Freedom in an Unfree World

In this world of multiple sources of information, it is rare to run into a person that has only one perspective and sees things only through one way -- never considering for a moment, that there could be other ways of seeing the same thing. That’s why it is important to have a two-party system, and even preferably more than the two, which is usually just a contest between proponents and opponents of the one way of seeing things.

True diversity would mean seeing thing in a wholly different way -- beginning with the most basic assumptions and premises about life and society -- which both have agreed not to question and discuss. In government, the question is usually about whether we need more or less government (money) -- and not whether we need government at all -- in the increasingly many areas of life that really far outstrips every community’s capacity to dictate for every individual exercising and manifesting freedom, liberty and intelligence.

The essential discussion of government today should be what is its most important functions -- and not simply every aspect and activity that government could get involved in. The flaw in this manner of thinking is the belief that in order to get anyone to do anything, we have to first get everyone to do anything -- which obviously doesn’t work as well as the realization that in order to get everyone to do anything, we have to first get any one to do anything.

One is the precursor to the many -- so that for a society and nation to get better, at least one person has to first, and not that having none actualize that possibility ever before, we jump to the conclusion that it would be a better, if not perfect world, if everybody was that way. That is the proper understanding of human evolution and progress -- and not the countless damaged people demanding that everybody in society must change to live up to their perverted expectations (demands) of what everybody (else) has to be for them (to be happy -- or at least, not so angry).

Meanwhile, they have no expectations and demands of themselves and their own conduct and behavior -- but only their insistence that the world would be a perfect place and there would be perfect order if everybody else just let them rule the world. Very few people in government and politics, can resist this manner of thinking -- or that the object and purpose of everything they do is the exercise of power -- over everybody else.

And really, the greatest government is that originally conceived by the founders of every free and healthy society -- that the objective and purpose of everything we do, is the exercise of power -- over ourselves and our own lives, and that the proper jurisdiction of government, is everything that interfered with that -- which very obviously to the most perceptive, has become the opposite of that. If that were limited to government, it wouldn’t be so pervasive except that it becomes a model for the behavior of everyone else, especially those who would have us believe that they are quasi-governmental institutions, like the media, and everybody else with aspirations to be the exclusive authority (boss) in everybody else's life -- including killing them and violating all their rights if they deem it appropriate.

But usually, they just stop at deception and manipulation.

Leadership is Determined Not by the Average but the Best

The state of the art, or leadership -- in anything, is not determined by the average, but by the best. It doesn’t matter what the average scientist thinks -- as it does what the best scientist thinks. That is the limiting factor -- and not the average.

Every field of activity -- whether athletics, art, technology, politics -- are determined by one person who is the limiting factor -- not the worst, not the average, but the best because the bias is in that direction, and not simply to randomize activity and values.

So when people despair that the president or governor is in the minority, the presumption is that “all things equal,” there will be a reversion to the mean (average), rather than the best. It doesn’t happen that way; that’s why world records keep getting broken -- because they strive to surpass the present standard, and not merely to be an average player.

This is one of the most greatly misunderstood phenomenon in the study of phenomena. The study of anything itself, is not a random activity -- but a very disciplined and biased one. One wants to know better -- and not just what the average person knows. That has no meaning.

So this concept of “average,” which many presume to think is the most meaningful thing to know about anything, is probably the most useless thing to know, or the most deceptive thing to know. The most significant thing to know about anything, is what the best person in the field knows. Ten lesser authorities, are not ten times as valid as the most insightful thinker on that subject. It could be that everybody else is just wrong.

But that we have that superior “one,” is an indication that things are working out well, because ultimately, that is the one that matters. All the others, is to produce that one. And far from negating all the abilities and efforts of all the others, that is the result and ultimate accomplishment of all the efforts -- that wouldn’t have been possible with anything else.

It takes whatever it takes, to get wherever one gets -- which nobody knows with certainty beforehand. That will not stop many from claiming that they do have this perfect knowledge -- about where humankind is heading, where it is, and where it has been -- as though they really knew. At best, they just know what somebody else told them, and another told them, etc.

That doesn’t seem to dissuade those who believe that what they have been told (taught) can have been anything but the unvarnished truth -- just as what they perceive presently, they think is without bias, preconceptions and assumptions of what they think the world is.

The average belief is that knowledge is randomly what we think -- rather than what the best think, and because they do, the fate of humankind moves in that direction and destiny more than towards any other.

That is the reason for great hope in the leadership.

“Stop Spreading Information!”

