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Politics

Election and personal honesty

And we are gearing up for the next presidential election.

I just read a comment on a security blog which proclaimed about politics that “dirty tactics and irresponsible behavior by whoever you oppose. However, most people consider this a bad, but legitimate, part of politics.”

The legitimate part is what I’m having an issue with. This is my reasoning.

Dirty tactics and irresponsible behavior should never be considered legitimate in political elections. If your friends have agreed on using those tactics while playing scrabble, that’s up to you and if everyone knows about it nobody is being taken advantage of.

When money has become so important that honor, integrity and responsibility are waved, then you have lost your bearing. Why, you might ask?

Look around and tell me if you feel everyone is being treated evenly and fairly?

Why do you think this is?

Just human behavior, could be a common reply and it would be partly correct. Partly. The missing point is that we are basically good and caring when all the attitudes, social and financial pressures, peer pressure and so on are washed away, you have someone with inherit goodness. “Goodness” here means having a strong will and desire to do the right thing that is more helpful than destructive.

Various pressures comes down on us and it can be easy and may even appear that the only thing you can do is to take advantage of others, the system and so on, to just survive. And the old if I don’t do it someone else will argument. Which is a beautiful justifier but the point being that when you stop respecting and loving yourself, then you become a burden, a problem and not a solution.

Interestingly, natively (without all the above noise) we are problem solvers, practically running on automatic solving problems left, right and center. It’s what we do.

The point is that not all solutions are good workable solutions as we make wrong evaluations, not using valid information and then just walk away from it even if we see it did not work out properly.

When you don’t know all the relevant facts it’s easy to not to arrive at a proper and useful conclusion.

When you are being marginalized, considered unimportant and ignored, it would be easy to see why you feel you are on your own. And then as not being part of others, at least not anyone that you feel matters, then it’s easy to decide to ignore them in your decision making.

But, here’s the horrible truth. We all share this rock flying through space. We are all more or less dependent on each other. Everything available in society that you did not grow, build, maintain, etc. was done by someone other than you.

You might feel they all abandoned you, went against your wishes and desires!

Do you know why? I mean really know all the facts involved?

Maybe they thought the same way as you… and now you are in a loop of ignoring each other.

This requires that someone steps off and raises to the occasion. You’d be surprised how happy and relieved the other fellow would become. We expect to be met with force and we dish out force whenever life throws a curveball. Force, it seems, is the one thing this universe is full of.

It can therefore be easy to buy into force being the universal solution type of idea.

It is 100% not the case. YOU are the universal solver, or at least have the potential to be so. Your actions matters a whole lot more than you give yourself credit for. You are factually important as a member of this world. Never buy into anyone telling you differently.

They might not, just like you might not, acknowledge your importance because after all you are only you. WHO TOLD YOU SO?

Certainly not those who wish to keep you ignorant and into dark of what they are up to. [sarcasm]

What is vital to have, is knowledge.

Knowledge is not just for those who live in a library type of thing, knowledge belongs to ALL. When we hide knowledge we are undermining society and indeed ourselves, though it might not be immediately apparent. With knowledge comes security and certainty. Proper pro-survival decisions can be made that does not come back to bite you.

It has been said to never judge a person until you have walked a mile in his shoes. In other words knowing all the facts behind a persons decision makes it easier to understand how his decision came to be. The proper response might be to share some knowledge, to bring about an understanding on the ramifications of his decision. Maybe it is a cry for help by someone lost and feeling unable to win.

Most bad decisions are not made to hurt others, in fact we hate hurting others so much that when we do and cannot stop ourselves, we try to remove ourselves from the situation. Failing that we try to have others remove us.

So what is going on today, I’m referring to having knowledge which applies to the situations we try to resolve?

A big change in society is how cheap, easy and fast communication flows around the world. Never before have this been possible. There’s a combination of a few things that allows things to not work out for the greater good.

People with vested interest, in other words, personal gain, are making the wrong decisions. I’ve talked about being a leader and the importance to be an actual leader by action not by your title. When power and money is more important than doing your job then things will go wrong. Again, someone needs to rise to the occasion. And that someone needs to be heard. Then others need to support such a person.

The vested interest lies with everyone in a position to make decisions which affect others. The more they can affect the higher the responsibility.

When media, with their vested interest of having as many eyeballs looking at them are more interested in that rather than doing factual reporting, then they are undermining society. Not all media is all bad, but many make the wrong decisions too often or and at key points because it appears to solve a problem for them.

I imagine you have noticed how much bad news there is on the news. It begs to ask if there are any good news at all, doesn’t it?

Fact is that there is many more good things that occur in the world, than bad. The definition of news, by the way, is something reported on. It is only news if reported. It is made.

This choice of what to report becomes the job of the senior editor. He decides on what will sell more. And he has to answer to the owner, or board of directors. This process creates an imbalance as what they consider important. They want to see one or more of these; sex, money, celebrity, injury, crime, controversy, danger, and opposing views so that they can be seen as being on Your side against the others.

Look those through and see how much room there is for good every-day news. Someone opened the door for Mrs Smith and complemented her. It might have totally made her day, or more. But for most of us we are sensation hungry and don’t want to read about her.

But without all the above points, good news are rarely favored over bad. Unless something has people’s attention that day.

When I grew up reporting was done factually with no added drama, just the facts ma’am. Someone realized that by adding a bit of drama they got more readers/viewers. No doubt they were not that good at competitively finding stories that they reached for this unusual solution.

Case I point, a Florida TV reporter was standing at an intersection and reporting on the heavy wind while hanging on to his hat and leaning into the wind so as to not loose his balance, occasionally needing to shift his stance to maintain it. Unbeknownst to him an old couple was crossing the street right behind him in a casual and easy walk, and since it was live it was not edited out.

There are moments in life where we as a society establishes new norms or standards. Many might be related to some imbalance such as men and women, majority vs minority, the same vs different. If you don’t have much knowledge about people, someone who’s different in some way can be seen as a threat. When lacking enough knowledge and understanding, life can appear to be mostly threats.

The thing to do is to always seek to understand, and failing that to ask questions. And if asked in a way so as to invite someone to answer, you may find someone valuable to you too.

When you see controversy, seek to understand who’s reporting, and how it might benefit them to do so. Are they sounding like an actor in a drama, or simply stating their observation?

How much “flair” do you add when telling someone about something you saw? Maybe making it a bit more than it actually was?

If you know this about yourself you can be sure others have done the same. Imagine if you got more pay according to how much you add to the story. Things not necessarily being “all the facts and nothing but the facts.”

OK, so you can see how easy it is to give things a “twist”. Which over time can become a big turn far away from what actually was.

Then add the fact that the whole world watches the United States, because we are currently the most powerful. Think of being the fastest draw in the west, or the best boxer. Would anyone want to prove better?

Yeah, that is a silly question as there will always be someone trying to be the fastest, strongest and so on. See the Olympics. When a contender has more to loose than he might feel he can afford to use he may also resort to an unusual solution. See Russia being banned for doping, and many others from many countries in many sports.

The old Soviet Union (United Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, now the Russian Republic) went on to conquer countries because of their own lack of food resources. You see, the USSR cannot produce all the food it needs. So it steals a country, or twenty, to secure their food supply. And when that is not enough it simply steals from their own, who cannot defend themselves and left to starve to death.

There is something not functioning properly over there. My opinion is that people are so used to living under dictatorship they don’t know any better. Not entirely unlike the so called Stockholm Syndrome where the kidnapped become friendly with their captors to try to have a normal life.

One of those Russian dictators announced his version of democracy, which was even worse than what they had that they wanted back to “good ol’ dictatorship. Ever since, the older generation knows that democracy is “bad”. Fortunately the younger generation have seen a lot more of the world through the internet and may not live under the same illusion.

Russia, Iran and at least China, are known to want to conquer the US in various ways. Much like we try to influence them and their population. Putin made a huge miscalculation when he entered Ukraine, and now cannot get out of it without looking weak. And weak is not working any more in Russia than it does here. They too want to see a strong leader, which explains the pictures circulating of him half naked riding a horse.

Putin used to be in the equivalent of our CIA, the KGB (later renamed FSB) where he was in charge of a section that worked on people control. Meaning he is well versed with manipulating people through social media. The idea that they are doing less to try to manipulating us than we do them is silly.

Russia, Iran and China want to see us weaken. They operate with various degrees of lack of democracy, and certainly less than ours, and when their population see how good it can be here, that undermines their leaders control. Therefore they are all motivated to undermine us here.

That means that it is highly likely that you are reading/watching online facts that are outright lies.

What’s one to do?

