W.D. Edmiston is a culture warrior of sorts who is concerned more for the original intent of the founders of the USA and cares much less about the later culture changes that relate to the "feelings" crowd or judgemental debate over who is sleeping with whom. An originalist on the Constitution as well, he is an outspoken critique of Marxism and the modern court system, especially the Roberts Supreme Court. The blog is an America First style of thinking - from strength we can set the best example to other countries.
Post 1 of 3 Human beings must be socialized inside of a family structure. Almost every culture on the planet would agree wholly or in large part to that statement. That is the training for being able to live with others. Animals are instinctual, they have DNA sequences that control what they will become – usually some kind of killer. Even a hungry baby chick can hunt a bug down and kill it, and eat it. To the bug, the chick is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
An alligator lays eggs, watches them, and protects them until they get in the water on their own. Then in a flash, the male or female may eat half of them. The little alligators are killing machines themselves, chasing down smaller things until they grow. Neither has any boundary to cannibalistic murder. Humans left to themselves in small groups, will prey on other humans just as unapologetically.
Animal lovers like to remind us humans that we are part of the animal kingdom. Technically, that is true, but most animal lovers are nice people and they are trying to raise the importance of their animals by making them more human. The police know it is not always a move up the ladder. We have seen too many human miscreants and their ugliness.
The role of the police officer is not merely to protect property. It is primarily to protect human life. I never was forced to take a life, or even hurt someone during my many years as a police officer. But I saved several either by first aid or pulling them from wrecks, burning buildings or thirty feet of water. There seems no thought about what will happen when social welfare people are unable to deal with confirmed criminal who enjoys hurting people. It takes trained, dedicated people to remove that person from society.
When the miscreant – literally meaning the mistake in creation – shoots at a police officer or a random person they are in effect shooting at the entire society to which they belong. They are defying that thing called the social contract, that has literally supported him or herself since infancy. When they do this sort of thing, they have failed to be civil. They have descended into that of a predator animal – having grown large enough physically to hunt something down and kill it. There is a list of rules of lessening amounts of punishment for us to follow and there are other rules our families are supposed to teach us. The village has no responsibility to teach your or your children to follow the law, except through the publication of the rules and later the adjudication of those failures in a public court. If during their adolescent stage, they are not taught critical thinking skills, they will most likely not fit into society and one of my friends in law enforcement will encounter them early on. They will not make friends easily and will always seem needy, looking for someone to help them with life. When they do not learn to think critically, they flounder and will always want someone to guide them through life. When they join a radical movement, hoping to make a difference and do not see progress soon enough; they will become frustrated. Often, they reach the alligator stage and hunt down and kill someone; either an opponent or a leader they think has failed them e.g. Lincoln/Booth, Lenin/Trotsky, Yitzhak Rabin/uber-nationalists, Scalise/Hodgkinson. We cannot continue to let non-American influences change how our very successful experiment with a government of, by, and for the people works. The police have a pivotal role in that government. The first form of government are our leaders. Hopefully, they will become our independent businessmen who offer their help with legislation after they have become successful. We must let our guaranteed freedoms of speech, religion, and God-given guarantees work without influences like political correctness. The only reason that anyone would want to remove the police is to allow those who do not like limitations on their activities to grow stronger.
Photo Leonello PiCatello – Unsplash
They want to tell you that their new idea is to put more thinking and kind people into the position of resolving disputes. That is a stalking horse argument. Their goals are not altruistic. As soon as they are allowed to gain control politically, they wiil try to take control directly of lives of those who formerly favored police. Those promoting the defund movement will create their own, stronger, more ruthless police. They are tyrannical, seeking more control and absolute control. Their police would be beholding to a small group of officials. Today, despite some claims, the police are supervised by the City Councils and State and County officials. Those officials are elected by the public. When the old police are no longer there to stop it, they will change that part of the law. Then the new police will appear.
The only way I can tell you I am certain this will happen, is that it has happened in every instance similar to this one in History. We tend to think of the French Revolution to be similar to ours. It was not, it was a fascist movement, that resulted in a new, organized, and deadly group of rulers who used the guillotine to solve all their problems.
