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Why is there no Hitlerplatz in Berlin? Why is there no monument (I assume) to the rise of the National Socialist Party? Simple: they are understood to have been moral monstrosities, unworthy of commemoration by sober, well meaning people.

Yet what is the Arc de Triomphe? It is a commemoration of what we in modern terms would term fascist wars of aggression, in which millions of innocent people died.

Napoleon used his wars in no small measure to fill a depleted treasury. He encouraged his men to very literally rape and pillage. They would burst into a home in a conquered nation, shoot the men, rape the women, and carry them with them on the campaign, until they got tired of them, and left them to starve. No doubt many were killed. Certainly, Napoleon didn’t care.

And yet this monstrosity, and the Terror which proceded, is fundamental to modern French culture. It is no wonder they cultivate so assiduously the inability to think, which I would term “unilateral intellectual disarmament”: it is necessary to continue to believe that Hitler and Napoleon were different at all.

Yet, Hitler had “scientific” views, based on Darwinian notions of the survival of the fittest, which Napoleon did not have. But who could argue that their fundamental self-seeking and need for blood and conquest were any different?

So much of history is bullshit. The same people who continue to see Napoleon as somehow great continue to see our successful efforts to bring peace to a continent– then support it globally–as somehow iniquitous.

If you think about it, the Germans were the very last ones to wage wars of aggression on their neighbors. Yet, those are the only ones we remember.

Why do they speak French in France? Because of us.

The foundational moral problem with the French is they have a shithole at the very center of the city, and they light it up with spotlights every night, as if millions of uselessly dead corpses and countless ruined, miserable lives was somehow a success, and that more of the same would be anything but a waste of human life and energy.

And the stink radiates. One can only hope reason descends for the first time on the City of Night some day.

Here is one exercise I came up with: consciously visualize greater success for people of whom you are jealous. Generalize it to everyone, but in detail. Think of specific people, and pray for them (or wish them well, in whatever manner is consistent with your own ideas on reality).

For me, sometimes, I wish I were a big wheel. I wish I had the M.D., the house, the car, the beautiful wife, and the 2.2 beaming, successful kids to sit around the Christmas tree with and sip some fine wine that I can afford because, hell, I’m a doctor.

This is nice enough, and someday something close to it may come to pass, but the simple reality is that I am who I am mainly because of decisions I’ve made or not made, and in a very small part because of the luck (good and bad) that happens to all of us.

I sometimes comfort myself with the patent fact that many “rich” people aren’t happy. A brother of a friend used to make $5 million or more every year. Now he complains that it’s less than a million. He has to sell one of his $5 million homes. His wife is fat, and he is in a bad mood most of the time. He drinks a LOT.

Or take the patent fact that a lot of bed hopping happens in a lot of ritzier neighborhoods (hell, everywhere). There are a lot of unhappy marriages, broken homes, and traumatized kids. Part of the price of large success is very hard work, which often leads to alienation from your family.

So one can do that analysis. I have done it. But what are you really doing? Bringing them down to your level. Well, I have this problem and that, but so do they, so they are just as unhappy as I am. As gratifying as this may be, it is not actually satisfying. It’s a form of Schadenfreude, which is just an amelioration of misery, not a positive good.

Sunlight is infinite (pedants let that go), and so is our ability to accomodate ourselves happily through creation with the outward circumstances of our lives. Plainly, some lives would be virtually impossible to live happily–say that of a poor, hungry, abused woman–but you can always live more happily if you choose to seek it. As I believe Abraham Lincoln put it “most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

And this starts with being supportive of the happiness of others.

So find that guy with the Porsche and hot girlfriend, or that woman with a great man, unlimited allowance and beautiful kids (or fantastic career, take your pick), and imagine them being happier.

Say the man is overworked. Imagine/pray for him to have more energy, a more positive attitude, and for the relationship he has with his family to strengthen. See them all smiling and being happy. See him getting promoted. See him having a wonderful vacation skiing with his wife and kids. See them getting old gracefully together.

