The One in the Many… many… pieces.

The details flood in, syntax changes, new methods & properties, a completely new and jarring look - I've got a high level understanding of what the overall concept is, but connecting the, at this point, still nearly senseless flood of particulars to the sensible comprehensive conceptual plan, is slow going to say the least.

Every skill and understanding you've developed threatens to be washed away in the riot of unfamiliarity.

Focus in, then withdraw and reflect - it is only just beginning to start to integrate... not unlike a few scattered pieces of a puzzle that fit together, amongst the senseless spray of pieces across the table - the thumbnail picture there before me, the full sized pieces a disintegrated mess. Slowly they come together, then one piece links another couple pieces, soon the border of the puzzle is laid, and then more and more, the particular pieces reflect the larger picture and established the pieces, and the picture comes together more and more.

I'm talking about a new (to me) programming language and application architecture, but of course I am also talking about the horizontal and the vertical. The only way to unite them is to do so step by step, in the face of the multitude of horizontal particulars that threatens to swamp your united mental picture. You look at the randomness of each piece, and it is so obvious that there is no way that they are related, you feel foolish thinking that they could form one picture, one concept, one truth.

You have to hold on to the One, you have to know that without the One, there is no many - and also that the One requires the many to become One. Focus in on the pieces - you must do so, or you get no grasp of their form. But then you must also sit back and reflect on the whole, you must keep that image intact, until you begin to see the many within the one.

The plan comes first - a high level integrated view of the world, it seems sensible and you buy into it. Then when it comes time to apply that understanding, you find that your high level understanding begins to crumble on contact with reality. You're mentally assaulted with a myriad of pieces, seemingly completely separated in time and place, and only very slowly are you able to tie them back to your larger world view. With diligence and reflection, the pieces come together, the concept takes shape in the particulars of your life, what seemed separate, shows itself to be in truth fully integrated into all the areas of your life.

Learning requires an idea to be planted first, then particulars to be examined, and slowly fitted together and integrated into a working whole.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The joke is that they happen simultaneously, they both come first. Yes, that IS Truth. And they rely on each other together to exist at all. As it is above, so it is below.

One of the things that drew me to programming was its many resemblances to philosophy, the mind and life. It still keeps me going, even when it makes me question every confidence that I've formerly felt, and to re-confront every fear that abounds in uncertainty, certain only that following the plan will eventually relate the pieces into the overall picture. The uncertain chaos will continue to fade, and understanding will set it in, and soon after foresight and familiarity will return as well as the Many become One… once again.

Prayers and Politicians

Well the cold & flu medicine is finally flushed out of my system, the regularly recurring gloomies have come and gone again, and its probably as good a time as any to address such timely topics as prayer and politicians.

Yesterday's election has brought out all of those who declare the sky's falling, who make urgent calls for prayer to fix the country, and even doomsayers declaring the coming of a new dark age falling upon us as we speak.

Not to minimize the current situation, but people - get a grip!

As to prayers being needed to right the course of the gov’t, IMHO those who indulge in prayer in order to change the world, to cure their friends boils, cure cancer, turn away hurricanes - or to reprove God for failing to handle things in a proper manner... you're all seriously missing the point of life, free will, the Universe and everything in it. Do yourself a favor and buy some nice magic wands and herbs. At the very least, you'll then at least have a certain pride of ownership & much more flashier and entertaining prayers to harangue the big guy with.

Now I do not intend to denigrate anyone’s belief in God or Prayer, I think that beyond the glib assertions of either the religious or the atheists, there is far deeper value to both God and Prayer than most imagine. But IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion), the purpose of prayer is to contemplate the state of your own soul, to seek after God's influence within your own soul, not to nudge him awake to the fact that you disapprove of the shoddy work he's currently doing in the universe.

I think that if there is a God, it's highly likely that God is pretty well pleased with the universe in all of its dimensions - those we can see, and those we can't see. If he was clever enough to, and went to all that bother, to design quarks, neutrons, atoms and solar systems to operate over the course of trillions of years; then causing all of those carefully crafted creations to suddenly shift in their properties and courses in order to satisfy the momentary whims of some shortsighted creation who haven't even figured out how to master their own free will over the course of a few decades of life - such fervent wish lists are probably not going to be a really big factor in the cosmic game plan.

In short, Metaphysicians, heal thyselves!

As for the likelihood that we are witnessing the onset of a dark age whose end will not be seen in our or our great-grandchildren’s lifetimes - Ladies and Gent's, that's been the constant case for at least 50,000 years! As possessors of Freewill, we are always faced with the consequences of our actions, and if we act foolishly on a consistent basis, disaster will follow. But to think that the immediate results of one dissatisfying election are going to have THAT catastrophic an effect is more than a bit hubristic its own right.

First off, we are living in the most prosperous time that has ever existed in all of the history of humankind, and we in the United States of America are blessed with the ability to affect the course of our nation through our choices and actions.

Remember to keep things in perspective, if the Dem's do get their way, it'll take a year or two to really louse up the economy again, and as for the rest of the culture, it will slide only so far before the electorate swings back the other way again. As far as the glass being half full or half empty, about the only thing you can really say about it, is that it is a Glass, the rest relies on people’s ability to perceive the glass, to understand that it can be filled or emptied or grasped according to how they exert their own free will in their own lives.

Folks, this is the way the country works, BY DESIGN, when the people lose confidence (wisely or unwisely) in those governing them, they vote them out. This is (still) a free country - that means that good and bad decisions will be made by, to and through the gov't. I have posted this poem here elsewhere before, so I won't post it again, but Rudyard Kiplings "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" sums it up - fools only learn by burning their fingers, and lessons forgotten have to be relearned.

I do realize that we face dangerous times, and much hinges on the choices we make, but keep in mind it was just a short time ago that hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out in an instant by a tidal wave. That kind of thing happens, and will happen again; at least the dangerous times we face politically are open to being affected by our choices, as opposed to sudden death dealt out by the shifting of tectonic plates or the trajectories of asteroids.

We are most assuredly going to have hard times coming, and we are going to have good times coming too - there will be scandals and there will be good times, and there will be disasters as well - in short, life will happen and we will respond or react to it as best as we are able, and no politician or prayer is going to change that.

Politicians are NOT ever going to fix things! At best they can make the ride a little steadier, but they can't fix anything, because when you come down to it, it is US that makes it work, or not work. Nobody can FIX anybody other than themselves. The closest you can come to affecting others is through education - and I don't mean accumulation of diplomas. Until the people again get wind of the existence of Education, and educate themselves again as to the pursuit of Sweetness and Light, there will be no political solutions to anything, only larger and smaller swings of the pendulum in one direction and then the other.

I believe that Prayer is also NOT ever going to FIX things out there in the world. If it does anything, it is a way to deepen your consideration of your own deeply held principles and convictions in relation to a wider perspective, the God view of life - and so it enables you to strengthen your own inner understanding of your place in the world, and with that, the strength of your convictions and wisdom will follow.

As I've also noted before:

In our sleep,
pain which cannot
forget
falls drop by
drop upon the heart until,
in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
-- Aeschylus

And in the end, as creatures of Free Will, that is all that can and should be asked and hoped for.

‘Jon Cary's’ assertions to the contrary, Genghis Khan is not here amongst us, and even if Genghis and his buddies are somewhere out there in the world - so are we! If you want to change the world, deal in Ideas, put in the hard work of understanding them, discuss them with others - Educate each other. The one thing the world has NEVER had before, is the ability of nearly anyone to do just that, and on the unimaginable scale we have today, with the ability to do so with anyone anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night via the blogosphere, and anyone else can see and participate in the same discussion.

Even here on my own tiny little corner of the blogosphere, I've had people in the last few days looking in from around the USA, and Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, India, Australia - folks, never before has such a thing been possible, for ideas to be exchanged, contributed to and improved upon simultaneously around the world. Beneath the hype of the Internet, I think that that single development is absolutely world shakingly huge, and surprisingly little understood.

Do you want to save the world?

Then slow down, stop trying to FIX someone else, and Think. Discuss ideas with others, seek to understand what is Good and True, and live accordingly. If the world can be improved, THAT is how it is going to happen, and once sound Ideas are understood, the rest will follow, and without such understanding, nothing else of lasting Value can or will be accomplished.

Think about it.

Relevance

Those Dead White Guys of olde, are they still relevant? Their answering laughter is thunderous. The more I wonder, the smarter they get, these people that haunt our libraries; the dead men, dead and buried, dead and gone, who still rule us today more thoroughly than any tyrant could ever hope to.

For example, Euripides wrote Medea, one of his more disturbing plays, of Jason, the hero of the Argonauts, and his wife Medea who helped him escape with the golden fleece from her Father - both now older and fallen on hard times. He thinks to solve their situation by planning to marry the daughter of King Creon, putting Medea and their children temporarily aside 'for the improved standing and good of all'. She deals with their problem by bringing horrible death to his new betrothed and to King Creon, and most horribly of all, to their children.

