To fit in with "The Happiness Economy" thread.
[Thanks to Larry Cooper at UBRON for this.]
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Happiness Economy - Part 3: Recap and Inspiration
What have we learned so far? Probably not all that much. Still it might be worth a short recap. We did get to see some history and how it effected the policies of Western culture - primarily, the United States and Europe - as they established the way that both business and culture "should" operate in the entire world.
This was the mandate the world gave to these allies (the US and Britain mostly, but also the USSR in the east) as a prize for winning World War II, and these nations maintained this uncomfortable post-WWII stability through the patently insane mass-production of thermonuclear stock piles, each side - east and west - each claiming they were just trying to "keep the world safe" from the other.
This started the Cold War. And in this new kind of war there was no escape plan. Left as it was, the probability that it would have destroyed the world by accident well before our current date was almost a sure thing, it looked like we were in for big trouble.
The missiles kept piling up, and the computers used in making the decision of whether to retaliate against an "attack" (and there were close calls in this department) were incapable of the perfection needed for flawless defense. When the stakes got too high, treaties needed to be signed. And then it seemed like it took more and more treaties. It was a situation that was quickly spiraling, more and more, out of control. In the case of the Cold War it was not ultimately the leaders of countries who brought the world back from the brink of hell. It WAS the people.
The people of the world pulled a coups d'état on their leaders and said enough is enough. Throughout the 1980's, musicians (Pink Floyd's The Wall and The Final Cut, for example), movie producers ( The Day After), playwrights, poets, songwriters, teachers... and...
Students...
Remember this little hero: Samantha Smith, the little girl from Maine who wrote Yuri Andropov (current leader of the soviet Union at the time) a letter that helped change history?
I want to do the following extensive quote from Wikipedia, because it brings back what a huge contribution this girl made to humanity, with vivid detail, and it tells us just how fast we've forgotten what we've seen and just how easy it is to change the world, if the message is put the right way...
Your children have that same opportunity every day and the right, to express their dissatisfaction with the way adults run things, to add their take. They are much wiser about the basics than we give them credit for. And they could take the truth if we could take it ourselves enough to tell them what it is. Andropov didn't mince words [my bold]...
Don't be afraid to tell your kids things; not to scare them, but to inspire them to action. For Godsakes, tell them that they CAN do something about the overwhelming problems in the world. They don't have to be scared little lambs. In comparison Samantha Smith was a lion. Had she lived, the experience she gained in the 1980's might have led to her becoming the youngest Secretary of State. Had she not died at 13 she would be 39 right now. She could have become President of the United States. Your children should be allowed to think big.
When Samantha Smith died in a plane crash with her father it broke the world's heart. Many thought it was an omen that destruction was inevitable. We know now that the memory of her courage and innocence would inspire rather than discourage the world to end its death wish. And Samantha's loss was indeed felt around the world...
I wasn't kidding about a child leading us (please see "And a Child Shall Lead Us" post). Adults are losing control again. We want to be happy on the earth. We want there to be peace and health and freedom. But we DO NOT ACT as though this were a big priority. Most of us do not act at all. Most of us take the attitude of my parents when I asked about the truth. Any child could be the next Samantha Smith. And the more we can see ourselves through the eyes of our children, the more we will care about helping ourselves, the world we have inherited and, especially, those children of ours who deserve something better than what we are doing right now.
As I've highlighted in two past posts ("God - Within and Without" and "And A Child Shall Lead Us"), there are parents now who give me great hope. My friends from Yarmouth, Maine, especially are models of parenthood. My own sister is an exceptional mother. Her children are confident, well-loved, paid attention to, inspired, allowed to express themselves freely, well-behaved, funny, adventurous, healthy...and happy. But things are not easy for her. Still she makes sure that that doesn't effect the "kiddos" in any negative way.
These kinds of parents (mostly through the leadership of wise mothering - sorry dad's, you are great guys too, but I see this improvement as being largely due to the influence of a new breed of woman arising in the world, one who is not content to make the mistakes of her parents and grandparents, yet also has devotion to the family model and places it above all other concerns - no matter how hard she ALSO works outside or inside the home), the ones once called, "Generation X" (now, 25-45) are forming the foundation for a new society.
Their children are being born post Cold War, post 20th Century. These "Millennials" are the promise we have to the future. Someday, one of these children, I think, a woman, is going to become President of the United States and transform world culture into a more unified trans-national organization. When that happens, it is possible that world-wide wars will become a thing of the past. Starvation will be rare, international emergency agencies will become strong, a new economy based on the premise that humans should strive more to be happy and therefore find wealth, than to practice the false premise that they need to become wealthy in order to find happiness..
I hope so much to be looking back on the concerns of this blog, as a happy old man, and say, "Well, we did it!"
This was the mandate the world gave to these allies (the US and Britain mostly, but also the USSR in the east) as a prize for winning World War II, and these nations maintained this uncomfortable post-WWII stability through the patently insane mass-production of thermonuclear stock piles, each side - east and west - each claiming they were just trying to "keep the world safe" from the other.
This started the Cold War. And in this new kind of war there was no escape plan. Left as it was, the probability that it would have destroyed the world by accident well before our current date was almost a sure thing, it looked like we were in for big trouble.
The missiles kept piling up, and the computers used in making the decision of whether to retaliate against an "attack" (and there were close calls in this department) were incapable of the perfection needed for flawless defense. When the stakes got too high, treaties needed to be signed. And then it seemed like it took more and more treaties. It was a situation that was quickly spiraling, more and more, out of control. In the case of the Cold War it was not ultimately the leaders of countries who brought the world back from the brink of hell. It WAS the people.
The people of the world pulled a coups d'état on their leaders and said enough is enough. Throughout the 1980's, musicians (Pink Floyd's The Wall and The Final Cut, for example), movie producers ( The Day After), playwrights, poets, songwriters, teachers... and...
Students...
Remember this little hero: Samantha Smith, the little girl from Maine who wrote Yuri Andropov (current leader of the soviet Union at the time) a letter that helped change history?
I want to do the following extensive quote from Wikipedia, because it brings back what a huge contribution this girl made to humanity, with vivid detail, and it tells us just how fast we've forgotten what we've seen and just how easy it is to change the world, if the message is put the right way...
Samantha Smith
Historical Context
When Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union in November 1982, the mainstream Western newspapers and magazines ran numerous front page photographs and articles about him. Most coverage was negative and tended to a perception of a new threat to the stability of the Western world. Andropov had been the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and began his tenure as Soviet leader by strengthening the powers of the KGB, and by suppressing dissidents.[2] Andropov declared, "the struggle for human rights was a part of a wide-ranging imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet state."[3] Much international tension surrounded both Soviet and American efforts to develop weapons capable of being launched from satellites in orbit. Both governments had extensive research and development programs to develop such technology. However, both nations were coming under increasing pressure to disband the project. In America, president Ronald Reagan came under pressure from a lobby of U.S. scientists and arms experts, while in Russia the government issued a statement that read, "To prevent the militarization of space is one of the most urgent tasks facing mankind".[4]
During this period, large anti-nuclear protests were taking place across Europe and North America, while the November 20, 1983 screening of ABC's post-nuclear war dramatization The Day After became one of the most anticipated media events of the decade.[5]
The two superpowers had by this point abandoned their strategy of détente and in response to the Soviet deployment of SS-20s, Reagan moved to deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles to Europe. The Soviet Union's involvement in a war in Afghanistan was in its third year, a matter which was also contributing to international tension. In this atmosphere, on November 22, 1982, Time magazine published an issue with Andropov on the cover. When Smith viewed the edition, she asked her mother, "If people are so afraid of him, why doesn't someone write a letter asking whether he wants to have a war or not?" Her mother replied, "Why don't you?"[6]
Life
Samantha Smith was born on June 29, 1972, in the small town of Houlton, Maine, on the Canada–United States border, to Jane Reed and Arthur Smith. At the age of five, she wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth II to express her admiration to the monarch. When Smith had finished second grade in the spring of 1980, the family settled in Manchester, Maine, where she attended Manchester Elementary School. Her father taught literature and writing at the University of Maine at Augusta[4] while her mother worked as a social worker with the Maine Department of Human Services.
In November 1982, when Smith was 10 years old, she wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, seeking to understand why the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were so tense:[7]
Her letter was published in the Soviet newspaper Pravda.[8] Samantha was happy to discover that her letter had been published; however, she had not received a reply. She then sent a letter to the Soviet Union's Ambassador to the United States asking if Mr. Andropov intended to respond. On April 26, 1983, she received a response from Andropov:[9]
- Dear Mr. Andropov,
- My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.
- Sincerely,
- Samantha Smith
- Dear Samantha,
- I received your letter, which is like many others that have reached me recently from your country and from other countries around the world.
- It seems to me – I can tell by your letter – that you are a courageous and honest girl, resembling Becky, the friend of Tom Sawyer in the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. This book is well known and loved in our country by all boys and girls.
- You write that you are anxious about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.
- Your question is the most important of those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously and honestly.
- Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth. This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
- Soviet people well know what a terrible thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strove for supremacy over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.
- In that war, which ended with our victory, we were in alliance with the United States: together we fought for the liberation of many people from the Nazi invaders. I hope that you know about this from your history lessons in school. And today we want very much to live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on this earth—with those far away and those near by. And certainly with such a great country as the United States of America.
- In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons—terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That's precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never—never—will it use nuclear weapons first against any country. In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on Earth.
- It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to your second question: 'Why do you want to wage war against the whole world or at least the United States?' We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country– neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government–want either a big or 'little' war.
- We want peace—there is something that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.
- I invite you, if your parents will let you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an international children's camp – 'Artek' – on the sea. And see for yourself: in the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.
- Thank you for your letter. I wish you all the best in your young life.
