Maryland Culture Outreaches the Entire World!

The Maryland home of the New Horizons mission has placed the fingerprint of Maryland technology further afield than anything ever sent into to space, at least so far as downloaded images go.  Voyager is somewhere traveling out into the abyss, but long since incommunicado.

Here is a nice report from the BBC that has some good video description of the program:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33520436?post_id=10205666287609024_10206085046197727

 

The Genius of Paddy Chayefsky

 

The genius of Paddy Chayefsky never ceases to impress me.  It is worth rereading one speech of the Howard Beale character from the movie Network, for it is as timeless as Dickens' opening line in "A Tale of Two Cities." 

From the screenplay:

and, suddenly, the obsessed face of HOWARD BEALE,
gaunt, haggard, red-eyed with unworldly fervor, hair
streaked and plastered on his brow, manifestly mad,
fills the MONITOR SCREEN.

  HOWARD (ON MONITOR)
 I don't have to tell you things
 are bad.  Everybody knows things
 are bad.  It's a depression.
 Everybody's out of work or scared
 of losing their job, the dollar
 buys a nickel's worth, banks are
 going bust, shopkeepers keep a
 gun under the counter, punks
 are running wild in the streets,
 and there's nobody anywhere who
 seems to know what to do, and
 there's no end to it.  We know
 the air's unfit to breathe and
 our food is unfit to eat, and
 we sit and watch our tee-vees
 while some local newscaster
 tells us today we had fifteen
 homicides and sixty-three
 violent crimes, as if that's
 the way it's supposed to be.
 We all know things are bad.
 Worse than bad.  They're crazy.
 It's like everything's going
 crazy.  So we don't go out any
 more.  We sit in the house, and
 slowly the world we live in
 gets smaller, and all we ask is

 please, at least leave us alone
 in our own living rooms.  Let me
 have my toaster and my tee-vee
 and my hair-dryer and my steel-
 belted radials, and I won't say
 anything, just leave us alone.
 Well, I'm not going to leave you
 alone.  I want you to get mad --

ANOTHER ANGLE showing the rapt attention of the PEOPLE
in the control room, especially of DIANA --

  HOWARD
 I don't want you to riot.  I
 don't want you to protest.  I
 don't want you to write your
 congressmen.  Because I wouldn't
 know what to tell you to write.
 I don't know what to do about the
 depression and the inflation and
 the defense budget and the Russians
 and crime in the street.  All
 I know is first you got to get
 mad.  You've got to say:  "I'm
 mad as hell and I'm not going
 to take this any more.  I'm a
 human being, goddammit.  My life
 has value."  So I want you to
 get up now.  I want you to get
 out of your chairs and go to
 the window.  Right now.  I want
 you to go to the window, open
 it, and stick your head out
 and yell.  I want you to yell:
 "I'm mad as hell and I'm not
 going to take this any more!"

What has changed since 1976 beyond the more thorough 
saturation of corruption? It's as if time stood still, 
and everything has been a prelude to something greater
that is yet to come. 
 
We're all waiting.  I don't know if we're ready.

The World Wearing Filters

The problem with viewing the world through filters is that you are not seeing reality, but only a limited version of it.  You therefore integrate reality in pieces and end up with a worldview that may please you, but is actually like a big block of Swiss cheese, filled with holes.

One needn't dwell on negativity in order to see the world as it is.

One major insight that my sister had years ago, which she shared with me and I have never forgotten, was a cascade of thought that she experienced while driving alone.  She thought of all the people in the world that were dying at that instant, and how many people were sad and grieving for the loss of their loved ones.  But then she suddenly realized that there were just as many people being born, and that everywhere happy parents were celebrating the beginning of new lives, and people who were already here were celebrating birthdays.

In that instant, she had glimpsed the symmetry of the universe, where each negative is balanced by a corresponding positive.  Had she been wearing her "feel-good" filters at that instant, she would have never been able to experience that revelation.  Most of us prefer to not to see things that displease us in life, especially vile, evil things that no sane person wants to witness.  However, seeing the evil in the world needn't depress us, so long as we recognize its lesson.  It teaches us that it is not the path to be on, for it yields the opposite of joy.

