Moderates United

Greetings!!

Tonight I would like to talk to you, middle America. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I used to wonder about you, when I was flying around the country. I thought: who lives THERE? Now, I have realized that what I should have been asking is: how can I help those people? How can I message them?

And pondering it, I have decided guns really aren’t that bad. I asked one of my agents to show me his gun just today. I didn’t touch it, since it looked dangerous, but I can see how you would want one of those things in areas where there are wild bears.

And religion. Honestly, I can tell you some of my best friends are religious. Seriously. I even go to church myself. I pray and everything. I can see how people would really get into that, especially the singing. I’ve always like the sound of someone singing in the distance.

So what I wanted to convey today is that we really aren’t that different, you and I. Tonight I’ve even asked the White House chef to make something called “biscuits and gravy”, which I understand is also a very popular African American food. I want to understand “y’all”, such that we can communicate, talk, and discuss.

So if you think I’ve been neglecting you, fear not. I haven’t had arugula in over six months. That’s how plain my tastes are becoming. I’m really just one of you. I’m even thinking about taking a spin around the White House lawn on a riding lawnmower, and wearing an International Harvester ballcap.

We’ve got two years. Let’s make this a great thing, shall we?

There are two principle narrative in evolutionay biology, each unable to account the actual data we see. The first, that of Darwin, is that random change (mutation) couple with random benefit (natural selection) has over vast expanses of time worked to counter the natural entropy of our universe.

The problem with this account is that it makes predictions that have been disproven. Specifically, it predicts that all species at all times are in the process of modification. All mutations which are not harmful will be retained, and selection between divergent groups will only happen gradually, again over vast expanses of time. Thus we should not have to look for “missing links”. They should everywhere. Every species we look at anywhere should show patterns of change over time. They don’t. What we see is the sudden appearance of a species, and then NO alteration for vast periods of time, then it disappears again.

Clearly, species evolve over time. One can track changes in moths and insects. One can trace genetic progressions in humans. Yet, we always find the species when we first see it already morphologically evolved. This is absolutely contrary to his thesis. To be clear, we have fossil fields where we can look at vast expanses of time, and have fossils from each era. They stay the same, with only minor alterations.

To solve this manifest problem, evolutionary biologists, rather than considering the (for them) horrible notion of incorporating field theories back into biology, chose to look at the actual record, and work backwards. Their only justification for this were the foundational ideas that biological systems are best understood as self organizing machines, that of course there is no God, and that the record did not support Darwin.

Thus you get Punctuated Equilibrium, in which huge evolutionary changes happen, relatively speaking, quickly. But the entire contribution of Darwin, which made his ideas plausible, was the combination of chance, natural selection, and huge amounts of time. With Gould, the time disappears. Some catastrophe happens, the animals are placed in a do or die situation, and the ones that survive evolve rapidly.

Yet, this posits precisely an interaction between the biological system and the environment. It presumes, in effect, that DNA rolls of the dice can be skewed in favor of survival, that the slot machine can be fixed. Yet, there is no provision anywhere in any theories for this.

We see this notion of ecological niches, in which animals coexist until they can’t any longer, then the species which has best adapted to the situation survives, and everything else disappears. Yet, what this would lead us to expect would be a continuity of fossils for long periods, then the disappearance of many, with the winners continuing. And this still doesn’t explain how rapid, beneficial mutation can appear simply because it is needed.

I firmly believe that if we can learn the political lessons in front of us, that the Left (and possibly some secretive very rich people for whom some have been fronting) has been lying to us for well over half a century, and if we can grasp the meaning of the corruption of climate science for the Global Warming scam, then at some point it will become possible to question the materialistic narratives of the emergence of life from within the scientific establishment. You have to have this idea that “everything you ‘know’ could be wrong”. Most people who earn Ph.D’s assume that whatever the truth is, it’s in their labs, and not elsewhere.

I further believe that a time will come when we wonder how it was possible for us to be so stupid for so long.

As I think about it, this really is an effort to redefine in a permanent way the relationship between our personal space, and the space of an increasingly overreaching–literally–State. What they are saying is that “We have the right to strip you of clothing, or strip you of your dignity: your choice.”

For what? For what concrete good? Israel doesn’t do this, and they have had no hijackings in decades, despite being the number one target. No American plane has been hijacked since 9/11, despite not using procedures like this.