- Y. Andropov
Front cover of Journey to the Soviet Union.
A media circus ensued, with Smith being interviewed by Ted Koppel[10] and Johnny Carson, among others, and with nightly reports by the major American networks. On July 7, 1983, she flew to Moscow with her parents, and spent two weeks as Andropov's guest. During the trip she visited Moscow and Leningrad and spent time in Artek, the main Soviet pioneer camp, in the town of Gurzuf on the Crimean Peninsula. Smith wrote in her book that in Leningrad she and her parents were amazed by the friendliness of the people and by the presents many people made for them. Speaking at a Moscow press conference, she declared that the Russians were "just like us".[11] In Artek, Smith chose to stay with the Soviet children rather than take the privileged accommodation offered to her. For ease of communication, teachers and children with fluent English were chosen to stay in the building where she was lodged. Smith shared a dormitory with nine other girls, and spent her time there swimming, talking and learning Russian songs and dances. While there, she made many friends, including Natasha Kashirina from Leningrad, a fluent English speaker.
Andropov, however, was unable to meet with her during her visit,[12] although they did speak by telephone. It was later discovered that Andropov had become seriously ill and had withdrawn from the public eye during this time.[13] Smith also received a phone call from Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to orbit the Earth. However, not realizing with whom she was speaking, Samantha mistakenly hung up after only a brief conversation.[14] Media followed her every step—photographs and articles about her were published by the main Soviet newspapers and magazines throughout her trip and after it. Smith became widely known to Soviet citizens and was well regarded by many of them. In the United States, the event drew suspicion and some regarded it as an "American-style public relations stunt".[15]"Teach your children well" about Samantha Smith. Stress to them just how profound one letter from a child can be! Stronger than any amount of potential nuclear destruction or any other man made thing. To read about this again after all these years was almost overwhelming to me personally. This was a girl from Maine. Maine children should be proud to live in such an place. If they could just see themselves in Samantha Smith, they could do things right now to raise awareness about what a mess we are in. But remember, parents, Samantha did this on her own. She asked the crucial questions and was encouraged by enlightened parents.
Smith's return to the U.S. on July 22, 1983, was celebrated by the people of Maine with roses, a red carpet, and a limousine[16] and her popularity continued to grow in her native country. Some critics at the time remained skeptical, believing Smith was unwittingly serving as an instrument of Soviet propaganda.[16][17] In December 1983, continuing in her role as "America's Youngest Ambassador", she was invited to Japan,[18] where she met with the Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and attended the Children's International Symposium in Kobe. In her speech at the symposium, she suggested that Soviet and American leaders exchange granddaughters for two weeks every year, arguing that a president "wouldn't want to send a bomb to a country his granddaughter would be visiting".[19] Her trip inspired other exchanges of child goodwill ambassadors,[20] including a visit by the eleven-year-old Soviet child Katya Lycheva to the United States.[21] Later, Smith wrote a book called Journey to the Soviet Union[22] whose cover shows her at Artek,[23] her favorite part of the Soviet trip.[24]
Smith pursued her role as a media celebrity when in 1984, she hosted a children's special for the Disney Channel entitled Samantha Smith Goes To Washington...Campaign '84.[25] The show covered politics, where Smith interviewed several candidates for the 1984 presidential election, including George McGovern and Jesse Jackson.
Your children have that same opportunity every day and the right, to express their dissatisfaction with the way adults run things, to add their take. They are much wiser about the basics than we give them credit for. And they could take the truth if we could take it ourselves enough to tell them what it is. Andropov didn't mince words [my bold]...
- You write that you are anxious about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.
- Your question is the most important of those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously and honestly.
- Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth. This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
- Soviet people well know what a terrible thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strove for supremacy over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.
- [...snip...]
- In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons—terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used.
Don't be afraid to tell your kids things; not to scare them, but to inspire them to action. For Godsakes, tell them that they CAN do something about the overwhelming problems in the world. They don't have to be scared little lambs. In comparison Samantha Smith was a lion. Had she lived, the experience she gained in the 1980's might have led to her becoming the youngest Secretary of State. Had she not died at 13 she would be 39 right now. She could have become President of the United States. Your children should be allowed to think big.
When Samantha Smith died in a plane crash with her father it broke the world's heart. Many thought it was an omen that destruction was inevitable. We know now that the memory of her courage and innocence would inspire rather than discourage the world to end its death wish. And Samantha's loss was indeed felt around the world...
Samantha Smith was mourned by about 1,000 people at her funeral in Augusta, Maine, and was eulogized in Moscow as a champion of peace. Attendees included Robert Wagner and Vladimir Kulagin of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, who read a personal message of condolence from Mikhail Gorbachev,[33] while President Reagan sent his condolences to Smith's mother, in writing,
"Perhaps you can take some measure of comfort in the knowledge that millions of Americans, indeed millions of people, share the burdens of your grief. They also will cherish and remember Samantha, her smile, her idealism and unaffected sweetness of spirit."[34]
I wasn't kidding about a child leading us (please see "And a Child Shall Lead Us" post). Adults are losing control again. We want to be happy on the earth. We want there to be peace and health and freedom. But we DO NOT ACT as though this were a big priority. Most of us do not act at all. Most of us take the attitude of my parents when I asked about the truth. Any child could be the next Samantha Smith. And the more we can see ourselves through the eyes of our children, the more we will care about helping ourselves, the world we have inherited and, especially, those children of ours who deserve something better than what we are doing right now.
As I've highlighted in two past posts ("God - Within and Without" and "And A Child Shall Lead Us"), there are parents now who give me great hope. My friends from Yarmouth, Maine, especially are models of parenthood. My own sister is an exceptional mother. Her children are confident, well-loved, paid attention to, inspired, allowed to express themselves freely, well-behaved, funny, adventurous, healthy...and happy. But things are not easy for her. Still she makes sure that that doesn't effect the "kiddos" in any negative way.
These kinds of parents (mostly through the leadership of wise mothering - sorry dad's, you are great guys too, but I see this improvement as being largely due to the influence of a new breed of woman arising in the world, one who is not content to make the mistakes of her parents and grandparents, yet also has devotion to the family model and places it above all other concerns - no matter how hard she ALSO works outside or inside the home), the ones once called, "Generation X" (now, 25-45) are forming the foundation for a new society.
Their children are being born post Cold War, post 20th Century. These "Millennials" are the promise we have to the future. Someday, one of these children, I think, a woman, is going to become President of the United States and transform world culture into a more unified trans-national organization. When that happens, it is possible that world-wide wars will become a thing of the past. Starvation will be rare, international emergency agencies will become strong, a new economy based on the premise that humans should strive more to be happy and therefore find wealth, than to practice the false premise that they need to become wealthy in order to find happiness..
I hope so much to be looking back on the concerns of this blog, as a happy old man, and say, "Well, we did it!"
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Twallk 6 - Not Alone
Here is a song about my recent IWALLK Odyssey, and how much it meant to be loved and supported when I needed it most. ALWAYS, there was someone there. I never felt alone. I got a bit depressed sometimes, but it was never out of lonliness.
Maybe as one single unit, humanity is not alone either...
I hope you like it, or at least understand its message.
Words and Music by Alex Wall
Click HERE
for a pdf lyric sheet
Maybe as one single unit, humanity is not alone either...
I hope you like it, or at least understand its message.
Not Alone
Words and Music by Alex Wall
There's an empty bench
In Mill Creek Park
Bring your kids feed the ducks
On the lily pond
I walk for miles inside a song
I want to make my life my own
And I'm not alone...
I'm not alone...
And I can wear my soul
And you will see my soul
I'll spend a golden coin to find the hope
Now there's an empty space
In Mill Creek Park
I'm heading home, the ducks have flown
And the path is dark
There's a broken heart
Inside our world
We've grown apart; we should march as One
With our flag unfurled
We were lost for years inside a dream
And we've forgotten what we've seen
But we're not alone...
We're not alone...
And we can find our souls
And they will see our souls
We can make a Golden Age to call our own
I'm not alone...
You're not alone...
We're not alone...
Copyright 2011 Omega Art and Music
Click HERE
for a pdf lyric sheet
Friday, September 23, 2011
And The Child Shall Lead Us
Well, now that we've taken “God” out of the equation... He, he, he... No promises though that It will stay out.
I have two “Happiness Economy” posts waiting to be edited. People have been requesting them and please know that they will be posted very shortly. However, some might find the following to be an interesting and semi-related tangent to the ideas I have been expressing in that other thread.
I want to return to another human component to my journey.
I have another wonderful friend who keeps a practical sense of forward momentum and I want to comment a little about this very helpful attitude of hers. It will be my intention to attempt an illustration of just how important her spirit of “Sleep well...OK, it's time to get up and resume the suffering—because we ARE getting there,” is.
She has been where I was this summer, but suffered much more than I. She is the mother of a very bright and intelligent young son, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple weeks ago and really developed a fondness for. Would it be a surprise to say that I saw a bit of myself in him?
Their interaction with each other was like a couple of friends—a team, until the kid in him came out to ask for this and that, as we walked around a certain store. Happily, with a natural air of forthrightness, she would just say, “No, you don't need that,” or “yes, I'll think about it and we'll talk about a time when we can come back.” He was SO good at accepting her judgment of the situation, that it seemed to me at the time, that they functioned as a kind of business partnership. No doubt, they must have their disagreements and uncomfortable times. Still, the impression I came away with was one of a mother with great confidence in herself and a son who felt this aspect of her, instinctively letting it replace his own unsure desires.
