Happy 4th of July! Respect ALL Americans, and...

Happy Fourth of July! We are living interesting, troubling times. But we can make it better and we will make it better. Even against these dark forces belaid against us. Just as we've always done. Just s we always will do. Remember what the fourth really means and what we went through to get here. Especially what our Founders went through to give us not a perfect country, but one where we can achieve always, greater and better things. And remember, many have actually died in order for that to be true.

If you enjoy the respect of those from other countries just because we are American...

Respect those who have achieved more in life than you have. They have earned your respect.

Respect those who are still on that path to get to where you are, or those above you, because you were once there yourself.

Respect those you believe or judge will never achieve what you have, or that of those above you, because they may one day, and you cannot know any different, achieve that, or more. Until then, until they die, you are only assuming. And yes, you may be right. But so what? Thinking that way is a petty view of life and you add to the destruction you look down on every day of your life.

Respect those who are not American, because the luck of the draw found us born in a country such as America. What if you hadn't been?

Respect those who are newly American because they have chosen to come here, because they saw America as a great place to be a part of, and they persevered to become an American.

Respect those who are newly residing in America, even if illegally, because you have not lived their life.

Respect those who are criminal, who have made bad choices, who even continue to make bad choices, because to not respect them, furthers their condition, adds on to it, and does nothing to turn them around.

Respect All Americans, regardless. The next time you talk to another American, remember all these things and treat them with the respect an American deserves.

Respect All Human Beings. Because you are one too and to disrespect them, disrespects yourself, and all human beings.

Respect ALL Americans.

Respect ALL Human Beings.

Have a happy and safe 4th of July!

On Being a Man Today

What does it mean to be, a "Man" in today's world? That's a good question. One that is leaving many confused, flustered, even angry and bitter. We are also seeing this in the workplace when jobs disappear when businesses fall by the wayside. When we refuse to change with the times. to learn new things, to adapt as our ancestors did with changing environments during the ice age and beyond up until today.

I'm not talking about macho bullshit. I'm not talking about homoerotica. I'm not talking about self-involved obtrusiveness, aggressiveness or arrogance. I am not talking about misogynistic ridiculosities.

I'm talking about being, a Man. Not just a male. Bu a useful, respectful and decent human being. it is about at least understanding humility if not exhibiting it openly.

Note that there are many things similar to being an enlightened being, to what it means to be a woman, a minority, a person in a weak position in a culture. Or a human. When you have to watch out for all you do every day or suffer the consequences, you have to be more aware. And when you do not and "suddenly" find you have to, it's a shock which elicits anger and a lashing out. Better to stop and think and react appropriately.

Due to a variety of factors including not being a woman, a minority, in my view as I am a man, I really have no right to tell women what to do. I have no idea why men do not seem to see this. Fear of a loss of control one might presume. When I'm holding a deciding factor (as an elected official, as a legislator) I would need to be aware of concerns outside my realm, my comfort zone.

Yes, we all make mistakes. We may be raised with a belief system that is challenged once we get out into the world and as an adult. And so we pick ourselves up and try to do better with each day.

Still many male American politicians seem to think they have or should have, just that right. As if, God-given. Some of those "rights" some "people" also seem to believe are God-given rights. Obviously, they are among some of the biggest assholes on earth. Obviously, those types got us into this situation in the first place.

Abraham Maslow  (1954) came up with several things that all humans need in order to survive.

Late in the process, however, thank "God", he added in sex as one of those elements.

Good for him. Good for us.

Here's his list:

1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, sex, etc.;

2) Safety/security: out of danger;

3) Belongingness and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and

4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.

5) Cognitive: to know, to understand, and explore;

6) Aesthetic: symmetry, order, and beauty;

7) Self-actualization: to find self-fulfillment and realize one's potential; and

8) Self-transcendence: to connect to something beyond the ego or to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their potential.

To address these issues in the context of being male, I would offer this...

We seem, especially some on the right in this country, to stop politically at number four.

We keep the first one, our physiological needs as primary and so it should be. But we need to realize others have those needs, too. At times we seem to forget that.

As it is with #2, safety, #3 association, social needs, #4 self and group esteem.

