If only more people were interested in the question, "How does one find peace?" That path begins with finding inner peace. There is a saying in the scriptures (New Testament) which helped me understand it: "Thy will (God's will), not mine, be done." Our desire to defy reality places us in conflict with nature (God), and disturbs our peace. I recommend the book, "Loving What Is [Real]," by Byron Katie, a virtual masterpiece. It is the best I have seen on the subject, though I would advise that you exercise some caution of her very brief, but frequent treatments of Relativism and Knowledge; contrary to her assertions, you do know two subjects for sure 1) The exact natures of yourself, your desires, and feelings, 2) Your observations and experiences (which are not usually completely accurate).
Many people turn to religion to find peace, but instead typically find hate and division, or hopelessness and despair. Peace is the Holy Grail of Beauty and Life. Your beauty will rise to the surface and literally change your physical appearance as you find peace. There will exist no fear or doubt, no regret or anger, no problems or suffering only challenges and opportunities.
It is hard to find peace, especially with oneself, and here is why: Because you want things to be different than they are. In short, you must desire and expect that everyone and everything act according to their natures, regardless of your own personal wishes. The only way that your peace may be violated is when you expect differently.
The key to peace is this (and this is worth more than all the gold in the world): Decide to love and accept every real thing, but focus on the positive and inspirational aspects. See happiness in pain, but here is the hardest part: Accept that it is the nature of others (though not always) to violate their own peace, to disturb the peace of others, and even to sometimes try to disturb your own peace, if they ever get reason to believe that this is possible. Now loving pain is not to say that you desire more pain, but simply that you are deciding to respect and appreciate it while it is with you. As you heal by this process, the pain will and must leave you, but only when it is ready to do so, only when it is the right time.
While in jail, you must love those opportunities to find, embrace, and share peace: to serve, to inspire, and to live a happy life. . When others think poorly of you, there is only one peaceful reply, "I agree that your unrealistic expectations of me are negative, I accept that, and I am at peace with that." This reply is usually best said only to oneself, as other people tend to disturb their own peace even more when the truth of their negative dissonance is established. Disturbing the peace of others is obviously not the peaceful path. Never do it, even when others request it. Instead, find a peaceful and inspiring reply on the subject. If I have said anything which interests you, feel free to let me know.
--
Andy Landen
Houston, TX
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.- Plato
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Friday, December 15, 2006
The FairTax, Term limits, and Majority Rule
Many people introduce the idea of term limits in hopes of strengthening the voice of the people and thus enabling the FairTax to be passed into law. My response is that this won't work, it just changes the dynamic, that's all. Currently, I am convinced that mere numbers is insufficient for political reform because representatives exist ONLY to execute their own agendas and make the people think that they are "the lesser of the evils." If you contribute enough money, they will try to work you into the pork barrel spending politics of Washington.
Remember the effect of the massive anti-war demonstrations? To no avail whatsoever. Consider the effects of local protests against school district policies. With sufficient numbers, the board will pretend to listen by inviting the concerned parties to attend a *regular* school district board meeting. The board hears the group for a time without reaction, and then spells out their policies and justifications. They continue with the same plan, perhaps with small token adjustments to appease the protesters and the public into thinking that they had some effect.
I have seen government ignore very large numbers of people with very legitimate concerns, even using the judicial branch to undermine their initiatives (in Washington State). While number are important in some respects, the FairTax cannot succeed without a more strategic operations. Writing letters makes us feel good, and in fact appeases our anger on short term basis, but that appeasement only undermines the will to create a more effective campaign. Ultimately, the FairTax WILL PREVAIL when our government is reformed to *represent* the will of an equal and *complete* majority, otherwise any victories will be small and short-lived.
Which brings me to address the true (complete and equal) majority. The founders of this country imagined factional tyranny acting in the name of the people, as is found most extensively in George Washington's writings which includes warnings about foreign entanglements with alliances and mutual defensive pacts. They never imagined a complete and equal majority sovereign in government.