This week, we relaunched the websites and blog posts based on my book, Looking Backward, Forward. It is about the current climate of overreaching government control and congressional behavior that has characterized much of the 21st century. In it, I discuss a behavioral disorder called Adult Arrested Adolescence (TriA) that many people have developed. It is threatening the sovereignty of the United States and affects many areas of life. TriA’s think poorly because they have been taught to think with feelings or emotions. That is first-tier thinking, where first impressions, happy thoughts, and colorful images delight the senses. It is not the second-tier deeper analysis that helps us evaluate the worth of ideas, people, and their schemes. These people went through adolescence without fully maturing, leaving the brain unprepared for adulthood and Critical Thinking. There are reasons why that happens and you will enjoy reading about them.
Since I substitute teach in a high school, I have sometimes discussed critical thinking in my classes. Every year, I get a freshman who puffs up and complains they do not want to be critical. They do not want to think critically because it isn’t nice. Their thinking is so superficial and they relate it to the political correctness they are taught on television and our culture. Critical thinking is not hate-speech, it is instead the skills you need to evaluate a problem or opportunity and form a judgment or solution. It is necessary for the full development of a young person’s identity and character. People who have so seldom used second-tier thinking in their adolescence, do not develop good critical thinking skills, and they have never developed their brains to do it well. What is worrisome, is that like some language skills, if the brain does not learn them early, it cannot learn them at all.
Remaining a Tri-A means the brain does not develop the “wrinkles” that serve to store memory. By using primarily first-tier thinking skills they are unable to distinguish emotions from thought. The stronger the emotion the more they will stifle their ability to be realistic and distort their views of situations and relationships. It allows them to believe in terms of slogans. They attach deep meaning to slogans like, “love is just a word” and “everything happens for a reason.” While they perceive these words to mean something important, they mean nothing at all. They are also able to combine multiple contradictory ideas that seem profound and meaningful. Such an event, almost 120 years ago had an unusual effect on politics and government, leading to the death of many people. It began innocently.
In the latter part of the 19th century, philosophers and scientists were just beginning to study human psychology. Psychotherapy and Sociology were not yet the well-developed areas of study they are today. Their ideas were fascinating and you can imagine the young and well-to-do college children in their coffee houses argued over them constantly. This was the age of Ivan Pavlov, whose experiments with dogs led to the observation that certain stimulus caused dogs to salivate when they were about to be fed. Another scientist of that time, Wilhelm Wundt, now known as the father of experimental psychology, decided that to study human beings, all elements of study must be measurable. In doing so, he threw out any consideration of the soul. That set the stage for experimental psychology to become attractive to social engineers like followers of Marx and Ingles. That set the stage for people hoping to improve and control the population to imagine the human being as a machine. If the right stimulus was added, a predictable reaction would happen.
Meanwhile, a funny thing happened along the road to the betterment of society and the education of its children. It is remarkable, but it is a fact, that a simple romance novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887, would be that influential. It was written by Edward Bellamy in 1888 and became the supporting mythology for social programs like socialism and Marxism in the twentieth century. It also played a role in creating the systems responsible for the Arrested TriA.
Edward Bellamy, a new author looking to make a few bucks writing romance novels wrote Looking Backward: 2000-1887. It was nothing more than that, a romance novel. The primary character was in love but experimented in many things including time travel. He put himself in a deep coma in 1887 and was not found in his special laboratory until the year 2000. An influential scientist found him and showed him a Utopian society. His true love was now dead, but her granddaughter was by then about the same age as when he went to sleep. That inter-generational love is the rest of the story.
What the readers read into it were the descriptions of how the society worked. While it was seemingly perfect, the book did not describe any real way to achieve those goals other than simple phrases like, “We worked together.” Bellamy despised socialism, so he called this new form of government nationalism. But the hundreds of young socialist-minded theorists who talked about politics in coffeehouses thought they saw more. Keep in mind this was before even the First World War. The world had not seen the results of socialism run wild.
