Should the Majority Rule?

We hear a lot these days about “defending democracy.” What they claim they want to defend it against is tyranny. We must assume here that “democracy” is actually a code word for a system that respects the rights of everyone, and lets everyone – or as many as possible – participate in government. It refers not only to who may be elected to rule, but also to who may participate in the election. The fear – confirmed by history – is that the electors will choose someone who does NOT respect their right to equal participation in the processes of government. In such a wise, a democracy could destroy itself.

What does it mean to rule?

A students’ dictionary tells us: “To have political control or authority over; govern.” Govern: “To control the actions, workings, or behavior of; direct.”

Ruling has a definite political connotation. But more generally, a parent normally rules a family, a Chief Executive normally rules (or directs) a business, and schools are ruled by principals or headmasters.

The ordinary assumption is that a group will have a ruler or a leader.

Traditionally, a ruler or leader holds all three (assuming there are just three) major activities of government: Policy (rule) making, Administration (or execution of policy) and Justice. But that is tyranny. Many leaders attempt to do this, and many populations expect this from their leaders. But there is also a less common tradition of separating these activities under different leaders or leadership groups.

Part of the reason for a governing structure such as the one implemented by our Constitution is to restrain the executive leader from hoarding all of the other functions of government and thus becoming a tyrant. We can also suppose that term limits and some other finer details of our system have been implemented in the hope that they will discourage the rise of tyranny.

What is a majority?

Majority: “a number more than half of a total.”

The modern ideal of “majority” is that the “total” will include every able, honest adult citizen. This was not always the case. For various reasons, groups have agreed – or been coerced to agree – that certain people were fit to choose leaders and others were not.

The ultimate exclusivity is the royal, or monarchical, system. This gives all power of choice rule to just one bloodline. Various failures of that system resulted in pushes to widen the pool of possible rulers and the pool of those who could choose them. It started by including other aristocratic families, then extended to land owners and other businessmen. It was the American ideal to eliminate all traces of royal and aristocratic tradition and replace it, ultimately, with a system where anyone could be qualified to rule the country and anyone could be qualified to vote.

The American ideal never fully materialized. Why not? Was it overly idealistic, or has it been steadfastly resisted by some somewhat hidden elite that has always resented being deprived of its “rightful” place in society and has been fighting to restore its power ever since?

One argument has always been that the voters can be fooled into electing someone who will end their right to vote. That, in essence, they aren’t “smart” enough to choose a ruler.

Who is qualified to choose a ruler?

Beyond various historical facts, the answer to this question is far from clear.

Any system that relies on a democratic process to select rulers would assume (wouldn’t it?) that those people allowed to vote are qualified to choose a good leader. But perhaps this is not the central assumption. Perhaps there was simply no other obvious choice for a workable system of choosing. If you aren’t going to let bloodlines or a small group of insiders pick the next leader, then how else can it be done?

In the corporate world, the Board of Directors normally makes these decisions. That is certainly quite elitist; and only a few corporate entities don’t do it that way. But corporate businesses are one of the strongest sectors of modern society. Could it be that this is a smart way to do things?

In Parliamentary systems, the leader (Prime Minister) is normally chosen from among the parliamentary members. There may be some sort of popular vote associated with this, but usually the Parliament makes this selection itself.

Leaving the choice of a leader to “the people” is in some ways a radical departure from all the more traditional methods. Yet, in its practice, it has similarities to the other systems. These similarities are often not totally appreciated by the voters (or potential voters).

Who is qualified to rule?

In any society that uses leaders, someone must decide who among the various candidates for the various ruling positions are qualified to hold those positions.

If the entire job of choosing a leader consisted of selecting the one who was the most qualified for that job, then that could be one reason businesses do better at this than governments.

In politics (or government), another factor has always entered in, which amounts – in the most simple terms – to ideology.

In the U.S. where only two political parties dominate, there can be only two major ideologies at play in any given race. This tends to result in “binary” political discussions. The most common political binaries are liberal/conservative, Left/Right, and Democrat/Republican. None of these binaries are necessarily equivalent.

In Europe where parliamentary systems are the norm, several different ideologies may be part of the political debate. The European Union currently has seven different political groupings. This “diversity” is also evident in most national parliaments.

There have been many examples in political history of voters choosing leaders by ideology rather than by fitness to serve. This has sometimes resulted in political disaster. We all think of Hitler, but there are others. A candidate – indeed an entire ideology – can be deceptive. And thus voters can be persuaded that their choice will have a certain result, then be surprised when they get a different result. This could be said to be the principal weakness of the popular vote.