But one does not need to put down others in order to raise oneself or one's group up. It leads to racism and bigotry and the "us against them" tribal mentality so prevalent today in American politics.

We need to move beyond into the latter numbers. The argument has always been lame: "We don't have the money for less important issues." Then where is the money? We had it, where does it go?

We need as number four indicates, to think more, to see beyond ourselves, to see the entire picture, not just our own, or our own group's view. That is what being enlightened is about, in seeing all the associated issues and having the wherewithal to address them in productive and helpful ways. Not ignoring them because, they are too hard. That means that sometimes we may even need to take a backseat to others' needs when it is appropriate.

Self-actualization means we need to move beyond ourselves to be better and to always try to be even better tomorrow than we are today.

Self-transcendence is taking our higher selves and actualizing that part of ourselves. To see beyond our self and our concerns and that of our group. To feel empathy for others and compassion, and to seek not just our better position in the world but our ability to be a better human being...in this world. That one thing could make this world a better place. Not just for ourselves, but for others and for others who have little say in how things are done, when, or where.

Truth, decency, compassion, understanding. Being a "man" is not just about the old paradigms. It is also about being aware of, and being better than, and even outside of our personal understanding of the world. It is about being more than we are and think we can be.

Yes, being a Man, being a Person in today's world is not as easy as it once was.

But this is the world we live in today and we need to at least try, to understand when we fail, to know that our attitude about all this has much to do with how we view the world and how we are perceived and so too, how we grow as a person.

Knowing vs Thinking We Know

After what we've just been through with the SCOTUS (sign the petition?) nominations, partisan politics, America being torn apart with help from Russia, with help from Republicans, both for decades now when no one seemed to notice except for a few, we need to re-evaluate what the hell we are doing. To America.

But perhaps more importantly, to ourselves.

None of us really knows what the hell we're doing. Even when we do, sometimes that falls by the wayside because things change, and we do not notice. Or things change and we do not noticed because that is how it was planned out, laid upon us, covertly undermining our reality. Some of us seem to do better than others. Why? How? Luck? Intellect? Acting like a bully? Underhanded means? Good Karma? Yes, and no.

Some of us have more rules in our head than other. Or some react better to situations than other. Or some of us just seem luckier than others and so just seem to "know" what they're doing.

But then suddenly the market changes and they're broke. Or their spouse has an affair, and they're single. Or their company downsizes and they can't find a new job, even though they may be generally overqualified. Or one day their kid simply gives up, totally and completely, and yet, no one saw it coming.

Someone said that the three most important things in life are timing, speed, and distance. Those are things you can practice and perfect. But they are not... everything.

What matters most is that we care, that we go on. That we have the right amounts of compassion and perseverance.

Because if you don't care, you won't go on. If you don't go on, you won't be there anymore for anyone to care about. And those you cared about won't have you anymore to care about them.

Just be sure to care about the right things. Try hard to always have them in the right order. Maintain the right priorities in your life. But be careful. Because too often, when viewed from outside of ourselves, outside of our lives, even outside of our country, we aren't doing what we think we are.

Why?

Because you know what? Most of us don't. Most of us really don't know what we're doing, we're just faking it so others think we know what we're doing. But give it some time and effort, some serious consideration.

In maintaining the right priorities in your own life, you affect many others. Because it helps others to find the right priorities in their life, too. And sometimes, what is right for you, isn't for them. So then what?

Exactly. Pay better attention. Because from what we're seeing, too many simply aren't.

Climate Change And The Humans Who Deny

Climate change deniers are on par with the flatearthers. They are purposely ignorant and refuse reality. It's a human based mindset that evolves along the lines of man made religions. And yes, they are all man made, or human if you prefer. Though if I were a woman I wouldn't want credit for what men mostly did in the past and are still doing today. But hey, equality brings with it responsibility. Sometimes even for things you aren't at all responsible for. Though to be fair, women do have some responsibility in the evolution of religions. Even though they seem to be the most abused by them.

As for climate change today you truly are simply stupid to deny it. Who denied it for so long? Conservatives and Republicans, and those who even passed laws denying it in places like South Carolina.

As for humans being responsible, perhaps not just for climate change, but to be sure for excessive climate change, the evidence is clear and again, you are of the mentality of those mentioned above if to deny it. Best case? You're ignorant of the facts.

