Sentence Completion

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my life...

1. I will be more focused.
2. I will repeat mistakes less often.
3. I will know more of what brings me joy.
   

The things that make me happy are...

1. helping others.
2. the outdoors.
3. building community.
4. being liked by others.
   

To bring 5 percent more happiness to my life...

1. I will raise the bar and continue the climb to my personal peak.
2. I will excel at each step along the way to my personal peak.
3. I will hold happiness as paramount.
4. I will learn the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Past, Future, & Present

I have an intense need to explain how our world got to where it is today. This need bubbles up from the depths of my being so fervently that I am inclined to think it is innate, and thus put forth no effort to explain this curiosity.

Why are we here?

In Life, The Universe, and Everything, Douglas Adams artfully described a phenomenon in our culture that is focused on the answer without ever delving into the question. The answer to life, the universe, and everything - he says - is 42. What point was he trying to make with this ludicrous statement?

Since the dawn of written language about 7000 years ago, mankind as a whole has painstakingly and eloquently sought the answer to our origin without giving proper attention to why we are looking.

Why do we care to look?

Another way to describe our search for our origin is to say that we are trying to figure out how we got to where we are. Why would one seek to retrace his footsteps along a journey? Perhaps he is lost: unsure of where he is and where he is going.

Have we lost our way?

Suppose you were to turn on the news. What would you see? "Bad news is good news." Depending on where you live and what season it is, you may look to the weather report as a source of occasional good news. Either irrational pessimism has swept the planet (a possibility), or our world is getting worse with each passing day.

Our worldwide culture has tunnel vision. We have very little perspective from which to judge our location and direction.

Where are we headed?

No one knows exactly where we are going, but we have some big clues.

1. Our population is growing with ever-increasing food supply and distribution.
2. Our supply of liquid energy sources is ever-decreasing.
3. Food production and distribution will get more expensive as oil becomes more scarce.
4. Conclusion: Many billions will starve. Chaos will erupt as governments are not able to quell the angry stomachs.

If you agree that 1, 2, and 3 are true, then the conclusion should be apparent. Chaos means more when you live in it. America is not immune. Here is my question:

What should we do now?

Please think about it and post your thoughts.

Medina Ride

I went up to Medina on the bicycle today. The ride took an hour. It's quite nice up there.

The number 1 reason to vote for Obama

I received a forward about Barack today:

My fellow Americans:
  
As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor's relations with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, or my blatantly leftist voting record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of change. 
  
I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing. 
  
I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a female employee with whom he was having an extra marital affair and who was pregnant with his child. And I'm not going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and fi guratively. 
And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support.  Her love of meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the White House. 
  
Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt. 
I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have meaning, then that means you have to think about them. 
Americans are tired of thinking. It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the heart. So when you go to vote in the primaries, remember don't think, just do. And do it for me.   
  
 Thank You. 
 Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. 

I lament the reality of politics: we commit to a two party system out of fear that the candidate we are more afraid of might take office.

To be frank, I don't find any of the slights to be substantive; prima facie, they are not necessarily reasons not to vote for him.

What is the number one most compelling reason to vote for Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.?

He will talk to our enemies.  Our tendency to brand our enemies as terrorists or insurgents, and the subsequent policy of not "negotiating" with them is horrifying to our enemies and potential enemies.  The first principle taught in negotiation is that you must separate the problem from the people, then focus on the problem.  When we refuse to talk to them, it is sending the message, "We don't want to talk about the problem, we just want you dead."  That is a terrifying message that does not provide enough leeway for us to win over the hearts and minds of our enemies.  They are compelled by the fight-or-flight reflex because our policies preclude the possibility to settle it like civilized people.  It is extremely counter-productive to conflate people and problems; it is foolish, expensive, and inevitably not in our best interest to attempt to kill the people rather than talk through the problem.

The above is the complex modern explanation for the beautifully simple principle, "Turn the other cheek."  Organizations (such as Nations, "terrorist" groups, etc.) are macro analogies for people, and all of the principles that work best in interpersonal relations also work best in international or other inter-organizational relations.

