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Many of the more literate people out there will be familiar with the expostulation by a Buddhist monk–I’m pretty sure it was Thich Nhat Han (sp?)–to the effect of “when you do the dishes, do the dishes”. I’ve tried it, and couldn’t figure out what on earth he was talking about.

Here is a similar–perhaps the same, and I am just being retarded–idea: treat all tasks you do with affection. Do not force them. Do not resent them. Allow yourself to feel pleasure at all times and places. Normally, we have things we like to do, and things we don’t like to do. We transition from a state of contentment to a state of resentment, but this is not necessary.

It seems to me–on a superficial reading, not even being familiar with the actual Sanskrit word for mindfulness–that being aware, solely, is empty in a bad way. Moths are aware, and don’t think many thoughts. You have to consciously be looking for some desired state, and mindfulness is simply taking notice when you are drifting towards or away from that state.

I won’t go into all the fallacies that attend this topic normally, so much as point out how it COULD work. Consider the story of Joseph from the Bible, and the Pharoah’s dreams. As it happened, he was being told to set aside from his surplus crops enough food to tide them over for 7 bad years. They had 7 good years, then 7 bad years.

If we had a real Federal RESERVE system–which saved money from tax receipts, in a condition of actually having excess tax receipts, and no net debt–that money, which would be “real” money, could be put back into circulation when the economy slowed down. It could be gradually taken out again when things improved. This would work.

A further, rather radical idea I had was returning to State-issued currency. What if we had 50 different currencies in the United States? Would it impede the movement of money? Yes. What it would tend to do is make businesses operate more locally, and discourage massive transnational corporations. What I want is more diversity. I want less sameness. I want every State to have their own identity.

And frankly, I think we would all be happier if we moved around less, and settled into something approaching a complacent parochialism. As it is, we don’t know who we are. We move here, there, everywhere. And everywhere we go, we see the same damn shops, same construction, in many cases. You don’t know if you are in Boise or Dallas, depending on the street.

We need a massive transfer back to localism. It has been the case throughout our history that many currencies were issued. We forget this, but at one time, if memory serves, we had some 30,000 currencies. Banks would issue their own money. That, obviously, is too much, but if we had each State issue–once–their own money, and backed it with gold–with gold obviously being the means by which to move it around the country–I think some good might come of it.

If efficiency is the sole good, then a time may come when human beings are superfluous. Efficiency for WHAT? This is the question. We don’t want things: we want what things provide, such as comfort and time.

Why don’t we do a better job of thinking these things through? Personally, I blame the 24/7 media, which is slowly making brain dead zombies of us all.

Let us consider what Capitalism is. It is the accumulation, through time and effort, of the buying power to invest in something that makes something, say a factory. Since we can’t eat money, the part of Capitalism that is actually USEFUL to us is that part that makes things: boats, lettuce, software, music.

A fundamental principle of true Capitalism is competition. Now, in material objects, innovation is always possible, and necessary if you hope to continue to succeed. You use better tractors and fertilizers in food production, or transport it more efficiently. You write software programs no one has seen. You write a new song. You figure out how to make better boats cheaper.

Innovation in money is not possible. It is what it is. The path forward for money lenders then–and I am not here talking about your local bank, which serves a needed purpose, but rather the Federal Reserve, which prints money and loans it to banks who loan it to your neighborhood bank–is to develop a money trust, or Mercantilist relationship with the Federal Government: an anti-competitive relationship.

Let us posit one dollar on the table, with one teacup. This is its present day purchasing power. Let us further posit that the amount of money in circulation at any one time is completely arbitrary. We need enough physical “bits” to prices things precisely, but nothing more. Let us say that our dollar stands in for all real money in circulation, that can be cut into as many bits as needed. This is day one.

Day two, a second dollar bill is placed next to ours, making the teacup–the SAME teacup–cost 2 dollars. What happened? We now have half the purchasing power with the same dollar. What happened was the Fed printed money, and it trickled down the food chain. The people who got that money first, now own part of your teacup. Wealth has been transferred.

We know that in conditions of innovation, goods should be getting cheaper. You shoudl be able to buy two teacups for the same amount of money. The reason this doesn’t happen is that while we are innovating, our wealth is being diluted by injected money. Since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created, we have seen 3% annual inflation, which compounded amounts to nearly 2000% inflation.

Clearly related are the facts that our national savings–what the Fed terms M2–have diminished to nearly nothing; in point of fact, almost all of us are net debtors. This is because a combination of inflation and cheap credit has caused us to view borrowing as smarter than saving.

Consider, though, our manufacturing: where has it gone? Much of it has left. Why? This is no doubt something with many explanations, but for me one stands out: if you can make money without making anything, why wouldn’t you? Is our economy not largely one of massive financial institutions, with trillions of dollars between them?