Imagine that woman finding the perfect outfit, and absolutely beaming when she gets to wear it out. Be happy for her, ESPECIALLY if you don’t like her and are jealous. [Note: I am indulging in some stereotypes. Like most stereotypes, this one has some validity, in my observation]. Imagine her children getting awards and being successful. Imagine her dealing well with the daily stresses of home life. Imagine her, too, growing old happily with her man, who dotes on her and is perfectly faithful.

Or imagine that independent strong woman you always wanted to be rising to be CEO or Partner, or whatever the pinnacle of her career might be. Imagine her finding a man who is willing to share all that with her–if that’s what she wants, and I think most women do. Imagine her taking daring, exciting vacations all around the world, having a ball volunteering in Africa, or South America, windsurfing, sunbathing. Imagine her growing old gracefully, and contented with the outcome of her life.

It seems to me as you go through this process, you create more space for yourself. You don’t have to play defense.

I think quite often when we are jealous of others, absent a strongly competitive spirit, we unconsciously try less hard. You think, “they are successful because they are like THAT”. I didn’t get that. I’m not like that. My parents/school/life never taught me that.

In other words, in the process of justifying your own relatively lesser success, you create a self fulfilling prophecy, in which you try less hard because of some supposed ontological, innate disposition you don’t have, rather than because you simply have not made a decision to succeed.

And in visualizing the success of others, you create a template for yourself. Why not want a world in which everyone is happy and thriving? As I have said before, if things get too easy, we can always create problems for ourselves.

As things stand, though, I see kids emulating vampires and zombies, not creatures of light. Something is very messed up in our society, and I think it is what I have called at times our “Resentment Transmutation Mechanism”, aka “Meaning System”.

This is the reason you are happy when odds say you should be sad. It is the reason you succeed when odds say you should fail. It’s the sun and the rain, and the fertile earch in which you plant your seeds to grow.

That’s what I am trying to create here, for both you and me: a better way to live.

I have a quote on my refrigerator that I (obviously) like: “Happiness come more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded, it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again–this is the brave and happy life.” J.E. Buchrose. I have no idea who that is. It was in one of my planners, and I cut it out.

This seems true to me. I think all of us have this well of enthusiasm and affection in us, which wants to get out. Given that we all have it, all of us would be giving to each other all the time, if there were no blocks to it. And yet manifestly we live in a world where indifference to others is common, and cruelty not as uncommon as we would like it to be, and apparent fascination with sadism growing.

I have commented on this often, but the destruction of our shared culture has been proceeding apace for some time: through violent media (which reduce interpersonal trust, and foster cynicism and even depression); less face time with one due another due to the alternative of the virtual presence of other virtual human beings; and attacks by socialists on all subjects of sentimental attachment, like “God” (however we individually conceive of him/her/it), patriotism, our history, our identity, marriage itself, and even shared rituals like Christmas.

Home is where we come from. Home is where you leave from. Home is the energy from which you create yourself, and explode into the world.

What if you have no home, in the most general possible use of the word? What if you inherit no creed? What if you reject the teachings of your parents and community? What if you reject your history, and your traditions, and your rituals? What if nobody ever even tries to teach any of these things to you, and just lets the TV be your parent and guardian, as happens often enough?

You never know who you are, and you never know who other people are. This makes the process of community building much, much more difficult. If you look at many inner cities, there functionally IS no community. That is the role that gangs play, and a vitally useful social role this no doubt is for many confused kids.

But even in the suburbs, who are you? You exist in an air conditioned home, with plenty of food (much of it processed beyond recognition), and shop and strip malls. Maybe you go to Abercrombie and Fitch, and for a time think sex is going to solve all your existential problems. Then it doesn’t. To the extent it was what you hoped it would be, it is so through the eyes of your jealous friends (in most cases: no doubt “true love” continues to occur). If you’re a guy, you get your rocks off, then she suddenly seems less interesting. If you’re a girl, you’re hoping to get affection and esteem by giving yourself up, but you are almost always disappointed, and in many cases destined for future cynicism.

