The world is in turmoil. What can we do?

Much of what’s taking place in the world today has been made possible by amazing communication technologies. While these technologies bring much of positive value to the world, as with so many other developments, they also offer those with dishonorable motives new avenues through which to prey upon communities. The latter application of these technologies has reached such proportion, If I wasn’t seeing it happen, I’m not sure I would have believed it to be possible. I grieve that it is.

I was born in 1950. I remember the U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. I remember what I saw as a child of life in those times. I remember the post WWII mind set which was predominant in those days in the midwestern United States. There was an undercurrent of optimism, positivity. Diseases were being conquered, diplomacy, rather than war, occupied the headlines. People felt good that tyranny, authoritarianism, genocide, had been defeated. As is all too clear now, the world wasn’t as free of some of these human problems as many believed.

It’s not that everything was ideal, not at all. There were (and sadly still are) issues of ignorance, misunderstanding, fear, hatred, between people of differing races and religions. There were the major rifts between the nations identifying with capitalism and those identifying with communism. However, during WWII, people from many nations, nations with histories of distrust, antagonism, had pulled together to defeat a common enemy. There was optimism that the common values which had surfaced during the war could be built upon to establish lasting peaceful relationships. It was a time of the belief in unlimited possibilities for a better world.

What is absolutely apparent now, is that those who perceived the possibilities for improving the conditions of life for all people, weren’t the only ones seeing unlimited possibilities. There were those who saw the potential of using the new technologies, the developments in transportation, communication, psychology, medicine, and other disciplines, as tools for plunder. Rather than embracing the opportunities to engage in massive development, to facilitate improvements for the common good, they saw, and continue to see, human deficits through the lens of exploitation. Not as areas of need to be addressed with pervasive development and education, but as openings to be exploited in order to establish themselves in predatory positions of power within the systems of the world.

It is apparent now, that post WWII, those seeking personal wealth and power have been working, manipulating public perception. Often co-opting the very symbols which had represented the defeat of tyranny, authoritarianism and inhuman behaviors. They employ words and symbols which once stirred the most positive motives within people to obfuscate and shield their predatory agendas. One of the first major coups these people won was, via magazines, television, and other media, establishing the idea of unrestrained pursuit of personal wealth as a positive primary value in the psyche of people around the world. Once that lie, a lie which ignores basic values necessary to maintaining both healthy individuals and healthy cultures, was pervasively established in the minds of the population, the door to pandemonium was opened.

Competitive economics establishes a system in which those at the top have the distinct advantage. The oppressive, sometimes murderous, methods used to maintain and expand the wealth of those at the top become just the methods of “business as usual”. After all, it’s what you would do if you had all that money? Isn’t it? It’s the value system the media repeatedly portrays as the way of the world. And many, especially those who have never been exposed to something different, simply assume that impression to be the global, inescapable reality.

Abraham Maslow provided us with a working framework, a skeleton, within which it is possible to “flesh out” not only healthy, thriving individuals, also healthy, thriving cultures.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

How do we know what is needed to “flesh out”, to establish a viable, worldwide, thriving human culture? We have the findings of the work done in many scientific disciplines over many centuries to guide us. Psychology, sociology, medicine, agriculture, engineering, all of these disciplines, and more, hold information which provides the necessary answers. There are the developments in science and the arts which provide much instruction for the establishment and maintenance of a healthful, thriving human culture. There are answer available to us to the problems of housing, health, energy, pollution, and more. Sometimes these answers go unused because they interfere with the profit motive of those in positions of power. And we accept it because the culture of competitive economics has become normalized.

The thing is, we have got the tools we need to establish a world in which people of many different backgrounds can live together as vital aspects of our world ecology, interacting and enhancing each other’s experience of life. What is missing is the focus to make it happen. I would have said the “will” to make it happen, but I believe that will is present, inside every living human being. Sometimes it is dormant, sometimes it has been covered in so much pain and trauma, so many lies and misdirections, that it expresses itself in twisted, destructive ways. But it is there.

As a teacher of mine once said: “Life takes work, it’s death that’s easy. Just do nothing and you will die.”