When she was abandoned and penniless, he was just a baby. Bear in mind that her fall had nothing to do with substance abuse or any irresponsibility on her part. Rather, it was her faith in a husband whom she assumed would be there for her and their new family. But, after supporting him for seven years -and putting him through school - getting pregnant after five years of fertility treatment, four miscarriages and two surgeries, her husband asked her to leave her job (knowing full well he was going to leave her), cold-heartedly reasoning that he would have had to pay more in child support. She was seven months pregnant when he forwarded the mail and stopped paying the bills, then he took off with his girlfriend.
Things got so bad that her inability to find enough food for herself, meant that breast feeding was just not in the cards. No male on this planet could possibly understand the psychological torment of loving a hungry baby you can't even feed from your own body. In my mind – because I was not in touch with her back then – I have the image of my frequently-visited bench at Mill Creek Park, occupied by a mother and her little baby.
Things got so bad that her inability to find enough food for herself, meant that breast feeding was just not in the cards. No male on this planet could possibly understand the psychological torment of loving a hungry baby you can't even feed from your own body. In my mind – because I was not in touch with her back then – I have the image of my frequently-visited bench at Mill Creek Park, occupied by a mother and her little baby.
In this image I see her unable to give him what he is crying for—the life-giving sustenance he needs and she needs for him. I see her peer down into his bright eyes and him look back at her through his tears. Knowing what I now know about them, I see (perhaps only in symbol—for no child can help himself from feeling sad in his hunger), him stop crying and smile as their selves blend in the open air the same way they had when he was attached to her in the womb. Could it be that the younger we are, the more of the future we sense? And his would turn out to be a future of needs fulfilled...and then some.
Growing up in school (in Yarmouth, Maine—a preppy little coastal town), she and I were friends but on different paths at the time. Still I recall her as friendly, immaculately dressed, highly intelligent and very well-spoken.
There is a kind of “economic relativity” whose formula might describe how psychologically hard one hits the “bottom” when falling from a stand point of some degree of comfort and security into the depths of hunger and destitution. It is similar to the effects of physical gravity. In physics this is called the “impact force.”
[And for those who are are even more turned off by math, than by religion, feel free to skip over the following, until you see, “In other words”...]
In the more wishy-washy, non-scientific, sense that I am proposing, it is between the “psychological mass” of the falling object (the “object” being a person's cultural expectations about an acceptable standard of living for themselves—from past experience), the height of the fall (arbitrarily assigned by whatever amount of material loss is “felt”), and the mass-area that the object it falls against (the “bottom,” loosely referring to the psychological “limit” that one can fall to; being something as infinitesimally close to non-existence (i.e. death = 0) as possible, without ever reaching this limit.
This is only a playful and figurative (not to mention probably inaccurate) concept, since the more one examines the intervening variables, the more error one finds in the concept itself. In other words, please take this with a ¼ teaspoon of salt. Still, it might describe—though weakly, for those of us who have fallen in such a way, how we feel about “hitting bottom,” relative to where we might have started from, socioeconomically. And it goes something like this...
For simplicity-sake I will use very basic assumptions. We might recall the physical formula for impact force as illustrated at livephysics.com...
As an object falls from rest, its gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy. Consider a mass m which is falling vertically under the influence of gravity.
Object is falling from rest, therefore initial kinetic energy is zero. Once the object hit on the ground, height is zero, therefore no potential energy at ground level.
Initial PE = Final KE
Impact velocity just before the impact is
From work-energy principle, change in the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the net work done on the object.
For a straight-line collision, the total work done is equal to the average force of impact times the distance traveled during the impact.
Object is falling from rest, therefore initial kinetic energy is zero. Once the object hit on the ground, height is zero, therefore no potential energy at ground level.
Initial PE = Final KE
Impact velocity just before the impact is
From work-energy principle, change in the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the net work done on the object.
For a straight-line collision, the total work done is equal to the average force of impact times the distance traveled during the impact.
Average impact force x Distance traveled = Change in kinetic energy
Total work done = Kinetic energy just before object hit the ground
Impact force
Well to save myself from a dozen complaints about “irrelevance and unnecessary complexity,” I will consider only the bolded statement above, restated and dumbed-down, for my purposes as...
Average psychological impact force (Favg) = Change in state of mind (ΔMstate), divided by the Distance fallen from a resting state of satisfaction (d) , or, ...
Favg = ΔMstate/d
In other words, when one starts from higher level of personal expectation, one suffers a greater degree of personal disappointment and psychological defeatism.
In all likelihood, the typical Yarmouth, Maine-raised child who is raised in relative socioeconomic comfort, and then falls into poverty and depression as an adult, will have a harder time, psychologically, than the typical Bangladeshi-raised child who starts out and tends to remain in that low or lower socioeconomic state. Even when the Bangladeshi falls, the distance is not as great and the impact upon that person is not as potentially defeating as the Yarmoutheshi. That little impact crater seen in the diagram above is not as deep and is easier to climb out of.
Now, I fully understand that there are many logical problems with the assertion I have just related. And I do not in ANY way want to give the impression that the habitually dirt-poor person is actually better off than the originally-richer one who finds themselves dirt-poor, after existing in a much higher standard of living. BOTH are suffering. Both deserve a basic dignity that humanity is not consciously (through a cessation of greed, violence, selfishness, national pride and ignorance, etc.) yet able to afford to everyone on this planet. But I do want to make the point that it seems that ANY AND ALL average (discounting any genetic predispositions for making their own lives harder than they need to be) humans would be equally impacted by starting with plenty and then falling into abject poverty. And this is true, independent of race, ethnicity or gender.
I think this is a very important point. What it shows me is that when we, in the so-called, “First World,” promote the spread of the high philosophical ideal, that we call, “Democracy,” we are deceiving ourselves and standing on an illusion. And we are just primitive enough still to think that this ideal – which, by the way, we don't even practice correctly here in “the lands of opportunity” (there has NEVER been a truly democratic society) – can be forced upon whom we deem "less-democratic" cultures.
We have equated things that should not be equated: Representative Government = Democracy (RULE by the people), Democracy = Free Market, Free Market = Capitalism, Capitalism = Opportunity, and Opportunity = General Prosperity. These five red herrings are terrible and terribly misleading, and misunderstood assumptions.
Why are they “terrible”? Because, they only benefit the groups and individuals who use them as a justification, and thus a means, to do things like spill blood and replace it with petroleum, lower expectations for originality of thought as a way of perpetuating conformity—ostensibly and euphemistically, renamed “social stability,” and accept the suffering of some—that some others might prosper, locking up, persecuting and even killing anyone who speaks up against this equating.
We often sit back and armchair-philosophize about our First World benevolence toward less-fortunate peoples in distant lands - people who have significantly (unfairly?) less - by patting ourselves on the back about our “Democratic” ideals. It is quickly forgotten that it was our particular, historical Western (American?) happenstance (as I discussed in the “Happiness Economy” thread) that allowed for the unprecedented technological, military, industrial—and thus, economic, growth, that we enjoyed during the last century that gave us our leg up. It was NOT the supposed superiority of our modern philosophies.
And, even as we watch the crumbling of loosely-built, worldwide markets all around us – while we keep running to Walmart for more duct tape to tighten them up – we treat the inevitable ever-NEW, yet consciously-unforeseen, changing social and economic needs of our developing global culture as fads, anomalies, and flashes in the historical pan. If we can just tweak this cog or that gear, it will all come right back to the (impossible, post WWII) American Dream, as a World Dream: three car garages, ½ acres of green lawns for everyone, reasonable mortgages, steady employment, opportunity for entrepreneurial success, access to emergency services, well-equipped police protection, store isles filled with fresh produce, plenty of alcohol, cigarettes, red meat, coffee and candy, office supplies and salad shooters... We know what we expect! And now we want the world to expect it too.
Unfortunately, though, the natural resources needed to make sure that every McDonald's meal comes with paper bags, cardboard burger boxes, plastic cups with straws, and a hand-full of napkins—all of which is THROWN AWAY in the same visit; the fossil fuels needed to manufacture and transport that packaging to the restaurant and then from there to the landfill, to power the appliances that store and cook the food, heat and cool the restaurant, keep the engines of drive-through customers running while they slowly move through the service window; the arsenic, silicon, lead, copper, gold and plastic of every digital device used to keep orders flowing and numbers computing, are not infinite.
The products DO degrade and depreciate over time, necessitating their own continual replacement. Therefore, any “increased efficiency” in the process ACTUALLY speeds the waste and exploitative potential of that same process. We are fools to think that “innovation” under the umbrella of such static and inflexible energy and economic models is “growth.” Ripping open the ground and sucking up what we find there, so Americans, Europeans and the Japanese can make fast food packaging and cellphones that become obsolete in six months is imeasurably selfish and irresponsible. It just makes us feel really good...temporarily. It is our heroin. Terence McKenna called it a "junky-mentality." And (paraphrasing McKenna) we are willing to pay for our junk. But if the countries we exploit don't want to sell it to us, we must be willing to break into their house and take it from them. Because, no matter what, it is going into our good right arm. That's the plan.
My friend has seen the rotten other side of the pretty, wooden boardwalk that suspends our delicate feet above an uncertain landscape of shifting shapes, swimming in the darkness below us. I have seen a bit of it myself. It really seems to take a “fall” to reverse the pride that came before it—if that can even be done. Well, in my friend's case and possibly mine too, it CAN be done. And maybe it should be a requirement(?).
But, when, upon our first meeting, as we stood in front of each other and introduced ourselves, he thought nothing of wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his head against me...I knew that our children are here to save us, and not just replace us. I foresaw that the love, brilliance and promise there; that waiting in his little heart, being supported, encouraged and inspired by his stalwart, well-experienced and realistic mother (the same one who once sat with him upon the figurative park bench of his infancy, as they shared a common hunger and despair), is a Power beyond the greatest and largest machines of industry; beyond the power imprisoned by the nuclear forces of the atom. I beheld, at that moment – even the generations before us set up a system that had the potential of destroying the world we now live in—with little concern about looting the future of their grandchildren, in order to supply the comfort of their present – the profoundly positive force contained this young boy, along with his young associates and friends, is as unstoppable as the sunrise tomorrow. It IS THE answer.