Various thinkers and researchers have looked into this problem and attempted to understand it better.

Plato in his Republic argued that a “philosopher-king” would make the best political leader.

Many researchers, notably Łobaczewski (Political Ponerology) focused more on who definitely should not be allowed to lead: The psychopath and the sociopath. It can be noted that such personalities often wind up leading nations or companies or smaller production groups, to the ultimate dismay of most honest people. Such leaders are characterized first by deceit, or their ability to deceive, and next by violence, or their ability to coerce using threats of violence. Some will characterize such people as “strong” leaders. But in fact such people are cowards and basically insane. They will ruin whatever they attempt to control.

Beyond this, we have traditional measures of personal abilities, such as Intelligence, Production Record, and Education. It is common to consider these abilities when selecting business leaders. But, for better or worse, they are seldom seriously considered in selecting political leaders. Attempts have been made, usually during campaigns, to make these factors more important. But “voters” taken as a group seem more likely to choose based on emotional response.

Here is an example of that argument: “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies is a 2007 book by the economist Bryan Caplan, in which the author challenges the idea that voters are reasonable people whom society can trust to make laws. Rather, Caplan contends that voters are irrational in the political sphere and have systematically biased ideas concerning economics.”

The Emotional Tone Scale and politics

Hubbard introduced the concept of emotional tone in 1950. It is a method of analyzing a person or group depending on its emotional responses. Done well, it is pretty good at predicting behaviors. But it is not widely known or used, except in a sloppy pop-psychology form.

In his Science of Survival, Hubbard relates Tone Level to political approach (or ideology). By his observation people of highest tone are the most “liberal,” followed by those who are “conservative.” Most other political ideologies fall into the “negative emotion” band, and thus are unsafe. This is where we are living today, and why the saner among us are so concerned about certain alternative political approaches. They see the deceit in an ideology like Communism or Socialism and vehemently warn us against them, without a conceptual framework adequate to explain why.

When the two choices in America (liberal/conservative) were both seen as reflecting a positive emotion, then the debate between them could remain civil. Now that many among us see ideologies we disagree with as reflecting negative emotions, we are more strident in denouncing them, or warning against them.

Today, rational thinkers see the exclusionary messages of “the Right” as reflecting the negative emotion of Anger. They rightly see this as capable of producing political violence, and thus dangerous. Others see the inclusionary messages of “the Left” as based in Fear, rather than in a true liberal cheerfulness. To the extent that this is true, those people could be very dangerous, implementing coercive and anti-democratic measures in the name of “safety of the larger community” or other platitudes. The psychopath can mimic higher-toned people and ideas, and this is the concern of many who warn against the new ideologies described as “Woke” or “Critical Theory.” They argue that these are psychopathic, or criminal, ideologies dressed up to appear rational and “liberal.”

This debate is currently in a stalemate. Some would call it a propaganda (or “cold”) war with the potential to turn into a hot war. We are already dealing with two hot wars related to these clashing ideologies, one in Ukraine and one in Gaza (Israel/Palestine).

In these wars, the “Right” has sent its armies into more “Left” areas, resulting in great destruction and loss of life. However, one “liberal” area (Ukraine) has been accused of being very corrupt, as well as infiltrated by anti-Russian groups created by the CIA. And in Gaza, the “ruling party” was a terrorist group that has been perfectly willing to launch thousands of missiles into Israel and attack and kill Israeli civilians. This is a deceitful and cowardly way to fight a war. Thus we see that war is often the result when both sides slip into the realm of negative emotion.

We do not have many mechanisms for keeping politics – and the governments that result from it – on the positive side of the tone scale. This is our real danger.

Who is qualified to vote?

I restate this question after going through the above discussion.

Can you tell the difference between an honest man and a deceitful man (or woman)? Would you be willing to vote for someone who seemed less than honest just because there was no better choice?

If you answered “no” and then “yes,” I would prefer that you not vote.

However, we have in place in the U.S. and in most of Europe “universal suffrage.” That means that if you are a literate adult, you are “qualified” to vote.

I don’t care that much what your political ideology is. I prefer an honestly “liberal” approach, but an honestly “conservative” approach is also workable.

