Wake Up!

Posted on 20. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 14, 2011

Care – enchantment

From The Reenchantment of Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore

“If with an ecological sensibility we protect the oceanids, care of oceans will follow. We couldn’t maltreat an ocean unless we had begun to think of it as a mere body of water and not as a spiritual entity. The Greeks and others who imagined the ocean as divine were not beneath us in sophistication, but ahead of us. If anything, we have lost the one thing that would sustain our intimacy with nature-a religious sensitivity to the sacredness of all forms in nature. The oceans are not only a bountiful source of fish, transportation, and recreation; they are also one of the supreme sources on the planet for contemplation and other aspects of the spiritual life, but we could know this only if we were deeply schooled in the necessary virtue of reverence.”

One of the most heinous crimes of our times is a lack of caring. My English teacher in 8th grade surprised the class as she got extremely mad at one of the students when he said he didn’t care. She said, eloquently, that he had better care, because all his life depended upon it. He would find his work meaningless, he would stop enjoying himself, he would make of his own life a mockery when he decided that he didn’t care about anything. In short, he would cease living and merely skim the surface of life.

If there is one thing that divides humanity, it is this trait of not caring. It is a decision to put self above all others that separates a being from his brethren. It becomes Me and Other, as though we were not one organic whole. When a person decides not to care, he has given up on that thing. Then it is up to the people who care to carve out a path, and they are doing it with a heavy load of people who are asleep.

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Liberty!

Posted on 20. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 13, 2011

LAVA – Los Angeles Venture Association – Libertarian – stewardship

This morning, I attended an event hosted by LAVA, the Los Angeles Venture Association. A panel of experts taught us “PR for Startups”. It was my first event of its kind.

It was a great opportunity for me to pitch my website to whoever would be willing to listen. Everyone was friendly and happy to exchange information about our companies. It was worth getting up at 5:00 am to make it to the venue many miles from my house.

Whenever I tell people that I’m doing something political, it gives them a chance to get passionate about their opinions. The second person I talked to told me he was a Libertarian, and he wasn’t afraid to tell me his sheer distrust and hatred of government.

I listen to everyone. I am truly interested in what people have to say. Sure, I have my own viewpoint, but I am like a calm pond, waiting for someone to throw his skipping stones. And most of what he said was right about government: its complexity weighs everyone and all our companies down with a yoke of regulations and rules, omnibus documentation, and over-taxation. Always over-taxation.

If government would just leave the businesses alone! Why can’t businesses make money and hold onto it and invest it into other businesses? Why should government be the arbiter of good and not-so-good? Who are they to regulate what is and is not?

Another Libertarian chimed in: he wanted ultimate freedom and civil liberties.

I agree with almost everything and everyone who can support their ideas with a good argument! That’s my problem. I can see all sides of the issues.

So I asked, “Was there ever a time when our government worked?” To which the first Libertarian answered, “Yes, in the beginning. I would accept a government like that!”

Ah, there’s the rub. Government, like life, gets more and more complex. It never gets simpler.

What if we could throw all the laws away and start over again, with just the Articles and Constitution? Where would we be?

For one thing, we wouldn’t have the IRS. The IRS, in a form not recognizable by today’s standards, was started in 1913. Before then, income tax was considered unconstitutional (and even today, many consider it thus). If we could go back to those days, which is debatable, one thing we would have to dismantle is our military. How many folks in this country would agree to that?

So complexity is our yoke. And yet, if a handful of people today, as wise and as bohemian as our founding fathers, were to craft a document to set a new government, could they appeal to everyone or even a majority of our citizens? Can our present Congress agree on anything? I think the answer is obvious.

So politics always comes back to the age old question: if people are given their run of things, will they act selfishly or in the interests of the masses? And my Libertarian friend was telling me that it will always be to act selfishly, because that is the nature of humans. And because no one could answer this basic question: how do you define “good”?