People this has nothing whatever to do with security, and everything towards bending reality towards a New Normal in which the State can monitor the most intimate aspects of our personal lives. It really, truly is the beginning of 1984.

To quote Paul Krugman, in another context: be afraid, be very afraid. Then be angry, and make sure this bitch hears enough noise that our Socialist in Chief has to fire her or retract this totalitarian policy.

The way you break people is not through harshness, but through gradually demanding more and more submission–in seemingly small, seemingly necessary ways–until they lose their sense of self entirely. We are far along in this process in this nation, and this is just one more step in that direction. Enough is enough. Our government has NO right and NO justification to demand that everyone who flies on a PRIVATE airline take their clothes off, or get molested.

If you think about it, actually, in large measures has the airline industry not been taken over by the government? Have we not created a federal police force that does not answer to any of the States where it works, and is largely beyond the control of Congress?

Why is it I can’t opt out of security? Why is it airlines cannot set their own level of security? Some people are so fearful that this sort of screening is what they would want. Most of us are fine walking through a metal detector, and leaving it at that.

Frankly, my preference would be an airline that carefully profiles its passengers, and only bothers to check people who fit the demographic profile of terrorists. We skip the metal detector entirely. I suspect that would work just fine. As things stand now, rather than violating a few peoples “rights”, we violate the rights–severely, in this case–of EVERYONE. Are they going to grope children too? Or force them to pose naked?

This is utter and complete lunacy, and if it stands this alone will be a major issue in 2012. I personally will never submit to it. It is degrading, and goes far past the boundaries that should exist not just between individual citizens, but more particularly between the State and the citizen of that State.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

This is called “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”. In any chaotic system, the exact starting point can lead to wide variations in result. I sometimes call this “the tip of the spear”, which can be infinitely sharp.

I was sitting in a bar tonight, contemplating a woman. Common enough occurence. What I was wondering is if some one thing I had said or did, or some one or several parts of who I am made a large difference, such that what could have been a rewarding relationship was ended before it began. That rough thought process, I suspect, is common enough as well.

This in turn led me to begin pondering chance more broadly. If some one person had not come in, and given me the chance to talk with her, would that have made the difference? Given a chance, I can be very persuasive. Pondering, I decided I had done some 75% of what would have constituted perfection, and the appearances all indicate that still would not have sufficed. I’m an odd duck. Charming at times, but very unique in my worldview, and way of doing things. It is what it is. I like myself, and have no plan to change–or pretend to change–for anyone.

Pushing even farther out, though, I got to thinking about randomness as an aspect of human experience. How do we manage it? For primitive people, it is sticking together in groups, and doing what has always worked. Yet, their degree of chance fortune and misfortune was no doubt much greater than our own, where accidental premature deaths are no doubt much lower than they were, say, 10,000 years ago.

How do we turn “the tip of the spear” into something which almost always works the same way, rather than leading to wild swings in outcome?

Edward de Bono uses the concept, in discussing perception generally, of what he terms “catchment areas”. No matter where rain falls on one side of a mountain, it flows the same way. The same applies on the other side. In effect, the rain is funnelled from a large area to the same spot. It is organized and channelled.

Likewise, what is the role of insurance of various sorts? Is it not channelling chance such that no matter what happens, the same rough outcome is achieved?

And this can be broken down according to my four cultural tasks. For example, someone who believes nothing will be thrown into chaos, given a sudden tragedy. Someone who is a committed Christian will also be hurt, but recover more quickly, and endure far less internal anarchy and dissolution.

Someone who believes in an account of the nature of reality that is non-scientific–which does not accord with observable facts–will be thrown into a tailspin if something happens that cannot be accounted for within that world view. People who believe in science, understand that all truth narratives are contingent, and they expect the unexpected (at least the more intelligent people).

Politically, if you have a narrow, very rigid system of governance–say the rule of the tribal elders–and the elders are killed in a war, you are in trouble. If you view all political organization as originating in individual perception and volition, then you can adapt to anything.

Economically, free markets are the paradigmatic self organizing system.

All in all, it seems we have managed risk well, and can do better. As I said in a post a couple of days ago, if we solve all the material problems of the world, we will have to create new challenges for ourselves, but that can be done with intention, and with a mind to the evolution of such challenges.

Hope this makes sense. Bit tired.