The rest is history. Although there were no methods described to achieve this society, the budding Socialists needed none. Many German and Russian theorists were creating theories and having fun debating them. Marx and Ingles were still writing letters, articles, and the two-volume Das Kapital about that time. Bellamy’s book led to the creation of over 200 Nationalist clubs throughout Europe. These clubs were mostly college clubs for young, pampered, boys and girls whose brains had not finished growing. They were able to connect many contradictory ideas to support 200 Nationalist Clubs around Europe. A surprising number of influential young people found themselves still influenced by Bellamy’s book years later. They eventually grew up and took those socialist ideas in the place of “nationalist” into their new careers. The most striking is John Dewey, the so-called Father of American Education. He believed in the possibilities of the novel, included the idea that spirituality and the belief in the Bible were useless to educating children. He did think of creating his own religion in one of his writings, but only as a way of controlling the people in a movement.
What we find today, is that an even greater number of these same types of shallow thinkers have been created, either in a huge case of unintended consequences or just as likely by intent. In a headlong pursuit of socialist ideals, Socialism is still popular with our youth. At the same time, the concepts of manipulating people through propaganda found in both Nazi Germany and the Cold War USSR have gone mainstream. The Chinese have used behavioral conditioning (The Manchurian Candidate) and the American CIA (The Men Who Stare at Goats) used mind-altering drugs to interrogate and manipulate their targets. That has not been lost on the United States merchandisers, marketing people or our education professionals. The latter being why we have lost both prayer and the pledge in schools. It is also why parents complain of politically correct indoctrination. Both parents and the ultimate authority found in the Bible, get in the way of modern school indoctrination. Over the last few election cycles, behavioral techniques have been used on the voting public. They reached their height during the 2008 and 2016 elections. A later post will cover that in-depth.
Our schools have been teaching contradictory messages, using top-down centralized control of students to the point they do not think well for themselves. They have been taught to always defer to their teacher, then the principal, or the coach and the administration for questions of final authority. This type of teaching has been going on for years, so neither parents nor students know how to think for themselves. What has been created are young people tailor-made to be street fighters, fuzzy thinkers who not only are behaving that way in our streets, but in every type of business, government, and social service business. There is a lot more to how that change took place, and it almost sounds like I’m describing a single step process. But it is more complicated than that. This is only the fourth blog of at least twenty-five that relate to my book titled, Looking Backward, Forward. It is, I hope obvious that I think we need to move away from the unintended consequences of Bellamy and onward to something better.
What you should not do is assume this is a blanket criticism of all schools. There are some good ones. More importantly, the values and ethics of many teachers have not changed. Sure, there are some agendized teachers. But the majority of teachers and school professionals are just that professional. But, government guidelines, forced down their throats by the Teachers Union that is the National Education Agency force schools into some activity that is not helpful. The Michelle Obama school lunch policy stands tall among those not well-liked by the students.
Creating these types of non-thinkers results from forced school attendance, school discipline policies that put children at odds with their teachers, administrations that place students into class ranks, and a culture that no longer values education. So, the school boards and the administration stress discipline over everything – including learning. Therefore, schools are operated increasingly by discipline and rank order. What we have produced is a group of children, not all of them but many, who are groomed to be followers of mass movement tyrants, and community organizers who will use them to achieve their goals. There is a way to upend this policy, but it would be a sea change in how schools are taught – and there are no proven, perfect ways of teaching. Most people imagine some society has a perfect example of education, but the best systems fit the community and the people in it. No one method will ever suit every community.
These blogs will cover the main topics of an almost 400-page book that was published in 2018. Do not buy the current version now. A second edition is coming. The blogs are free, and I hope you will sign up to follow the blog regularly. I will post several to kick things off and then they will come slightly further apart until they arrive once or twice a week. At the same time, I will discuss current topics in light of how they relate to the Adult Arrested Adolescent focused upon Pro-America themes.
The book upon which this blog series is based, Looking Backward, Forward is about government control and pugnacious congressional behavior in the 21st Century. That relates to the Adult Arrested Adolescent or TriA that has become a crisis for the future of the USA. The TriA is a behavioral disorder that describes how some people in the United States and other countries think. And they think poorly if at all because they have been taught to think with feelings or emotions. That is first-tier thinking, where first impressions, happy thoughts, and colorful images delight the senses. It is not a deeper second-tier analysis that helps us evaluate the worth of ideas, people, and their schemes.