When something seems too outlandish, just too much! It probably is. You are looking for people who are more level headed, less dramatic, more actual stats brushing aside so called facts unless you have gathered information from ALL sides and honestly (to yourself) evaluated the stats (accomplishments), good and bad, and come to a conclusion as to where they are at in their actions. Especially looking at what REALLY matters, which ALSO has to be evaluated properly.

This is not an easy accomplishment, there are a lot of vested interest in fooling you. Some may already have done so, thoroughly enough that you are already convinced.

I’m afraid at this point it is probably not about politics anymore, as much as the character of the people who want to be supported.

Let’s put things into a perspective that might help.

If you worked in a business selling things and you are stealing from them and when management announced they were going to make an in-depth investigation, you would not exactly want to support that investigation. And by doing so you may in-fact turn attention onto you. If someone opposed an investigation into wrong doing, you would expect them to not have clean hands.

After all the violence on January 6th, of a mob storming and breaking into Congress. Threatening to hang the VP and the Speaker of the House. You would assume that the people in that building, who worked there, would be very interested what threatened their very lives. Would you not?

Yet, a good number of Republicans quickly changed their mind about supporting it to do all they could to undermine it. Yes, I’m not saying they are all bad or that the party is, but I am saying there are some real issues that needs to be evaluated in the behavior of some of them. Right now the GOP seems too happy to fight each other and damn the consequences for the country.

(Full disclosure, I’ve lived on three different continents (EU, Africa and of course the US of which I’ve seen over 30 states), seen many countries political parties and designs, and I’m surprised how we only have two parties, which lends it self too much to one sided behavior. My own views do not really align well with either, as both have pro’s and con’s. I’m both conservative and liberal in my views.)

But seeing some of the new people in Congress, I cannot but conclude they are only there for their own personal gain. There is nothing about honest caring for the people but mass attempt in manipulating them towards their own personal gain. With all its shortcomings there still used to be a decorum, and agreed upon sense of manners and willingness to come to a mutual agreement, for the good of all the people they represent.

It get’s even more “interesting”. Political parties are huge on research and surveying, they know what people express on most any subject. They have also been aware that some minorities races will overtake the whites in a not very distant future. This is a threat to their establishment, and many a scheme has been and is being dreamed up to protect their future as the ruling “class”. However, this is not what a republic stands for.

What I’m trying to say is that we are having a hard time operating as a true republic, and just because someone is afraid of fair competition is not a valid reason to fall in to anarchy, as that will only make things significantly worse.

The short of it is that there’s a massive amount of information being pushed. Some is more factual than others. Some are more false than others. Which one you have to decide. I once learned to look and not listen to people when trying to learn about them.

Observe as much as you can. Ensure you brush aside your own bias when looking to ensure you don’t color your actual observations.

Why have leaders, or not?

It seems that there is confusion on what a leader is, or what makes a leader in the first place. We have over and over witnessed a failure to elect leaders, both in local friends to follow and all the way through the top job in the country at our own expense.

It is also visible through various misinformation campaigns created by various players in the local and world scenes that are having success in creating diversion and upsets that is threatening ours and others nations.

In this information rich environment where anyone can say anything from anywhere in the world, it is a big challenge to identify who is on what side of things and what their goal is. There are a few traps that we fall into but before diving into those I want to talk about leading and leadership.

For someone to be a good leader, and one could qualify that to mean who can help improving everyones living conditions and not bring about the opposite. Or, thanks to his/her actions we are surviving better and things keep improving. Happiness is within everyones reach.

A leader must have integrity, must have the family, group, company, councilman/woman, and every other level up through to the US president, have in their interest to forward the survival according to their sphere of influence. Must act unselfishly, and never sell out their responsibility to some vested interest that only think of themselves. Which means causes more harm than help and assistance.

I’m saying that regardless of your sphere of influence you need to also evaluate that with everyone in mind. Otherwise you may easily find yourself up against everyone else who are united and your actions could cause sever loss to your sphere of influence. As in the case of criminal acts where justice catches up.

So, how do you recognize a leader and indeed, separate out the ones that only speaks the speak but does not walk the walk? With all the noise from all the media outlets and everyone having an opinion however unqualified to promote it, how to tell them apart?

There is a saying Look, don’t listen. You need to observe what someone is doing and the results of those actions. You may need to look into their history and see what are the effects of their actions over long time?

You need to be able to evaluate these things to have any chance to make a decision which will increase your happiness, after all the purpose of life is in very plain sight. What do people seek, indeed the constitution guarantee? The pursuit of happiness.

Only a small percentage are in such a bad state that they have given up on surviving and are focused on complete failure – death. Most everyone else are seeking happiness. Starting already with the baby who repeats noises that makes you smile and laugh. Or the joy of having unselfishly helped someone through something.

To the degree your life is not filled with smiles and laughter to that degree you are not actually winning. Winning is not measured by money or power, indeed few people who gain these in quantity are privately happy.

When the pursuit of some goal, of a leader, does not include those around him/her, then that person is not a leader but someone just looking out for themselves. This does not mean you cannot look out for yourself, we all need to, but when a leader is not acting in the interest in those who depend on him/her then that person is not acting as a leader.

Being a leader sometimes includes making decisions that are not immediately appreciated by all, especially when most of us have our own goals and desires that may not always have others best interest in mind. The harder things are, the less we tend to think of anyone but ourselves. This is normal, but not actually the optimum way, and I’m being very gentle in my description.

We live on a planet that is buzzing around in space, and instead of seeking to find agreements and common goals we are sidestepped with misinformation that turn us against each other.

The USA became the super power thanks to the united actions of the whole nation. The single largest contributor to the survival of many other countries who depends on her. Yes, we have also through people pretending to be leaders gotten into wars and caused a lot of damage around the world.

But that which made America so great is almost broken in half. In a matter of a few years the US is not united but split into fighting with each other.

You have to ask yourself who benefits from this?

Regardless of any insight you may or may not have this is the bottom line, are we as a nation stronger or weaker? Where have we been going from election to election? Are we as a country getting happier or more upset on a daily basis?

As people we are, well, people. And people makes mistakes, that too is normal. What you do after the mistake is more telling and more important. A leader have no problems with transparency and will acknowledge the mistake and take corrective measures.

If this all seems a but much for you, a bit too hard to deal with – I sympathize.

But you still need to know that the only way out of this is to be part of the bigger group in some capacity, that means at a minimum taking some time to get familiar with who are those that claims to be a leader and who is not. That cannot be done by listening to any one source on the political spectrum but as many as possible.

Don’t be too hasty to make your decision. There are usually so many factors involved in these peoples lives that it boggles the mind. Discovering them is a very tough job.

Know that there are many many special interest groups in this and other countries that have their own agenda and are NOT working to make America the best it can be. These players often have huge budgets and plenty of people to create good and false impressions of people. You could ask yourself who are most threatened by a united USA?

Congress today are going through a change whereby many are not really standing for anything in particular but are simply pushing whatever line, say and do anything they think will get them what they want. All at the expense of the greater good. Not how a leader behaves.

Also, remember this: you get the government you deserve!

If you don’t participate then you cannot complain.

One more thing. This is the US of A where the political balance ALWAYS swings back and forth from side to side. It’s never “over”. Take your win or loss and prepare to educate more people about your vision of a great country and what makes it so. Never result in violence or overthrow of the government.

If you pursue some activity that is illegal at least ensure that you actually can accomplish the goal and not end up in prison because you, yourself, did not ensure you knew what the legal outcome could be.

Try to set the good example that you want others to follow. Take responsibility of mistakes and try to not repeat them. 🙂

And please, get over the basic facts that all humans are humans regardless of skin color etc. If you are white then know that soon you will not be the majority, and if you are not caucasian see how wrong people can be about skin color and try not to make the same mistake.

Someone living deep in a jungle are no doubt surviving easier and are happier than most people in the concrete jungle. People are pursuing happiness to their best of their abilities all around the world. They are likely to have drastically different views than you do, and frankly from a purely survival viewpoint, since we are sharing this planet, it is in our interest to find solutions that works for all and not limited to the few. Doing otherwise will not work out in the long run.

Get educated and lose the insecurity and join the new civilization. 🙂 Because it is coming as surely as any has in the past. Change is the only constant.

Where does happiness hide?

Watching history, primarily late 1800’s and the first half of 1900’s, during which time Europeans had a lot of turmoil, including two world wars, it becomes obvious that political unrest led to devastation to millions of people and numerous countries.

Knowing what the conditions were that lead to all this death, destruction and misery could be of interest to hopefully prevent them from occurring again.