This is why I blog: to answer that question. Because we are so jaded by society, that we have forgotten that the answer is really quite simple. Goodness can be defined by two things: health and happiness. Now, we could go on forever debating semantics. But the truth is, in each of our hearts, there is an answer to these beliefs of health and happiness. Am I healthy? Is my family healthy? Is my community, my government, my country healthy? Is my planet healthy? And similarly, we can ask this of happiness.

Look at this country. Ask these questions, and then you will know if people are acting for the common good.

And finally, I said: “It is our responsibility to be stewards,” and there I think I lost my Libertarian friend. Because I doubt that in his world, stewardship even begins to enter his thoughts. So there is a limit to how far a conversation can go, and this one ended here.

I welcome my friend to enter the thought process of stewardship. First, he has to know what it means, and then he has to give a damn about it.

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Two Headed Monster

Posted on 18. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted on September 12, 2011

Democrat – Republican – two party system – bipartisan – dysfunctional congress

Yesterday, I told two complete strangers at my daughter’s Sunday school that I just started a website that is meant to fix the problems in Washington. After they had a good laugh, saying that was impossible, I persisted in explaining that on this website, anyone can run for Congressman/Senator/President and that people can use their write-in vote to change the face of politics.

More importantly, people can start to really voice their complaints and offer solutions, and we can build consensus. This consensus can be readily compared to what is going on, so that the disparity between the will of the people and what goes on in Washington can be out in plain sight.

One of the women raised the point that even if we got “regular people” into office, they would soon become corrupt. I imagined a lobbyist waving a wad of cash in front of one of the rubes we write-into office, and that they grab that cash and stuff it into their pocket so that they can feed their family and their children’s families for three generations.

She’s right! No matter who we send to office, at their first sight of the kind of money thrown around Washington, they will cave.

I told her that we need to send a bunch of Mr. Smith’s to Washington, who can’t be bought. She wondered how we voters can tell if a candidate has that kind of resolve and integrity. I said that there must be people who care enough about others that they won’t sell their soul and do the wrong thing for the immediate gratification of their family alone.

They still said no.

So I asked, “should I give up?”

And without hesitation, they both chimed in “no!”

I can’t even count how many times people have told me that it’s impossible to change the face of Washington. I get it on a daily basis. But no one ever tells me to stop what I’m doing, and in fact, they are so curious what kind of effect this website will have, they actually encourage me.

I know the odds are stacked against us. Look at what money can buy our candidates in the machine that is our political system: unlimited television time, sophisticated marketing campaigns meant to cloud the issues, deals of every imaginable configuration, making liars and concealers out of even the most “trustworthy” people.

Another person told me that the money machine that runs Washington really just creates a two-headed monster. We might think we’re voting for one thing or another, but they’re both funded by the same BIG special interests. So when we get more of the same in some of the most egregious ways, it’s because no one stood up to those big guys.

Maybe we won’t be able to change the face of Washington in one election cycle. But we may be able to do it in two or three. I will not give up; will you?

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Happiness, Part 1

Posted on 17. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 11, 2011

 

Happiness Sickness

 

We have a happiness sickness in this country. Part of the problem is our culture: it focuses on materialism, wealth, and status. The other problem is that we just aren’t taught anything about what it takes to be happy.

 

This is the first of a three-part segment on Happiness. I am quoting (with permission) from Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” This will set the stage for parts 2 and 3.

 

“The problem of evil has bedeviled many religions since their birth. If God is all good and all powerful, either he allows evil to flourish (which means he is not all good), or else he struggles against evil (which means he is not all powerful). Religions have generally chosen one of three resolutions of this paradox. One solution is straight dualism: There exists a good force and an evil force, they are equal and opposite, and they fight eternally Human begins are part of the battleground. We were created part good, part evil, and we much choose which side we will be on. This view is clearest in religions emanating from Persia and Babylonia, such as Zoroastrianism, and the view influenced Christianity as a long-lived doctrine called Manichaeism. A second resolution is straight monism: There is one God; he created the world as it needs to be, and evil is an illusion, and that enlightenment consists of breaking out of the illusion. The third approach, taken by Christianity, blends monism and dualism in a way that ultimately reconciles the goodness and power of God with the existence of Satan. This argument is so complicated that I cannot understand it. Nor, apparently, can many Christians who, judging by what I hear on gospel radio stations in Virginia, seem to hold a straight Manichaean world view, according to which God and Satan are fighting an eternal war. In fact, despite the diversity of theological arguments made in different religions, concrete representations of Satan, demons, and other evil entities are surprisingly similar across continents and eras.