And I counted myself among the most privileged of all men, to hold that non-material treasure in my own arms, and I gave it a place in my own heart; a heart that was broken and sick—but, through the leadings of a child was able to be made whole again. Our children are FAR more precious than we have ever dared to think.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
God - Within and Without - Part 2
It is not at all surprising that people have been turned off by religion. The word, "religion" itself is loaded to overflowing with cultural assumptions, founded on the debased and inhuman activities that organized and institutionalized religion has prosecuted in the past.
People complain about Islam and the violent acts perpetrate in the name of Allah. And everyone knows how badly Christianity has violated its own tenets through crusades and "holy" inquisitions. It is a FACT that more people died in the name of Christianity (some 809 million in the last few hundred years), than by the Fascism of WWII (62 million) and Communism (209 million) combined--times two! Islam and Christianity have certainly been busy putting each other's believers in the ground for the last 1400 years. Christianity has probably killed the most people in history, though admittedly it had a 600 year head start. And religion in general has been the source of the most preventable human deaths since the execution of Jesus around 39 CE.
Who can blame people for not wanting to be associated with the "people of the Books [the Torah, Bible and Koran]" and their wrathful, vengeful and unfair male deity--"God"? Because of these bloody religious tyrannies, it is widely (if erroneously?) presumed that religion (being the relationship of the supernatural and humanity) = organized religion.
But that is not what *I* mean when I use the word. Both my friend and I agreed that it is organized religion that turns many thinking people away from the pursuit of a divine Creator. And for a woman like my friend who grew up without any church experience or Biblical training (I was raised a Congregationalist, until I found a better way), the antiquated and illogical actions of religious GROUPS have ruined any chance for her to be attracted in any way to any aspect of their traditions. This is SO true, that she seemed not to have ever even entertained the idea that the relationship of humanity to God could occur in a non-organized way. I wanted to tell her that even further away is the possibility that God ever even WANTED churches, mosques and temples to be constructed for a kind forced (through guilt) worship, or or holy books to be composed by old men and thence shoved down people's throats by well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning religionists since the times of Moses.
Is it so hard for today's religionists (and I mean, in this context, the promoters of organized religion) to accept that the minds of so many otherwise intelligent and good-hearted people would naturally reject all aspects and attributes of the "Old Man in the sky"?
When I asked my friend if she believed in survival after death, she seemed a bit less certain. Both she and her husband lost their parents in different ways. It seems the temptation to believe that somehow their "energy" WOULD go on even after mortal life, is one that is difficult to escape. My impression was that she wanted to believe in some form of non-material existence, where any kind of god not necessary. But it also seemed too much of a stretch for her to believe that their identities (personalities or souls?) could remain intact after life in the flesh.
For me, this kind of non-material energy without personality seems foreign and unlikely. But I come from a post-Christian belief system now (as a student of the Urantia Book). The complex and unique perspective that I have gained in my search for the better way (the non-organized, personal religious way) has long ago satisfied me with the answers I craved in this regard. I was fortunate to have started out in a relatively liberal environment (Protestant Congregationalism) conducive to a concept of the loving Parenthood (Fatherhood and Motherhood) of God, along with just enough dissatisfaction stemming from the required dogma and seemingly meaningless rituals of traditional Christian theology, to want to find this "better way" that I speak of.
Unfortunately, the road to my current belief system cannot be canonized, summed up, written down or described in brief. It is SO different from the norms and memes of historic religious experience that I sometime despair at my inability to at least present an intellectual alternative to the honest inquiries of atheists and agnostics--in the rare instances when they have become interested enough in my views on this subject to inquire at all. To either religionists or atheists/agnostics, my belief system (more like a "Knowing," actually, than a "faith") is not immediately obvious as a rational option for either of them in their own search for truth--be it religious or philosophical. So when she rightly, pointedly and simply asked,
"What do YOU believe?" I was only able to stammer out an inadequate and half-measured reply.
It is fascinating, upon reflection of this dilemma, to relate that a series of learned and automatic thoughts came into my mind and then dissipated between the time I heard her question and the moment I began weakly to answer it.
The first one of these was from my Congregationalist childhood: "Here is your opportunity to 'save the non-believer.'" (Ironic since, in a way, it was this non-believer who saved me--in a sense.) I was quick to bury that one, as I had so many years previously, when I finally realized (in my teens) that the God who was growing inside me was not a Congregationalist God, but instead, merciful enough to "save" EVERYONE who sincerely wanted to live in the "next world." And I know from my own journey that we will all be given the opportunity to make that decision in this life or if not by its end, then in the subsequent and transitional state of material "death," no matter how many times we might have rejected the idea, while not having the complete amount of information necessary to choose before that death. But how could I explain this to her on her lunch break?
The next impression that passed into my consciousness was, "If she is happy and satisfied with her life as it is, without the need to believe in a First Source and Center, leave her the hell alone!" This was a more reasonable and humane option. I have learned - by the example of mentors in my own training who discouraged the Christian (and Muslim) idea of proselytizing and religious influencing (and by "influencing" I really mean, "manipulating/deceiving") in an ends-justify-the-means kind of way. And to "let it be" is often the wisest course of action. It is well-understood by Urantia Book enthusiasts who read this blog - accounting for perhaps 75% of its readership - that the book's "cosmic philosophy" is anti-cult, non-organizational and not to be "pushed" onto others. How many other spiritual books can say that? Still, though, I was unsatisfied with not saying anything in answer to her query about what I believe. Thus, came my incomplete answer, previously mentioned.
If any person is able to comprehend the LOVE (rather than the un-real "wrath" of historic religion), the MERCY (rather than the threat of "condemnation to hell"), the SPIRITUAL REALITY (rather than the man-made falsehoods, perpetuated by priests, ministers, and imams), the INTIMATE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP (rather than the mass-minded need of human beings to want to belong to a group/church of similarly-minded people, willing to go to war, torture, bash in the head of or burn alive anyone who dares to "believe" differently than they do), of the God I call, my "Father"--it is this friend. If there is anyone who could receive the tools of divine guidance from within her own mind more efficiently, it is her. If there is anyone who could USE those tools in partnership with her divine Inner Spark, to bring others to their own inner sanctuaries, she could succeed beyond her own wildest dreams...
Nevertheless, I simply love her too much to have wanted her to change anything about herself. She is already living the life that God would want for her anyway. She is already loving the people in her life the way that God would guide her toward. She is already at peace within herself the way that God can bring "the peace that passeth all understanding." She is already socially, ecologically, culturally AND spiritually benefiting the world around her the way that God wills for all of us. She is the exception to what I always thought was the Rule. Yes, she would certainly drink up quite a bit of the newish information of sources like the Urantia Book, but even the organizations around that are churchifying, and she would never accept such a thing--which, by the way I DON'T either. A Urantia Church is the WRONG direction for this very reason.
In the crisp, cool, late summer air of my walk home, I considered these things with great care. And a strange, but reassuring, Answer arose that settled the matter for me. Perhaps, it IS the will of God, that the instinctual Goodness of the non-believer should be held in equal measure and with equal respect - even in the cosmic sense - among her human associates, compared with the learned goodness of the believer. My spiritual intuition suddenly and clearly showed me that she is ALREADY choosing the will of a misunderstood, but loving, God, whom she has no need at all to call by name. And in this way, perhaps she possess a purity of spirit and an advanced state of soul-growth that is completely acceptable to the God of the Universe that I believe in, and the essence of the God within her own mind that she
chooses not to believe in.
No one can say with any authority at all whether either she or I walk along the "right" or "wrong" path, simply because we espouse different sources of motivation for our common direction. Thankfully, it also seems in every way to be the SAME path. In a world so tenuously balancing upon the fulcrum of progress and destruction, two friends who love each other, want to see light penetrate the darkness of their world, with the joyful sharing of a mutual lifetime that they have been Consciously OR randomly given - as a team, as a human FORCE - CAN NOT FAIL to ultimate bring more Truth, Beauty and Goodness into this world than it ever would have had without them.
No one can say with any authority at all whether either she or I walk along the "right" or "wrong" path, simply because we espouse different sources of motivation for our common direction. Thankfully, it also seems in every way to be the SAME path. In a world so tenuously balancing upon the fulcrum of progress and destruction, two friends who love each other, want to see light penetrate the darkness of their world, with the joyful sharing of a mutual lifetime that they have been Consciously OR randomly given - as a team, as a human FORCE - CAN NOT FAIL to ultimate bring more Truth, Beauty and Goodness into this world than it ever would have had without them.
THIS CONCEPT is the thing that could unify humanity in the short-term. It is something above organized religion AND humanist materialism. It IS the EVEN better way. Maybe in this post I won't “lose” her like I have in the past, when discussing these things. But even if I do, I suspect the impact upon the believers who read it might be more constructive anyway.
On that beautiful September day a non-believer taught a believer a new and valuable lesson. And neither of them had to change themselves one bit in the process.
God - Within and Without - Part 1
I was taken out for lunch by a dear childhood friend this week. Thai food--my favorite! It was so nice to see her again. She is the type of person - and we have been so close in the past - that throughout the years, every time I see her it is like we just seem to start from where we left off.
We had a very thought-provoking discussion. And we went right into it immediately. I found her so easy to talk to still and her interest in deeper subjects was just as refreshing as it had always been. I'm not much for small talk. It bores me. I can do it, but it usually doesn't take long for me to get a little impatient and begin steering the conversation toward more substantial areas of interest. Thankfully there was none of that with this friend.
