August 27, 2008

The Whole Abortion Thing

've never seen this mentioned in this way before, so I'll say it.

If I were a practicing Christian and I were to consult the Bible about when life begins, when a living Soul appears in the body, I think the Bible is fairly clear:

Genesis 2:7: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

There it is. The body comes first and with "breath" life begins. The body without the breath of life is not yet a living Soul. That moment happens with breath.

Now, I'm not a Christian and I'm not telling Christians what to believe. I'm just showing how I would use the Bible as an authority if I were inclined to determine what it says about when life begins.

To say life begins at conception is understandable. But to say it in a way that means there's a living Soul in the zygote seems simply wrong. The sperm is alive. The egg is alive. They come together and guess what! The result is alive.

But if the Bible is to be used as an authority on when human life truly begins, clearly it's with the "breath of life." That's when the body becomes something more: A person.

This is important, because when discussing the whole abortion thing, with all its inevitable emotional baggage, it's easy to get lost in all the ways words are used. There's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to view human life as beginning with fertilization.

But when it becomes a matter of government legal action, we have to be more careful and clear because it makes a difference when determining when someone is to be charged with taking a life.

If we define a zygote as a legal person, then miscarriages can result in charges of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. If a legal person is defined at the moment the baby takes a breath, then anything before that is merely biological and no charges should be brought.

Clearly both of these are problematic. What about a woman in her 8th month where the baby is viable, she wants the baby, and someone attacks her resulting in its death? We all can sense that this is a chargeable act because a real person was possible and a life was taken.

However, there's less of a sense of that when the zygote is only a few days old.

So we ought to at least acknowledge some of those differences legally.

- A zygote until just before viability is not a legal person.
- A viable baby in the womb is a legal person since a living Soul can be embodied.
- A baby born is a legal person and with breath becomes a living Soul.

I don't believe that the US Supreme Court should bypass the Congress (the people's representatives) and make law out of thin air. They are not accountable to the people the way Congress is. And this is precisely why I have problems with Roe v. Wade as law.

But Roe v. Wade as public policy is actually as close as we can get to a compromise that works according to the three-part structure I've outlined. It allows for a person being defined in the third trimester and beyond.

It's not a question of when life begins. Life is ALWAYS present. It's a question of when a legal person begins, and when we should use government to coercively enforce that definition of a legal person.

If you want other interesting bible facts, check out 2nd Corinthians chaper 12 verses 1-5 where Paul talks about a man out of the body and taken up to the third heaven.

Out of the body??? Third heaven???

It seems the body is just a container for a living Soul who can travel out of the body and visit one of the heavens while the body is still live.

There are even passages that point to reincarnation. Interesting, huh?

Posted by witnit at 10:07 AM | Comments (11)

June 13, 2006

1. Creating Your Life

he information that follows is partially influenced by material offered by The Pacific Institute in Seattle, Washington, and partially by other sources. If you like the stuff on How The Mind Works, please consider attending the Investment in Excellence training.

1. Creating Your Life - The Land of the Blind

First, before going any further, I want you to watch a short video. It requires Java active in your browser and its about 7 MB, so it will take some time to download. The video shows some students passing a basketball. Some students are dressed in white and the others are dressed in black. Here is the test. Watch the video one time and count the number of times the students in WHITE pass the ball. Simple enough, right? Okay. Watch the Basketball Video.

If you have trouble with the video, then try this test. Read the following sentence once, then follow the instructions EXACTLY that follow:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF MANY YEARS OF EXPERTS.

Now go back and read the sentence ONE time and count the letters "F."

Finished? Okay. First the video.

How many times was the basketball passed among the players in white? 16? 17?

Okay. Here's the question: Did you see the Gorilla? That's right, the Gorilla. Go back and watch the video again.

Meanwhile, how many "Fs" did you count? 2? 3? 4?

Did you count 5? 6? 7?

That's right. There are 7 "Fs." Go back and find them.

Still not seeing them? Isn't it strange, especially for those of you who count only 3 "Fs," that you can be told that there are 7 "Fs' in the sentence and yet you STILL can't see them.

If you don't believe me, then go back and count the "OFs" in the sentence. That's right. There are four of them, aside from the 3 others in the bigger words.

Here's one more test for you. Check out this picture of a woman.

Now, how would you describe her? Is she a young woman or old woman? Is she wearing a choker around her neck, or is she a hag with a big nose?

Of couse, the image holds both and old woman AND a young woman, depending on how you look at it. Go back and see if you can see the other woman. If you locked on to one image, you will likely find it terribly difficult to see the other woman. Here's a clue: The young woman is looking away from you and wearing a black choker around her neck. The old hag is in profile and her big nose is the young girl's chin. If you find it impossible to see it yourself, you can find the answers here.

Okay. So what? A few optical illusions, right? No big deal.

Well, my friend, it IS a big deal, especially if you are concerned about seeing TRUTH in the world and inside of yourself. It IS a big deal if you go around unaware that you have blindspots to the truth.

The Basketball/Gorilla video demonstrates that when you FOCUS on something, you become BLIND to everything else. This is good up to a point. Great high-performing people, in sports or business or anywhere else, demonstrate an ability to focus that blocks out distractions, that creates blindspots to everything irrelevant to what they are focusing on.

But there is a down side as well. When you lock on to what you believe the truth to be (or believe to be the "purpose," like the purpose I gave you in counting the number of passes between players in white) that missile lock can blind you to other important things that are going on as well.

This is how magicians work. AND it is how advertisers, media manipulators, politicians, and predatory people (forgers, con artists, men on dates) generally work. They get you to lock on to one thing so you are blind to something else.

The fact is, if you want to change, to grow, to get to the TRUTH, whatever it may be, you may want to consider a few things:

1) How are blindspots created?
2) Do I have blindspots that limit or control me?
3) How can I discover my blindspots?
4) How can I avoid creating blindspots that limit or control me?
5) How can I recognize blindspots in other people?
6) How can I recognize when others are intentionally or unintentionally trying to create blindspots in me?
7) How can I get past blindspots and into creating my life in a free-flowing manner with abundant energy? Because a lot of your blindspots are keeping you from having spontaneous and continuing energy to accomplish your goals.

This is the starting point for this series of posts. I want to point out to you some things about yourself, about your mind, and about your creative potential. The fact is, you are probably living only a small part of your potential. And that there are blindposts in you holding you back, blindposts in the form of PICTURES that you are holding about yourself, about others, and about REALITY that keep you from doing what you could do if you only knew that you had it within you to do it.

Until I'm able to move forward with this new series, you may want to move to How The Mind Works.

Posted by witnit at 9:59 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

August 3, 2005

Uncomfortable Truths, I

reating Your Life 4: Uncomfortable Truths, I

The Story So Far Short Version:

Death is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on humankind.

Long Version:

I started off this series with The God Game.

• Part 1: I introduce the idea that it's good to recall that it's not necessary to believe in God in order to be a fundamentalist. Then I discussed the meaning of the First Amendment establishment clause regarding freedom of religion, and why all interpretations should rest on defining the limits of the Federal government.
• Part 2: I talk about a certain domain of rationalist skeptics and their limitations of interpreting truth. I also introduce The Micro-Scientific Method, which only can be used to prove truths to oneself, no one else. I end by setting up The God Game.
• Part 3: I give my answer to The God Game, namely that if I were an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being, I would create EVERYTHING, and everybody gets to play every possible role.
• Part 4: I introduce The Satan Maneuver, an avoidance tactic used by fundamentalists to avoid uncomfortable truths.

At the same time I wrote the series, Evil Dictionaries And Money.

• Part 1: I talk about how changing definitions is used to control people.
• Part 2: I begin a fairy tale on banking and money.
• Part 3: I finish the fairy tale.
• Part 4: I talk about how manipulative definitions work to change taxation and attack liberty.

Next we explored How The Mind Works.

• Part 1: I talk about how the mind inately possesses blindspots.
• Part 2: I talk about how the picture that people have of themselves can dictate their reality. I also give a technique I successfully used to quit smoking, and more importantly see myself as a non-smoker, not a smoker who has quit.
• Part 3: I introduce the Reticular Activating System, a network of cells in the brain that creates blindspots based on what you believe to be true.
• Part 4: I introduce the Censor, which is part of your subconscious, and how the Censor blinds you to truths. I also talk about ways you can start using the Censor for your own purposes.
• Part 5: I talk about your self-image and how it is related to how you talk to yourself.
• Part 6: How your mind will lock on to things, and then lock out other things. And how people can use this function of your mind against you.
• Part 7: I get personal and then talk about the formula Imagination x Vividness = Reality.
• Part 8: I introduce The Pygmalion Effect, and how the pictures we hold of other people can actually affect them. Also, I talk about how you may have uncritically accepted pictures of yourself from other people.
• Part 9: I talk about Rites of Passage and The Wizard of Oz, and how the world is full of positive and negative wizards.

Finally, I began this series, Creating Your Life.

• Part 1: I talk about how the mind is a good slave but a poor master, and how important it is to be End-Result Oriented in order to achieve your goals.
• Part 2: I talk about how making changes in your life is like Kitchen Remodeling. You have to take out the old kitchen before the new one can be installed. I also mention 12-Year Cycles and how they relate to changes.
• Part 3: I talk about Full Power Imagination and how the image you hold in your mind's eye, with the right attitude and attention, will eventually manifest in "reality."
• Part 4: This post. A summary so far.
• Part 5: Next, some more outrageous propositions and a note about pluralistic tolerance of benign ideas.