I would prefer leaders and voters who are intelligent. That might be considered “elitist,” but the fact remains that most people are not really qualified to rule, and possibly not to vote, either. Rulers are by definition an elite (in that we require only a limited number of them), and perhaps voters should be, too.

But I would be happy if all voters at least knew the Tone Scale and could spot people on it. I believe that low-toned people have been our major problem in politics, not this or that ideology. We need honest people in politics, as well as in business and education. Honest people with no major secrets to hide are less likely to start wars or make other disastrous decisions that will harm the lives of millions. If the majority can learn how to select such people, then the majority may rule. If the majority makes too many mistakes, then it will likely lose its power to choose its leaders.

A Recent Epiphany (After a Long Hiatus)

“Threats to Democracy”

Recently I have been hearing a lot about “threats to Democracy.” I knew there was something wrong with this whole campaign, but I couldn’t quite pin it down.

This narrative is being pushed by the corporate media, which is currently identified with the “Left” and the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile the “Right,” sometimes identified with the Republican Party, is warning us that the Left is turning anti-American and threatening our founding principles. As the Left is currently allied with Corporate, and Corporate is notorious for criminal schemes to make more money (or whatever they are trying to do), I tend to give the Right some credence in this regard.

Democracy in Theory and Practice

Per current theory (as expressed in Wikipedia and elsewhere) Democracy means “rule by the people.” This is in contrast to Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, Autocracy and various other types of rule where “the people” are not consulted by the ruling class.

This meaning is taken directly from the Greek. To further quote the mysterious writers of Wikipedia: “Prevalent day-to-day decision making of democracies is the majority rule, though other decision making approaches like supermajority and consensus have also been integral to democracies.”

Thus, it is generally accepted that in a Democracy, all the most important decisions require a majority – or greater number – to agree to them. At the popular level, this would be a majority of voters.

The Paradox

The Left has traditionally worked to protect the “rights” of blue collar workers and minorities, creating a working coalition that elected representatives who would work for better treatment of the “lower” classes. That basic agenda, apparently, hasn’t changed since after the Jim Crow era (when Democrats in the South were segregationists).

What has changed is the introduction of Critical Race Theory into the mix, and its insistence on the undesirable characteristics of “Whiteness.” Whiteness is the supposed bane of the entire Earth and of all its indigenous people and people of color.

Thus, the Left seems intent, with the help of Critical Race Theory, of taking power away from “Whites” forever.

However, in 2020, 62%-to-71% of Americans were “white.” Thus, if Democracy were to be properly protected from “threats,” “whites” would remain in power, until such time as they are no longer in the majority. So why would the Left be so concerned about “threats to Democracy?”

Other Arguments

The typical retort from the Right to the “threats to Democracy” narrative is that we don’t have a Democracy in the United States, we have a Democratic Republic. The Constitution establishes various limits on “majority rule” to protect the rights of minority voices and people. It also limits the power of the central (federal) government in order to protect the population from mob rule or some new form of totalitarianism.

What the Left typically works for is minority rights. This does not protect our “Democracy” as much as it protects society from political uprisings.

Thus, I am persuaded that this current campaign to “protect our Democracy” is a cynical way to forward a secret agenda of control through shaming. I say that partly because it has involved the advocacy of censorship of protected speech. As despicable as it may be, lying and foul language is not illegal. It may betray the immaturity of the person speaking such things. But who told us on national TV that the “unvaccinated” did not deserve medical care? That was a TV host identifying with the Left.

So let’s get back to what is really happening in this world. We are experiencing what amounts to a corporate takeover. The World Economic Forum (one major mouthpiece for the corporate world) has declared that we will “own nothing and be happy” (an exact quote).

Someone has to own the material objects of the world. If it isn’t us “ordinary people,” then it must be the ruling class – Corporate.

Further, we have seen in recent years various content platforms (corporations) cooperating with the government to censor certain speech, such as that questioning the efficacy of the “vaccines.” They have actually been doing such things for decades. A newspaper campaign was run against my church which resulted in Parliamentary Inquiries (1960s) in some countries. Only when the investigations could turn up no wrong doing did that campaign subside.

These tactics are nothing new, but the internet is, and this rather bizarre approach to politics known as Critical Race Theory is also a more recent development. Get sucked into it at your own risk. It shows no sign of having honest intentions.

