How to Celebrate Thanksgiving in the Midst of Toxic Politics and COVID-19 Lockdowns

 

How to Celebrate Thanksgiving in the Midst of Toxic Politics and COVID-19 Lockdowns

 

“War is over. If you want it.”—John Lennon

If ever there were a year filled with an abundance of bad news and a shortage of good news, 2020 would take the prize. Between the toxic political theater, pandemic scares, nationwide lockdowns that smack of martial law, a rollercoaster economy, and the ever-present menace of the police state, it’s been a hard, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning kind of year overrun with too much hate and too little tolerance.

It’s been a year in which tyranny took a few more steps forward, freedom got knocked down a few more notches, and politics and profit margins took precedence over decency, compassion and human-kindness.

Now we find ourselves at this present moment, overwhelmed by all that is wrong in the world and missing the fellowship of family and friends kept apart by COVID-19 restrictions and concerns.

No wonder this Thanksgiving finds so many struggling to reflect and give thanks for what is good. After all, how do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded? How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day? How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?

Here’s what I’ve learned from living in a small community (population 1500) for the past year: you don’t have to agree on politics, or subscribe to the same religious beliefs, or have the same demographic makeup in order to live peaceably with one another.

These small-town people don’t have a preponderance of fancy cars or advanced degrees or six-figure salaries or committees aimed at discussing problems to death, and yet they have mastered the art of getting along. They make no secret about their views on politics and religion and anything else on their minds, and yet they remain friendly—neighborly—respectful of those with opposing views, even when they wholeheartedly disagree.

Yes, America, there is life beyond politics and it can be wonderful if you just give it a chance.

Here’s what I suggest: this Thanksgiving, do yourselves a favor and turn off the talking heads, tune out the politicians, and take a deep breath. Then try this exercise in gratitude: find something to be thankful for about the things and people in your community for which you might have the least tolerance or appreciation. Instead of just rattling off a list of things you’re thankful for that sound good, dig a little deeper and acknowledge the good in those you may have underappreciated or feared.

When it comes time to giving thanks for your good fortune, put your gratitude into action: pay your blessings forward with deeds that spread a little kindness, lighten someone’s burden, and brighten some dark corner.

Engage in acts of kindness. Smile more. Fight less. Build bridges. Refuse to let toxic politics define your relationships. Focus on the things that unite instead of that which divides.

Do your part to push back against the meanness of our culture with conscious compassion and humanity. Moods are contagious, the good and the bad. They can be passed from person to person. So can the actions associated with those moods, the good and the bad.

Even with COVID-19 restrictions in place throughout the country, there is still so much good that can be done to help those in need.

Be a hero, whether or not anyone ever notices.

Acts of benevolence, no matter how inconsequential they might seem, can spark a movement.

“Each of us has an inner hero we can draw upon in an emergency,” concludes psychologist Philip Zimbardo. “If you think there is even a possibility that someone needs help, act on it. You may save a life. You are the modern version of the Good Samaritan that makes the world a better place for all of us.”

All it takes is one person breaking away from the fold to change the dynamics of a situation. “Once any one helps, then in seconds others will join in because a new social norm emerges,” notes Zimbardo.

This is what Zimbardo refers to as “the power of one.”

“If you find yourself in an ambiguous situation, resist the urge to look to others and go with your gut instinct,” advises Melissa Burkley in Psychology Today. “If you think there is even a possibility that someone is in need, act on it. At worst, you will embarrass yourself for a few minutes, but at best, you will save a life.”

In other words, don’t turn away from suffering. Even smiling at a stranger in these fearful times can be a revolutionary act.

All it takes is one person to start a chain reaction.

For instance, a few years ago in Florida, a family of six—four adults and two young boys—were swept out to sea by a powerful rip current in Panama City Beach. There was no lifeguard on duty. The police were standing by, waiting for a rescue boat. And the few people who had tried to help ended up stranded, as well.

Those on shore grouped together and formed a human chain. What started with five volunteers grew to 15, then 80 people, some of whom couldn’t swim.

One by one, they linked hands and stretched as far as their chain would go. The strongest of the volunteers swam out beyond the chain and began passing the stranded victims of the rip current down the chain.

One by one, they rescued those in trouble and pulled each other in.

There’s a moral here for what needs to happen in this country if we only can band together and prevail against the riptides that threaten to overwhelm us.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there may not be much we can do to avoid the dismal reality of the police state in the long term—not so long as the powers-that-be continue to call the shots and allow profit margins to take precedence over the needs of people—but in the short term, there are things we can all do right now to make this world (or at least our small corners of it) a little bit kinder, a lot less hostile and more just.

It’s never too late to start making things right in the world.

 Rules for Radicals Everyone must leave something behind

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

As we travel through this life we have been so graciously  Given “We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

If we have not yet come to the understanding of our indoctrination yet as a people or as individuals of humanity  let us do that today and come to and understanding of the truth of our slavery, it matters not what color race or creed we hail from we have grown comfortable in the ways of the governed.