These people went through adolescence without fully maturing, leaving the brain unprepared for adulthood and critical thinking. Their peers tell them this is new thinking, and they should distrust other points of view. They may actually have a bias toward vacuous but intelligent-sounding myths. There are reasons why that happens and I hope you will enjoy reading about them. I would be happier to be wrong. But that, I fear is not the case.
New thinking is biased toward old myths
Since I substitute teach in a high school in my retirement, I have sometimes discussed critical thinking in my classes. Being in Texas a non-union state, we have a very good school that turns out students that perform well in UIL competition. We have turned out a Gold Level FFA Program, a great award-winning band, and at least one very popular NFL star. Even so, every year, I get a freshman who puffs up and complains they do not want to think critically; because critical thinking is like hate speech. That is an example of what I mean – their thinking relates to political correctness ideas that float in the ignorance pool of our culture. Critical thinking is not hate-speech, it is instead the skill you need to evaluate a problem or opportunity and form a judgment or solution. It is the goal of education.
These first-tier thinkers so seldom use second-tier thinking in their adolescence, they have never developed their brains to do it well. In my experience, the young people who are involved in the technology trades, pharmacy, nursing, mechanics, welding/fabrication, engineering, veterinary and agricultural skills are deeper thinkers and understand their world much better than those who are steeped in literature, laboratory, and mathematics pursuits.
Remaining a TriA leaves the person with an emotional thinking process. Using primarily first-tier thinking skills they are unable to distinguish emotions from thought. The stronger the emotion the more they will stifle their ability to be realistic and distort their views of situations and relationships. It allows them to believe those vacuous slogans. They attach meaning to phrases that mean nothing like, “love is just a word” and “everything happens for a reason.” They are also able to combine multiple contradictory ideas that sound deep and meaningful. My favorite from my college days was the Zen question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Almost 20 years ago an odd thing happened with a romance novel. That began with the publication of the book, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy.* In the latter part of the 19th century, the concept of a Utopian society that ran itself became popular. The coffee shop idealists found deep meaning in the book. The ideas were all based on socialist beliefs that try to make people into almost identical parts of a single government. It is remarkable that one single book,* appears to have become the supporting mythology of social programs like socialism, progressivism, liberalism, and Marxism in the twentieth century. It also played a role in creating the system responsible for the Arrested TriA.
Romantic Socialists or confused TriAs
Photo – Tim Householder, Unsplash
Edward Bellamy, a new author looking to make a few bucks writing romance novels wrote Looking Backward. It was not intended to be more than that. The primary character was in love but experimented in many things including time travel. He put himself in a deep coma and was found in the year 2000 in a utopian society. His true love was now dead, but her granddaughter was just about the same age as when he went to sleep. That inter-generational love is the rest of the story. What the coffee house crowd saw was a book about their concept of utopia. They added their socialism and what were then new social project ideas into the story and formed Nationalist Clubs. They had Bellamy’s blessing because he used the term Nationalist in his books, including the national ownership of all means of production. He described its successes, but he did not also show how they achieved that success. His focus was on the romance. But the socialists thought they saw through it and the rest is history. Although there were no methods for how this society was to be put together, the Socialists needed none, Marx and Ingles were writing essays, broadsides, articles and trying to finish Das Kapital. Many others were bloviating on better ways to run the society, steering it toward a utopia of their own. These clubs were mostly college clubs for young, pampered, boys and girls whose brains had not completely finished growing. They were able to connect many contradictory ideas to support 200 Nationalist Clubs around Europe.
What we find today, is that many of these same types of shallow thinkers have been created, either in a huge case of unintended consequences or just as likely — by intent. Our schools have been teaching contradictory messages, using top-down centralized control of students to the point they do not think well for themselves. They have been taught to always defer to their teacher, then the principal, the coach, and the administration for questions of final authority. Students and their parents have gone to the same type of schools for the last 50 years. Neither of them received no real instruction about deeper thinking unless it came from their families. Many cannot think deeply and instead just follow the fashion and whim of their friends. They imagine themselves free when they are bound in chains to an ideology and have lost their freedom in the process.