It seems to me the most creative acts humans can perform occur spontaneously, as internal states. If you think about it, courage is a creative act. Where fear would normally be present, bravery appears. It appears as the outflow of principles which a given person has chosen, and as a result of instincts.

When you look at art, what you are seeing is the physical artifact of a state someone has chosen, that of receiving and transmitting new ideas. Where do plotlines come from? Visual images? Musical arrangements? Dance moves?

At some point are they not non-existent, then suddenly appear, in rough form? And is that rough form not then steadily sculpted with yet more new ideas, until the artist rests?

I would submit that it is this creative gestalt which is most important. The art produced is merely the means needed to achieve the end of creative engagement with life and work (which are in large measure the same thing).

It is perhaps stretching the facts to call it a spiritual discipline, but I am very fond of a system of movement and affective awareness articulated in English by Tarthang Tulku, which he called Kum Nye.

Even the first exercise is quite interesting. You sit comfortably, spine straight. Cross legged is best, if you can swing it. Then you consciously relax every muscle in your body, for some ten minutes. Then you spend ten minutes simply processing every sensation that arises. You don’t reject it, or build it: you just watch it. Finally, you visualize something that has made you happy, feel that feeling, then build that feeling, like blowing a small ember into a fire. You can in this way CREATE a feeling of happiness. Try it. Then get the books, parts I and II.

Love, too, is a creation. So much of what is called love in our world is nothing but compulsion, quite often sexual in nature, but sometimes a belief that the other person will somehow solve your problems for you.

Consider this thought experiment: what if we had no genders and no sexual desire? What would love look like then? Would it not look much more like CHOOSING to love someone, consciously?

As I have defined it, love is a desire to help other people create themselves. It can manifest, depending on the context, as both compassion and confrontation. It can be helping someone carry their load, and it can be watching them carry their load without lifting a finger. Always, love is about what is actually beneficial for the other person, and not what feels good for you. War can be an act of love, as can opposing war. In my world, the only absolute principles are the need for individuals to reject self pity, persevere, and learn something every day. Always, you have to ask yourself what the details of each unique situation are, and do what you can to build other people, such that they are independent and able to love others as well as themselves.

It seems to me most of the brutality of modern art flows from a rejection of the possibility of individual moral growth. If individuals cannot grow, then logically their internal states are of little intrinsic importance. That individuals cannot grow, qua individuals, is an intrinsic conclusion of any philosophy dedicated to the principle that everyone is equal not just in rights, but their innate personality traits. The lazy equal the industrious. The intelligent equal the stupid. Socialist leave no room for qualitative distinctions of this sort.

This leads directly to art which is not FOR something–for building communities, for building trust or other virtues–but which rather rejects the very possibility that art COULD be for such things. Yes, it can be used as propaganda, but not for love.

Such an attitude, on the contrary, brings much ugliness. Cows chopped into sections, and preserved. Crucifixes in urine. Paint trails from paint cans with small holes in the bottom, swinging around on a string. What are any of these ideas trying to build? Nothing.

Socialism is always a DETRACTION from human culture. It is not a humanism. It is a form of cultural suicide. Do not even the Chinese, now, want to look back on their own long history with something other than the contempt which was de rigeur under Mao and the fascist punk kids he brainwashed so effectively?

Ideas have consequences. The task I have set myself is showing clearly what the paths are between which we must choose.

Hopefully the foregoing makes sense. I have delayed posting it, since the feeling which gave rise to it is entirely non-verbal, and I wasn’t sure I could convey it.

What if all of our problems of money disappeared? What if the entire planet had enough to eat, shelter, access to medical care and all the other things that econonic growth can bring? What then?

It seems to me we would have to invent problems. We need problems, to be happy. But this would be a good thing. We could invent intelligent problems, ones which consistently fostered growth. As things stand, some people are emboldened by, say, war or poverty. They become braver and more compassionate. But many more are ruined, turned into mean, nasty selfish persons.

The root problem with Socialism is that it is a one note song. It has no character, no flavor, no charm, nothing suitable for engendering a world any human would want to live in. Their worlds are grey because in the end, they don’t believe human INDIVIDUALS can be improved, morally or otherwise. The only possible task is the improvement of the SOCIETY, and the definition of that begins and ends with the eradication of both poverty and wealth.

Yet no decision in the history of the human species has been made by a group. No thought has been thunk (just go with it) by a group. Decisions are made by individuals and RATIFIED in groups. Thoughts are thunk by individuals, and shared and embraced by groups.