She had been a strong supporter of mine during my Odyssey. In fact, in the last few days of that strange adventure, I had become pretty depressed and, with no prompting on my part, she seemed to pick up on it.
There was one very dark moment... I stood at the edge of a literal and figurative bridge. I looked down. Then I looked out into the horizon... Ships were heading out of Portland Harbor, people were down on the beach drinking and laughing and the sky was so beautiful--there at the end...of the day.
My heart seemed to long for the waves, the empty solution, the ease of the fall. And I wept, openly and without embarrassment. It had to come out. The pressure valves I usually rely on were not functioning--so tears did the job instead. I asked, in my mind, "What am I doing all this for? I'm simply a drag on the world. Things would be easier for everyone if I was not here. What right do I have to bring attention to my foolish plight, when so many other - better - people than myself suffer immeasurably more than I?" For a moment I sat and listened to the white noise within myself. Straining to hear even the smallest whisper there. Then I said, "Father, I'm not a sign seeker, but I could really use one right now." I turned away. I had not come this far just to fall...apart. I wiped my face and walked on and over to the other side of evening.
I hadn't checked my email for about six hours, so I stopped at McDonald's for its WiFi access, spending the rest of my bottle money on a soda and cracked open the laptop. There in my Gmail Inbox were three messages from this friend. I hadn't heard from her for a little while and thought it odd that she would send so many messages, especially on that night. She asked where I was and offered to come pick me up. Why would she write that? I wrote back that I was OK, but just had walked through a pretty rough spot... But how the hell did she "know"? Perhaps in desperation, or perhaps because I was actually discerning the answer to my request for a sign... I accepted her intuition and communication as one. She said later that she just had a "feeling."
This is where the interesting part begins.
At our lunch a couple weeks later, after I had accepted the offer of renting a room from another good friend, moved in, and was reunited with my cat, our talk came to a concern of hers that she was generous enough to express. It wasn't about the time on the bridge, but about some of the subject matter of this blog.
She gave a lot praise for most of my posting, but then hesitated for a moment. "The only thing," she intimated, "...is that when you start talking about God and religion, you lose me."
When I asked why, she said, "Because I don't believe in god." This REALLY surprised me. And you may see why in a moment. I had tried, except for a couple of very clear examples, not to post about my spiritual beliefs and views here in Iwallk-Land. The few that did slip through were of a mostly personal nature. They related to my inner life, and because the blog really is just a glorified journal, I thought it appropriate to apply what was happening in my soul as well as my outer life.
This may have been an error on my part, since many folks were probably turned off by my commentary on such intimate spiritual details. I had very intentionally not "gone there" for that very reason. My intentions for keeping this personal narrative free of "religion" (whatever that means) was a major priority. The blog is really meant to document my hopeful transition from a life of sheltered comfort, to the street of opposites, and then my transition into a new life. It was meant to also be a philosophical commentary on society and why I wanted out of the status quo. I did find, however, that at certain times, and maybe for future historical interest, I felt the strong need to express my higher beliefs. It was cathartic at the time, and allowed me to share just how much comfort and guidance I receive from "the still small Voice" inside my soul. Yet, I'm sure that it also alienated some of my readers.
This comment from my friend confirmed that concern as being valid. And the reason why it struck me so powerfully when she mentioned her discomfiture with the subject is that, in my ignorance, I had always assumed that she must have a strong "faith," herself. How else she could she have been such an obviously caring, loving and supportive friend to me, brilliant wife to her husband, nurturing mother to her girls and socially outstanding member of society in general? Without believing in God?
It just didn't make sense to me, as a person who never even questioned the existence of a Prime Mover. My frequent period of lost faith have always been a deficit of my belief in myself. I've never blamed God for my own shortcomings, my own many failures, the presence of evil in the world, nor the hardships and suffering of so many people whom I've loved so dearly.
I've always known that the universe was one of opportunity; that to have made the spheres of time and space each a Paradise of bliss and perfection would have defeated the divine Purpose. The Plan was for creatures TO struggle and claw their way through their lives--gaining experience (something an already eternally perfect being craves); perfecting themselves through their own efforts and painful trials. It was to offer a CHOICE. Free will would be an illusion without the choice and power of the lowly human races to reject their Creators, even if it was their misjudgment about His purposes. I assumed that any being who could not perceive the many BLESSINGS bestowed to assist us, despite our dark and sometimes-terrible plights, must be a failure of that being on every moral level. But such is NOT the case.
On my long walk back home from this lunch I contemplated the apparent paradox. Maybe God isn't really needed as an acknowledged force in our world? Maybe the people who are so morally successful and just in their lives, without a need for recognizing the Creator of those lives, are just as valuable and necessary in God's universe (at least at this stage in history) as any holy man or woman? This was a new realization for me. If someone like my friend could do as much if not MORE good in the world and in her own life, without the need for a Reason than many of the self-described "believers" and openly pious women and men out there, what is the harm?
In a recent study, atheists/agnostics were shown to be the best educated about the religions of other people than any of the participants in those religions know about the others...
Most of science is a humanist/materialist endeavor. And look at how much of material reality it now is able to describe and predict. Stephen Hawking has recently asserted that he no longer believes that God would be necessary as a force in the creation and maintenance of the universe...
"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to set the Universe going."
The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, 2010
Social activism also is often based on non-religious concerns and atheist (sometimes called, "nontheists") are some of the most strident leaders in groups like Amnesty International. And in my study of the biographies of historically influential people, it often seems to be the atheists who have the easiest time dealing with the mortality of those around them, as well as their own inevitable and personal demise. They tend to be better-educated and more socially involved with global issues than do their religious counterparts.
[Please see Part 2]
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Twallk 5 - Sunset
I made this very short video around seven this evening...
It was too beautiful to resist...
Monday, August 29, 2011
NovaVox Within
I see the distant land that I seek now. Having chased so many mirages, and gotten to know them well, the outline of this future land is suddenly sharp enough to be perceived. It hangs in a violet haze just above the horizon.
The perspective I hold in my mind right now is of the mountain climber who simply knew how to hang on, while earth around his mountain sank away. I am not yet at the summit. The peek lies somewhere off in that distant and future land. I scale the spine of this part of monolith's spine. When I reach the top of this region, I will do the sobering march of the Knife's Edge...my Katahdin dance.
It is the day after Irene - the non-hurricane - but a blustery, fall-like crispness penetrates the air. All the rain has been dried up by the wind; tears leaving only imprints, desiccated impressions...
Autumn is on it's leisurely way. Leaves are blowing in little whirlwinds and then gathering in the low spots. Portland is quiet and peaceful, seemingly having been cleansed from a hard night of drinking, after a long day of waiting in the wind. When Iwallked home last night the power lines were buzzing. Thick cables were straining with a power on the inside that is crying to be free.
It is this energy, that is beginning to burst its seems. Light is pouring through the tiny cracks in what I have accepted as "here." I must admit to myself that it is so much more... It is also "Now." My denial of the higher ground; the futile and sentimental need to have things remain the same - at the material level - is receding from my life. There is no escape from the Light Storm that is coming, when the last bit of the concrete dam(n) fails utterly. But I don't want to escape anyway. Precious... fleeting, fickle, unreal, draining... time. Energy is filling time. The transformation from matter into spirit (the most Primal energy) IS the escape.
We are currently only "aware" of one kind of energy in the universe: physical/material release of the bound-up power in the nucleus of the atom. To let the beast off of its material leash is an awesome spectacle to behold. Take a plutonium implosion and add in some very clever focusing of that fission reaction to actually fuse hydrogen, increasing the yield of the subsequent nuclear explosion by a factor of three; from the kiloton range, into the megaton range. This is energy too (fission is powerful and fusion is even more powerful), of course, but even as impressive as nuclear energy is, it pales in comparison to the power of the mind that controls it--pre/post-nuclear. It is the mind-over-matter and the spirit-over-mind...
This being said, the energy I am beginning to see is made of something that humans have refused to contemplate on mass-social levels. And it has barely been able to keep the less-powerful (nuclear) beast hooked to its rusting lease. It is on this mountain-side that I have become aware of a way to even the equation.
Even if it is only in my own life, the energy of the Nova within is allowing me to transform along with it. It took (and will continue to take) this long, long walk, along the natural but uncertain shores of what we've left behind for me to re-gather the still-important aspects for myself and, I pray, for others too. I seem to be one of many now who need to shed the dead-skin of an antiquated vision. I keep running into "the others" who cling to the same cliff. And they agree, if we are all doing it at the same time individually, surely we can do it even more effectively, together.
Old things are passing away.
Behold, all is becoming New.
Because I am with my friends in spirit, I truly feel for the friendless, the voiceless. They line the walls, stairways and alleys of my path. But they speak to me. Somehow that is good enough for them; stewing in the juices of a cauldron of desolation and separation. These homeless, mentally ill, physiologically addicted kings and queens; they are in hell, but somehow closer to heaven.
I can't go that far--suffering in silence. That is not my destination. But I can bring their story to you. And I can TRY to bring you to them. And - God willing - in that process the energy of souls "becoming new" will be released...from both sides of the social spectrum. Unfurling this flower of Light takes the water of cooperation, soaking into the rich, well composted soil of experience, but can only be aerated by a signifiant measure of courage, on everyone's part.
Soon I embark on what should be a new business. But it is likley I will continue to struggle with doubt and a definite lack of material resources, until it is set in motion. I promise you this though: given the monetary chance of this potential to give back to my world, I will not fail to throw myself into the process. And if it is not to be, so be it not. Only a sudden and unexpected event of some kind will stop me. You know the way these things work. When one is finally fueled up and ready to drive forward, it is usually the blind turn that spells any sudden and/or tragic stop. But, again, that is not my concern. If the sign is missing, the turn will inevitably still come no matter how diligent I am, and, frankly, I know now that would simply be another means of escape--perhaps, the most merciful kind. So, I am not afraid.