“From a psychological perspective, Manichaeism makes perfect sense. “Our life is the creation of our mind,” as Buddha said, and our minds evolved to play Machiavellian tit for tat. We all commit selfish and shortsighted acts, but our inner lawyer ensures that we do not blame ourselves or our allies for them. We are thus convinced of our own virtue, but quick to see bias, greed, and duplicity in others. We are often correct about others’ motives, but as any conflict escalates we begin to exaggerate grossly, to weave a story in which pure virtue (our side) is in a battle with pure vice (theirs).”

"Copyright © 2006 Jonathan Haidt. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group."

 

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Debt of Gratitude

Posted on 16. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 10, 2011

war – military – Vietnam – Afghanistan – PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – Armed Forces

We owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who serve our country in the Armed Forces, not simply for what they do, but for what they are willing to do. Because we love them, we must support them throughout whatever process they find themselves in.

Young soldiers who see a lot of action, who are in the thick of things, who have even one traumatic event full of the rush of adrenalin, the tragedy of seeing their brothers or sisters die, always come away changed. They have witnessed something momentous, especially when taken as a large fragment within the short span of life they have lived and the limited experiences that have shaped their worldview.

Many soldiers come away addicted to the adrenalin rush, unable to find similarly intense action when they return to their homes. They have killed or seen killing, injuries, highly emotionally charged scenes. When it is time to come back down and join society, how do they assimilate?

We made a huge mistake after the cold war in Afghanistan. We left that country torn apart, without making sure the young Afghans of that country (half the surviving population was under 14 years old) had a means of making sense out of their lives. More impressively, we left them with the example their elders shooting large weapons at the Soviet helicopters, feeling a thrilling sense of victory through a game of shoot ’em up. Or so, a 14 year old might see it that way.

And so these youth may have been conditioned to feel a thrilling sense of reward for the act of shooting things out of the sky, or making things blow up, not really knowing why, on a gut level, these things were so attractive.

Violence can be addictive. It depends upon your experience with it, and your success in not getting killed. This is part of what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is all about. That, and the warped thinking that violence solves problems and so it is rationalized.

When I was 25, in 1986 I met my first Vietnam Vet. He was a hulking Samoan man with a shiny dark face and a beautiful soul. I was treating him for a knee injury and like many people I’ve known, he started pouring out his story to me. He didn’t want to tell me all the gory details of war, but I could see it in his face.

He told me he is a Christian and very religious. But when he was in ‘Nam, he did things he still cannot explain to himself. This huge man started sobbing crying in front of me.

He said his religion told him not to kill, yet that is what he had done. He could not reconcile his past with what he knew in his heart was the difference between right and wrong.

This man profoundly affected me. I knew instinctively that what he had been through was a horror beyond my complete comprehension. What I took away from the experience of watching a veteran cry is that the toll of war follows these men around for the rest of their lives. And if it doesn’t, we should all be worried. Because in my mind, his humanity was crying tears of guilt and remorse. The best part of this man was still grieving over something he had done 20 years ago that could never be removed from his life.

I tell this story, not to bring us all down, but to show that the kernel of this man, the seed he was as a child, was basically a good person. Not a killer who needed to be controlled at all costs, but a good person who was told by his superior to do a terrible thing. Or else. He had nowhere else to go, or so he felt at the time.

If our soldiers say pshaw, it’s because they don’t or can’t think ahead. The ones who say they’re just doing their job don’t realize that the psych carries the cost long after their boots are put away.

When we left Afghanistan in 1979, after a job well done what we might have done, to prevent future Afghans from seeking to repeat their wartime adrenalin-producing activities was to counsel them through the aftershocks, the ripple effects, and to show them a peaceful existence is possible. We should do the same for our own people. War does not have to go on and on.

