Thursday, November 22, 2012

UFO's, Murray and Facebook

I did a lot of bouncing around Facebook tonight, catching up with old friends and annoying the radicals, and checking out some happenings. I have a pretty wide reach with information and pages. I have discovered no one reads the articles they link to except for a few of us. I have also discovered Facebook is very dangerous place for anyone who is doing anything good.
I have seen in the past couple of months, 4 humane organizations shut down after getting on Facebook. It doesn't matter what kind of animal or fish is involved. All the animals in their care were killed by the governmental animal control after someone happened onto their page and started filing complaints. Often the person wasn't even in the same state.
I have seen several people posting about their homestead experience who are now out of a house and home for the holidays, put off their land and their animals killed, too.
Some of my friends just posting interesting pictures of UFO's have been attacked viciously for no reason. A few are suddenly finding they are being harassed by one or more government bodies. Life is getting very difficult for them but when you are in a field that often finds your fellow researchers dead in odd circumstances, they are perhaps better capable of taking care of themselves than other people on Facebook.
Undoubtedly Facebook has been a boon for Law Enforcement, particularly the child porn and pedophile division. That is why I cringe at some of the photos I see people publishing. Tonight I saw a proud parent post a picture of their son's swim team in wet bikini suits that I am sure had several pedophiles drooling. I only hope there isn't enough information to allow someone to track down that eye candy but I am probably hoping against the odds.
I read a heartbreaking story of someone whose life and that of a friend has been pretty much trashed because of a picture posted in bad judgement. No apologies were accepted. No one even stopped to think this person may have children to feed or how it was going to affect her relatives. No, they simply ruined her life and that of another person.
There are a lot of people out these that think this is some sort of reality show. They can destroy another person and change the channel. The people on Facebook are not real to them. They have no remorse or even compassion and they wander through public pages and look to find someone to attack. The really bad thing, they have found this garners them the attention they crave. One site managed 3,000 followers attacking some poor hapless person who probably had no idea there was a problem with a picture. They took it down but they didn't understand that once you publish something on Facebook and remove it from your timeline, it isn't gone. It is on everyone's wall and they can share it. It still exists after you delete it.
I am sure one poor person had no idea that his cell phone number was public to every person friended or subscribed to his page. I've picked up a few whack jobs playing of all things: Farmville. Can you get more benign?
Now that the election is over, all the whackoes who got off on attacking candidates and getting a big thrill from finding other whackoes to agree with them, no longer have targets. They can't get attention without a target and my friends, you are now in their crosshairs. It can be as simple as you have loved ones and they don't, a home and they don't, a lizard and they don't....I used to know someone that if we were sitting in a restaurant she would be making derogatory comments about perfect strangers and their hair or clothes. Really, what is that except jealousy and trying to show how superior you are? I am sure she has a ball tearing people down on Facebook and she is on Facebook.
As for me, I have a lot to do in the next few months and I am getting off Facebook except to play Farmville for relaxation. So if you don't hear from me, it's because I really am not here. I can access Farmville without ever going on Facebook though it may show I am on. It just isn't worth my time and energy to see perfectly good people destroyed by other people to get attention.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Who is it alright to kill this week?

