My Way of Thinking?

Over the years I've listened to various dialogues on so many different controversial issues and I continue to come to the same conclusions today. I have been right all along that is about one thing, and that is that if you start with the earth as the foundation of any argument you must inevitably realize we have all become dependent upon too much technology, that which separates us from the natural cycles of the earth and this has been psycho-sociologically injurious to us,  as well as has led us to engage in foolish destructive endeavors masked as beneficial, acts that avoid culpability through subterfuge and the displacement of effort and foisting responsibility upon powerless populations, and in the process wasting limited natural resources while poisoning all living inhabitants.

This displacement and subterfuge that I mention happens very gradually in such small increments that like the frog slowly succumbs to boiling water, we do not realize what we have done to ourselves—we do not realize that we put our trust in that which and those who have only self interest and little real rigorous science or compassionate humanity to support their presumptions of philanthropy.

This is why like some of us I find myself at odds with the status quo, in opposition to those who chose not to question authority—whether to protect their employment or because it would shatter too much of ones hard sought level of leisure, calm, pleasure or cost them possessions, or simply because of a dependence upon a given trust or belief system. Such systems sadly cannot be relinquished without great trauma or force. Persuasion that is has long since lost its window of opportunity for an easy reconnect; for an immediate and personal detachment awaits like a crevice, a gaping, maddening emptiness of no-return. It is the most extreme of cognitive dissonances that looms before us all. 

"How could we all have been so wrong", we ask ourselves?  Sadly, this is where the greatest choice of all either separates or binds us forever. We demand of each other to "choose a side." "You're either with us or against us." We're "us and them", reliable or fake, uplifted or downtrodden, wolves or sheep, hawks or doves, heroes or scapegoats, blessed with praise or cursed with schadenfreude. "Where do you stand?" "Explain yourself!" "You worry us with your thinking. There is a code for that in the DSM5, you know?"  "Perhaps you have a mental disorder."  

In countries like China or Russia, yes, even contemporary Russia, they incarcerate you for challenging the state's "way of thinking" or religious beliefs. What a sad condition we are in, we who would be kings, not peasants....   when all we have to do is look down for our answer.

Speaking of... candidates.

What I think I have failed to realize as a white male and thus verbalize succinctly is that maybe once there is an equal number of women and persons of different races and cultures in positions of power in both states and the federal government it may become more opportune then and acceptable for a person incidentally blighted such as myself by my whiteness to say I wish not to call attention to the color of their skin or their religion or their gender or sexual preferences but rather focus my critical gaze on the candidates' records and their ideals. I recall as an example of this kind of oblique marginalization authors such as James Baldwin who wished to be thought of as an author first rather to be labeled as a black author—segregated in a sense from the other masters of literature. And by this I mean to say that all women and peoples of the many cultures are human first and best judged by their character as Martin Luther King said, their primary attributes of ethical conviction as opposed to their appearance or the manifestations of their cultural practices or spiritual worship. All of us might find virtue better if we imagined we were blind and just listened to each other.

 Teachers who are incompetent or predatory should be of more concern to parents—I would not be averse to cameras in classrooms in other words. Also I think teachers should share with parents what their lessons entail; parents could then opt their child out of that particular lesson they object to. If they merely have "alternative facts" which the parent wishes themselves to "indoctrinate" their child with that's entirely their prerogative. 

Anyway I get the discomfort the teacher in question ( in a facebook feed I encountered) expresses but I see no evidence of malice, immorality or an intent to deceive or "indoctrinate".  That's an unwarranted interpretation. If a teacher presents factually vetted material about controversial issues without passing judgement the teacher should have nothing to worry about—from open minded parents that is and I think that's where the discomfort comes from, an awareness that some parents will object to some subjects that are readily available in the mainstream and social media. Why limit a student's ability to debate on such topics. Perhaps an astute young student might one day "enlighten" that previously narrow minded parent.

Follow the money... all the way down to the ground.

1. The concept “follow the money” draws a red herring across the path of looking for a cause of extortion or greed.
2. Looking for the source of money requires starting at its origins not the middle, 
3. Money represents the value of labor (somewhat like the calories—joules—required to maintain the physical effort of the body).
4. Labor is the energy a society assigns to the extraction of natural resources and thus the power to turn those resources into things
5. The value (power) of natural resources and labor thus divides into: 

• the power to maintain, and escalate the value of things (create leisure and wealth)
• the power to create the desire for these things 
• the power to distribute these things 
• the power to obtain these things
• the power to use these things 
• the power to isolate labor faction and diminish its power
• the power to extort value by subterfuge (the corrupt man is a straw man)

Feel free to add the finer powers I left out.

Again, saying “follow the money” draws a red herring across the path to the real source of money and avoids recognizing the overall abuses of power.

The criticality of visual thinking and explicit usage of descriptive vocabularies.

I strongly believe racism is learned behavior.  It is therefore up to parents to take great care what they say around their children.

A little school bus driver event to explicate this claim.

Two years ago I had a group of siblings that had not ridden school buses before. Their very first day the youngest said to me as he stepped up from the last step: "You're a racist". 