And have failed to become the unique and beautiful beings we were born to be 

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED : is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”

“If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

I say this in a sense of feeling I to have lost my way to whom I was born to be .

It is true that Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

In our indoctrination as Americans we must come to see thew truth in that false idealism of whom we are as citizens of our world as free citizens of it, The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

It is said that governments of this world are destroying the planet and our own lives in a sense this is true but no one alone can mislead or destroy a country or our world unless we are all accomplices in the destruction of it it not a matter of good and bad but of truths .

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.

“It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral;”

MANY MAY SAY I AM A LAIR “To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.”

Understand the world we live in the governments that rule the people of all faiths colors and creeds in this world “In America Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.”

The Establishment AKA the Governments of this world rule by the consent of the governed indoctrinated to conform to the ways of the establishment of the times “Our main problem is a lack of understanding of what it means to be human and that we are not separate from nature.”

In learning to become the change I wish to see in our world I have had to ask myself these questions knowing all to well what I have been taught by the educational systems of my time “What is the meaning of life?" "What is consciousness and the mind?” "Why am I here?" “What is my relationship to God and the universe?" These questions have been asked for centuries, but they are irrelevant to achieving social progress. These are unanswerable questions because they don’t have referents in the real world. The posing of such ambiguous questions doesn’t express concern for fellow human beings, or a desire to elevate their condition. Such musings are gibberish in terms of practicality, and as impotent as wailing over an injured person instead of seeking medical attention for them.”

“Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith....Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.”

The truth is “People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others.”

“The great American dream that reached out to the stars has been lost to the stripes. We have forgotten where we came from, we don’t know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. Afraid, we turn from the glorious adventure of the pursuit of happiness to a pursuit of an illusionary security in an ordered, stratified, striped society. Our way of life is symbolized to the world by the stripes of military force. At home we have made a mockery of being our brother’s keeper by being his jail keeper. When Americans can no longer see the stars, the times are tragic. We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful new world; we will see it when we believe it.”

“One may reasonably ask: Why do people cling to the values and practices of the past, when they so obviously no longer work? Long-standing thought patterns are hard to overcome because they often appear to serve the interests of the individual, and old ways of thinking are simpler and easier to handle. In a two-valued way of thinking, as in good and bad, right and wrong, love and hate, cause and effect, very little logical analysis is involved.”

A part of our indoctrination is based in are faith “Most churches make people feel guilty about natural human inclinations, making them feel dependent on the church for forgiveness. Religion focuses on unresolved human problems of insecurity, shame, fear, and wish fulfillment, and offers hope for a better life in the next world. Science offers people the tools of reason and knowledge to help build self-reliance and free people from mythology and simple wish fulfillment.”

“Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality.”“The only limitations on the future of the humankind are those we impose upon ourselves”“Unfortunately, we tend to support basic values and traditions that reflect the past, without questioning their appropriateness to the present or the future”

“We can build rockets to explore outer space and enhance the quality of life on Earth, or we can use them to destroy other nations.”“Either we learn to live together in full cooperation or we will cause our own extinction.”“Today everything is so complex as to be incomprehensible. What sense does it make for men to walk on the moon while other men are waiting on welfare lines, or in wars around the world  killing and dying for a corrupt dictatorship in the name of freedom?”

“They have seen the almost unbelievable idiocy of our political leadership—in the past political leaders, ranging from the mayors to governors to the White House, were regarded with respect and almost reverence; today they are viewed with contempt. This negativism now extends to all institutions, from the police and the courts to “the system” itself. We are living in a world of mass media which daily exposes society’s innate hypocrisy, its contradictions and the apparent failure of almost every facet of our social and political life.”

“In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of “the common good” and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed.”

Many speak of Revolution or revolt I tell you this “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so future-less in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.”“Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.”

As I have grown older and had the opportunity to speak out to lead and write of those experiences it is in my opinion “What the present generation wants is what all generations have always wanted—a meaning, a sense of what the world and life are—a chance to strive for some sort of order.”

“A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.”

Thus the greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. 

To find this true change we seek people must come to see We are not here concerned with people who profess the democratic faith but yearn for the dark security of dependency where they can be spared the burden of decisions. Reluctant to grow up, or incapable of doing so, they want to remain children and be cared for by others. Those who can, should be encouraged to grow; for the others, the fault lies not in the system but in themselves.”

Non-violence is the key to changing our world

“What is the alternative to working “inside” the system? A mess of rhetorical garbage about “Burn the system down!” Yippie yells of “Do it!” or “Do your thing.” What else? Bombs? Sniping? Silence when police are killed and screams of “murdering fascist pigs” when others are killed? Attacking and baiting the police? Public suicide? “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun!” Is an absurd rallying cry when the other side has all the guns.”

