The Fight Goes On

When one side or another in a conflict reaches its goal, the victors quickly lose cohesion, separating on some previously overlooked, ignored, or minor point unnecessary to consider in the previous battle. The new rift is now ready for exposure, giving energy to yet another engagement. All the while, new players enter the system, queuing up for their chance to enter independently or connect to one of the others. The need for some sort of contest--relevant or not--never seems to go away.

Punishment And Time

Humans have a misguided sense of justice when it involves long periods of time.

When a devastating act has been committed and the offender(s) is not caught within a few years, the victim(s) almost always move on. They eventually accept the situation as much as possible, reintegrating into their family and societal lives.

If the transgressor(s) is eventually discovered years later, prosecution might best be left alone. The case will bring back the old hurts, many of them having been healed. The main thing being accomplished is more pain—and for more people—as the victim(s) likely have new relationships of all kinds who will also be effected.

What might be best is to let the investigation continue in private, not to be revealed until after the perpetrators’ and victims’ deaths. The perpetrators’ legacy will then be the thing which is punished, and that’s not a trivial thing. Having someone’s permanent legacy tarnished can be a deterrent in and of itself.

At a certain point in time after the initial act the victims could be offered this arrangement. We might be surprised at how many would accept it.

The Greater Good

The goal of our physical existence should not simply be the prolonging of it. Rather, its goal needs to be the creation of the formulated and emergent self into a positive force for all, with the continuation of positive lingering on, well past the body's termination. If the continued existence of the body is in disagreement with this goal, others may sense its presence as one would a poison.

Friendly Advice

Increasing the frequency of friendly advice creates an inverse reaction to one's number of friends.

Broad Commonalities, Weak Intimacy

The more broad the definition of what people can find in common with one another, the less close they actually will be. Intimacy–of all kinds–needs very specific points of commonality.

Disappearing Dimples

It is an awful feeling to make someone's dimples disappear.

Sales And Capitalism

For the same reason a business is not structured so that the sales force runs the place, pure capitalism can not be unleashed on a society without controls.

Candle Power

So often in politics a hurricane is created to snuff out a candle.

Less Sleep Can Hurt

To reduce your time spent sleeping can be torture if your waking hours are frivolous.

Sad Favorites

Favorite things that don't ever change is sad.

Standardized Tests Fail To Hit Their Mark

We know that the results of standardized testing do not predict very well the test taker’s abilities in real life situations. At best (and not always), the tests only expose a potential ability. Despite this contradiction, for over a century we have still be using standardized tests to predict was a person can supposedly do.


The problem is due to a very simple fact: Where the brain stores knowledge is separate from the parts of the brain called upon to analyze and use that knowledge. When a standardized test is given, the person’s actual ability is not the thing being tested because the wrong part of the brain is being called upon during the test. In order to find out what a person can actually do, the test needs to include the actual activity and then evaluate the result, calling upon the parts of the brain that are involved in real life situations.

Omnipotence Is An Oxymoron

The concept of an omnipotent god is something like a relationship based on S&M. In a relationship where one is being dominant over another, it is assumed that the one taking the action is the one in control. This is not the case. The person to whom the punishment is being inflicted can stop it at any time and change the behavior of the other because the rules of the relationship include it. A safe word, or other indicator, by the recipient of the action calls it off in a instant.


Similarly, with the concept of an omnipotent god, it appears that the god is in complete control. But the rules indicate that humans can make this god express an emotion (angry or sad or happy) or action (curse or bless) by a human’s actions. This actually gives control to the human, not the god. The god can be controlled by a human by ‘making’ him angry or happy.
 
Omnipotence is an oxymoron.

Accepting Postive, Passionate Energy

When someone is happily passionate about what they are doing, observers can't help but be attracted, even when the activity is normally considered silly by the onlooker. Even if a witness normally thinks of the activity indifferently, the gleeful spirit being shared is captivating none-the-less. Some of us will fight this pull, feeling that we would be surrendering to a substandard instinct to accept interest in an activity previously dismissed. For those who don't accept the enticing sentiment being shared lose out on a wonderful boost to their own being, rejecting a free gift everyone should accept. Positive, passionate energy needs to be accepted when it's offered.