One thing you need to understand is that governments, corporations, religious leaders and politicians employ well trained people to alter your opinions, to change the way you see things and to change your very core values to benefit them.
You need to understand there are two sciences: psychology and sociology.
Psychologists work with the individual and changing their behavior and thought patterns.
Most of you think sociologists direct needy people to social programs and that is truly the face you most likely see. But, there is another side you don't see or hear about. Sociologists study societies or large groups of people. They, like psychologists, learn to manipulate group opinion, values and morals.
A huge push came after WW2 to study how to manipulate large segments of society without them noticing they were being manipulated. They had watched how successfully Hitler had convinced normal, moral people to persecute and kill their friends. They wanted to know how you could change an entire nation's morals and it wasn't to protect you.
You are most familiar with advertising. You probably are familiar with the cute little skulls in the ice cubes in the alcohol ads.
Psychologists determined most drinkers were risk takers, adrenaline junkies and to put it mildly, tended to have a death wish. So, advertisers placed death imagery into alcohol ads knowing it would subliminally, below the level of conscious perception, appeal to risk takers, adrenaline junkies and people with a death wish. It was really simple and pretty straightforward except the people buying more and more alcohol didn't know they were being manipulated. Every bar in the country went with low lighting and red decor because psychologists discovered rats would drink more under low wattage red lights. Rats actually do not like alcohol and won't drink it unless forced to but under red lights, they were real little boozers. It worked very well. One could easily argue that presenting your product in the best possible light to sell it shouldn't be illegal, but there is a big difference between that and what was being done. As long as the bottle of booze is sitting on the counter and the person is telling you how great it tastes and how wonderful it will make you feel, that's straightforward. You can get up and walk away. You can make a decision. But when you don't know you are being manipulated at a level below your consciousness, is it moral? Is it just plain fair?
Manipulation can be very subtle and you are going to get very offended by what I am going to tell you next. However, you might want to let it settle a bit in your brain before you burn me at the stake because you are the one on the receiving end of this manipulation.
If I were to say to was alright to kill someone because of their color, you would scream to high heaven and your main argument would be that color has nothing to do with a person's worth. You would be 100% right.
Now, if I were to say someone should be punished more heavily for killing or assaulting a cop, you would say: absolutely.
Read what I just wrote a few times and see if you can see where you were nicely manipulated.
Okay, I'll explain. You have just said that a person putting a uniform on is more valuable than say a surgeon because you are going to deliver a greater punishment for the same crime based on who the victim is. That makes the person in that uniform better than everyone else in society. You have just given up your worth, your value as a human being to a symbol: the uniform.
Now I've heard the argument that they risk their lives for us, but the funny thing is, theirs' is not the most dangerous occupation.
The most dangerous occupation is fisherman and related jobs in the fishing industry. They have the more fatalities and injuries per year on the job! On average they make 12.30 an hour and have little to no benefits and no retirement plans. Number 2 is logging workers making 3.00 an hour more. Number 3: aircraft pilots and flight engineers. Number 4 is your local garbage and recycling handler. Those garbage trucks are killers. Number 5 is a no brainer: roofers. Number 6 is iron and steel workers. My uncle worked in the steel mills. Fatalities and injuries were a weekly thing. Number 7 is agricultural, ranchers and farmers. Them little doggies have sharp horns. Number 8 is drivers, sales workers and truck drivers. The more time you spend on the highway the higher your odds of someone hitting you. Number 9  is anyone working with electricity, installers and repairers and Number 10 is Taxi drivers and chauffeurs.
The police and military didn't even get on the list.
However, if you off a fisherman, you just get murder one and if your smack him is just plain assault and battery. Do the same thing to a cop and it is the death penalty and assaulting an officer can be nothing more than touching them.
Now, is the average cop or soldier better educated than the average person. You know the answer is no. So why did you just value their life higher than the poor trucker who delivers your food to the grocery and the man out there sweating picking up your garbage? You think nothing of flipping the bird at a trucker but you want someone who does it to a soldier tried and convicted of treason and I guarantee you, if you flip the bird at a cop you will be arrested for assault and battery though you never got in touching range of this person.
You have been conditioned to accept their authority over you as absolute. They are untouchable. They are better than you or anyone else. Their life is worth more than your child's life. They cannot be disobeyed. They can no longer be questioned.
And now, hardly a week goes by some poor unarmed idiot gets shot by a cop who felt threatened. Old ladies fleeing intruders in their homes are shot multiple times and killed because they didn't have their hearing aids in and couldn't hear the cop telling them to stop. She was in her nightgown. How much of a threat is a senior citizen in a nightgown? But you accepted it. She did not stop. You accept that if you do not obey the order of a person in uniform instantly, no matter what that order is, they have the right to kill you.
So folks, who IS it alright to kill this week? The answer is: YOU.
Don't believe me?
Then explain to me why you go to the airport and allow a person in uniform to feel you up, humiliate you and even detain you when that person is not even a policeman? They are private security guards like the old man walking the beat in shopping center. They are not trained in any avenue of law enforcement. They are the person or pervert next door putting on a uniform and you have been conditioned to obey the uniform without question. You should be very, very worried about now.