Back in the U.S

Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my my my my mind

Oh, show me ’round your snow-peaked mountains way down south
Take me to your daddy’s farm
Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm

Beatles

America in the 1970s

The above song was written in 1968. The Beatles were in India at the time, at an ashram taking meditation lessons. The song parodies several popular rock styles. But more importantly it poked fun at both the U.S. and the Russians boasting about how great their own countries were. With the Vietnam War layered on top of a continuing Cold War, the whole propaganda war was beginning to wear thin.

In the 1970s the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, admitting, essentially, defeat. The U.S. economy was tanking and Nixon was being run out of office (quite deservedly, most of us thought). By 1975 the Church Committee had held several hearings concerning corruption in government intelligence agencies.

The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations; Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders; Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity. It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA.

Wikipedia

Many of us growing up during that time became convinced that our country was not the great moral beacon of democracy, peace and prosperity that it was made out to be. Thankfully most of us had the right to speak and write about these things, though the Internet was not yet born.

Many more revelations would come to light over the following years. And I mean MANY more. But Eisenhower’s Military Industrial Complex – now becoming the Corporate Entertainment Government Complex – seemed to be shoring up its damaged reputation and preparing to continue its quest to capture the hearts and minds of the American people, and then, the people of the world.

I am impressed in particular with their ability to sell to Americans and the world a new age of pharmaceutical-based health care for both body AND mind (seeing as the mind was simply a function of the brain, according to modern psychiatry).

9/11 went off with no major hitches, ushering in a whole new era of U.S. military violence abroad, and electronic surveillance at home – now integrated into our new cell phone and computer networks.

The once diverse and interesting entertainment industry, starting with TV, then radio, music, movies, books, magazines and video games, while being expanded to hundreds of separately branded services, was brought under the control of just six major corporations: National Amusements (Viacom); Disney; Time Warner; Comcast; News Corp; and Sony. This is why I now refer to it as “corporate media.”

PBS – the most trusted name in corporate media

The Public Broadcasting Service began operations on October 5, 1970, taking over many of the functions of its predecessor, National Educational Television (this per Wikipedia). It is officially non-profit and operates under a set of rules designed to prevent undue influence on content from large donors. There is no doubt, however, that the content leans liberal, with the news blatantly so.

Frontline

Frontline is the news documentary arm of PBS and is produced by its large Boston affiliate WGBH. Frontline has been producing shows since 1983.

Frontline has produced 785 documentaries so far. I have only seen a few of them. In reviewing the list of them all on Wikipedia, the older ones seemed very diverse, though of course always attempting to provide more in-depth information relating to current news stories.

The ones I have seen more recently seem more focused on partisan political issues. The attitude seems to be that Trump and Putin are obviously public criminals, while most of the rest of us are above all that and just trying to get along. What happened to the revelations of corruption in the U.S. that began to appear in the 1970s? Shouldn’t those who see this as a continuing problem get some kind of voice? It seems all these voices were now considered to be “conspiracy theorists.” But weren’t the conspiracies unearthed in the 1970s quite real?

The 2019 season included such titles as: Zero Tolerance – a critique of Trump’s immigration policy; Kids Caught in the Crackdown – more of the same; America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump (Parts 1 & 2); NRA Under Fire; and United States of Conspiracy.

The 2020 season included: Policing the Police 2020; President Biden; Trump’s American Carnage; American Insurrection; and Germany’s Neo-Nazis & the Far Right.

The 2021 season included: America After 9/11; Putin’s Road to War; Plot to Overturn the Election; The Power of Big Oil (in 3 parts); and Police on Trial.

Plot to Overturn the Election has been aired several times. It locates some shady operators involved with Stop the Steal, but fails to tell the whole story of who Lin Wood and Sidney Powell were or how they became convinced that computerized tabulation machines had been tampered with. It makes the whole operation look much more secretive than it really was.

The 2022 season started with Lies, Politics and Democracy which accuses Trump “undermining American democracy.” It also contains another part of Putin’s Road To War, which in its turn demonizes Putin.

It’s not that these people don’t deserve our derision. But I find it superficial and naive to think that the problems in a society come from a few outspoken leaders. Where is that leader getting their information and advice? That’s what I want to know.

Alternative Media – the least trusted name…

You see the problem. The six great companies that run all the major information sources on this planet are not going to air research that attempts to uncover their own corruption or true agendas. Why should we assume, if Trump and Putin are so bad, that they are the only ones? If Russia indulges in misinformation and propaganda, wouldn’t America also? That’s what we thought we learned in the 1970s. Well, this lesson seemed to somehow get unlearned. Corporate media, it seems, now has clean hands and thus has the right – if not the duty – to expose those with dirty (bloodstained) hands.