These are obviously recurring themes for me. Yet I think they are recurring themes for radicals too, who reject the banality they have known for a political zero-sum racket which on some level they KNOW will lead to general suffering, even for them.

You have to have a reason to suffer. Love is as good a one as you can find, but historically this has often been achieved through rigid social codes.

Think about this, though: is an Untouchable at the bottom of the Hindu caste system worse off than a person who regularly contemplates suicide because life has no meaning for them? The children of wealth and privilege kill themselves regularly.

No doubt the life of what Gandhi called “Harijans” were (and are, if they still exist, as they likely do in muted form in rural India) difficult, but most of the misery that matters happens between your ears.

In my view, the person who is racked with confusion and self pity is worse off than a person who knows who they “are”, and what his or her role is in the world.

To be clear, I am not advocating a return to feudal hierarchies. We have evolved, in my view, past the need for such things, if we will just rationally take stock in what we have.

We have the ability to create ourselves. So does everyone else. And if the most important source of happiness is loving, then freedom gives us the greatest capacity for choosing our own passions.

As I see it, we don’t just love people. We can love activities, or ideas, or places. The more places you can direct your love innocently, the happier you will be.

I don’t think it is overstating the case to say that some people are married to their careers. If it is something they genuinely love, then it satisfies the need in them to give generously and spontaneously.

So often we think we need to get love to give love. Mathematically, if we have a Keynesian style Demand failure–if the loving process doesn’t get started properly, or declines–then we are stuck with a world full of selfish, unloving, and unloved people. That is stupid. And it gets the causation error backwards in my view.

The need to love is primary, but we have somehow convinced ourselves that the need to BE loved is primary. This is a beautiful setup for the generalized pity party that characterizes so much of our nation and wider world today.

It need not be so.

I would differentiate the two. If you are not happy, it is not necessarily the case that you are feeling sorry for yourself. When you take emotional risks, and lose, there are consequences. Maybe the great can handle such things quickly and efficiently, but I think most normal people–everyone I know–has to go through a period of mourning/suffering, and it is not always possible to fully recover from a trust that has been deeply betrayed.

Just as some physical wounds leave scars that never fully disappear–and some that never fully stop hurting–so too does emotional trauma leave a mark. The mark is left in the patterns of emotional life: how trusting you are, how open, how enthusiastic, how willing to take risks. You have new decisions to make, and you change from one set of default assumptions to another.

Within my own world view, this does not become a sin until you start to become angry at other people for your condition. At that point, however, pain becomes self pity, and self pity is the foundation of resentment, which leads to chronic anger, hate, isolation, then aggression, and following rationalization.

We live in a culture of resentment, and that is why we see large skulls on large swathes of our popular culture, from t-shirts, to boots, to hats, to book covers. It is part of the reason why the horror section is so full in your local Blockbuster.

America has always been a nation whose people were inventing and reinventing their common culture, in response to constant change. Yet, historically we had at least a common appeal to Christianity, which itself–in direct and unmistakeable contradistinction to the can(n)ons of Socialism–gave voice to sentiments such as forgiveness, love and faith, and which countered the natural human urge to resent others. This appeal has been under attack for some time, and the doctrine with which we are supposed to replace it is one of constant anger.

You cannot build a nation worth living in from that basis.

I was thinking about a creative use of the Fed this morning. Not sure if I came up with this term–it seems too obvious not to have been thought of by someone–but I can’t consciously trace where I may have read it.

In the 20’s, Wall Street was largely unregulated. Groups of super-rich could and would, as a matter of historical record (I saw this on the History Channel, so it must be true), get together and pick a stock, any stock. They would buy up large amounts of it. The fundamentals didn’t really matter, although good lies are always more plausible than bad ones. They would literally pay someone at the New York Times or whatever other rags there were back then to start writing positive stories about that stock, such that excitement was generated. Other people would start buying it, so the price went up. At a certain point, they would send in their Sell notices, and pocket in some cases millions over the course of weeks. Obviously, you can’t do it weekly, or people wise up, but this was definitely something that happened more than once.