To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis—will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means. But if one lacks the luxury of a choice and is possessed of only one means, then the ethical question will never arise; automatically the lone means becomes endowed with a moral spirit. Its defense lies in the cry, “What else could I do?” Inversely, the secure position in which one possesses the choice of a number of effective and powerful means is always accompanied by that ethical concern and serenity of conscience so admirably described by Mark Twain as “The calm confidence of a Christian holding four Aces.”

“Whenever the word power is mentioned, somebody sooner or later will refer to the classical statement of Lord Acton and cite it as follows: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In fact the correct quotation is: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We can’t even read Acton’s statement accurately, our minds are so confused by our conditioning.”

We live in a demented world today “The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.”

“In which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.”

We must all leave something behind stand and be counted decide no longer to be governed but to be free 

For there is no Apprenticeship for freedom you are free or you are not ,“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom

—Lucifer.

I am Joseph F Barber / I am an American Patriot...part of the Grassroots Movement of bloggers spreading the truth the media will not. A Freelance Syndicated Writer, Editor, Author, Activist, Blogger, Tradesmen,Veteran, PTSD Survivor, Gas and Diesel Mechanic.

“A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as I climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the "real" top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.

Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, "Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?" Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. "Because it's there." Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. Paradocically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare - an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.”

People are Herd Animals

 People are Herd Animals

Reason vs. Instinct

Has the World gone Insane?

We humans like to think of ourselves as beings of reason and logic. We like to believe that we have "common sense" and that a reasonably intelligent and sane person wouldn't likely do something or believe something that he or she knows or should know is stupid. Nonetheless we see examples everywhere where people do things and believe things that are far below their capacity for logic and reason. We look around and say to ourselves, "People can't really be that dumb!" yet every day they continue to be that dumb? I believe that I have found the answer as to why people perform below their intellectual capacity. The answer is that people are herd animals, and that when behavior is viewed in relationship to the herd mind, a lot of things can be explained and understood.

For example, ever have a Jehovah's Witness, Hare Krishna, or other member of cult religion come to your door to try to convert you to their way of believing? Have you ever had a discussion with them and come to the conclusion that no matter what you said, no matter how good your reasoning and logic, that there was no way that you were every going to have a meeting of the minds with this person. You can be right and the subject of your discussion so obvious that a dog with a note in his mouth could win the argument, yet this person can't comprehend it. And it's not that the cult member is to stupid to understand obvious reality. They may have a college degree, a good high tech job, and be a member of Mensa. You might even be able to discuss the mathematics of why time slows down as you approach the speed of light, yet they remain unconvinced that world is round. How is that possible? It's obvious, yet they can't see it. Why? Why? Why?

We have already established that they are smart enough. They have the brain power to comprehend what you are saying. There's not a shred of doubt that you are right and they are wrong, so wrong that you can't believe that they actually believe what they believe. What's even more confusing is that this cult member is as adamant about his beliefs as you are about yours. The absolutely can't understand why you don't want to give up your worldly possessions and commit suicide to join the space aliens hiding behind the Hale-Bop comet. Who would not want to join the space aliens?

The problem is everywhere. It's not just the Jehovah's Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, Branch Davidians, Mormons, New Agers, and Republicans. The insanity is everywhere. Government agencies make bizarre decisions. Politicians pass bizarre laws. Judges make bizarre rulings. Corporations enact bizarre rules. You hear stories about girls who are straight A students being expelled because they brought Midol to class to control menstrual cramps. Jack Kevorkian, a saint in the Church of Reality, is in jail. The Kansas Board of Education wants to equate Evolution and Creationism. Teenagers, who know better, are still getting hooked on cigarettes. Men wear neck ties, and women wear high heels. What is going on here? Did someone poison the drinking water? How is it possible for reasonable people to behave this way?

The Inner Workings of the Mind

If we assume that people are behaving far below their capacity to reason, then we have to conclude that reason is not the dominate aspect of the mind. We have to conclude that there are other factors in the brain that are dominate over our reason and these other factors cause us to behave and believe what we do. We have to give up the assumption that because we are human and intelligent, that intelligence rules. Clearly it doesn't. But if it doesn't, what does?

What does control behavior and belief indeed? You may find the answer to that question shocking. The answer may be so shocking that you find it hard to accept. At this point I want to invite you to do a little mental experiment with me. As you read the rest of this article, I want you to try an old hippie LSD trick without having to actually take LSD. I want you to separate you mind into several independent threads of conscious. Most people are only away of or are used to paying attention to a single voice or thread of consciousness and haven't learned how to use multiple voices to comprehend new ideas. In this article I will attempt to instruct you in a new way of learning and apply that new way of learning in real time to understanding your own mental processes. This is actually fun. It's like solving a new kind of puzzle. And it's not very hard to learn.

In order to multitask your brain I will create a series of different voices in you mind and give them names. As I create these voices, you will hear them talking. Each voice will have a different tonal quality so as to distinguish them from the other voices. As you read these words, a voice is speaking them to you in your mind. We will call that thread, "The Reader". As you read these words the Reader creates a voice in your mind which you imagine is my voice talking to you. I have a low deep voice like Barry White. Do you hear it? No, I have a high squeaky voice like Pee Wee Herman. You hear that? If you really want to here my voice you can go to my Sprint Sucks page and hear what I really sound like. Pick a voice. That will be the voice of the Reader and represent my voice.