And manifestly if you look at any Communist nation, what you see is not the eradication of Individualism, but the apotheosis of it, in which one man controls a small group of men, who make decisions for EVERYONE. Soviet socialism was not organic. It was not what The People, or The Workers chose. It is what LENIN chose.

Always invert whatever you see coming from the mouth of a leftist, and you will be close to the truth. If they speak of truth, hear lies. If they speak of socialism, think dictatorship of the masses by one person. If they speak of economic growth, hear poverty. If they speak of justice, hear unchecked tyranny.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?ex=1304395200&en=5418dde9be746a20&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-1103-L18

He ends it with “be afraid, be very afraid.” And we are the fear-mongers?

This is just generic pap for the masses. He’s reminding them they are right and the Republicans are wrong. Obama is a conciliatory moderate, but those big meany-head Republicans won’t listen to him, and will do the same big meany-head things they did in 1995.

He continues his meme that it is necessary for the government to do something to fix the economy, and that absent help, the economy will not recover. This has been a successful tactic for them. Republicans think ordinary people are quite able to make decisions on their own. It’s not that they are saying nothing should be done, but that a tyrannical government is not the right entity to be doing it.

Governments can’t and don’t run businesses. They provide needed public services that can’t be had any other way. Printing money to pay for things the people would be unwilling to pay for in open taxation is not one of those services. “Stimulating” the economy by taking our money and disbursing it arbitrarily and mainly to fellow-travelers is not one, either.

We want to be left alone. Don’t try to help us. Obama, go golfing. Pelosi, go find a better plastic surgeon. Reid, go burn up ants with a magnifying glass, or chase Vegas showgirls.

And Krugman, I think you should take up sailing. Buy yourself a big boat with the money you have made advocating economically ruinous policies, and spend the next two years sailing around the world, without a cell phone. You will see how much we needed you when you get back. It might be humbling for you, but frankly you need some humanizing. Not sure if you got the short man thing going on, but you would most bless the world by remaining silent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/opinion/01krugman.html?ex=1304395200&en=ccbeef7810685380&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-1103-L20

S2D2. Some of you will know what that means.

Net argument: we need to spend more. Spin this time? Moral factors are preventing it from happening. Rehash of fatally flawed Keynesian arguments, that if no one is spending money, everyone’s wealth decreases.

First off, you obviously cannot solve the problem of debt with debt. Private debt cannot be financed sustainably with public debt. If I use one credit card to pay off another, have I really accomplished anything? This point is inescapable.

The goal, of course, always with these people is to transfer control of private capital to either the government, or reliable entities like some extension of the Fed.

Second, let us ask why it is people would not be spending money. First off, dunce that he is, Krugman conflates consumers with businesspeople. BOTH spend money, do they not? When someone builds a new corporate headquarters, expecting growth, does not a lot of money flow into the economy?

For entrepreneurs, one must always weigh risk versus reward. For established businesses, same thing. As exciting as playing the horses can be, when you are risking your own money you want some sense of stability. With Obamacare looming large, and a Socialist in the White House, American businessmen and women have no faith in the future; not enough to bet big on anything, until Obama gets stopped.

And to be clear, the money invested by businesses is the root of consumer spending. Toyota, say, creates a Prius, at considerable cost, since it feels people will spend money on THAT car, who would have sat on their money had it not existed. People who will not pay $2 for an apple WILL pay $1. Hence investments in apple harvesting technology and transportation, making it more efficient, will also spur spending growth.

The solution to slowdowns in spending is innovation. Innovation, in turn, is a function of private individuals, acting in their own interest.

And underlying all of this is the fundamental inflation/deflation/boom/bust cycle that causes slowdowns like this.

Krugman asserts that blaming Fannie Mae is ridiculous, but he doesn’t say why. Shortly, I will be laying that argument down in black and white. I have not read his book, but I suspect Thomas Sowell has already done so, as no doubt have others. It’s patently obvious. This is a classic inflation/deflation cycle. We are still seeing deflationary pressure from the housing market, which has yet to hit bottom.

Krugman is a paid hack. He shills for an agenda that WILL put us in a Depression, and which will be absolutely ruinous for everyone but he and his.