On to 5. Creating Your Life: Uncomfortable Truths, II

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Posted by witnit at 8:07 AM

April 9, 2005

Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 4

ou can go back and read Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

The story so far: How words are defined has consequences. Con artists of all stripes us language and changing definitions to take advantage of you. The definitions of money are such that most people don't realize that they have been conned into thinking what's in their wallets and purses is real money. It's not.

Mind Games

If you have read up to this point, you might be thinking that I am one of those "Don't file your tax returns" individuals. Not true. I do not see any benefit for anyone to "buck" the system, confront the IRS, and fail to pay income taxes. It would take a fairly significant minority to even consider such an action, but the risks are too great for individuals. Too meaning well-meaning government people simply have no idea what they are participating in. Or of the consequences of changing meanings.

Let me give you an example: The 16th Amendment to the Constitution has very little text. It states quite simply:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Pretty plain meaning, right? Well, not exactly. If you do a Google search on the income tax amendment, you will find a wealth of controversy, but I am going to focus on one small aspect--the definition of the word income.

Originally, income was understood to mean indirect income (such as capital profits and other profits that did not involve labor), not direct wages (such as the money you get for going to work).

In other words, there was a difference between income and wages.

But over time, as such things naturally evolve with government, bureaucracy, and the abuse of power, the definition of income has continually changed and expanded to encompass much more than was originally intended.

But here is the crux of the matter: What exactly does it mean to amend the Constitution?

Where does the Law reside? This is an important question, because it goes to the heart of what distinguishes the U.S. Constitution and the United States from all previous forms of government. Historically, law has resided in men: in princes, kings, monarchs, emperors, bandits, gangsters, and so on.

The right to make law, execute law, and judge law resided in people. And if a king or a thug decided to change the law from day to day, to punish you but not his buddy for the same crime--to be absolutely arbitrary in the definition and application of what was law, crime, and punishment--the king or thug could do precisely that.

Our Founding Fathers changed all that. And the value of The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Men cannot be overstated, for it is what has sustained the greatest amount of liberty for the greatest amount of people in the history of our world.

The founders separate the making of law (legislative), execution of law (executive), and judging of law (judicial) to dilute the power of men to take the law into themselves in an absolute way. The whole point of the U.S. Constitution is to embody law externally, outside of people. To concretize meanings externally so that people could see and agree on the meanings, and only to change those meanings in a difficult process in order to protect liberty from the Rule of Men.

This is so important that it needs to be emphasized and repeated. The arbitrary rule of men, embodying meanings inside people, so that individuals can decide what the fundamental laws mean on a day-to-day basis is the path to tyrants and thugs and well-meaning despots. It is the death of liberty.

The amendment process to the U.S. Constitution exists for a very obvious reason: To allow an orderly, conservative, difficult-to-implement process for changing the meanings of the Constitution in such a way that it cannot be done by the whim of individual people.

But there are many people who look at others, especially productive people who work hard and make a lot of money, who do not want to go through the difficult process of being explicit about the meanings of their words, and changing those meanings. Instead, they will bait us with one kind of meaning, and then through the interpretations of judges, or the interpretations of bureaucrats writing regulations, change the meaning of the words in the law, without consulting the people.

Words have meanings. Clear definitions have real, practical importance in protecting the Rule of Law. Think about it. The Rule of Law is the primary indicator of whether or not an economic system is viable for investment.

If you have money to invest, are you going to feel more secure investing in a country that has consistent Rules of Laws that are explicit and that you can count on from day to day? Or more secure investing in a country whose leader or leaders can arbitrarily change the law from day to day without notice?

The extent to which a government is governed by a Rule of Law vs. Rule of Men is the extent to which it can have a viable investment-oriented economy.

Now you may be more appreciative of people who argue original intent or original meanings when talking about the Constitution. The extent to which we get away from holding ourselves to the legislated meanings of laws and allowing people to change those meanings outside of an amendment process is the extent to which we return to the rule of kings and monarchs and emperors and despots and tyrants and gangsters and thugs and con artists of all stripes.

How do con artists line their pockets at your expense? By using language to distract you with one meaning in your mind, while they have a different meaning in theirs, and while you are distracted with a fantasy, pick your pocket, or your goodwill, or your virginity.

Words have meanings. How those meanings change is crucial to liberty. Pay attention to meanings. It's important.

If you haven't already started the series How the Mind Works, start it now. That series of posts is heading into some interesting related areas.

*** The purpose of our organization is to perpetuate our organization. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 3, 2005

5. How the Mind Works

The story so far: You have a mind. Your mind functions as is complex filter. It stores pictures of yourself and the world. The pictures may not match reality, they may even be outright lies, but they are regarded by the mind as "true."

The mind has a mechanism, the Reticular Activating System (RAS), that creates blindspots to anything that does not match its stored pictures. The good news is the RAS helps you focus. The bad news is the RAS blinds you to anything contradicting your stored pictures, of yourself and of reality. Why? Because its job is to maintain your sanity, meaning your stored pictures.

You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture.

When you learn to ride a bicycle as a child you learn a simple fact very quickly. If there is a rock in the road, you don't focus on it. If you do, you end of hitting it. It doesn't matter that you want to avoid the rock. The harder you try to avoid the rock, the more you are drawn to it. To avoid the rock, rather than focusing on the rock you focus on the path around the rock.

When you drive a car, you also notice this phenomenon. When you think about changing lanes and check the rearview mirror, you begin to drift into that lane.

I remember watching America's Funniest Home Videos. A buddy was videotaping his friend skiing down the slope. The skier was so focused on his friend holding the video camera that he ended up skiing right into him, even though he obviously was trying to avoid him.

You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture.

The mind naturally moves toward the picture it holds. This is another aspect of the RAS.

This is why in disaster training, airplane pilots do not practice crashes, they practice recoveries.

This is why fatalistic people who are convinced nothing will go right in their life find that nothing does.

This is why no matter what kind of person you want to be, if you are convinced you are fated to be a particular kind of person, that is who you become.

You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture. If you are not happy with what you are getting in life, change your picture.

This may not always be easy, but it can be done. Of course, if you don't believe the picture can be changed, you will continue with your current picture. In fact, there are many people out there who want you to believe that your life is fated to be something outside your control. That you must follow the picture they give to you of yourself. And it's no surprise that the picture is often at your expense and their benefit.

Self-Image and Self-Talk

The subconscious mind functions somewhat like a computer. It accepts programming, lines of code, in the form of Self-Talk, what we say to ourselves about ourselves in our own mind. And how much feeling is behind it.

Self-Talk also includes the statements we accept from others and adopt as our own in our own thoughts.

You've probably noticed how much your mind chatters about yourself and the world. For most of us, the mind is talking non-stop. The talk is not just what people say about themselves. It also includes talk from parents and teachers and colleagues and political pundits and advertising and... everyone who we have consciously or unconsciously accepted as authorities.

If you were to monitor your Self-Talk for a day, you would notice that it is mostly negative--angry, sarcastic, self-belittling, limiting, can't-do, and down on yourself.

Your Self-Talk creates your Self-Image, the deep picture that is stored in your subconscious and filters your reality about yourself. Therefore, your Self-Image strongly influences How You Act in the World. And How You Act in the World reinforces your Self-Talk.

This is the Reality Cycle that strongly drives your sense of self and reality.

• Self-Talk creates your Self-Image.
• Self-Image strongly influences How You Act in the World.
• How You Act in the World reinforces your Self-Talk.

This Reality Cycle operates mostly without people being aware of it. But when you are able to acquire enough detachment and begin observing the Reality Cycle within yourself, especially your automatic Self-Talk, you can begin breaking the Reality Cycle and being the driver of it, rather than it driving you.

But this can happen only if you recognize several important things:

1. You are not a victim of anyone or anything.
2. You can begin recreating yourself and your reality.
3. You can continually enlarge your perception of Truth by overcoming your externally implanted and self-created blindspots.
4. There are plenty of people and institutions around you that do not want you to recognize any of this.

In a very real way, we are talking about your Imagination, your primary creative picture-making faculty, your ability to create a Vision about you and the world.

Look at your life and relationships. Who and what is it around you that wants you to believe you are a victim? That you should feel guilt or fear? That you cannot help who or what you are? That making your own way in the world is useless and pointless? That you are helpless?

Who and what is it around you wants you to believe that you were born with a negative stamp on you? Whether it is religious guilt, racial deprivation or some other thing that means you started out with a deficit that you cannot help, that you cannot overcome?

Who wants you to believe that you are a victim?

Who is using words and images to program your mind against you believing that you can better yourself despite the way the world is? Who is using guilt and fear and strong emotional energy to "lock-in" negative imagery about you and the world to drive your behavior into thinking and actions that usurp your creative energy for an external cause?

Who wants you to believe that you can't change yourself or the world or what is "true" just by thinking differently about yourself?

By the way, if you have read this far and are actually interested in reading more, please let me know in the Comments.

More to come in 6. How the Mind Works.