The second voice will be the voice of "The Critic" which will be your voice. As you read my words here and hear my voice in your head, you will hear your voice in your head talking back to me. "Who the hell is this guy? Is he trying to fuck with my brain? What is he really up to? And what's the LSD stuff about? What makes him so smart? Was he sent by God or the Devil? Republicans are not a cult! You Liberals are the ones that are brainwashed! Hey, this is fun!" The Critic character is you talking back to me as if we are having a conversation. In your mind you hear your voice and my voice arguing about what you're reading here. You can't believe everything you read. You have to have someone standing guard to evaluate and filter the information that comes into your mind and to relate it to what you know and believe. The critic is the gateway that guards the mind.

The third thread of consciousness will be "The Feeler". The Feeler won't have a voice because it doesn't actually say anything. It is the emotions you are experiencing as you read this. As I tell you things you will feel good about the things that you agree with or find interesting or amusing. You will feel angry or resentful towards things you don't agree with that offend your system of beliefs or the values you hold sacred. As you read these words you will experience emotions about the ideas presented here. It's the same as what happens when you read anything. The only difference here is that you are aware that what you are reading is creating an emotional thread of conscious, the Feeler, in real time that is coexisting with at least two other threads, the Reader, and the Critic. And these threads all exist at the same time, and you are aware of all three simultaneously. How do you feel about that?

At this point you should observe an order of causal events that is taking place. As the Reader reads these words, your mind creates a voice, my voice, which is speaking to you. As you hear me talking, the Feeler reacts to my words and created emotions about what I am saying to you. The emotions drive the Critic to respond to the Reader that the Feeler also reacts to. If the Feeler experiences strong emotions, it compels the Critic to respond in a manner so as to cause the Feeler to feel comfortable with itself. What the Critic says is for the benefit of the Feeler. I would now ask you a question. In your mind, is the Critic a slave of the Feeler? Can the Feeler be compared to a nagging spouse that makes the Critic do it's bidding? Ponder the notion.

You are now observing the Reader, the Feeler, and the Critic and how they interact. You are observing the chain of events where the Reader says something, the Feeler reacts to it, the Critic responds, and the Feeler feels something else. Now that you are aware of these three threads of conscious and how they are processing this stream of information in real time, what is it that is aware? What it is that's watching all this? If you are now, at this moment, observing three threads of consciousness simultaneously, then who is the observer?

The fourth thread of consciousness will be called "The Watcher". The Watcher may or may not have a voice depending on how your mind works. In my mind that Watcher sees pictures. The way I experience it is that the Watcher sees the Reader as a person with a generic face that is speaking to me. The Critic is me listening to the Reader speak. The Feeler is like someone else's kid who is some screaming 6 year old brat that won't shut up and want's it's way all the time. The Watcher is like a TV camera that's taking it all down. And it's all happening in a place that is usually some place where I do deep thinking and feel good about. Your experience may vary.

The Watcher is like the "higher self". This fourth thread of conscious is that part of you who is observing the other three threads process this information in real time. The Watcher is also self aware and can watch itself watching itself. It's kind of like defining the word "Recursion" in the dictionary by saying, "See Recursion". In addition to being the Watcher and watching the other threads, the Watcher is that part that makes decisions and controls the updating of the "Master Database" which is the accumulation of who you are. It might be compared to the Board of Directors in a corporation or the Congress of the United States. Oh my God! A Congress in my brain? The Feeler just vomited!

The Watcher is also the one who determines "The Prime Directive" which are the guiding principles that matter in your life. It determines your "morals" or "what you believe in" and important principles and lessons that guide your life. It integrates your experiences and evaluates them and gives them meaning so as to create the pattern for future decisions. The patterns for your future decisions is what makes up your Master Database. The Master Database stores information about decisions so as to create a pattern of behavior.

The advantage of storing patterns of behavior in your Master Database is to relieve your mind of having to figure out what to do every time you face a situation. Instead of going to the effort of thinking, you access the pattern. That frees up the Watcher so that it can move on to new problems. Remember the first time you ever drove a car? It was terribly complex. You had to deal with the gas and the brakes and the steering and other traffic and traffic lights and other cars and what if you hit someone or a cop sees you. It's amazing you made it down the road at all. Now you drive somewhere and it's so automatic that you may not even remember the experience of just having driven somewhere. That's because it's stored in the Master Database.

When things go along as usual, you are on cruise control. But if something unusual occurs, something that is inconsistent with the Master Database, the Feeler sounds the alarm. The Feeler is the thread of consciousness that compares the data input streams with the master database and creates the appropriate emotions to summon the mental resources to deal with the input that fails the pattern tests in the master database. You're driving down the road and suddenly some idiot runs a red light. The Feeler wakes up the Watcher indicating that an executive decision is needed immediately.