A few background factors; poor leadership that is not for the people will cause problems with counter survival conditions. When people suffer they will eventually revolt in some fashion starting with making fun of those doing well and eventually evolve into violent revolt.

When people have the idea that “leadership” is all about themselves and against the people it sets the scene for revolt. What kind of person will be supporting this? 

When lies are spread that paints that picture it will attract those who feel they don’t have anything to lose.

Who then would gain from spreading such lies?

If you look at how some thieves promote the idea that nobody actually owns anything. They win if their crimes are actually not a crime. Similarly I’ve watched gang members express that they are only taking what was their birth right but what never received. Righting a wrong. Those kinds of illusions are there to lessen their crimes.

This usually comes from people with extreme views and usually narrow ideas based on partial actual understanding of life and the situation at hand who simply want to push their own agenda and will happily burn, maim and kill anything perceived to be in their way.

See Lenin, Stalin and Hitler to name some well known figures, who in turn killed for their idea of a “pure” society but in reality were simply causing more death and destruction than what had preceded them.

Now we see Putin executing the invasion of Ukraine as the solution to some situation where the death toll looks like it has exceeded 100,000 just on the Russian side.

As a quick reflection on the policies of warring countries; look at countries such as Japan, South Korea, Germany and how they are doing. Now look at countries after Russia’s involvement. The difference is the value of human life that each country places. Russia happily sends the masses, especially the poor masses, to fight their wars and cares more about saving equipment than soldiers.

Whereas the US places real value on people and sees equipment as expendable.

In the case of the Russian Federation it is a collection of some 20+ republics with their own language, legislature, constitution and with some level of autonomy. It is to some degree similar to the states in the US.

The US has a constitution that protects its people and limits government intrusion into our lives.

The Russian Federation also has a constitution but has had a dictator at the helm for 100’s of years and their constitution reflects this.

Unless you have done your homework you may not realize how it is that Russia, supposedly the 2nd most powerful military in the world, did not simply take over Ukraine in a matter of days, and are now losing the war they started.

Something about free will and being in charge of your own destiny or rather the removal of those (slavery) and suppressing freedoms will not be part of a winning formula.

When a condition exists where most anything of value is only available to the few, the masses will not cooperate in an optimum way. When food is not readily available, work does not exist or allow for a proper income, when you see the people who are supposed to be leaders live well and grow fat, when people disappear who express their unhappiness – this is when a country stops functioning.

The whole purpose of a true group is to have a higher survival potential as a team than as individuals. When individuals of different skills, abilities and interests join towards a common goal the impossible becomes achievable. They put aside differences as they recognize the value of the team.

They may promote solutions supporting individual interests but they don’t force their own over the good of the group. For people who have not lived under life and death suppression it’s not easy to fully understand what it does to a people. Not unlike, though on a smaller level, the beaten wife who does not leave her terrorizing husband. 

One may not understand why in the world she stays but if you listen to her she is saying nobody else would have her. Her husband beat it into her that nobody would want her because she’s so useless. Many have a hard time understanding this, never mind a whole country that is living under suppression.

In Russia you have a federation where pretty much all of the power lies in Moscow and total control lies with Putin who can overrule any decision set by the (rest of the) government.

This type of rule has pretty much been the case going back to the first the Grand Duke and later Tsar (king) in the mid 1500’s until present.

Lenin’s solution was to overthrow the government with force (1922) and he used Stalin to rob the bank to finance the operation. After he died in 1924 by the 1930’s Stalin had taken power and continued ruling with even more violence. More people died under his rule than from Hitler’s and on top of it they were his fellow countrymen. (But in the west Hitler is more known as Russia is to a large degree a mystery by design.)

These centuries of rule in Russia have built a nation of people where many are barely scraping by. Living with minimal education and options. Where speaking up is a sure way of not being seen again. Neighbors would falsely report you as an enemy of the state because you had something he or she wanted and with you gone… 

If you were to live under the threat of death or at least prison hanging over you and your family and friends then you will not volunteer doing something that supports that condition. You will end up ignoring something that is failing rather than speaking up or fixing it yourself.

As most others who are starving with an uncertain future, if you see an opportunity to put aside something that can help your family you are more than likely going to cheat and steal. (In Russia it is something literally everyone is well aware of and probably did.)

Russia is vast, it covers 11 time zones and has some 145 million citizens.

Imagine that 99% of them not only feel oppressed but have their civil liberties severely limited. You don’t end up with a scenario of people wanting to support their government.

Where people from Putin down to the maintenance guy of Russian military vehicles and equipment does whatever they can for personal gain. And if you are, for example, a general then you control vast amounts of money and people.

Surely nobody would mind if you put a lot of the military budget into your pocket and built yourself the castle you surely deserve after having worked your way up to that position by any means, including marrying your daughters off to the right families.

Communication is the key to any military success but when your comm gear is barely working and when it is sending communication in the clear because it costs too much to encrypt it, you are giving away all the operational directives to the enemy as soon as you transmit.

And if you are the maintenance guy surely nobody would notice if you sold off the gas supply, and instead of buying oil to maintain the tanks and save yourself from slaving away maintaining them you simply shared the profit with your superior (with each trying to get the upper hand of the other, all the way up to Putin).

Where you as a soldier are poorly trained, have few hopes of a future, with broken equipment and end up being sent off for a military drill (supposedly in Russia) but in reality to war in Ukraine for some, to you, unknown reason.

The military manual on how to conduct war is still the same as it was during WWII and relies on simply sending floods of victims (sorry soldiers) towards the enemy in hope to slow the enemy down and, I guess, drive them into apathy. Which it really does not.

Russia had some 20,000 tanks before the war. As a comparison the US has something like 6,500+ tanks. Remember the maintenance guys above? They did not bother caring for all that steel in the form of tanks that needed ongoing maintenance to not rust away. That added with severe losses in Ukraine and lack of western spare parts they are down to maybe having some estimated 160 operational tanks today.

Electronics have always been inferior in Russia. Partly because of money not being spent where it was needed and partly due to an American spy who, when arriving in the Soviet Union, convinced the leadership to build him a city where he would teach electronics and lead Russian electronics development.

He got his city which must have been great for him. However the combination of Russian slave workers (sorry, willing citizens) and his know-how, Russia’s electronics has always been inferior. (One could say that he made up for his treason to the US by forever crippling electronics in Russia.)

The answer to the Russian military’s losses comes down to key failure in communication, not maintained equipment and lack of purpose and morale. To make things worse supplies are constantly cut off and food is more scarce than ammunition.

The new conscripts that are being sent to Ukraine are forced to fight Putin’s war to “rescue” Ukraine from the nonexistent Nazi threat. They only receive a few days worth of training.

Each US soldier receives approx $1M in training. The Russian have plastic helmets and rusty weapons and eat what they can scrunch up. They are often seen stealing washing machines and the like from Ukraine homes.

Behind the Russian front line is another line. That line is there to shoot anyone retreating from the front line. Who in turn have another line behind them.

The conscripts are often seen drinking into a stupor and getting into fights on the way to the front. This is a normal “solution” in Russia, drink to get away from the conditions they are in. Much like American soldiers in Vietnam getting high even though the Vietcong could attack at any moment and they would be too out of it to defend themselves.

Ukraine’s soldiers are rotated away from the front on a regular basis. Each earns $1,000/month and an extra $3,000 if at the front. The Russian soldier is promised good pay but unlike the Ukraine counterpart does not actually receive any money.

The Ukrainian soldier is considered valuable and is not sent into battle unless they can win. (Though being patriotic surely makes many take more chances, for example the rapid advance tactic that has been deployed which have been very successful due to the enemy’s poor disposition.)

Meanwhile Putin has removed himself from everyone else, he as every dictator knows there’s a bullet with his name on it. To reach him you have to check into a special hotel where you are in isolation for two weeks and only then you can enter the building Putin is in.

You will find yourself at the end of a 20′ table with him at the other end. He can’t afford to trust many people.

OK, enough about Putin. The whole point here was to share how it looks like living in a Russian dictatorship. Which is not unique, look at the American journalist, born in United Arab Emirates, who had been outspoken against the royal family in the UAE, who entered the UAE embassy only to be tortured to death and smuggled out in pieces.

The US constitution allows for anyone to speak out against our government. It is the protected speech we value so highly here.

The inner workings of things such as the government is commonly not well understood. There are so many details of it that we generally hold other things more interesting and rely on the government to do their thing, and for others to let us know about important things.

That which is hidden can hurt you, is a truth that is demonstrated on a daily basis. To the degree you are ignorant about the actual workings of things to that degree you can be hurt.

