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.

A bloated central govenment?  

How does centralizing work as a social process?

"Centralizing" homogenizes, constricts creative adaptation -an evolutionary characteristic, a human developmental characteristic.  Centralizing, socially shapes the belief that one size fit all.  Centralizing constricts creativity, ignores diversity, denigrates alternative thinking, and stimulates "polariztion" of people. 


Centralizing also fosters a governing "elite," a top-heavy adminstrative layer that grows further and further out of touch with grassroots.  Administrative layers, as we've known them in large bureaucracies, e.g. the NYC public schools, (and Democrat governments in general), expand through cronyism.  Recall the slogan: it's not what you know it's WHO you know (the basis of cronyism).  Centralizing shuts up opposing viewpoints, suppresses LOCAL agenda.  It can't meet everyone's needs so it prioritizes, selects, caters to, feeds dependencies, and panders votes.  

The more centralized governance, and the larger that governance, the more we discover that polarization rears its ugly head...because people don't feel good when needs aren't effectively met.  And if government is bloated, centralized, it certainly is not locally responsive except through crooked deals, earmarks, and cronyism.  Special favors proliferate ...as we've witnessed in the  proliferation of "earmarks" currently bloating the obamacare compendium, now under Supreme Court scrutiny.

Centralized, institutionalized bureaucracy  amounts to allowing an administrative elite to declare what will work for everyone -regardless of diversity needs determined in every single local community (beginning with the family, the neighborhood, the town).  An administrative special elite supervises access to advantages: THEY design the rules, the laws, the budgets, the paths of access  to power (energy resources, media, technology).  They publish the rhetoric that shapes how the populace perceives.  They in fact make our "local" decisions  from a central point of control.  Localities differ in nature, character, resources and needs.  Centralized decision-making is generally no good for the  diversity of "locals"  ostensibly intended to benefit from the institutionalizing of government.  


I believe in the freshness and wisdom of that which is LOCAL  -not federal.  I favor governance which is limited, focused, and transparently managed.    

As a voter, I prefer to register INDEPENDENT.  I don't like the homogenized version of either of the two major parties offered.  But in terms of how I live my life, develop children and adults, I espouse a conservative way of living and guiding others in my care.  


... In fact, I know very few parents and educators who actually live their lives and raise children in ways that are (politically speaking) "liberal." My friends and family actually live life in the conservative arena.  They believe in the wise conservation of human and natural resources. They live life according to prosperity principles.  And they believe prosperity thinking and behaving  within everyone's personal power, in fact our birthright to be activated from within.  


What is the activation process? 
What circumstances call it forth from within? 
What squelches activation? 
What restarts a stunted trajectory?


The "liberal" thought (and "liberal" action) resembles the thinking and passivity of laissez-faire parenting.  And fifty years of psychological and educational research has never backed such non-engagement.  Laissez-faire parenting leads to advocating "sleep training." 


The label "Liberal" is not all it's cracked up to be... but it sounds good. Labels can cleverly cover up truth.  Labels can be employed deceptively. As citizens, we are called to be adult thinkers, no longer following, trusting children:  look beneath the surface, look into the issue, look around actions out of sync with the words.  


Finally, look within.  Meditate, cultivate mindfulness ... even politically.  Our personal lives can become changed overnight by a subtle series of political  misperceptions, mistakes, votes.  While we may not see/feel/sense our political lives as palpably as our personal lives, the are as real.  We simply may not be as conscious of our political life as we are of our personal life.  


Our personal life is often tucked comfortably within a more nebulous (less perceptible) political life.    They are in actuality one life.  We experience living more powerfully to the extent our "outer" lives ...like the rings around Saturn... are integrated, synthesized, whole.  Our life, in all its layers, and on each level, deserves to be lived consciously.  

Study Time begins in America ... invitation to form a study group

It's Sunday morning and gratefully being retired (and Being Rewired), I have made time to "study" the layers within national and world events now for 7 months.  

This is more time on task than I required to study 67 textbooks from three fields (education, psychology, and research methods). Back in 1974-76,  such preparation was deemed necessary before submitting to doctoral level "preliminary or qualifying" exams (intense all day written and oral cross-examination sessions over a three day period).  This is how the University determines if a coursework-completed graduate student demonstrates the necessary and  sufficient thinking skills, knowledge and know-how, as well as ethics to conduct and publish original research. 

So, I sent a document I assembled to the people I care about -including bits of politically relevant research ... very basic in fact ...terms and concepts for starters. All sources were provided so that each person can cross check at home.  Everyone was encouraged to open the attachment and "read at your convenience." This format prevented anyone from opening a document if s/he had no interest.

I will list the terms and websites below in this blogspot so you also can directly inform yourself at your convenience.

1. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary...look up Capitalism, Communism, Marxism, Socialism
2. www.marxist.org:  What is dialectic materialism?
3. www.mltoday.org: How does Marxism-Leninism play out in today's issues?
4. www.allaboutphilosophy.org: Does sociological thinking mattershow up in political policies and rhetoric? Does politics matter for you and those you care for in the schools and marketplace politically?

  I encourage you to connect the dots for yourself.  Use your acquired lens to practice decoding "news" presentations according to each particular network's political orientation.  Notice how networks vary considerably in both the "news" they will  cover and the issues they omit.  Notice tendencies to predigest the issues for you vs report facts and let you seek/ listen further to position statements and debates about the meaning of those facts.

I implore you, as we have learned to avoid the dangers infused in additive-laden "manufactured" foods, please avoid listening to predigested and particularly-sculpted media presentations about big issue information on our plates in America.  Instead, activate your own inference skills (highest level reading skill) to inform yourself, talk among family and friends, and read between media's lines at the very basic political-principles conversation staring back at us from our table in America. 

For anyone tempted into lower level thoughts of racism, I refer you to Daneen Boreli's best-seller: Blacklash (2011).  She is a highly studied and articulate African American citizen, political analyst, and writer.  Her book is available on Amazon via kindle, hardback, and paperback.

Hmmm...

If you don't yet have such political interest, this format spares you exposure to these very basic elements of current political research.

If you'd like to have a public forum for further discourse, dialogue, commenting ... please particpate in this  blog and consider Being Rewired.