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Things Will Get Better

Posted on 14. March 2013 by admin

 Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 9, 2011

 

derivatives – economy – Glass Steagall – crash of 2008 – Financial Modernization Act of 1999 – Gramm Leach Bliley Act –  Warren Buffett – Charlie Munger – banks – securities

 

The purpose of this website is to elevate the mood of the citizens of the United States. The cause of many of our problems is being in a valley so low that we cannot see above the crest that would show us a way out. Solutions for our problems lie in creativity, ingenuity, and technology and a shared sense of purpose. If ever we needed a more inspired sense of community, it is now.

 

That is a good thing, because all the researchers and great thinkers who study happiness tell us that a sense of community is one of the key elements that lead to a more productive and satisfying way of life. Instead of sitting alone in a room, people need to be out in their communities making a difference by social, face-to-face, caring interactions. This website is the answer to ennui, inaction and a feeling of helplessness.

 

Before a human being can feel good, she needs to have her basic needs met: food and shelter and a means of making a living. With unemployment so high (and the numbers are skewed because everyone knows, when you’re unemployed so long that you lose your benefits, “they” stop counting you) the pressure to take care of the situation is nearly unbearable.

 

But first I will explain why we are in this situation the best way I know how. This is the short version, because it has taken several decades to get where we are today.

 

Back in the year 2000, when George Bush Jr. was about to take over the presidency, a bill was on the floor of Congress which would essentially dismantle the last vestiges of what was the Glass Steagall act. The passage of this bill set up the conditions where derivatives, credit default swaps and sub-prime mortgages were deregulated and obfuscated. A strange thing happens between presidencies: it’s holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s) and our congressmen usually fall into lame duck sessions where people don’t feel much like paying attention and working hard. But I don’t believe congress stopped thinking in order to pass this bill. Quite the contrary. I think they probably knew that the rest of the country was asleep while they stealthily passed a law to repeal the very act that had protected our country from the boom and bust practices that had put us deeply into the Depression in 1929.

 

In a very acute way, I feel that our congressmen and women sold out our futures because they wanted to help create get-rich-quick schemes now.

 

The rest is history, as they say. Make no mistake about it: I am blaming the people who voted in that congress, Democrat and Republican alike, for creating not just one, but a series of conditions under which our present economy came to be. For more information, go to this article, because it is the best description (all in one place) that I have found for what went on prior to 2008 to cause the crash.

Now, we still haven’t put into place the same safeguards that we used to enjoy that prevented banks from, essentially, gambling with our money. The derivatives market is still corrupted, and it needs to be fixed. Here’s Charlie Munger’s opinion on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M3a2j-jHIs. Charlie’s protégé, Warren Buffett weighs in on this paper, calling derivatives “Weapons of Mass Destruction:” Warren Buffet on Derivatives.pdf

So the first order of the day should be to replace those safeguards that prevent an inflated “boom” cycle after which there is always a massive “bust”—and in this case, recovery is taking a long time, and indeed it may be felt for generations to come.

 

The second thing to understand about the crash of 2008 is that the banks made “good” on their credit default swaps, which is to say, they borrowed that hefty sum from our government—trillions of dollars—to be able to give a hefty sum to a very few paper pushers who masterminded these scams. In a free, capitalistic society such as ours, those people should be rewarded for being so “smart” that they figured out a way to work the system legally (albeit immorally and unethically). And now, these people are living the “high life”. Or are they?

 

Deep down inside, these wealthy few not only understand what they did, but they don’t feel worthy of what they have. They know that by pulling massive sums of money out of circulation, they have unwittingly caused massive unemployment, they have caused strain on our government systems, all the way down to the education of our children. That’s not being a good neighbor.

 

And what happens when you aren’t a good neighbor? It weighs heavily on your conscience, or at the very least, if you aren’t a sociopath or a psychopath, it causes fear and anxiety. These people know they “got away with” something, and they know they are sitting on the solutions, and they know that if they don’t put the money back into circulation, this country will continue to spiral down.