Increasing energy, decreasing the significance of time with the grandeur of Now-consciousness, exteriorizing the soul, living more simply and eliminating the desire for "things," getting to know the ways of nature - as well as the other members of the human family, valuing hope, honoring reality, being instructed from within, expanding awareness, fighting for unity, while preserving diversity ...and... all the while, becoming more and more immune to disappointment... I WILL.
The Portland Public Library just opened and I have to move on...again. In the morning sunshine I notice the sound of two gold coins clink together in my pocket. And I smile for a moment as Iwallk on...
The perspective I hold in my mind right now is of the mountain climber who simply knew how to hang on, while earth around his mountain sank away. I am not yet at the summit. The peek lies somewhere off in that distant and future land. I scale the spine of this part of monolith's spine. When I reach the top of this region, I will do the sobering march of the Knife's Edge...my Katahdin dance.
It is the day after Irene - the non-hurricane - but a blustery, fall-like crispness penetrates the air. All the rain has been dried up by the wind; tears leaving only imprints, desiccated impressions...
Autumn is on it's leisurely way. Leaves are blowing in little whirlwinds and then gathering in the low spots. Portland is quiet and peaceful, seemingly having been cleansed from a hard night of drinking, after a long day of waiting in the wind. When Iwallked home last night the power lines were buzzing. Thick cables were straining with a power on the inside that is crying to be free.
It is this energy, that is beginning to burst its seems. Light is pouring through the tiny cracks in what I have accepted as "here." I must admit to myself that it is so much more... It is also "Now." My denial of the higher ground; the futile and sentimental need to have things remain the same - at the material level - is receding from my life. There is no escape from the Light Storm that is coming, when the last bit of the concrete dam(n) fails utterly. But I don't want to escape anyway. Precious... fleeting, fickle, unreal, draining... time. Energy is filling time. The transformation from matter into spirit (the most Primal energy) IS the escape.
We are currently only "aware" of one kind of energy in the universe: physical/material release of the bound-up power in the nucleus of the atom. To let the beast off of its material leash is an awesome spectacle to behold. Take a plutonium implosion and add in some very clever focusing of that fission reaction to actually fuse hydrogen, increasing the yield of the subsequent nuclear explosion by a factor of three; from the kiloton range, into the megaton range. This is energy too (fission is powerful and fusion is even more powerful), of course, but even as impressive as nuclear energy is, it pales in comparison to the power of the mind that controls it--pre/post-nuclear. It is the mind-over-matter and the spirit-over-mind...
This being said, the energy I am beginning to see is made of something that humans have refused to contemplate on mass-social levels. And it has barely been able to keep the less-powerful (nuclear) beast hooked to its rusting lease. It is on this mountain-side that I have become aware of a way to even the equation.
Even if it is only in my own life, the energy of the Nova within is allowing me to transform along with it. It took (and will continue to take) this long, long walk, along the natural but uncertain shores of what we've left behind for me to re-gather the still-important aspects for myself and, I pray, for others too. I seem to be one of many now who need to shed the dead-skin of an antiquated vision. I keep running into "the others" who cling to the same cliff. And they agree, if we are all doing it at the same time individually, surely we can do it even more effectively, together.
Behold, all is becoming New.
Because I am with my friends in spirit, I truly feel for the friendless, the voiceless. They line the walls, stairways and alleys of my path. But they speak to me. Somehow that is good enough for them; stewing in the juices of a cauldron of desolation and separation. These homeless, mentally ill, physiologically addicted kings and queens; they are in hell, but somehow closer to heaven.
I can't go that far--suffering in silence. That is not my destination. But I can bring their story to you. And I can TRY to bring you to them. And - God willing - in that process the energy of souls "becoming new" will be released...from both sides of the social spectrum. Unfurling this flower of Light takes the water of cooperation, soaking into the rich, well composted soil of experience, but can only be aerated by a signifiant measure of courage, on everyone's part.
Soon I embark on what should be a new business. But it is likley I will continue to struggle with doubt and a definite lack of material resources, until it is set in motion. I promise you this though: given the monetary chance of this potential to give back to my world, I will not fail to throw myself into the process. And if it is not to be, so be it not. Only a sudden and unexpected event of some kind will stop me. You know the way these things work. When one is finally fueled up and ready to drive forward, it is usually the blind turn that spells any sudden and/or tragic stop. But, again, that is not my concern. If the sign is missing, the turn will inevitably still come no matter how diligent I am, and, frankly, I know now that would simply be another means of escape--perhaps, the most merciful kind. So, I am not afraid.
Increasing energy, decreasing the significance of time with the grandeur of Now-consciousness, exteriorizing the soul, living more simply and eliminating the desire for "things," getting to know the ways of nature - as well as the other members of the human family, valuing hope, honoring reality, being instructed from within, expanding awareness, fighting for unity, while preserving diversity ...and... all the while, becoming more and more immune to disappointment... I WILL.
The Portland Public Library just opened and I have to move on...again. In the morning sunshine I notice the sound of two gold coins clink together in my pocket. And I smile for a moment as Iwallk on...
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Iwallk Irene
Irene wasn't such a bad girl. She was pretty tame compared to storms I've seen in the past. In the afternoon I walked around and filmed a little bit her effect. I edited it at Mill Creek McDonald's because they have an outlet and WiFi.
Until about an hour ago (it is 8:00 pm as I write this) some of the lights in Kightville were off. And there was a big emergency "something" (didn't seem to be a fire, or collapse, or accident...) that must have happened down there, because a ladder truck, a fire ambulance and a regular ambulance went screaming by, down Waterman Drive. [Sorry I misspelled "powerlines."]
The following is the video I made--such as it is. Nothing real dramatic, but I could certainly feel the power of the storm above me. The tide was dead low and clouds were really whipping by about 100 feet up. But on the shore where I was walking, it was relatively calm. The wind was the most prominent aspect. Even this morning it didn't rain that much. After I publish this I will return back down to Wright Park and see if the tide is coming back in very much.
Enjoy!
Until about an hour ago (it is 8:00 pm as I write this) some of the lights in Kightville were off. And there was a big emergency "something" (didn't seem to be a fire, or collapse, or accident...) that must have happened down there, because a ladder truck, a fire ambulance and a regular ambulance went screaming by, down Waterman Drive. [Sorry I misspelled "powerlines."]
The following is the video I made--such as it is. Nothing real dramatic, but I could certainly feel the power of the storm above me. The tide was dead low and clouds were really whipping by about 100 feet up. But on the shore where I was walking, it was relatively calm. The wind was the most prominent aspect. Even this morning it didn't rain that much. After I publish this I will return back down to Wright Park and see if the tide is coming back in very much.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Happiness Economy - Part 2
OK. So, what do I mean about "happiness" and what does it have to do with the idea of transforming economics?
The cleric, Richard Cumberland (1631–1718) introduced the idea that, as humans, we have a natural right to the "pursuit of our own happiness." Around the same time, John Locke (1632-1704), the so-called "Father of Liberalism," expanded upon this as a Baconian scholar. In his 1693 Essay Concerning Human Understanding he says that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness." Eighty-three years later, as we all know, Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Ben Franklin and others, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most famous sentences ever written (my emphasis): "We hold these truths to be self-evident [Franklin's contribution], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
These guys were not hedonists. They were not "pleasure seekers," although they did enjoy themselves when they could. That was the point. Mostly, though, they were deists and rationalists. And when Franklin changed Jefferson's wording to reflect their view that the right to happiness was "self-evident," it expressed so simply what philosophers had on their minds during the Enlightenment (the 18th Century--aka "the Age of Reason"). After Newton and Leibniz (both, philosophers AND mathematicians) simultaneously discovered the calculus and showed that everything we see in nature can be described by an extremely accurate form of mathematics - simplifying the old method of using the less accurate trigonometry of the Greeks - a rational God seemed to emerge from nature. The Western world was waking up after 1500 years heavy handed religious rule over all behavior. They saw secular government as the liberator of mankind (except for their own slaves of course), and planned to make "the American experiment" a catalyst for reform and a model for all future governments.
These men were students of science and nature, and believers in an un-wrathful Deity who ran the universe in a well-thought-out way. It was suddenly apparent, for the first time since the Eleusinin Mystery cults, that human beings were meant to be free to explore their world with mind and body, and only this could lead directly to "true and solid happiness." Even the Bible, which has a paucity of information about secular happiness was re-examined for its role in life. The word "blessed" in Jesus' beautiful "Sermon on the Mount" can be interchanged with "happiness"...
It was recognized that the moral lessons for individuals put forward by Jesus himself (rather than the oppressive churches that grew up to MISrepresent him), could fit perfectly with the ideas of guiltless scientific exploration and philosophical ("philosophy" being a unifier of religion and science) enjoyment of the world around us.
Today, the emphasis put forward by political and economic forces in this country, and thus around the world, focuses almost entirely on the "Life" and "Liberty" aspects of the thinkers of Enlightenment. "Happiness" has been marginalized as a fluffy afterthought. However, the subsequent Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States are meant to more clearly define and categorize civil and criminal law in regards to all three fundamental natural rights. And that NEEDS to be remembered.
I'm going to take a side road now for the rest of this post to highlight the problems with drug prohibition law--specifically cannabis policy, since that is what I have learned the most about when it comes to the abuse of our constitutional rights and the restrictions placed on our right to pursue happiness.
In the last 42 years, several significant rights have been curtailed to fight what was originally Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." What was touted as a healthful social policy was, in hindsight, just a deflection away from the Vietnam War problems. And since the "evil," "leftist" counter culture were being so vocal about their ojection to the war in Southeast Asia - and heavily into cannabis use at that time - what better way to discredit them? The Drug Enforcement Agency (or, DEA - also formed by Nixon - himself, a criminal: see The Watergate Story - in 1969), now has the authority to violate our self-evident rights, like the 14th Amendment, which states clearly...