I don’t believe in hope. Hope is what enables you, when your head is being held under water, to believe it will end soon. If it doesn’t, you die. Far better to be able to live without oxygen. I have had my head held underwater figuratively for years, yet survived. Why? I don’t hope: I keep moving.

Purpose is the alternative to hope. For me to keep trying, there does not need to be any prospect for success. I do what I do because it seems like the right thing to do, and I therefore choose to do it.

Hope is a dependence on the future. It is a dependence on external events. People whose hopes have been dashed repeatedly tend to become cynical and apathetic. Yet, we can all control our internal states to a great extent. I’m not an unhappy person. Most of the time, I actually feel pretty good, especially considering the emotional asceticism of my life. I laugh a lot; I sing (badly) a lot.

I see so many people getting into these profound funks of one sort or another. It’s all falling apart. There’s no use. blah, blah, blah.

Maybe thing are falling apart, but I speak from experience when I say the antidote is to get yourself in the game, and work to make things better. Hope is not necessary for this.

It makes no matter how small the effort is, and results don’t matter. Obviously, try to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but any action forward is better than pessimistic hand-wringing. Fire, then fire again. All great successes in the world have been largely the outcome of small things done by forgotten people.

If you hope in yourself, then you can determine the outcome, n’est ce pas?

In today’s world, it is easy to forget basic history. It sometimes seems to me that is, in part, the GOAL of much of our media, to surround us with so many unimportant details that we lose sight of the big picture. It is for precisely that reason that I consume very little media, spending perhaps 30 minutes daily reading news stories on the internet, and in general avoid editorials entirely. I prefer to form my own opinions.

It is worth noting, though, that much of the continent of Europe has seen autocratic regimes in power within the lifetime of many citizens. Spain and Portugal were ruled by dictators, if memory serves, until the mid-1970’s. Ireland and Greece fought civil wars in the 20th Century. Germany, of course, was ruled by the Third Reich (in their view, the first “scientific” one, since they were the first to grasp the essential importance of race and biology; this is one of many reasons we need to watch how the word “scientific” is used); as were most of the nations of Europe for some five years. Italy had Mussollini. Norway had its Quisling government. Austria wasn’t sad when Hitler came across the border. De Gaulle, as I understand it, may as well have been a dictator. Sweden, Britain and Switzerland are the only nations I can think of (perhaps Luxembourg and Lichtenstein and some other little nations excepted as well) that have not seen tyranny or civil war in some form in the last 75 years or so.

Further, as I understand the matter, there is NO nation that has a Bill of Rights like ours. There is no nation, as I understand it, that has a Freedom of Information Act. In Holland, Geert Wilders was charged with committing a crime for saying some very obvious, very common sense things about the unwillingness and seeming inability for most Islamic immigrants to join their larger social, political, and cultural order.

One final point: the next time you hear some call America “imperialist”, ask them: Compared to whom? In the approximate era when we were fighting our Civil War to preserve the Union and free the slaves, the British were carving out a hunk of Africa that they renamed Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes. The Belgians were causing mass death. The French were colonizing North Africa, and southeast Asia.

And they were doing this for financial gain. That is what imperialism is. It makes little sense to invade another nation and give them money. You take their money. That’s how real imperialism works. You negotiate sweetheart deals or just take things by force.

What we do is spend American lives and money to help other nations form democratic systems which protect liberty. And for that, we often get spit on by many in the other nations, and by our own Left here, which is utterly lacking in the ability to differentiate cultures based on universal standards. They start from the idea that we are wrong, then infer any and all Others, no matter their behavior, must be right. This is the result of long-term conscious indoctrination, and avoidance of adult, responsible judgement.

As I get older, I have more fantasies of what gets called isolationism, but which is really just not going out and forcing stupid, fratricidal people stop killing each other. Say Hussein had gotten a nuke. We could nuke him. Figure out where he is, and take him out. Would significantly more people have died? That would depend on the details. It’s a guarantee less Americans would have died, though.

Sometimes I think we should cut our military in half, enact compulsory State militia (National Guard) service for all able bodied citizens, perfect our missile shield, no matter the cost, and just tell other nations that if they screw with us they will get nuked. Self evidently, we build a fence with the Mexican border, and put in place SERIOUS security. All the shores have good sensors. We build superior satellite telemetry, which we likely already have.

It should be said, too, that people obsess about defence contractors. The real money in war is loaning the money for it. Never forget this. And that applies to Wars on Poverty, too.