The essence of the idea of the gold standard is that there is a finite amount of money. Gold can be mined, yes, so it can be added to the money supply, but not easily. The intent is to put limits on how much money can be in circulation at any one time.

I may be mistaken, but it appears to me for now–and I will continue thinking and studying–that the reason we work so hard and get so little is very simply that we have given much of our real money over to Wall Street and the Federal Government.

On that last point, consider how many people the Federal Government employs. Consider all the buildings and land they own. Consider the pensions people get, and health benefits. ALL of this–ALL OF THIS–comes out of the private sector in the form of taxes and inflation. The government cannot provide you ANYTHING, except the rule of law and defense of the borders, that you could not better get on your own. This applies particularly to the poor, since every job in the public sector is a job taken from the private sector, with interest.

We need to get our money back. We need to abolish the Fed, and return to the gold standard. I will put a few more ideas in the following post.

It seem to me this word needs to be resurrected, as a term for the collusion of government and private enterprise. True Capitalism is free. No companies get unique rights as a result of their relationship with the means of government. The government exists, in my view, to PROTECT against the formation of cartels, and to enforce contracts, and provide physical security.

We use these terms in politics often (certainly I use “the Left” often, since I reserve the word liberal for those who value liberty). A bit of a comment is warranted on these words.

Historically, it comes from France, during the French Revolution. In the great Assembly Hall, where the self appointed delegates of “the people” met, various factions sat in physically different parts of the room. Since they were revolutionaries, all, by mere fact of being there, it can I think be safely assumed there were no PUBLIC absolute monarchists there, although presumably there were some private ones.

Rather, the right consisted in those who saw some value in tradition, who generally did not want to kill the King, and who favored gradualism in the process of political change. They wanted reasoned debate, moderation, and a certain skepticism towards those who wanted to radically alter the social landscape.

Patently, the system as it had existed in Louis XVI’s (I think that’s right) was corrupt. Broadly speaking, government was run by an oligarchy, and Old Boy’s Club. The King, for example, could offer plum government contracts for no bid to favorites. He could impose legislation which was not subject to veto by anyone. He did have restraints, though: as nominal defender of the Faith, he had to keep himself in the good graces of the Church. As an aristocrat, he needed to keep that class more or less satisfied with the status quo, lest they launch some sort of coup.

The decisions made by this group affected all the people, yet the people had no real say in them. It was a closed system.

The “rightists”, very simply, wanted to alter this. They wanted to put curbs on the King’s power. They wanted an Assembly to counterbalance the King, and force him to consider the public will in his decisions. They were, on my reading, the voice of common sense.

The leftists, in contrast, wanted not just a revolution politically, but in morals. They wanted to overthrow the entirety of the Catholic tradition. They wanted to build a utopia based on the ideals of liberty, brotherhood, and equality. On paper, these don’t sound so bad. Yet, the methods they chose were murder and political terrorism. That this was irrational was obscured by theorists among them who developed systems of wordplay that defended the indefensible. On the most basic level, how is the judicial murder of political opponents consistent with brotherhood? How is a de facto absolutist speech and behavioral code consistent with liberty? And if the Assembly has NO curbs on its powers–but not everyone can join–how is that equality?

Historically, look at the word right. You can be right, as in correct. We speak of human rights, as in claims to certain basic protections. And with respect to the left, consider the word sinister. It is related to sinistral, which means “left”. Or gauche/gaucherie, as in socially clumsy? In certain mystical traditions you have the normal path, and the “left handed” path.

As I see it, what we might term the mythical symbolism here is correct. The left, in France, and since, has been a symbol of evil: of the rejection of moral norms, political violence, and the imposition of wanton and unchecked power.

Like that as a polemical phrase. What sort of status, exactly, does a Ph.D in, say, Sociology or English confer? What can we assume about their knowledge base? In my view, very little.

Brief comment: it is interesting to note that in all his voluminous writings, he never described what Communism might look like, concretely.

Here is my own version of “Communism”. Because this exists, it makes me superior in at least that respect to him. Frankly, anyone who took the time to write virtually anything remotely possible would be his superior. He discounted human agency, and hence the need for planning. That is stupid. Very stupid.

I am giving serious thought to describing my book as the pathway to “Communism”. I really do think we would all be happiest as a nation of shopkeepers. Napoleon offered that as an insult, with respect to the English, but he himself was an autocrat and butcher, leading an army of thieves.

What large multi-nationsl corporations tend to do is create competition across continents, where everyone is getting squeezed price-wise. This puts innovation into overdrive, which is good, since we get more for less, but it also tends to decrease profits, foster financial instability in some, and support on-going movement in the direction of monopolistic control, as the big fish eat the small fish. I suspect things are tighter in that regard today than most of us would suspect. It was long seemed to me that the oil industry operates as a de facto cartel. I could be wrong.