Imagine growing up on some distant farm and only knowing about things on the farm. No knowledge about any government or rules other than the practical life lessons learned on the farm.

Now imagine you walk (ride) into a city after a long trip, and you are immediately locked up and your horse taken for dropping manure. Let’s say it is illegal in some politically important square.

You inquire who the idiot is that made that law and that he is the one that should be locked up! Imagine that being the Red Square in Moscow and in front of the police you suggest Putin should be locked up. [I made up the horse manure law just to make the point.]

In the US you are not particularly concerned about criticizing the President, but in a dictatorship you and your family could see the gallows. When China executes a person a bill is sent to the family for the bullet.

Be very very careful about what you wish for. As we have seen, the US political experiment of democracy is only as strong as the supporters of it.

As a teenager I was able to travel Europe including visiting one of the camps generally known as Auschwitz. I stood in the gas chamber room, saw the scratches on the tile of people trying to get out, I looked into the dual ovens outside the room where they burned the remains.

I saw the collection of glasses, hair, and personal belongings that had been collected by the Nazis behind large glass partitions. I saw the walls lined with pictures of smiling prisoners that intended to present a different reality of the quality of life in the camp.

If you were looking for hell where the devil resided that would certainly do. Unfortunately Nazis, Russians and dictators are not the only ones who come up with such solutions as killing, maiming, suppressing others as a so called solution.

Mankind seems to have learned that when everything else fails force is the answer. An individual at that point does not have their entire mental capacity available to him/her. They have reached some level of overwhelm and feel so backed up against the wall they can’t properly evaluate solutions that are actually long term pro-survival solutions.

Most people have experienced the feeling of futility of some situation we were in. The world around us continuously creates the impression that what wins the day is force. We feel forced into some corner and are not able to take an exterior view and make an evaluation of all the facts and likely outcomes of actions we are contemplating. Instead we lash out!

So reaching out with force is understandable. However rarely is it the ideal win/win solution. For one we tend to not understand the details of what troubles us, may that be understanding the law, other people, or what drives and motivates them. Often not even ourselves.

One of the most valuable things in life is compassion. How much compassion do you have when you are in the mindset of being the judge, jury and executioner?

How easy and fast do you jump into that mindset?

The speed is partly determined by how freely you can look at all sides and all the facts. If you are fast and in an emotional state, it might be because you are not actually able to make proper evaluations. Evaluations which might come back and haunt you, even if you don’t see how they relate. All because of hasty decisions to be the judge, jury and executioner.

It has been said that man cannot serve justice fairly.

It has also been said that you should treat others the way you want to be treated. Give the benefit of doubt and apply compassion.

I have been in the situation of staring down the blade of a big knife held by a large cop killer in a tight place with just the two of us. He walked away unharmed, as did I. 🙂

I knew something he did not and I was able to handle the situation without any force by simply using my knowledge of ethics and justice. Turned out he was on the run and was seeking shelter. Instead he found compassion and hope, and found that even he had some value and raised the idea that he had the possibility of being valuable again.

I never saw, or read about him again but I’m certain that he never forgot me and what he took with him from our talk.

Criminal reform is possible, but it is based on each person gaining their self respect back. Not by pushing their failures. Sure, they have to make amends, but will they bother when they are constantly reminded of how bad they are? You serve your time and that’s how you pay your debt, except in most places you are not allowed to vote again, and forever have that record. A sure sign or society does not know how to “recover” a criminal.

What have we learned here?

There are those who will saw off the branch they are sitting on, with complete ignorance that they too are on the branch. Maybe they are so far gone they are “going down” and intend to take everyone with them.

Sometimes when your actions lead to so much suffering, or violations of your integrity, that in your ignorance you decide you need to stop yourself even if that means causing so much damage that you get others to help take you down.

For many who make mistakes they feel they have reached a point where they cannot “afford” to be wrong once more so they publicly hold on to how right they are, in spite of being aware they are wrong as it would be too much of a blow to be seen as wrong again. They will take being right to their grave.

When you have pursued some direction for so long that it would be a blow to you to acknowledge that it was the wrong direction. You can often tell if you are there as you are not having as much luck as you once had. You have more things go wrong and you are simply not happy. Life has more unhappiness than happiness.

This is not the moment to dig in deeper but to stop and look around and approach life from a different angle or direction. At some point in the past you made one or more decisions which led to where you are. It might be at a time of great duress. Maybe confusion and uncertainty, but you were not “at the top of the world” when you made that decision.

Look around at who and what you have in your life. What is influencing you the most on a subject you are honestly not well versed in. This lack of full insight is a good area to find things that affect your life in some unexpected way.

A good friend of mine said that insecurity exists in the absence of knowledge. Without proper knowledge it’s a crap shot as to if you will make the better choice. Confusion does not lead to certainty and prosperity.

Backing away from an area means you lack understanding. Blindly following others advice is a good way of making bad decisions.

In areas where it is hard to identify facts your only options are to educate yourself as much as possible and to find wide and varied views from different sides to see what is being said. Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle but rarely at any extreme side.

In public relations it is a well known point that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it. In some areas millions of dollars are being spent to push some version of reality as the actual reality towards some end that may or may not be in the public’s interest but more likely only benefits an individual or small group.

A trained eye can spot these but for most it is simply accepted and used as the truth from there on. We have seen enough lies and misleading statements that we know there are unjust things going on, we simply don’t know how deep it is.

The answer is simple, ask yourself if it is bringing happiness to your life? Happiness is overcoming problems. Solutions solve things whereas lies “sticks” and does not resolve things.

Voting is by some seen as a waste of time as they are only one. By supporting non voting you are simply getting the kind of government you deserve. You are telling the government you don’t care – go ahead and do whatever you want. By voting we send the message that we are looking, maybe we even get our candidate to win.

It looks like most don’t know how the government works and are happily accepting them as the why for any and all wrong in the world without any thought because Everything is their responsibility. Maybe forgetting their own responsibility by not only educating themselves and doing their civil duty by voting.

In the end ask yourself are you actually honestly happy? Maybe a closer evaluation of where you are at and how you got here is in order.

Steve Szmidt

Lies, Death and Misery

At least in the West we have some interesting ideas about Death. When someone’s body dies we have the idea that misery needs to follow. The funeral and reception is where we dress in our best black, avoid smiling at all cost and end up in debt if the family member did not have death insurance. Then the probate comes and takes half of any assets.

What’s wrong with this picture?

At the end of a lifetime one should have lived a full life, helped a lot of people and garnered many friends. People should be happy that you lived! Your life should be celebrated with a colorful, cheerful and exuberant party!

The state should not come in and claim more of what has already been taxed. And since people who are generally well off are not willing to help those less well off, I understand that in order to have roads utilities etc. these functions in society needs to be funded.

This touches upon one of the worst things in our society, selfishness.

I don’t know when people started to be so selfish, so unwilling to help. But I can imagine that when we agree to be temporary taxed to pay for a war (The United States War Revenue Act of 1917) where the 2% tax bracket for people earning less than $20K was lowered to 2K while the top income bracket was raised from 15% to 67%, did not really motivate people to work harder, and when the war was over the temporary tax did not prove to be so temporary after all.

As a result churches who used to help those less fortunate from the collections by the congregation, received less and less and ended up no longer able to contribute. When income tax hurt families so much that both parents had to get a job. Where children started growing up under someone else than their parents, who frankly may not have the same amount of willingness to care and appreciation for others children.

Labor laws forbade children to work which created delinquency and crime. About the only good to come out of it was getting them out of the mines which was the problem the law supposedly tried to solve. Of course simply saying using poor families children (or any other children) in mines is illegal was too simple.

This cycle of individualism, not feeling able to care for anyone else than yourself, type of ideas grow and fester in a society where media is doing all it can to scare people into buying their exaggerated bad news. Where the front page (or web page) is trying to scare us into buying their news. Which today is an online ad driven enterprise not motivated to help but to make money, because money is seen as scarce and everyone needs to grab as much as they can.

Compare that with native tribes in various parts of the world where happiness comes from helping others, from being part of a group that cares and nurtures each other, where that group spirit is so high that being kicked out is practically a death sentence because of shame and lack of belonging.

The idea that you need to keep up with the “Jones’s” is a good example of materialism being adopted as the indication of your value. The more you have the more valuable you must be. We value people for amassing large amounts of money, which certainly is a good feat, but is not as important as helping others, in creating and contributing to an environment where all win.

It is still commonly recognized that a team does better in life than individuals. Yet we seem to forget that so easily.

Maybe those who lead are not so good at being leaders as they too are focused on self.

Society is validating the wrong things keeping the cycle going. Which so far has been a downward spiral more than a circle.