So let's skip the facts.

Consider this. that humankind once killed one another directly, manually, with sticks and bludgeoning weaponry. When your enemy felt the impact of your attack, you were directly through that weapon connected to them.

Now let's modernize. Mechanize. Which we do so very well.

Once humankind realized they could use simply machines to kill, the thrown implement came into being, the rock, the spear, the arrow. In some ways that began our decline, but also our evolution and our rise to the top of the food chain.

Let's advance that a bit.

We invented the musket, then mechanized it further into the cartridge, beyond that to the bolt action, to the semi and full automatics. Along with this obviously there were explosives.

Then, the atom and nuclear bombs came on the scene.

So to think humankind cannot affect even a planet sized environment when they have mechanized pollution through industry and individual polluting devices such as cars, boats, planes and so on, not to mention, industrialized animal product production, is to exhibit a vast lack of understanding of our history and capabilities that literally boggles the mind.

Not to mention we have extracted fossil fuels from the ground which laid buried for millions of years and we have then used those to energize our lives, releasing into the ari ancient carbons which are quantifiable and qualifiable.

That is, we can track them.

There is no question about it. Humankind is escalating climate change to a massive degree with our 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 days a year intensive world wide mechanized polluting systems which have gone on now for over a hundred years.

We couldn't have done a better job if we had actually been trying to pollute and affect massive climate change. Even polluting massively poisonous substances into our own living spaces, the air we breathe, the water we drink and more.

IF you still deny humankind can and has evoked excessive climate change, then it's only fair and reasonable for you to be labeled: stupid. Sorry, but you're denying reality does not mean the rest of us have to, and as well, die because of it.

It does mean however that we do have to fix this as best we can, altering our current course of progress, or lack thereof, entirely perhaps without you.

Even to your detriment if you stand in the way.

It's your choice really. Help or get out of the way. Or be run over with our progress and positive changes.

Think about it.


#gOP #Republican #conservative #climatechange #climatedeniers #flatearthers #TheIdiotElite #POTUS #realDoanldTrump #VPOTUS

Our Internet Today... and Yesterday

Nuts. I'm not 100% loving Facebook, but it's nice nationally and internationally to have a platform from which to easily and at least somewhat usefully do so. To do what? All that Facebook kind of stuff. Obviously.

Graphic from ITPulse

I started on the internet back in the late 80s.

I was involved in it, took classes in it, worked in IT (Internet, intranet technologies and...information technologies) in a variety of ways, jobs, levels and orientations.

It's amazing to see how far we've come. For that matter, how far I've come, as I've retired from IT and now am a full time author and filmmaker with at least ons screenplay in hopefully the right hands in Hollywood.

I even wrote a short sci fi story about America, the internet and media titled, In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear. It is recently available as of June 2018 as an audiobook as well as ebook. It was my first fiction sold to a horror quarterly back in 1990 and is the first story in my book of my older sci fi and horror fiction, Anthology of Evil. I have a sequel coming out of my newer writings, many of which have been published in magazines or anthologies with other authors.

Graphic from Zcorum

This Internet today is simply not what we wanted, in what we're seeing today. Like the Internet of things. Though it has surpassed the imagination of what many of us has conceived. We had wanted an internet free for everyone, where information was free to all... and open.

Much has even disappeared from online, or has become a fee based access situation. Overall, the Internet has benefited us all, if only we can get back some of our original orientation, if only we could counter some of the for profit issues and get back to the betterment of humanity.

At first for us it was, "information is free!" It should be Free! "The Internet is for Humanity!" Not big money! Not big business. Certainly not for Russia to alter our national elections!

Back in the 80s, if someone tried to sell something in the newsgroups back then in the beginning, or the middle, the late 80s, where we had mostly text based newsgroups, FTP, Telnet, Gopher, whatever text based stuff, they were crushed. Ostracized.

When the graphical internet, the World Wide Web, WWW, what came to be known as the internet as the dark parts sunk into the dark web...money started creeping its way in. A few of us pushed to keep it out until (I for one) realized that it was far bigger than us and far too powerful (money's like that) and that it could serve a good purpose. But then would obviously take a darker course. Simply because...it's inevitable.