But what about all those killed by dangerous medicines, by toxins released into our environment in the name of pest control , weed control, hygiene, or shopping convenience? Don’t those deaths result in blood on someone’s hands? Aren’t we interested in who they are and why they did it? Can we really expect the world to respect our moral pronouncements when our own people and institutions are also guilty of crimes? How can we put our own house in order if we don’t know how corrupted it has become?

The task of informing us of such things has fallen on the “alternative media.” These people attempt to get the “truth” out using various online platforms and with minimal funding (usually). They are an odd mix of super-intelligent researchers, loud mouth trouble makers, and outright imposters. They are needed and they are also hated, mostly by the corporate media. And so they and their messages have been banned (censored, deplatformed, terminated) by many corporate media platforms.

The Wall Street Journal recently released a list of people banned from Twitter. It is incomplete.

Donald Trump: Former U.S. President.

Mike Lindell: The MyPillow CEO was banned over a series of claims about the 2020 presidential election.

Kanye West: The rapper was recently banned from Twitter for posting antisemitic comments on the site.

Sidney Powell: Lawyer and former Trump employee was banned during a “purge” of accounts that supported Q.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser was also banned during the Q purge.

Lin Wood: A member of Trump’s legal team and Q supporter.

Roger Stone: The political consultant and ally of Trump was banned in 2017 for making insulting remarks toward CNN anchors and contributors.

Steve Bannon: Trump’s former adviser was banned when he suggested that FBI Director Christopher Wray and chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci should get beheaded.

Katie Hopkins: The conservative British political commentator was banned in 2020 for mocking the Black Lives Matter movement and for calling immigrants “cockroaches.”

Gavin McInnes: The founder of the Proud Boys, a group the ADL describes as “a right-wing extremist group with a violent agenda,” was banned. Twitter prohibits all violent extremist groups.

Conservatives argue that this prohibition is not applied consistently. The argument that companies like Twitter are targeting conservative anti-corporate messages seems obvious to the people getting banned. But to many others the impression that these people deserve to be silenced is very strong. The limiting of free speech for the “good of society” seems sensible to more and more people. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that this would seem anti-American to those whose voices are being silenced.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: This U.S. representative’s personal account was banned for repeated violation’s against Twitter’s misinformation policy. Greene was spreading information about COVID-19.

The argument against banning “misinformation” is, of course: Who gets to decide? Shouldn’t I get to decide this for myself? Doesn’t the suggestion that I must defer to “experts” invalidate my own ability to think and decide?

Alex Jones: In 2018, this right-wing conspiracy theorist was banned for violating Twitter’s policy against abusive behavior. One of Jones’ theories is that 9/11 was an inside job (which is true per Courtney Brown’s work).

Milo Yiannopoulos: The conservative commentator was banned for repeatedly harassing and insulting the actress Leslie Jones.

Raúl Castro: The former Cuban president and other accounts run by the Cuban government were banned in 2019.

The Wall Street Journal’s list includes some minor celebrities that posted nude photos or violated the privacy of other people. We might assume that those bans were legitimate. But the big question still remains: Shouldn’t I be free to decide for myself who is being criminally dishonest or verbally abusive?

Wikipedia also carries a list of Twitter suspensions, both temporary and permanent:

These people were banned for things they said about COVID:

Donald Trump

David Icke: A famous British personality who believes that Reptilian ETs exist (they do).

Naomi Wolf: Feminist writer banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Nation of Islam: A black church banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Alex Berenson: Former NYT writer banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Greg Locke: Church pastor banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Emerald Robinson: Journalist banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Robert Malone: Virologist banned for criticizing the COVID shots.

Plus these recent bans:

The Babylon Bee: Comedy site banned for making fun of somebody (I’m not kidding).

Jordan Peterson: Canadian psychologist banned for making fun of a public figure.

James Lindsay: Intellectual banned for anti-woke ideas.

Doesn’t freedom mean free speech?

We are hearing that other governments around the world are banning free speech. Russia, Iran, China are being attacked by our corporate media for their bans of dissident voices and their propaganda. But what about our own failures to allow free speech? Does the fact that speech remains freer here excuse those abuses? How long can we continue to assert that we honor our founders’ ideas here, when corporate media removes dissident voices from their platforms?

