Bare Bones Biology 072 – More Corposystem Games – FactFictionFancy

It’s a lot of fun to fight over television controversies, because it seems like nobody gets hurt and nobody loses. So we sometimes forget that most television controversy is just make-believe arguing that is meant to keep us solidly in front of the TV, and not learning about the real facts of life. On modern television, even the news is manipulated — a corposystem game – not real life at all. The facts of life? We breathe air, we drink water and we eat food, and without that all the games in the world won’t keep us alive. Not the TV, not the corposystem, not money.

Money isn’t even a real thing – it’s only a commitment to trade for goods and it’s only useful when people are willing to honor it. We can’t eat, breathe or drink money. So maybe we should spend a little more time understanding how we get what we do need to stay alive, and a little less time trusting the corposystem to get it for us.

The corposystem does not and cannot make food energy, air or water in useful quantities. Those things come from the ecosystem. Yes of course, the corposystem can move things around, and mess them up — but it cannot make enough food, air or water to keep us alive. It is the nature of the ecosystem to produce these things, just as it is our nature to need them, and there is a very important reason for this. We and the earth ecosystem are one living, interacting system. Just in the way that you and your kidney, and your lungs and your heart – all are one living system.

The corposystem is a parasite. It’s not alive, so it does not care if we destroy the air, water and food. It only cares about one thing, and that is money. So the corposystem is using and destroying our air, water and food energy to make things, to sell to us, to get money. And it invents TV propaganda games for us, so we won’t notice that it is taking away our air, water and food. Games like this one, that I call FactFictionFancy. It begins with a news announcer. Here’s the example, a TV announcer says:

“Nearly all living things on this earth, including us, require food to get the energy we need to stay alive, and when we break down the food and use the energy — that process releases carbon dioxide.” That’s a true fact. “NONONO” screams another announcer on a different show that is owned by the same corposystem. “When animals break down food during their metabolism – and use the energy – that process releases water, not carbon dioxide!”

Aha, a fight, what fun, let’s join in, and so a third reporter, owned by the same corposystem claims to have checked with some “expert” who says it’s carbon dioxide. And so it goes. We all sit glued to our TV sets, wondering who will win. Before long a couple of politicians enter the argument, one on each side, Republicans versus Democrats. Water or carbon dioxide. Because they hope to get votes if they say what we want to hear.

But the thing is, of all those fighting people, nobody’s opinion makes any difference at all, because – the reality facts can be measured and have been measured and THEY ARE WHAT THEY ARE. Nobody’s opinion can change them. So, while it’s a fun game arguing, it does not put food in our mouths or prevent the asthma deaths that are caused by air pollution, or save the crops that are lost to drought or the water that was polluted by fracking and runoffs from contaminated croplands. While we behave like fans at a dog fight – as though we had no responsibilities – as though nobody is getting hurt because it’s only a game on TV.

And our politicians are arguing about nonsense instead of discussing solutions to real, difficult problems in a real, life-or-death world.

Bare Bnes Biology 072 – More Corposystem Games – FactFictionFancy
KEOS radio 89.1 FM, Bryan, Texas
Transcript at FactFictionFancy.wordpress.com
Audio later this week at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com

“Democracy”

de·moc·ra·cy n

“the control of an organization by its members, who have a free and equal right to participate in decision-making processes.” (Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.)

If Mr. Flores would ask me to help prevent someone (anyone) from expressing his point of view in a “democratic” meeting, I would wonder what Mr. Flores was trying to hide. If Mr. Flores then pointed out several times that the police were there to keep order — and he posted a couple of bouncers near the person who wanted to speak (you can see their bottom halves in the second photo) – I would make a big effort to find out why Mr. Flores didn’t want this person to express his opinion. Knowledgeable honorable people who are looking for solutions to real problems – such people are not afraid of ideas.

What is a Town Hall Meeting?

“A town hall meeting is an informal public meeting which gives the members of a community an opportunity to get together to discuss emerging issues and to voice concerns and preferences for their community.”

Mr. Flores meeting, of course, was not a Town Hall Meeting. When a person talks for a couple of hours without discussing, that is not a town hall meeting.

“dis·cus·sion n
Talk or a talk between two or more people about a subject.”

When we the people go to a town hall meeting, we expect a discussion. What can we do in a supposedly democracy in a fake town hall meeting when we are not permitted to have a real discussion?

