The Threats and The Solutions

Threats:

Wage Inequality: When enough people are exploited, when wages are driven down instead of buoyed up, when capitalism leads to desperation to the dependent segment of our population, we flirt with instability, rebellion, and revolution.  There is enough wealth in this nation to avoid this if we find a way tin incentivize businesses to increase the wages of the lower tier workers.  With the blatantly unequal rise of wages for different classes in America, how can those directing and litigating and legislating how we compensate different levels of society need the excuse to make those annual raises more equal.  And with the recent mutation of those annual increases tilted so extremely toward the rich, there is a growing capacity for this remedy.  Business people, MBAs, the C Suite, Financial institutions, Boards of Directors, this is your chance to build in institutional structures that tie compensation at the highest levels with those at the middle and bottom, AND correct the imbalance that's manifested itself withing the last 30 years.  You're smart motherfuckers.  You can figure this out, and for the long term strength of your current hegemony, you better do it now or it's going to come crashing down on not only the underclass, but the rest as well.  Your move, power brokers.  Do the right thing.

Equal Opportunity:  The strength and stability of our nation begs that we optimize the participation of every human being living in our boarders.  Every person on the public dole, in prison, unemployed, disenfranchized from productivity for whatever reason is a drag on all of us.  What can we do individually and institutionally to bring those outcasts back into the productive side of our economy? The ROI in moving any of those out-groups into the in-group pays off more than any other endeavor to the overall health of our country.  What are we doing to neutralize the forces that oppress anyone or allow them to fall into the takers? Drug addicts, prisoners, released prisoners, the sick, physically and mentally disabled, welfare recipients, young single mothers and fathers, the poor, homeless, PTSD victims (vets and non-vets), etc.  Getting those individuals the focused assistance they need to return to productivity is worth every single penny over and over. Every person we leave behind will live to haunt the world of our children's future.

National Security: Being a global force for good is a fine tagline for the US Navy, but contributing to the worlds down-trodden both within our borders and around the world is the single best thing we can do to keep America great in the eyes of the world.  We can lead or take a back-seat, or we can lead by example.  The world, for sure, needs to do their best in their borders, and we can be an inspiration or just another failed experiment.

Corruption Busing: Trust in our institutions, with the apex being our federal government from the very top down, is the single most important need for our long-term stability.  Everything we can do to identify and illuminate areas where we need to clean house is necessary.  Vigorous, continual, continuous, strenuous and unrelenting pressure to be better is central to continuing as a viable nation. Independent and unbiased journalism is essential, so supporting local, state, and national media that prove themselves to be objective and aggressive is worth every penny.  Truth, you sons of bitches, not to further your ideologies.  Fuck your ideologies.  Facts and science and a clear picture of reality will do more to put us on the right track than your conspiracy theories, right and left wing-nut biases, and the blowhards that get all emotional over the Clinton's, Bush's, and Trump's.  Follow the money, subtract your emotions (if you have feelings about people (like Obama or Trump), you're not the right person to act on facts).  If you have feelings about America and the Constitution, you're getting closer. If you have feelings for the long-term (3 - 10 generations) of our continued global viability, you're closer still.  Avoiding spending on objective study of climate change, gun violence, immigration, government effectiveness, national health, defense, energy, science... is dangerous. If we're not making policy on reality, we're at the mercy of merchants whose goals are their short-term (single or two generation) wealth instead of national long-term resilience and stability.  Your choice.

Solutions:
Pick one or more of the items above. Think hard about where you want to contribute some of your energy and resources to bust up the negative parts of any of them or to bolster the forces for good. I like working toward the positive side and let the negative side starve for lack of attention. Promote strong, independent journalism at whatever level. Support organizations that bring people to productivity. Lobby your company to raise your minimum wages -- if you're the CEO, check your greed and find a way to share the wealth to strengthen your company's standing in the world.  Whatever your level, throw some support at one of these worthy enterprises and drag some friends along with you.

By the way, one of the solutions is stronger education based on students' needs, especially those students who are poor and whose needs are not being met. Equality in education is a force multiplier.

Let's Keep Our Eye On The Ball, People.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so when there's no real crisis, we make one up to fill our emotional space. Like a gas, whatever the latest drama is will expand to fill our container.

This, in itself, should be something we keep in mind all the time. The consequence, if we don't, is that the real crisis will sneak up on us and fuck us from behind.  The important, somewhat non-urgent things, have to be kept in check and on our radar, because the little peccadilloes will distract us if we're not shrewd.

It's part of being an adult, and as a country, it's part of keeping the long-term programs strong and effective. For example, the existential threats to our way of life are economic stability, maintaining our trust in government (bigger picture: making sure our government is competent, which we're struggling with at the moment), and keeping ourselves on a positive trajectory as a people -- united and aligned.

Our little differences can be dealt with, like what sort of healthcare will keep us together, but we need real leadership in bringing us together on the overall goal: providing adequate healthcare for everyone so we can pretty much get on with our lives.

It's better if more of us are involved in substantial ways in working toward solutions to our major threats: International Security, Wage Inequality, and Equal Opportunity.  Pick one and get to work. Click here.