We should not ignore evil and spout euphemisms of joy, but instead, learn to recognize and understand evil for what it is, so that it reinforces one's beliefs in the path to goodness.  It is no easy trick to be able to stare down evil, and many prefer to look away.  But in order to integrate reality accurately it must be viewed without filters.

Hugging trees and mystically believing in a better world is fine, so long as one realizes that it takes a lot of hard, concentrated effort and work to build a better world. 

Evil must be confronted head on at times, and fought desperately, or it will consume the unwary individuals who fail to recognize it as a malevolent force that must be dealt with.  To look away or ignore it allows it to thrive.

We ignore that with which we do not wish to deal, at our own peril.

The Future American Republic

Today during the early-morning twilight between sleep and waking consciousness, through the direction of mental forces greater than my conscious ability to muster, I received an epiphany that moved me several planes higher in universal consciousness.  I cannot at this juncture share the full context of that revelation, but I can at least say this. 

All governments on planet earth are illicit and must be overturned for the betterment of mankind.

In fact, the very idea of "government" as currently conceived by most individuals on this planet, is wrong, and against the intrinsic nature of man.  The American republic, as first conceived and implemented by our forefathers, came closest (in modern earth's history), to approximating an ideal solution,  but it has so far mutated in its never-ending mission-creep as to be unrecognizable to our founders.

Our original republic was (as per our constitution) free from income taxes, and we survived by trade tariffs for the first 150 years of our nation.  That is as it should be.  All income tax is illicit, and therefore, illegal.  One only need look at the growth of central government and the consequential loss of liberty to realize that the citizens of our republic have been hoodwinked, duped, and robbed repeatedly since its inception.  Moreover, the ability to wage wars and kill our fellow individuals on the planet has  greatly increased with higher taxes on both individuals and corporations. 

Our current model is all wrong and must be changed.

In fact, the whole idea of "governing" individuals by force and threat of force and imprisonment is an illogical, misconceived ideology.  We do not need forceful governance, but instead, need a "coordinating cooperative" that serves individuals more befitting to their needs, and which provides for the common defense in less invasive ways that prevent foreign aggression by our military.

Everything has gone awry from what our forefathers had intended, and there is no solution in sight, unless we redefine the best purpose and methodology of the systems that were designed to serve us, (not to imprison us, persecute us as individuals, and extort money from us as slave laborers who must work a third of every year just to pay taxes that have been illegally levied upon us).

Remember, that our republic was based upon the god-given rights of individuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then reflect upon the system that we have inherited.  It is not the republic demanded by our Constitution.

Writing the Dog

Chapter 11 - Tragedy at Chamizal Park

El Paso was chosen as a seminal location in the novel not just because it is a gateway to Mexico and a beautiful city, but because Chamizal Park offered such a powerful metaphor for all that was taking place in the novel, and which would ultimately take place in the future. The unique nature of the history of the area lent itself to the turbulence and violent upheaval that had to occur in the story.

While the story does showcase El Paso at points, it was an organic development that came naturally from the circumstances of the plot and not something that happened only because I like the town. The side-by-side cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and the stark dichotomy that they paint, in reality, as well as in the novel, make the location uniquely suited for the tale that the Dog tells.

Residents of El Paso will no doubt recognize many familiar places and details that will be of no special significance to those that do not live there. I have always loved El Paso, since the first time I saw it as a young man, back in the days when it was still a quiet small town. I was therefore delighted to learn as I was writing the novel that the city had displaced Honolulu as the safest large city in the United States. But it also struck me as that much more incredible to read of the many murders just across the border in Juarez. Of course, in the novel, one will find how that reality helped to ignite la Nueva Revolucion Christiana, or the New Christian Revolution, and Juarez is therefore also a very important puzzle piece in the saga.