From the ending of the play after Jason has discovered the children’s death, and she is being borne away into the heavens in a chariot of the gods, they harangue each other endlessly:

JAS. And thou thyself grievest at least, and art a sharer in these ills.
MED. Be assured of that; but this lessens the grief, that thou canst not mock me.
JAS. My children, what a wicked mother have ye found!
MED. My sons, how did ye perish by your father's fault!
JAS. Nevertheless my hand slew them not.
MED. But injury, and thy new nuptials.
JAS. And on account of thy bed didst thou think fit to slay them?
MED. Dost thou deem this a slight evil to a woman?
JAS. Whoever at least is modest; but in thee is every ill.
MED. These are no longer living, for this will gall thee.
JAS. These are living, alas me! avenging furies on thy head.
MED. The Gods know who began the injury.
JAS. They know indeed thy execrable mind.
Meo. Thou art hateful to me, and I detest thy bitter speech.
JAS. And I in sooth thine; the separation at least is without pain.
MED. How then? what shall I do? for I also am very desirous.
JAS. Suffer me, I beg, to bury and mourn over these dead bodies.

each accuses the other that "it was YOU!", not seeing that from the perspective of the chorus and the God, the truth is that it was THEY that did it. Once upon a time, together, they slew dragons, they were Heroes – now, what they had done, and who they once were together are forgotten. Euripides continues:

JAS. But may the Fury of the children, and Justice the avenger of murder, destroy thee.
MED. But what God or Deity hears thee, thou perjured man, and traitor to the rights of hospitality?
JAS. Ah! thou abominable woman, and murderer of thy children.
MED. Go to thy home, and bury thy wife.
JAS. I go, even deprived of both my children.
MED. Thou dost not yet mourn enough: stay and grow old.
JAS. Oh my dearest sons!
MED. To their mother at least, but not to thee.
JAS. And yet thou slewest them.
MED. To grieve thee.
JAS. Alas, alas! I hapless man long to kiss the dear mouths of my children.
MED. Now them addressest, now salutest them, formerly rejecting them with scorn.
JAS. Grant me, by the Gods, to touch the soft skin of my sons.
MED. It is not possible. Thy words are thrown away in vain.

Each is intent on the cause and the fault of the other; one who had done the deed, one who had ensured that it would be done. Each talk past the other focused on their own parameter of hatred and justice - different as can be, and yet but two parts of the same soul, parted and grotesque.

For that is what I think Medea is about, Jason, the calculating taker of step after step up the stairs, and the visionary Medea who takes the entire staircase at a bound, but now off balance carreening wildly about - the particular and the whole, each necessary to the other, but now separated by divided vision, and their separation is a bloody wound, raw nerves and pain to both, united no more. The One, divided and at odds with it's once one self.

Do we not do much today that resembles this?

Think of the 'art' that currently plagues us, the stylization of ugliness, a disharmonic, separateness is its hallmark. Pieces of this and pieces of that, thrown together - find any tattooed fool for a glaring case in point. This art doesn't unify, it separates, it discolors, it unbalances - and its companion adornments of body piercing with chunks and hoops of iron struck through the wearers flesh, it mutilates what was once wHoly.

There is an irony here lost on both the artiste's and their patrons, and that is that I don't think that most of these adherents grasp this wider perspective precisely because their vision has been hauled down from the heights, and pressed into the horizontal particulars before their faces.

They don't see a whole that is divided, they see only parts which they adorn and prop up to be 'admired', pieces... many pieces, quantity in place of unity, juxtaposition over integration - the result of their unknown philosophy, their faces pressed up so close to the trees that the bark is wedged between their teeth, their eyes unable to see around the width of the tree filling their vision, the very existence of a forest is to them but a scoffed at rumor. But even to these people, what pieces of wholes they do retain, they retain within them still.

The further irony is that the "Modernist" artiste’s, who do realize that they are assaulting unity and beauty, don't realize the way in which their 'fans' don't grasp their point. They think that the public is just too stupid to grasp their intent, but they don't fully get the idea behind the publics missing the pointed ideas behind their "art", the public only thinks that it has found a sophisticated way of engaging the target of the ‘art’, which unbeknownst to them, the artiste is attempting to destroy.

As an example of what I mean, one review I saw of Warhols Marilyn Monroe canvas, the one that had three images of her churned out upon it, and odd colors washed over the surface, was that it was depicting the effects of machine upon nature, and so illustrated the worthlessness of art, and of the West in general, etc.

But what the reviewer and the artiste don't seem to get about such awful 'art', is that most people on seeing the images they present in their pieces, they still manage to mentally leap to the actual objects that these images spring from - physically or conceptually; whereas the artiste seems to think that all art and interpretation of art, begins and ends with the images they use, but it is only themselves that they impress with their extremely tortured trails of 'thought' which they see as being truly 'Deep'.

They think that those horizontal images they distort are somehow entirely separated from that conceptual entity they originally derived it from. When they slap Marilyn Monroe upon a piece of clapboard, and splash pastels over her, they think that they've succeeded in destroying her. But what they don't get, is that when most people see the Marilyn canvas, if they’re not repulsed by the presentation of her remembered beauty, they use the 'painting' to mentally travel to that still whole mental picture they have of her beauty - they only see a 'unique' way of displaying her, they don't disassemble her in their minds in the way that the artiste intended, to them she is still whole.

Or at least for some, in part - for now. The patrons are still primitively seeking after Art, the unifier, the giver of meaning, but they are given only this particularized 'art' instead, and it doesn't unite, it doesn't soothe, it only excites. And excitation always requires more and more to sustain itself, more quantity and more jolt to each dose to be felt at all. This 'art', it does batter away at Sweetness and Light, and inexorably beauty is divorced from unity, quantity buries quality, concept is separated from fact, the Vertical is severed from the Horizontal, the eagerness for the perception of style and respect does eventually erase all style and deliver respect only from those who don't know what it means - and finally meaning separates into mere facts, suitable only for hurling as weapons for breaking, not building.

Jason continues as Medea disappears into the sky:

JAS. Dost thou hear this, O Jove, how I am rejected, and what I suffer from
this accursed and child-destroying lioness? But as much indeed as is in my power
and I am able, I lament and mourn over these; calling the Gods to witness, that
having slain my children, thou preventest me from touching them with my hands,
and from burying the bodies, whom, oh that I had never begotten, and seen them
thus destroyed by thee.

But old Jove, the One in the Many, is not deceived by either Jason or Medea. Those who were once One in Love, divided from each other, willingly, and purposefully, and in so doing wrought pain and suffering upon all that their division rent apart. The Chorus answers:

CHOR. Jove is the dispenser of various fates in heaven, and the Gods perform
many things contrary to our expectations, and those things which we looked for
are not accomplished; but the God hath brought to pass things unthought of. In
such manner hath this affair ended.

Our 'art' finds its way into our aspirations and our lives; our elections tomorrow are more cases in this point. The Leftists are so focused on their horizontal goals of regaining power, and thwarting Bush, that they are most willing to distort their vision by any particular perceived offence they can gin up into a scene between themselves and their Media.

The Conservatives have fallen to their folly of trying to retain high principle through the mediation of horizontal power grabs. Small gov't, secure borders, Righteous War staggering under Medicare bribes, multi-culti bribes, and International-PC-Relations bribes in order to secure power, and so of course they fritter it away.

The leftists with their particulars at the expense of any soaring vision, the conservatives with their soaring vision pinned down with their particulars as butterflies to a display board - truth and unity forgotten by each, and repelling each other just as a magnet when broken in two can not be forced back together, the once common center now become two oppositely polarized ends.

A Greek tragedy in deed.

Make The Doppleganger Wait

The following is from a letter I wrote to my oldest son a couple years ago when I went home to see my Grandma once more before she died. It came to mind today as a weeks worth of flu drugs are finally draining from my brain, there’s still the flat dead feel inside my head that I often get when I break down and take cold/flu medicine. I’ve never been one to take much more than a throat lozenge because most med’s seem to really throw me for a loop, and that sensation put the point of this letter into my mind – the doppelganger that seems to be within each of us, ready to take the controls should you let them slip – always ready to slip between you and yourself.

Ryan,
I'm sitting by the barbecue at Grandma Jeane's house - fresh from the pool, and the afternoon desert quiet. Grandma Ebbie is close to 104, and closer still, to being no more. This morning I saw her for the first time in over a year, and her arms are no thicker than my index & middle fingers twined, her hair snow white, and thin as blown snow, and the oddest thing, was watching her slip into and out of her face.

I sat by her as she woke, and she was no more my grandma, than anyone else passing by on the street - in fact less; her neck & face twitching with primitive animation, little of it human, and less of it anyone I knew.

Then as her eyes began to blinkingly recognize that someone was sitting next to her, you could see Her trying to reclaim her body... moment by agonizing moment of wearisome attention... fleeting and halting, but persisting. She began by "Who are you"... Who? I have a grandson? Are you Mason? Brother?... She and her humanity slipped out, and the bodies default reflexive animation let her rest, and then she made an effort to come back again... "I have a Grandson that lives far away..." "Who are you?" "Van? Who'is Van? Are you in college?" and slipped off again, and then another charge at retaking herself, and back & forth for about 30 minutes.

And then I saw Grandma slip into her face. It was the oddest thing, her lips lifted up, her eyelids drew down a fraction and her cheeks bunched "Van... it's good to see you... are you here?". For the next half hour it was much the same style repeated "Are you in college? Or Do you live here? Followed by a few minutes of recognition, and back at the time-phased questions again, but now not the primitive default life working the face and keeping the body alive, and keeping the controls for Grandma ( or keeping her from them?), but yielding their face to her with a simple blink, and Grandma was back. Her memories scrambled, her sense of her place in time non existent, but She was there all the same, and recognition and delight in her voice at the mention of Ryan, Chad, Rachel and Carol, and a glittering as she craned her neck to eye the slideshow of pictures on my laptop of the faces that attend those names.

She got a little bit better in the afternoon - maintaining a grip for about an hour, then slipping back again, and fading for the remainder of the weekend.