Maybe I’m more fortunate in that I’m pretty good at telling when a person is doing things that are unselfish or selfish. Where what they say is not what they do. Maybe I’m just one of those few who are more willing to observe the actual actions of people, can see when people around that person are good helpful people and not exhibiting criminal traits.

It seems that so many are happily buying the most outlandish lies that are so obviously false that a 5 year old can see it but adults fail to do so.

Something happens in our society to people’s ability to be there and simply observe. To be willing to see what they are looking at. To realize that this person who said things you wanted to hear are not doing the things we hoped to see. Maybe it’s too much of a let down to accept the truth of the reality?

I look at a persons environment and ask questions such as; are their children happy children, are the people they keep around continuing setting the kind of examples you expect someone of high values to set? Sometimes the truth is really simple and right in front of your nose!

This next sentence will be hard to take. It’s not that hard to assume a little bit more responsibility for self rather than blaming others.

When you blame others you give them power over yourself. You have said they have more control over me than I do, at least in that situation. Which certainly can be true. Point being that that is not a happy situation, at least for you. Not one that will improve conditions.

If you look hard enough you can find one small point where you can assert a bit more control over your own life. It does not have to be an all out grab of full control over all areas of your life. Which might not be so desirable anyway. It’s nice to have friends that can express their own ideas. A society filled with people who each have areas they like to be, do and have in.

Anyway, life can fall to a point where one have all but given up on any possibility to be happy. This is where those still alive start thinking of overthrowing whoever is controlling their area. Could be a sibling, parents, extended family, local leaders, and the federal government.

So where do you start?

A gradient approach is the easiest and most likely to give you a win.

Riots start because the injustice has been too large. Unfortunately the riots rarely attack the real source of their suffering and just increase the amount of misery. Being able to identify the real source of the troubles in society becomes all important if you want to improve it.

Your immediate environment is bound to offer opportunities where you can make things better, even if nobody else notices – you notice! Do something nice to someone, especially if they don’t expect it. If this is entirely foreign to you then you simply need to do it more often. At some point, maybe sooner than later, you will have some unexpected luck coming your way. It all depends how deep you have buried yourself in using blame to explain your life.

Thing is that one can ALWAYS decide to change and if it makes life better than its a good thing. Ignore that potential of it meaning that you must have been wrong for all that time. Ignore it!

Look around and find things that you can admire. Could actually be how beautifully bad things are. How perfectly bad everything is. Admire it!

Once you are able to admire it you can step “outside” and look at life from a different perspective. When you can look at all the crazy things and admire them then you can get free of them. By the way, admire does not mean agree! You would be a fool to agree.

No, admiration is like a secret power that can tear down any wall or injustice. If you can add persistence in spite of whatever odds to admiration then you have a winning combination!

From that newly gained viewpoint You can find and create opportunities to overcome lies, misery and even death as death is only a physical thing. Which is a different story. Point being there is a lot more to life, happiness in life, than society leads you to believe.

Is Peaceful Political Justice Possible?

Peace, something which statistically has been hard to accomplish for any duration. Let’s look at it from a different viewpoint – what drives war from a democratic government viewpoint, comparing with dictator driven, and all the way down to the individual.

My last blog talked about the bully and how his/her insecurity is resulting in well, bullying and physical attacks. Some groups of people have adopted the viewpoint that the individual is nothing, maybe from thinking he’s too weak, and the group is everything.

It’s pretty clear that a group of people can generally survive better as a team, sharing duties and being able to accomplish more together. Just the simple increase from one to two people makes many tasks so much easier and certainly allows for it to be more interesting or pleasant.

If we scan to the war Vladimir Putin started and see how the Russians military is suffering as of this writing, you can see that one immediate problem is their supply chain. It is very visible, and easily attacked. We can look at US and China navy’s and see their supply problems are equally challenging.

This gave me a thought, what if we stop wars the way they are being fought. Because until man can be cleared from his pathetically irrational behavior to solve his problems, we are stuck with them for now. What we need is a solution which does not look on an individual country but on all countries.

The primary barrier appears to be something very basic – communication. The ability to communicate towards a solution where everyone wins. And though wars do create apparent benefits they are not long lived. They are not sustainable.

Why do we have individual countries, areas such as states within the US, for example, where different policies apply.

I believe the basic of that is related to wanting to survive well. In an apartment building some might make enough noise to keep others from sleeping. One party feels that loud music is how to loose stress from the daily grind, while another prefers to just sleep.

One might feel that cows are sacred animals, while others don’t eat during some parts of the year, while others cannot allow a drawing of their spiritual leader. Those are examples of attempts to increase their survival potential.

We are all of us just trying survive the best we know how.

Most people unfortunately appears to be completely and utterly without any practical knowledge of what is or is not pro-survival. When someone steps up and says something often or loudly enough, it will convince some that this is a way to improve their living conditions. To increase their survival potential or identify some injustice being committed.

Too often they lead to what I call unusual solutions, they are not good, standard (and workable) solutions that takes everyone into account. They cause NEW problems for others. For a solution to be good it must be MORE beneficial for ALL than destructive.

Of course who today think of anyone but themselves?

Life is being seen and promoted as something difficult and hard to understand – and nothing could be further from the truth!

But hang on here! If it is so easy why do so many have such a hard time?!?

Yes, why indeed?

What does it take for a person, a family, a group, the city, county, state, country and planet to flourish and prosper? Why are there such disparities (difference in quality) between them?

I’m sorry to say it first comes down to personal integrity. Because if you don’t have it you will not only loose sight and forget what that is but you will hold yourself back as you have lost your self respect.

Then caring and having compassion for your fellow man (as in mankind). Because if you don’t care and are not able to be compassionate then not only will the person you are supposedly helping notice that your help is not sincere, your help will not be very helpful.

Next comes a tolerance to operate even if there’s a lot of confusion. You have to be able to deal with those random particles or you will get confused yourself and take wrong actions.

Now you will need to have some understanding and be able to acquire knowledge even though you might have an innate (built-in) knowledge already, you need to be open and willing to learn, to observe others and the environment. Without proper observations you are not operating with the current situation and the outcome will be random.

These points are not trying to say that you should stop helping or anything, these are guidelines for how to do it more successfully.

Lastly, if you can look on any person, regardless of who they are or what they have done, and be WILLING to give them care and compassion, now you can look beyond their deeds, their crimes and shortcomings and evaluate what a proper path would look like for them. For it is not correct to blindly do nice things for someone actively engaged in some criminal activity. But they do need our help.

They must first stop and come clean if they are to have any chance. They have to come to realize the errors of their way, to see what the urge was to commit their crime, what problem it supposedly solved. Only then will they be able to come up the conditions.

OK, so we need to be able to rehabilitate people. This in essence means getting them their self respect back. Which only they can give to themselves. We can accept them, but they need to say “I’m once again standing tall and able to face the world, their group, their family and feel not good but great about it. Because this will be a great burden lifted off their shoulders.

Once we can give this priceless gift to ourselves and each other we can truly move towards peace everywhere.

That adventure starts with maybe a small group that is successful. Others who notices and inquire how come they are doing so well. Then others adopting their methods and policies, repeating over and over until whole nations can walk tall.

When people see something that is working well, something that is not what we today call political, but something that helps them, then we will be well on our way. Politics have a bad reputation because people are not taking part.

When people are not taking some active role, especially voting, then you are telling the elected that you don’t care. Even if you only have one vote. It is not about if your vote will change the outcome it is you telling the elected that you better pay attention or you will be voted out next election.

Of course if enough people feel the same way then you help making a change.

Today with societies being well established and not easily changed, it will take a big disaster for people to not only wanting to change things but to agree how. The politicians role is to work things out in such a way that as many as possible get the best possible improvements.

And yes, it does require more integrity than less in the involved.

If you don’t vote you know they don’t care what you think.

Let’s circle back to wars. Neighbors might conduct some limited war against each other, generally it does not get too out of control with the military called in to stop the unrest. States certainly made war as in our civil war. Countries have been and are conducting war, whatever they call it.

These wars are started by individuals.

Individuals, in the case of countries, where they have the power to call men to war against others. But why are they even calling for war? Something is obviously wrong, at least in their mind. Look at Putin, his motivations might be to be the big ruler that made Russia great again as in days when they indeed controlled much more land than presently.

How about the probably more than 100,000 men, women, children and animals that have been killed and injured during this war. That is a horrific number, mostly caused by one single person.

Russia due to their climate have a harder time to growing food than many other countries. One solution has been to conquer neighboring countries and take food from them. With the fall of Soviet Union a number of these countries managed to leave Russia.