All people emanate from and are inextricably a part of the Divine Creative Spirit. This aspect of our existence is represented by the golden circle in the center in the diagram above. The next area, the circle which surrounds the center circle, is the “Worldly Persona” which is the identity the rest of world knows us by. It is defined by our words and deeds which are observable to the rest of the people in the world. It is this persona that is the product of the process described below. Our persona reflects the sum total of our worldly experiences, desires and decisions.

There are no “bad people”, there are no “good people”, there are only people. What makes the difference between tyrants such as Adolf Hitler, Mary I of England, or Pol Pot and revered personalies such as Gautama Buddha, St. Teresa of Calcutta, or Martin Luther King Jr.? It is not some mysterious, unknown variables. The difference lies in the sum total of their individual experiences (education, indoctrination, relationships, interactions), their desires, and their decisions. It is important to note here that the “sum total” may include the experiences, desires and decisions of many lifetimes. Also that biology and/or injuries can play a major role in the development of an individual’s persona.

However, we are thinking beings with free will. We have the potential to change. We can mold not only ourselves, but the world we live in. If we decide we desire a better, more harmonious, world, and we act upon that desire, we can bring that vision to reality. It may take time, but the sooner we start, the sooner we arrive.

With the determination to do so, bitterness can be transmuted to understanding. Fear and hatred can be transmuted to caring and love. However, we must stay aware that the opposite is also true. Caring and love, with enough abuse and trauma, especially when accompanied by input and reinforcement to do so, can be replaced with hatred and cruelty. We must end the mistreatment, the cruelties we impose upon one another. We must see each other as being the children of the same Creator, which we are. As we now know, we are all inextricably interconnected. Isn’t it time we established the positive, harmonious, joyful, reality we all, at the core of our being, long for?

In summation, while we all can, at times, be negatively affected by the world around us, through enlightenment, education, understanding, we can transmute negative impulses into constructive actions. We can play a more positively determinate role within our own lives, within our relationships, and within the world around us.

At this time, around the world, we are being advised by individuals and agencies, which wield substantial worldly power, to be fearful. We are being urged, coerced, to be compliant, to follow the instructions we’re being given. Instructions which appeal to the fear the media and corporate powers are largely responsible for instilling. In their positions of power within the media, the corporate powers are wielding an incredible ability of censorship over information. They routinely do not publish truths which disagree with, which dispute the predatory agendas they are implementing. A predominant one at this time is the COVID/”vaccine” agenda. Any information which contradicts the fear based agenda they are pushing, is either censored in corporate media, or, if it is referred to, it is done so in such a way as to discredit that information.

A collection of various and sometimes overlapping people have introduced a previously unknown disease into the world apparently in the pursuit of a homicidal, special interest, agenda. And they may introduce more. They are offering toxic, death-dealing treatments and doing all they can to repress the knowledge of the existence of safe, effective treatments. And throughout it all, they are engineering the flow of vast amounts of the world’s wealth into their hands. Yet we can make the decision to comply with this heinous agenda, or not. We have the final decision in whether or not to allow the pollution of our minds and spirits with the fear and hate they are promoting. And, we have the final decision whether or not to allow the pollution of our bodies with the toxic substances they are pushing.

Changing the focus back to our inherent divine origin and heritage, even when we are being motivated by fear, anger, hatred, even then, through the filters of our mind which are active at that time, we are expressing the innate desire for life which is present within all of us. However, if we desire a more harmonious, healthful, joyful life, we need to discipline ourselves to refrain from expressions which lead to more harm, more trauma, more fear, anger and hatred in the world. While we cannot ignore such emotions when they are present, we must learn to see through to the primary, underlying reality of the desire for life which is there. We must learn to see it not only within ourselves, but in “the other”. When we can do that, and when we embrace the values of negotiation, understanding, mutuality, and the desire for resolutions which enhance the harmony of human interactions, we can have a genuine heaven on Earth.

All through my life I have heard skeptics, cynics, say that such a thing is “too idealistic”, not practical, not possible. Even they, in doing so, inadvertently acknowledge the ideal nature of such thinking. If we aren’t devoting our time and energies toward seeking and establishing the ideal, what are we spending them on? Seeking and establishing the mediocre? The dysfunctional? Or are we just letting entropy, the slow slide into dissolution, be our guiding motive?