Yet, if things are produced locally and consumed locally, then competition happens locally and much more congenially. That is, at least, what happens in my imagination; and talking to old-timers, that seems to have been the case 40 years ago. You bought from local companies, and they would scrap a bit amongst themselves, but nobody was–usually–trying to drive anyone else out of business.

It’s a delicate balance. To the extent you let the government step in to prevent monopoly formation as a result of competitive success you transfer power from the private sector to the public. Yet, to the extent monopolies exist, they detract from competition.

No final, philosophically complete answer is possible. All cases have to be dealt with on their own, but I would submit the following heuristic is always helpful: concentrations of power are always bad, and diffusion of power is always good. We needed a strong Federal Government principally for national defense, and to serve as judge in disputes between the several States. Beyond that, both the letter and spirit of the law were intended to grant States the right to make their own rules.

I have said this many times, but I see no reason Minnesota could not copy Denmark, and I see no reason Texas could not copy the Wild West.

I posted the following on my Facebook today, relative to the argument we constantly see that both sides in any dispute have validity.

“Let us format the basic proposition thus: given two propositions, both should be considered as necessarily equal in quality and value. This is the argument, and I have seen it often.

Let us consider the converse: given two propositions, both should not necessarily be considered as equal in quality and value.”

Both are propositions, making opposite statements. Both cannot be universally true. If we treat the first proposition as true, it is contradicted by the second. If we treat the second one as true, it is NOT contradicted by the first.

And in point of fact, there are knowable rules which govern the world–societies, economies, political systems, the physical world–and that statement which best coincides with those rules is most correct.

Truth is that which enables us to predict the outcome of our actions, and it applies in the moral sphere as well. The “truth” of leftist economics is that they don’t care about poor people, justice, or human rights, since their policies create poverty, injustice and pervasive violations of human rights.”

That was this morning, then I got to thinking about it. Consider the foundational claim of moral relativism: that no universal moral truths exist. We can’t, for example, condemn the Arabs for their abuse of women.

Let us invert that claim: universal truths DO exist (I am being loose with “truth” here, by which I myself intend to connote an idea that consistently generates what it is trying to generate. If you want peace, then a “true” idea is one that generates peace).

Therefore: No universal moral truths exist is juxtaposed to Universal moral truths do exist. The claim that no universal moral truths exist is, itself, a moral claim. Therefore if it is valid, it contradicts itself. Only the latter formation is logically coherent. This matches, of course, common sense understandings we have, like equal justice before the law, the Golden Rule, and the like.

I have done that basic operation before, but not quite that way. Thinking, and following pathways, is a type of motion. You are travelling trails, and gradually mapping the forest. You have gone this way before, but not taken this spur; I wonder where it goes.

Most truth, in my view, is latent. It is a sort of hidden crystalline structure that, when light is shined upon it, reacts as a whole. It is not a thing. You cannot possess it. You can merely interact with it, harmoniously, or dysfunctionally.

I wrote in my journal the other day: “America, and this world, will end. It is not a question of if, but when.” Strangely, I found it comforting, like the best Hank Williams.

As I pondered it, I thought about the creed of the warrior. Death is always the end of the warrior. It may come sooner, or later, but in the end death it must be. To the extent war has any value, it is teaching this truth, and the acceptance of that truth through frequent exposure to death.

In the end we can answer for our commitment, and nothing more.

I have the Tibetan Four Dignities hanging on the four walls of my room. I won’t get into that, but on the one labelled “Outrageous” (the Garuda) I have put a four step action plan to save the world. Simplicity itself, right?

Step one is to manage my finances. If I have no money, I have no time, and no ability to do anything. That would make me sad. Extending this, though, our nation needs to manage its finances as well. Without money, it can do no good, either.

Step two is to solve the problem of moral relativism. I think I have done that, and just need to set it down in an acceptable form.

Step three is to develop a device for communicating with the dead. [roll your eyes here]. Hear me out. We have 1000’s of recordings that appear coherent, in the voice of the deceased, and relevant. The field is called Electronic Voice Phenomena. There is considerable empirical evidence that consciousness continues after biological cessation. I have yet to meet anyone who has actually studied the evidence in its entirety who could not at least conclude that there was reason to find value in it.

For most, though, to investigate something you have to have some way of believing it is possible, so I’ll say a word on that. To the extent we can determine, the material world does not “exist”, per se. It is wave patterns interacting with consciousness, and producing images that appear solid. We know, with as much certainly as you can get in science, that all matter is mostly empty. Just look at a model of an atom.