*** Well, if you don't like my opinion of you, you can always improve. Ashleigh Brilliant

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March 21, 2005

4. How the Mind Works

Every teacher in every classroom should be aware that every student has a subconscious Censor, the Reticular Activating System. And they should be aware that they themselves have one as well.

In many ways, we do not act according to the truth. We act according to the truth as we believe it to be. And there is a particular danger when experts are certain that they know the truth. The human mind innately responds to "psychological certainty" by creating very real blindspots to evidence and arguments that contradict the certainty.

Anyone aspiring to be objective in viewing evidence and sorting through arguments needs to develop a degree of self-doubt in order to minimize the automatic and natural actions of the Censor in human mind.

The Story of Cliff Young

In Australia a 600-km marathon is held between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Several years ago a 61-year-old man named Cliff Young showed up to run the race. The world-class runners thought he was some derelict that showed up in the wrong place because Cliff showed up wearing Osh Gosh overalls and galoshes. And he was obviously an old man.

[For a detailed story on Cliff Young, go here.]

When he told them he was there for the marathon, the professional runners asked if he had ever run in a marathon before. "No," replied Cliff. "How have you been training?" they asked. "I have cattle on my station [farm] and since I have no horses, I run around to move them along." The runners laughed.

You see, every professional marathoner knew with certainty that it took about five days to run this race, and that in order to compete, you would need to run 18 hours and sleep six hours. Cliff Young was clearly not up to their standards.

When the marathon started, the pros left Cliff behind in his galoshes. He had a leisurely shuffling style of running that targeted him as an amateur.

Cliff had no training. He did not know what the world-class runners knew. As you have probably guessed, Cliff won the race, but that is not what is astonishing. What is astonishing is that he cut one-and-a-half days off the record time.

How? Because of his lack of training, he didn't "know" that you had to sleep six hours. Cliff got up three hours early and just kept on shuffling along in his galoshes while the pro runners slept, and he finished the race in three-and-a-half days. He beat everybody. He was a sensation in Australia.

Now that world-class runners "know" that it is possible to run with much less sleep, and that they can conserve energy by adopting an easy shuffling jog, they have a new way of approaching long marathons.

We are like the pro runners. We act, not according to the "real truth" but according to some cockeyed truth given to us by some well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning "expert." For this reason, people that don't know the "accepted wisdom" are more likely to discover new aspects of life, create remarkable inventions, and break through into a new realm of consciousness.

The Censor

The conscious mind perceives, associates, evaluates, and decides. The subconscious mind stores habits and attitudes, and also stores what it believes to be the truth, irrespective of what the real truth is.

The primary job of the Censor is to Maintain Sanity. (It also creates drive and energy, and resolves conflict, both of which are connected to its need to maintain sanity.)

The subconscious stores "truth" (it is initially uncritical as to the validity of the stored truth). These "truths" are stored in the form of habits and attitudes that arise from facsimiles, the picture-patterns that we hold onto as anchor points in this world.

For example, suppose my parents told me (as they did when I was twelve) that "You can't make money doing what you love; you have to be practical." If I uncritically accept that picture, it makes its way into my subconscious and is stored as true. Now immediately the Censor goes to work building blindspots to anything suggesting that I actually can make money doing what I love. I only develop habits and attitudes that reinforce the stored picture.

Or suppose that my professors tell me that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the Shakespeare poems and plays. If I uncritically accept that picture, it makes its way into my subconscious and is stored as "true." Now immediately the Censor goes to work building blindspots to anything suggesting an alternate candidate.

Unless something happens to overcome the blindspots, I will accept the orthodox view because those anchor points have been established with which I am comfortable. AND if I go on to build a scholarly career on that picture, or to tie my finances in some way with that interpretation, then I will build further blindspots to block out any threat to my comfortable and lucrative foundation.

Of course, it's just as important that if I am persuaded that someone else may have written the poems and plays attributed to a Shakespeare that I do not attach myself to this new "truth;" otherwise, I will begin building blindspots to any evidence that contradicts my new "truth."

Why does the Censor build such blindspots? Because the Censor cannot abide insanity, meaning anything that contradicts my perceived truth. The Censor functions automatically and naturally. As long as I believe this "truth," I cannot accept anything that contradicts it. The Censor has maintained my "sanity" by requiring me to see only the stored truth. You can literally be looking at the opposite truth and NOT SEE IT. (Remember the F's?)

In other words, you can literally be looking at evidence that contradicts your interpretation of historical evidence and NOT SEE IT.

This phenomenon is evident when you lose your keys. Have you ever lost your keys, and after having looked everywhere you announce, "My keys are nowhere to be found."

Immediately, your Censor builds a blindspot against your actually seeing the keys. Why? Because you would appear foolish (insane) after having made your statement. So then someone else finds them (in an obvious place where you had looked several times), and you have to say something like, "OK, who moved them? They were not here when I looked."

This phenomenon is also evident when you judge someone. I remember being on a job and being told that a certain fellow employee was stealing from the company, but had yet to be caught at it. I began to see that employee's shiftiness. Her actions were obviously suspicious. Though I had once thought her kind and ethical, now she acted in a way that reinforced her untrustworthiness. Once the real culprit was caught, she regained her kindness and innocence.

Since stored "truths" build blindspots to reality, it seems to me that the scholars have quite a challenge in leading students into higher studies. For any statement or "truth" the scholar presents, the student may accept it in such a way that blindspots are formed against other, better "truths" or interpretations.

Thus it seems incumbent upon the scholar and scientist and teacher to convey a strong sense of only standing behind interpretations as a "best case" rather than "the one and only truth."

Let's review the job of the Censor:

1) Maintain Sanity - The Censor makes sure that you act like your self-image. It defines this acting as "sanity." When you don't act like "yourself" you develop anxiety until you either start acting like yourself again, or you change yourself (your self-image). That is, if you have a strong image of yourself as a Stratfordian, you have a harder time, even temporarily, trying on the "shoes" or point of view of an Oxfordian [one who believes that the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, wrote the plays]. The stronger the image, the more you will subconsciously work to thwart a change to that image.

If you actually discover a good Oxfordian argument, you will suffer anxiety because of the conflict with your Stratfordian self-image. A good argument is then more likely to suffer a stronger attack. (The same holds true, of course, among staunch Oxfordians who come upon a good Stratfordian argument.)

Another example: If you "know" that you are not good in math, then if you do well on a math exam, you will suffer anxiety because doing well is "not like you." Your Censor then will correct for the error of success and you will do poorly on the next exam.

Why do poor people who win the Jackpot usually end up poor again soon after? Why do people who have little money and inherit a significant amount usually spend it all and end up where they started? Because they picture themselves as poor, so they must correct for the mistake of wealth.

Why do people who've been in prison for decades have such trouble adjusting to the outside world once they are released? Why will they commit a crime in order to be sent back to prison? Because freedom conflicts with their deeply ingrained picture of being an inmate. Freedom = anxiety.

To a staunch Stratfordian, a good Oxfordian argument = anxiety, insanity.

To a staunch Christian, a good evolution argument = anxiety, insanity.

To a staunch Leftist, a good deed by President Bush = anxiety, insanity. He must be lying.

That's why imagination is crucial to experience. We only attract ourselves to a state of consciousness once we can see ourselves in it.

In other words, a scholar and scientist and teacher needs to develop a kind of objectivity where deeply held beliefs are challenged and dislodged to form a more flexible scholarly consciousness.

2) Resolve Conflict - The Censor also helps us solve problems. In fact, once we understand the art of giving our Censor problems to solve (resolve), we can grow in remarkable ways.

The Censor won't allow us to hold two contradictory pictures of ourselves or reality. To experience two contradictory beliefs, pictures, or feelings is called "Cognitive Dissonance."

The Censor always works to resolve Cognitive Dissonance. Whenever we picture something as incomplete, we label it a "problem." The Censor works to make things complete, to resolve cognitive dissonance, to solve problems.

Thus, when a staunch Stratfordian faces a good Oxfordian argument, the Censor will either 1) dismiss the good argument in order to preserve the comfort of a staunch, entrenched position, or 2) let go of the staunchness and begin to allow a larger picture of reality to emerge.

3) Create Drive and Energy - Suppose you set a goal to remodel your kitchen. Suddenly you have a "problem." The picture or vision you have does not match the reality. You experience cognitive dissonance and your Censor moves into action to resolve the problem, to create wholeness. You must do one of two things: either give up your vision or remodel the kitchen.

This form of anxiety is actually creative drive and energy. In other words, to be creative is to deliberately throw your life out of order (setting a goal or creating a vision) so that the Censor gives you creative drive and energy to get your life back in order (accomplish the goal or vision).

Many people avoid setting visions and goals, or accepting new interpretations, because they confuse creative drive with stress. To grow intellectually means to continually revise yourself and your models of reality. This is why a true scholar does not require students to "lock on" to particular literary interpretations, or require students to work primarily with critical interpretations of literature rather than the literature itself.

Real scholars will help students thoughtfully explore alternative models, without prejudicing them or threatening them with academic censure.

More to come in 5. How the Mind Works.

*** I x V = R (Imagination times Vividness equals Reality) Lou Tice

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March 5, 2005

3. How the Mind Works

kay. Now that I've completed the overview in Part 1 and Part 2, let's get into some details and their implications.