The concept of blind justice revealed the path of fairness and equality to me many years ago. The idea is that a person can only be partial if they can differentiate between several options, and that inequality requires the invasion of privacy which departs from "blindness." So given the existence of two wolves and one sheep voting on who to have for dinner, the sheep is only in danger if the wolves can discern or judge 1) that they are wolves and 2) that the victim is a sheep. With blindfolds (and nose pins, etc.), they are unable to target (vote) any specific group for dinner. Thus equality and fairness may be preserved only through the defense of privacy which blinds "justice" (i.e. the government). Concerning the FairTax, every measure taken to defend privacy in the FairTax strengthens its fairness, equality, and power; measures of privacy enacted throughout government strengthen its legal resistance to factional corruption and forces other laws to submit to the fairness of "blind justice."
Is blind justice, i.e. equality, relevant to the subject of the FairTax? Of course. The FairTax is attempting restore fairness, equality, simplicity, transparency, and responsibility into the revenue side of government, but the government must be aligned with those principles in order to accept any legislation founded in the same (without a SERIOUS fight). These principles must be incorporated into every other aspect of government, else "traditional politics" will both fight the enactment of the FairTax bitterly, and effectively and utterly corrupt it (as it has the income tax) once we win the needlessly costly fight.
The FairTax has begun as a grassroots organization, but noble goal of fiscal fairness must develop into a much more comprehensive and strategic operation in order to prevail in the current political establishment; brute force of numbers is insufficient, as very clever politicians are quite practiced in the art of "side-stepping" the brute will of the masses. Leadership will listen to the people when they are legally bound to the people's will, and that requires a constitutional ammendment. The only way to give the people (and thus the grassroots) sufficient power to advance fair initiatives like the FairTax is to fill government with leaders who would release their own power in favor of Democracy (and I have yet to ever see that happen). The FairTax binds government to the will of an equal people, removing the manipulative power of inequality which many politicians so cherish and thrive upon, so their strong opposition is natural and expected. What begins as a movement from the people, must "snowball" into an effective, multi-pronged, multi-tiered, strategic government reformation process, or else it must smolder forever as a good intention continually undermined and dismissed by the politics of the day.
-- Andy Landen
Houston, TX
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.- Plato
Remember the effect of the massive anti-war demonstrations? To no avail whatsoever. Consider the effects of local protests against school district policies. With sufficient numbers, the board will pretend to listen by inviting the concerned parties to attend a *regular* school district board meeting. The board hears the group for a time without reaction, and then spells out their policies and justifications. They continue with the same plan, perhaps with small token adjustments to appease the protesters and the public into thinking that they had some effect.
I have seen government ignore very large numbers of people with very legitimate concerns, even using the judicial branch to undermine their initiatives (in Washington State). While number are important in some respects, the FairTax cannot succeed without a more strategic operations. Writing letters makes us feel good, and in fact appeases our anger on short term basis, but that appeasement only undermines the will to create a more effective campaign. Ultimately, the FairTax WILL PREVAIL when our government is reformed to *represent* the will of an equal and *complete* majority, otherwise any victories will be small and short-lived.
Which brings me to address the true (complete and equal) majority. The founders of this country imagined factional tyranny acting in the name of the people, as is found most extensively in George Washington's writings which includes warnings about foreign entanglements with alliances and mutual defensive pacts. They never imagined a complete and equal majority sovereign in government.
The concept of blind justice revealed the path of fairness and equality to me many years ago. The idea is that a person can only be partial if they can differentiate between several options, and that inequality requires the invasion of privacy which departs from "blindness." So given the existence of two wolves and one sheep voting on who to have for dinner, the sheep is only in danger if the wolves can discern or judge 1) that they are wolves and 2) that the victim is a sheep. With blindfolds (and nose pins, etc.), they are unable to target (vote) any specific group for dinner. Thus equality and fairness may be preserved only through the defense of privacy which blinds "justice" (i.e. the government). Concerning the FairTax, every measure taken to defend privacy in the FairTax strengthens its fairness, equality, and power; measures of privacy enacted throughout government strengthen its legal resistance to factional corruption and forces other laws to submit to the fairness of "blind justice."
