Common Sense...Time to "Get it."

While capitalism is imperfect its imperfections depend on the integrity of the individuals using that process.  While imperfect, it allows individuals and families freedom to prosper, create and recreate.  Socialism, all grown up, economically looks like Greece, Portugal, Italy, France, etc.  Europe, not including Germany -who doesn't overspend, which is why they  have the money to offer to bail out bankrupt Greece (with conditions to stop overspending on their socialist programs) is currently on the verge of economic collapse.  So do we (US) really choose to continue on a path to socialism?

Communism looks like the starving and mafia-controlled Russian Federation ... and the one-child China (preferably male children).  

Tyrannical Dictatorships look like Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.( and Sharia Law -which among other deadly women-hating ways, includes death for blasphemy).  

Please do your own investigating, pay attention day after day for at least one month.  Compare and contrast five different TV networks in their coverage and presentation of events.  

1. Are the range of issues covered, followed the next day of dropped?  
2. Followed by partisan debate? Or does the network itself present a single political position/interpretation?
3. To what extent has the network predigested issues, simply and summarily prounced as facts by the newscaster?
4.  Does the network (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN) offer simple or complex interpretations/debates/dialogues of political events?
5. How much time is allocated to local, national, global news?  Many focus much or more time on murders and natural disasters compared to time on the task of informing a vote-capable citizenship (- allocated to national news that we can actually do something about through our right to inform ourselves and vote on November 6, 2012).
6. How do you feel after witnessing individual networks --hungry for more detail and dots to connect? Or sick to your stomach stuffed with views of violent episodes you cannot control? Or kept happily sheltered from ugliness in the world needing transformation through our sharing, our efforts, our contributions?
7. After watching a network do you feel like you ate a can of Chef Boyardee prefabricated ravioli drenched in additives to make eating it smoother, faster, taste-bud stunned, and seductively addictive (like loosing ourselves in tabloid celebrity drama) 
8. Or do you feel quizzical, stimulated, nourished ...even  invigorated by some healthy conflict of interests that makes you want to learn more... as if you devoured a healthy nutrient-rich salad.

Check out  YouTube recordings of Barry's progression since 2007.  Check out the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney.  Investigate top talking points/issues through Google searches.  Cross check email "Forwards" through a check point listed below.  My brother has used all three, recommending them.   It's good to have an alternative.

Snopes.com

Factcheck.org

Politifact.com

Just notice...and spend significant time questioning with a friend what you both thought you knew when you didn't know much, but felt OK about that.  As  Antoine St. Exuperay expresses through the WWII novella entitled, The Little Prince: "One sees clearly only with the heart."  

And as we mature as adults, we learn to see with our fuller and higher, deeper and richer heart-mind.  While we will always detect the ways of thinking and the primal affiliations of childhood, adolescence, and very early adulthood, mature adults are called to use all our senses, including common sense.  We bring to bear on our adult issues a wealth of global and local knowledge and know-how. We organize and update and revise our primal perceptions in the context of higher order concepts from which we can draw more accurate inferences.  

In the end, adults contribute to our greater good as informed citizens,  able to navigate diverse territories, responding to both the panorama and each tree in the forest in which we live and love, work and play, participate and contribute, make the world a truly better place by being the best we can be.

Please leave behind the fear of being politically correct.  Keep your good manners, use your words, don't worry about spelling ... just respond, share thoughts, ask questions...substantive questions, not rhetorical questions meant to stop real inquiry and conversation.  Let us leave behind lower order social behavior that makes people jump on bandwagons, stick with the tribe we thought we came from regardless of new information, new questions, new problems and the need for new direction.  

Please call yourself and your friends to a higher level of political functioning.  At least require opinions to be backed up with facts -like we do Mob mentality tends to seduce and hypnotize even the brightest among us when the media blares.  Instead, take a deep breath,  release what they want you to infer, hear, see.  Meditate - then check three very different sources before drawing a conclusion.  Move beyond the middle school morality of needing to belong so much you go "tribal" on an issue  -rather than being open to exploring it fully and independently.  

In conversation, require "claims" and "interpretations"  to be backed up with facts and examples -especially if the comment is a negative allegation.  When a few immoral news reporters (e.g. The Washington Post, 5/11) go on dirt-digging witch hunts (as witnessed with select media re Herman Cane) -or invent some dirt to publish regardless of verity (like they just did on Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney from high school 47 years ago), please make a commitment to yourself to be open to unlocking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  

Especially, if and when we allow our mind to take in something negative, we owe it to our evolving integrity to check it out ... keep on, keep on until our whole being lets us know we finally got to the bottom of it.  Let's engage important and substantial political conversations  (not popularity contests, not he say/she say distractions from the essential issues on our American table ) ... now.  Our now is not a rehearsal.  Now is the real time to get it right. 


Getting to the bottom of it is a process...don't be tempted to short-circuit your process by discounting FOX News programs because you've heard it's extreme.  Once you watch all the networks listed above, you'll notice that Fox is the only one who reports all the issues on a daily basis...and presents issues/updates both favorable and unfavorable to ALL candidates...AND includes analysts presenting views left, right, and in between. No other network presents it all.  I believe this is why America rates FOX NEWS #1 (Neilson Ratings)...consistently.