Real and Surreal - Consciousness

Those of us who have pondered the nature of conscious awareness and consciousness have concluded that this hard-to-express, hard-to-define, hard-to-explain phenomena is unique.  The brain (and body neurosystem and its chemistry) contains it, but it is not of the brain. It's of time, geometry, residence, and electrochemistry all mucking up together, with its mixture of realtime sensory input, stored neural pathways and memories, neurotransmitter concentrations and distributions, and contemporaneous fluctuations in all of that which give us this sensation of being. To try to deconstruct it into any momentary or sub-system of all that mixtures is to remove some of what it means to be human.  As such, even if we were able to download all of those complex and chaotic algorithms into another brain or artificial intelligence system, it wouldn't be the same being.  If it (that consciousness) were able to be cloned (and I'm way dubious), it would exist as its own separate entity.  I couldn't go there with it, because the me is wholly existant only within THIS body/mind system.  The new person might be another, different me, and HE might be able to feel like he's me inside another being, and as far as YOU are concerned, it might be an good enough version of me to carry on as me (because you don't feel me like I feel me). As I interact with you, I don't feel the you-ness of you -- I only sense the you as I know you to be through observation, interaction, and our history along with all the assumptions, understandings and comprehensions that I apply to all my thoughts and feelings of you.  But I can't know the feeling YOU have while being you.  That's yours alone, never to be able to be shared with an "other."   So the idea that I would be able to live as another person, immortal or transcending my own body, is not a thing.  At least not for many millennia of advancement...  Here's a scientific thread for you to turn into a novel: A person is merged with a mindscape and lives with it over time, allowing me and it to grow together directly connected to my mindspace until it becomes more and more of part of me and when it's been able to share enough experience where I have direct mental access to it directly connected to my brain, and if I can train myself to access and store and live from that space until they are mutually connected as if I had the two brains and I was intentionally duplicating my memories and experiences with that secondary mindscape, then perhaps after years and years, I could start letting my original brain slowly drift off-line (maybe as it dies), then, like someone having a hemisphereectomy or severing the corpus collossum (which happens sometimes due to brain tumors or severe, life threatening/debilitating conditions), the original could be removed and much of my conscious self could continue on Brain two.  If you do choose to go that route, let me know so I can take credit for this pretty cool idea.  I've never seen it talked about like this before, so as far as I know, this is the first time it's been proffered as on option.  We could start developing the protocols today and in the next hundred years or so of brain research, they could start developing the interface technologies to accommodate it.  Good luck!

Rationalism and American Politics

If your angry (the natural symptom of fear or pain) or afraid or hurt, you're going to have a really hard time seeing beyond the filters to clarity.

If you're invested in one side or the other, you're going to struggle to have unbiased thoughts regarding what you see, and are likely to either cherry pick your information (unconsciously or deliberately) to justify your position.

If you're not too bright, or if you're pretty ignorant (sometimes caused by anger or investment), you should be rightfully suspect of any opinions that form in your head.  Although those who aren't too bright are less apt to question their own judgment, and many people who are ignorant don't know grasp enough of the full breadth of the topic to even be aware how ignorant they are ("Who thought healthcare was so complicated?")*

So what's a person to do when you have a "no right answer" world and you want to really understand the big-picture circumstances, and then advocate or act accordingly?

1. Find someone who is totally not invested, who is learned about the topic at hand, who is really intelligent in systems analysis (in the system you're interested in), and has a very broad understanding of the world in general, and has kept skeptically informed about the issue, and ask what they think.  Have them give you a detailed analysis from both (or the several) sides of the issue, and from different perspectives (internal, outside, immediate and long term, and in technical details and broad scope of the scenario).  Then ask a few more people who fit the bill but with deep understanding of a different aspect of the topic.  These people are rare, and very valuable. But be careful to avoid people who have espoused their pet theory because they often are blind to evidence that doesn't support their preconceptions.

2. Triangulate: Get your information from your best sources, and listen to what a wide variety biased and mainstream sources are saying, evaluating their motives and what you know of their personality by their behavior and interests (never what they say, because they speak after their actions).  See below for some thoughts about best sources.

3.  Follow the money.  Rarely are people disinterested in financial reward. Even the meager will vote their pocketbook (or at least believe they are) against their principles most of the time.

Who you can never really trust to speak truth? Businessmen, Politicians, Idiots, Zealots, Ideologues (unless their ideology is "I just don't care."), the angry, the hungry, the scared, the vain, the ambitious, the overly polite (nice) people.

 Who does that leave?  How about people who are scientifically (show me verifiable/repeatable evidence) minded, socially aware agnostics, fiscally-stoic deep thinkers with a journalistic bent, and are experts in their fields.  If we can get the AI community going, and have them ensure their huge brain-machines are built without their emotion chip, and can feed them information like they do for IBM's Watson...  Use them to help best understand what's real and what the implications are, bounce the results off a few ethicists, and then support a decision maker who can understand their best conclusions but also has a heart.


*I just wanted to grab an example that everyone would be able to grasp, not being political.