You can also jump to Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

As I've said before, isn't it funny how often we hear about the fact that we have a subconscious mind, and yet we never take it into account in our daily lives? Well, it's time to start.

Because there is a significant minority of people around you who do, and sometimes they do so at your expense and their benefit.

I'll get into more of that as this series of posts continues.

The Reticular Activating System

The reticular activating system (RAS) is a network of cells in the brain associated with wake, sleep, attention, and focus. It physically filters irrelevant sensory input. It's the RAS that makes you forget that you have all those little tickly hairs on your body (until I mentioned it to you. Hey, what's that sound outside?)

The RAS allows you to focus. When you start reading a good book, or a fascinating post like this one, the rest of the world begins to fade away--the television, the traffic on the street, the sounds of rain on the roof, your sweetheart talking on the phone in the other room.

The RAS makes you blind to everything that you regard as unimportant in this moment. It opens your awareness to what you value, and closes your awareness to what you don't value.

Every day you walk through the world oblivious to everything you don't value. (Or to what others may have somehow convinced you is of no value. See how this might work?)

The RAS works like an executive secretary; it screens out the junk, clutter, the nonessential, working as a sophisticated filter, allowing you to focus. That't the good news.

Of course, it also screens out everything it thinks is junk. It's important that you realize that many valuable things get screened out because they are not valued. That's the bad news.

(Hey, suppose we want to prevent people from valuing certain things like, say, the founders of the first liberal democracy in the world, the Constitution, sophisticated language skills, what it means to be a citizen, etc. Maybe we should make sure everyone goes to the same kind of school and learn everything but those things and...but I get ahead of myself.)

The Conscious Mind

Let's do a quick review of what you pretty much already know. Your conscious mind constantly has you perform a basic series of actions as you go through the day. Each time you come upon an experience, you perceive, you associate, you evaluate, and you decide what to do.

I perceive something slithering in the grass and I hear a rattle. I associate that with my experience and memory--a rattlesnake. I evaluate it. This is not good. A rattlesnake can bite and poison me. I decide to run away.

We think that is pretty much all there is to reality. But reality is more like an iceberg. A small percentage of the whole appears above the surface.

The Subconscious Mind

Your subconscious mind is a repository. It stores habits and attitudes, and it stores what it regards as "the Truth."

Your subconscious, especially as it relates to the reticular activating system, constantly strives to co-opt anything you do repeatedly and tries to make it automatic. That's its job.

Habits

When you start driving a car, you are conscious of every turn of the wheel and movement of your feet. You have to be because it's not yet habitual. Your subconscious notes the repetative activity, and soon, you're driving down the road for minutes at a time and you forget that you are driving.

How do you stay on the road? The subconscious takes over and keeps you doing what you have done so many times before. It makes your driving automatic to free your conscious mind to focus on other things.

The same is true with learning how to type. Most typing teachers will tell you that there is a 20-words-per-minute limit to conscious typing. There is a barrier that you cannot consciously pass. When you learn how to type, you have to learn to let go, allow it to become habitual (subconcious). Then you can reach 50, 60, 100 words per minute.

Piano players and other musicians know the same thing. At first, you have to practice, practice, practice. At a certain point, proficiency and speed pick up as you allow the activity to become more automatic, more a part of your subconscious.

Attitudes

On an airplane, the attitude controls determine how the plane turns toward or away from something. The right wing drops and you lean right. The left wing drops and you lean left. In life, we lean toward things we like and away from things we dislike. This behavor reflects our attitudes.

The subconscious begins to co-opt and make automatic our repeated likes and dislikes. Our cultivated attitudes become habitual. They become a part of us, and we soon believe that these attitudes are instinctual, determined, automatic, rather than remember that for the most part they are learned.

"The Truth"

So here is the kicker. Just like habits and attitudes, what you believe to be true also gets stored, whether it is really true or not.

Your subconscious is not interested in what is really true, only in what you believe to be true. Anything you strongly believe to be true gets stored as "the Truth." And it becomes part of your makeup, your personality, as integrated into you as your driving, your typing, your attitudes.

There is a third part of your mind. Let's call it The Censor. One of it's primary jobs is to keep you sane. The way the Censor keeps you sane is by making sure that "Reality" out there matches "the Truth" inside.

Think about that for a minute.

To be continued in 4. How the Mind Works.

*** We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glowworm. Winston Churchill

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February 21, 2005

Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 3

ontinued from Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 2.

*********

The fairytale continues:

Big Tony and Vito had a good thing going. But they wanted more. As time went on they noticed something else: People not only exchanged the redeemable paper notes like they were money, they began treating it as if it were money.

Until now, money was defined by several of its distinguishing characteristics in that it functioned: 1) as a unit of account; 2) as a medium of exchange; 3) as a store of value; that is, it intrinsically held value so that if someone would not take it in exchange for something, it still held value and could be used as a commodity in some way; 4) as a standard of deferred payment.

Big Tony the banker and Vito the politician loved gold and silver. And they grew envious. All this gold and silver was sitting in Big Tony's bank, just sitting there doing nothing, while the people who owned it were out there exchanging paper notes as if they were the real thing. They had to erase from the definition of money #3: as a store of value.

So they got an idea: Why not make it official? Why not make the paper notes themselves money?

They knew that people might catch on if they did it all at once, so they decided to do it in stages. They knew that to cook a frog, you don't drop him in boiling water. He'll just jump out. But if you put him in lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, he won't jump out until it's too late. His ass is cooked!

The $100 notes now stated: This certifies that there is on deposit in Big Tony's Bank one hundred dollars in gold payable to the bearer on demand.

They knew, as stated, that if the note would pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars in Gold, that the note itself was not One Hundred Dollars in Gold.

The first step was to change the statement to: This certifies that there is on deposit in Big Tony's Bank one hundred dollars payable to the bearer on demand.

Of course, since the note said that it would pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars, it was not One Hundred Dollars, but at least it no longer talked about Gold.

And almost nobody caught on. Never mind that saying, This note will pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars made no sense. It was like saying, This note will pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Gallons. A unit of measure is not the thing itself. If someone asked you, "Would you give me a gallon?" you would rightly ask, "A gallon of what? Gas? Milk? Paint?" A gallon by itself means nothing.

Same with dollar. It used to be if someone said they would give you a dollar, you would answer, "A dollar of what? A dollar of gold? A dollar of silver? A dollar of what?"

Of course there were a few cranks who talked about a government and banking conspiracy, but they were shrill and silly looking and spoke a language that most people didn't understand, so it was easy to paint them as nutcases (especially since some of them were nutcases, so all you had to do was point to them and paint everyone who talked that language with the same brush).

Big Tony and Vito knew that the next step would be a bit more awkward, so they decided to print up some extra money to found an Economics Think Tank to begin writing papers on how there was only a limited supply of gold and silver and that in order for the economy to grow the city would have to consider alternatives to the Gold Standard and the use of precious metals as money. There simply was not enough to go around.

Meanwhile, Vito wrote and had the legislature pass the Federal Reserve Act to create a banking system that appeared to be separate from the government and from banks. There were still some people complaining, but the newspapers didn't report on their concerns. The newspaper editors and journalists and columnists were always on Big Tony's and Vito's party list, and they were kept informed of the complexity of the economy and the need to "adapt to a new age of economics."

The Federal Reserve introduced its own Federal Reserve Notes that stated: This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable at the Federal Reserve Bank in lawful money.

Once again, nobody but a few cranks and nutcases noticed the difference, or thought about the fact that if the notes were redeemeable in lawful money, the notes themselves were not in fact lawful money.

Meanwhile, there was an economic crisis, and Vito and his fellow politicans announced that to fix the economy, they had to go off the Gold Standard, withdraw gold from circulation, but people could still use silver and the Federal Reserve would redeem notes for silver.

The cranks and nutcases complained, but most people didn't understand the nature of coin, credit and circulation, so they just went along.

Big Tony and Vito waited a few years, supported more enlightened economists who wrote papers and books and developed new economic theories based on systems without gold and silver as a standard, and then took the next step.

They waited until a big-wig celebrity was killed and a foreign policy crisis dominated the news, before printing up new Federal Reserve Notes that said simply, This note is legal tender for all debts public and private. The face of the note read One Hundred Dollars. No mention of redeeming the note. No mention of gold or silver, or anything on deposit.

At the same time, they announced the need to begin withdrawing silver from the economy. Because there was just not enough to go around, you see.

Meanwhile, people deposited their redeemable notes in their banks, and when they withdrew money they received non-redeemable notes. When they brought in their silver coins, they exchanged them for non-redeemable notes.

So if a father turned around and presented the new Federal Reserve notes and said, "Oh, I just remembered, it's my daughter's birthday and I want to give her silver dollars," the bank teller replied, "I'm sorry sir, but the government has to withdraw silver from circulation due to the growing economy and there being so little silver to go around, but here, you can have these brand new dollar coins that are just as good, they contain a mixture of copper and nickel with a nickel finish that looks exactly like silver, well almost, and she'll be happy with these, and they even have the same little mill marks on the edge to make them look real, because you know that they never put these mill marks on copper and nickel coins, because nobody would bother to shave them for their content being that they are base metals and not as valuable as silver or gold."