It got me thinking of what an immense stretch of time she has covered, what a unique thing a person is, or can be, aside from merely human, and what it means to be either. It also got me thinking, that we all, every moment of our lives, invisibly and almost imperceptibly even to ourselves, have to engage in that same battle for control of ourselves, as your Grandma was visibly engaged in.

When your Grandma was born, the Train was still the fastest transportation on earth, airplanes were unheard of, electricity and telephones only rumored, and the century the 19th. She's seen the coming of Modernity, Movies, two world wars, Airlines, Spaceflight, Computers, the internet, and an absolute transformation of culture which marked someone of age when she was a child, their bearing, beliefs and attitudes, from someone of our time, as distinctly as if they were from Ancient Greece or Victorian England.

What those differences are, and whether Pro or Con isn't the point I'm after here, but only that a Human being, someone who has shaped and claimed their self, and what that means, and the uniqueness & significance of it, is what I'm after - and what it means for you.

Modernity, Movies, two world wars, Airlines, Spaceflight, Computers, and the internet, are not what make us who we are, or that make us anymore or less worthwhile or significant. In short: The differences between Togas or shin length shorts - Papyrus or HTML - don't mean a crap.

The choices that you choose to make, rather than to default to, Do.
You are at the age, where you are emerging from childhood, and into the character which you will essentially define as you, for the rest of your life. You are also at a time when you don't yet have the habits or experiences which you will use to shore up, define and further shape You into the self you will come to be able to map yourself out to others from.

By that I mean, you have yet to have those defining moments where you can say to someone "See, I did this, then, and for this reason, and so, as you can see, I am like This." You may already feel it, but as of yet, you have only a limited Proof of it, and the self assuredness that it establishes and demonstrates.

However, it will be those choices yet to be made, the experiences stemming from them, and the beliefs which they will cement into the structure of your life yet to come, that will define you, and mark you as you, to yourself, and to those around you, for the rest of your life.
What I want to say to you most of all out of all of this, is that you will always have the moment of choice throughout life, of whether to actively engage yourself, and uphold what can be the integrity of your life, a life that You have Created, through an unceasing procession of individual decisions in the heat of the moment, to choose your life.

Either that, - or as is more often the case with most, to yield their life to that primitive animation, the default life, which exists in us all, but is not Us, it's a doppelganger - a thing that bears our face, but not our soul. It is a choice-less default of energy that will readily accept the reins of your body at anytime you wish to casually stand aside and let it move you along. It knows the trick of your words, and has access to the snapshots of your memory, and is always eager to DO as the heat of emotion urges, but never with regard to what You would do, were you in it's place, as indeed you should be.

Will you always successfully choose to make that choice? Not likely, I at least can't say that I have always successfully made the choice to choose, but I flatter myself to think that I have been more successful than most, and have been forthcoming in admitting when I haven't, or in admitting that although I chose, I chose unwisely.

If you give it consideration, I think that you'll find, that in choices of Should you do something, of Right and Wrong, the Natural is almost never the right choice. The Natural Choice, is that of the animated doppelganger within us all, eager to gain the controls you let slip. But it is so much less than us, and when we negligently let it at the controls, we almost always lessen ourselves; in our own eyes, and in the eyes of others.

I think that it is important to note, that everything we have, either trivial or significant, is the result of our unnatural choices. Language, Invention, Art, Civilization are all the result of a seemingly infinite string of decisions against what comes naturally; and Civilization is the result of a Herculean effort of it's members to remember and pass them on, which have separated us from the Natural realm of the animal, and transported us into the realm of humanity - and it is far better than the life of the natural animal we originally were.

You can see the effects among us, of those who've let the Natural Choice substitute for the Right Decision. Those with drug problems, those that cheat in their relationships, those whom you're never sure you can trust, those who steal, abuse others, murder - what they all have in common, at that crucial point of decision, each of them made the choice to let themselves do what comes Naturally, yielding to the urge of the moment instead of doing what they knew they should do. And you can surely verify from your own experience, as I can, that everyone of them surely knew it was, if not Wrong, at least that it was not Right, at least at the beginning of building their string of actions become habits, that they were still able to make the distinction.

People know when they are making excuses for doing what they shouldn't. Eventually they may pile those excuses up so deep in their own minds, that if they studiously avoid letting their thoughts linger on their excuses, they can avoid facing the truth about themselves directly, but I suspect that there is always the echo of the life they've thrown away sounding throughout their every moment, annoying or tormenting them, as the degree of the case may be.

Religion has one thing right, there is an all seeing, ever present deity mindful of everything you do, but it's not some bearded guy on a throne in the clouds, it is you. And as the person who tried to escape their life by globe trotting the world said, "It was no use, everywhere I went, there I was". You can't escape yourself. You can however lose yourself, by ceding the controls to the easy, the Natural choice of the Doppleganger within you; and with each of those slips, the Doppleganger gains a stronger hold on the controls of your life, through those unwise actions become chaining Habits.

You build Habits, not only consisting of actions, but also habits of thinking - or not - of ceding the choice to be Human or Natural, and you can see the truth of this in the face of any addict as they come out of the influence of their drug of choice, see the consequences of it, and frantically swear "Never Again!", and note the absolute fear and loathing they feel towards themselves in the next instant, as they try to hide from the fact that they know that they no longer have the strength to completely get their life back from the Doppleganger within them.

And so it is that I've irritated you by saying, that Everything you do affects everything you want to do, and your ability to do it.

I may be staggering all over the map here. I know that I am.

My point is that to be someone worth being, is the result of a never ending string of decisions, usually of choosing not to do what is easy, natural, and momentarily satisfying to one urge or another, but instead, Thinking and Choosing to do what you determine is Right. You need to know that although the Right Choice isn't always the one that will give the immediate sensation of pleasure, it is at least the one that is far more deeply satisfying, and which will give a satisfaction that lasts far beyond the moment. And won't spawn an unceasing echo through the years of your life, an ever present torment of "I should have done! I could have been!" Happiness is not a never ending string of pleasurable sensations, but a sense of satisfaction with your decisions, a peaceful sensation of your soul which accompanies you whether in luxury or poverty, and without which no luxury can ever give any satisfaction. For proof, ask Marilyn Monroe, or Elvis, or John Belushi, or Kurt Cobain, or... The list goes on and on.

It's important to know that some of your decisions will be wrong - there is no avoiding it. The only way to never make a wrong decision, is to never make any decisions; to shuck your clothes, forsake your humanity and dash off into the forest to bark at the moon.
It is that realization which lies behind the myth of an Eden lost to the Apple, and behind the idea of original sin.

You have everything you need to accomplish anything you want. You could be a President, a Titan of business or Sport, or the best Iron Worker in town, or the best Dad who happens to do something for a living. What you choose to be doesn't matter (except of course, to you), but that you choose to Be, does. Even success doesn't matter - it's certainly desirable, and Rightly so!, but it doesn't itself make one person better than another, or more at ease within their own skin. Success doesn't mean only being successful at what you were doing, but at who you were being.

I have made a lot of decisions that didn't turn out successfully, I've taken a lot of unwise risks, that didn't pan out - dropping out of college to be a musician didn't put the odds of success in my favor. I did however understand the consequences of my choice (as best as any 20 year old can understand them, which ain't saying much!) , and I had enough confidence in myself to believe that if my roll of the dice didn't come out in my favor, that I'd be able to pick myself up, pick a new course, and, though I'd be several years behind everyone I knew, I'd make it work out.

I chose what I needed to choose to be comfortable with being me, and I still think it was the best choice. Incidentally, I even think that not having won the gamble was for the best, especially when I look at you and your brother & sister. Know what you value, and value it.
Over the last couple months, you've increasingly begun responding to being asked or told to do something, with either a calm "Ok", or an "Ok, but would it be alright to..." which is the mark of someone who is becoming their own person - maturing, laying claim to their lives.

Nurture that sense, that action of asserting your reasoned control over yourself, that is you becoming you, and it is of the most dire importance to your life that you do so. It is after all possible for a person to be alive, but no longer living, no longer being the active force within themselves. The doppelganger will wait a hundred years, but it will also be quite happy to step in and take over a person’s life before they’re through living, the person that always gives in to their emotional reactions, who flies off the handle, who drinks to handle the pressure – to the doppelganger these are all the sound of the reins dropping, and it is eager to pick them up if you let it.

Make it wait. A hundred years is too soon, make it wait.

Blogodidact - Blowing in the wind of my sneezes

Aside from various other useful excuses, I've been down with the Flu (Achoo! sniff...shiver & shake. groan).
Flu shots? I don't need no stinkin' flu shots(Achoo! sniff...shiver & shake. groan).

Return to Deep Thought

Chaos & stress at work has cut down on my blogging time (looks like it may be looking up, we’ll see), but I finally have the time to finish up some house keeping rebuttals of Deep Thoughts rebuttal of my rebuttal on his series on Distributionism, which I think will clear the air of our butting heads over economic policies.

I think the outstanding issues between us are on concern about Gov’t programs, the niceties of upgrading your job skills vs “living Wages” and Corporations and policies regulating them.

Concern about Gov’t programs
I had questioned the wisdom of advocating and taking part in Gov’t tax incentives & training programs, which Deep Thought replied in part with:

“Therefore, I think that supporters of Distributionism (as well as our allies in the realms of Libertarians, Objectivists, and fiscal Conservatives) should push for serious tax breaks for small business owners, even to make small businesses tax-free. I feel the same way about job training; federal job training has been around for a long time and will not vanish overnight.”

