Do you love yourself? Do you feel worthwhile? Imagine doing this--->

[Moonbeam]

cwjerome: One of the beauties of our Constitution is it doesn't end conflict (that is impossible), it channels our problems into constructive ideas and solutions.

M: Can you say how it does this. I believe that conflict is caused by a schism in the self that can be healed. Thus there is no conflict for some and for others there is. Those who are in conflict with themselves will always contest with others, but those in inner peace will be happy even as slaves. I do not like the absolute of impossible and do not believe it is true. It is also not optimistic and constructive, in my opinion, something you also seen not to want to support.

c: But we have spent the last 25 years arguing "fake" issues and asking the wrong questions.

M: It would help me to have examples unless you mean the following to be, in which case I do not see the connection.

c: Since WWII Western thinkers said there is too much abstraction and sophistication. Complexity was the problem. Just give the bottom line. Keep it simple stupid. We became anti-philosophical and anti-theoretical, great enterprises of complexity were seen as the enemy. But trying to make the complex into the simple distorts and is not reflective of reality. We are distorted... out of synch, confused.

M: Why is what you say here true. I don't see it. I think wisdom is part thought, part heart, and part living experience, a balance of knowledge and intuition so to speak. I am also not exactly a Western thinker.

c: Now we are riding (suffering) on the ripples of a Post-Modern tsunami.

M: I have no idea what this means. I have no idea what post modern is. I like to deal with ideas as ideas not as labels whose meanings I don't know.

c: When we were told that reality is arbitrary, order was a myth, and man was helpless, our world shifted.

M: I guess I didn't get the message. I don't know any of that nor did I notice a shift.

c: Sure, call it a fad, a growing pain... but we are still feeling the aftershocks.

M: I don't call it anything.

c: We are operating with a scarred societal psyche that will take many more years to heal.

M: I think something is wrong with how we see things, yes, but I don't know what scar you see so I can't say much about this.

c: Today we read text with intent to disprove. We reconstruct. We are cynical... irony is our theme. We cleverly look for bad motives and use our smarts to criticize anything; everything. We use our energies to undermine ideas and people ("gotcha politics" etc), rather than to build and cultivate. We analyze to destroy.

M: I understand this and agree.

c: Will we regain our childlike wonder and ask pure questions, with enthusiasm and amazement? Can we see a rebirth of sincerity?

M: I do not know. I think sincerity is the ticket but I don't know how you can make people sincere. I belIEve that sincerity comes when people feel pain. A near death experience will open a few eyes, or the loss of all one values.

Sincerity is being serious.

c: Citizenship is dead and it's reflected in our debates. Everything has been reduced to "voting" and it's a LIE. The US was designed as a Republic, to be the great engine of inquiry, for citizens to learn and grow, together for the betterment of all... when we reason well we reveal the universe. Our Constitution and Spirit (ie. the people) both evolve and grow, but if they don't match it will fail. We are slowly unraveling. We have become ignorant of our role and afraid of the good.

M: Be of good cheer. When oppression exists even the bird dies in the nest. A saying

We live in a competitive society and competition is hate. We were made to feel like losers and children so as adults we pretend to win. We fear the good because it hides behind our self hate. Sad too because there isn't anything wrong with anybody. It is just a feeling, a feeling that is based on lies we believe deeper than anything else.

 

[Moonbeam]

Cool of course, but I'd rather people find ways to limit population or sustain huge populations as opposed to finding ways to create overpopulation while not providing for the means to support them.

Can you walk and chew gum?

 

[shira]

One of the beauties of our Constitution is it doesn't end conflict (that is impossible), it channels our problems into constructive ideas and solutions. But we have spent the last 25 years arguing "fake" issues and asking the wrong questions. Since WWII Western thinkers said there is too much abstraction and sophistication. Complexity was the problem. Just give the bottom line. Keep it simple stupid. We became anti-philosophical and anti-theoretical, great enterprises of complexity were seen as the enemy. But trying to make the complex into the simple distorts and is not reflective of reality. We are distorted... out of synch, confused.