Russia has been made up by over a dozen different countries and is now called the Russian Federation. Putin has done a decent job of moving Russia forward but began implementing a number of changes to laws which once again prohibits disagreeing with the government (around 2005 I think).

Before this Russians enjoyed a high level of freedom similar to ours.

Unfortunately, due to centuries of hardship Russia is a very corrupt country. The corruption is on every level, and each level take “their” cut. In the end financing is not reaching where it is supposed to. The corruption is a direct result of living conditions so bad you have to cheat the system to stay alive.

This is one of the fundamental flaws in their “system” which stopped them from being able to simply walk in and conquer Ukraine’s capitol Kiev. The volunteer soldiers were supposed to earn money, even good money, but are not getting paid. Unable to send money back to their families. Why?

Each level taking “their” cut. In the end nothing is left for the guy actually doing the work. This has eaten its way into every part of the Russian society.

If you were to take my suggestions for having more success in life and apply that to the Russian situation, you can see it is an uphill battle. [Now I do understand there are underground Russians sabotaging Putins war efforts by blowing up supply trains (Russia is primarily using trains for their military supply lines) and other efforts to bankrupt the war and ultimately bring a stop to Putting one way or another.

Civil unrest comes from the people not being able to survive.

In Russia many top oligarchs (the richest business people) have suddenly had incidents such as fallen out of the 6th floor window in a hospital, being blown up when their car exploded and so on. What they had in common was not agreeing with the war as this is being very costly for them and so they speak up.

The Russian government did not even tell the Russian soldiers where they were going or why.

This should give some indications, and just touching the surface, as to how things can go here if our democracy fails.

Whatever you think is wrong with anything here in the US, it cannot be compared to how it is now in mother Russia. If you are any kind of free thinker you would be concerned about some nosy busybody reporting you for something, probably not true, which you would suffer for whether real or imagined.

Imagine not having freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, speech, religion and so on. Where at anytime they might come for you and you had little recourse. Imagine how it would be to live with a constant worry, or fear, of someone reporting you for anything.

This is one of the great things with our Constitution, the land of the free! If you have never lived outside that freedom on a daily basis it is not obvious what that does to you mentally and physically. You reach a point where you no longer care. You can’t afford to care to keep some semblance of life. Your life is built on one loss after another.

This is actually what is at play with the attack on Congress. It might seem like a horrible injustice if an election is stolen from you, but compared to a dictatorship it is NOTHING.

And it is possible that the democrats had an election stolen just a few cycles ago in Florida. It was settled legally. No violence. And our social experiment rolled on to see another day.

Once you seize control illegally, very few people who are willing to be violent, and my guess is none, are fully aware of where that road leads to. I bet none has lived in Russia or under any other long term dictatorship. The common dull look in their eyes, not daring to get excited should it too be removed.

Imagine being a child under parents that think you are a problem and a bad slave. No love, no care, no affection. Not allowed to do anything really, just expected to be silent and invisible. Beaten regularly and told how lucky you are. If you survive mentally you are planning your escape. Do you think a country can be the country of the free, of We the People, under anything but a republic?

Should Police Help People?

I just watched a YouTube video of a woman with two children around 4-6 years old get fatally shot by a police officer, in a small city in Nevada.

The officer acted as he’s been trained which is why this became a fatal shooting. The woman was clearly not operating with the current scene but as if there were dangers lurking behind any person. Many would call her crazy.

There were two officers on the scene and she had a knife in her hand yelling to the police to not touch her children. A 911 caller had reported that she was afraid that something was going to happen to her children.

The complete failure and reason this turned deadly was due to the training of officers to basically treat anything dangerous as if it was a military assault. Which is very effective if the people you deal who are mentally there.

If you want to calm down a situation the last thing you do with an irate person is to oppose their view. The best thing to do is to play along with them and try to understand what demon/situation they feel they are dealing with. You can only calm them down when they feel understood. Opposing them, yelling and acting threatening is not very workable. This is true to anyone upset.

The first thing you want to do is to get in communication, this means thoughts are being exchanged with understanding, without force, threats or demands. Simply act is if you care about them and try to understand their problem/situation.

Once the person feels someone else is on their side they can then start calming down. Be a ‘safe person’, don’t seem to threaten them but be their ally. It is surprisingly simple and easy to do if you have any compassion for others.

Imagine one of your family members being the other person and treat them with the same love and respect, you will be surprised how easy it beome to defuse situations.

I’ve never failed to handle any person with the above, and I’ve talked down gang members, a cop killer, run of the mill nut cases who were really unhappy and ‘charged’ up. One threatened me with a knife in close quarters outside my apartment door demanding access. I relaxed, leaned to one side of the door frame on one leg and said ‘One one condition, that you owe me an apology when you see that that person is not here.’ as perfectly calm and friendly completely ignoring the threat (knife yielded by a much bigger person than me).

He turned out to be a cop killer on the run. He was taken back by my smile and total lack of displaying any indication of being in danger. In fact he did not dare passing next to me, I had to step away from the door before he stepped in, only to realize this was not the place. He tried to pay me off but I insisted on the apology, which he could not easily fathom. He had screwed up and he knew his word had never meant anything, so the idea that he would just say sorry was utterly unreal to him. It took a couple of minutes before he finally did, but he did say sorry and melted like butter when I said OK, thanks! At that point he told me his life history as if in a confession.

But you see what I did, I handled the situation with complete calm and care. His problem was my problem, and we solved it together. Threatening and putting him in a defensive mode would not have worked out well. Sure I could have just shot him but on principle I only use force if needed and that was not it. (Though many would say if any situation was that this was it. And that would just demonstrate their inability to handle it gently. You can take it to the bank that this guy never forgot me, and being treated well in spite of.)

Another time a woman whom our office security could not handle was in our reception interrupting things. I told security to leave us and got in communication with her. She was on about aliens and spirits and what not in some garbled version. I simply demonstrated an interest in her and her situation, and acknowledged everything she said. I suggested we get away from these other people (the staff in the office) so we can talk uninterruptedly, which she liked, and walked her outside. Spent a few minutes with her and she ended up walking away looking happy.

The whole ‘trick’ is to honestly care about others and wanting to understand them and help solving their problem. Caring is a secret weapon that can solve so many situations. Yelling to people is a method of force. It is not being in very good communication but more out of communication. So if you want to get others to do or not do something it makes a big difference if you are duplicating each other and have a good understanding.

In another situation a woman was really upset and yelling on the phone about the alleged problem some employee of ours had caused. I got the call transferred to me and I asked her what happened? Hearing her loud upset and accusations I simply acknowledged her really good. I said

‘WOW! That’s HORRIBLE!!’ she immediately stopped, was quiet for a few seconds and said Thank You!

So that’s another ingredient, proper acknowledgment. That is the sign that you have understood what they said. If someone says ‘And then the truck rolled over the baby!’ You would not calmly say OK.

You see a drunk and disorderly, how do you handle it?

Be a friend, care and try to understand them, then give a proper acknowledgment. A little over acknowledgment might be needed if their attention to the the environment is lowered, drunk or upset for example. But always in a friendly tone.

If you don’t want to shoot and kill some mother in front of her young children that’s how you do it. Police Academy are you listening? Your officers are dealing with any number of threatening situations each day. Meanwhile society is anything but pleased with the amount of police shootings. Demand that your officers are able to communicate with strangers in a friendly voice, and not oppose everyone as the immediate go to solution. It does not instill respect as it simply shows an incompetence in dealing with people. Your officers should not only drill all the other things they do but drill handling people in various stages of upset and ‘out of it’.

Manners is one of those thing kids used to learn at an early age. And if the adults set a good example themselves then the kids usually saw that it works.

The officer that drew his service weapon on a young girl needs to train in how to handle kids and probably people in general.

A police office is not a soldier. He may feel it when citizens shoot at him, but something has gone wrong long before those bullets come his way.

Groups get along and win when manners are applied from the beginning. When you treat people with respect above all, people feel safe and are less prone to pull a weapon on you. When equality rules the day and compassion is in use, society becomes a good place to be in and you will want to be part of it.

The Declaration of Human Rights is what should govern the day. All talk about how some people are less, or not people, is only made by people who are basically insecure. If a four year old tries to make fun of you I suspect you would not feel threatened. I simply agree and laugh along. In fact if anyone is making fun of you the best response is to simply agree and laugh along. You will not remain a target of ridicule for long.

It has long been proven scientifically that all the human races are human and are no more nor any less than anyone else. Individuals are different and a small number have a problem in dealing with things.