Perhaps the policy of not negotiating with terrorists is deliberately designed to give us a non-pacifiable enemy, thus fueling our Military Industrial Complex and/or providing a guise for pursuing stability in oil supply.  It would be practically impossible to extract testimony from any such villain on which to indict him.  It would be like trying to bring down the Mafia, only harder.  This makes it futile to pursue headhunting.  "An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind," i.e. retributive justice hurts many but helps none.  Luckily, we have an electoral system, which gives us a chance to reform.

The prudent action is to discontinue failed policies and strive for peace by following the simple and vastly misunderstood example of that dude from the first century A.D. named Jesus.  "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  I certainly wouldn't want to be hunted down like a dog.  Would you?

First Kirkland Jog

Armor

Note: The Neolithic Revolution was about 10,000 years ago when agriculture came on the scene.

Last weekend I was daydreaming and chatting with a friend about nothing in particular.  While talking, I realized that the Garden of Eden story from the Bible was about the Neolithic revolution.  I happened upon this article by searching those terms on Google.

The article is very interesting.  Technology is making it easier for the rich to secure their wealth.  This means that when the socialist revolution finally does come, and I believe it will, it will be far more cataclysmic in nature than they have been in the past.  However, a new wealthy class will rapidly develop out of the ashes and within a few generations the society will be well on its way to where it started as a capitalistic society.

Socialism has a terrible track record at long-term sustainability in a Neolithic society because we reproduce too fast and live too long.  Resources become so scarce that hyperinflation occurs and millions of people starve.  This is the point where it breaks down and a class society forms.

It is all very cyclic.  Thus, I propose that the answer (to Life the Universe and Everything) cannot be found in this domain.  Perhaps we need to change our perspective on suffering.  Empathy tells us that suffering ought to be erraticated, but why should we feel more empathy for a human being than a canine being or arachnid being?  Perhaps the answer is that we should have equal compassion for all beings; or that we should perceive all beings as more similar to us in ambition and strife than we may have realized.  I think it is clear that life is going to persist regardless of what humans do.  It is far too resilient to succumb to any human-born disasters.

One must balance the need for survival with the pursuit of Nirvana.  I think Christopher McCandless (of Into the Wild) summed it up best: "Only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness."

On Intellectual Property

Someone writes:

Property wins the social-evolution test as a stable and effective social system.

My response:
Property does not necessarily win the social-evolution test for stability. Inevitably power (i.e. property) becomes so concentrated that the threat of force required to maintain rights over that property becomes precarious to wield. Eventually the downtrodden rise up in anger and take from the wealthy what they cannot attain through other means. In other words, the risk versus reward of armed conflict to dissolve control over property outweighs the alternatives. This is a Socialist revolution and it naturally follows after a highly successful Capitalistic society forms. Later, that Socialist society will begin to see the benefit of property rights again and a new wealthy class will rise to take power.

These changes take hundreds of years. America had a Socialist uprising against oppressive property rights in the Revolutionary War. Remember the Inalienable Rights from the Declaration of Independence, "life, liberty, and happiness?" The term "happiness" replaced "property" from the Declaration of Colonial Rights. How could the Inalienable Rights suddenly change? They quickly reworded it to prevent non-White non-males from gaining power (i.e. property). American Revolutionists dissolved all previous property rights and granted said rights to everyone -- did I say everyone? I meant white males.

I predict that the fight over intellectual freedom is going to end in a Revolution. Those with vast amounts of intellectual property and power (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.) will find it impossible to sustain through force. The mob will take what it can get in relative safety. I certainly do.

Which route will be taken toward Revolution? Government may be so large and corrupt that our bureaucratic system cannot handle it with the requisite haste. Property law infringement will become so pervasive (as it has with music) that enforcement will get astronomically expensive and the system will collapse upon itself, then restructure. Apple identified that the music industry was collapsing under a Socialist revolution and restructured the industry to work to their benefit.

Perhaps the fight over intellectual property will not be a bloody one, but we have a lot more to worry about. IP is just one slice of the cake of power.