apply approach similar to one that is being taken by Australian forces in the region. It is necessary to win the war; it is also necessary to win the peace. And that can only come from action that benefits people on the ground as effectively as it combats the militants in the hills.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-30940223776585979552008-10-15T02:06:00.000-07:002008-10-15T02:13:24.403-07:00Immigration and SynthesisThe problems that the children of hippies experienced have been blamed on the supposed bad parenting of them by the hippies. This is wrong. The root of the problem is that the parents lived by one set of values while living in a society that ran by another. The exact same problems have existed in other similar situations - Hindu children who were raised in America; children of the people with American sympathies who were raised in the Communist countries; children of Mexican or black people who were raised in racist societies; children of liberals who were raised in conservative parts of America. And given dynamics involved such problems are inevitable. <br /><br />What is loved at home, is hated outside the home. What is loved outside the home, is hated at home. The child either tries to please both at once, or goes entirely one way in either one or the other direction. Both tug, pull, make all kinds of demands. And neither home nor outside the home will completely accept, as the two worlds hate each other and, when they are at war, both demand complete loyalty - against the other world. <br /><br />So the blame-the-hippies people got it all wrong. It's not the problem with the hippies; it's the problem of living by one way in a society that lives by another. And this is going to happen all over the world, and all over America, by people on any side of any divide, for as long as the forces are not understood and not dealt with in an intelligent and rightful way.<br /><br />Banking on the illusion of world war II generation being right, a speaker at Republican convention in 1992 said that right and wrong is "what your grandmother taught you." Let's see. That would mean, for the boomers, the flapper generation; for my children, the boomer generation; and for me, my Stalinist grandmother. Then there was the "back-to-the-basics" or "back-to-the-roots" movement. So that means, you want me to "go back to my roots." Really? You want me to become a Stalinist? One word for such attitudes: Idiocy. Two words: Complete idiocy. <br /><br />These one-size-fits-all solutions are wrong because one size does not fit all at all. And far greater knowledge, wisdom and understanding is achieved by people using their minds proactively and arriving at their own solutions than is achieved by having one ill-fitting mold imposed by one or another band of thugs. <br /><br />When raised among conflicting worldviews, systems and beliefs, the person has claims laid on him or her by everyone. The home wants complete loyalty and claims betrayal if one goes with what's outside the home. What's outside the home wants complete loyalty and claims betrayal (of country, "values", whatever) if one goes with the home. Then there's more idiots who claim that such people "lack integrity" or "are at sea." There is a good reason for that. We are dealing with people who've been raised in many worldviews and who therefore cannot have single mind about things unless their minds are completely locked. The only form of integrity that is available to someone who's experienced many worldviews is what I call dynamic integrity - the integrity of mind as created dynamically through insight and cross-examination of the perspectives among one another. Which, in many ways, is a process that leads to far greater knowledge and understanding than does static integrity of sticking with whatever "roots" one is supposed to have. <br /><br />The intercultural flux accomplishes this: expose people to different mindsets. That means that people are removed from false comforting myths of one or another worldview and must use their brains. That is for the better. The more people have to use intelligence, the stronger it gets, the greater the knowledge and intelligence of the population. And the greater its capacity of making truly responsible choices that actually have a chance of being informed enough to create worthwhile outcomes. <br /><br />On the way, are found all kinds of dangers. One woman I've known about had been a respected professional in the Soviet Union. In America, she was nothing, and she kept saying such things as "I used to be a person once." An older writer who had been vice-president of the Soviet Union Writer's Guild was reduced to going to restaurants in his Soviet-style suit and glasses selling people his book. His input: "We are Russian, and that's all we will ever be." In both cases, immigration was most likely the wrong decision - another evidence against one-size-fits-all solutions, whatever the ideology of the day may be. <br /><br />To be completely American is to betray Russia. To be completely Russian is to betray America. But to see the right and the wrong in both, and to combine the rights while eliminating the wrongs - that, is a way to serve, embody, and improve both at the same time. <br /><br />The mindsets can be combined in all kinds of ways, from optimal to worst to all between. One negative combination can be seen in my UVA classmate and fellow Russian immigrant Sam Vaknin, author of book on "Narcissistic personality disorder," who is using the Soviet tactic of pathologizing dissent to pathologize all potential sources of dissent from the party line of his profession - and in the process pathologize also all potential sources of innovation, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, drive, passion, creative thinking, and risk-taking to which America owes all it has. Another negative combination is found in those who've brought to America the Russian social authoritarianism and are using Russian-style dogmatism to empower oppressive agendas like Christian Right. Seeking a sustainably positive state of affairs, I am taking a different path of integration, and using American can-do spirit, enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial mentality to bring into America the Russian passion, poetry, romanticism and intellectual thought. <br /><br />Too many in America have no value for the poetic, the romantic, the intellectual and the philosophical. With people lacking value for these, those naturally inclined toward such pursuits run into all kinds of nastiness, which leads many people to see the wrong attitudes responsible for such affects as rightful. They are not. The Soviet Union (and many in Russia before that) equated capitalism with evil and business with crime. The people naturally entrepreneurial became criminals - black marketeers, "speculators" (illegal resellers), "prohodimets's" (system manupulators), and later bandit capitalists. This likewise led many to believe the attitudes responsible for these affects as rightful. They are not. The problem is not with poetry, romanticism, arts or philosophical thinking any more than it is with business. The problem is with societies that have no value for these legitimate, worthwhile endeavors, and thus not only injure and criminalize those capable of these things, but also <br />fail to tap into the potential of these people and employ it for the benefit of the country and its people. <br /><br />Russia will benefit from seeing the value of entrepreneurship and giving legitimacy to the process, allowing it to be done in legitimate ways and raise Russian material standards of living. America will benefit from seeing the value of passion, poetry, and conceptual thinking, and using these things to enrich people's minds, selves, relationships, and experience of life and one another. There is no unfixable flaw with either Russia or America. The problem is with wrong attitudes traditionally held by both populations. Replace those false limiting traditional attitudes with attitudes that see and apply instead of hindering human potential, and both places will bloom.Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-750016168570767026.post-38712301345518845592008-10-15T01:56:00.000-07:002008-10-15T02:05:21.750-07:00The Superpower Syndrome<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:12px;"> <p> Having for 12 years lived in the former Soviet Union - and for 18 years in America - I have seen a malignancy shared by many citizens of both countries. I refer to it as the Superpower Syndrome. <br /></p><p>The affliction manifests in slightly different forms in the two countries, but its essence is similar. The afflicted believes that, because his country is great, he is great just by virtue of having been born in that country and needs to do nothing whatsoever in order to make himself great. The possessor of Superpower Syndrome claims unconditional greatness as derived from his country and believes he does not need to develop intelligence, wisdom, goodness, or personal cultivation, and indeed that such things are against his country. Instead he derives his concept of greatness from his concept of patriotism - manifest in tunnel vision, barbarism, cruelty, ignorance and hatred of everything existing outside his home. <br /></p><p>The afflicted might believe different things and mouth different dogmas. The American may say "Money talks, bullsh*t walks"; the Soviet may have said "he fears me, that means he respects me." The American may tell his children to say "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"; the Soviet taught his children to say "proletariats of all countries unite." What both societies had in common, was the belief that they catered to the lowest common denominator - and as such were arbiters of reality, humanity and life itself. And both, in pursuit to the aforementioned beliefs, trivialized, demonized or destroyed everything that is more subtle, or less easily quantifiable, or requiring an attention span greater than that of an average TV commercial to understand. <br /></p><p>This of course has been the very worst feature of both superpowers. An American may believe that people who rightly appreciate - and draw into their lives - the appealing ideas and customs of other civilization is a poser. A Soviet may have said that the same person was the enemy of the proletariat. An American may believe that personal cultivation (as pursued in cultures such as France and Japan) is wussy or weakening. A Soviet may have said that such things were bourgeois. Having both received their political systems from erudite, finely cultivated intellectuals (Jefferson and Franklin in America; Marx and Lenin in USSR), they both turned viciously and barbarically anti-intellectual and anti-artistic, claiming the same to be artifacts of aristocracy rather than a natural human right - a pursuit that develops the people into the best they can be and enriches, invigorates, and gives wisdom, color and bounty to the countries and the citizens of the countries, whatever their income level and profession. <br /></p><p>Both, in the process, have seen quite hideous demagoguery. As the Soviets referred to luxury, sexuality and prosperity as vices of capitalism, so have American demagogues sought to portray intellectual, philosophical and artistic perspectives as being elitist or un-American. Whether or not they are elitist, or "vices of capitalism," is beside the point. All that the Soviets attacked in their demagoguery - and all that Americans have attacked in the same vein - enriches human existence and elevates it to a level above the "bottom line," however that is defined in each country. Furthermore, it gives expression to the most magnificent in the human being and allows it to do what it naturally seeks to do: Add color and beauty and elegance to human existence and make our world an improvement on nature and not a degradation. <br /></p><p>The truly obnoxious feature of Superpower Syndrome - afflicted individual is his equation of swinishness, cruelty, barbarism and sheer idiocy with morality. Believing himself to speak for human nature, he attacks, destroys and demonizes all aspects of human nature other than ones his country espouses as human nature while grotesquely indulging the aspects of human nature his country believes to be bottom line. An American who wants something other than acquisition of property, and a Soviet who wanted something other than to serve the state, comes under hideous and vicious attack - not because they are in any objective sense wrong (they are not), but rather because they violate the respective nation's ideological concept of what is human - and, by violating the nation's dogma of what is human (and consequently its pretense of being the unchallenged provider for fulfillment of human nature) constitute a blow to the very ideological precepts on which the country's claim to legitimacy is based. </p><p>In pursuing the Superpower Syndrome, the afflicted of course harms his country far more than he helps it. To keep out of one's country the good ideas of other countries, is to fail to incorporate wisdom, insight and genius that exists elsewhere and lead one's country to fall behind. To keep people from developing the beautiful, the thoughtful, and the artistic, is to impoverish the experience of the people and to turn one's country into something hideous and grotesque while failing to incorporate ideas that form spontaneously in the culture. To keep people from developing cultivation, is likewise to impoverish human experience. And to say that one thing is human nature or bottom line, while everything else is not, is to do grave violence and grave disservice to humanity and especially to one's own country. <br /></p><p>When the Soviet Union fell, many possessors of the Soviet version of Superpower Syndrome were left in a pretty bad place - a place that of course they had richly merited. America has so far been able to avoid similar fate due to a more intelligently designed system, but it has had a number of close calls. I still encounter Superpower Syndrome among American people, and that is something that I believe intelligent Americans ought to combat. The Superpower Syndrome is a drain and a blight, not a benefit, for the country, and in destroying the best that appears in the culture it leads to its long-term ruin. </p></span>Ilya Shambathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10614000324858420981noreply@blogger.com0