Statements B and C, have been found to be indisputably inaccurate...
A 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report: Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, says about the cannabinoids in cannabis, on page 4 [my bold and underline]...
Even though this prohibition was not the result of popular action, but by rather morally conservative political factions, any police officer is ALWAYS considered to be "reasonable" in his search for the substance. Though he needs "reasonable suspicion" to search your house, his NOSE is often his only "objective" way of suspecting the presence of cannabis. And because HE is a police officer and YOU are not, a whole bunch of other violations and abuses of power can then be exercised in his desire for your prosecution. He is motivated by the need to meet arrest quotas for such "drug offenses" and his department feeds at the trough of federal funding especially assigned for this purpose. He has every reason to make sure you are found "guilty," once he starts the process. It often begins with the violation of your Miranda Rights. Here is an explanation for the intention of Miranda Rights, in case you've ever wondered...
The typical Miranda warning is as follows...
But if/when you are coerced into potentially incriminating yourself at the scene, it can be a short trip to a full search of you and your belongings. Saying the wrong thing can set you up for "reasonable suspicion." The problem is that (again) a police officer may say that you forfeited your Miranda Rights and agreed, through a facial expression or other affirmative gesture, to the search. There is precedent for this in California. If you have a chance check out the interview with Attorney Eric Hart at the Psychedelic Salon Podcast, you can get an idea of why this happens. The point being: Whether you are hiding something or not, you must specifically, but civilly, say to the officer that he does "not have permission to search" your house, automobile or person. Otherwise, even a simple gesture can be invented or "interpreted" to justify the search.
The English lawyer, Sir William Garrow (1760–1840) developed the idea of (my emphasis) the "presumption of innocence," a notion that is not found in the Constituion, but is accepted internationally. This requires that the "burden of proof" be placed upon law enforcement, rather than the accused. Yet, many times, instead, there is an assumption by law enforcement that you are guilty until proven innocent, leading to the potential permanent seizure of your cash and/or property, even if you are never prosecuted for any crime (my underlines), as in this instance...
So, what does all of this have to do with "The Happiness Economy"? Well, first of all the DEA is a great example of an entrenched, para-military (remember the submerged male instinct?) organization that receives huge amounts of money from the Federal Government. This amount has increased steadily. Consider the following...
And this money is being spent to fight a losing "war"--everyone knows this! I strongly encourage everyone who reads this post to take an hour or so off and listen very carefully to this lecture by Jonathan Ott: Crimes Against Nature the Civil War Against Drugs. It is BY FAR the most informative, factual, single source I have ever heard on this subject. Download it...study it. You will never be able to defend US drug policy after you understand what Ott presents.
How many other failed programs continually get more and more money, just for failing--with zero hope for success, while their appointed agencies exhibit such extensive corruption, violating natural, civil and even human rights? And no one - including our dear selves, it seems - ever considers raising a real political stink about this fact. Instead, we waste our collective energy running around scratching our heads trying to determine whether we are"liberals" or "conservatives"; Republicans or Democrats. It should be quite clear, though, to rational people, that wasting money is wasting money--no matter which of the Republicrat sides of the isle they associate themselves with. These are OUR tax dollars.
I don't know about you all, but this institutionalized hypocracy does NOT make me happy. Nor, does the fact that whether I'm doing something against the law or not, I can be arrested and detained without cause, searched without warrant and lose all of my property and life savings without conviction.
The economics of this unhappy situation is unsound, patently unfair, highly prejudicial and ultimately facilitates an endless and completely arbitrary hemorrhaging of public money, at a time when we need every last dime just to run the basic infrastructure of the country. Now, combining politics with economics. Just look at prison figures. Over 50% of all incarcerated non-violent prisoners are drug offenders. And it costs $18,000-31,000 per federal prisoner, to hold each of them for only one year. I have never even made $31,000 per year in my life. The most I ever made was at my last job as a supervisor was $30,000 per year. Yet, non-violent drug offenders are costing that much to incarcerate.
Combine all this ridiculousness with fact that the US locks up more of its own citizens than any other First World nation. Drug policy is mainly responsible for this. Yet, illicit drug usage remains the same. If making cannabis illegal is such a brilliant concept why do countries who have decriminalized it (like Holland), have LESS drug use, per capita. And seen over-all, illicit drug use is a non-problem globally. Only 3.3% to 6.1% of the adult population worldwide use illicit drugs. To give some perspect 25% of the adult population uses legal tobacco (a substance that kills around 300,000 people per year in the US alone). Direct use of cannabis has never physiologically killed anyone in 10,000 years. For a surprising and fairly well-balanced report, download: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) World Drug Report 2011 (pdf).
The cleric, Richard Cumberland (1631–1718) introduced the idea that, as humans, we have a natural right to the "pursuit of our own happiness." Around the same time, John Locke (1632-1704), the so-called "Father of Liberalism," expanded upon this as a Baconian scholar. In his 1693 Essay Concerning Human Understanding he says that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness." Eighty-three years later, as we all know, Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Ben Franklin and others, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most famous sentences ever written (my emphasis): "We hold these truths to be self-evident [Franklin's contribution], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
These guys were not hedonists. They were not "pleasure seekers," although they did enjoy themselves when they could. That was the point. Mostly, though, they were deists and rationalists. And when Franklin changed Jefferson's wording to reflect their view that the right to happiness was "self-evident," it expressed so simply what philosophers had on their minds during the Enlightenment (the 18th Century--aka "the Age of Reason"). After Newton and Leibniz (both, philosophers AND mathematicians) simultaneously discovered the calculus and showed that everything we see in nature can be described by an extremely accurate form of mathematics - simplifying the old method of using the less accurate trigonometry of the Greeks - a rational God seemed to emerge from nature. The Western world was waking up after 1500 years heavy handed religious rule over all behavior. They saw secular government as the liberator of mankind (except for their own slaves of course), and planned to make "the American experiment" a catalyst for reform and a model for all future governments.
These men were students of science and nature, and believers in an un-wrathful Deity who ran the universe in a well-thought-out way. It was suddenly apparent, for the first time since the Eleusinin Mystery cults, that human beings were meant to be free to explore their world with mind and body, and only this could lead directly to "true and solid happiness." Even the Bible, which has a paucity of information about secular happiness was re-examined for its role in life. The word "blessed" in Jesus' beautiful "Sermon on the Mount" can be interchanged with "happiness"...
Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.'
Matthew 5:1-12
It was recognized that the moral lessons for individuals put forward by Jesus himself (rather than the oppressive churches that grew up to MISrepresent him), could fit perfectly with the ideas of guiltless scientific exploration and philosophical ("philosophy" being a unifier of religion and science) enjoyment of the world around us.
Today, the emphasis put forward by political and economic forces in this country, and thus around the world, focuses almost entirely on the "Life" and "Liberty" aspects of the thinkers of Enlightenment. "Happiness" has been marginalized as a fluffy afterthought. However, the subsequent Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States are meant to more clearly define and categorize civil and criminal law in regards to all three fundamental natural rights. And that NEEDS to be remembered.
I'm going to take a side road now for the rest of this post to highlight the problems with drug prohibition law--specifically cannabis policy, since that is what I have learned the most about when it comes to the abuse of our constitutional rights and the restrictions placed on our right to pursue happiness.
In the last 42 years, several significant rights have been curtailed to fight what was originally Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." What was touted as a healthful social policy was, in hindsight, just a deflection away from the Vietnam War problems. And since the "evil," "leftist" counter culture were being so vocal about their ojection to the war in Southeast Asia - and heavily into cannabis use at that time - what better way to discredit them? The Drug Enforcement Agency (or, DEA - also formed by Nixon - himself, a criminal: see The Watergate Story - in 1969), now has the authority to violate our self-evident rights, like the 14th Amendment, which states clearly...
Cannabis, which, though proven to have medical benefits, is still listed as "Schedule I" in another of Nixon's inventions: the Controlled Substances Act, which states (my brackets and underlines)...The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and Warrants shall not be issued, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse ["abuse" is an ambiguous term now considered to be completely synonomous with any kind of "use" itself].
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
Statements B and C, have been found to be indisputably inaccurate...
A 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report: Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, says about the cannabinoids in cannabis, on page 4 [my bold and underline]...
The combination of cannabinoid drug effects (anxiety reduction, appetite stimulation, nausea reduction, and pain relief) suggests that cannabinoids would be moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting.And many states, including Maine, have contradicted federal policy by legalizing medical use of marijuana. Yet there is always a barrier to reforming drug policy, usually erected by the DEA. When a serious attempt was made to reschedule cannabis - see the Medical Marijuana Rescheduling Petition (pdf) - DEA testimony was accepted as more medically relevant than any actual medical studies or reports, and the petition failed. The fox (DEA) guarding the henhouse (drug policy based on medical research), has an obvious conflict of interest in this way, since they would lose a large portion of their funding, were federal law changed by rescheduling cannabis. What does this mean? It means, unequivocally, that Richard Nixon is postumously still in charge of drug law in this country. And neither the voters, nor the scientific medical establishment, can seem to even make a dent in it.
Even though this prohibition was not the result of popular action, but by rather morally conservative political factions, any police officer is ALWAYS considered to be "reasonable" in his search for the substance. Though he needs "reasonable suspicion" to search your house, his NOSE is often his only "objective" way of suspecting the presence of cannabis. And because HE is a police officer and YOU are not, a whole bunch of other violations and abuses of power can then be exercised in his desire for your prosecution. He is motivated by the need to meet arrest quotas for such "drug offenses" and his department feeds at the trough of federal funding especially assigned for this purpose. He has every reason to make sure you are found "guilty," once he starts the process. It often begins with the violation of your Miranda Rights. Here is an explanation for the intention of Miranda Rights, in case you've ever wondered...