If your partner changed his/her mind for MONEY...

Folks...as the esteemed and ethics-rich journalist Mike Wallace would say, "C'mon?!!"

I also, as Barrack Obama claimed for years, think this is an individual and states rights issue (a very personal, a clearly social issue).   But suddenly during campaign season, Barry claims he's "evolving?"   And then he evolves virtually overnight...

What other areas of national and global significance fall prey to his "evolve" style ... his decision-making process -easily moved by popularity and money ...or personal ideology.

This functional level is insufficient when "serving" in a leadership position (and he's been in  our TOP position now for three and one-half years).  It matters in a friend...it matters in a lifetime partner...it matters in our representatives -both nationally and globally.  We give people in representative positions some of our power to change our world...and their instituted changes can compromise -even endanger-everyone's truly essential well-being.  The more voracious the government ideology, the more power they assume, the more essential that we pay close attention.

A decision-making process -driven by popularity and money - brings related concepts to mind:
ADOLESCENT

Given Barry's chronologically an adult, then these words also fit his overnight evolution:
SHALLOW
PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNDER DEVELOPED
EASILY, EXTERNALLY INFLUENCED
SCHMOOZE
LACKING SUBSTANCE
WEAKENED CHARACTER
COERCIBLE
EXTRINSICALLY MOTIVATED
CALCULATING
LACKING SUFFICIENT  INTEGRITY
A PUPPET (... and then whose?)
HIDDEN AGENDA...himself and personal goals (...and just what are these?)


Here's the information.  Read and digest the contents for yourself:


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/timeline-of-obamas-evolving-on-same-sex-marriage/


http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Gay-marriage-campaign-fundraising/2012/05/08/id/438368


http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/222685-gay-campaign-bundlers-pressure-obama-to-publicly-support-same-sex-marriage.html

Something in the wisdom of the past ...and bringing it forward now

• There's a children's music CD entitled, Bloom Where Your Are Planted.

I bought it for my daughters over thirty years ago, when it was an "album."  It's ideas are so classic to the harmonious development of childhood ideas about growing and changing, that the album is currently a CD.

The title idea ... Bloom Where Your Are Planted... came to mind this morning during my yoga session.  The sun streamed in the windows as I stretched into each asana in a sequence I have come to love because I benefit internally from each pose.  I rest in each pose... and in resting, images flowing through my mind are reflected.  Words came with the reflection we write about here. 


Later, I arranged a Medicine Wheel session for myself to further examine, then integrate these words reflected on the still waters of my mind during yoga: Bloom Where Your Are Planted .  


Here's what  came to mind:  

• A seed's germinating is compromised when motion diminishes access to nutrients and a place to rest, secure itself, engage it's sprouting process, secure rooting, draw in further nutrients
• to  Bloom Where Your Are Planted,  we need acess to rest and security so that our continual process is undisturbed, 
• In environments that do not ensure sufficient rest and security, sprouts are easily uprooted -withering and dying follows.
• applied to human beings, the germinating and sprouting process needs protection and preservation 
• consider this concept: "necessary and sufficient"and apply it to our intention, our effort
• consider this concept: "ecosystem" and apply it to systematized dynamics
• how do unhealthy systems stay in balance?and do they all finally collapse/
• what is necessary and sufficient to create a system in authentic balance? sustainable balance?
• to ensure the growing that scaffolds the blooming process -both within an individual, and between and among people (physicially, emotionally, ideationally, personality-wise and relationally) 
• because being disturbed ... or not sufficiently nurtured... impairs the blooming process.  To what extent does it also initiate a coping/disease process?
• how does the idea of "necessary and sufficient" bring us more clarity as we our think about seeding? sprouting? blooming? designing healthier dynamics? designing healthier systems ...an ecosystem?
• When is an effort "necessary and sufficient"to bring about an intention?
• To what extent is "necessary and sufficient"
• how can we use this information to develop plans for marriage-making?
• how may we consider how to create a home for both individuals and the union?
• how can we use this information to consider our home's capacity to sustain a child across childhood and adolesence?
• and finally how can we model and educate our children so that they are able to sustain themselves upon adulthood?
• Rest with just one choice question above.  Let that question simply rest in the stillness of your mind, as a small boat floats upon the still waters
• Imagine this boat/question traveling organically through the four seasons from spring through winter...evolving as it naturally does without any push or pull externally
• Respectfully consider now the evolved ideas bloomed during their journey through the seasons -after the winter thaw, -after the boats return to shore: What do your discover? Blog it...

Additional quests to rest with, blog about:
Do we eschew REST because we are addicted to stimulation or certain kinds?

Are we afraid of reflection natural to stillness?

Do we confuse stillness with emotional dying because we have only skimmed it's luminous surface?

Here we enter the depths of rest together and find within REST's  inherent values, respectfully.