Photo – Olmez,
Schools focus on discipline due to the deep fear of public embarrassment. Children getting into fights at school, pregnant in stairwells, or hurt by bullies bring about harsh criticism, complaints, and threats of lawsuits. The student body cannot get out of control. Therefore, discipline and rank order is the way schools are operated. What we have produced is a group of children, not all of them but many, who are perfect followers of mass movements tyrants. That is a much more complicated story, but the series of blogs will cover that topic and more.
The result of our children having their education dumbed down and their social responsibility made overly important is that we have tailor-made street fighters; fuzzy thinkers who not only are behaving that way in our streets, but in every type of business, government, and social service business. They are welcomed into movements like Black Lives Matter because they will drink the Koolaid, become true believers, and sacrifice themselves to make the world a better place. That promise is usually a lie.
***
In the next blog in this series, I will compare known adolescent characteristics with the Tri-A and explain further how that is harmful both to the person and the nation.
The blogs will cover the main topics of an almost 400-page book that was published in 2018. But do not buy one now. A second edition is coming. But the blogs are free, and I hope you will sign up to follow the blog regularly. I will post several to kick things off and then they will come slightly further apart until they arrive once or twice a week, mainly focused upon Pro-America themes.
W.D. Edmiston, Robert Starr, Arlington J North, Allen Spence, D. LaRue Mahlke
There is a moving song about indecision called loving arms. Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge made it a hit in 1973, and more recently a girl group with their own indecision recorded it in 2015. The 1973 version made the song a memory for many people. The final chourus, after describing the mistake of leaving a loved one, believing the freedom to roam would be better got my attention the first time I heard it. “Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains, lying in your loving arms again.” By 1973 I had both a strong Biblical training and had begun to finish, and pay for, the last of my classes in college, by pursuing a career in law enforcement. One of the things I learned was about liberty. From the Judeo-Christian model, we learned that liberty has constraints. That is the only way it works well. The basic model of both English Common law and The Constitution were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That is not a pro-religious statement as much as it is just a fact. That idea was well known in English Common Law, and probably the reason they were chosen to be included in the Declaration. The fact that follows from it is that America has become the most prosperous and helpful neighbor to her peers than any in history. . . with liberty and justice to all. Contained or inferred in is Kristofferson’s being “too long in the wind.” That means being beyond control, at liberty but having no plan or goal. Even while the pledge mentions liberty, it is constrained by the responsibility to our Republic, To “keep it” as Franklin said, as our form of government. Let it control the country and the guarantees our Constitution offers. You are pledging yourself to the chains of that liberty. Also, within that liberty, is to respect the liberty of others. It means that agreeing to follow laws in this country is better than being without them. Nowhere in that liberty is the freedom to steal, assault, burglarize, damage them or their property, stop them or their cars on the street – or even shout in their face. That curtails their liberty – and like anger, there is no justification for taking another person’s liberty. The number of times the police hear a guy say, “Well yeah I hit her, but she made me mad!” are countless. The speaker always says it with such gusto – as if it was justification — some sort of get-out-of-jail card. It is not, and if you are using anger or your “right” to protest to hinder, much or harm others you are outside the law. Those are the chains of liberty. If a lover is to be faithful and true they must accept the chains of responsibility. Like in marriage, the lack of freedom to romance others, to accept responsibility for a partner, their health and individual needs as well as shared goals. The protestor, for his protests to remain relevant, must remain within the liberty of our chains.
***
W.D. Edmiston
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A couple of years ago I wrote the book, Looking Backward, Forward. It was published in early 2018. At the time, having a Website and Blog was not on my mind and I had no idea what it could be.
This is a positive viewpoint on the state of our people, it has a direct effect on what will happen on Election Day. I hope you will share it with others if you find it worthwhile. Your comments are appreciated.
The time has come for me to create a blog series for that book and to share some of my experience, education, and interest in research with my readers. This is the first of a long series. Along with it will be some topical diversions based on recent news and how the treatise of the book is reflected in daily events.
A blog that believes in the kind of America where we grew up
Some 40 percent of our population includes adults who are locked into thinking like an adolescent child, a term coined as Adult Arrested Adolescent, or Tri-A. They are adult people who act like children. Tri-As (pronounced Try-Aze) respond, think, act, and have outbursts of adolescent angst and emotion that, looks like an adolescent child. By empirical evidence I hope to show you this is not only a problem but an opportunity for the USA.