Friday, November 9, 2012

By Soul and Soil We are Connected


How do you describe a feeling, a sensation? Words are inadequate to describe the connection between you and those who came before you, those who share the building blocks of your body, psyche, soul and the land that spawned you.
I had arrived in Scotland at 9 PM and found it pitch dark unlike the city I live in here in the USA. It was cold and we ran from the bus to the hotel for more than one reason. The bus engine was about to throw a bearing and even at the lowest idle, it can go right through the engine and any nearby bodies.
The hotel had kept dinner hot for us though for the life of me, I cannot remember what it was, just that there was an awful lot of it. I trudged up to my waiting room expecting to spend a night under my coat on a hard bed reminiscent of so many foreign beds that have sought to make my nights a misery. Much to my surprise, I found a spacious room, really hot water, a real heater and a soft bed. Scotland definitely had England beat or perhaps the contest wasn't that fair as my bed and breakfast was owned by Colombians.
The next morning came early and they stuffed us to the point we lucky ladies with purses were stowing a hearty lunch in them. If you had food left on your plate, you got the evil eye. Then it was on another bus and the prerequisite castle. That island is littered with the darned things. Generations must have spent lifetimes building nothing but castles and at this point, they really did all look alike.
But they weren't alike. The English had kennels and displays of leashes and collars. The Scots had a graveyard honoring the dogs that died protecting their owners. They had monuments to their dogs. The English had stained glass ceilings depicting the crest of every royal family, pretty novelties to remind us of our station. The Scots had monuments and memorials to the men who died in their wars, every day men forced to be mercenaries after the royalty of the English starved the country economically into servitude. No, this castle was not like all the others. It was a memorial to the memory of the struggle of a people to survive.
After a good time during which no one bothered to herd us about but left us to find what each needed to see, we returned to the bus and headed toward the town square for some shopping and lunch after which we could find our way back to the hotel. Naturally we were nervous as we Americans simply were not prepared for how small a major city like Edinburgh really is and wanted maps, detailed instructions and preferably someone to hold our hands. We were assured anyone could point us in the right direction and if we got on the bus going the wrong way to just wait and it would circle around to the right direction and leave us off at the hotel. What we didn't know was there was only one main street with shops on it and it wasn't that long.
As for me, my memories were blurred with my vision as I watched the tourist traps whiz by and tried to memorize the way back to pick up trinkets for stateside friends when I felt the bus lurch to a stop. I braced myself to exit as I am and have always been the outsider. No one ever looked like me where ever I lived. I expected the curious stares and sneers. I expected to be last one waited on, the last one admitted and the last one trusted. That is the life of one who simply doesn't belong in a big way. I had learned my lessons well, lifted my chin, smiled and stepped half way off the bus only to freeze on the bottom step. Everyone looked just like me. The next person in line finally gave me a gentle shove off the bus and I stood on the narrow sidewalk, completely disappearing within the thong of locals. I wandered a bit, completely amazed at my new anonymity until the lure of shopping was too much and entered my first shop.
Everyone wanted to help and quickly shunted me to the proper clan tartans though I had not managed a word as to what clan I belonged. Until I opened my mouth, they had no idea I was not an out of town cousin on a shopping trip. A few blocks away I was welcomed into a local restaurant for a lovely lunch amid the locals. Finally I found a suitcase and convinced a Japanese store owner I wasn't a local but a pretty savvy American, so he could cut the crap and give me the best price on the cheap suitcase he was trying to sell as top of the line. I think he said he'd rather deal with the cheap Scots, but I cut my bargaining teeth in Latin American markets.
I sat in the park for a while just looking at the people, each could have been my brother or sister, and marveling at everyone smiling at me and saying hello. I belonged. I wasn't an outsider. This was where I came from at my most basic genetic level. These were my people.