Now we are riding (suffering) on the ripples of a Post-Modern tsunami. When we were told that reality is arbitrary, order was a myth, and man was helpless, our world shifted. Sure, call it a fad, a growing pain... but we are still feeling the aftershocks. We are operating with a scarred societal psyche that will take many more years to heal.

Today we read text with intent to disprove. We deconstruct. We are cynical... irony is our theme. We cleverly look for bad motives and use our smarts to criticize anything; everything. We use our energies to undermine ideas and people ("gotcha politics" etc), rather than to build and cultivate. We analyze to destroy. Will we regain our childlike wonder and ask pure questions, with enthusiasm and amazement? Can we see a rebirth of sincererity?

Citizenship is dead and it's reflected in our debates. Everything has been reduced to "voting" and it's a LIE. The US was designed as a Republic, to be the great engine of inquiry, for citizens to learn and grow, together for the betterment of all... when we reason well we reveal the universe. Our Constitution and Spirit (ie. the people) both evolve and grow, but if they don't match it will fail. We are slowly unraveling. We have become ignorant of our role and afraid of the good.

Is this a Scott Pakin plant?

 

[spittledip]

This is like bringing in the mongoose to kill the poisonous snakes in Jamaica.

 

[jackace]

This is like drilling for oil in the ocean at a depth of 5000 feet.

LOL!!

I like what you did there.

 

[rpanic]

This is what will get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbEDM5WZ68

 

[cwjerome]

[q] cwjerome: One of the beauties of our Constitution is it doesn't end conflict (that is impossible), it channels our problems into constructive ideas and solutions.

M: Can you say how it does this. I believe that conflict is caused by a schism in the self that can be healed. Thus there is no conflict for some and for others there is. Those who are in conflict with themselves will always contest with others, but those in inner peace will be happy even as slaves. I do not like the absolute of impossible and do not believe it is true. It is also not optimistic and constructive, in my opinion, something you also seen not to want to support.

I believe it channels problems into constructive ideas and solutions in a variety of ways, based on the strategic combination of revolutionary ideals: order (rule of law) and wholeness (government by the people), to being derived from a natural law that is compatible with Man's nature, and everything in between. It set up a republican ideal with open discourse and the governmental institutions modeled on normal mental processes. I could go on and on but this would require a separate discussion that would be difficult to complete, as all my premises from this post rest on a large body of philosophical deductions.

c: But we have spent the last 25 years arguing "fake" issues and asking the wrong questions.

M: It would help me to have examples unless you mean the following to be, in which case I do not see the connection.

One family of examples would be basic issues and decisions that effect the pocketbook. Arguments are framed, and we make decisions, based on economic outcomes to a superficial, self-interested degree as to make any authentic reasoning secondary or non-existent. If an automobile tax is up for debate, people tend to see only the $200 they'll save or pay that year and disregard the surrounding, larger issues. Likewise, the health care debate has centered around how much money it will cost people individually and as a whole, while philosophical constitutional questions (particularly 5th and 14th amendments) are barely represented.

Democracy in the Aristotelian sense is self-interested rule by the "lower class" and that is what people are doing acting out in simplistic, short-sided ways and seem to have forgotten the republican ideal of rule for society. Because of this political perversion, we also have a parallel oligarchy of small group self-interested rule as well. This is not how it's supposed to be.

c: Since WWII Western thinkers said there is too much abstraction and sophistication. Complexity was the problem. Just give the bottom line. Keep it simple stupid. We became anti-philosophical and anti-theoretical, great enterprises of complexity were seen as the enemy. But trying to make the complex into the simple distorts and is not reflective of reality. We are distorted... out of synch, confused.

M: Why is what you say here true. I don't see it. I think wisdom is part thought, part heart, and part living experience, a balance of knowledge and intuition so to speak. I am also not exactly a Western thinker.

You may or may not be a western thinker (although I would suggest you are more than you think), but I am talking in general terms about society as a whole, particularly US and British thinking since WWII. This is an observation -with others as well- derived from my experience as an educator and historian. I suppose much of it has to do with WWII itself, then the 60s turning polity on its head, and then the final Post-Modern assault that tears it from its head completely. I am not talking about scientific thought... the irony that technological understanding has skyrocketed while philosophical reasoning in the areas of man, the universe, and government is stillborn seems to go unnoticed.