Miranda Rights:
Under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, an individual has the right not to incriminate him- or herself. The United States Supreme Court has held that, in order to comply with the Fifth Amendment, an individual who is in custody and being interrogated must be provided their Miranda warnings.
If law enforcement does not provide a defendant who is undergoing custodial interrogation their Miranda warnings, the prosecution may not use any statements derived from that custodial interrogation in the prosecution’s case in chief at trial. Being in custody does not necessarily mean that an individual is in handcuffs or at a police station. Whether a person is in custody for purposes of Miranda is determined by whether a person has been deprived of their freedom in a significant way. If law enforcement officers have not complied with their obligations under Miranda, a defendant may bring a motion to suppress the statements. If the motion to suppress is successful, the statements cannot be used against a defendant in the prosecution’s case in chief.
Even if a defendant has been abused of their Miranda rights, any statement made by a defendant may not be introduced into evidence at trial unless the statement was made voluntarily. A coerced confession may not be used against a defendant. It is the prosecution’s burden to demonstrate that an individual knowingly and intelligently waived their privilege against self-incrimination. A motion to suppress can be brought on the basis that either the waiver of Miranda rights was not voluntary, or that it was not knowing and intelligent. Attorneys at Nolan, Armstrong & Barton have successfully moved to suppress statements in murder cases, economic espionage, homicide, petty theft, domestic violence and DUI cases.
The typical Miranda warning is as follows...
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?
But if/when you are coerced into potentially incriminating yourself at the scene, it can be a short trip to a full search of you and your belongings. Saying the wrong thing can set you up for "reasonable suspicion." The problem is that (again) a police officer may say that you forfeited your Miranda Rights and agreed, through a facial expression or other affirmative gesture, to the search. There is precedent for this in California. If you have a chance check out the interview with Attorney Eric Hart at the Psychedelic Salon Podcast, you can get an idea of why this happens. The point being: Whether you are hiding something or not, you must specifically, but civilly, say to the officer that he does "not have permission to search" your house, automobile or person. Otherwise, even a simple gesture can be invented or "interpreted" to justify the search.
The English lawyer, Sir William Garrow (1760–1840) developed the idea of (my emphasis) the "presumption of innocence," a notion that is not found in the Constituion, but is accepted internationally. This requires that the "burden of proof" be placed upon law enforcement, rather than the accused. Yet, many times, instead, there is an assumption by law enforcement that you are guilty until proven innocent, leading to the potential permanent seizure of your cash and/or property, even if you are never prosecuted for any crime (my underlines), as in this instance...
A police dog scratched at your luggage, so we’re confiscating your life savings and you’ll never get it back.” In 1989, police stopped 49-year-old Ethel Hylton at Houston’s Hobby Airport and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage. Agents searched her bags and strip-searched her, but they found no drugs. They did find $39,110 in cash, money she had received from an insurance settlement and her life savings, accumulated by working as a hotel housekeeper and hospital janitor for more than 20 years. Ethel Hylton completely documented where she got the money and was never charged with a crime. The police kept her money anyway. Nearly four years later, she is still trying to get her money back.Furthering what I was saying in Part 1 of this thread, people who rely on certain ideologies that they feel are fundamental to social stability should not be changed (such as capitalism being seen as the final word and the ideal economic system) often become willing to change the world around them in order to support these ideological positions. These people believe that the good intentions of capitalism and civil rights sometimes need to be "amended" to fit the now-outdated primary philosophies that they cling to. We saw this with the abuses of capitalists who are in denial about the destructive nature of the original ideal of "capitalism," set forth by Adam Smith, to today's economy. We also saw how capitalism is actually hostile towards free markets. And now in this post we see the same kind of "amending" going on with the abuse of the civil rights set forth by the Constitution in the government's drug policies. But all that is politically acted upon is easily transposed back into economic terms.
So, what does all of this have to do with "The Happiness Economy"? Well, first of all the DEA is a great example of an entrenched, para-military (remember the submerged male instinct?) organization that receives huge amounts of money from the Federal Government. This amount has increased steadily. Consider the following...
Fiscal Years 1990-1997
From FY 1992 through FY 1997, DEA funding for the Southwest border increased 55 percent (from $82 million in FY 1990 to $127 million in FY 1997).
- Total budget authority for DEA increased nearly 90 percent (from $558 million in FY 1990 to $1,054 million in FY 1997).
- The number of DEA special agents in the Southwest border region increased 37 percent (from 587 in FY 1990 to 806 in FY 1997).
Fiscal Year 1998
In the FY 1998 budget request the DEA budget totals $1,146 million, an increase of $92 million (nine percent) over FY 1997 ($1,054 million). At the FY 1998 level of funding:
- The DEA budget will account for seven percent of the National Drug Control Budget request for FY 1998 ($15.917 billion).
- DEA funding for the Southwest border will total $157 million or about 14 percent of the total DEA budget in FY 1998 ($1,146 million).
- The number of DEA special agents in Southwest border region for FY 1998 will total 902, an increase of 96 special agents (12 percent) over FY 1997 (806 special agents).
And this money is being spent to fight a losing "war"--everyone knows this! I strongly encourage everyone who reads this post to take an hour or so off and listen very carefully to this lecture by Jonathan Ott: Crimes Against Nature the Civil War Against Drugs. It is BY FAR the most informative, factual, single source I have ever heard on this subject. Download it...study it. You will never be able to defend US drug policy after you understand what Ott presents.
How many other failed programs continually get more and more money, just for failing--with zero hope for success, while their appointed agencies exhibit such extensive corruption, violating natural, civil and even human rights? And no one - including our dear selves, it seems - ever considers raising a real political stink about this fact. Instead, we waste our collective energy running around scratching our heads trying to determine whether we are"liberals" or "conservatives"; Republicans or Democrats. It should be quite clear, though, to rational people, that wasting money is wasting money--no matter which of the Republicrat sides of the isle they associate themselves with. These are OUR tax dollars.
I don't know about you all, but this institutionalized hypocracy does NOT make me happy. Nor, does the fact that whether I'm doing something against the law or not, I can be arrested and detained without cause, searched without warrant and lose all of my property and life savings without conviction.
The economics of this unhappy situation is unsound, patently unfair, highly prejudicial and ultimately facilitates an endless and completely arbitrary hemorrhaging of public money, at a time when we need every last dime just to run the basic infrastructure of the country. Now, combining politics with economics. Just look at prison figures. Over 50% of all incarcerated non-violent prisoners are drug offenders. And it costs $18,000-31,000 per federal prisoner, to hold each of them for only one year. I have never even made $31,000 per year in my life. The most I ever made was at my last job as a supervisor was $30,000 per year. Yet, non-violent drug offenders are costing that much to incarcerate.
Combine all this ridiculousness with fact that the US locks up more of its own citizens than any other First World nation. Drug policy is mainly responsible for this. Yet, illicit drug usage remains the same. If making cannabis illegal is such a brilliant concept why do countries who have decriminalized it (like Holland), have LESS drug use, per capita. And seen over-all, illicit drug use is a non-problem globally. Only 3.3% to 6.1% of the adult population worldwide use illicit drugs. To give some perspect 25% of the adult population uses legal tobacco (a substance that kills around 300,000 people per year in the US alone). Direct use of cannabis has never physiologically killed anyone in 10,000 years. For a surprising and fairly well-balanced report, download: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) World Drug Report 2011 (pdf).
People finding happiness or relief for medical problems - which can also bring happiness - from the use of cannabis (and this is only one example of the many ways that happiness is sought, obviously) are being hunted down and shut away in prisons, with their property being seized and their reputations being permanently marred, by their own tax dollars, and by an organization (DEA) that consistently FAILS in its mission to rid the country and the world of "drugs"--and cannabis IS the most likely substance to be arrested for. Yet, never, not one single time, scientifically, has a negative independent study of cannabis held up to the ocean of positive ones. Nevertheless, unscientific, politically-motivated, para-military, irrational, hypocritical, economically wasteful public policy is maintained. This is not a rational way for the country to spend money. It is also depriving its citizens of their right to "cognitive liberty" (visit: the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, or CCLE, for more information on this concept). I promise you that in the next 5-10 years, cognitive liberty will be the new battle cry for human rights activists (like myself). An overview of the CCLE's mission is (my underline)...
...elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought. Our mission is to develop public polices that will preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st Century.
Freedom from slavery. Universal sufferage. Protection for sexual preference. Most of us see the moral reasoning behind these things, but there is also an economic advantage to each of them. And their acceptance is part of an ever-progressing trend toward a happier humanity; one with less discrimination, more diversity and more money for all (something I will address in greater detail the next post on this subject). It is a sad fact that human beings - now that they are achieving freedom in the outside world - have to fight tooth and nail for the most fundamental freedom of all: the freedom to think what they want, in the way that they want. It must become so. And it WILL become so.
I intend to continue doing my part, that you (the reader) might similarly be inspired to educate yourself, and then take action in your own way to make this a more balanced world; one with the (1) material resources that make life comfortable and (2) the intellectual freedom to review and improve upon your own inner life, thereby enhancing the lives of everyone on this ever-shrinking world of ours--both are required for the coming of The Happiness Economy.
[Please check in for the next post on this thread.]
I intend to continue doing my part, that you (the reader) might similarly be inspired to educate yourself, and then take action in your own way to make this a more balanced world; one with the (1) material resources that make life comfortable and (2) the intellectual freedom to review and improve upon your own inner life, thereby enhancing the lives of everyone on this ever-shrinking world of ours--both are required for the coming of The Happiness Economy.
[Please check in for the next post on this thread.]
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