Yeah. That's what they would say...or imply.

Meanwhile, the bankers and politicans got the gold and silver, and the people got their non-redeemable paper money with all kinds of dollar amounts printed on them.

And there were more wars, more parties, more mysterious inflationary forces, more ignorance about the nature of money, and more gold and silver jewelry showing up in the possession of politicians and bankers. And the old politicians and bankers died, and the new politicians and bankers took over, brought up in universities with all the new economic theories and international monetary policies, and down they forgot as up they grew about the true nature of money.

And the people lived happily ever after.

More to come in Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 4.

***All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson

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February 20, 2005

The God Game, Part 4

his post completes this portion of The God Game. You should have already read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Satan Manuever

Here's my favorite picture of Satan:

I first noticed the Satan Maneuver some years ago while watching a televised interview of an evangelical minister. The minister claimed that the earth was created 6,000 years ago. The interviewer asked the minister about scientific discoveries of fossils that were undoubtedly millions of years old. How could the minister account for those age-old fossils? The minister replied simply, "Satan put them there."

We can imagine the nonplussed look on the face of the interviewer. Where could he go from there? It is important to understand what the minister accomplished with this answer. He had introduced a magical explanation into a forum that was assumed, up to that point, to be one where arguments were supported by evidence and reason. By introducing this Satan Maneuver, the minister destroyed that forum and replaced it with one that precluded, by its very nature, any argument based on evidence and reason.

In fairness to the minister, he may very well constantly dwell in a forum based on magic and faith, with no desire to ever be involved in a forum of evidence and reason. However, scholars and others who enter into a debate that implicitly promises a forum of evidence and reason have an obligation to avoid any introduction of any form of Satan Maneuver?that is, any explanation that introduces a magical explanatory element that negates arguing from evidence and reason, especially when they become uncomfortable with evidence and arguments that threaten to weaken or overthrow their closely held arguments or positions.

The Satan Maneuver appears in Shakespeare studies. When confronted with internal evidence that Shakespeare may have had a high-level education, whether in law or the classics, some scholars produce a rabbit out of the hat by falling back on Shakespeare's genius, or some other form of magical aptitude based on nothing but sheer speculation.

For example, A. L. Rowse in his Shakespeare The Man explains Shakespeare's comprehensive and wide-ranging experience with classical and contemporary literature and history thus: "He had a marvellous capacity from the outset for making a little go a long way; his real historical reading came later ? he was very much a reading man, and he read quickly."

How he has grasped Shakespeare's "marvellous capacity" or knows his reading ability, Rowse does not say. But his meaning is clear; Shakespeare gleaned his incredible wealth of knowledge by having a capacious mind that magically (through the mystery of "genius") grasped knowledge quickly and easily.

British Shakespearean scholar Allardyce Nicoll makes a similar claim in his book Shakespeare: "In the wonder of his genius he was able to grasp in lightning speed what could be attained only after dull years of work by ordinary minds."

Thus can scholars magically explain away the lack of high education and the absence of leisure that would seem to be needed for a writer of Shakespeare's accomplishments to refine his skills and accommodate the range and depth of his accomplishments.

By introducing such statements, these scholars destroy the possibility of presenting arguments in favor of a university education, or the kind of experience and access that comes with the aristocratic and noble classes. The forum of reason, argument, and evidence dissolves. Genius in the form of a quick mind and capacious memory explains all, the magical ability to immediately and photographically apprehend everything, sans education, sans experience, merely from reading books.

Another form of the Satan Maneuver is the "Universal Tavern of Second-Hand Knowledge." When confronted with the enigma of Shakespeare's knowledge of law, Italy, foreign languages, or anything else that could possibly require unusual study or physical access, some may argue that "Shakespeare would have picked such things up by visiting a tavern and querying travelers or lawyers or multilingual scholars or?" fill-in-the-blank.

Again, such an argument based on the second-hand acquisition of knowledge would harm any ability to rely on evidence and reason to make a case that the plays show the kind of knowledge that would require direct experience.

Rationalist skeptics commit a Satan Maneuver with the mind when they invoke its power to explain away out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and the like. "We know the power of the mind to produce powerfully real hallucinatory experiences, and that's all that is happening. It's just chemicals in the brain."

Again, something that can explain anything explains nothing, when it comes to working scientifically.

Just like the evangelical fundamentalists who magically invoke Satan to explain away evidence and reasonable arguments, the rationalist skeptic falls back on the mind to explain away any reported experiences that may lead one away from purely materialist explanations for the nature of human experience. The mind is the skeptic's Satan.

Now, if you haven't already done so, go to 1. How the Mind Works, which continues this series.

*** Me... a skeptic? I trust you have proof...

***The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good. Robert Graves

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February 17, 2005

2. How the Mind Works

Now, there's another way the mind works that's even more profound, but few people realize it. The mind has a kind of thermostat that keeps us sane. A thermostat tries to keep the temperature in a certain range. If the temperature goes too high, it kicks in to cool the system down. If the temperature gets too low, it kicks in to heat the system up.

The mind has a deep, innate mechanism that continually tries to make sense of the world, to keep it within a comfortable range. It's part of the subconscious mind that regulates how we see the world. It holds a certain picture of the world and of ourselves that we label as sane. Then it goes to work making sure that everything we perceive fits in with our picture of a sane world and a sane self.

But this picture is not the same for everybody. Different people have different pictures about what is sane and what is crazy. Most of us have enough of a similar picture that we can get along with each other. But people with a picture that deviates too much from our common picture begin to look insane to us. This fact often accounts for the strife between political ideologies.

Here's an example. Everybody tends to accept certain authorities as true authorities. We tend to believe in experts who tell us something about ourselves. In elementary school they have these tests that are supposed to tell us what we are good at or weak at. Usually verbal and math, right?

So suppose a student in elementary school takes one of these tests, and the teacher, an authority figure, tells her that she's weak in math. She takes that in. "I'm weak in math. Thanks for telling me. I might have tried."

For the student, that becomes the "truth," whether or not the test is accurate. Their internal picture of themselves sets the thermostat. Once that truth gets embedded, the student's mind will reaffirm that truth every time she fails a test.

And if she does well on a test? She looks at that as a mistake, or the thermostat in her mind will, and the next time she takes a test she'll do poorly. Her subconscious picture will help her correct for the mistake of success. Her mental thermostat has been set to, "I'm weak in math." Being good at math does not fit her picture of herself, and anything that contradicts that picture is seen as an error, a fluke. Even success. Success cannot possibly mean anything good.

It's the same with some poor people who win the lottery. People picture themselves as poor, get lots of money, only to throw it away on parties and extravagant purchases, rather than investing it. They see themselves as poor. They're comfortable with that picture because it's a picture that they are familiar with. They know the rules. Suddenly they have wealth. This puts them in an uncomfortable world. It's new, it's different. It's not like what they're used to. So they become spendthrifts and end up back in the lifestyle they are used to. They return to the comfort zone set by their internal thermostat.

You're probably thinking, "Well, that can't be right. There are plenty of poor people who become wealthy." Sure. But it's usually through their own efforts. They hold a picture of themselves that gets them beyond their circumstances. They daydream of a different life. They get comfortable with that daydream, grow into it, and if they work hard enough they gradually manifest that dream. They transition into the new picture quite easily.

They have managed to reset their thermostat, take on a new picture of themselves, a new self-image, and live a different life.

Lottery winners could do that as well, it's just that few ever see themselves wealthy. They see themselves as poor people with money to spend.

So do I believe that people can't be helped? That they can only get ahead as rugged individualists? People can be helped. But the best way to help them is to encourage them to adopt a new picture of themselves and their life, and then work to create it for themselves. With some help if necessary, but they have to supply their own creative efforts. They have to participate in resetting their subconscious thermostat.

Frankly, most people like where they are. Especially if they don't have to work hard for handouts. (I have a relative who is a perfect example of this. He's smoked pot from the age of 14. He's now 47. He has been collecting Social Security for years because he convinced a government psychiatrist along the way that he was mentally disturbed. "I'd look at him and say, the files, the files, they have files on me." And he'd laugh at the psychiatrist's stupidity.)

People who have an understanding how the mind works can manipulate a population. Happens all the time. Marketing companies and political consultants know how to implant images and craft group images that idolize their products and candidates and demonize the competition.

They're not always successful. It's a more complex process than I'm describing. But I think everyone should be aware that they have a subconscious mind that is programmable like a computer, to a certain degree.

But you also have the power to alter your thoughts, talk to yourself in new and positive ways to change the picture. And protect yourself from others who try to program you.

How to Quit Smoking

I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. I wanted to quit. It's hard to quit, even though research shows that the physical addiction is gone after several days of non-smoking.

Why do so many go back to smoking after that? Because even though they have given up smoking, they still hold the image of themselves as smokers. They are smokers who are not smoking.

I quit smoking by becoming a non-smoker first.

I spent months visualizing myself without cigarettes, even though I still smoked. I pictured my life without smoke, without dirty ashtrays, without a cigarette between my fingers, even while I was smoking.

And I adopted the attitudes of a non-smoker. Smoking is awful, it pollutes the air, kissing smokers is like licking an ashtray. The usual stuff.

When I finally quit, I didn't crave cigarettes because non-smokers don't crave cigarettes and I was already a non-smoker.