Well there is of course a difference between advocating something as an ideal policy and advocating something as a change in existing policy –with that in mind, having the goal of turning existing bad policies towards ‘less bad’ policies with the eventual goal of discontinuing them altogether, then I have no other objection to his position on such programs.

The niceties of upgrading your job skills vs “living Wages”
One Part I do have an objection to, I’ll get right out of the way:
“But I must say, Van is a bit, uh, blithe about the whole idea of ‘if your job only earns you ¾ of what you need to live, get another job for the additional ¼ and look for the skills to get you out of it’. Ya’ think? Of course, where they are to find the time for further education while working at least 1 ½ jobs can be a bit of a puzzler, I suspect.”

No, I’m not blithe about it at all, only experienced. When my wife and I married and moved to the Midwest, we knew no one, and had no money, she was pregnant [we found out the day before our wedding - somewhere in between our engagement and marriage, God, ever the wry comedian, turned our plans to hold off on having kids for two years into a punchline ;-) ] which made our only source of income – her job as a flight attendant – very tentative, and I, having played in a band for the duration of the 80’s, had no marketable skills other than looking and sounding good on stage.

I had selling Real Estate in mind, and so while working as a minimum wage leasing agent I studied and passed my license exam and sold Real Estate in my ‘spare’ time. While I did pretty good, we soon both realized that my wife was completely unsuited to living on a commission only pay scale lifestyle. So I spent the next 4 years, the worst of my life, working in retail.

I tried several side jobs (which didn’t work out) while working my job and being Mr. Mom 3 days a week. I finally found a better paying sales job, but then discovered computers, and realized that THAT was what I should be doing. That meant taking a very difficult step down the pay scale ladder before being able to step up it again in a field I felt I could excel in.

Over the next two years I spent every waking moment available, studying, learning, taking exams, practicing and studying some more. I carried 500 page “Database Theory and Development” and programming, and then “Object Oriented Programming” language books around with me everywhere I went, on the off chance I’d have a moment to read or quiz myself. I carried them - to the movies (reading while waiting in line. Seriously. Hey if you’re going to become a geek, you might as well behave like one), at dinner, in between scrubbing the kids in the bath, at picnics and visiting friends, I carried one of “My Mistresses” as my wife called them, around with me, and when home if not studying, I was practicing on our new IBM PC (my taking us into debt to buy that PC is still a sore point between us!) until I finally was able to gain the skills and certifications I needed to get into, and rise up into a better paying line of work.

It was extremely difficult and stressful for all of us, but it was necessary because our income and condo were only ¾’s (at best) of what was needed for us to make ends meet.

I don’t say the comment “blithely” at all. My wife is currently working as an Lpn nurse at 1/3 of the pay she made as a flight attendant for TWA when that unholy mix of Corporate action and Political Intervention resulted in TWA vanishing, and all of it’s employees being double dealt into being laid off. She finished an 18 month crash course at the community college last year to earn a degree and become an Lpn, and while working she’s also back at college at nights working towards an RN certification, so she can get closer to the income she had enjoyed, and we relied heavily on, for 17 years at TWA.

I don’t say it blithely at all, and I have no stomach for anybody who whines about it being too difficult, that Gov’t should help them, hand them up, etc. My vision goes red, and my fingers threaten to smash the keys through the body of my laptop and into the tables finish when I hear people suggesting it can’t be done, or that Gov’t should step in and help. It is precisely BECAUSE of the programs that Gov’t has enacted to “step in and help”, that our taxes (directly and indirectly) cut into our income so much that it has become so difficult to have a single income household to begin with.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath…. Ok, I’m fine now.

And one other comment where I asked about what “capitalism failures are they? When?”, Deep Thought responded with “Uh…. The ones you just mentioned. Van just wrote that laissez-faire Capitalism “…ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people, as well” and that this empowers demagogues to take advantage of that to undermine the rights and freedoms of people. That is what Belloc was discussing in the Servile State, Chesterton in What’s Wrong with the World, etc.”

Well, there is not, cannot be, and never will be an economic system that preserves the rights of individuals and eliminates the downside of risk, that is a part of life, and as Deep Thought says he rejects the idea of Utopianism – well, attempting to establish a policy that eliminates the downside of risk in economic ventures - that strikes me as an attempt at Utopianism. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but in terms of the principles involved, only a slight one.

At best, informed close associates or neighborhood investment clubs could be formed for the purpose of aiding each other – but even that would be Very risky to the relationships.

Clarifying My Premises
Since most, if not all of the rest of Deep Thought’s and my disagreements seem to revolve around our definition of Capitalism, this may be a good time to pause and define our terms. The short Oxford Dictionary defines Capitalism as “economic system with ownership and control of capital in private hands”. I would add my understanding of it to be a system which results from the Political recognition of, and defense of Individual Rights and the Property Rights which are essential and central to all Rights.

From that point of view, I balk at the idea of economics being seen as a tool to be used towards attaining Happiness. Economics is useful as a forecasting tool, and tool to help ward off policy errors that might intrude into the economy. I don’t consider economic policy to properly be a set of active policies at all, but only a warning system against the intrusion of bad law.

With that said, the focus of my comments on Distributionism may stand out more clearly; you’ll find me objecting to anything that either is, or can be used as a tool for putting intrusive governmental policies and laws in place that will violate Individual rights in the name of ‘economic policy’.

Also, to restate it again, I think Distributionism as Deep Thought sees it, is more a set of advisable economic practices for private individuals to voluntarily adhere to, than any kind of proposal for establishing a new Gov’t Economic ‘Policy’.

On Corporations and policies regulating them
Deep Thought and I also come to friction on the subject of Corporations. A corporation, a large one, almost by definition contains rank upon rank of middle managers, partially involved workers pushing papers, docs and policies here and there, and somehow around the fringes, they manage to contribute to the production of the corporate product and profit.

Undoubtedly it contains waste, but cumbersome as it is, it is an organization that has yet to be improved upon for most practical purposes. When an organization plan is achieved that is demonstrably more efficient than that of the gigantic Corporations, rest assured, the Corp’s will die, and quickly.

IMHO, one cue towards what may come to be their eventual replacement I think may be seen in, of all places, Hollywood!

Look at the credits at the end of a movie, either produced through a studio or an independent production, and you’ll see hundreds of names and companies that are involved in the production of the product, the movie; few or none of whom work for the Production company itself. They are brought into the project of ‘building’ the movie, as needed in real time, they work together as needed to contribute to the product, receive their pay (or percentage agreements), and separate again from the Production company – which itself may consist of two or three Producers and their secretaries, at the end of the project. Of these numerous people & ‘Companies’ (most of whom which are almost the pure definition of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism) they may work together this one time, and never again, or repeatedly over the course of the next several movies. The individual companies in these credits may even be working together on several different movies at the same time!

No predictions, but it’s something to keep an eye on. Our I.T. Dept’s partially approach this method, but only on the level of moving individuals in and out of positions, the departmental bureaucracy lives on. Because the Corporate body as it exists today breeds waste and inefficiency, I have little doubt in saying that they will one day cease to exist, as soon as it is figured out how to accomplish what they accomplish now, but better and more efficiently.

However I reject any notions of penalizing Corporations for their legitimate practices, or anything resembling Trust Busting, totally and completely. When you hear of such actions being proposed, you might want to consider, though not essential to the principle behind them it is instructive, are they designed to protect the consumer, or the competitors? Who benefits by passing laws that prevents a corporation such as Standard Oil, or Microsoft, from charging less for their product? Of course their success makes it more and more possible for them to push their economic weight around and cut better deals for themselves. What of it? To what purpose do you wish to make it possible for some companies to be successful at charging more for a product than the bigger ones are capable of charging less for?

As a side note, when Microsoft became a target in the 90’s of Anti-Trust laws over Internet Explorer (which those of us who were involved in the business at the time of the judgment against them, suspect as being the true initial pop in the dotcom bubble), the suit was instigated by AOL, Netscape, Oracle and SUN – the most closed systems, anti-software integrating, over controlling of ‘partners’ Corp’s in the business, who thought nothing of getting big brother involved in helping them to control the market where their own abilities were woefully insufficient. These are companies that actually practice every strong arm tactic, policy, and quest for world domination that Microsoft is only accused of. They hate MS because it achieves all that they desire and aren’t competent to do themselves. That scenario is, and always has been, the soul of Anti-Trust actions.

Deep Thought opines “And if a corporation is large enough, it can enter new markets and use its economic resources to do the same to more and more fields of transaction. Think this is loopy? Look at Standard Oil; in the 1880’s began a decades-long practice of coercing shippers to give them discounts and to increase shipping prices for competitors. Soon their control of transportation allowed them to literally dictate oil prices to oil producers in America, demand further discounts on their own shipping costs and ‘rebates’ (i.e., kickbacks) from the artificially-high shipping costs they demanded for their competitors, and other such actions. Using this clout, they also gained very effective control of steel production and, eventually, railroads. This was an especially good idea – by controlling the steel industry, Standard controlled the cost of railroad tracks and cars. By controlling oil, they controlled the cost of fuel and lubricants of the railroads. When they moved into the railroad business it was a foregone conclusion that they would dominate it shortly.”

To which I say - Good!

As long as the Corp gains NO legislative/regulatory political power, and uses no PHYSICAL force; and threatening to no longer do business with a company, or convince other members of their supply chain to not do business with their company DOES NOT qualify as Physical Force – it is negotiation, though hardball, true, it is still a legitamate part of the process of making agreements.