 

Yes you can create a buffer zone using your wealth. Fly in private jets, go to islands that only the wealthy visit, and generally try to ignore the unwashed masses. That only goes so far. Somehow, some way these people (unless, again, they are sociopaths) will figure it out that they can’t ignore the problems of the masses who are their countrymen, their neighbors.

 

There is a law in economics that is rarely discussed, but it is one of the most important laws because it affects our ability as a species to live: money needs to flow. We talk about cash flow, and taxation, but we rarely talk in terms of movement. Money absolutely needs to move in order for the whole system to work. It needs to change hands, so to speak. I am not just blaming the few who have made out in the 2008 crash. I am also pointing my finger at any country, company, or entity that holds onto money and allows it to putrefy when there are so many people in need all over this world. It’s a matter of conscience.

 

We need to create systems where the little guy in this country can borrow, at a reasonable rate, from capitalistic institutions that are designed to move money again. It is a win/win. The “investors” are anonymous, and they have a place to stimulate our economy, while creating jobs. In some countries, these are called micro loans. Originally used to help third world countries, we need more micro loan programs here at home.

 

Posted in Economy, Writeindependent.org | Comments Off on Things Will Get Better

Parenting Is An Art

Posted on 13. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 8, 2011

What happened to good parenting?

As parents, we are tired. We work so hard, or have so many demands and responsibilities that we can’t spend the time and attention on our loved ones.

So the kids have their own lives, periods of time separate from their us, watching TV, playing video games, hanging out with friends, unsupervised for much of the time. These are their influences: TV, mass media, friends who are influenced not by human interaction, but by a frenetic fast paced life.

A famous actress once said: “Children today grow up too fast to know the meaning of romance.” I liked this saying because I had a very slow childhood on a farm in Pennsylvania, where a walk in the woods was as good as spending time with a friend.

So what is romance? It’s a combination of slowing down enough to notice, of paying close attention to something, and of letting the joy in your heart sing about the wonder of it all. It takes a slow meditation to get to that place of romancing the world or finding the state of romance.

Basically, romance is a celebration of joy. Do our kids feel that in their everyday lives? When a kid gets in touch with her joy, she knows instinctively that life is worth living, and she will respect life, honor it as sacred. From this place, she can learn to respect other people, respect her work as an expression of her self, and respect her place in the world.

As parents, the best parenting begins with showing our joy every time we look in the faces of our children. If you haven’t slowed down enough to look into the face of your child to celebrate that feeling lately, then it’s time.

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If Howard Can Do It, So Can I

Posted on 13. March 2013 by admin

United States – bicycle tour – Continental Divide – Bikecentennial – Glacier National Park

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on Sept 7, 2011 

I have seen more of the United States more slowly than most people because in 1984, I bicycled across the USA. My group started in Oregon, ended in Virginia, and then I tacked on another 350 miles to get to my hometown in rural Pennsylvania. All in all, it was 5,000 miles.

 

The inspiration for my trip was a gentleman named Howard who was a graduate student at Penn State. He has a marvelous sense of humor, and he got it into his head one day to bike across the USA, even though at the time, he didn’t know how to ride a bike!

 

I was already totally into cycling, and Howard came along for a ride with me one day early in his training. Penn State is situated amongst some of the most challenging mountains you could ever climb. I remember going uphill that day with Howard, and as I passed him, I could hear his gear shift clacking behind me because he hadn’t yet mastered shifting!

 

Howard somehow made it across the United States, and by then I had caught the bug. So I bought a touring bike, named it “Howard”, and my motto became: “if Howard can do it, so can I!”

 

I rode with a group called Bikecentennial, who organizes trips from Missoula, Montana. We carried everything on our bikes: peanut butter and jelly for making sandwiches, our tents and sleeping bags, and the tools required to fix flat tires or broken chains.

 

I learned what the Continental Divide was in a big way, having to cross it nine times. It’s the ridge of mountains that divides the country, water falling to the east of it eventually reaching the Mississippi River and water to the west, the Colorado River. Luckily, climbing is my forte because I like to stand on the petals as much as possible. It gives the pooter a break.