The problem with most people who quit and still crave cigarettes is that they are still smokers who aren't smoking. The outer picture may have changed, but they still hold onto the subconscious picture of themselves as smokers. And so they still crave cigarettes.

What kind of person are you? What ways do you picture yourself that hold you back from what you want to be? There is no easy way to change, and not everything will submit to your efforts.

I know this sounds simplistic. But you have nothing to lose by becoming aware of the processes involved. And trying a few experiments. If you have the discipline.

More of this stuff to come in 3. How the Mind Works.

*** Are we having a relationship, or just doing research on each other? Ashleigh Brilliant

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February 16, 2005

1. How the Mind Works

First, you can get more context for these posts by reading all of the The God Game posts, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 (although, perhaps not immediately apparent).

Also, I want to acknowledge Lou Tice and The Pacific Institute for contributing to my understanding of such things as the Reticular Activating System and its psychological counterparts. If you want a deep understanding of this and other goal-setting topics, fly to Seattle and take their seminars. They are the real deal.

*******
I claimed in The God Game, Part 3 that there is evidence that the mind possesses the ability to "partition reality."

We all seem to think that we perceive the "truth" every day all around us. But actually, we don't. We only perceive truth as we believe it to be. And as I will point out, we have little awareness of how what we believe to be the truth is highly filtered.

Here's a quick example, which you may have already been exposed to in a psychology class. Read the following sentence one time:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF MANY YEARS OF EXPERTS.

Good. Now, read it again, only once, and count the number of letter F's in the sentence. I'll wait for you.

If you are like most people, you counted three F's in that sentence, right? In Finished, Files, and Scientific.

Would you believe me when I tell you there are seven F's in that sentence? Go back and find them. I'll wait.

This is no trick. There are seven F's. Isn't it strange that you can be looking directly at something, be told something is there, and not see it? Look again.

If you still only see three F's then my point has been made. The other four F's are in the four OF's in the sentence.

Ahhh, that's better. Strange, isn't it?

My guess is that since we read the F in the word 'OF' as a 'V', somehow our mind blinds us to them as F's. The concept gets in the way of the truth. It creates a kind of blind spot. The mind is a very interesting thing. Have you ever thought about how the mind must filter our environment for us? For our own good?

You had no idea that your brain had placed a kind of filter on your perception. You thought you were seeing the absolute truth. You weren't, and you had no idea that you possessed such a blind spot. Even when told directly that it was there. Doesn't it make you wonder what other blind spots you have?

You may ask, "What difference does it make? If they're blind spots that I don't know I have, so what? How can I know, since I'm blind to the blind spots?"

Exactly.

The mind possesses a remarkable filtering system. If it didn't, you'd go crazy. Think of all the information coming in through all your senses. The sights, the sounds, the tactile sensations. Think of all those little hairs on your body. If you focus on any part of your body, you would become aware of the sensation there.

But once you focus on something else, that tactile sense fades from your conscious awareness. That's because there is a part of your brain that functions like an executive secretary, a kind of censor of what's not important. It determines what information gets through to your conscious awareness, what information at any given moment is of value.

That's why when you read a book and begin letting the story fill your imagination, the outer world begins to fade away. You don't hear the traffic outside or someone calling for you. They have to speak more loudly to get through.

As we focus on something important, things that are less important fade away. Important information gets through. Whatever is considered valuable or threatening.

This explains why a teenager can be watching television and a parent can call them to dinner and not be heard. The value of the parent's voice goes down in proportion to how important the TV show is.

This explains why a new mother sleeps through other sounds, but when the baby starts crying, she wakes up right away. The other sounds are not threatening so they don't get through the censor, but the sound of the baby gets through.

Have you ever been at a noisy party where the whole room is chattering away and you can't make out any of the conversations? Then someone mentions your name and that somehow gets through? Same principle. That's also why people at dinner can have cross conversations with each other and still carry on. As you focus on something important like your own conversation, the others fade.

I once had a neighbor with a barking dog. It kept half the neighborhood awake, but the owners were never bothered by it. The barking constituted a threat to the peace of mind of the neighbors so it got through the mental filter. But the owners loved their dog and were probably comforted and felt protected by its barking. They would have no problem sleeping through the night. If their neighbors knew there were burglars in the area, they might sleep better if they knew that the barking dogs were protection.

You see, it depends on how you psychologically evaluate the sensation. This principle should be of particular importance to teachers. They have an obligation to make the material valuable to the students. Because the moment a student thinks what is being taught is no value to them, their minds shut down.

The teacher and the course material fade away. The student can be looking right at a teacher as the teacher explains something and not get it. (We have all experience this. We lose interest, our minds wander, the filters kick in because we become interested in our own thoughts or fantasies, and minutes go by where nothing the teacher/boss/television/politician says gets through.)

Next, I will give you a tip on how to quit smoking in 2. How the Mind Works.

*** Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

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February 13, 2005

The God Game, Part 3

f you haven't done so, you really should first read Part 1 and Part 2 of The God Game.

*****

Jewish student: "There's a God."
Gentile student: "No way!"
Jewish student: "Yahweh!"

I don't mean to offend you, dear Reader, but I have to admit that the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh or Jehovah, always struck me as being more in the Satanic camp than the Divine. Exhibiting a kind of pathological disorder.

All that anger and wrath and guilt-tripping and manipulation and sexual objectification and vain need to be worshipped and outright torture and murder. I just didn't buy it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Jehovah doesn't exist. He may well exist. But somehow, I never quite bought into him being the Big Guy, the #1 Creative Honcho, El Supremo Bueno.

Jesus, on the other hand, seemed more in tune with the Divine. That love stuff made more sense. But all that blood and suffering and crucifying and...

I used to ask my mother why all the real God miracles happened thousands of years ago and not today. She didn't know how to answer. Then I asked who Cain and Abel married. That got me into trouble.

Let's just say that I was sceptical of the Bible as the literal Word of God. However, there are passages that appear to be divinely inspired at some level.

(For a fascinating mathematician's examination of the first line of Genesis in Hebrew by someone not given to mystical, new age nonsense, I recommend Stan Tenan and his first video Geometric Metaphors of Life. Stan is a peer-review kind of guy. Unfortunately, the Hebrew scholars aren't that literate in mathematics and the mathematicians aren't that literate in Hebrew studies. So Stan is a brilliant but singular bridge. Do not confuse him with popular Bible Code types. He's a scholar more in the tradition of Ernest McClain. Do not dismiss him by perceived associations.)

I remember reading the sacred literature of many religions. All seem to have a piece of the truth. But I didn't want to go to India to find a guru. I didn't think I had to go anywhere to get the truth. Not to a text, not to a priest, not to some outer authority. I did believe in masters in the sense of master craftsmen who teach the apprentice and put them on the road to mastery. But I didn't want to ponder the sound of one hand clapping. So I coasted.

Anyway, back to The God Game.

Suppose I were an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being. Suppose I had the impulse to create. The question that begins The God Game is simple.

What would I create?

In a word, everything.

I would create every kind of life and every kind of non-life and every kind of place and every kind of experience and every kind of doing and every kind of being. I would create omni-life

Every universe would exist, every story would be true, every science-fiction and fantasy scenario would play out, every fiction would be fact, every narrative and book and movie and tale (fairy or otherwise) would get the green light.

I would create worlds in two dimensions and three dimensions and four dimensions and more. Worlds of Newtonion physics and Einsteinian physics and hypercubian physics and transmogrification physics and Lord of the Ringsian physics.

And I would populate my universe with immortal beings who would have the opportunity to play in those universes as long as they wanted, playing every role, and experiencing every experience.

Of course, part of the fun is getting lost in the role, so I would make sure that they would temporarily forget. Forget what they had done before. Forget who they were before. Play out the new role as if it were the only role.

Because nothing makes a life worth living more than thinking that it is the only one.

Every immortal being (Soul) would get to play every mineral, every plant, every animal, every human, the rich man, the poor woman, the master, the slave, the famous, the obscure, the healthly, the sickly, the warrior, the leader, the follower, the wielder of power, the victim of power. The angel, the devil, the magician, the (fill in the blank...only your imagination can limit the possibilities.)

Every kind of existence, long and short, from small consciousness to intergalactic and universal consciousness.

There would be one fundamental rule to make it all fair, to get the ball rolling, and to bring some structure to the overall, overarching story of each immortal being:

You reap what you sow. Every thought, word, action, emotion, intent, and non-intent generates little boomerangs that come back to you, in this life, the next, or hundreds of lifetimes away in other worlds. And given the fact that you don't remember sending out those boomerangs, life will surprise you with the appearance of unfairness and victimhood and being the effect of some other cause.

The whole point of it all? Learning how to give and receive unconditional divine love. Not romantic love, not emotional love, not intellectual love, not intuitive love. Divine love. Whatever that may be.

This creation obviously implies karma and reincarnation, although not the caricaturish versions. And why not? Why not everything combined with the ability to play out every scenario and role in personally carved out cycles?

The seasons cycle from birth and flourishing to decay and apparant death only to return to start the cycle again, in a new way. The tides go out, but they come back. The earth revolves on its axis to return. The moon circles the earth, the earth the sun, the sun the galactic center and so on.