Eventually I got it, as did others, but it worried me\us.

 I learned, I got educated about it, I took many classes. I worked in IT. First as a technical writer, then deeper and deeper into the mechanics of it all. Which led as it has to, to security. Something I'd been into before at a more physical level.

Graphic from Latest Internet News

I had stumbled into something awesome. Something that led to Internet security people and police as well as intelligence people at all levels and the government. Something I was headed into before. The great Soviet had died but that education and those skills were all still relevant.

Now here we are. We need a place for everyone to use. Not fractured, but cohesively. Not to polarize, but to feel to feed ourselves intellectually and other ways. To share with like, but also unlike minds.

We need this. It protects us. It also attacks us. Sometimes from those we elect or pay to protect us. Openness, transparency. THAT protects us. That and being able to share and openly so.

I don't care if it's Facebook or not. Or as I proposed in my above mentioned story, In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear, where the United Nations builds its own "Facebook" social media platform. Using experts from around the world to build it, all the best minds. It replaces Facebook. Everyone the world over uses it.

Photo from Daily Maverick

So that when any dictator or government shuts its people off from it, the UN pays attention, and immediately sends in moderators, "blue hats", to protect the people and stop more abuse as we've seen so much through the end of the last century and the beginning of this new one.

It became what it could become, as with Facebook or Twitter in the Arab Spring, or other national travesties. I had done my best back in 2011 to support that movement in Egypt and some did use my blog back then for updates to information their government was trying hard to keep them from. It was a hopeful time, that devolved into mediocrity, much as America has with the election of Donald Trump as president.

Before Facebook it was MySpace, which has changed into a music platform. Before that, there were others. Before that there were the BBSs, the Bulletin Board Systems you used a modem to dial your phone and PC up to.

Before that...well, it's been around for a while. This ability to communicate world wide. In the late 1960s when I was in jr. high and had a radiotelegraph license and could run a ham radio. I talked to other countries and wrote it all down as is normal procedure for hamm operations.

Before that it was telephones and before that, the telegraph. Although that technology was by a select few of trained and paid individuals, a kind of subculture grew up around it and telegraph stations across the nation. There are even very interesting books on that culture.

But we don't do that anymore. Though, we kind of do. Don't we? Everything now is recorded and saved, somewhere. And, we need that. For history, for our protection. For our coming together. For humanity growing closer, rather than continuing to take advantage of those less knowledgeable, less powerful, less whatever. But we're seeing humanity growing more apart. Why? We need to work on that, and turn things around, to be sure.

In that way we can make those others and ourselves, more than. Not less. Because as we're seeing, too many are trying to make us all, less than we can be. I'd really prefer to be more, for us ALL to be more than we are. Even if I don't always win. Even if I don't become rich. Even if I can't, have everything.

Graphic from WordlessTech

Just enough really is enough. That alone, would make me happy. For us all to better ourselves and come together. To be more informed, more aware, more proactive. More caring for all others as well as ourselves.

Especially if those around me, are happy too.

God, Humanity, Religion, America

You must please forgive me, for I cannot help myself to not consider things and openly share them.

For it occurs to me that the ridiculous strictures upon Humanity by such things as religion, or the ten commandments, by conservatives, by the Republican party of late in blending so much religion with politics in a country that has forbidden that, have been so much a bane to our Humanity.

Having over-focused on so many of the wrong things, these and such things have led us to misunderstand our Humanity.Much as religion does from time to time. Think ISIS. Think GOP.

Remember that the ten commandments ignored slavery, domestic violence, child abuse, abuse against women, and why?

Anti Roy Moore poster

I don't see where blacks should be offended by that flyer going out (above). How very true is it first of all? Let's face it, this wouldn't even be an issue to dump Roy Moore if he were black.

So called Good Christians are actually going to vote for Moore. Confusing. Stupid. Some say because Trump, a man who has crass and base views in life, whose sense of class and style is brutish at best, was also accused repeatedly and more so of sexual harassment which he admits to, and yet HE became and is somehow still, president. Although his acceptance rating is at 32%, the lowest for any president ever in American history. Now there's a precedent, right?

