Well folks ... I have been away for awhile attending a family spat with my favorite group... The Sabian Assembly. But before I get started I want to pass along a comment that I got to help some of you who would like to make comments but have found it difficult to do on Google. I hope that this is helpful and that we can get some comments to discuss back and forth... that might be fun.
When I signed up for google account I seem to have neglected to link it to this site. I went to blogspot home and logged in. Now I can respond!!!
By nutmeg45 on Happy New Year... let's start the New Year Right on 1/12/11
The last week or ten days have been spent in lending my 40 some years experience in solving some problems within our group. And it seems that sometimes when one problem is solved another one is created. The situation brought out something that I had learned many years ago that I called Dick DeGeiso's Law of Social Relativity... or "I get big by making you smaller". This I learned from watching kids play in the schoolyard and the like. They call each other names that refer to some peculiarity of the person to make them feel "smaller" so that the name caller becomes "bigger" in his mind at least. This gives rise to "fatty", "bow-legged", "big nose" and the beat goes on and on. This gets more sophisticated as the combatants get older and more experienced. In fact it is a juvenile form of the tactics sometimes used in debates or arguments known as 'Sophistry'.
To see such tactics used by adults in a discussion is disheartening and is in no way a testimony to their maturity.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Obligation will save the Nation
In the beginning God created man and from man's rib he created women. And once they ate of the tree of life they procreated and started something that resulted in what is now a population of over 6 billion and growing. The first thing that man was aware of was himself. Perhaps he was aware of the cradling and protection of the womb, but certainly he became aware of his mother since she was vital to his emergence into the world. Then as he stretched his senses in all directions he became aware of the existence of others. But from this he developed the sense of "me" and that which is "not me". So this then lead to the idea of owning property.
From millenia ago everything became "mine" and in the harsh environment of the stone age man had to protect his property, his mate, his offspring, his cave, his tools and the list goes on. A rich man had many wives, many children, large flocks of animals etc..
This presented a problem because, then as well as now, people generally tend to be of two persuasions.. those that build of their own sweat and blood and those that take by force or guile. So when the "raiders" came, the men of property were forced to defend their property. The raiders would come in and kill the men and take the women, the children, the animals and now they became wealthy by possession.
Tribes were the defense against this outside aggression and what began as "me" versus "not me" became "we" versus "they". So men banded together to defend themselves against the others in the form of clans, tribes and the like and eventually built cities with walls and decided amonst themselves who would come in and who would be excluded. And this was the beginning of law.
The law determined the property rights of man. The collection of men who got together to determine the laws formed the first governments. So that the existance of government was in a sense to protect man's property. Then as well as now, the right to belong to a group and to share in its protection was dependent on the obligation to obey its laws.
From millenia ago everything became "mine" and in the harsh environment of the stone age man had to protect his property, his mate, his offspring, his cave, his tools and the list goes on. A rich man had many wives, many children, large flocks of animals etc..
This presented a problem because, then as well as now, people generally tend to be of two persuasions.. those that build of their own sweat and blood and those that take by force or guile. So when the "raiders" came, the men of property were forced to defend their property. The raiders would come in and kill the men and take the women, the children, the animals and now they became wealthy by possession.
Tribes were the defense against this outside aggression and what began as "me" versus "not me" became "we" versus "they". So men banded together to defend themselves against the others in the form of clans, tribes and the like and eventually built cities with walls and decided amonst themselves who would come in and who would be excluded. And this was the beginning of law.
The law determined the property rights of man. The collection of men who got together to determine the laws formed the first governments. So that the existance of government was in a sense to protect man's property. Then as well as now, the right to belong to a group and to share in its protection was dependent on the obligation to obey its laws.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Happy New Year... let's start the New Year Right
2010 left off with a comment from Margery and it took me all this while to get it copied over to my Post. It seems that blogger sometimes allows comments and under some other mysterieous circumstances does not. So I suggested to her that if her comments were not getting through to email me at
richard.charles.degeiso@gmail.com Then it took me a century to copy from my gmail account to the comment section on the blog... but the devil would not paste in the comments section... soooo finally I pasted it on my next Post and here we are. And Margery wrote...
Sometimes a choice leads to another choice. If I come to a fork in a road and choose left, but find it to be other than what I expected I can chose the next two or three lefts and return to my starting point, albeit later in time. Else, it may lead me to more interesting adventures, as fate would have it. If I add too much garlic to the pot, I can add more chicken and make leftovers. I don’t see choice as an end, but rather a beginning. But I guess, then that’s where attitude enters the equation. Does that mean my experience has taught me there is no wrong choice? I’ve always said, make a decision and stick to it.
Well Margery.. if we were in the city, we could probably say that since the streets are laid out at right angles to each other mostly and taking a continuous left turn for example would lead one right back to where they started.. that is like the movie "Groundhog Day. But like every country gal or boy knows the forks in the road are more like the letter Y and that would make it impossible to go back in time as you suggest in your comment. Unfortunately the arrow of time in our reality always points to the future.
But I have to applaud your thoughts and perhaps some day if we ever get a chance to visit I can savor your most delicious chicken stew. You are right of course, choice is a beginning and true freedom is our everlasting right to make a choice. Experience tells us whether or not the choice was a good one so that when we come to another fork that looks like it might be similar(not necessarily the same) then we whould have a better chance of it coming out in our favor.
Let's hear it folks. If you can't leave a comment then give me a holler at richard.charles.degeiso@gmail.com
richard.charles.degeiso@gmail.com Then it took me a century to copy from my gmail account to the comment section on the blog... but the devil would not paste in the comments section... soooo finally I pasted it on my next Post and here we are. And Margery wrote...
Sometimes a choice leads to another choice. If I come to a fork in a road and choose left, but find it to be other than what I expected I can chose the next two or three lefts and return to my starting point, albeit later in time. Else, it may lead me to more interesting adventures, as fate would have it. If I add too much garlic to the pot, I can add more chicken and make leftovers. I don’t see choice as an end, but rather a beginning. But I guess, then that’s where attitude enters the equation. Does that mean my experience has taught me there is no wrong choice? I’ve always said, make a decision and stick to it.
Well Margery.. if we were in the city, we could probably say that since the streets are laid out at right angles to each other mostly and taking a continuous left turn for example would lead one right back to where they started.. that is like the movie "Groundhog Day. But like every country gal or boy knows the forks in the road are more like the letter Y and that would make it impossible to go back in time as you suggest in your comment. Unfortunately the arrow of time in our reality always points to the future.
But I have to applaud your thoughts and perhaps some day if we ever get a chance to visit I can savor your most delicious chicken stew. You are right of course, choice is a beginning and true freedom is our everlasting right to make a choice. Experience tells us whether or not the choice was a good one so that when we come to another fork that looks like it might be similar(not necessarily the same) then we whould have a better chance of it coming out in our favor.
Let's hear it folks. If you can't leave a comment then give me a holler at richard.charles.degeiso@gmail.com
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