Everything natural returns, not to its exact place, but like a spiral, to a new place similar to its origin but apart from its origin.

All in nature is a curve. Why should life be any different? It appears linear: You're born, you live, you go on a few diets, you die. But that is the appearance. Why not more?

And what about all those horrible things that happen to children? What about the so-called problem of evil?

It's a problem only if you take a short-term linear perspective. Only if you believe that just because you don't remember existing before you birth, that you in fact didn't exist. (Heck, you don't remember existing during your sleep last night; did you still exist? Just because you have memory of a thread before, how do you know you existed? How much of your existence is really taken on faith? Groundhog's Day. Remember?)

I know. I can hear all the qualifications and rationalizations and argumentations buzzing in your brain. There' so much more that would need to be answered and explained and structured.

But why not? Why not some truth in every religion, including non-religion? Why not a universe whose fabric basically allows each immortal being to partition reality in such a way that each can have his own reality, and those who are in some kind of agreement can participate in similar realities or worlds so that they can share anchor points for greater experience and growth together?

(Look for my upcoming posts on How the Mind Works, to see how we may already possess those partitioning mechanisms. And that without them, we would re-experience Soul or God or whatever you couldn't call it because you would lose the language.)

Ask yourself, if you were truly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, would you limit your creation to that of Jehovah or Allah or Krishna or Brahma or Descartes or Sartre or Sagan or...?

Now for the The God Game, Part 4.

*** Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. Niels Bohr

*** When I discover truth, I will tell you, if telling you still seems important. Ashleigh Brilliant

*** Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul. Ashleigh Brilliant

*** How can I believe in God when last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? Woody Allen

***Death is the greatest hoax every perpetuated on humanity. Mark Alexander

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February 9, 2005

Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 2

ontinued from Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 1. Warning: What follows is extremely simplified. But still essentially accurate. Like most fairy tales.

*** A Fairy Tale History of Money and Banking***
( Fractured Fairy Tales Theme )

ONCE UPON A TIME some very peaceful people bartered for their needs. A farmer would trade corn for chickens, a carpenter would trade labor for shoes, and a traveler would barter temporary work for a bed in a stable. These people agreed on value and exchanged as they saw fit. It worked well for a while.

Over time, certain goods that were easily carried, stored, and measured were seen as a kind of money, items that had inherent value to measure the value of other goods. Salt was such a good. Easily measured, it could be used as a means of exchange for other goods. Better still were silver and gold, which eventually became de fact standards.

Everyone wanted gold and silver. They contained a kind of inherent charisma. Gold and silver were easily malleable and made into jewelry. They were easily measured and checked for purity. The farmer would trade corn for gold knowing that he could buy chickens with it. The carpenter was happy to be paid in gold because he could buy shoes with it. The traveller accepted gold for his labor because it did not perish, and people in other towns readily accepted it. It held inherent value, because if people were left with only the gold, they could do something with it.

As commerce grew, the town flourished and more traders arrived, and the town became a center of trade. The traders brought gold and silver with them, and hired guards to protect their money.

One day Antonio got the bright idea of becoming a goldsmith, someone who would store and guard gold and silver for a fee. Antonio was someone with a credible reputation for security and discretion. The local town council supported the idea.

Traders would arrive, take their gold to Antonio , and he would give them a document testifying to how much gold they had deposited with him. The storage fee was agreed upon and the traders would receive receipts that said something like, "Bernardo Grumio has on deposit in Antonio's establishment 50 ounces in gold dust."

Over time as the industry grew and the town became a city, Antonio made the receipts more generic to make transactions easier. The receipt would state, "This note will pay to the bearer on demand 50 dollars in gold on deposit at Antonio's Goldsmithery." (The term dollar was used to indicate one ounce.)

All went well and people's trust in Antonio grew. That trust was such that people felt comfortable exhanging Antonio's notes, knowing full well that at any time they could get the gold that backed those notes. So people would go to the market with Antonio's notes and exchange them for food and goods and services.

Antonio noticed after several years that at any given time, the amount of gold he held never decreases below a certain amount. He knew that the city was in need of a better aquaduct to help with the irrigation of crops, but the city did not have enough money, and taxes could not be generate enough revenue for another year.

So he went to the mayor, Vitorelli, and suggested that they borrow the gold to pay for the public works project and then pay back the gold with a little extra. Antonio would ask the larger storers of gold if they would agree to have their gold used this way and get a little extra money in return.

They agreed and Antonio became a banker. The city flourished, it got a new aquaduct, they experienced a bumper crop the following year, the city experienced increased tax revenue and paid back all the gold plus interest, and everyone was healthy and happy. The economy was good.

Then Antonio died. He had trained his son well, a large young man who was not quite as bright and charitable as his father. People called him Big Tony. The mayor's son, Vitorelli Jr., was groomed by his father in politics. People called him Vito. Big Tony and Vito were friends.

Over time, Big Tony noticed something. People began more and more to treat the paper notes they were carrying as money, exchanging them freely among themselves. Even Big Tony did that. Fewer and fewer people actually cared about the gold they effectively "owned" in storage.

Big Tony knew that the actual number of notes out in the city equalled the exact amount of gold in his vaults. (He had $100,000 dollars in gold--real money--and there were exactly $100,000 in redeemable notes circulating--currency that merely symbolically represented the real money in the vaults. )

Big Tony's idea was simple. Why not print up a few extra notes and spend them? He had the printing press. What could it hurt? Nobody was going to notice. A few extra notes wouldn't be that big a deal. So Big Tony printed up an extra $1,000 in redeemable currency and spent it on a big political party for Vito. Big Tony inflated the currency supply.

Meanwhile, prices mysteriously rose by about 1%. More money in the system meant more could be bought, which naturally led to people raising prices as demand increased. When Big Tony was asked about the rising prices, he said that a thriving economy always results in some rising prices. People were satisfied with that explanation.

Big Tony told Vito what he had done for him, and Vito was grateful. In fact, Vito suggested that Big Tony print up more money, because they were going to need it to go to war with a neighboring city that was trying to dam the river that supplied the city with water.

So Big Tony and Vito began inflating the currency supply to pay for weapons and troops. And when prices rose dramatically, Vito called a press conference to explain that war always affected the economy and caused prices to rise because resources were more scarce, that it all was very natural and to be expected, but don't worry because things will get better after the war.

To be continued in Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 3.

*** One good reason for trusting me is that many foolish people already trust me. Ashleigh Brilliant

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January 28, 2005

The God Game, Part 2

his post continues thoughts started in The God Game, Part 1.

I used to subscribe to Skeptic magazine. I love science. I enjoyed reading the likes of Martin Gardner, the former Mathematical Games colunmist of Scientific American.

Martin was then replaced by Douglas Hofstadter who is even more brilliant. (His books are powerful play for mathematical/musical/linguistic minds, especially the original Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.

I also enjoyed James Randi, Isaac Asimov, and Michael Shermer.

Yet none of them believe in the Soul or in God. They can look at a little girl holding a doll, and feel nothing odd or irrational in pointing at the doll and saying, "That has obviously been designed by a creative mind" and then point at the girl and declare, "That is not the result of a design by a creative mind."

(Update: As the comments below point out, I am wrong about Michael Shermer and Martin Gardner. I made the kind of mistake one makes when applying to all contributors the beliefs held by the loudest voices. I apologize for the error. I should have used the names of the more popular radical defenders of evolution. Not that I discount evolution. Please keep in mind that the writing that follows speaks only to that domain of staunch rationalist skeptics who start from the position that they believe there is no God until there is scientific evidence to prove such existence.)

I finally had to end my subscription to Skeptic. Why? I simply got tired of the rather sloppy, hypocritical, unscientific attacks on believers in Soul or God.

Specifically, I got tired of rationalists who could attack the leap of faith (and anecdotal experiences) of many Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, when these same rationalists failed to recognize their own leap of faith denying the existence of Soul or God.

I can understand if they say there is no scientific proof, and that they simply do not know. But they abdicate their right to claim to be scientific when they declare that there is no Soul or God.

The Micro-Scientific Method

Many authorities, particularly rationalists, insist that reality is best explained consistently through the Scientific Method of experimentation. Anecdotal evidence is always suspect, so consistent results of experiments conducted by a variety of researchers offer better evidence for the truth of a proposition. Never mind that science is essentially a series of anecdotal experiences.

(Really, when was the last time you had direct, first-hand experience with anything "scientifically proven"? Almost all that you believe to be scientifically proven is really based on the authority of anecdotal stories. How often have you opened the newspaper only to discover that the latest studies show that all previous studies are wrong? How often have you believed the new anecdotal scientific story has proven that the previous anecdotal scientific story is wrong? Is your belief "scientific"?)

I call this the Macro-Scientific Method. It's the staple of our media diet of statistics and research and studies. It carves out a very particular, very narrow domain of experience and declares that to be truth. Don't get me wrong. The Macro-Scientific method goes far in the "hard sciences" in revealing material truths.

But there is also a Micro-Scientific Method, which carves out a far larger domain of experience and truth. This Method centers on one's own personal experience rather than on authoritative studies.

I know what thoughts I had 10 minutes ago. What those thoughts are can only be known by me. I cannot scientifically prove them to anyone. If I tell anyone, that's declared to be anecdotal. But they're still true.