They may be and often are different in some way. That should make life more interesting, getting to know and understand someone from some other background than your own.

If you are in a group which is not treating you with sincere respect then you might not be in the right group. Same goes for work, if you cannot win there then maybe you should not be there? Why slave somewhere where you cannot be happy and winning?

Force yourself to smile in front of a mirror and see if you can keep that frown. Wish upon others that which you want for yourself.

🙂

How Fear and Force Undermine Each Other

The physical universe is based on force. There’s gravity pulling you down with force. There’s matter telling you how you better get out of its way or get hurt. There’s wind trying to push you over, earthquakes tossing you around. There’s the stronger guy in school not getting beaten up because he’s the strongest. Guns, batons are all saying use me and win! Over and over we are reminded how force rules the day.

Or does it?

The physical universe has no intelligence. Does not care nor is aware of who’s affected and is merely held together by a design which is based on the attraction matter has towards itself.

Man has actually conquered the physical universe to a very large extent. The bully is conquered by a combination of intelligence and force. Earthquakes are similarly imposing itself, but our buildings are designed to bend a bit and hold together. We have a group of people that keep an eye out for strong winds and issues warnings. We have planes that fly into the eye of the storm to see how it is made up to keep us abreast of what might be coming our way. We walk upright and do the most amazing motions in spite of gravity. The bully is simply insecure and is trying to shift attention away from himself and onto the impression that he should not be messed with, or questioned, which may reveal his insecurity.

Smart use of force between people is to only use it to the extent it is needed to get someones attention, then it serves no further positive value.

A child who has eaten a lot of sugar may not respond when you try to stop him from running on the walls breaking all in his way and may need to be physically stopped before you can get his attention. But once you got it you better back off, or you are simply telling him how you are bigger and stronger, which will not earn his respect, as you would just have become a bully in his eyes. That would teach him that force wins the day, and the cycle starts over.

To get out of the vicious circle we need to set a good example. Society is constantly showing itself by example how it needs to live in order to survive.

Fear is usually based on not being able to face the unknown, and will usually result in being afraid of something that does not exist. The fear itself will help create the condition of that which one is afraid of. Fear results in no inspection and less communication. And when man goes out of communication with man fear comes in to warn you of the threat of the unknown. If you were looking for a vicious circle look no further!

One of the most simple things ways of solving problems, by the way, is to look. For example, I had a air conditioner that stopped cooling. My immediate thought was it had run out of coolant. Now I was facing calling an a/c guy to come out and fix it. But before I got to the phone I thought I should look and see if there was anything obvious I could see. I opened the outside box and looked inside. It had a couple of relays and other components.

Triggering the a/c to start I noticed how one relay did not appear to fully close. Using a voltmeter I could see that it was indeed not closing. A quick visit to a store and $10 later I had a new relay and the a/c was working again. It took maybe 15 minutes of my time to discover what was wrong. OK, so I understand electricity, but that just tells me that what you don’t know you can be in effect of. In other words education is quite valuable as a general tool. And if you live life willing to look and learn you can handle more of life.

All I had to do was to be willing to look and see what I may see. In my mind I had drawn up a wait for a technician to come out and certainly a bigger cost to get it operational. You see how easy it resolved once I looked?

This is not a unique example, simply how it gave a live example of the value of looking. Take the child afraid of what may be lurking under the bed! Once you gather enough to look, and maybe a flash light or two, you can establish that there’s nothing there and you can rest.

Here’s another example of force. Have you ever held a child on your lap. When you do he or she, will squirm and try to get down. While it will be perfectly content simply sitting there if it can leave on it’s own self determinism.

That tells you something else of value. In dealing with humans, things work easier if they can have their own self determinism. Your only issue is getting compliance in some situations where some control of the environment is needed.

Most people then will respond well if allowed to execute self determinism, and are not controlled by force anymore than is needed and a bit of good positive communication.

Good communication is dependent on the ability to communicate which in turn require you to be there and be able to look and observe others and how things change. If you act with certainty and respect you can get almost anything you need from others. Most people are very willing to help. It is a basic trait of man, his willingness to help.

If you bypass his willingness then you are probably using force and not so much respect. A real authority is a person who can control the environment or the subject at hand. An apparent authority is someone who is taken at face value without inspection. Looking was missing to allow the observation of the person’s ability and knowledge of the subject or situation.

Man is actually a simple animal who’s sometime trying to be complex to appear more valuable than what he or she thinks of themselves.

OK, so we learn that treating others how we ourselves wish to be treated is a way to happiness. This is indeed needed by society at large to function well.

In a military situation the use of overwhelming force is a good practice which saves lives. However it is not a good tool to build a society for mankind.

When protecting people it becomes vital to have an understanding of man based on observation of proper application of force and respect, which with it needs a healthy dose of compassion. It does also require a bit of courage to look and deal with what is going on.

A man held down by overwhelming debt, maybe an equally upset wife from her goals being squashed and neither being able to look and discover what is behind their problems, might get disillusioned enough that he momentarily gives up. Which could manifest itself in loud and disturbing actions. Possibly with the show of force to counter the pressure he feels.

To calm down and stop the destruction such a person may demonstrate does not require more use of force as is so commonly done. Simply a proper acknowledgment usually does the job.

So what is a proper acknowledgment?

It is that which shows the person that he or she have been heard and have been duplicated. In other words the person feels he or she is understood. Once understood the person feels there is someone else who shares the burden. That can be a very big relief and should not be underestimated. In fact you can entirely disarm someone with a proper acknowledgment. I’ve single handedly, purely with a few words, handled a really large man that a number of bouncers could not handle. All I had to say was that he’s really large and the others are acting the way they are because they are afraid of him. He instantly stopped and got in good verbal (vs physical) communication with me.

You know force is not simply physical actions. Your voice can also demonstrate and at least threaten physical force. It depends on your ability to demonstrate intention in any one direction. You can enter a room full of with violent action and simply give a simple command with a strong intention and stop everyone in their step.

In fact you merely showing up with a calm presence and being there able to look and duplicate what is going on can stop violence. It looks like magic of some sort. But it is simply being a larger presence than the confusion. Being the stable datum that everything else can align itself with. You cannot be sucked into the confusion and have to be able to hold your position.

You hold a position with certainty and competence. Your competence will come from, you guessed it, being able to be there looking and observing. Knowing what you are doing and having demonstrated enough competence in the past. In turn that will give you certainty. Which comes right back giving you more ability to hold that position stably in spite of the tumbling confusion.

A confusion is only a confusion until a position, or viewpoint, can be held and be used to sort out the random particles in it.

That position is your certainty of self and the situation. If good enough would cover any situation.

The subject here is how fear and force undermine each other.

Fear undermines you and your ability to handle force. You will not look and observe what is going on. For example a fighter depends on being able to be there and look at the motion of others bodies and any particles involved, and take split second steps to handle them when they become a threat, or even before they can become a threat if you are good.

Fear depends on uncertainty and not looking or understanding, the present situation. It will feed on itself and if not handled ruin your day.

Force also depends on uncertainty and not looking or understanding the present situation. It too will feed on itself.

Compassion and love of your fellow man is actually your foundation that will make life a lot easier and return a lot of value to your life, and others in your environment. It too feeds on itself. Compassion breeds compassion. Care is part of that.

Indeed it looks like you will get what you put your attention on.

If all you look for is motion and your general attention is on finding and stopping motion before it moves too fast you will end up a miserable problem yourself.

Police and security people are at risk of falling into that trap. The way to stay well is to look at everything going on. Society has far more positive things going on than negative. When you see an upset or disorderly person don’t insist on immediately stopping him or her. Be willing to let the person be upset. Be willing to understand that person so that you can properly acknowledge them.

If you have enough care for your fellow man it will show. It will allow you to approach each person as a person with respect, which will make a positive impact, even if it is not immediately obvious. There might be more upset that you need to discharge. Simply be a safe terminal for the person to share his or her upset with. Presenting force does not make you a safe person. It simply adds more force, or promise of force which will simply escalate things.

True, you can scare people with enough force that they cave in and are subdued. But it is not a good general way of operating, again only use force until you get their attention.

So what do you do if you cannot get their attention?

You may need to have a good balanced use of enough force that you can control the person until such time that you can reach them. I’m thinking of drugs and maybe earlier show of force that made them hide so deep that you cannot easily reach them.

When a person is armed with deadly force it easily becomes a huge liability to society, unless that person is balanced enough and able to be there and communicate verbally and only use enough force to handle the situation. The first action cannot be an automatic draw and fire. If a person is afraid of other people and cannot be in their shoes and have care and compassion for them they are not suitable to keep us secure. They will end up being a bigger threat and undermine the people they are suppose to support and help.