I discovered the bus trip to the hotel was a whole 3 blocks I could have walked but they were accustomed to Americans being weaklings. It was cold and I admit I have never felt colder and I have been at the top of Andes in the winter, but the chill filled me like an old friend I had not seen in a long time. As night fell, I sat in my windowsill and looked out at King Arthur's seat...a low hill by Scottish standards but I had been guaranteed, a climb I probably couldn't make. I was raised in West Virginia part of my life. I already knew distances in the mountains are deceiving. I had carefully opened the window to take advantage of lazy wind that doesn't bother to go around you, but cuts right through you, as I had been told. The chill spread through every inch of my body and my blood sang with a song older than my body as my soul called to the mountains, lochs and heather and they answered. We were one and I was home.
It was this feeling I recalled today in the chill of an early autumn in Florida as I read the newspapers. The Latino vote had shifted to at least 67% for a president that didn't insult them by trying to wear brown face on their TV channel. But as I read the article I came to the Cuban vote, barely hitting the 50% mark as old men still fight a lost battle with a ruler, 50 years older and just as strong as the day I stepped off the two engine plane into a sweltering country, palm trees everywhere heavy with coconuts, and people speaking a language I barely understood having picked up my smattering of Spanish in Mexico. My mother was clinging to my hand, scared to death of the line of men with rifles held at ready hand as we walked to customs and then, they took her pound of coffee. Yes, they took her coffee and explained, we grow it, we have much better than Maxwell House here and anyway, you can't bring food into most foreign countries. She was livid but they had guns. They let her keep the coffee pot. Even a Latino man with a gun knows better than to push a red head too far.
This was my home for the next almost two years. There were orchids, something we had never seen before. Lizards abounded everywhere unafraid of humans and reducing my mother to squeals. I think they deliberately tortured her. Birds sang in strange songs. Everything grew with a lush vengeance. During the rainy season, the water fell in torrents at 3:05 PM to 3:35 PM every day as if Mother Nature had a wrist watch accurate to the minute. Then the steam rose and it was almost as if the rain was falling back up into the sky. By dusk, it cleared and everything prepared for the cooling breezes as it dried, and preened and paraded its newly cleaned colors. A whole new world of insects came out. Spiders as big as dinner plates stalked their dinner which could one of the multitude of peeps or tiny frogs and toads that came out to sing in the abundant puddles and pools. With little ambient light from the city of Havana, the stars papered the sky like a child gone mad with glitter and the night blooming flowers perfumed the air. There was always music somewhere. Someone was singing and someone was dancing as the old men traded their dominoes to assess the young women seeking true love under the watchful eyes of their grandmothers or aunts. And then there would be quiet except for the calls of wild and occasional drumming and sleep came easy until they started shooting at me, anyway, it was nice while it lasted. The whole island had a perfumed smell to it. The humidity clung to your skin but didn't really wet it and make you uncomfortable. Everything moved a slower pace because life went on and was more important than time, business or politics.
And because of old men and old wounds and older stupidity, generations have not and will not ever know what I felt in Scotland on my 40th birthday. They will never truly feel like they belong. They be a demographic on someone's chart. They will be disconnected from the land they live in always feeling a bit out sync with everything around, yearning for something they cannot describe and knowing for certain it is missing.
My only question to those old men keeping hatred alive and voting against their own best interests just to find someone willing to pay lip service to waving a saber around is: Is it worth it? Is it really worth it? Look at your children and your grandchildren who will never know their native soil and many of their relatives, think of the children born and the parents buried and answer that question with your soul. Is it worth it? Is hatred ever worth it?

Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Failure of the American Business Economy: Hubris

Hubris is a word you may not know the definition of and I will eventually define it, so be patient.

Why is the American business world failing? Is it the huge CEO salaries and bonuses that have created a top heavy economic model where the top 1% hoard more money than anyone can spend in several lifetimes, taking that money out of circulation and starving the economy below them? The answer is probably very likely, but have you wondered how it got that way? How did we become a 3rd rate or less manufacturing based economy from the top of the food chain in just a generation or two? Could the answer to both those and more questions be the same: Hubris?

George came in and had been watching the day after summation dinner with the Republicans as the top dogs discussed why Romney/Ryan didn't win. They were brandishing such reasons around as: (1) improper branding, (2) publicity didn't properly insulate him from the accusations (3) yada-yada-yada-braf.... At no point in time did anyone simply say, we nominated two lying, idiots for the office of president running on the same old policies that got the country in this mess and few people were fooled. However, the American people have already pointed that out.

So, one might ask why no one at the top seems to see that.

It seems the man (and it always is a man) at the top cannot make a mistake. If his grand new product fails, it wasn't properly branded and introduced. No one ever says it was a bad idea and no one wanted one of them. If his economic policy fails, accounting must have made a mistake. If his employment guidelines fail, the American workers are lazy dolts. If his products fail in every sense, the workers aren't putting them together right. Heads will roll and they are always the rank and file. Bonuses will be given at the top no matter how many failures. The saying too big to fail should be too high up to fail because apparently CEO's are actually gods and cannot fail.

Why on earth do we, the lazy dolts, accept this travesty of logic?

It comes from a simple psychological concept introduced some 50 years ago. You know it now under the headings of "no child left behind" and other names. Put simply, children were rewarded whether they actually succeeded or not. Everyone was getting a star. Everyone was passing the grade. It seems to have slipped everyone's mind that some children were not ready to pass because at almost a 100% rate those children not ready to pass were immature males who had been made that way by over indulgent rich mothers with nothing else to do.

When you work, you clean, you cook, you wash and you have no help and more than one kid, the concept of spoiling and protecting one goes right out the old window. You don't have enough time. However, when the little darling is your meal ticket by carrying on the family name and legacy, you are going to wrap him in plastic bubble wrap and destroy any teacher that says he just isn't smart or mature enough to pass the grade.

Our problem is, they never got smart enough or mature enough to pass the grade and they are running things now. The fact that Romney didn't win can't possibly be Romney's fault. I keep flashing to the image of John Bohner with tears running his face because he didn't get his way...he is the Speaker of the House, not a 2 year old! Grow Up! You blow it, you take the fall, just like the rest of us. The fault REALLY is YOURS!

This insanity flows through all of American Business and Politics. THEY CAN NOT FAIL! Therefore, when we are out of work, being foreclosed on and don't have enough food to eat, they can't even conceive of the problem because THEY CAN NOT FAIL! This simply cannot happen. They have a permanent safety net. We must have one, too. Unfortunately, we can't find it.

When I was in psychiatry, I quickly noticed a disturbing trend. It was called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it was skyrocketing. This disorder is not just a disease of the military. It affects huge numbers of "survivors" of traumatic events. When I grew up, there was the Korean War and WW II. Some men returned  with this problem, but most did not. Now I was seeing most returning with it and it was spreading into the general population like a wild fire. So, I looked at the family histories of this disorder and it wasn't hard because the families were usually sitting in my office crying. It was then I saw the pattern. The closer knit, more supportive the family, the worse the condition and the more the sufferer was pushing them away. Those of us who grew up in the take care of yourself universe and don't expect us to bail you out world didn't get PTSD.

When the support mechanism the person had been conditioned to expect, Mommy and Daddy bailing them out and taking their side, failed in an accident or war, the person was first lost and traumatized, then angry that these people didn't show up and fix it and then angry at the entire world for letting them down. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Now, everyone is supposed to do it for you as you reap the rewards if you come from the top 53%.

The model of free loading welfare recipient (though false) is easily inserted into the psyche of the average American to replace the model of a hard working poor person who needs help with their struggle because EVERYONE HAS A SAFETY NET. No one can fail or be left behind. These people are just to lazy to use it.

After all, you attract and create your own reality. Yes dear metaphysical friends, you, too, have been duped by a well organized, psychological con game whose purpose is simply to bilk you out of the last penny and vestige of freedom you have.

News Flash: THE CEO'S FAILED. THE POLITICIANS FAILED. EVERYONE FAILS SOONER OR LATER.....It's how you learn and grow. Unfortunately the first two groups get paid billions of bucks to fail. Trust me....you won't be getting a check when you fail.

hu·bris

noun \ˈhyü-brəs\

Definition of HUBRIS

: exaggerated pride or self-confidence
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hubris?show=0&t=1352405753