 

One of my favorite memories on the trip was the “laugh off” I had with Gary, a fellow rider. He and I immediately hit it off, because we both knew how to imitate Goofey’s laugh. We had all rented a van to tour Glacier National Park, and we were tired after a long day of sightseeing. The eleven of us were in the van when Gary and I decided to have a laughing contest. Whoever lasted longest, won.

 

I have a wicked competitive streak, so I was damned if I was going to lose. I had to have the last laugh!

 

Have you ever witnessed a laugh-off? It’s very hard to stay stone-faced through one of those things. We had everybody laughing, except one hold-out: friend Doug, a doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who wanted badly to stay somber through the whole thing. Five minutes in, he couldn’t stand it any more and he finally broke up.

 

I can’t remember who won that day, but it doesn’t even matter. We got everyone in that van laughing and I have a great memory for the rest of my life.

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Change is Scary

Posted on 11. March 2013 by admin

 Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 6, 2012

change – Obama – anxiety

Before the economy gets better, things have to change. Change is scary, but it is also exciting and wondrous.

Everyone must know how to handle his/her own anxiety that comes along with real change. Remember first that so long as you have a good heart, you will be strong enough to turn the tide when you are called upon to follow your soul’s path, and not this shallow existence we’ve witnessed so far. I’m writing specifically to those people out there who think that greed is good, and that money is everything. There is a better life ahead and we each hold the key.

To handle the anxiety that comes along with real change, we must know technology in the softer sciences. Some wonderful experts have already uncovered techniques to handle anxiety. Dr. R. Reid Wilson is a forerunner in this important endeavor of showing people how to retrain their thinking process. He explains some simple concepts that anyone can understand because the proof of their concept resides in the body. I will give you a link near the end of this blog of Dr. Wilson’s YouTube video to get you started.

Your body is like a tuning fork: if you pay attention to its vibration, you will be able to handle and ultimately enjoy living. Listen to some wonderful music, watch a beautiful play, read a deep poem, observe the vastness of the sky, hold a loved one in your arms and feel the love coursing through your body, look upon art and nature–all these techniques help ground us and keep us in reality. And reality or consciousness is good indeed.

If you do not experience anxiety or have a fear of the unknown, this blog post is not for you. But if you occasionally feel like you’re out of control of your life, or you get nervous before making a decision, or if you have free-floating fear, visit here.

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No Green In Science Fiction Movies

Posted on 11. March 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 5, 2011

Movies like the Matrix, Terminator 2, Alien are missing something. There is no green life, no plants in these movies. Sure, they’re ultra sleek and compelling, but they forgot one important fact: without plants, none of these people would be alive.

It gets even weirder. Because plants don’t really “digest” the nutrients they need, they rely heavily on bacteria and fungi in the soil to do the job of digestion for them. In fact, we rely heavily on bacteria in our own gut to digest and make bio-available the nutrients we need from our food.

In short, we would be dead if it weren’t for bacteria.

Science fiction movies are skimpy on the science. In fact, they shouldn’t even be called science fiction. They should be called “fiction-fiction” movies.

I bring this up because I want people to know that plants keep us alive. There is no future world without them, and certainly life would be pretty bleak without greenery. Gardeners know that we’re linked to plants and the soil, so they don’t have any trouble understanding this concept.

The unsung hero of the underground world isn’t a bacteria, though. It’s a fungus called mycorrhizae. For some excellent information on mycorrhizae, click here and scroll down half way. The reason this fungus is so important is that it extends the root system of healthy plants and therefore the surface area for picking up nutrients by 100 fold.

Why should you care about fungi? Two reasons: 1. If you eat food that is grown on healthy soil, it will be packed with nutrients and 2. If plants are sprayed with pesticides and herbicide, the microorganisms in the soil suffer, thereby affecting a plant’s ability to take up nutrients.

Why buy organic? It’s not because it tastes better, people! It’s because you’re eating food that is healthier, more packed with vitamins and minerals.

If you want the studies that support these claims, contact info@writeindependent.org

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