The Reality Bubble

Reality really is relative, as described by both Psychologists and Physicists. Fairly recent theoretical discoveries in M-Theory (String Theory for those keeping score from home) seem to indicate that every moment that passes in our lives can be perceived in three dimensions; as I look around my dining room right now, I see a Maroon-Bellied Conure approximately two meters in front of me and a stove three meters to my right. If I wish to get up and go down the hallway, my objective reality can perceive the obstacles along my course of travel and plan accordingly. Yet, at the same moment, everything is also being projected, in two dimensions onto the surface of the expanding wave-front of the cosmos. However, since I am still typing this, I have chosen not to get up. Yet not just the events of me continuing to type are being projected onto this expanding surface, but even the act of me getting up to check out the refrigerator have also been projected nearby. I am still typing, yet in an endless fracturing of the possibilities of space-time, I did indeed get up to check out the left overs from last night's dinner. I can not perceive that reality, yet it did, both objectively and subjectively occur elsewhere. It occurred elsewhere and else-when, though it is impossible for me to either see (since the 2-d projection is retreating, at some times, faster than the speed of light) or otherwise perceive that event.

Reality sure can be a hoot, can it not?

People have a reality bubble around them that is not necessarily based on objective reality, rather it is based on highly personal subjective reality. Many call this a "world-view", I like to think of it as a "reality-filter". The filter is specifically designed and created by the individual to promote a stable psychological gestalt of self. Events of self reflection and introspection can sometimes lead one to alter their filters and thereby alter their perception of reality. I believe that this is something most people do as they grow older and mature their self-image. There are plenty of ex-hippies who protested the Vietnam War, protested the draft, and told the government to stay out of their lives (you're oppressing us, maaaannn), yet are now the same ones that send our young men off to war (who, by and large are quite willing), propose a new draft in the interest of fairness ( Charlie Rangle), and are now telling me that the very air I exhale is a poisonous and toxic material. Boy, have their filters undergone an alteration. When I ask these individuals (common folk like me that just happen to be the supporters of those individuals) the answer I get back is a perplexing look, hand gesticulations, and a sentence that trails off that usually ends like, "but this is........different". Right.

What I have trouble understanding is how an individual can be intelligent enough to develop economic or political theories that, when practiced in the real world (yes, I know, reality can be rather odd) produce failure, misery, and death squads; then proudly tell the American people that we just have not been doing enough of that economic or political theory (specifically Keynesian economics and Statism). Hello, can we recall Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Russia, and even the French Revolution? Can we recall Weimar Republic Germany, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) or Argentina; heck, even the PIIG nations of Southern Europe. Germany just had the best economic upswing in 20 years and STILL posted a more than doubling of their budget debt! How long does or can this go one before people figure it out and think to themselves that spending away the future of your children for self-gratification (or aggrandizement) today is not the right way to go? Perhaps trying to control how a person lives, eats, dresses, consumes, or yes, dare I say it, breathes, may not be the best things for us to be doing?

What is their motivation for the destruction of the American way of life? What can possibly appeal to our political leaders about the European and Asian concepts of Communism and Statism? Power, the lust for glory and historical remembrance? Can we be so base as that?

According to my wife, yes. We can be and, deep down, most of us are. Having grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, her reality is frequently at odds with mine. She sees my world view as being unrealistically optimistic and incredibly simple at times. She sees the military as a tool of oppression, not liberation by those in power and she sees those who serve their careers in the military as being good for nothing productively else in society (present military excluded, of course). Should I try to alter her subjective reality? No. Actually, upon self-reflection the vast history of our culture has indeed been one of oppression, power and plunder. America is a unique experiment, blessed by God and given an opportunity to be the exception, not the rule.

The time has come where America is at an historical evolutionary cross-roads. We can either stay true to our heritage or we can follow the well-worn path of central control of both the material and the imaginary (thought, creativity, expression and the like). The Progressives have done their level best to slowly destroy our heritage and make it easy for us to accept the chains of Statism. We have been lulled into a waking dream and pulled, step by step, decade by decade down the path of Statism and it is only a very, very short step to complete the process. We are waking up to the danger and have been stirring since the times of Ronald Reagan, but we have been pulled hard lately and maybe enough people have not been awoken.