Is blind justice, i.e. equality, relevant to the subject of the FairTax? Of course. The FairTax is attempting restore fairness, equality, simplicity, transparency, and responsibility into the revenue side of government, but the government must be aligned with those principles in order to accept any legislation founded in the same (without a SERIOUS fight). These principles must be incorporated into every other aspect of government, else "traditional politics" will both fight the enactment of the FairTax bitterly, and effectively and utterly corrupt it (as it has the income tax) once we win the needlessly costly fight.
The FairTax has begun as a grassroots organization, but noble goal of fiscal fairness must develop into a much more comprehensive and strategic operation in order to prevail in the current political establishment; brute force of numbers is insufficient, as very clever politicians are quite practiced in the art of "side-stepping" the brute will of the masses. Leadership will listen to the people when they are legally bound to the people's will, and that requires a constitutional ammendment. The only way to give the people (and thus the grassroots) sufficient power to advance fair initiatives like the FairTax is to fill government with leaders who would release their own power in favor of Democracy (and I have yet to ever see that happen). The FairTax binds government to the will of an equal people, removing the manipulative power of inequality which many politicians so cherish and thrive upon, so their strong opposition is natural and expected. What begins as a movement from the people, must "snowball" into an effective, multi-pronged, multi-tiered, strategic government reformation process, or else it must smolder forever as a good intention continually undermined and dismissed by the politics of the day.
-- Andy Landen
Houston, TX
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.- Plato
Thursday, December 07, 2006
DNA Mapping Revolution
Understanding the language of life will empower those who "speak it" to program whatever kind of life he desires. It is the power of the Gods, and far more significant than a nuclear arsenal or advanced medicine, when completely understood.The DNA is a complete instruction set for each life. It chemically dictates the biological construction, functioning, and processing of all organs within it. Any language, to be understood, must be first mapped. Usually, the "bad" words (or diseases) are the first words learned, because they hold the greatest interest of the student/researcher.
The first benefit and the primary course of study in this effort is the identification of troublesome "codes," or diseases, but that just barely begins to scratch the surface. We will begin to recognize patterns between the code and the operations until we start to build DNA-compilers which translate human instructions into DNA-code, and attempt to reverse-engineer interesting segments to understand what they are saying specifically.
Ultimately, humans will be able to design viruses which attack certain diseases, or races, and they will move to designing better organs and even useful life forms to meet specific needs. As with all great powers, much potential for harm from side-effects exists with amateur experimentation unless great care is taken, much potential for good and evil will arise from developed/mature technologies and experience. Given the complexity and size of DNA, this process could take substantial time and resources, until the emergence of quantum computing.
Before we design viruses and other life forms, we will find it necessary to design "DNA workshops" consisting of "DNA construction machines," and stores of "DNA building materials," such as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, etc. Eventually, we will be building our own amino acids with specialized DNA/organisms. At last, a long and complex assembly line of Life will be designed and put into motion for each desired biological creation.
The science fiction names given to humans of "Carbon unit," and "Carbon machine" will be very easily accepted, and we will find ourselves with the difficulty of trying to define a new morality with the blurring of the lines between life and machine.
The first benefit and the primary course of study in this effort is the identification of troublesome "codes," or diseases, but that just barely begins to scratch the surface. We will begin to recognize patterns between the code and the operations until we start to build DNA-compilers which translate human instructions into DNA-code, and attempt to reverse-engineer interesting segments to understand what they are saying specifically.
Ultimately, humans will be able to design viruses which attack certain diseases, or races, and they will move to designing better organs and even useful life forms to meet specific needs. As with all great powers, much potential for harm from side-effects exists with amateur experimentation unless great care is taken, much potential for good and evil will arise from developed/mature technologies and experience. Given the complexity and size of DNA, this process could take substantial time and resources, until the emergence of quantum computing.
Before we design viruses and other life forms, we will find it necessary to design "DNA workshops" consisting of "DNA construction machines," and stores of "DNA building materials," such as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, etc. Eventually, we will be building our own amino acids with specialized DNA/organisms. At last, a long and complex assembly line of Life will be designed and put into motion for each desired biological creation.
The science fiction names given to humans of "Carbon unit," and "Carbon machine" will be very easily accepted, and we will find ourselves with the difficulty of trying to define a new morality with the blurring of the lines between life and machine.
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