What is the principled difference between such hardball tactics on the part of Corporations, and your trying to wheel and deal at the local service station by saying “Look I’ll let you put a set of your top tires on both my and my wife’s car, but if I do, I want you to throw in a alignment check and road hazard on all the tires of both cars, for free, other I’m taking my business across the street to Big Bob’s place and you and your mechanics will not see any more of our regular business”?

In any essential principle, there is no difference, and any interference or intervention in that negotiation, is a violation of the Individual Rights of both parties, and of the principle of the Individual Rights of all.

Again, who is it that such laws are intended to protect, consumers or competitors?!

“Analysis by economists then and now agree; Standard Oil began as more efficient than its competitors, which allowed it its initial rapid gains. Once it reached its height, however, its efficiency began to drop. In the end it was less efficient than its (few remaining) competitors (or, in some ways, no more efficient than the others).” Well some economists then and now may agree, but it might be helpful to mention the many who do not, Henry Hazlitt, George Reismann, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, Richard Salsman, Andrew Bernstein…. The list can go on and on.

“So, I have no problems with a monopoly of efficiency – after all, a more efficient competitor will eventually come along. But I have issues with coercive monopolies. I have yet to meet a Conservative who likes coercive monopolies, but I also rarely find a Conservative who will admit that large firms can establish a coercive monopoly almost as easily as a government can. The result? I prefer small firms to large ones.”

I’ve consulted at massive corporations, large companies, and smaller firms, and I too far prefer smaller firms to larger ones. But I DON’T want to have having anything to do with politicians or judges in attempting to reduce (or increase) the size or scope of any private business venture.

For those who do advocate having their congressmen restrain capitalism’s excesses, may want to consider that it was a republican, a business ‘friendly’ conservative, who created the first Anti-Trust law, the Sherman Anti-Trust act in an attempt to get competitors to ‘make nice’, completely blind to the fact that he wasn’t just forcing business’s to make nice, he was driving a serious fracture into the pediment of Property Rights, and Individual Rights. It paved the way for all the destructive policies and programs of Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Hoover and FDR. It has laid the foundations for making it conversationally respectable for politicians and judges to consider whether or not private individuals have a right to retain ownership of their property, when others want to use it “for the common good” to make more money for themselves and the cities tax receipts.

And for the record, if Mom & Pop shops can out maneuver, and deliver more valuable services for less than Wal-Mart and the other big corporations can – then I am thrilled for them, and root for the fall of the wasteful Goliaths.


The subject of Wage Slavery sent Deep Thought into an explanation which included “Face it – public schools suck. They are more and more divorced from providing a practical education while they continue to tighten their focus on indoctrination. The result is a populace less and less able to actually become entrepreneurs, forcing them into a spiral of jobs that pay too little for them to live one, resulting in debt resulting in…. Well, you get the idea. The end result is an entire class of people who cannot do that most basic of things – be self-sufficient.”, to which he will get absolutely no argument from me. The latest part of my series on the slide of modern philosophy into the dumper, What never was and never will be (I’m still recovering from re-reading Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, Kant & Hegel, I need a bit more of a breather before getting slimed again by diving into Marx & the deconstructionists’) traces the slide of Education from a process of making one fit for Liberty, into the muck of drowning children in a drudgery of training for skills in ‘basic minimum competency’.

Regarding Guilds and Unions, I personally don’t think that anything other than a professional organization for specific artisans is going to be successful, but with Deep Thought’s clarification: “When you can join any union, no union, or drop out of a union when you wish it means that the unions are forced to do what they are designed to do – help workers. If they do a lousy job, people leave them. If they try to wring concessions from management that makes the business less competitive, they are going to go away pretty quickly when the other unions and the independents oppose them.”, and also his statement that “The goal of Distributionism is to use the voluntary actions of individuals to ameliorate these negative effects in a manner that not only remains Capitalist, but has competitive advantages.”, then I’ve got no further argument against his presentation of Distributionism, and I look forward to again reading Deep Thought to help me get deeper into my thoughts.

As my current thrill ride through the world of Capitalism smoothes out, I’ll be back to my regular (?!) postings ASAP.

Redistributing my thoughts on Deep Thought (The inevitable post 'midnight post' revisions have been made)

Deep Thought took me to task recently for my comments on his series on Distributionism, suspecting that I had skimmed his posts and commented on what caught my eye. I did not skim them, but I promised him that I would reread his series and either take myself to task if I had been in error, or better explain my comments on his posts.

Before I get going again, for the record, Deep Thought is on my Blogroll because I look forward to reading his posts, and even on the rare occasions that I disagree with him, such as this, there is still much to be gained from a good disagreement – a focusing and clarifying of your own understanding, that you're hard pressed to get from anywhere else (certainly not from arguing with moonbats!).

I have reviewed Deep Thoughts postings again, and although my evaluation stands, I also reread my posting, and I must confess that I am guilty of not making clear where my criticism of Deep Thought ended, and where that of worse views picked up, leaving the impression that some of my sharper comments were directed at his posts – which they were not intended to be.

My only defense is that my three part posting was originally one posting, and as I turned it on, it took several minutes to post, and seemed hopelessly long for anyone to bother reading. So I did a little quick slicing and dicing, to rearrange the post into three separate posts, and it lost some in the doing.

If brevity is the soul of wit... I must painfully admit that I haven't yet learned the art of being brief.

I did manage to leave in one reference to “As advice, some may see some value in this, but as Economic Policy? However holy the intent, I can’t see any ultimate destination for these good intentions, other than a new Utopian hell on earth” – but even with that in consideration (you know I'm in trouble if that was an example of calmness and courtesy), I didn’t adequately point out that Deep Thought explicitly denounced using Governmental force to bring about any portion of Distributionism. It was a case of my rushing on to the rest of the post, and not comparing what I had in my head, and what I had on the ‘paper’.
For that, I apologize to Deep Thought.

However, my objections to the implications of Distributionism are real, to what I see would soon be sneaking in through the sidelines and back door, if it were made an official economic policy.

Again, the fact that Deep Thought explicitly states his opposition to state redistribution, interference, etc and for objecting to such for the right reasons, to my mind, absolves him of any and all of the darker implications which I think would have to result from Distributionism being implemented. And again, it is mostly towards the implications I see as being inherent in Distributionism, rather than any direct intent of Deep Thought's posting, that most of my comments are directed towards.

Part of the reason I see trouble coming in through the back door, are the tools that Deep Thought see’s as being used as incentives for Distributionism.

- Tax credits & Gov sponsored job training. For a State to have enough largess in their tax base to spare on social engineering (tax breaks) implies Income Tax, which to my mind is one of the big three (Income Tax, Federal Reserve System, Welfare & regulatory systems) physical realities behind all that has fallen in our nation today.

- “Microloans to such organizations could be subsidized by government agencies” is just a cloaked method of socialist redistributionism.

- “I was surprised when Fr. Neuhaus, whom I normally find to have a very informed opinion, dismisses Distributionism as not having anything to which to attach policies or platforms in the political arena. America has; a Small Business Administration that promotes small business; farm co-ops, credit unions, consumer co-ops, and business co-ops like ACE hardware on almost every corner; a history where the Grange movement held strong, if brief, political influence over national politics; a growing concern over the impact of large enterprises like Wal-Mart and Microsoft of the well-being of the average person; and a rather large (and growing) government job training program.” Which I take to mean that having a Small Business Administration, government sponsored jobs training and a growing concern over a growing Wal-Mart, are signs of optimism and hopeful solutions in the making; but I emphatically believe that these are not part of a solution, they are instead part of the problem! Anytime that Government steps out of its role of ensuring that rights are not infringed, upholding law and order, and defending the interests of the Nation, moral and physical disaster is in the making.

I also have my doubts about a wider scope being attributed to an economic policy, than is proper to its function. The Goal of Economics is not happiness, but production; it is philosophy and ethics that point towards happiness. Economics should of course be compatible with, even complimentary to the goals of philosophy - which as Aristotle says, is happiness – but Happiness is not the goal of Economics, producing, distributing and managing wealth, is the goal of Economics. “Their goal is to create a community where the members avoid the excesses of materialism”, but I think that the only defense against materialism is an education which better teaches what is truly valuable in life, and that again is the job of philosophy, not of economics.

Some other points of concern are:
- “Deal as directly as possible with the producer/end user” … is of course a wise policy when it saves time and effort to do so, but there are many middlemen that do give significant savings in time and effort, and so are worthwhile. Super markets are an excellent example of middlemen being valuable services provided to consumers. Most Mom & Pop stores are not. Wal-Mart is a time saver, visiting all the mom & Pop stores you would need to in order to quickly pickup the products that can be found at a single Wal-Mart, would be a massive time waster, and the expense would more than likely be higher.

In fairness, Deep Thought does say that if middlemen are adding value, then use them – my reaction may be more to an overall tone I perceive (especially concerning expanding corporations and Wal-Mart) which makes me rise to imaginary bait, than a direct quote by Deep Thought on this. I see Corporate consolidation as usually being a good thing; the reason it is done is to increase productive efficiency and profits; and if it is done poorly, it too will collapse or be broken up, so that eventually the frozen productivity that had been locked up in inefficiency and waste, can be thawed & released from its parts once again, back into the wider economy.