Usually the Feeler doesn't need to wake up the Watcher. It just gets annoyed and nags the Critic to spout the dogma stored in the Master Database by the Watcher. For example, if I say to you, "Ronald Reagan was the greatest president who ever lived." Or if I said, "Bill Clinton was the greatest president who ever lived." One of those two statements will alert the Feeler, who is driven by the Master Database, to cause the Critic to state, "He's got to be out of his fucking mind!" This happens because the information about Clinton and Reagan are already stored and the reaction causes a predictable response.

Thus, how you feel about Reagan and Clinton is based on the information stored in your Master Database rather than what you think about them. The only time you think about them is if a situation comes up that exceeds the limits of the information stored in the Master Database. That requires the Watcher to make a decision and update the information there. Remember when Reagan admitted he really did trade arms for hostages? Remember when Clinton admitted he really did have inappropriate sexual contact with Monica Lewinsky? Some of what you felt was the stress of the Feeler trying to store and integrate information that doesn't agree with the contents of the Master Database and requiring the Watcher to sort out conflicting information about who's good and who's evil.

You may wonder at this point how many threads of conscious are there. Probably thousands. But for the purposes of discussion and experience here we'll limit it to talking about 4 threads and a database. That's enough to give anyone a headache. You might want to take a break at this point and get a couple aspirin. This is deep and it's going to get deeper. I'll try to keep this as simple as possible, but it's a very complex subject. It's out of the box and beyond the rim. There's nothing in the "Master Database of Global Human consciousness" to attach it to. (That's a hint as to where this conversation is going.)

Why is the Inner Workings of the mind Relevant?

I'm glad you asked that question. This is relevant for a number of reasons and it is necessary to lay the groundwork for the ideas I'm presenting here. It is important for you to understand the relationship. It's not only important to understand how brains work in general, but how your brain works in particular. The reason this is necessary is because all of our brains are imperfect tools. These imperfections are significant defects that cause us to form the wrong conclusions about the nature of reality. There are aspects of our brain that we all share that make it very difficult to accurately assess certain specific information and that in order to understand it, we must first address our own mental flaws and program around the bugs.

Additionally, all knowledge is relative. We understand what a tree is in respect to it being a plant, that it is made of wood, and wood is hard, and trees are big, and they grow, and they have leaves, and they die, but they live a long time. All these aspects of understanding a tree comes from relating it to other things we know. When a new born baby sees a tree, it doesn't comprehend it as a tree. The image is focused on the back of the eye, and it is transmitted to the brain where it is compared to an empty database. Nothing in the baby's mind says "tree". In order to understand "tree" the baby has to accumulate a lot of information to understand what "tree" means. Without the information in the database, tree means nothing. Likewise, to understand the forces that override reason, one has to first understand and experience the inner workings of the brain in real time.

I'm going to say things here that are true, but are in direct conflict with your Master Database. These are ideas that your mind will actively defend itself against unless your Watcher updates this information. We humans collectively have a lot of bad data in our databases which was placed there both as a result of cultural and tribal forces and survival instincts. If I just presented this information directly to you, your automatic processes would prevent you from understanding it without you ever being aware that this mental process was taking place. I have a theory that if you can be aware of your mental processes and observe them trying to kill an uncomfortable idea, that you will learn a new trick that will allow your brain to function beyond it's design limits.

I am not asking you to accept anything I say here on faith. In fact, I discourage the belief in anything that can't be tested. That's why I am trying to set this up as an experiment that you can conduct yourself of your own brain and to learn for yourself from your own direct observation so that you know first hand the resources and limitations of your own mind and can develop techniques that allow you to use your brain as a more effective tool. There are situations I face every day where I have to use my brain in areas that are flawed. But I have been able to understand my mental deficiencies and to work around them.

What we are talking about here is why other people believe in and do things that look to us to be incredibly stupid. How many times do we see someone with a personal problem that is so obvious to everyone except for the person involved, who absolutely can not understand it. Sometimes they get past the problem and they themselves can't understand what took them so long to figure it out. It seems that everyone has the ability to see everyone else's problems but their own. What does it take to isolate oneself for oneself so that a person can observe themselves the way everyone else sees you? If you can do that, you can see yourself the way you really are without your brain playing tricks on itself to protect you from a reality that you find unpleasant and are not prepared to accept. The only difference between seeing yourself the way you really are and the way others see you is that they don't have your personal mental barriers. Likewise, you can see them the way they are because you don't have their personal mental barriers.

Mental barriers are not limited to individuals and personal behavior. There exist mental barriers that are tribal mental barriers that are shared by all members of a tribe. For example, it is perfectly natural for Moonies to believe that Sun Myung Moon is God. That is part of their tribal database. If you are a member of that tribe, you believe Moon is God. If you don't believe Moon is God, the tribe throws you out. If being a member of the tribe is more important than reality, you mind will trick you into believing that Moon is God and your mind will prohibit you from realizing that Moon is not God until you are ready to leave the tribe. No amount of reasoning will penetrate that barrier because logic and reason are not the dominate factors. Your Master Database is controlled by the Master Database of the Moonies. If your mind doesn't control that section of information then your Watcher can't update the information and you will be unable to assimilate information that is real.