The subjective reality for me is grim. I am afraid for where this country has been going and what the 60's liberals have done to both my future and those of my children. The objective reality is that we will just have to live with it and change it where it is within my power to change. Progressives and Statists (is there a difference?) are getting their subjective and objective realties to line up. I have to wonder if the masses of them will not, when they are older and have seen yet another failure, a large and impressive failure on the scale of the United States, alter their perception filters to see what they and those like them wrought upon the world?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe there is no single reality that is "right" or "correct". Maybe things just "are". In Quantum Theory, human thought is able to affect the outcome of experiments that are "either/or" results. I wonder if enough of us thought a certain way we can affect reality and get things to turn our way in the end. You know, I believe that this is possible. A wise man, more than 2,000 years ago caused a book to come into being and he said something along those lines. What we call "desires" today, they called "prayer" then. If enough of us pray for deliverance, then deliverance will come. Now, this is very odd that science can discover, or theoretically outline something that has been the exclusive realm of religion for millennia. The Catholic church is correct to say that science and religion (today) do not have to be mutually exclusive. Just as Issac Newton, who edited a bible or Albert Einstein who stated that the perfection of the Universe could not have been an accident.

I think it is time for me to go study my reality filters and perform some more introspective tune-ups.

The Stoa is open.

--Zavost

God Bless You, Ronald Reagan

A rare individual. Men like him, willing to stand up and tell you what how it is, regardless of personal political cost. No matter how hard I look, I can not find a single man in the political arena today who is able to articulate the conservative message with such clarity. He was a patriot and he infected those who heard him with this patriotism. I am a Reagan child, come to my maturity under his Presidency. I learned that to get somewhere in life you must work hard and hope for success, though failure is ALWAYS an option. Learn from those failures and try again. The children of Clinton learned how to dodge the truth and look 'cool' doing it. The children of G.W. Bush learned how to keep their heads down, both on the battlefield and in public, since to support him brought scorn. The children of Obama will learn how to tolerate only Islam in their lives, while at the same time, thinking that you can spend your way out of debt.

I really miss you Ronaldus Magnus.

One of his great speeches, recorded while stumping for Barry Goldwater in 1964, is included below. It is fairly long, but worth the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY&feature=player_embedded

--Zavost

The coming Collectivist Nightmare

The YouTube link below sums up the hard right turn of the American public since the election of BHO. Many have known, deep down, that this cancer was here in the States, but we never really wanted to believe it. Most of us just kept getting up and expecting our lives to remain on the upward curve. Watch the link below and the various Tea Parties will be better understood. It will also give you some insight into the assumptive lords and masters of the "New Republic" under Progressive control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wusgcG4rfo

America has never been a "collective" nation. From our very beginnings we were scattered and few. Families and extended family groups founded villages and outposts along the frontiers, taking risks that could and frequently did, take the lives of their loved ones. The only involvement from the "government" was a land grant title and a vague notation about the boundaries and location of said plot of land. That was it. There was no police or social services present. They were on their own. Waves of immigrants fled Europe as the nation-state continued to tighten its grip in their native lands. They came to our growing, filthy cities that were a den for machine politics to make a living in manufacturing. Others went into the frontier to carve out their lives, far from the influence of Washington, and farther yet from the old landholders that had power over their lives in the old country. Pioneering was a dangerous life, but it was their lives. They kept what they farmed, sold what they wished to whomever they wished.

Today I listen to Democrats explain how they must be given more power to control the actions of the American people. I hear a Michigan Democrat tell me that the health care bill is more about controlling the lifestyles of the people than it is about the delivery of healthcare. Obama neuters NASA by forcing it to contract to the private sector for its mission vehicles, yet he takes over GM and Chrysler. What's with that? Congress comes back into session to pull together another unaffordable bailout package, this time for his teacher union buddies even as a myriad of economic indices warn us of a massive unraveling of the American economy.