Now, if we can be hypnotized to create multiple selves–some of which only emerge at certain times, and each of which is “conscious”, per se, in that you can communicate with it, without the intercession of the primary consciousness–can we not posit that we have aspects of our consciousness that only come into play when we die? It seems certain to me that consciousness is not unitary. William James offered up the idea that the brain is a conduit for thought, and that brain lesions, and drugs and the like affect the ability of our consciousness–which is non-material, or material in a different way–to express that thought.

If we take the logic of Janet’s experiments to their conclusion, we have to accept that we are each many. The Buddha famously denied the existence of a unitary self, and this is presumably what he meant. He was simply speaking empirically.

Anyway, that’s my thought process, and the intent is not to make navel gazing speculations, but to gather concrete data. Specifically, the issue with many of the current methods is that they use chopped up speech, or radio stations between channels to create “white noise”, that spirits can then operate on more easily to communicate. This opens up the valid criticism that what is being heard is momentary content that just slips into apparent–but really random-coherence.

If one used an actual white noise machine for background sound, that objection would disappear. In particular, I have wondered if you could seal it in a box with a recorder, and still get results. This would eliminate alternative explanations, which is the point of science.

Conceivably, with a digital recorder, one could even create some sort of algorithym to notice changes in the sound profile instantly, flag it, then play it. If this worked, you could respond real time, which would create the de facto equivalent of a telephone. This was something, by the way, that Edison and many other inventors worked on, including Oliver Lodge, who has a credible claim to being the actual inventor of radio.

One thing that needs to be figured out, too, is that when the sounds appear, where is it? What frequencies? On what medium? Is their pattern in any way different from sound recordings created other ways? I don’t know if it is possible that they could be, but from what I can tell the scientific aspect of the thing is far from systematic. It mostly appears to be people who think it is cool, or people wanting to speak to departed loved ones. The thing needs to be done better.

Step four is to develop a system for biomorphic self regulation. Specifically, I believe the evidence is solid that biological systems–life–cannot be fully understood without recourse to informational fields. If you think about it, if we share, say, 50% of our DNA with a seasponge, does that not rather make it harder to explain how we become us, not easier? Clearly, we are assembled from proteins that are formed as a result of certain genetic operations. Yet, it seems to me we understand the building blocks–the physical structure–of life, but not where the plan comes from.

A building implies an architect. You can build many things from bricks, but the end result will be what you wanted. We are in a similar situation in biology. We can see what happens, and we can describe in great detail the processes, but in the same way bricks do not direct themselves, it is between difficult and impossible to see how they can both be the raw material AND the plan. Biologists don’t see this since they can describe the processes in such detail. I would include “evolution” in this, in that we can track changes over time, but I don’t think natural selection is a good, much less complete, explanation for the fossil record.

Returning to the idea, the evidence is good that the signalling system is very weak light, and that DNA acts both as a sort of construction material warehouse, and as a signalling device.

On this reading, most diseases result from imperfectly shared information. Our bodies, obviously, are in a constant state of being recreated, and when information is lost, entropy results. Cancer is basically just a black area that receives no information. Given this, it would make sense to practice refreshing the sytem properly.

I visualize a sort of box where the light you emit is measured, and some sort of feedback introduced, say with sound, so that we can develop the capacity to emit more light of the optimal frequency. Sounds crazy, I know, but my gut tells me something like that will work.

In tandem with this, or possible instead of this, we could also shine light on people, of a carefully calibrated frequency, to reinforce existing fields.

With respect to Darwinism, which I view as both philosophically pernicious and factually incorrect as an explanation of the origin of species, I would like experiments to be done in which survival situations were introduced to some species with a high reproduction rate, like flies, and the speed with which the resulting adaptation happened measured.

What we see now is scientists pointing to adaptation, and saying it proves “evolution” (which they rarely use with precision), but I think it is the contrary. We can look at how many genes are involved, and calculate all the possible random mutations, and derive a probability that that particular beneficial adapatation will arise by chance.

What I believe we will see is the adaptations constantly happening at a rate that is several orders of magnitude faster than what would be predicted by chance. In point of fact, I think such experiments would show the doctrine of speciation through random mutation coupled with random benefit to be inadequate the challenge of explaining that empirical result. This is, I believe, an experiment that can be done, and the reason I mention it here is that I believe that until we integrate the field concept BACK into biology (it was there for some time, and essentially banned in the US by the AMA) we will not make significant progress with cancer.

I want to cure cancer, you see.

Nothing grandiose about me. I may be nuts, but I’m never bored, and rarely boring.

Actually, I post this in the simple hope that maybe somebody will take one of these ideas and run with it. I don’t care who gets credit. I never have, and will submit that my influence in some areas has actually been quite substantial and largely invisible.