Keeping Students Together, Gifted Or Not

By separating out the ‘gifted’ students from everyone else, we are supposedly doing a good thing for them. If we change our thinking just a little bit, we can do something even better for them, and, at the same time, do everyone else a favor, too.


One of the things that we know is that being around people who are more intelligent or have different skills rubs off, even if it’s not intentional. Just being in the room and hearing the questions that are asked, the methods used to solve problems, and the overall positive attitude pulls everyone else in those directions and leads to increased understanding. People don’t improve very much while hanging around people who are close to their own skill level and with the same skill set(s). Yet, we still expect the non-gifted students to advance and even excel.

One of the other things we know is that one of the best ways for someone to learn something is to teach it, or help teach it. While it is true that not all people with clear knowledge can teach very well, the attempt does improve their own knowledge even more.

So, what would be best, it seems, is to institute an educational classroom environment where there is a mixture of students, with the ‘gifted’ ones helping and teaching others. If a ’gifted’ student’s teaching skills are lacking, then the instructor can play the lead role, or find someone else to do so, and let the ‘gifted’ student with poor teaching skills assist. They can then also learn from one of the other ‘gifted’ students who possess better teaching skills.

This student-as-teacher role only needs to be a small part of their curriculum. It doesn’t take much for this to work for everyone, where no one gets left behind, figuratively and literally.

Labels For Transferring Life

Why do we not use 'hunting' when it comes to fish? Or crabs? Is the difference between 'catching' and 'hunting' simply motive? Or is it the result--life or death? Are insects hunted or caught? What is the real difference between 'gathering,' 'picking,' and 'harvesting'?--What do we get from the use of  these different terms to describe the point-of-no-return in ending life in order to then absorb it and continue our own?

Europeans As Invasive Species

Without specifically excluding it, there is no accurate definition of "invasive species" that does not include the European migration to the Americas.

Destructive Capitalism

Capitalism is perhaps the most destructive force the planet has ever experienced.

Holiday Giving's Winners

Christmas has become a method of wealth distribution under the name of gift-giving. But the wealth being transferred in not from the giver to the receiver exclusively.

Because this transfer has attached to it a level of status and cultural support, gifts are being given to those who don't need them by those who can't afford them. To maintain the culture’s environment, its members must continue to accumulate debt in order to give these gifts, forcing them to work more than necessary to repay it. This fuels even more overall consumption by everyone. (Only a few of us can increase work without increasing consumption.)

The system’s goal is simply to move money around so some can snag a piece as it moves by. Whether people want to or need to is irrelevant. This goal allows those who produce things to take a piece of everyone's current wealth through the transaction, called profit. Lenders get some of our potential future wealth, called interest. The rest of us end up with less than when we started through the deal.

So, while we give money to the shops borrowed from the credit card companies in order to give an object to someone else (who’s doing the same thing), we all end up with less in the end, the difference going to the brokers of the deal--the shop owners and creditors, who encourage us to keep it up.

Happy Holidays.

Consuming The Earth's Resources

Humans can eat just about anything, but each culture chooses a basic narrow diet. Like locusts, we can easily destroy a food source before moving on in search of another. But we can take down many food sources because we can eat so many things. We can also make use the planet's other resources more widely than any other species, destroying them in the process as well.

We can destroy quite a bit of the planet by eating a resource or consuming one in some other fashion. We don’t really seem to care either way.

Five Free Days

Ancient Aztec and Egyptian calendars had five extra days not reconciled into their months. Could this “open” time be untagged purposely, indicating the possibility of new knowledge, a symbol that there was always more to discover? Was this an indicator of an acknowledged open wound in current knowledge?

GM Foods, Famine, And Fortunes

Why do we let the genes that produce food be patented? When too many foods are eventually produced this way, the control of the world lies in the hands of corporations. They can hold food for ransom, legally.

There will be a time when a famine is worsened because a corporation will insist on a price too high to pay. It will be argued that the corporation has the right to make a fortune if the unfortunate can't pay up. Millions will suffer and millions more will die, all in the name of protecting the patent of a gene.