According to a recent publication of the TEA party: “I understand that the local MoveOn.org and Brazos Progressives will be out in force preaching more class warfare.” It sounds to me like the TEA party leadership also does not want a discussion.

I can’t speak for the MoveOn Leadership in DC, because I walked out on about their fourth sentence, because up to then nearly every sentence contained the word “fight” two or three times. Well, yes – if you want to end up in a fight, then you should fight. However, fighting will only make our problems worse.

We have very serious problems that are out of control, and the only way to control them is to deal with their causes. Beating up on someone else (passive-aggressive or overt aggressive) never solved any real problem over the long term. Beating up on other people only makes more enemies. I think Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and the Buddha all agree on this point, and I believe they have accomplished more that is worth accomplishing than almost anyone else I know about. Winning doesn’t solve problems. It’s fun, but it only makes more enemies. If we really want to solve problems more than we want to have fun – well, our behavior labels us. Clearly we don’t.

And anyway, there is no way to win ourselves out of this particular problem in which we find ourselves. There is no way to solve it with fake town hall meetings that concentrate on economics in a fake democracy that does everything in it’s power to prevent us from understanding really what our problem is. So that we could actually get together and solve it. So, the meeting was all about economics, but – I’m not an economist, so here is the definition of economics.

“ec·o·nom·ics n
1. the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services (takes a singular verb)”

So – economics studies the relationship between supply and demand. Nobody talked about that in the town hall meeting, even though the root cause of our very big problem is the relationship between supply (from this good green earth) of everything we need to stay alive — and demand (by humans).

The real problem is that we are running low on supply and our so-called economics is trying to solve that problem by selling more stuff. And borrowing money. Neither of which will solve the problem of a limited supply. Does it make sense to try to produce more when there are fewer resources? Not even to an economist, but if we only had those two choices in a condition of low supply – well, I wouldn’t do either of those solutions, I would tell the people what is the real root problem and ask them to help solve it. But as that solution seems not to be on the table, surely borrowing money can’t be nearly as toxic as trying to make more stuff when we are running a bit low on resources.

Even I know that outflows are only one side of the economics problem. And inflows do not come from people. They come from the green mother earth. If we want to try to fix our very big problem we can’t do it by focusing only on the outflows. We will have to think, talk and share ideas about the inflows, where they come from, and how we plan to get enough without destroying the green mother earth that produces them.

God made the world as he made it. God did not make supermarkets. He made the earth to be fruitful with carrots and potatoes and corn and wheat and apples. He did not make economics. He told us to be honest and kind and compassionate. He did not suggest that we use trickery and chicanery to get what we want by causing harm to others.

I say to MoveOn and the progressives and the TEA party that you are all fighting over ephemera, and if you don’t start looking for real, factual information about how God did make this world to operate – then you will all lose. And so will I.

I say to MoveOn and the Progressives and the TEA party, and especially Mr. Flores, you are all wrong when you fight over some “democracy” that is dead and gone and never was like you say it was. You should be working together to learn the real facts about how this good green earth nurtures and feeds us – learn where our real supplies really come from and how — so that you all can help to build a more bountiful life style for the future. Instead of just having a fun game of king of the hill.

If Mr. Flores were to ask me to help make sure that someone doesn’t have a chance to talk – that his ideas should not be heard, I would wonder what Mr. Flores is trying to hide. Here’s my first guess. I guess he’s afraid we folks in the audience will figure out how much he does NOT know about our world and our country and even our economy. And how much he does NOT know about what is needed to make our country honorable and fruitful once again.

So I think it would be better to ask. That guy who didn’t get to talk might have had a good idea.

In Answer to Your Letter

I believe as Americans, we should not be fighting each other or anyone else over unimportant things while the country and the ecosystem collapse around us, and I believe that something is happening higher up in the politico-economic structure that wants to lay waste the land in order to “get theirs” now. Of course this has always been true, but right now there are two huge differences:

(1) Now the ecosystem has run out of reserves to support their biological and economic ravages. Before now we were not so big and there were always more resources somewhere that could make up for the crooks’ behaviors.

(2) Now the power brokers are more subtle and have learned to maintain their power by setting us against each other. Obviously their goal is to pretend we are recovering and at the same time give us something unimportant to fight over so we won’t notice as they ravage the countryside and we lose the rule of law that is THE thing that defines us as American.