Now, let’s involve the Fed in this. I own a very nice top hat, gloves, tuxedo, have a chauffeur, a valet, and smoke expensive cigars. I instruct my bank to buy up a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds at prevailing prices.

As it so happens, I also sit on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Frankly, this could be in the 20’s, or it could be today.

I decide that the economy–which is to say the same thing as “me”–would benefit from a healthy infusion of cash. So I vote for the Fed to buy up a bunch of my Treasury securities. This is new money. When I bought my Treasury Notes, that money went to the Federal government, and was promptly spent, entering the wider economy. That money is gone. So the money now coming from the Fed is money from that magical checkbook they have.

I now have a pile of cash with which to inflate things. I focus on a range of stocks, to make what is happening less obvious. But the net is that I buy up a lot of stock, and in so doing inflate the prices. This creates upward motion which, given human psychology, most notably a need to not miss out on a “sure” thing, feeds on itself, up to a point. Given enough money, you can “day trade” in a quite secure manner, by being the one who–by and large–dictates the value of the stocks. Again, there is no fundamental reason this could not be happening today.

At a certain point, you have made enough for now, so you put your Fed hat back on, and buy the Treasury stocks back. You take that cash out of the system, which is deflationary. To be clear, you pay the Fed cash for the Treasury notes it holds. That money is then extinguished.

Stock prices then fall to the extent to which they were inflated, but–again given human psychology–will tend to fall farther than equilibrium. What does this do? It creates sales. You have excess money left over from your stock speculation, so you use that to buy up banks and industries.

If you don’t get overly greedy, if you are sufficiently patient, you can do this over and over forever. I believe there may well be trillionaires out there.

I am still evaluating the situation, but it is hard not to believe this is basically what happened in the leadup to the Great Depression. Clearly there was inflation; clearly the Fed was ivolved; and clearly the main players got out before the Crash.

Maxim One: When Aggregate demand falls, stimulate debt.

Maxim Two: When this doesn’t work, expand government.

Maxim Three: When you control all aspects of the private economy, you control the polity, and all the people in it.

It has long been my view that most contemporary American movies teach some silly things about life. Particularly, virtually every action movie–and a not inconsiderable number of other types of films, including dramas and comedies–will have a plotline which goes something like: bad guy does something bad, good guy appears and has small success, setback, another success, setback, apparently large success, huge problem–everyone tied up, with the villain ready to do whatever bad thing he was going to do–then POOF, a miracle.

In Jonah Hex, there they are tied up on the boat, and she gets loose, and they somehow have no guards watching them. It reminds you of the scene in Austin Powers where Dr. Evil’s son is telling him just to shoot Austin, or at least watch the seabass with lasers kill him, but he refuses, and of course Powers escapes, as of course did James Bond.

Harry Potter makes a silly error, jumping into a frozen lake by himself. Ron appears from nowhere, to save him. They get themselves incarcerated, then POOF–literally–Dobbie appears.

The subtext of this theme, repeated ad nauseum, is that no matter how bad the spot you get yourself into, somehow, something will happen. This does happen in the real world, but it is not a plan, and it is not common. A homicide cop once told me that most of the time the person who looks like they did it, did it. And most of the time what ought to happen–given a set of social, economic, and political circumstances–does. Unless those with principles have spent a long time and lot of effort sculpting things their way, things won’t go their way.

All nations end. This is a historical fact. At some point–2 years or a 1,000 or 10,000 years from now–America will be a largely forgotten memory. The human race itself may be gone.

So in looking at the future, we need to remember it is not a question of if, but when. And given that, we need to not foolishly place our faith in some savior to appear from nowhere, but in prior proper planning combined with energetic execution.

I need to do some thinking out loud. The following may be a bit stream of consciousness, but will hopefully be useful.