The control of food has shifted from kings to corporations, and protected by the government, the corporations’ servant.

Rejoicing In White Space

Why do we get joy from the encounter with those pages at the end of a chapter that have only a few lines? The page has mostly blank space and we get to jump ahead quickly to another page with the sense of having gotten away with something. Even if we like the book we are reading, being able to take a sudden leap forward gives us a little boost. Did we somehow cheat and get away with it? Do we just like the break in the pace? Is there a need we get fulfilled to “progress” without effort, a feeling of accomplishment without toil?

Gateway To Sex

Kissing is a gateway drug to sex. But, then again, so is sight.

When Consumers Are Full

There have been many stories about how when pre- and post-holiday sales are disappointing for merchants it drives prices down too far. Within those stories there seems to be an assumption that consumers should continue to spend for anything as long as the price is low enough. "It's not that consumers don't want the things being offered," the sentiment appears to be, "they're just being stingy with their money and looking for bargains."


While traditional supply-and-demand economics has trained us to think this way, there is something else in play that is often overlooked. Consumers may simply be "full."

Acquiring things has limits. Even if prices drop to near zero, some items just will be seen as unnecessary at a certain point following a period of sustained acquisition during "good" economic times. Economic "supply-siders" will tout the notion that just about anything will drive an economy as long as there is enough of it--a large supply of something will drive down prices and offer an irresistible call to buy. It is the lowering-of-prices side-effect that is the important part of this ideology, not size of the supply, really. We just need to reach an "equilibrium" and things will begin to recover, goes the thinking.

This thinking hurts sellers, though, as they are often forced to close when price demands fall too short. In all the economic theories that we are taught, we forget that most things that can be categorized within a "system" will reach a limit eventually--a point of being full. No amount of tinkering with supply and prices will force a change in behavior from consumers when consumers just doesn't want anymore of whatever's being offered--when they've had enough, already. This state has not been unforeseen, it's just been responded to with different pricing methods to try and avoid the inevitable point of consumers being full.

For instance, pricing strategies have moved toward bundling of items in an effort to increase sales. Prices are set at two or three...or 10...for a certain price; items from socks to plastic bowls can rarely be bought individually any more; products that require an ongoing supply of something (i.e., ink) do not include much of it with each replenishment; contracts for service get extended (i.e., cell phones) for longer period of time; etc.

Growth, the buzz word that we all hear as the goal of any economic or corporate policy, has its limits. There will be declines and reversals. Policies never seem to take this into account. Therefore, when it happens, the sting is more severe than needed.

We need to change our thinking about economics and turn toward a goal of sustainability, not ever-increasing growth. No system can grow forever. Economics is no exception. If we wish to reduce the pain--the economic ups and downs--that is the result of our looking to unrestricted growth as a goal, we need to realize that the goal is the problem.

There has been next to no research on what it would take to build a sustainable economy. We need to get our best minds on the subject and listen to what they have to say. If we don't want to continue to experience the pain of uncontrolled growth as our only economic goal, we need to look to alternatives. It's long past time to do so.

Imminent Death Is Relaxing

People who know that they will die imminently (i.e., sick, death row, trapped) with no options are generally not fearful. If the knowing does cause fear, it is a temporary fluctuation of mindset quickly resolved back to a calm demeanor. Knowledge, even of your own death, can produce calm; ignorance can breed fear—even if the knowledge in question should be frightening. Now that we understand this, society has lost a major presumed reason for the death penalty—to see fear while being put to death, and the public witnessing the act to experience it, too.

High Intelligence?

The mistaken impression of high intelligence can be achieved by someone who makes a simple new discovery or is willing to say something publicly that is obvious but others are not willing to acknowledge, especially if that 'something' is cathartic by being publicly acknowledged.

Capitalism's Unequal Equilibrium

We have mistakenly given the term ‘equilibrium’ a positive connotation, which has produced those on the political right with a false sense of superiority about unfettered capitalism.


The equilibrium of a system is defined by the forces within that system, which push it toward its equilibrium point. (If that point is a moving target, it may never actually be reached—like a railroad car never catching the engine.) If the system's forces are aligned in such a way that a positive outcome is not its equilibrium point, then the system is flawed. But we never even look at that question because too many people think that the push for ‘equilibrium’ is valid on its own, not even bothering to look at, let alone evaluate, its destination.