While this might strike you at first as a curiosity, it is not merely an observation about an obscure part of social psychology. If that many of our people are not mature, what can we infer or observe that may have a profound effect on our culture as we know it. What does that mean about how our government works? Is it observable in your daily life that the people around you, your bosses, the check out clerk, the people to whom you trust everything from your laundry to your financial transactions are emotional, feelings driven people? Would you rather they be able to think critically, to adhere to the social contract that says do for others as you would expect them to do for you. The fact is, we may be at a tipping point from which we cannot return. To have a large section of our adult-aged population remain emotionally adolescent with a stunted ability to think is somewhat of a crisis.
The idea came from my first book on social networking behavior, in 2006 about the internet. The behavior there was so similar to classic Adolescent characteristics, it reminded me of reading in college Eric Hoffer’s book, The True Believer, thoughts on the nature of mass movements, (1951.) Hoffer was the first to give us definitions and an understanding of how mass movements work. Central to his writing is the idea of the true believer. True believers see themselves as damaged as adolescents often do. They instinctively look for a way to fix themselves by becoming part of something bigger and not always better. Being famous for crazy stuff is good enough. Ideas like Progressivism, Socialism, Catholicism, Christianity as a religion, Protestantism, and Islam also contain a large number of fanatics. Social Reformers like Barack Obama seek out those who mistakenly or foolishly see themselves as nonredeemable. The reformers offer them glory by “hitching themselves” to a big movement. To accomplish that ruse, Obama bastardized an idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s whose suggestion was for the individual to personally set high goals, “hitched to stars” rather than subsume themselves to lower expectations. To be fair, warrior chiefs, generals, and all other forms of totalitarians seeking cannon fodder have used the same spiel throughout history. From those ideas, I began to look at them as seeds of a latter-day behavioral disorder called Tri-A or Adult Arrested Adolescence. Hoffer didn’t say a word about the Tri-A himself, my research following his line of thinking led me to the Adult Arrested Adolescent.
Utopian schemers have created the Tri-A to be the ideal follower of their causes.
Then as now, Hoffer showed us that Utopians are constantly trying to fiddle with mainstream American culture. My own observations and research tell me not much has changed. Creating the Tri-A takes that one step further, and it was not an accident. By manipulating the American school systems quietly and promoting political correctness they have changed many of our youth into followers instead of leaders. They have created the Tri-A to be the perfect activist for social causes – most of which are a myth. My investigative training as a police officer taught me to use empirical data. In other words, data that was readily observable. So, to a degree, this may read a little like an offense report. One day, I expect the Tri-A or a behavioral disorder by a similar name to be in the Desk Reference to Diagnostic Criteria. It may become a diagnosis like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Depression, Anorexia, or Bulimia.
After WWII and the revelations of what fanaticism had done to millions in the world, Hoffer could study the direct cause and effect of manipulative governments and populist leaders. Hoffer watched these activities as they occurred during the 1930s (Nazism or Social Democracy) through the 1950s (Stalinism) He then compared them in The True Believer to ideas that are more ancient and the words of those who spoke on similar eternal truths. He favored Montesquieu the philosopher and originator of the idea of separation of powers in government. What he taught us has passed the test of time. Hoffer understood mass movements because he immersed himself in the topic. Since 2006 I have spent hundreds of hours studying the Tri-A. For the last three decades since first reading his book, I have applied his ideas to what has happened in America. Since the lure of Utopian ideas and political movements are highly attractive to the person who feels he is damaged and incomplete they are interested in changing things. Change — without any further definition has become a war cry for Progressive partisans. Their slogans sound profound and meaningful when they are just words that mean little or nothing. They are merely trying to recruit those who seek to reinvent themselves. The same partisan evangelists promise that change will make the damaged person whole but offer only fairness, equality, and promises of creating new legislation. Each evangelist hopes that their one great effort will guarantee equality and fairness. They tell every listener the solution is to promote the concept of centralization of all matters to the highest authority. The first problem with all their solutions is that fairness and equality are concepts that work between individuals. A third party, unless it is a judge deciding a fact of law, is a poor choice to determine fairness for others. So is a judge, but that’s how we set it up in the legal system. Fair solutions cannot be enforced