Our political model makes this very easy for them, especially after Bush indoctrinated a whole generation of young into the glories of war, because the people are willing to believe that “winning” a debate or an election, or ANYTHING is a valid way to solve a problem. Just as they were willing to believe that “winning” a war is. Wouldn’t you think we would notice the proofs of all the failed wars? So I am dedicating my time and energy to fighting FOR the constitution and rule of law and the ecosystem.

One of the things that stands in the way of our problem solving, as we push the whole earth ecosystem further and further away from a healthy balance, is that we are NOT teaching our people how the ecosystem works. We do know in its basics how the ecosystem works, but we are withholding this information from the voters (even on PBS). I think the reason for this is what I said above — so that the voters will not interfere with the crooks’ ravaging.

The other thing that stands in our way is our war mentality that prevents us from talking among our selves and realizing that we all want the same things and we all have the same problems. We apply our war mentality extravagantly to almost everything we do because we believe that “winning” is more important than solving the problems. We are so indoctrinated in the “winning” model that we can’t feel good about ourselves if we believe someone else might be better in some way than we are. Now I ask you, what problem does that solve?

I am antiwar. Really. Not like people who go out and fight with each other about whether or not we should have war. I don’t care who wins, so long as we solve the problems.

Wait — if we solve our common problem — wouldn’t we all win?

What a novel idea.

We are All Human

I know it’s obvious.

We are all human. We are not divine; we are mammals and it is easy to prove that we have built-in reflexes and other mental attributes. Some of these are so automatic that they are not specifically controlled by our logical brain.

For example, if you are getting a physical examination, the doctor might tap your knee with his little rubber hammer. He wants to know if your “knee jerk response” is working properly. In other words, if your automatic nervous system is functional.

Similarly, there are some things that we all want and need that are so important that they are buried deep in the parts of the brain that work automatically. We don’t think about them. We just react.

Those are things that we want and need, just because we are human.

For example, it is well studied that babies — human babies — want and need to be cuddled or they will not thrive. If they are not cuddled at all, they may die. That is a common human need. Humans want and need other humans — when they are babies, when they grow and when they mature. Therefore it is important that your relationships with other humans should be responsible, ethical and thoughtful because those are qualities that are special to human life.

All humans want and need to be nurtured by other humans. It’s a fact that is built into our biological nature. It is a trait that has evolved our biological position at the top of the evolutionary tree of social animals. Of if we were created; the fact remains.

When we fail to model responsibility or fail to consider the welfare of other humans, we are failing our own human nature. What’s worse — if we don’t give, we don’t get. We end up torturing our own selves.

Now – everyone knows the above, or at least it makes sense to us all. What we so often fail to do is CONNECT what we all really want with whatever we are doing and THINK to ourselves:

“Is there any connection between what I want and what I am doing?” If there is no road or bridge, then I probably won’t get from here to there, even if whatever I am doing feels good as a temporary substitute.

For example, what we discussed yesterday. Getting to the head of the line. First, we can’t succeed at that because there is no head to the line. Now. Second. How does getting to the head of the line get me what we all want, which is to be nurtured?

Or whatever it is that you do when you get that “I WANT” feeling. Will forcing your wife to submit give you what you really want? Killing? War? Will it get you what you need to demand that your opinion be respected? Will it get you what you need to ignore the pain and sorrow and disagreements and differences of opinions of other people, as so many well-meaning people do? Just don’t rise? List everything that you do whenever you are disturbed that you aren’t getting what you want. Which one is likely to work? Long term.

For all this time this blog has been devoted to concepts of power – at every level, and this is the basic take-home message. Your personal power is available to you if you know how to use it, but it will not do you any good unless you

1. know what you want and
2. behave in such a way that it is physically and emotionally possible to get to what you want from wherever you are.

And when we individually figure that out, our personal power is very nearly unlimited. And when our culture figures it out — then we will have REAL power, not the poor unsustainable imitation we believe in today.
(Photo from the upcoming book Texas Skies).

Move the Moon, it Bugs me

“Make President Obama Stop Global warming.”

You must be kidding.

That organization (and I have to say a lot of other organizations) get no money from me. And the hungrier they are for the green the more ignorant the claims they come up with, some of them.

But that makes Global warming an even worse problem doesn’t it:

1. Obama can’t fix it without our help;

2. All these people who could be helping are wasting their energy thinking of stupid things to say to raise money.

To spend your time thinking or talking about what you can not do to help mankind Is a waste of your brain and the time you could be spending doing something worthwhile..
There is more that you CAN do than you can ever do.
Just make sure that whatever you do now does not make life worse for someone else later on.