Continuing:
- “All men have a right to private property, just compensation for their goods and labor, and to enter into business agreements of their own free will” Unfortunately I do not see that this will protect property rights and ensure fairness, but instead only serve as a mandate for those people in power, to demand that their constituency have property, then some property, then some minimum amount of property, then an increased amount of property - and agitate to get government programs established to distribute it. Property Rights are not to be violated, but they aren’t to be awarded either, they flow from the nature of being human, they are not bestowed or granted.

- “, a man who produces goods or commodities must be paid a just amount for those items.” No, he must be paid what someone is willing to spend and which he is willing to accept – nothing more. More means waste, regulations, and agencies and bureaucratic regulatory law.

-Deep Thought makes a reference to “Wage Slavery”, and that is a term that just gets my hackles up. It has its most common origins as a Marxist concept, intended to obscure the fact that the employer/employee relationship is freely kept and for mutual benefit. A so called “living Wage” cannot be the goal of a business. A desirable product at the most appropriate cost is all that can be expected. If the people working at such jobs need more, they must find other sources of income, or put another way, if they are only able to produce ¾ of what they need as income from their job, then they need to seek the remaining ¼ elsewhere and probably should be looking for ways – new skills, education, to make possible a change of their main productive skill.

Deep Thought supports the creation of Guilds, he raises most of the objections I would raise at such organizations, but I don’t see that they are as easily solved and dismissed as he thinks possible. One key concern of mine, is that If the workers of Guilds are allowed to set prices, that means that prices will be artificially high, such as Detroit's automakers were in the 70’s, and then soon some one, such as Japan, will come along and see that costs are indeed too high, and they will take that opportunity to do better work for less cost, and once that happens those workers and Guilds are going to be seen as Fat fast, and then cut off ASAP.

Another concern is that if the Guilds are allowed to set prices for their members, they derive defacto governmental power, making them more equivalent to Unions, and that type of group power being used to make decisions ‘for the good’ of its members – no matter what they might feel is fair and proper, I think must lead to eventual corruption.

And while I’m at it regarding Union’s - whatever their motive, the worker who endorses old style Union thugery & blackmail to boost his wages and benefits for skills that any experienced teen could perform with minimal instruction, gets no sympathy from me at all when he inevitably finds himself laid off. If he spends his dishonestly acquired ‘generous’ time off doing something such as hunting instead of improving his productive range of skills, he gets what he deserves when the auto plant collapses due in large part to his Union thugs demands.

Regarding Usary, Deep Thought allows that
- “A lender may charge reasonable fees for a loan or for exchanging money. A lender may charge a reasonable penalty for a late payment”, but my obvious question is, as determined by who? Of course you should shop around for the lowest rate, assuming you have the time and credit score to make such a possible lower rate seem attainable. But such rates should not be determined by anyone other than the parties involved, otherwise it is wasteful and unfair and unjust to all parties involved.

With Distributionism, Deep Thought notes that some,
- “…argue that interest rates should be extremely low (on the order of 1-2% at most) and, especially for home loans, others argue that no interest is acceptable at all, only fees.” , to which I again have to ask how is anyone, other than the lender, to determine that?! Is some regulator seriously in a position to tell someone who is putting their capital at risk in a loan, that they have determined what its worth for the lender to make the risk? I can just picture it 'We have thoroughly examined all situations you lenders may find yourself in, and feel you are safe and secure at this rate. Lend everything you've got. Now. Doan worry aboud dit'.

Again though, for the most part Deep Thought promotes Distributionism as more of an ethical practice, which if emulated (aside from the concerns above) would be for the most part a positive step, certainly an improvement over the state of our current mixed economy. As an ethical practice willingly subscribed to, its adherents are free to practice it and with my blessing, may it help ease the sharp edges of life lived in freedom.

I would just note that it is difficult to ease those sharp edges without changing their shape and damaging the overall integrity of the structure. Sharp edges may be just as necessary, as are disappointments and occasional punishments, are important parts in learning to improve yourself through the school of hard knocks. A last note along those lines:

- “Laissez-faire Capitalism is an argument that “Selfish, unjust actions lead to altruistic, just results… eventually.” This is typical of conservative views, which I think undermines us in so many ways. Being able to do what you see fit because it is right to be able to – that will produce the most wealth and value in the end, but that is a non-essential side effect, and ignores the fact that it will inevitably bring disappointment and ruin to many people as well. It is that ignored last part, which those demagogues lurking out there, looking for an in, will inevitably use in an attempt to cast the first part as 'an unmet promise', a tool, to put governmental power into their hands to “do good’.

- “…It goes on to point to the continued failings of unfettered Capitalism and the need to always remember the inherent worth of the individual and the need for solidarity.” What failures are they? When? Deep Thoughts own postings illustrate the immense success of capitalism and the unprecedented benefits to all the world resulting from it – the so called failures of capitalism, come from non-capitalist measures mixing in improper features, economic regulation chief among them.

There is, admittedly, a harshness associated with capitalism, a harshness which I am in the process of experiencing a taste of it myself at the moment – our CIO has been sacked, our projects restructured, and I’ve got to learn and become proficient in a new programming language lickety-split, or I’ll be out the door as well.

It is harsh, life is harsh – Black & White is harsh and it is only through the painfully slow process of earning and saving your wealth that we are able to soften the edges a bit and provide some cushion and comfort for ourselves. As I see it, any attempt at artificially creating that cushioning through the power of governments ability to rob Peter to pay for collective Paul, or even worse, to force Peter or Paul to act against what their own judgment tells them they should do - will be doing no one any favors in the end. If we want our Ends to be Just, our means must be Just, anything else is necessarily using the Ends to justify the Means, and that will most certainly be a bitter end for all.

Who's there? Hamlet and America.

Who's there?!

To paraphrase the melancholy Dane, "Ah, America, I knew him well!"

How like the dark Dane we are these days; who's there?

Our true heads of state, not the President, but our 'Intellectuals' (I find it impossible to write that without quotes), those who fill our heads with thoughts to think and point out the deeds worth doing, are themselves too involved with their own morbid thoughts of weakness to provide any wisdom at all.

We've got numerous Polonius's wandering about the stage babbling platitudes of advice "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "Above all else to thine own self be true" as if giving advice to poeple departing on the journey of life, as if "Ok, turn left, don't borrow, go 200 miles then turn left and after the dell be true to thine own self, and make a right around the old Oak and you're there."

Nonsense. "Bush is a fascist”, “Bush has done more damage than 9/11!", "Dissent is the higher Patriotism". Utter nonsense to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear - to anyone with even a cursory understanding of history - even to those in possession of a dictionary - utter nonsense.

You can see the leftist moonbats reflection in Hamlet trotting out the mousetrap play, for intrigues sake, trying to catch the King - as if he hadn't known his guilt already, just trying to line up a little nudge from reality so he wouldn't have to make a decision himself. The ultimate cop-out of determinists - waiting for occurrences to happen and then decry them, rather than taking action and responsibility for the results you create.

How many times does Hamlet ponder and ponder, but never connect thought to deed?

When he does act, it is sporadic and without thought as when he see's a body behind a tapestry and knowing nothing but his snap assumption, stabs it with his sword and killing poor befuddled Polonius.

Who's there? It is his self indulgent moroseness and indecisiveness that ultimately brings about the deaths of Polonius, his daughter Ophelia, that enables the King to mislead Laertes into a plot to kill Hamlet, which not only kills Hamlets mother, but brings about his own death too - just after that of poor hornswaggled Laertes and the King.

Listicism, endlessly analyzing opposing lists of alternate points of view, seeking after deterministic happenings to "Occur" on their own and relieve the burden of judgment and independent action from them.
How like moonbat America today.

As the first line of the play "Who's there?!" asks, who is there? Who are you truly? There is much that you know, but little that you understand and even less that you believe.

Your fancy thoughts have left the ground so long ago, that they produce no value, reveal no truths, and prepare you to take no actions but that of endless whining and indecisive harrangues against reality. But it is reality that persists in insisting that you DO something to earn your existense, not being willing to "Occur" for your benefit.

Who's there?

To all of the Leftist's so fixed on "The Iraqi distraction making the Islame-o's angry" and 'Bush lied and people died", put down Uric's skull and offer up some solid and integrated ideas of your own, together with the concrete steps you're willing to take to bring them into reality.

Reason is a fine thing, when it is directed to encompass all of your knowledge, enabling you to bring all of your skills and abilities to bear on a problem - but when it is shorn of those roots in reality which alone make it possible to connect the otherwise not apparently related dots, then it becomes a weight around your neck, and it draws you ever downward.

They have bound themselves to impotent inaction by their eager beliefs of themselves as being unworthy oppressors, of there being no true Right and Wrong, of multi-cultural relativism - cultural Marxism, that makes endless pondering upon the miseries of the day, as itself the ideal ends of their thought; and action - especially any action to do what is right in and for the West, such things are deemed as being forever distaseful, losing propositions, one and all.

Having discarded thoughts of there being such things as selves, and especially of souls, they believe that all is only the result of chance and unknowable forces acting in society. In their minds we are all powerless in life - be it before Katrina or the Caliphate, we are only able to yield to it and They, always to They who are presumed lesser, so that we can appear generous and admirable (and oh so subtly superior) to them.
Gagdad summed it well again, noting on his post of 9/30/2006 that:

“For you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but
to them it has not been given.... Therefore I speak to them in parables, because
seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.'
Therefore, Jesus is identifying and highlighting a perennial problem with
spiritual knowledge: many who hear hear it do not hear it, and many more who
understand it do not comprehend it."

As with many moonbat Trols, they love their pretty words, but they don't comprehend their meaning. Their speech's take impressive sounding and pretty words and just line them up in attractive arrangements, stuffed animals on display, but without life and meaning beyond their appearance, their integrated concepts torn out and tossed aside.