by a top-down structure that comes from an overeager government. As far as centralization and dictation from the government are concerned – why do we think people in government know better? The kids of my heyday would have said, “Who died and made you king?” Secondly, teaching that there is an ultimate authority to which all disputes can be referred does not teach self-reliance and the ability to negotiate with your friends and neighbors. In early civilizations, the elders of some societies met at the city gate to act as judges in disputes. It is an ancient method, more a teaching experience on how to get along than a jury system. Involving the police or courts in your affairs speaks of a weakness of character. It says you cannot reach a constructive agreement effectively. At that point, the only thing left is to recover damages from whatever the elements of the dispute show are called for. Letting others decide how to live your life is like shooting nuclear warheads. A real rocket scientist who worked in the intercontinental missile program told me, “No matter what happens, if we use these things; we lose.” To teach children that they cannot get through life without handouts or help from the “boss” is to teach them to be peasants. We lose. Have you not asked yourself if there is something more serious going on when grown people have no understanding of things once taught in high school or working with their parents? They cannot understand or construct simple sentences or grasp more complex issues like cause and effect? Were you slightly amused at the number of people who went to psychiatrists because their candidate lost the election in 2016? Do the people who serve you, work for you, sit next to you at a ball game sometimes amaze you with their childish view of things? Do you wonder how they arrive at concepts like, “Drug-free zones” or “Safe Spaces” since those are hopelessly childish views of how social control works? That is the point. They are not just acting like kids; they really are still adolescents behaviorally. They let others tell them how to live. They get furious and hateful when things do not always work out in their favor because they interpret fair and equal as “The way I want it to be.” Then they get elected to public office.
W.D. Edmiston, Robert Starr, Arlington J North, Allen Spence, D. LaRue Mahlke
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Your potential of having a life full of accomplishment is your ability to be comfortable with uncertainty.
Arlington J. North
Why do we ignore the risks while blithely swimming in an ocean full of man-eating creatures? Those who are close to the seashore almost completely ignore that risk unless sightings are posted. There is some uncertainty in that – but not a lot — attacks are one in 11 million. But people do get attacked and killed.
Many more are afraid to fly although there is
a one in five million chance of dying from it. Walking down the street is 1 in
400. We hop in our cars to just go for a drive when the chance is 1 in 103 of it
killing us. But our fears and uncertainties paralyze some of us over the more
mundane unfamiliarities.
The uncertainty of going to college in another town; taking a job in a state where you have never visited, much less lived; these are things many of us face. College in another state, hum? It is comfortable, and certainly cheaper, to go to a local community college. Where you live may have a very low cost of living, parents, friends and all sorts of things like that. Those things are real and sometimes limiting. You cope.
But It is a little sad to watch fear of risk stop talented people.
But
human beings have a need for a sense of awe and it is important that we tap
into it. We look at the stars and wonder what they mean; why do we find them
fascinating? Nature constantly amazes us, and we wonder how it all works. What
makes it do those things that give us awe. It is their uncertainty that causes
awe in the stars and nature and in other people. Every human has a need to be
awed and when we are, we are better for it.
Young people, strong and capable should try as many new things as possible. I don’t mean just teens; I mean young strong healthy people. One day you are going to be old and your biggest regret will be not taking a chance at being awe; of learning other things.
You don’t know what you don’t know. When you take that chance to be awed, to see the other side of the mountain, to plumb the depths of the ocrean; you will be awed by what you did not know. Take a chance don’t be reckless, but start small, get our adventure legs under you. Then GO!
There is a big divide over politics today. I have my
opinion, you have yours. But those not as familiar with the commonality of
political rancor over the ages – it can all be summed up well with what we
learned from Dr. Seuss.
Everything stinks till it’s finished.
That true of politics. But the great thing about how
our world has worked out for over 200 years is that when the people get their
wish, not those of one extreme are the other, it smells relatively well in the
end.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not. The more you read the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.
So, since the founders left the power vested in the
people who are all in the same pot, not the uber rich of the average
politician, we make better choices for the public. That means all of us should
read up, get up and do something about the things we really want to happen in
our world.
Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one Alive who is Youer than you.
This is encouraging to those of us who have never been involved in “campaigning” for something you want. You. Everyone in America is an individual, given a voice by those who founded the nation. The idea that some people try to shush you because they think their ideas are better than yours, or call you names just means they haven’t read enough and just don’t know.
Only you can control your future.
This could be either an encouragement to those in the above paragraph or a warning to those who want to control you. But it is also a warning of sorts to everyone. Both what you do and what you have done helps define who “you are Youer” than. Doing defines us much more than what we think or say. It indicates more than anything what you will do in the future.
Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.
This is also both an encouragement and warning. Some
call it Kharma, some say “what goes
around comes around” but the fact is what you put out is what you get back.
If things start happening, don’t worry,
don’t stew. Just go right along and you’ll start happening too.
Those who encourage the division and the discord in
their lives get division and discord. Eventually, we tend as humans to sweep
the discord away and search for tranquility. Keeping positive as an individual
is more powerful to your future than staying mired in the discord. Those who
continue to trouble us tend to get their comeuppance one way or the other. Mr.
Trump seems to take a little more direct response to what’s happening in his
world. It is something that seems uncharacteristic of a President. Especially
those who are unfamiliar with Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt.
I’ve heard
there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead and some come
from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my trouble
are going to have troubles with me.
“We are normally blind about our own
blindness. We are generally overconfident in our opinions . . . We exaggerate
how knowable the world is. . . people don’t think very carefully. They’re influenced by all sorts of
superficial thinking in their decision-making. . .”
Daniel
Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow
Making an unqualified statement
about your decisions is as difficult as having dinner with your future in-laws.
Having an idea is so threatening to other people we must qualify it with an “I
think” disclaimer. It’s that or be labeled as not being nice – or worse,
racist.
Try saying, “I think the third quarter figures
indicate greater investment in marketing is needed.” You might as well say,
“The third quarter figures indicate greater investment in marketing is needed
but my Ichthyology degree from Thunder-Bolt Community College and Stock Car
Racing Track, doesn’t really give me much credibility on the subject.”
“I think.” in a sentence asks
permission to say something, as if you would modify it if no one agrees. Really,
would The Terminator have scared anyone by saying “I think I’ll be Baaak.”
We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, and political groups. I ask in my writing ‘What is real?’ Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people use very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.
Using a Hegelian concept of “being” or “reality” our society is offering more and more opportunities to participate in activities that create an alternative reality. That is why the young person who handed your coffee and change this morning seemed not to connect with you at all. The place where you intersect with their world is not on that easily accessed, safe, electronic media. His reality does not include you. He does not belong to your reality. That can’t be good.
[1] Phillip K. Dick, Philosopher, Writer, Novelist who wrote Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau
The history of Liberalism and Marxists is full of instances where the words and symbols they use to promote their causes are pirated and redefined. History is full of instances and none more glaring than that of the Statue of Liberty. It was never about immigration, it was about American Exceptionalism as exemplified by the Civil War.
It is easily researched that Bartholdi (sculptor) and Laboulaye (visionary financier) intended the Statue to be representative of America’s courage to fight a Civil War over the rule of law regarding slavery and the state’s right implications therein. It was about the abolition of slavery and the establishment of liberty. The evil of Jim Crow laws had not been completely realized when Laboulaye had the original vision or it might not have happened. Nowhere in its dedication were the words immigrant or “give us your tired” used at all.
Then, a few years later, “The New Colossus”poem was hung on the wall of the Visitor’s Center in 1903 during a dedication in memory of those raising funds for the statue’s pedestal. Notice that I did not say it was there to add or subtract to the meaning of the Statue of Liberty. Immigration idealists have ever since have been gradually obscuring the original message of the Statue of Liberty. They want to say it is about modern day immigration and always had been. A myth converted or pirated to their truth.
The idea that thousands of immigrants may have been inspired, brought to tears or given hope at the sight of Lady Liberty is not an argument that I make. The important point is that its original intent was to honor that honest brand of American exceptionalism that lead to the Civil War because of American courage. It also stands for the Rule of Law we are still trying to appropriately enforce over the idea of basic human individuality. Something, I might add, neither our government nor any other person can take from you in this country.