Readers of my blogs (writing) may be familiar that I had been increasing my participation at the local newspaper’s blogs until increasingly I was subject to continual personal insults and attacks from thinly-veiled serial “anonymous” bloggers who for sometime now have dedicated their entire existence to my destruction. There have always been people like that on the periphery of my life -- invariably so incensed that I’m allowed to “get away” with doing whatever violations of contemporary mores they wish they had thought of first. That was to be expected.

But the author of the blog demanded that I not quote any other source but himself and what I read in the newspaper as the sole source of information -- which is not unlike the “journalistic” control of the discussion, that increasingly seems so heavy-handed and doomed to reveal their lack of brilliance, if not competence and accuracy.

This is the point at which I have to make the decision to either go for the larger readership or maintain my own standards of integrity and value in being a doorway to “all” the information, and not just what the “powers” that want to be or continue to be, want us to know to further continue to exploit and manipulate us desire. It’s a pretty easy call -- and one I’ve never been reluctant to make.

Creating another venue for information distribution is easy to come by but losing one’s integrity and judgment, is pretty much an eternal damnation that ensures that one will have lost their way forevermore. If one is not clear in what they are doing, then it is easy to get lost and follow the path not worth taking.

That is the reason one sees so many misshapen and deformed people working in these fields -- with a look of contempt and sneer of resentment perpetually etched onto their faces. One can start with the beauty known as Helen Thomas as the poster girl for “The Look” journalists all over the world seem to have inherited from their gene pool. That ugliness is just the external visage of a much greater horror inside that seems to be the DNA of all such master manipulators now -- of which the mass (media) demagogues are simply the most visible and obvious.

Those still left in the fields of journalism, education and liberal politics should start to exit from those positions now -- before it is too late for them to save themselves, let alone the nonsense of saving others (or the world (Al Gore’s Disease, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, etc.)).

The peculiarity of their demands is that their is nothing in it for me if I comply with their demands except for my own abnegation which they expect I should trust in their “good intentions” to advise me of. What’s required is a blind trust in authority -- and authoritarian figures, that is a distinctive feature of (public) education (indoctrination) in Hawaii. That’s how we all go along to get along and is the cultural blindness that prevents us from seeing things clearly -- as independent people do so easily and naturally.

Tent City, USA

One of the most remarkable transformations that has apparently become the new tradition on July 4th in Hawaii, since the banning of the homeless from homesteading the beachfront parks, is that they become overnight tent cities for the rest of the community -- for a day or two, at which time, one can see the state-of-the-art in camping and recreational gear on full display.

Most of these happy campers look like they never left their backyard -- and co-exist peacefully and amiably in very close quarters. Even movement through these campsites flows freely and easily -- as long as it is understood, that getting anywhere fast is not the objective. It is the co-existing and defining “community” and “interpersonal interactions” that is the objective -- which has been misplaced by a mentality constantly trying to get somewhere else, and in that process, missing every chance to create the present reality which is the only reality.

From these present actions, the future is created -- and not because people “intend” to act intelligently sometime in the future -- and it always becomes more distant, every time one checks in for a status report, until it is deferred so far into the future, that one knows that the only time one will see those “good intentions” actualized, is in the afterlife, of which many even then, hope doesn’t exist. In that manner, they never have to account for anything.

That is the world and reality beyond “liberalism” -- which for most seems to be knowing all the right things and the right things to say, but failing completely to manifest that understanding in any of their actualizations of thought and deed. In fact, what is usually the case, is that their actions are a contradiction of everything they profess to believe -- thinking that their “professed intentions,” is all that is required to reconcile these disparities.

In this manner, they ARE the problem in the world -- thinking they are its saviors and even martyrs. How do we know the difference? Only by the actions, accomplishments and results. People who truly “love mankind,” don’t insist they live trustingly with murders and thieves -- hoping for the best results. They choose instead, to protect the innocent from those with long records of mischief and malice against their fellow men.

Such people have nothing to hide and so they are comfortable living and acting in the light, in the sight of all the others -- with the common good, safety and welfare even higher standards than the arbitrary laws -- that cannot presume good will.

Five years ago, the only people who camped at Ala Moana Park was the "homeless"; with them banned, everybody can feel free to do so -- including the “homeless” also.

In designing the future, one also can’t favor the disadvantaged over everybody else, thinking that is an intelligent and compassionate society -- but merely entrenches dysfunction over the general welfare, which is a critical flaw in liberal thinking. Societies need to be defined by its strongest links and not its weakest.

As one moved through the crowds, what was striking is how proud people were of doing so well with so little. that was everybody’s idea of genius.