If someone is upset they usually have a reason. Caring enough to hear and trying to understand them will make them hold you high long after you have left.

Let’s talk about criminals.

A child will as soon as they can try to contribute to the family. By not allowing them to contribute you will end up fostering criminal behavior. I believe man needs to be able to contribute to feel good and be happy. When a man cannot contribute he thinks himself not very valuable. If not valuable and you cannot make a positive impact then it does not matter what you do.

Add some experiences where some of those impacts will be actions against the common good of society. Robbing someone, for example. If they succeed then they have learned they can be good at something. It may be the only option they feel they have since they cannot or are not allowed to hold a job and have some common decent respect of self and others.

That child which is not allowed to help with dishes is being taught their contributions are not wanted. They are completely the effect of the much bigger bodies around them and can only try to upset you to get even. Bed wetting, breaking things, screaming are all indicators of having disagreements. You could ask yourself if some broken dishes are more valuable than the child?

For that matter give them some plastic ones to clean. Maybe their own plates.

A gang member is a person who does not believe themselves able to contribute to society. A criminal is a person who have lost their self respect.

The way to turn both around is to allow them to get some respect back to learn they can contribute to our society and they will happily do so.

But it will require care and compassion to get there as the road may not be an easy one to walk down. It will also require a healthy dose of courage and belief in your fellow man. But it will ultimately be more rewarding than the other option.

I for one think a society based on care and compassion would be more pleasant than one based on fear and force. What do you think?

First Amendment Rights?

Intended to those in charge.

As someone who has visited Auschwitz as a young man while traveling through Europe, who met people who were deformed from being concentration camp guinea pigs and saw the horrors that came because nobody would do anything about it before it became too late, I was utterly stunned to see how my all time favorite service appears to actually be taking a stance supporting extreme violence hate sites.

I’m guessing it has something to do with the 1st amendment which is generally a great thing to support, though one has to be aware that it only refers to what the government is not being allowed to violate:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Clearly free speech is a crucial part of society, but common sense can step in and say if, for example, you want to insult my wife in my own house, you must leave. If you want to proclaim death to my neighbors, you can’t stand on my stoop to do it from. If you try to promote violent rhetoric using my company – it will be removed.

Doing anything less is supporting what ultimately becomes criminal activities which at the very least is bad for business in the long run.

I also find it shameful. Certainly ignorance and stupidity alike can be very dangerous given the right situation. When I look myself in the mirror I much prefer to feel strength from doing the right thing, and not having acted from ignorance or misinformation.

There is a very real situation where people don’t bother to investigate what they are being told. They are commonly not very well versed with the world outside their own nor have a solid education. Thus being at a disadvantage frequently find themselves not finding any road to success but reasons to be unhappy. Some take advantage of that to misdirect their unhappiness towards people and activities that actually seek to help society. These “some” are stuck wanting to take the world down with them. Meanwhile the lesser educated and informed, but not automatically less valuable, fall pray to the lies and propaganda and with little to loose stand up ready to fight the false evil. Others even less educated about life become willing to meet the vestigial virgins supposedly waiting for them once they click the detonator. The price for freedom is constant alertness and willingness to fight back, not blindly supporting any activity or “right”.

Thus, I frequently assess who I associate myself with and as someone who has so far been a staunch supporter for a decade am now wondering what is your intention visa vie Nazi hate propaganda, and similar sites?

Ideal Gender Equality

I see a lot of attempts to have more females in computer technologies such as programming.

I hold a firm view that whoever does the job they should be equally paid. To me that does not mean I expect to see a drive to get more females in what are traditionally more dangerous jobs or physically tough.

Why? We are not built the same. We don’t have the same basic drives, which is a good thing! The genetic build shows that males are more densely made, look at the muscle mass. Makes us better at handling cold weather for example. Carrying heavy things etc.

Females are typically more interested in things that provides a stable environment for rearing children. While males are more interested in, well getting into trouble. From an early age we throw our bodies around and brag about who beat it up the most.

Obviously it’s a generalization but the point is the game of life clearly has different designs for the two sexes. My observation has been that women are better at having order inside but are poor at external directions and males the opposite.

The most important job anyone can have is rearing our children to become able and responsible adults. That responsibility is to create a good home and females usually does a better job of it. Males provide the energy (money for example) and raw material to build the physical structure.

Now why is it important to have more women in various jobs, does it make them more equally worth? No, they are already probably more valuable than men. But the idea that males bring home the money so it belongs to them is a bunch of single minded bull!

For those of you who live together, but don’t share everything – something is out. One or both of you are only thinking of self. Once you got together and became a couple you need to work and act as one. One spouse does something bad like driving into the fence, you then don’t yell at that person but simply get the fence fixed, acting as it was you who did it, because it was. Remember, you are One. If backing into the fence continues then help practicing backing up.

The joy of going to a workplace and performing a job is valuable and key, but if you raise a family you’d better make sure your offspring are properly cared for. Which means sitting down and do your financial planning together. Work as the team you supposedly are and stop putting self first. In the long run you will be a lot happier.

Life requires a stable base to operate from. When the base is unshakable you can really create success. Actions with long term pro-survival effects are those most valuable.

Then the “equality” of the work space might solve itself.

Men, Freedom and Happiness

Growing up and seeing different social, political and geographical environments, never mind travelling all over, have been a great learning experience. For a young boy the world can be a huge adventure waiting for him to conquer it.

In my case I grew a certain moral aptitude and ineptness at the same time. Maybe it’s a normal thing with youth to feel superior to the foolish older generation, whom I felt were responsible for all the wrongs not yet resolved. Which, much to my surprise, few really seemed to care about. Maybe because they appeared stagnated due to no longer reaching to right the world, or whatnot. For me that brought the urge to go out and face the unknown and improve conditions.

Time does offer the opportunity to see the errors of ones way, if one is willing to look, and see the steadfast viewpoint which in the long run turned out not to be pro-survival. And if one, like me, had grown up with the certainty that I was mostly right in my decisions, I could easily afford seeing when I was wrong and adopt a new view.

In my mind the greatest lesson have been realizing that we are all here together on this small planet and most of us want to do right but sometimes lack the proper know how. We all have, at least at some point, dreams we wish to fulfill. One of them is to right the wrongs in the world.

The methods of how to go about righting the wrongs of the world varies drastically. For some individuals it means ample use of force. As in genocide, or just making others know how powerful you are by placing as many barriers for others as is possible.

For some it means suppressing the views of others as they might bring change, not caring what change it is, just to ensure no change is approaching. The fear of facing the unknown is just too much in a world where you are mostly a victim.

Regardless of what we dream of, big or small, we have this dream of pursuing what makes us happy. It just should not be at the expense of others. Yet how do we accomplish our goals in a world where others dream of the opposite?

I found some basic ideas that serve me well:

  • Do not create an effect on others that you are not willing to experience yourself
  • Take actions that help as many as possible and hurt as few as possible
  • Consider the effects of your action into the future
  • Be responsible for your immediate environment, which is limited to what you feel is Your environment

The latter part about responsibility I know is a no-no. The R word is a huge mistake and should be removed. But the fact of the matter is that one is actually only as successful as one assumes responsibility. And the success only lasts as long as it is helping as many as possible and hurt as few as possible.

Responsibility means that one does not wait for that unknown person to set things right, one does it simply because one knows about it, or suspects it and investigates and acts accordingly.

There seldom is someone else who will correct the thing you see wrong in life. If I’ve learned one thing in life that is that most wrong things are wrong because of that assumption. Oh, I know! It’s not always pleasant, in fact it can be a huge interruption to your lifestyle!

But that’s no valid excuse to let things stay wrong! Get off your butt and do something about it!

Oh, once you start putting in order in your environment the first thing that will happen is that all those things which run counter to your order will make themselves known. Screaming and crying, those who oppose order will complain. Often loudly!

That then is a good sign that you are putting in order. Because if there is no noise after a while, you are not putting in much order.

Whatever you do, don’t stop, simply continue putting in order and sooner or later you will see how things calm down.

When you put in that order make sure you consider what is helping as many as possible and stopping as few as possible.

The best decisions comes from a mind that is at great peace. One filled with compassion for his fellow man. A man at war is not compassionate, or he’s a fool thinking that violence solves anything. It never has. Education is the greatest tool ever to walk this earth. Always be of a mindset to learn every day. Allocate time to learn about your fellow man. Discover the real why someone is fiercely disagreeing or opposes you.

In all of that discover who you really are and be true to yourself, and you will find that personal freedom and happiness is possible.