Ultimately, whether in the United States or someplace else in the world at large, the term coined in the U.S. by the authors of the Declaration of Independence, “We the People“, represents a reality which can stop tyrannical abuses and elevate humanity. It is within our individual decisions, that we collectively possess the ability to determine the direction this period of history will follow.

What does a new “case” of covid-19 mean? (And is it okay to shout “fire” in a crowded theater?)

fake-news-2

One of William Shakespeare’s most well-known questions is: “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  However, it is also well known that names, words, can and do make a great difference in how we perceive a thing.  The noun “case”, especially when relating to illness/disease is one of these words.  We have to be aware that sometimes a word means something in common usage, and also, within the specialization of one discipline or another, that word may have a particular meaning.  For example, we all know what the common usages of the word “head” are.  Either a body part or possibly the boss, or leader of something.  However, in the Navy, the word “head” can and often does refer to the toilet/WC.  Sometimes it all depends on the context the word is being used in.  The word “case” has some similar usage issues.

In common usage I venture to say we usually think of a “case” as being something that holds something else, like a cellphone case.  Or, when speaking about illness, a case is commonly thought of occurring when someone is actively ill with something.  We’ve all probably heard about someone coming down with a case of food poisoning, or, heaven forbid, a case of cancer.  The fact that someone ate some food which somehow, later, turned up as tainted, means that maybe the person might “come down with a case of food poisoning”, but not necessarily.   With cancer I have heard that at any given time most (all?) of us have some potentially cancerous cells in our body, however that doesn’t mean we’re suffering with a case of cancer. A “case” of something commonly means someone is actively suffering, ill, with whatever it is.   The CDC and other public health related people and agencies however, seem to have a different meaning for the word “case” within their technical jargon.  In that usage a “case” can evidently mean simply a positive test result which may, or may not, indicate the presence of detectable material from a COVID virus. Remember, at any given time most of us have some potentially cancerous cells in our body which does not indicate we have a case of cancer.

So when we hear about all the new cases of covid-19 turning up, what does that mean?  Does that mean all the people represented by that number are actively suffering from the severe ravages of covid-19, which we’ve heard so much about?  If we’re thinking in common usage terms, the word “case” tends to lead our minds down that path.  However, the reality is that in terms of the daily covid “scoreboard”, it doesn’t mean that at all.  It means more people have been tested and some of the test results are positive.  Kind of like someone eating some food with some unwanted bacteria growing on it.  It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily going to come down with a case of food poisoning.  As with exposure to just about every potentially harmful substance on Earth, there a few other variables involved such as the amount of the “dose” of bacteria and the person’s pre-existing state of health.  I think that the robustness of the human immune system is being largely ignored as the covid scenario progresses.  Which brings us back to: will someone who tests positive for covid become ill, develop symptoms?  Maybe. I’m not sure there are any reliable numbers on the relationship between testing positive and becoming symptomatic.  But even if odds are that an infected person will develop some symptoms, as the World Health Organization states:  “COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. Most infected people will develop mild to moderate illness and recover without hospitalization.”

At this point I find myself asking, would the daily news have the same quality of sensationalism if what is reported as “cases” are more accurately reported as “positive test results”?  At this time the sensationalized use of the the word “cases” is an instrument for the production of fear.  Imagine the headline:  “Today an additional 1,000 people tested positive for covid.”  After a few weeks, how many people are going to be on the edge of their seats waiting for the latest tally?  But if they say there are 1,000 new cases of covid, especially without any qualifying explanations, our minds, our imaginations, tend to take us down the path of common usage to a forest of doom and gloom, don’t they?  So, are we being misled?  I think so, I think the folks putting the words together know exactly what picture those words are likely to conjure up in the minds of the general public.  However, are they lying?  I think it can be easily argued in a court of law that, no, the health officials are merely reporting the facts as they define them.  And the media is just parroting what they’re being told. 

I think the reporting which is taking place around covid by the mainstream media in the U.S. begs the question: is it okay to shout “fire” in a crowded theater?