The equilibrium of capitalism is one of unequal access and outcomes—some will be rich and powerful, others (the vast majority) will not; some will have access to resources, some (the vast majority) will not. This should not be considered a positive goal for any society.
 
Pure capitalism does have an equilibrium, but it's negative and it’s required by its structure.

Attention, Negative Or Positive

Even if something is not seen as generally positive, when someone is good at it or an expert in it, another person who could be an object of that attention is insulted if excluded. A woman might be a little insulted if a known womanizer doesn't at least give her some attention.

Dividing By Zero

Every time someone insists that the idea of a god be accepted, it's like demanding a mathematician divide by zero--any result is nonsensical.

Pathological Opinions

Human behaviors and emotions can be arbitrarily called pathological based on nothing more than current cultural opinions because there can be no objective model for an ideal human. We are always just the current result of evolutionary forces with no specific point.

The Outisde View Of Pleasure

When denied pleasures and interests, they are still sought. If found in places not seen by the majority, it creates separation from them, resulting in either admiration described as genius or loathing described as craziness.

Boiling Away True Meaning

After reading (or absorbing in some other way) a large or complicated set of information, we will often try and boil it down to something easily remembered or understood, which can seriously distort the original. We then mistakenly use the distorted version for future thought and action, which begins a chain reaction of errors.

Giving At A Distance

The current method of giving through charity is via groups and government. We do not want it to be personal. We pay others to do it in order to keep the classes apart and knowledge of those being helped in a fog. In this way a privileged person’s conscious can be kept unoccupied with society’s inequalities.

Belief No Path To Truth

Those who believe rather than think only find truth accidentally and rarely.

Non-Family Mentor

It may be that a healthy, wise, and confident person is more likely produced when a supportive, consistently available, and friendly non-family member is there be completely open and non-judgmental from childhood. This supporting adult could be a grandparent or an uncle or aunt, but it may be even more powerful if this adult is not related. The support, praise, and guidance will not be attached to family baggage, and allow the relationship to be seen by the child as in certain ways more "clean" and more legitimate because from an outsider, friendship is seen as earned rather than obligatory, boosting the child’s confidence in their self.

Repugnant Colors?

What if different odors were as different colors, noticeable but not necessarily repugnant?

The Inevitable Fight

Wherever religion is involved in government and a is substantial force in society, all peace is temporary. Religion on its own is a singular cause of conflict, continually gleaning forces for battle, only keeping the violent kinetic energy formed in the gathering's creation at bay while preparing for the next engagement.

No Need To Ask Who's There

Now that everyone has their own phone, no one needs to ask "Is so-and-so there?"

Do It Again, And Again, And Again...

If a student wishes to rediscover a known fact by doing an experiment verified a thousand times before, let the student do it. The knowledge gained by doing it will be useful to all future endeavors. A hands-on event is better retained and more likely to bring in future discoveries via serendipity.

Were Twins The First Talkers?

Is is possible that the first uses of language came from identical twins? If language development is evolutionary, then the first individual with language abilities would have needed someone to talk to--and understand the speech--in order to have the ability continue through a population. It is hard to see a single talker with no one who is able to understand having a procreative advantage.

Since we also know that language is much more easily learned as a child than an adult, the first child born with language abilities would see those abilities fade with age without being able to talk to others to "activate" it. In addition, by the time this individual reached an age of reproduction, the language ability would have largely passed and, therefore, communication with offspring who might also have the inherited genetic disposition for language, would likely not happen for the same reason it couldn't communicate with others when this individual was an infant.

However, if there were a set of identical twins born with the same ability for language, they could potentially talk to each other by developing their own language--as we know happens with modern human twins--and pass it on to their offspring. So, there is a high probability that the use of language by any of our ancestral populations was a side-effect of the birth of twins.

Battling Bell-Ringers

Imagine a Salvation Army bell-ringer and a homeless person with a kettle and bell standing side-by-side, each with a kettle asking for money. Who would get more? Who would get removed by the police and go to jail? Who would people look down upon with a denigrating attitude?