Let's face it, none of what this says is a stretch

These are religious people? "Good" Christians? Racists? And let's face it, if Moore were white as he is but had been chasing after young black girls, he would lose his race hands down, not because they were young black girls per se, but because he was after girls who weren't white.

What can one say but... The South. And... Republicans. Conservatives. Silly people. Better a seat in the Senate than a Democrat, even if an old geezer was a young girl chasing child molester who had been blocked by the local shopping mall and YWCA because of those behaviors. But hey, better a pervert than a Democrat or someone liberal. Good grief.

"Forty years ago in Alabama, people could get married at 13 and 14 years old. My grandmother at 13 was married, at 15 had two children and a husband. If Roy Moore was guilty, if he was at the mall hitting on this 14 year old, forty years ago in Alabama,there's a lot of momas and daddies who'd be thrilled that their 14 year old was hit on by a district attorney." Southern focus group male member this week on Vice News.

OMG, seriously? That's the American South? And they admit it? In public? On national TV?

Okay, so Alabama admitting to its perversions. Things that it has recently been ruled on the world stage in other countries is child abuse and sexual molestation and needs to stop.

But in our American South, oooorah! Go get em Roy! Perve away on our young daughters. Woohooo! You old rascal! Just like our President! Nail that girl to the bedpost old sir!

#GOP is being pretty slimy....Republicans are still supporting perverts and openly and no one's gonna stop them! Remember decency? Yeah, it's fading.

Red is a good color for Republicans at this point as the blood of our morals leaks out as they are dying, all across America's Congressional floors.

In limiting our behavior and with due consideration to Humanity's sense of innate OCD, or of extremizing things, we have consistently misunderstood and denied ourselves of just who we are. Better of who we should be and what is best to try to achieve to be.

And so ridiculous strictures have sorely damaged us again and again as in our misunderstandings against such things as sexuality in just who we are. We have consistently misinterpreted these as denying any aspect of us.

Rather than our reveling in it all. Instead of merely having mature and controlled attitudes about it. Instead we have forced archaic and immature attitudes about it and shied away from more mature reasonings about it.

For instance rather than has self discipline and practicing not raping or abusing women, some cover women up hiding their appearance so men won't what? Really men, you can't act like mature adults? Grow up. We're not letting ourselves practice maturity. So how do we get people like Islamic terrorists? Huh, I wonder. It's been built in.We did it to ourselves.

Which was why I created The Church of the Pure Purple or Purpleism back some years ago as a reaction against not only the ridiculous in religion but also against the ridiculous and ignorant things forced upon us in our lives, by ourselves (as a species). The smartest (absurdist) religion in the world says:

First rule of Pulpleism is, no killing over religious issues! 

That, if there really were an all knowing all seeing God, should be the FIRST Commandment OF ANY and EVERY religion. But then again, a God did not set up any of these religions and so we see what we have seen for millennia. Ludicrous behaviors supported by those in power and abused all the way down the line to the most common and ignorant and then back up agains from the bottom.

Yes, yes good things have been done by religions throughout history too. But serial killers have also done good things. What's your point? If not for religions, more rational types would have done these things. So that's not even an argument. If not for religion, we'd already be out into the solar system and yet, we're barely now off this planet. You don't see that? Read history. Learn about all the science that was put down, destroyed, scientists through history murdered, all by religion. Yes, religion supported some science, but more so, it tried too many times to destroy it.

We have found because of established religions a need, no, a desire...to be interpreting things in the most ridiculous of ways. Such as in Islam covering its women up completely merely to protect men from themselves rather than teaching and requiring of them to have a mature sense of discipline about it. We have stoned non heterosexuals because they deviated from the norm. A norm to this day many religions deny. Then we have male religious leaders sexually abusing male boys. And hiding it in a systemic way.

In reality the norm is exactly what we have in their existing. Yet we deny reality for the status quo of defending and perpetuating the belief system.

We have ignored our inhumanity to one another over the worship of what we cannot see, over entities who have demanded of us even in their having been fully created by men, demanding of us our full and undiluted attention all while fully against reality and... one another.

What then is the true crime against Humanity? If not merely that of the considerations of our crimes against worshipped idols, regardless what it may deemed to be?

All we need to do for now is simply to drop religion form politics and vote sanity.