Lets pretend that the Martians invaded the earth. They landed here in 1979 in Iran and took over the minds of Iranian students who brought the Ayatollah into power, eventually leading to Reagan being elected and everything that happened as a result of that. These Martians are invisible and invade the thoughts of everyone they contact. At this point every person on the planet has been touched by the Martians. If this were true, which it isn't (I hope), how would you know if what you were thinking was your own thoughts or the thoughts of the Martians? If you worked at it hard enough you could create a set of objective tests that would allow you to function normally in spite of the foreign consciousness. Dealing with the human brain isn't that different. Your brain has a hell of a lot more potential that your using, and you can learn how to tap into it. (No, in not with a Church of Scientology.)

Your Critic may be saying to your Watcher, "We'll that doesn't apply to me. I'm not a member of a cult." To that I say, yes you are. All of society is organized into tribes and we are all members of various tribes and have surrendered part of our Master Database to the control of those tribes. The human race itself is a global tribe and it controls much of what we believe, some of which is wrong. Because we are human and we are part of various tribes, we all have the invisible Martian inside us, messing with our minds. However, if we can reclaim our minds from tribal control, then we can use our reason to discover reality the way it really is and to feed real information back into the tribal mind so as to improve the entire tribe and all it's members. Which is what the Church of Reality is all about. To pursue reality the way it really is, in spite of the tribal mind.

Human Tribal Instincts are Usually Stronger than Logic and Reason

Millions of years ago humanoids were just beginning to stand upright. They organized into small groups allowing them to survive better as the males provided protection and hunted and the females raised their young. Over the centuries language skills developed which allowed individuals to talk to each other. Because ideas could be communicated, one individual could learn something new and pass that knowledge on to the next person without that person having to learn it on his own. Knowledge could be passed on by word of mouth allowing a person's knowledge to survive past his death. With this new knowledge others could build upon the work of others and create levels of technology far greater and any individual could create themselves. No longer did everyone have to reinvent the wheel. (I wonder how long that expression has been around?) Because of language, people could communicate and work together and there was shared knowledge or tribal knowledge. These communication skills allowed those who could talk to survive better than those who could not talk and our brains evolved for the purpose of language.

Because of language, people became dependent on each other. No longer were we truly individuals. We need each other to survive. In a sense we are part of a greater organism in the same way that bees are part of a hive. Although an individual bee is technically an organism, a single bee has no more chance of surviving than a single bee cell. I think it's more accurate to say that in the world of bees, that the hive represents the individual organism, and bees are merely cells of the hive.

Although humans are much more individualistic than bees are, we are more like bees than we're like spiders. We rely on each other for our survival. For example, I didn't make my computer, build my house, build my car, grow the food I eat, or make the clothes I wear. Very little of my reality was made by me. I wrote software that runs on millions of computers that allows my mental functions to work for other people. I am dependent on society and society is dependent on me. We share knowledge and we work together. In order to work together we have rules and we have governments that enforce the rules. We have trade and have developed currency so as to enhance our ability to trade. We have the ability to write and send email and data and our ability to share information has greatly enhanced our ability to survive.

But this shared knowledge has come at a price. In order for our species to survive, we have had to surrender part of our individuality for the tribal good. Many of our ancestors fought and dies in wars for the survival of our tribal culture. Our ability to survive as a tribal member has become a significant instinctive skill that is part of who we are and the knowledge we are born with. We all need the approval of the herd in order to have a sense of well being and to feel OK about ourselves. And for most people, it creates great mental anguish to be rejected or disconnected from the herd. The instinct to be tribal is so strong that many people will kill themselves as a result of separation from or rejection by the herd.

Because we live in an advanced society much of our knowledge comes from other people. Some of that knowledge is just plain wrong, but because the herd thinks it's true, we are expected to believe it. After all, it's not our nature to assume that we, as individuals, are smarter than the combination of thousands or millions of people who have believed things for centuries. But often an individual does discover a new truth or discovers that something the herd though was true is not true at all. When this happens knowledge is often lost because the individual submits to the will of the herd.

What is a herd?

A herd or tribe is any organization of two or more people who come together for any purpose. A herd can be as small as two people sharing an apartment to all of humanity. Most people belong to hundreds of herds and will move in and out of different herds throughout their lifetimes. A herd is any organization of people who share some common function. Herds include all religions, governments at all levels including neighborhood associations, sports fans, clubs, political parties, chat rooms, talk radio fans, Mackintosh owners, fellow employees, Mensans, hippies, bars, nerds, and schools. Each of the organizations have a set of rules and common beliefs. The members of the organizations all surrender part of their Master Database to the herd. The herd itself becomes a living organism much the same way a hive is a living organism of bees. And in many cases these tribal organizations are as real or more real than the individuals that make them up.