The Fed in theory can only buy outright US Treasury Notes, and post-1980, foreign bonds, or bonds backed by foreign governments, which is a large grey area, which patently includes foreign currency like the euro–a unit of value backed by the EU–and seemingly investments in the IMF and World Bank.

Now, that last is an interesting area. Neither actually reports to a government. It is basically a bankers club which was birthed with taxpayer money, and gone on its merry way. But patently we pay into the IMF. We Americans are paying for a large share of the EU bailouts, via the IMF.

How does the purchase of Treasury Notes create money, though? Say I am a bank. I buy $10 worth of Treasury bonds. That $10 goes to the government, and right back out into circulation via government spending. The Federal Government is a voracious creature, which can easily suck up and spend every dollar given it. That $10 existed when I spent it, in exchange for a security that will pay me over time some amount of interest.

Yet when the Fed buys the Treasury note (the precise term may be bond, but basically we are talking about a piece of paper stipulating a claim on future revenue of the United States govt, which is to say future taxation) it creates another $10. Thus now $20 are in circulation. This is how Open Market Operations create inflation.

But the Fed also seems able to abuse at will the Discount Window. They can apparently decide to extend the term of the loans at will. They did this in 2008 and 2009, and are probably doing it today. They created something called the Term Auction Facility, by means of which they can offer 1 to 3 month loans, seemingly to anyone, and certainly including foreign banks. Since such loans would be renewable, this is a de facto ability to “lend”–which is to say create–any amount of money and give it to anyone. I have missed this point up to now. I can now see no limits on their ability to create money and disburse it to anyone.

This is particularly bad since they can collaterize such loans, which is to say stake a claim on a car, house, company, or nation, perhaps via the IMF, perhaps directly. And if they “repossess”, say, a bank, what happens? Who actually gets it?

Who, really, IS the Federal Reserve? They have their own buildings, but they are “owned” by member banks. If the Fed makes a loan to some obscure bank in, say, Asia, and the bank folds, do they get a claim on the assets of that bank? Its remaining loan portfolio? Does that go to a member bank, or does the Fed go into the business of owning foreclosed homes and office buildings? These are interesting questions, for which I have no answer.

And when the Fed buys up Treasury Notes, they buy them from anyone. They may well be buying up Chinese held Treasury notes. The Chinese government will then have put money into circulation here via our government spending, but will keep the money the Fed gives it, to be reinvested in China. We may, in fact, be helping the Chinese reduce their stake in US bonds. We don’t know. Bernanke announced the bond purchases, but how will we really know where the money goes?

Are we at the dawn or dusk of our civilization? I was asking myself that question, and realized that in a thousand minds, we might find a thousand conceptions. For some, we living in the dark, waiting for dawn. For some, it high noon. For many, we are in decline, and the sun is going down.

As I thought about it, though, I decided that the “sun” in our imagination moves spaspodically, in quantum leaps that correspond to paradigmatic revisions. Was Louis the Quatorze (I think that is right) not the “Sun King”? Yet did not the idea enter the French consciousness that they were living in darkness, and needed the “dawn” of revolution? (Note: not all revolutionaries were lunatics or criminals: the moderates got killed by the radicals, in a pattern which has since repeated many times.)

And if we use the metaphor of a cycle of darkness and light, has there not always been some sun rising when some other sun had set? As the Western Roman Empire was becoming moribund, and evolving into the universal “Catholic” Church, was not Islam expanding?

And it’s a funny thought to think, but Muslims were likely much physically cleaner than their Christian counterparts, who had no equivalent in their Bible for the Koranic “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” If I’m not mistaken, bathing was considered unhealthy for much of the Middle Ages, likely in part due to the prevalance of water contamination.

What I am trying to do with this Goodness idea, is set the sun back to dawn; to set our perceptual filters to the idea that whatever our progress to date, we can do infinitely better in the future. We are not at the end of a civilization, but contemplating the creation of the first truly just universal order this benighted planet has ever seen.