They criticize endlessly but offer no criticism, or rather, criticism bereft of its meat - a reasoned judgment and suggestion of more grounded alternatives; Carping only. Apparently so focused on lost elections, that they've lost sight of what the elections are for - to lead America through perilous times to more freedom and prosperity - to lead with well rounded Reason and Action.

Who's there? Moonbat city offers no reply but endless sound and fury signifying nothing.

Spiritual Economics Part 3

True Or False
Good intentions and seeking ‘truths’ in our musings is a relatively easy thing to do, as compared to putting them into practice, which is hard - but unless you do both, you haven't really achieved the truth you are seeking. Not only is wrong done by taking from someone what is not yours, but giving it to someone who has not earned it deprives them of a necessary step, a life skill, without which they will likely lose their balance and crash on the heights.

We are that which makes it possible to bring the Vertical into contact with the Horizontal, but unless both are brought together through our thought & action - the truths we muse, will never make it into reality - they won't truly exist - within us, or without us – and if they can’t be brought together properly in reality – they probably weren’t truths to begin with.

As we are judged not by our intentions - the thoughts we profess - but by our actions, it is because it is only through our bringing our thoughts out from the depths and heights within us, and into practice out into the world, that they become our true abilities, habits, and traits by which we are known.

Theories and truths that are only thought, but not put into practice, are Truths to no one. The attempt to get someone to a particular point on the spiral without their having put in the effort needed to make the climb upwards, can only be accomplished by jumping down to that same point on a lower level of the spiral. Truths must be enacted, people must "become them" by merging action and thought into reality, and so back into yourself, that is how a soul is chiseled into reality, that is the spiral of Vertical progress.

That fusing of the inner and outer worlds into deep etchings upon our souls is probably the only thing that we can take with us when we leave this world - and they will be the true marks of who we are and what we have become.

Economics pervades your entire life, supporting a policy that is unaware of the true source of wealth, your mind and soul and their relation to truth and its unfolding in reality, will be incomplete and false. Error and lies obscure and truth and will force progress downwards in an ever accelerating tragedyectory as power less and less diluted with truth, drives your progress. As Gagdad Bob noted in a recent posting on One Cosmos :

"For when truth is denied, raw power fills the vacuum, destroying love and everything else in its wake."

Power is something that always will break its bounds unless held tightly in place, and it takes strong convictions, truths, principles to keep it in control. Power when allowed to drive, will point its path closest to the ground. Whenever lofty motives are mixed with contradictory lower ones, it is the lower one that will win out in the end, they weaken your conceptual grip - the wider lines forced out by the inner details no longer integrated with understanding and conviction.

Lets look at our Cones lines within lines in a different light. If you've ever seen steel wires sprung outwards in a flower shape, springy, resisting being pulled together, straining to spread out wide again from within a tube you attempt to contain them in. As you slide them into their tube they're contained, if the tube frays, they begin to spring out again. Think of our wider lines as concepts that are able to contain the particular lines, bound as they are with your understanding. It is that understanding that constrains the power of the particulars of reality into your control. As you lose that understanding, or weaken it with falsehood, or contradictory desires for the shimmering particulars beneath your grasp, they will strain their bounds open, widening, and forcing you down the slope of the cone.

Those powers loosely understood are released pulling your life left and right and downwards, always downwards, because power seeks the most solid stance it can take, closest to the vertical ground floor. Whichever of the contradictory concepts are the least conceptual, the most concrete bound, that is the one that power will take to be its foundation and motive point, and that will involve using Force to pull you with it. Liars are not the only means of spreading falsehood - political and economic policies that obscure the truth, and mislead people into thinking falsehoods to be true, are depriving entire peoples of a proper grasp of their lives - they mobilize 'innocents' to spread falsehood with their every well intentioned effort.

A moral life can only be fully lived through the free choices enacted in the life of an individual, and thwarting that freedom to live as you see fit, enforces false actions, even if not law – think of how many times you, or someone you know, has not said what they wished to, because of Political Correctness Truth is further obfuscated by every half hearted action a person makes - the lie spreads the spirit sickens, and the economy, the culture and love itself are suppressed and forced down the spiral towards its base.

What Good can be done with force? Nothing will result as the allegedly well intended intend it to. Force is Tolkien’s Ring of Power; to use it to DO, to initiate (which separates it from force used in response to force initiated against you – no pacifism allowed here, if someone initiates force against you, you are in the Right to smash them as best you can), Force for some supposed good in the world, it will inevitably corrupt and destroy the good it attempted to Do. It must be so, because of the nature of human beings Free Will. You can’t do as Rousseau proposed, "Force them to be free", you will only enslave those you think you are freeing. Free Will must be free to choose - without that a person can not develop themselves or achieve anything of worth in the world.

To the extent that you try to protect someone from the realities of life and the repercussions of their decisions, you lessen their experience of living their lives. Life can only be experienced through Experience - attempting to lessen the experience MEANS to remove that person from Experiencing a portion of their Life, and the lessons they might otherwise have learned, which must be learned for them to progress above where they are on their particular part of the spiral of life.

Spiritual Economics Part 2

Unnatural Goodness
I agree that it is true that Private Property is not a "Natural" state to man. Most things of value to man, do not come to him "naturally", if by naturally, we mean intrinsically, and innately planted into his brain by some higher power. The state of man which comes to recognize a concept such as ‘Property’ is something which his developing soul only comes to conceive, comprehend and adhere to after the long and hard lessons of history have been experienced and learned from. Humanity is not a Natural state for Man - Man in the primitive state, is but a clever animal, skittish, sly, ravenous, and to any outside it's immediate "family", hostile and ferocious.

The sentiments and values that we have come to praise as decent behavior, do not come naturally to man the horizontal animal, he is lifted to Man the Vertical being only through the slow accumulation and passing on from the parent to the child, to the society at large, those thoughts, conceptions, beliefs, practices and habits that serve to create that enlargement of soul which is visible as a Civil and Decent Human Being. And the progress of Man from the flat line horizontal savannah level that we apparently began from, has only been achieved one step at a time and then only when large swaths of a population have caught up with their cultures leaders and so improved themselves, have learned new truths of foresight (as with the agricultural revolution), civic respect and division of labor(as with the development of cities), Philosophical truths (as with the Greco/Roman & Judeo/Christian revolutions), and that of Individual Rights (which made Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution possible). All of this Progress has taken History forward, but the long and winding paths between these revolutions have not always been upon a trajectory marked by a Vertical lift.

Reason (not the modern conception which would have it to be synonymous with an isolated non-contextual logic chopping, but the traditional conception which included searching the depths of your Soul to be integral to its operations) is the faculty that enables men to discern and expand his store of values from the world out there. It is the guiding light of humanity, and like a candles flame, one which is easily gutted, even snuffed out, if not dutifully monitored and upheld by the individual and the community at large.

How are these ideas lost? Neglected? How can they be learned? Taught? What is the effect of not having this knowledge? Ignorance is bliss? Nah, ignorance can corrupt your very soul. Lets try out a metaphor, or analogy, for what knowledge does, how it moves you through life, for better or worse for your spirit and your life.

Round And Round We Go, Whether Up Or Down Only The Thoughtful Know – The Cone Of Plenty
It has been noted that the progress of human development, individually and societaly, bears a resemblance to that of a spiral, but to me it seems less like a spiral that of a cylindrical slinky, and more like what could be described as a cone. Your route around it might begin with a general idea, travel forward around the cone, filling in details and corrections, until you arrive back at the same position that you started from, but with a now solid well thought out idea, so that though you are back at the same left-right position, you find you've actually risen up the cone, having traveled in an upwards spiral, rather than just a level circle. That reaching for understanding of where you are and what you do, of gathering together details and finding the common unifying principle among them, is what lifts you up the cones slope.

For instance there is a sense of a full circle being drawn as you progress from the original concept of "Wheel" developing conceptually within a persons mind, and progressing from there to actually acquiring materials such as wood & iron, and on to fabricating them into an axel and a circular spoked object, and finally physically as a Wheel on a cart. It is through the merging ot inner form or idea with material matter through the alchemical actions of your actions, to create the physical wheel; this progression takes you forward from the point of conception to its manifestation, in a circular fashion, returning back at the point of the ideas origin - but on our conceptual Cone this would not occur in a merely linear circle, such a new idea wouldn't leave you on the same level you began from. How does it lift you, and why?

Lets try to illustrate this better by thinking of a circle, in geometry we look at a circle as having 360 degrees, which if you traced 360 lines evenly spaced from the tippy tip top of the cone, downwards to the wide bottom, you would see that the surface area that fits within one degree at the bottom will seem quite large, as compared to one degree half way up the cone. If you attempted to draw an additional, say 36 lines from base to tip within each of those individual degrees, you would probably see these smaller detail lines would begin to blend together as they neared the top. And if you continued this surface division by tracing 36 more lines even thinner and lighter in appearance, squeezed within each of the smaller lines, and 36 in each of those and so on, and so on... you get the picture, a lot of lines, continuing on for how many? Well I’d continue subdividing the lines with thinner and lighter lines until you have enough lines to represent each particular fact in the world… I won’t, but that’s the idea. Picture neutrino’s, electrons, protons as thin lines within the darker line for Atoms, and collections of Atoms within the darker lines of Molecules, and “your time, effort and possessions conveniently portable, and preservable” as thin light lines within the darker line of Economics. Particulars within Concepts within Principles within Truths, and so on.