For example, if you are a Christian, you are expected to believe in Jesus. If you don't believe in Jesus, what's the point in being a Christian? As a Christian, you might join a specific denomination of Christianity and become a member of a specific church. As a church member, you are expected to attend church on Sunday morning. You are expected to dress up and give them 10% of your money. The preacher is in charge and you are expected to listen to the sermon. When he says to stand and pray, you stand and pray. If he leads the congregation in prayer, then you all pray together. When you sing, you all sing together. When he says stand, everyone stands. When he says sit, everyone sits. When he says to speak in tongues, someone will get up and speak in tongues. And when he says vote Republican, everyone votes Republican.

In order to be a member of the herd, the member has to surrender control of part of their thinking and decision making process to the group consciousness. In the case of clubs, the punishment for individuality is denial of membership. In the case of government they might take away your money or freedom. In the case of religion, you risk losing your eternal soul and roasting in Hell forever. Membership in the herd gives an individual a sense of community and family. An individual develops standing and social position within the tribe and that sense of group acceptance is necessary of the psychological well being of that person. An individual who would challenge the powers that be within the herd risks losing the benefits of and encoring the wrath of the herd. There is a price to pay, and if the individual isn't willing to pay that price then they have to accept the herd's domination of that part of their Master Database.

Under Construction - More to Come

I am Joseph F Barber I am an American Patriot...part of the grassroots movement of bloggers spreading the truth the media will not. A Freelance syndicated writer ,editor and author activist and Blogger,Tradesmen , veteran and PTSD survivor, Gas and diesel Mechanic

 

The War Against Will  

The modern world will allow you to join any of a thousand collectives, but it will punish you for standing on your own, as a self-willed entity. People who commit this crime understand that they are outlaws in the present world. And if at first they don’t understand that, the world makes sure they know.

The world as it is, then, is the enemy of will. This is nothing new, of course, governments have been at war against will since they began: How else can you get people to blindly obey you, to hand over half their income, and to thank you for it? People who possess a full and active will must be convinced to do things, and governments couldn’t function if they had to do that.

The present world is built around the restraint of will, and not just on the government level. Advertising, for example, is more or less devoted to implanting subconscious desires and subverting the will with them. In dysfunctional families, manipulating one another – whether by guilt, ridicule, being left out of Papa’s will or whatever – is the currency of the realm.

And so obedience, consumption and acquiescence have become cardinal virtues, and the avoidance of immediate pain the prime directive. As we might paraphrase an old apostle, this world’s God is the belly.

The Willful, For Whom Heaven And Earth Were Created

All human creativity functions on individual will. Everyone interested in creativity knows this, and here are just a couple of passages to make the point:

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

— Albert Einstein

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

— John Steinbeck

It is the active will of individuals that has created everything good in this world. Really, life comes down to a choice between creativity and entropy:

• The world (the realm of officialdom, acquiescence and so on) is an incarnation of entropy, winding down and collapsing once the fuel left to it by creative men and women of the past is burned out.
• The creatives, who are willing to take blows in defense of their willfulness, and who bless the world in myriad ways

The willful, then, are creativity incarnate; the universe is and ought to be dedicated to beings of their type. It should also be populated by beings of their type, and I think someday shall be.

This is not to say that entropic people can’t make their way out of entropy and join the creatives; in fact they can, and do, on a daily basis. Still, it is a gulf that must be crossed, and the only way across is to act on one’s own will, alone, and for purely self-generated reasons. That is the price.

The Automated War On Will

The great threat of the modern world is a system I call Descartes’ Demon, the Big Data/AI personalized manipulation system that is already in daily use. I held back talking about this for years, seeing that it was too much for people to bear, but the beast has progressed so far that I can’t see holding back any further.

The Matrix, as it turns out, was all too true, and its world is now the world of Facebook, Twitter and especially Google. The real-life version of The Matrix is functional, right now. (See here for explanation, or here for illustration.)

What personalized manipulation is really all about is the subversion of individual will. And if you don’t think it’s happening, pull up YouTube on your smart phone, then ask your friend to pull it up on his or hers: You’re already receiving personalized pages.

The world is deeply committed to passing this off as trivial and ridiculing those that don’t. But it isn’t trivial; it’s a present and actual war against free will.

We Are Inherently Creative

Humans are inherently creative beings. We cannot create matter out of nothing, but we can mold it to an infinite number and variety of uses. We are the fountains of new and beneficial action in the universe. And we ought to function that way.

I’ll leave you with a few words from Albert Schweitzer:

Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it… It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.

This is what we need… and we need it now.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

 

Money Is A Weapon of Mass Destruction

Money wasn’t always our enemy, of course; I’m old enough that I knew people who were alive before it was weaponized. But modern money – dollars, euros and so on – are so destructive that they’re threatening not just individuals, but Western civilization itself.