As I mentioned previously in this post, it's a complicated argument that cannot effectively be discussed unless pulled out by itself and examined separately in-depth. Obviously this topic cannot split into 5 differentiated subtopics, and an online board such as this isn't a proper forum for these types of discussions anyway. You don't have to agree and it's not my intent to have people agree. When I write posts like this the goal is to have others form questions, big questions, that they can mull and perhaps explore. The goal is to have people start asking the right questions, the questions that will lead to deeper understandings instead of focusing on the topical Jerry Springer aspect of politics that only serves to blind us in our hamster wheels from the macro forces that are controlling our lives.

c: Now we are riding (suffering) on the ripples of a Post-Modern tsunami.

M: I have no idea what this means. I have no idea what post modern is. I like to deal with ideas as ideas not as labels whose meanings I don't know.

Post-Modernism is a topic worth investigating. The main idea has been basically discredited in most serious scholarly circles and is often seen as having been a necessary (and sometimes beneficial) bump in intellectual evolution, yet we seem to be grappling with many of it's damaging side-effects that I believe are more ingrained into our national consciousness than most people realize.

c: When we were told that reality is arbitrary, order was a myth, and man was helpless, our world shifted.

M: I guess I didn't get the message. I don't know any of that nor did I notice a shift.

Society got the message, be it subconsciously or overtly, over a period of time. What is written on the hearts of people is not always obvious to strangers and usually unknown to the person, without authentic, deep inner reflection. You may not know anything about what I said or notice a shift, perhaps because you may not analyze these issues in a "professional" way, but this is not about you personally it's about our culture and the national spirit.

c: Sure, call it a fad, a growing pain... but we are still feeling the aftershocks.

M: I don't call it anything.

That doesn't make it any less real... or false.

c: We are operating with a scarred societal psyche that will take many more years to heal.

M: I think something is wrong with how we see things, yes, but I don't know what scar you see so I can't say much about this.

Something to think about.

c: Today we read text with intent to disprove. We reconstruct. We are cynical... irony is our theme. We cleverly look for bad motives and use our smarts to criticize anything; everything. We use our energies to undermine ideas and people ("gotcha politics" etc), rather than to build and cultivate. We analyze to destroy.

M: I understand this and agree.

You agree, but why did it get this way and where is it taking us? I have made an argument that it's this way because of what I mentioned above and it can take us down a path of even worse government. The government is us and we are sick.

c: Will we regain our childlike wonder and ask pure questions, with enthusiasm and amazement? Can we see a rebirth of sincerity?

M: I do not know. I think sincerity is the ticket but I don't know how you can make people sincere. I belIEve that sincerity comes when people feel pain. A near death experience will open a few eyes, or the loss of all one values.

I do not think we need to feel pain to grow sincerity in our culture. Empathy yes. We need to transform how we look at the man, government, and the relationship between them

c: Citizenship is dead and it's reflected in our debates. Everything has been reduced to "voting" and it's a LIE. The US was designed as a Republic, to be the great engine of inquiry, for citizens to learn and grow, together for the betterment of all... when we reason well we reveal the universe. Our Constitution and Spirit (ie. the people) both evolve and grow, but if they don't match it will fail. We are slowly unraveling. We have become ignorant of our role and afraid of the good.

M: Be of good cheer. When oppression exists even the bird dies in the nest. A saying

Always.

We live in a competitive society and competition is hate. We were made to feel like losers and children so as adults we pretend to win. We fear the good because it hides behind our self hate. Sad too because there isn't anything wrong with anybody. It is just a feeling, a feeling that is based on lies we believe deeper than anything else.

I tend to not agree, but we have had that conversation...

 

[Lanyap]

They have to give it a competitive advantage over normal mosquitoes, so we must first create a super-mosquito to spread the genes.


Might be overkill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

Skeeter Viagra

 

[Zebo]

Cuts both ways. Scary when someone introduces a Ebola carrying mosquito. I prefer no genetic engineering course can't stop "progress" like those nukes which can wipe out all man kind in seconds or provide virtually unlimited power cheap.