Anyone who reads the story will no doubt recognize now, and in the future, how reality often mirrors fiction.

What Destroyed America?

It's 2075 and I am long since dead.  I write to you from your future.  I have traveled here in my mind, and looked back at my life and the lives of millions of others who lived their entire life in a dreamworld of denial, which was created by their unseen masters.  The America that you know has been destroyed, not by any outside aggressor, but by internal rot, corruption, and greed.  The oligarchs are in complete control now and nothing is left of what was once a thriving nation of enterprising individuals.

The citizens of this third-world nation, the Socialist States of America, are either rather disgusting fat blobs, or are starving, but most all are of low intellect and education, mere automatons who have few, if any, dreams, and who have almost zero chance of raising their stature in life, except through slavery to the authoritarian government that overseas everything.  Only oligarchs' families get the best jobs and most rewarding positions, for they have become the uncrowned royalty that rules over all the serfs that serve them.

Most of the populaces' best days are at the stadiums, watching competitions between sports teams that are owned by rich oligarchs.  Poor children spend much of their early life energies competing in sports, hoping to grab a lucky ticket to a better life in a high-paid position as a professional athlete.  For that is probably the only way that they can rise from poverty without selling their soul to their masters.  At least for a few years, they can live under the illusion of success that their inflated salaries support.  If they are lucky, they may parlay their career into long-term advertising gigs after their bodies are worn out with age and abuse.

But for the rest of the poor youths that come innocently into third-world America, there is little hope of individual advancement except through the narrow approved channels of the hierarchy.  If they play the game according to the rules, they might eventually land a decent-paying job in a professional field.  But again, the ruling elite of the over-arching government would have to grant such a position, and of course, most positions go to the friends and family of the leading oligarchs. 

Small business and individual enterprise are a thing of the past, because after all, no one ever built a business on their own, without government-granted authority.  Crime is rampant, because many individuals refuse to comply, and look for ways to circumvent the existing oppressive hierarchy of their socialist masters.  So black markets thrive, under the observing eye of the omnipresent government, which turns it's back to those who pay tribute to the overlords.

Each day, hordes of the citizenry bow and face Mecca, and pray to Allah for his assistance in either converting or destroying the remnant infidels who still perniciously abstain from Islam. The inferior women are largely invisible now, most driven from any positions of authority as the new caliphate continues to rise in third-world America.

The riots and piteous attempts at revolt are mostly over now, and starvation is rampant through the lowest classes.  Shariah law is wide-spread and most of the Christians have wisely deserted America for elsewhere.

I contemplate how this could ever have happened; how people could have become so anesthetized as to let the dream that their forefathers handed to them disappear, and it suddenly dawns on me.

Television.  That was the catalyst that helped cause the downfall of the people.  They watched fervently glued to their screens, constantly absorbing the propaganda that was spoon fed to them through the fifties, sixties, and on up to the millennium.  Then, technologies changed and cable TV and movies, and reality TV, and the garbage and banality of the Jerry Springers, and Oprahs, and Doctor Phils, and a host of others filled their minds with useless garbage, and twisted their values, and occupied their idle hours as they were simultaneously programmed to buy, buy, buy whatever the commodity-based economy pushed on them.

I guess it was about then, at the millennium, that I really noticed things going downhill badly.  It accelerated of course, and there wasn't much that the average person did except watch and wonder how things got to be crazier and crazier.  But few got up off their couches until it was too late.  There were meaningful movements like the Tea Party, by well-intentioned individuals who had banded together in a common cause of freedom and individuality, but they were quickly side-tracked by both the existing power structures and by traitors who tried to use them for their own self-serving ends.

The financial collapse was the crowning achievement of the oligarchs who had used the endless greed of the banksters to set the final mouse trap for America.  After that, it was easy to lead a starving, riotous people to their final enslavement.