If you stood back from the cone, it would likely appear to be one solid colored shape, but as you neared it, the darker lines would begin to stand out, and then the lighter ones, and more so as you neared the surface, until with your face pressed right up against the surface you would see only a gazillion individual lines running up and down the surface within the scope of your vision at that close proximity. We can’t live that close, we have to live back from the detail at the level where the lighter lines blend into larger ones, concepts. But it is important that you understand that those details are still there, they exist whether or not you are ignorant of them. Errors will mislead you and keep you down – literally, at least with our Cone analogy.

Take that cone and extend it up to the sky… if you leaned your head back a bit and lifted your vision from the bottom of the cone towards the top, you'd see these smaller detail lines seeming to merge into wider lines as you rose up the slope of the cone. While there maybe 36 particular lines within each original degree, and within each of those lines and within... as they converge up the slope of the cone, you'll see them integrating together into wider lines, and wider concepts and principles, as you rise up the surface of the cone.

Apparently Less Is More
If you've ever seen something like an elastic hair band, stretched and pulled down over a cone shaped object like a megaphone, and then released it, you’ve seen the band draw its shape together seeking its seemingly contradictory state of being tighter and also more relaxed in shape, and as it does, it rises up the surface of the cone. Though the area that makes up a ring around the cone higher up its slope is smaller, what actually is contained in your grasp is more knowledge than what is at the wider base. This is what concepts and principles do for you.

In like fashion, what appears to be a rate of climb is really a lessening of cognitive distance needed to encircle the cone by gathering the individual lines together and sliding upwards until they merged. With a wider, more elevated perspective, the tighter you will be able to see the detail lines merge into wider individual lines the higher you'd rise, and do the same with a number of these merged lines merging into an even wider lines farther up the cone, and so on, as you move forwards and slide your grasp a littler further upwards with each step.

A completely new idea might seem to provide a steeper angle of climb - but remember what might appear as climb, is really more of a lifting which comes of grasping how a section of apparently separate detail lines of surface reality, integrated together - you in effect shrink the surface area you need to traverse the cone, and the higher you find yourself rising. Understanding how particulars integrate into concepts – like 11111111111111111111 integrates into 20, makes human life and progress possible.

From a left-right perspective, your progress may appear to be back at the same point, but when looked at from the a farther removed perspective, you’ll see that the progression took place in a spiral trajectory which does circle back to the same left-right point, but on a different vertical level. Your progress forward comes from utilizing the things before you as you progress around the cone.

As you discover new aspects of Truth, new interpretations, applications for it, wider integrations, you lift your path in a tighter spiral up the cone, approaching closer to the one point from which all other conceptual angles descend, here, principles and Truths integrate into a single focal point - the one truth, from which you would be able to comprehend all with a single grasp, just as you are able to easily grasp the top of a cone.

On the other hand, by forgetting or neglecting the wider integrations you’ve made, you will find that you begin to slip, your elastic band being yanked back open as the surface expands with un-conceived details splaying out beneath your grasp. At first, those details might seem beguiling in their shimmering fine lines, but as you continue to descend, to disintegrate the concepts within your conceptual grasp, you will slip at a faster and faster rate of speed, grasping less and less of the cones circumference. To rise back up, you will need to relearn how the pieces integrate.

Speed Climbing
Our Cone is a 3-Dimensional shape, it has a surface area, and an interior area. From the surface area alone, any position you look at, but from the very top, you won’t be able to see more than a small section of the surface, and the closer to the bottom, the less noticeable its curvature will be. Lifting your gaze up the surface will help to see how detail lines merge together, and progress will be made.

Remaining focused on surface details, discovering new physical objects such as a wheel, will enable some progress in your enlargement/shrinkage area - since any integration brings you closer to a larger truth. But leaving your attention on appearances only, neglects even more of the Cone than is seen on the surface. As with Humans, what is inside you, your spirit or soul, though unseen, is a larger and more important part of you than your physical appearance.

If however, you manage to draw your gaze not only upwards but inwards, in effect poking your head into the interior of the cone – that will enable you to gain a much wider grasp of surface and height at once, seeing as you would, all around the surface of the cones circumference at your level and above, which from the outside can't be possible except from the very top of the cone.

Looking within the cone however, think of what you would see. You would be able to see across the intervening 'space', to see all sides are actually not sides, but one surface which can be observed all at once and perhaps even see how their slope unites into the focal point, at the tippy top tip far above, where all truths and sides converge into that One Truth. You might also note, that with your attention or insight within the cone, that there is something within the cone, not a vacuum... what... a larger spirit in and of the cone, something that is at all places of the cone at once, a spirit within, a in-spirtation.

It would be a bit strange as well, the curving of surface space being concave, rather than convex, but with some thoughtfulness, you would be able to apply this inner vision to your outer world, grasp more integration, and rise higher up the cone. People down below might marvel at how much you were able to grasp within your hands, their eyes filled with the multiple individual lines within lines within degrees – they might not understand when you would call down that your grasp was no greater than theirs, you only had hold of wider truths that themselves contained the details that overwhelmed their eyes.


The Wheel Goes Around
A completely new concept, such as first discovering the wheel, would provide a wide range of details integrated together, and lift, or focus your progress upwards. Learning of the wheel the first time for yourself would provide what would seem to be at the same time a widening of your reach while simultaneously shrinking your grasp. And as you repeated this process and learned it more thoroughly, you would eventually cease to learn new details & principles, until finally your grasp would remain unchanged with each repetition.

If you were to learn nothing new, day in and day out, repeating what has always been done, you might merely circle around and around like the Stone Age aborigines still living in parts of modern day New Guinea.

This brings about what I don't think is often appreciated, the fact that there is no guarantee that your 'forward progress' is taking you UP the spiral - you can as easily circle downward on the spiral & mistake your forward left-right progress for improving your position on the Vertical scale. If your someone who keeps their eyes fairly close to the ‘ground’, if you look not up, but backwards or even down, for easier pickings, more glittering details, you will by the direction of your gaze, descend the cone, the lines will splay out in wider separation and the path around the cone will become longer, and as the cone becomes wider, the less of its circumference you will be able to grasp.

As someone discards principles to grasp at particulars, individual lines that may be glittering in their gaze, baubles such as redistribution of wealth (thieving) rather than creation, they are discarding wide ranging principles, loosening their cognitive grip on reality, and so are dealing directly with seemingly more and more particulars, being pulled down the slope of the cone as it widens under your grasp.

Spiritual Cash Value
The same may be seen societaly, such as with the founding of the United States of America – it began with “All men are created equal” as its founding truth – but it took another one hundred or so years to move forwards and upwards from that belief to the realization of what it fully meant, through disagreement, upheaval and war in order to come around to implementing it, and still the spiral continues on towards its being fully understood and accepted by all.

With the concept of gaining goods, you can go forward to get 'goods' but depending on whether or not you incorporate the Vertical guidance & progress of that truest private property, your soul, you may progress upwards, or regress downwards. To rise upwards, you need to create values, and that is done through the forging of the values of your inner vision with an outward physical action, to produce gains both material and spiritual. This process can only occur unimpeded through the recognition of Individual Rights, the ability of a person to act as their conscience sees fit, which is the method of Capitalism. People free to do as they see fit, as long as they don’t infringe on the proper rights of others in their society.

What enables you to make choices and decisions enables you to integrate – denying that ability will cause you to reach less integrations, and slow your ascent more and more. It also is going to keep your attention fixed on the surface issues, rather than being able to contemplate the heights and inner reaches and from gaining insights from them, lifting you less and less.

A rapid descent down the slope of the cone, however, is ‘gained’ by taking the more easy path of least resistance, spiraling down by focusing on taking by force the existing values produced by others, claiming grievances and injustices, so that you can call that action 'gain'. This is the preferred method of the leftist, Marxist, Progressivist, collectivist Statist. Hello moonbat city.

Note that although what I’m describing here applies to the physical realm, more importantly it applies to the Spiritual realm.

As I've noted in earlier posts, the person who is a "self made man", has developed the traits & mastery of their own self to act responsibly, productively, and morally. In so doing they create a means of support for their family, a warm supportive family life too, the likes of which Norman Rockwell painted so well.

This will be a far different man from that creature so prone to demonstrating en masse with an uncouth rabble, loudly and violently demanding ‘action’ in their protests (for peace no doubt) and government 'limits' to be placed on business & for 'programs' to support the poor (helping to ensure that they remain poor) – Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol – two peoples separated by a common humanity.

This applies equally for such rarified concepts as Humor. P. G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories are of an elevating humor, whose plots weave the stories concepts and situations into an inner building of humor which bursts out of you from unexpected, but oh so logical, implications within the story coming together in a way that lifts and makes you feel good, it puts you into a good humor.

Its opposite can be found in something such as "The Simpson's" whose humor relies mainly on perceptual shocks and new lows of manners. To be sure, it produces loud guffaw’s of laughter, but focused as it is on the downwards perceptions of guttural shock, it leaves you not in a good humor, but in a more savage state, more likely to pass on caustic sarcasm than warm thoughts - hardly a good humor.

The 'Progress' you make on your spiral path, though it may move in a forward direction, if it is lacking in the Vertical orientation of conceptually integrating and spiritually elevating aspirations, but is instead more focused and concerned with exclusively perceptual goals that you can grasp, 'Practical' aims alone, then your forward progress is going to be down the spiral, a decapitated progression and you shouldn't be surprised at the mindless hell that it delivers you to.