Employer As Adversary

It is odd that lawyers and "security experts" have convinced business owners and their managers that it is in their best interest to treat employees like adversaries, enemies of which to be wary and suspicious. At the same time, loyalty is demanded within this adversarial framework of distrust and animosity. How odd.

Initial Pursuit

When one thing is initially found in common between two strangers, hopes of having more in common are often quickly dashed. In trying to size up a relationship with someone new, if initial hopes are high and then immediately disintegrate, we will detach. But, if there was no initial commonality to pursue, then we drop the attempt abruptly when we could have much more in common that not. It's a shame that we give up or pursue so easily based on first impressions.

New Ideas Need Help

When one has new information or a new idea that contradicts conventional wisdom held by the general public, those in opposition will often concentrate on one small piece of the new whole, looking to place a wedge on which to pound. Because of this, it is possible that the more detail provided about the new 'thing' the more likely it is to be rejected by the general public; there will be more single points to pull out and assert as representative of the whole—a type of mis-logic similar to attacking an analogy instead of the thing being analogized.

Because the new intruder is presented as uniform, singular, and cohesive, an attack on one part of it can be presented and accepted as an attack on the whole. Whether the attacker's position turns out to be false because of its narrow focus or inaccurate assumptions, those who wish to dismiss the new thing are allowed to easily latch on to the attack anyway. Even if the attack is valid on the single point, it is mis-logic to invalidate the entire new thing based on the single attack. New ideas often need to be molded after initially presented in order to be confirmed.

So, to present something new and give it a good chance of survival in the general public, maybe it makes sense to brief and concise, giving little extraneous information that could lead to false and unrelated tangents and attacks.

Or, create and support a more educated public. 

Mis-Labeled Phobias

All fears of separating from the pack are phobias. We only label some of them clinically.

The Falsehood of Solo Success

No one can say "I did it" truthfully. Accomplishment is not a solo affair. No one succeeds alone. Achievements do not come through singular effort. We all tap into the assisting forces around us everywhere, even if we don't know it or acknowledge their presence. To claim independent triumph is an apparition, a mirage that disappears when examined closely.

Magnified Justice

Lady Justice should remove her blindfold and pick up a magnifying glass. Or maybe better yet, place the blindfold over one eye and hold the magnifying glass up to the other one, making the image of justice the balancing the ideas of mitigating prejudice and considering all available details.

Temporary Users Of The Planet's Stuff

What happened to all the Crayons ever made? All the pictures, melted blobs, shavings, etc. went somewhere, but where? What happens to everything we humans produce? We seem to be, in large part, temporary re-groupers of the planet's stuff. We parse and re-align for our temporary amusement, needs, desires, etc. and then put it all back, but in different places and different forms, altered and damaged. We are redistributors, modifiers, and destroyers of the planet's ingredients. Are we really anything more?

Knowledge Highlights Ignorance

The acquisition of knowledge includes within it the unavoidable consequence of increasing awareness of the depths of human ignorance.

Genetic Indulgence

If it turns out that the study of genetics is eventually able to predict what diseases are lined up to eventually kill us, can we then freely indulge in all the harmful things that wouldn't kill us until after the first predicted cause of our death?

Belief No Virtue

Belief is not a virtue. Belief is where thoughts go to die.

Forced Followers

You can't drag someone behind you and claim you're being followed as a leader.

Design With Limitations

Designing something new from scratch may take longer and be less effective than making a simple structure based on less-specific parameters and then modifying it to meet the more specific goal. This is because we, as humans, have a hard time making decisions when we have too many choices. If we start with nothing, there are too many choices to think clearly and gain focus quickly. Just getting started can be a major hurdle; we can get bogged down when deciphering choices and deciding among too many things.

However, if given a partially constructed starting point it can act as a catalyst. We can then move on from there more quickly because many of the decisions have already been made by the existence and limitations of the given starting point. So, a design team might need to be two independent groups that do not communicate at all—one that has the task of coming up with catalyst for the second group, which continues from there to meet the 'real' goal.

Analogy

Analogy proves nothing.

Connotaton

A word's connotation is often more powerful than its definition.