And Justice For All

Once upon a time.. mankind existed in small isolated clumps and when the hordes came upon them they got ripped, raped and robbed. So they banded together for protection: protection of life, limb and property. And a whole new industry was born called "government". Now then Government said we need to consider the safety of our people so they invented the police and fire forces. And we need to protect our people from the ravaging hordes. So they invented the military. At each one of these steps it took money or the equivalent thereof. And the people gladly paid these newfangled things called taxes. So the people got to keep less and less of the rewards of their daily toil. Then the Government said "let us help you keep more of the fruits of your labor". And they invented banks. Banks who would lend you money or its equivalent. But you could pay it back at a small interest. At the same time the banks would pay a small interest on the balance in your account.

Let us do the math. On an average daily balance of $3000 the interest rate would be on the order of 0.3% annual percentage rate or APR. That same amount of money would be lent back to someone as a mortage at let us say 3% to 5% APR as the cost of borrowing on your mortage. That is a factor of ten(10) in favor of the bank. So the bank gives you $9 and gets back $90 on the mortgage. This gives them a net of $81. Now comes the Federal Government who allows them to charge as much as 30% in the case of credit cards. So the yield on your $3000 goes to $105 to the bank for the crummy $9 that they gave you in your bank account.

The banks take part of that money to lobby Congress to pass laws like the above. There is no way for the average citizen to compete with the power of the banks. When I was growing up we had usury laws whereby if a lender charged more than 8% he would go to jail. Oh well, maybe that is why we are becoming more polarized as time goes on.... the rich get richer etc. Look what it did for Rome... look what it did for Great Britain. And we are on the way.

Evolution revolution

Today, I watched a program on the Science channel based on the era of the dinosaurs. The program went from the beginning of animal life as it evolved from the original slime with its one-celled bacteria to the organisms that eventually evolved into the huge giants that we have come to know. In the beginning the dinosaurs appeared to be plant eaters. But the plants of that time were ferns, conifers, cyclads and the like. They reproduced by shedding seeds in great abundance and the climate certainly encouraged that. The dinosaurs needed to evolve long necks to reach this abundant food supply, And those that didn't, either survived on the seeds that were on the ground or, became meat eaters of the smaller mammal species that lived in the holes and burrows of the earth.

The small animals themselves showed signs of a similar evolutionary pattern since their food supply was insects. This food supply also became more abundant in the lush tropical environment that existed at that time. And of course the insects themselves became more abundant with the evolution of plant life from the gymnosperms to the angiosperms or flowering plants as it were. So perhaps we are seeing a pattern here which is driven by the cyclic rise and fall, if you will, of the earth's climate or environmental conditions.

The same program, mentioned above, described how now the Paleontologists are reasonably sure that the dinosaurs, the meat eaters that is, hunted in packs. And the evolutionary strategy to ensure an adequate food supply was to co-operate and this meant the banding together into families or clans or tribes and the like. The younger dinosaurs were leaner with longer legs and greater speed. The older ones like us humans, were slower but stronger and much more able to bring down and kill the prey for all to feed on. So the younger chased and herded the mammals into an ambush by the larger stronger adults. An example of similar strategies in the insect world is the bee's combining into hives and developing a sophisticated division of labor as seen by the Queen Bee, the drones, the workers et al.

The pattern that appears to emerge for survival and perhaps even beyond that to evolution is based on a co-operative activity. Since we choose to live in a monogamous society then the co-operation must be between the families, the communities, the states and even the countries of the world. The Global economic system works this way perhaps. It doesn't make sense to totally defeat a nation who you depend on to be the consummer of your products. So war makes no practical sense unless one intends to support and re-habilitate the defeated country so that they can continue to be the consummer.

So perhaps we should take advantage of the Global warming that seems to be occuring and ignore the shifting of naturally grown resources. And concentrate on the advantages that continuing co-operation would provide to our own mental and spiritual evolution. Let the fruit and vegetables come from South America and Mexico etc. and let our educational and technical interest supply elcctronic devices that would allow more efficient communication as well as production of those things that represent the food supply so necessary to our survival and evolution.

Experience is where it all starts

Today I read a letter from Marc Jones that was probably posted to the students of the Sabian Assemby some sixty-seventy years ago. This was entitled "Experience is its own existence". This got me thinking. How do I think about experience? And this took me down a long and winding trail to the 1960's when I was a young and aspiring supervisor with the great DuPont company.

God bless the corporate mentality that decided that we should be trained in subjects other than science and chemistry. So we were sent to courses, seminars, workshops and the like on subjects involving problem solving, decision making, and industrial psychology. And perhaps the best training session of all was the Dennis Whaitely program called "Goal Mind". It was when taking this program that I learned of the Reticular Activating System of the brain. Or RAS as Dennis referred to it. He described it as the receiver for all the sensory inputs from the environment which were then routed to the various parts of the brain for processing and storage as well as action if required. Like the good Gestalt mentality that I was given at birth I carried it around for all these years until all of a sudden the pattern took hold and I began to understand where all this was leading.

The objects of our time and space reality are taken in through the senses and processed by the RAS and sent to the proper place in the brain's cortex. Somewhere from here the signal is evaluated as to whether or not it is something to be embraced(pleasure) or avoided(pain) and this is the basis of experience. But, it does not stop just there. This is the animal level of being and we as humans have a capacity beyond that.

In humans there is a further processing of that stimulus that takes place in what we have described as mind, soul, spirit, psyche and the like. It is here where the experiences created by the stimulation of the sense organs are given meaning and value. Not all pleasure is favorable to the sustainment of the organism and can lead to its destruction as well in the case of some known addictions. Not all pain is a threat to the continuation of life as in the case of an operation to remove an encroaching cancer. So it is the mind, the psyche, that measures the trades-off that determine the continuation of existence. And this after all is Choice. And so it can be seen that even in that Garden so many millennia ago mankind was given a choice... the ease of life and pleasures of the Garden or to eat of the tree of Knowledge and go forth and multiply.

And you all know how we chose.