I guess it doesn't really matter.  The same things have been happening for thousands of years; the same stories played out in different ways.  From Confucianism to Zoroaster, to Buddhism, or Christianity; from ancient Egypt before it was corrupted by mystics, to ancient India, to the Greeks and Romans.  The virtuous ideals of individuality and the quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have always been at war with the collectivists and oligarchs who enslave entire populations of men to serve their own greedy ends.  So often, even through relatively recent history, we were all shown the methods of such evil men and systems of government, but the same tricks, the same promises have lead populations astray so that millions and millions of innocent, uninformed individuals were led to slaughter in wars and conflicts around the globe.

It is too depressing to look across this wasteland, so I will travel back in time to try to live the last of my life in a better world.  But what can I do as one individual to sound the alarm?  How can you make people see what they refuse to see?  If they killed the master Jesus, than how can a nobody help them?

One step at a time, one conversion at a time; open their eyes and make them see.  They don't need bigger houses and boats and new cars.  Turn off their video games and televisions and get them to think.  Nudge them, from their unconscious ways.  Advise them that the senseless violence God allows, the many murders of innocents may serve a purpose, if it instructs them to a better life in the future.

For it is always up to individuals to decide their own life paths, and no one, not even a Jesus can save people who refuse to be saved.  But many may change, many may awake, if they are given the chance to do so.  Too many are innocent of knowledge, and that is not a sin of their own making.  They have been kept in the dark like mushrooms and fed half-truths and a lot of Bravo Sierra.  They just need to be nudged a little.  When they are touched by personal tragedy; when their relatives' heads are sawed off; when they are starving in the desolate streets and dying in endless riots; then they might awake.

Hopefully, they will do so before then, but the odds do not favor the ignorant, complacent masses.  The oligarchs know this well, and they are very skilled in manipulating the public spirit to meet their own designs.

I'm going back now, from these decaying streets, back to an America where there is still hope; where there is still a chance for change.

 

Your Truth Matrix

In my writings, I often use the term "truth matrix" and I would like to elaborate on why that term is so relative and so very important.  For those that have studied advanced algebras, they are already intimately familiar with the importance of matrices, but for those who are not familiar with the operations of linear algebra, let me explain.

Systems of linear equations are used to describe things such as the many forces on complex systems like an aircraft wing or a beam under load.  To solve such complex systems of equations the corresponding variables may be arranged in a matrix and then solved using vector operations of linear algebra.

The human mind does a similar thing whenever it makes any judgement.  Your personal truth matrix operates on all the known relevant facts to help solve any problem placed before you.  What is two plus two?  Your mind answers almost immediately, without cognitive thought, conditioned by a lifetime of programming.  Most people will solve elementary math problems correctly, but we are all limited in how we perceive reality by the programming that has been instilled in our minds since birth.  "Prove that the given function f(x) = y is continuous and differentiable on the given interval," requires a different set of truth matrices than a simpler addition problem.

Complex social issues are complex because individuals' truth matrices have been wrongly programmed through conscious design, so that individuals may be more easily deceived and manipulated.  Most everything in the world becomes simplified as one's personal truth matrix is corrected.  Racism, bigotry, corruptions and lies all melt into nothingness when a healthy human being has their truth matrix more closely aligned with reality.

As the student of life progresses to higher levels of consciousness, he or she gradually removes false-truths from their personal truth matrix.  Otherwise, they cannot progress.  False-truths limit one's accurate perception of reality, cause distortions of thought, erroneous answers, and circular logic that leaves the individual exhausted and confused.

Logical Individualism breaks down the most complex social problems into easily diagnosed modules and allows one to approach existential reality in a more god-like fashion, seeing creation as it is, and not through socially programmed distortions.

Consider this: The man Jesus, in three words, gives all thinking individuals everywhere the strongest basis for their own personal truth matrix, the foundation upon which they may safely build.  He says:

Love one another.

The elevated individual grows to realize that empathy and a concern for one's fellow individuals is not only logical, but is also in one's own best interest.  For we are all our brothers' keepers, and as we watch and protect our fellow individuals' best interests, so will our individual interests be best protected.  Such is the Brotherhood of Man.