The Democrats are ruling, not running this country now. They are working frantically to get their legislation into place before the great bloodletting coming in November. They hope to root these power grabs deep into the political fabric of the government; too rooted and 'popular' for the Republicans to rip out (assuming they can muster the will and the spine). The Federal government is trying to centralize and collectivize everything. Look at what the Agriculture Department is doing with Sugar Beets (yes, I have a lot of time on my hands lately). The cost of everything with sugar is going to skyrocket. Hand in hand with that is the import/export ban on sugar in America. Working together, there is no way that a candy bar will be purchased with pocket change any longer. I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent assaults on salt and tasty food?

Central and Eastern Europe lived through this nightmare in the 20th century, why do we refuse to see where these policies will take us? It has been done, repeatedly, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. It leads to political oppression, collectivization, poverty and death.

Americans work for the individual or those in their immediate family. They work to make their mark in the world, to make a reputation and to become rich. They take risks that harm only themselves, though some would argue that they harm the employees when they fail, but that is a red herring argument. The Federal government, up until the Progressive movement, was a distant city that did not much interfere with the rancher, or sugar beet farmer. The American Individual succeeds or fails on their own hard, intelligence, and luck.

Collectives are soul-less things. Everything is done for the "good of society". What is society? Who benefits? All of us? Why must someone have to give something up so that another can have something? Why can't that someone go out and "earn" what they need? See, right there it is. Everything is everybody's, when you get right down to it. No one will have respect for personal property because it will be everyone's and no one's. You will be unable to better your life because to do so would be to take something away from someone else.

Bees and ants will broom out the unnecessary workers and males in the fall so that the collective can better survive the coming winter. Certain types of blood cells attach themselves to invading cells and then explode to kill of the infection. When we bleed, living cells clot to close the breach. Parts of our collective sacrifice themselves for the greater whole. The Soviets in WWII threw wave after wave soldiers at the Nazis and Werhrmacht to break a front. The Chinese practiced the Zap Brannigan methodologies of warfare in the Korean War; all in the interests of the "Collective". Human life becomes worthless in that system, valued only for what it can provide to the whole.

America and Americans are not cells in a collective organization. America has been a super power because we are GREATER than the sum of our parts. Locking us into a collective body will dissipate and waste the energy and innovation that has been our hallmark for generations. All you have to do is ask yourself this: what government agency would have thought up the i-Pad and ordered it to be created by the State owned Apple Corporation? It would not have happened. The world will be a dimmer place without that spark.

Let us all hope that the Republicans have finally learned from their squandered opportunities in the last blood letting. If they have not, then they will be swept out as well. Believe it.

The Stoa is cleaned and ready for the next speaker.

--Zavost

Intelligent Design, what is so intelligent about it?

I read something the other day in a recent science publication that has been grating on me. A person has written a book where he hypothesizes that Intelligent Design must be true because we humans have developed such a technological civilization. That without the ability to invent and create having been "encoded" into our DNA we would be helpless in the face of Nature and its animals.

I always have to just shake my head at the basic premises of scholarship such as this. It has to make the assumption that at some time, somewhere, a great finger came down and hit the "on" button and away we went as a species; that somehow we are not a part of the natural world around us.

I subscribe to the "Occam's Razor" assumptions that the simplest, least complicated hypothesis is likely correct. If we were bio-engineered by aliens then you must ask yourself several questions: why, what for, and how much patience do they have? We've been here a while already, even if we are only 5,500 years on this globe. Have they forgotten what they put us here for? The idea of spontaneous chemical reactions that, given billions of years, will begin to replicate more complex patterns of itself is perfectly reasonable to me. It does not take an endless chain of aliens creating one another, because after all, who created that first alien?

Now, before I get bibles thrown at me please believe that I am a religious man first and foremost, as were most of our Founders. I think Thomas Jefferson would have enjoyed reading Darwin's book (and those that came before Darwin that didn't get the same press coverage) describing natural selection. I do not believe that his solid religious beliefs would have been seriously tested or bent. I find myself praying often I believe that it is good for your soul to do so. I DO NOT believe in collective salvation or the preachings of "Social Justice" that has started to spew from my local Catholic church. Your relationship with God is the only truly private relationship you can ever have in your life. However, with that out of the way, I digress.