If that sounds a bit over the top, please read on. Before we’re done I think I’ll convince you otherwise.

I call fiat currency a weapon of mass destruction because it has caused far more widespread damage than chemical weapons ever have, and has assuredly destroyed more human potential than nuclear weapons. The nuke destroys horrifyingly but rarely; fiat money destroys minute by minute, day by day, over multiple decades and in shocking proportions.

How Money Destroys

How money destroys is not immediately obvious. We grow up learning to count it and spend it, then to make it, but few of us ever learn anything more about it, even in university-level programs.

Fundamentally, fiat currencies destroy because they hijack human will on a massive scale. Here’s how it happens:

1. Money (currency) is one half of every commercial transaction, and those transactions involve nearly every aspect of every life in the Western world, from birth to death. That’s immense scope.
3. Fiat currency is created at roughly zero cost, by governments and the friends of governments.
4. Money is used to buy all the necessities of life. Thus it is deeply and inherently motivating, and to more or less every human on the planet.
5. Because of the above, anyone creating new currency units can motivate millions of human beings: powerfully, on demand, and at almost no cost.

Think about this. People work for money, spending their lifetimes trying to find new and better ways to get it. They sweat from sun to sun for it. The people who create new currency units, however, make those millions of people clamor for their new dollars, thereby directing oceans of desperation and energy, as if by an invisible hand.

Yes, that’s a despicable position of advantage, but it’s more dangerous than just that. The lords of fiat have directed those oceans of energy and despair in horrific directions.

The Road Back To Serfdom

When you examine the motivations thrust on us by fiat currency, you see an overarching goal to bring us back to serfdom. How much of that is intentional and how much accidental I cannot say. But it is the overall direction.

Consider what we see after a century of fiat currency dominance: Never before have so many people worked so hard to display the illusion of prosperity, while remaining so deeply and precariously in debt.

I’m not just talking about poor people here; I’m talking about middle class and upper-middle class people, all across the West. And it’s important to see that it really was fiat currency that brought us here. Consider, please:

• • Credit reports, rigidly controlling the flow of new dollars to workers, require them to maintain high levels of debt. (Needless to say, the creators of the currency units are deeply involved with this process.)

• • Operators close to the currency creators get new currency (in the form of loans) that motivate armies of workers to build new skyscrapers for them. Merely by staying in the good graces of the fiat creators, stirring up the anthill to their benefit is easy.

• • The lords of fiat, maintaining loans for their clients, can dictate the actions of those clients. This is the primary function of interlocking boards of directors, for example. (It also helps to explain some notable recent events.)

• • Scientific research has been monopolized by the state and its myriad agencies. The inventors are perpetually begging for money that is created with a key stroke, and slaving to make the grantors happy. Science, then, has been hijacked… for free. (And again this explains some recent events.)

• • Wars have become economically painless. Even World War II required rationing and suffering from the populace. Not so these days; all the necessary money is created with a keystroke. The associated debt is just added to a pile that is fairly well ignored. (Thus we have pointless, 20-years wars and a D.C. swamp that perpetuates them.)

• • Welfare has become economically painless. Politicians have been able to spend rivers of money without consequence. The state, then, became a magic entity that could do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted. And assuredly, hundreds of millions of people believe this is so. As a result, people stopped taking responsibility for themselves (it’s easier that way) and yielded their will to the magic state… then defended their choice.

Trusting that you get the point, I’ll stop here. At the end of this line we see most people focusing only on short-term economic concerns, ignoring or evading the long term, and even hoping they’ll die before consequences arrive.

And yes, that is the fault of fiat currency.

What Now?

Ultimately, the great crime of fiat currency is that it steals the will of millions of people at once. And so we get out of this trap by reasserting our will.

Oddly enough, a serious number of us have a pretty good idea of how to exit this particular Matrix. That exit of course, is to use decentralized money.

If you want to use gold and silver, wonderful, but use it. Use it to buy and sell on a daily basis. If you don’t, the ability of the fiat overlords to motivate everyone, on demand and for free, remains unchanged.

The more potent choice is Bitcoin and a few other good cryptos. This is decentralized, mathematically certain, censorship-resistant money, and it’s transferable world wide for a trivial amount. All that really stands against it is fear.

Bear in mind, please, that I’m not interested in justice for the abuses done to us; that leads to the darkening of our characters; it isn’t worth it. On top of that, we simply haven’t the time and energy for it: We can escape our chains or we can seek vengeance, but we haven’t time for both.

So, there it is. Fiat currency has softened, redirected and abused the wills of millions of people. It has drawn Western civilization (even with its flaws the most benevolent and constructive in human history) to the breaking point. More or less all institutions within this civilization oppose its continuance.

If you want to change this, you’ll have to act. Jump into Bitcoin and crypto or start using gold and silver in daily commerce. For extra credit you can start home schooling or helping people who do.

Wide and approved is the way that led us downward to serfdom; narrow and despised is the way leading upward to the reclamation of will… and to the liberation that follows.

Make a move.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com