America was clearly conceived as a Christian nation, within which the tolerance of Christian charity would be practiced. Yet I would like to see us evolve past this. I have significant problems with received Christian doctrine.

For example, why would a just God require killing in his honor? Why would we need to ritually slaughter animals, as the Jews did? Tenfold: why would we need to ritually slaughter a human being?

Theologically, if one accepts the doctrine of free will, then it would follow logically that those who wrote the Bible were acting as individual, fallible human beings, and as such likely screwed up the actual message of Jesus, to a greater or lesser extent. Add to this the power aspirations of the Catholic Church, and you have a powerful incentive both for suppressing non-conforming views (with violence, as happened often), and for supporting views which likewise support your position of authority.

As far as Islam, the core, necessary contention is that God is one, and not many. I am quite willing to accept that, but not that God has a name or gender. God is what God is (this is, I think, close to the meaning of Yahweh), and our task is to see this force for ourselves, and bring it to earth, and use it for Good.

Thus, what I would like to see in the day we begin after we renounce all remaining vestiges of darkness–embodied most fully at the moment in the spirit of political totalitarianism, and the docrines which derive this idea–is a wedding of sincere goodwill, and open use of science for human improvement. Science is and always will be subordinate to creative, directing spirits. It cannot solve problems of meaning for us. Yet it can, in my view, bring the realm of God closer to Earth, by helping us understand how we are all connected, and what happens to us when the forms we use on Earth stop working, and our consciousness moves on.

God, in my view, is composed of two parts, which I have called (after the Chinese) chi and li. God is the matter/energy “stuff” of which the universe is composed. God is also the possibility of form. In our “chi” self, we are the same as God. We are composed of light. In our “li” self, we are unique. As I envision the matter, God does not “create” form, per se, so much as create a sort of sketchpad that retains shapes over time. God is mold with memory, perhaps.

Some passing thoughts. Hope they help someone.

Watched “Jonah Hex” tonight. I had in mind something easy, which was accomplished. Got me thinking about the stereotypical cowboy, taking on the world on his own. Obviously, this isn’t how things actually get done, in general, in the real world. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard: they work in groups. CIA, DIA, FBI, DHS, LEO’s: groups.

Yet this lone standout, this Gary Cooper in “High Noon” idea, has merit.

Ponder this: what if all 300 million or so Americans (whatever we are up to) thought independently? What if every man, woman and child in this country had an opinion on everything, which they were willing to share with the world, and expose to critical and positive scrutiny? Would this not be positive?

When selecting a decision path, people choose from available options. Regretably often, they choose from what they perceive as the middle of available options.

What if we were all truly individualists? This doesn’t imply selfishness, or ignoring social problems: on the contrary, individualism is a mindset in which any and all ideas are given a hearing, if there is a CHANCE that they might solve a problem which needs solving.

I see this stupid idea all the time, that individualism means selfishness. Here’s a newsflash for the dumb people of the world: Mother Teresa was an individualist. So was Gandhi. So was Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, Jr. As far as that goes, so were Karl Marx and Lenin, even though they would not have used those words.

If you are perceiving as a sovereign intellect, you are an individualists. Conformity generates the repetition of ideas, but not the useful multiplication of ideas.

Clear enough? Now go generate some ideas of your own, dammit. Post them somewhere. Defend them. Learn something. I do this all the time.

I have never been happy in places where people agree with me. I like disagreement. I just got kicked off the Daily Kos, and can’t muster the time to deal with Media Matters. As far as that goes, I can’t even reliably post my ideas on supposedly conservative websites. Mildly frustrating, but I have outlets like this one.

If I reach a point where everybody hates me, though, I know I will have succeeded. That’s a tough nut to crack.

Wish me luck.

Editorial comment: I’ve been known to drink a bit of whiskey from time to time. This post was influenced by it. I won’t take the time to rub out the rough spots, but figured I’d add that by way of clarification.