Back to this absurd idea that without our technology we are helpless little pink (pick your color) creatures that will be savaged by the first passing squirrel. We are part of Nature. We evolved there and have been there in our modern form for at least 80,000 years. Our predecessors were there, in a fairly modern form for over 500,000 years. Technology developed slowly with ideas coming and going, being traded around, improved upon, and discarded when not needed. Collective groups are not "smart", if you have a room full of idiots, you still have a room full of idiots (substitute country or culture in the place of rooms if you like). A brilliant individual comes along and teaches the idiots something useful who will then perfect it and pass it along. Other brilliant people in other places share their ideas with other brilliant people and truly amazing things can be created. With the rise of better communication and trade, ideas have been swapped and shared at a faster and faster pace. Our capacity to learn is no different than it was 80,000 years ago, but we are certainly better off then they were.

Now that I've described how it was individuals that gave us great ideas, I'll now describe how the brilliant individual and the collective grouping (be it clan or family, but lets think small scale here for now) drove innovation in the very beginning.

Your clan is migrating to a place far to the North in 60,000 b.c. It has not been able to make good time because shelter is scarce and predators are common. A hunter, with his heavy rocks and a stick tell the group that there is a cave on the edge of a grassy savanna that would be perfect to set up longer term lodging. The problem is the huge cave bear that lives there. The not-so-smart friend of the hunter says, "no problem, one cave coming up" and walks into the cave while the rest of the hunting party watches on. The hunter smacks the bear in the face with the stick and is instantly mauled to death. The group runs away and thinks on this issue. A smarter fellow recommends throwing the rock at the bear to drive it off. So, another hunter goes into the cave and heaves his heavy rocks at the bear. The bear runs faster than the human and mauls this one as well. The group, now two men short, once again rethink this bear thing. An even smarter hunter decides that he will sharpen his stick and harden it in the flames of his campfire. He pulls up his furs and heads into the cave. He stabs the bear in the side and is instantly mauled. The group backs off again to the safety of the fire and notes that the bear was actually hurt in that attempt. The smartest person in the group has an idea, how about everyone goes in there with sharpened sticks at the same time...and he will even experiment by putting sharpened stones on the end of his spear. That fall, the clan is residing in a cave with new fur coats and a cool looking area rug. Needless to say, this clan will fare better than their less adaptable brethren and have stronger offspring. Eventually, with ingenuity and numbers; since there will be other animals and clans to punch in the nose along the way, plus those tasty looking mushrooms...hey, you, taste those and tell me if they are good...

My point being is that we have done this on our own. We should be proud of who and what we are. Enough of this collective guilt. We have dominated this planet because we are the smartest animal around by far. Our biochemistry always astounds me with its complexity. We dominate through our intelligence and ability to adapt. Accept that. We all come from about 20,000 breeding couples (that is another blog) in the south of Africa. Our genetic diversity is almost non-existent. We are more alike than any two breeds of bird or dog or cat. We are the greatest of all the primates and we are soooooo very vanilla, genetically speaking.

Now, to ask what is so intelligent about our design. Who invented the wisdom tooth? How about the appendix? Why do we get cancer and have deformed children. Who is responsible for quality control up there? Why do our arteries clog if we eat good tasting food and why is bad tasting food so good for you? Why do the mean people seem to live forever? I know, I'm drifting into philosophy and that will keep me going for hours, so I'll stick to biology. The point is that our bodies are fragile, slow moving, and prone to break down without proper, regular maintenance. God may be driving evolution towards a form perfectly suited for our future but He certainly could not be responsible for the genetics that cause diseases and other infirmities. Those must be the aliens' doing and they must be lazy, with a capital "L".

Keep in mind I'm not out to offend anyone, but if I have then you need to think real hard about your own beliefs first. If a nobody from Michigan can shake your beliefs so easily then you need to rethink your beliefs, and I mean do the soul searching type of review. Now, if you want to burn me at the stake or deny me food, shelter, education or employment because of my scribblings then you need to look at the calendar and note that it is 2010. We are supposed to be enlightened and open to free thought. Don't want to commit heresy or anything. By the way, someone should go and look up what the original meaning of the word "Heresy" was and get back to me.

The Stoa is now available for some one else to teach a class. Have a nice evening.

--Zavost