Vote Humanity.

Vote compassion and humane treatment of our fellow human beings. Vote, American. Vote our most basic of ideals in separation of church and State, in order to allow freedom of each citizen and that of their choice to suffer worshiping the ethereal in the sky.

Look. Enjoy your personal delusions. It's America. Just allow the rest of us, ours.

It's not rocket science people. 

Is Our Human Condition Simply Out of Control?

I was watching Incendies (2010) the other day. I had really liked Sicario, both by director, Denis Villeneuve so I thought I'd check out his previous award winning Canadian film.

If ever you want example of the intellectual disease religion can bring to people, there's a good example of that in the film's initial murder which resulted from religious separatism. A separatism which includes the mores and tribalism that comes along with and from it.

Whether religion spawned tribalism, or the other way around matters little at this point, because it also now perpetuates it. Blended with the economics of reality for some, it is simply another cog in the wheel of humanity regressing.

Religion can be all fine and good, but it needs moderation... that is intellectual and informed practical application. That is to say, applying religion's teachings requires outright ignoring some of the more brutal and stupid tenets and statements involved within their convention (a custom or a way of acting or doing things that is widely accepted and followed) that its religious tomes supply, and demand.

If religion does not modify itself with humanity, it is a defective religion and therefore false in the face of Humanity. And reality.

The practical application of religion has gotten out of control many times, in many places, as it has now in the Middle East in obvious examples. As well as here at home in more minor cases. One has to understand that you are not so much then dealing with an enemy, but a people who are experiencing a kind of mental illness through a socially accepted system and a series of defective concepts and ideals.

They need saving from themselves.

It's not unlike a computer virus that begins to eat itself and brings its own system down. It needs to be cleaned up. It's not the enemy but a defective system that has become corrupted and needs its code and inherent governors brought back up to correct speed and action.

Yes, sometimes you have to kill people like this. As you would a rabid dog you stumble across in the wilderness. It's also just good to recognize that they have a problem, one that needs to be corrected and that they are not just inherently evil but misinformed, following their own best understanding of life through defective filters.

Normally I believe, humans want to be good. Want to be seen as good. Want to believe themselves to be doing good, to believe they are good and therefore what they do is doing good.

A little perceived good is good, but more seems better. Even more yet can be therefore be seen as even better, when typically it is simply outright destructive. And when it is destructive to others, it's easy to not see the damage, to rationalize it as "good". More therefore can be less. Just as a nightmare applied in typically human OCD fashion leads to a bipolar and excessive application.

Sadly the nightmare that this causes for some, can be felt as satiation and catharsis for its perpetrators.

And so it is left up to the rest of us to clean up this filthy disgusting belief system against non believers, or those who see reality over magical thinking. Magical thinking that has gone, as it is wont to do, horrendously awry.

The way out of this happening again and again throughout history is simply to lead ourselves into reality and proven belief systems and not simply belief systems conjured up by those in the far past, only to be interpreted by those in the present as the ridiculous and the murderous.

Still, we have new religious beliefs cropping up because we support these old beliefs and so new "prophets" believe they have an open door to come up with whatever crap they can imagine. As in Mormonism. As in Scientology. As is Conservative Republicans on the Christian right. As it stupidity.

We are not a stupid race. So why do we keep supporting belief systems that counter that? We need to get ourselves under control. And as things are going...we need to do it fast. Very fast. Before it's too late.

For far too many on a daily basis, it is already far too late.

Has this untethering of American from reality been brought to us courtesy of religions and the fantastical thinking required to believe them, for one to have faith?

We have seen this belief for many years in making excuses for people's religion and in America for having a diversity of religions and belief systems, that we should allow people their own delusions (if they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon or Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventist, etc.) because this is America and America means freedom. That's all great and good. However....

American politician and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said:

"You're entitled to your own opinions, you're not entitled to your own facts."

And that, outweighs either our freedom, or our religions.

It is time we pulled back, that religions went back to their proper and private places, out of our schools, out of our government in order to allow true freedom in America once again and stop infecting both ourselves and the world in such a negative way in our delusionally believing we are doing good when we most assuredly are not.

IF we do not, the corrective action that is inevitably coming, will be far more severe than anything we can now imagine.