Health Insurance

I am very happy that I have my government insurance program (Social Security and Medicare) and I can not imagine why anyone who is in danger of unemployment would be trying to prevent our government from making these government obligations available to all the people. Of course I paid my bit for it, and I always knew I was helping to pay for other people who were in worse trouble than I. And happy to do that.

So I will plan to go to the demonstrations, but I do keep wondering why? Why not spend my energy doing something more substantive. Why not find a way to use my personal power to make exactly the point that I wish to make about health insurance instead of trying to get on TV so that someone else will do it for us. (Of course I know why, it’s very difficult to think of ways to get our word across that great gap between us and the government.) The media are supposed to bridge that gap, and demonstrations do catch the attention of some elements of the media, but there is no reason to believe those media will actually present our message — and demonstrations are not rational discussion.

In fact, most demonstrations nowadays seem to be intended specifically to draw our attention AWAY from the real issues so we will not think about the common welfare but only about fighting with someone who disagrees with us.

I feel very sure that every individual person who really cares about the common welfare can find an easier, more direct and probably more effective way to make his views known to his friends, neighbors, representatives and to the media. Good old fashioned neighborly discussion would be a start, carried forward with rational, well considered letters, emails and Touchstone radio pieces. And support KEOS or your own independent media.

FactFictionFancy is back Again – Horribilizing

I just opened my mailbox, and out poured piles of unsolicited letters telling me about all the horrible things that are happening in the world. They want me to know that armagedon is near and that they can save us all from the end of the world if only I will send them money.

I wonder why this triggered a vivid memory of myself, age 6 or so, being washed out toward the ocean by a big wave, and there, standing between me and the big waves, were my daddy’s legs. These people want me to be afraid of the sea of life — and they want me to believe they are my daddy.

The fact is:

1. they can’t save us all;
2. if you offer them something that isn’t money they won’t even answer your letters or emails (I tried);
3. they are very careful to NOT talk about the problem and what causes it, but only the horrible things that have already happened that nobody can change.

I wonder why that is?

Maybe I should send them a little brochure that says:

“Are you afraid I will find out that the money I send to you will not fix the problem?” But they wouldn’t even care about that. They only look at the envelopes with dollars in them.

The fact is nobody can fix any problem unless we work together to discover the cause of the problem and fix THAT. And if we really fixed the problem, they would be out of business, wouldn’t they.

Charitable efforts that are done for the wrong reason do help some of the people. No matter how good the charity is, however, if the charitable work is done for the wrong reasons it will help some of the people after they are hurting, but at the same time it will strengthen the the system that made them hurt in the first place.

Fake Debates. Torture.

Changing the subject, loss leaders, asking the wrong question. The purpose of any of these so-called debates is to avoid discussing the issue. The debate about whether or not torture is torture is probably a lot of fun for some people. It allows us to get all excited about something that is not the issue. The issue is that:

1) All high government officials take an oath to support the constitution of the United States of America, and

2) The constitution of the United States of America declares the President and other high officials are required to honor the treaties and agreements of our country, and

3) Torture is a war crime and a crime in the United States of America, both because we agreed to honor the Geneva Convention, and because torture is a crime in the United States of America. It has nothing to do with whoever we don’t like or why we are at war.

Without the rule of law we have no United States of America. Under the rule of law, people must be held responsible for what they choose to do. Otherwise, there is no rule of law. Torturing is illegal. Nobody forced anybody to torture. It’s not possible to force anyone to torture other people.

When we choose to break the law, we know what the consequences are. We make that choice freely and accept the consequences, or we change the law — first and legally.

There is nothing to debate here.

But if we live in a culture where only two human values remain — winning, losing — then of course no discussion is possible and nothing is left to us but the mini-wars of fake debates. And we have shackled our souls to the shame and denial of our own abusive behavior.

Tired

Aren’t we just a wee bit tired of being treated like children? Little fairy stories, meaningless awards to make us feel good, cutsey or rahrah group hugs. I mean all of that is fine for fun and pleasure, but when do we get to use our brains for a real purpose?? Like to benefit the tribe?

Never if the media have anything to say about it.

I wonder why that is?

Definition: A displacement activity is something we do to pacify ourselves when we can’t do what we were meant to do. Like a tiger, pacing in a cage.

Courtesy of Michael Greenwell.