The hubris of the rationalists at Skeptic magazine is that they can selectively negate all that is provable through the Micro-Scientific Method, through direct, personal knowing. To negate Soul and God and everything else outside the scientific domain, all that they have to do is start from the position that nothing is true except what is scientifically provable. It's a perfect gotcha.

Why not start from the position that everything is possible, and only negate what is scientifically proven not to be so?

Oops. Sorry. That would allow too much possibility.

The Two Traditions

We dwell in the western tradition that goes back to the Greeks. We center ourselves in the philosophical tradition that starts with Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and goes through Augustine, Erasmus, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Mill, Darwin, Marx, Freud, James, Wittgenstein, and Turing. (Nope. Won't link 'em. Go to The Philosophy Pages, if you want.)

The philosophical tradition is primarily one of interpreting reality with the mind.

The other tradition is the initiatory tradition. This is the tradition of enlightenment, conversion, direct knowing, revelation, learning from the feet of an inspired master, or directly from Spirit of God or something.

The initiatory tradition bypasses the mind and supplies knowing directly, through some kind of direct experience, often inexplicable, beyond language, and sometimes sending someone into such a state that rationalists want to lock them away. It's very unscientific because it's exceedingly personal and unprovable to others.

The initiatory tradition interprets truth outside the mind. Perhaps directly by this thing called Soul.

Of course many people combine both traditions into any number of combinations.

Prelude to the God Game

People, especially rationalists, look at this world and the so-called problem of evil (most often encapsulated in the statement, How can a God allow children to suffer?) and declare that there can be no God. There is no way to reconcile a loving God with the nature of this world.

Maybe not. But let's try an experiment.

Forget all that you know. Forget all that you believe regarding science and religion and philosophy. Detach yourself from your cherished anchor points. Try this thought experiment:

Suppose you were an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being. Suppose you had the impulse to create. The question that begins The God Game is simple.

What would you create?

Think about that. I'll give you my answer in The God Game, Part 3.

*** There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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January 24, 2005

Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 1

he genuine purpose of a dictionary is to preserve distinctions despite public misuse.

A good dictionary functions as a ruler, as a constant unit of measurement for meanings to help people acquire a flexibility and subtlety of language and thought, for deeper and common communications and expressions.

A good dictionary warns against such misuse.

An evil dictionary, on the other hand, will descend to popular misusages, even to the point of deleting the original, correct usages. By evil, I mean that which breaks down structures and hierarchies that lead to greater freedom of thought, expression, and awareness.

Which word is correct usage for the following sentence? "We expect his continual/continuous presence in class this month."

"Continual" means repeated at intervals while "continuous" means non-stop. Therefore, continuous presence would mean he never goes home, night or day. This is a distinction worth preserving, but evil dictionaries will blur the distinction, calling them synonyms.

Evil dictionaries allow misusages to flourish and blur distinctions that are freeing. We live in an age that throws out hierarchies just for being hierarchies. Thus, many liberating structures are being reduced to rubble.

Manipulators of power want to blur the language, to keep people from using language specifically, clearly, and effectively because such people are easy to control. Clear and distinct definitions clarify reality, while unclear and ambiguous usage and misusage blur reality and keep people from seeing what is really going on. ("It depends on what the meaning of is is.")

In other words, if I can get a blurred meaning into your imagination, you will not see past that implanted meaning. I can then get away with misdirection in reality, while you are blinded by the implant.

Let me give a politically manipulative example that you can use to immediately classify your dictionary. Look up the word inflation in its economic sense. If the definition given is only that inflation is "a general rise in prices," then you have an evil dictionary. If your dictionary defines inflation as "an increase in the supply of currency that causes prices to rise", then you have a good dictionary.

If your dictionary supplies both without warning you that the first usage is a popular misuse, then you have a partially evil dictionary.You see, there is a profound difference between the two definitions. Inflation is not "rising prices." Inflation causes prices to rise.

There are people who want you to believe that inflation is merely rising prices in order to disguise the fact that it is the government or its appointed designees who "inflate the currency supply" (i.e., inject more money into the economy making the value of all money to go down and thus prices to rise).

If you never knew that governments cause rising prices by printing up more money (to finance wars, foreign aid, parties), then congratulations. You have been taken in by a con game that has been going on as long as there have been governments.

Study Roman history to see how the Caesars did it. Have you ever wondered why so many old coins have holes in them? Once the treasury got low with all the big parties, Caligula, say, would require that the money (gold and silver coins) have their centers punched out so that the metal could be melted down and more coins could be made. And a law would be passed requiring citizens to use the holed coins as if they still contained the full value of silver or gold of those without holes.

Of course, such laws failed, since the holed coins would immediately be devalued by merchants who raised their prices to account for the difference. One of the reasons why Greek and Roman history and the Greek and Latin languages are being removed from high school and college curriculums is that fewer students will stumble upon such truths. A deep study of Greek and Roman history and politics reveals starkly uncomfortable truths.

Of course, a good dictionary should supply the technical definitions as well as the popular reductions or alterations, but it should also make clear when there is a possible problem or potential confusion. That's one reason I like the Oxford English Dictionary (which gives the complete history of usage) and the Oxford Amercian Dictionary (which for example warns one not to confuse Continual with Continuous). (Of course, as you have seen with the link above, you can't trust AskOxford.Com, a terrible irony.)

But the main point I am making is that a dictionary's primary purpose should be to preserve real distinctions so that everyone has access to those distinctions. As you know, any elite group wishing to alienate the majority and consolidate power construct a technical language that allows them to talk above the heads of the majority.

In essence, good dictionaries do not become tools of such groups to offer only popular definitions while allowing the finer distinctions to slip away. Stay tuned. In Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 2, I will get into stuff so serious, you can only laugh.

Here are some interesting dictionaries for something to do during your dotage:

• The Devil's Dictionary
• Grandiloquent Dictionary
• Symbols Encyclopedia
• The Superheroes Dictionary
• Worthless Word of the Day
• Sex Dictionary
• The New Hackers? Dictionary
• Aaaugh!: The Foolish Dictionary Online
• The SubGenius Dictionary of the Gods
• Official Dictionary of the National Bondage Club of America
• The Gargish Dictionary
• Cavers? Slang Dictionary
• Pseudodictionary
• Dictionary of Unusual and Weird Words
• Dictionary of Winds
• Double-Tounged Word Wrester
• The Alternative Dictionaries
• A.Word.A.Day
• Catalog of Dictionary Songs
• Dictionary of Custom License Plate Terms
• Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, and Body Language Cues
• The Fictionary of Witty Words
• Dictionary of English Phonesthemes
• The Skeptics Dictionary
• Dictionary of All-Consonant Words
• Dictionary of All-Vowel Words

*** MAGNET, n. Something acted upon by magnetism.

MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. The Devil's Dictionary

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Posted by witnit at 7:16 AM

January 7, 2005

The God Game, Part 1

bishop, a priest, and a peasant were in a great European cathedral. The bishop approached the alter rail, beat on his chest and declared, "I am nothing. I am nothing." Then the priest approached the alter rail, beat on his chest and declared, "I am nothing. I am nothing." The humble peasant was moved to imitate the bishop and the priest, so he approached the alter rail, beat on his chest and declared, "I am nothing. I am nothing."

The priest turned furiously and hissed into the priest's ear, "Who the hell does he think he is?"

It's good to recall that it's not necessary to believe in God in order to be a fundamentalist.

I think all too many Americans have forgotten just what was and is the purpose of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights: To define the limits of the Federal government and to protect citizens from its coercive power.

That's what distinguishes government from business: A business persuades us to use its goods and services, while a government coerces us to use its goods and services.

So when the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" the purpose is clearly to protect us from government's coercive power to restrict religious freedom or force a particular religion upon citizens.

Which leads us to the present conundrum: Is the forceable amputation of religious icons and discussions from government institutions, including public schools, a restriction of religious freedom and in effect a form of coercing an atheistic religion upon citizens?

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim. Nor Hindu, nor Buddhist, nor Frisbeetarian (one who believes that when you die, your Soul flies up to the roof and rests there for eternity.)

In general, I favor open public references to a "non-partisan" deity and discussion of God and religions in public schools. The spiritual life and the tradition of spiritual principles are a legitimate topic for public discussion. Indeed, I think that, whether a particular religion has the whole truth or not, a person who believes they are held divinely accountable for their actions in this life is more likely to restrain their baser impulses than a person who believes there is no such accountability, that Darwinian struggle is the norm.

So when the mere presence of the word "God" in public life becomes something to amputate (recall the Sacramento, California, man suing over the use of "under God" in the Pledge of Alliegiance or the Cupertino, California, school district bans the Declaration of Independence from classrooms for containing the word God), Housten, we have a problem.

Think about how widely the 1st Amendement freedom of speech is protected, how it insinuates itself into public and private life. Religious expression seems to be equally protected by the same Amendment. Yet that passage is increasingly interpreted as a reason to restrict religious expression to dark places and behind closed doors.

I don't want either the whacko right or the whacko left dictating what everyone should believe, whether it's one God or no God at all. Just shut up and let us say Merry Christmas, even if we're not Christians. And let us talk about religion and God in the schools without being coerced into a particular belief. Or non-belief.

*** I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant. H. L. Mencken

Go on to The God Game, Part 2.

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