Now, perhaps you can imagine the kind of challenge I would have with that child from that day forward. I maintained my composure with him always but never succeeded in gaining his respect much less his sustained attention. Sitting down with him trying to engage in simple conversation was always disrupted either by his own angst or by the distractions of others nearby.

Hard as you may try you are no match for the indoctrinating impressions that preceded you. All you can do in such a case is to remain an exemplary compassionate adult. Kindness and even coming to their defense is the best you can do.

The same can be said of parents and adults of all races and cultures.  So until parents learn to stop propagating the hate through language in the presence of their children, and adults learn to restrain their biases, anger and hatred these once innocent offspring will carry that germ of violence into adulthood.

An example of unproductive thinking:

"Gangs exist because the American family is broken. The family is broken because corrupt government is in league with corporate growth destroyed family financial stability. Corrupt government exists because voters stopped vetting. Voters "dropped the ball on democracy" because of materialistic desires. Desires are prioritized because of suffering. Sufferers are vulnerable to vices. Vices are promulgated by pharmaceutical, alcohol and tobacco manufacturers. Drugs and alcohol finish off the rest of the family. Lack of a family creates a need for a surrogate sense of belonging to a family—like gangs."

A little simplistic maybe? 

To follow through with this example of circuitous thinking I give you this thought:

We most often fail to find solutions because we don't know where to start the conversation—and most often we want it immediately! And our cognition of it all fails from where learning language and empathy begins—in childhood, not in adulthood. 

So we must start the transformation with the raising of children, ALL children. From there it should be obvious that the priority of a society is to take what peaceful measures it can to reform all the agencies that are barriers to this end. ALL families then must have livable incomes and access to equal educational opportunities for their children if we are to have any hope of a peace-loving society.

Only then, in other words, can adult language even begin—one day—to suffice to solve the other critical problems, such as how to recognize logical fallacies and assert viable paths to beneficial results in domestic life or in industries requiring extensive specialized vocabularies or the myriad language barriers of international diplomacy.

Nurturing critical language and thinking is absolutely paramount and must start consistantly from the birth of a child.

Now, following through with that mandate, as many of you know several years ago our US government attempted to fix our educational inadequacies (to address a nation's prowess!) with what they called No Child Left Behind, and quickly there after, sensing a failure again, attempted to transform the entire nation all at once for all k-12 grades with a teacher weighted agenda called Common Core. This in effect disrupted the flow for all students past 1st grade with revised lessons which ultimately penalized teachers for a disparity created by this transformation of testing into a teacher performance review program. 

Any such overhaul of lessons should have focused on student learning and should have begun gradually with kindergarten then next year with first grade then next year with second grade and so forth so that there would be a continuity established of a step by step progression of the lessons from kindergarten to graduation 12 years later. Education is foremost about about individual self- esteem, then like the building of a campfire, will eventually allow new families to withstand the larger forces that would otherwise jeopardize a nation's guiding light. The reputation is a mere perk.

Anyway, your families with young children presumably have a good chance to initiate some degree of hope for a better future America if you in the least can keep your  conversations civil and exemplify eventual resolutions of conflict. If we have to start somewhere it might as well be at the universal beginning.

And now I am going to show you how visual thinking and language use are critically intertwined. In fact, so critical is explicit language use that death can ensue without it.

You may have seen the viral video of a police officer killing a pest control employee in the hallway of a hotel. To the officer's credit he believed the guy may be armed. Yet this is a perfect example of a lack of visual thinking and communication-skills on his part.

First he instructs the guy to lie flat on the ground with his fingers linked on his head and his feet crossed; then he instructs him to put his hands stretched out in front of him; then he instructs him to rise to his knees with his hands up (at this point the guy's feet uncross and the officer once again gets angry and reminds him he will shoot him if he makes another mistake); then he instructs the guy to crawl to him at which point the confused guy goes down to hands and knees to "crawl" and gets shot immediately multiple times!

So, certainly because he's threatened to shoot the guy if he makes a mistake it behooves the officer to be explicit in his commands. Yet, instead of saying "with your hands still above you shuffle toward me on your knees only."—for, anyone hearing the word crawl would think "hands and knees"—he says "crawl." This is both a failure of visual thinking and language use and proves it can have lethal results if one is incompetent at it... and this is just one example of why I harp on about visual thinking and descriptive vocabularies as being so very fundamental to a thorough education.

So what does all this have to do with racism?  Well, it should occur to you that if at last we have managed to address the economic barriers to stable conversant families and equal educational opportunities for all children (with an especial focus on critical thinking as in visual thinking and descriptive vocabulary usage) then how prevalent might fear be if ALL our children can experience intelligent conversation and enjoy the full benefits that an open mind and sociability can bring?!

(the video is very disturbing!)

https://youtu.be/OflGwyWcft8

What will it take to eradicate racism?

Nothing will change until economic parity is achieved—eradicating racism and fear would require every one to have at least a livable income with equal pay and equal advancement opportunities for the same education.
Changing peoples hearts requires that we all have educated minds free of bitterness and envy; eradicating fear requires empathy. And empathy requires some fundamental interests and experiences. What do you propose that those be if we are to maintain diversity in all things social and cultural? Perhaps we can only speak in terms of biology and health.
So, Are we a redeemable species?