I have really only looked at Twitter here. But those platforms include hundreds of TV stations, movie production houses, other social media companies like Meta, newspapers, magazines and “information” websites. And I see a similar pattern across all these platforms. The corporate world continues to act to protect its version of the truth, while it becomes clearer and clearer to more people that it isn’t the truth.

In the 1970s such brazen attempts to silence dissent could have provoked protest marches. Now it is just as likely that the failure to silence dissent will provoke a protest. In my opinion, we are walking away from a vision for the future that our founders expressed as best they could in the Declaration of Independence. But more importantly, I see us walking away from sanity, from a strong sense of personal responsibility, and from the skills we will need to survive as a species. The proper exercise of our freedoms is an extremely valuable set of skills, and we are losing them.

Here is a quote provided to me by Robert Malone:

“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. Do I mean a conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, incredibly evil in intent.”

–Rep. Larry P. MacDonald, killed in Korean Air Lines 007, 1983

Political Statement

I have been enduring a barrage of news coverage from the mainstream media, mostly PBS. And I felt the need to explain why I think this coverage is so unsatisfactory.

The Media

I grew up exposed to a lot of media and a lot of news coverage on TV and radio. When I was young, I thought journalists were doing the best they could to keep their reporting accurate and unbiased. Though of course they seemed to concentrate on war, crime, and controversy, what else was newsworthy?

Then I learned what had been going on with the media from the point of view of my church. Certain media organizations had been attacking the church with stories that were not honest or accurate. They were obviously biased, but relied on the perceived strangeness of our group to convince readers that the criticisms must be justified.

Later on, these attacks were investigated to learn their true sources. It was found that these stories were ordered published by the owners of the respective media outlets, who were operating under the influence of medical interests who saw our church as their enemy. This information introduced me to the idea that there are non-governmental (I call them “corporate”) control groups out there who are perfectly willing to use the media to deliver their propaganda messages to the population, just as political groups do.

Thus, “freedom of the press” does not end with freedom from government control. When a media outlet is government-owned or controlled, it is obviously going to function as a propaganda outlet for the government. But when a media outlet is corporate-owned, all that means is that it can function as a propaganda outlet for the corporation.

It is often assumed that the only major corporate interest is profit. But with the advent of corporate-sponsored non-profit “foundations,” it became obvious that something else was going on. For-profit corporations operate to influence the messages delivered by for-profit media outlets, and non-profit groups operate to influence the messages delivered by not-for-profit media outlets. I must comment that PBS changed a lot from its early years when it was largely listener-supported to the present time when it seems to be largely corporate-supported.

Corporate

Corporations finance the production of news and entertainment programs, and also operate to influence the work of academics and intellectuals through their funding of universities and research institutions. They also support non-profit advocacy groups, activist groups and political parties.

The corporate world is vastly under-reported in the media, compared to the political world and partisan politics. If you want to learn more about corporate influence on this planet, you have to look at sources who are often accused in the corporate media of being “conspiracy theorists.” There are many books written on this subject, and much discussion of them online.

These days, the concept of “corporate capture” of government agencies is widely discussed. But from my experience, corporate media largely avoids reporting the mistakes and shortcomings of the corporate world. Traditionally, Republicans (or Conservatives in other countries) were pro-business and thus tended to defend the corporate world. But that is changing. Though the Left is openly anti-corporate, the Democrats are difficult to pin down on this matter, as liberals support many activities (such as the modern medical industry) that are also supported by corporations. My impression is that liberals got snookered (fooled while they weren’t paying attention), though that could be overly charitable. Corporations do NOT have a liberal history, so this alliance with liberals never made sense to me. Some prominent Republicans have been significantly attacked by the corporate media, so now many Republicans and Conservatives are re-evaluating their traditional support for “free enterprise.”

Crime

I see crime as the single most important human problem. Unless a society can control the criminals in its midst, it is doomed to continual violence (as parts of Haiti are experiencing now) and gross inequalities, as crime is often involved in the amassing of great fortunes.

For me, Dianetics (1950) was the first book to address the subject of crime with the attention it deserves. Hubbard described crime – I think quite properly – as a form of mental illness. Hubbard continued to run into the problem of crime and psychosis in his work, and by the 1960s had developed a much more thorough approach to the subject.

Hubbard’s term for what others call the psychopath is “Suppressive Person.” Though I prefer Hubbard’s approach to the whole subject, almost no one outside of Scientology is familiar with it, so in the interest of communicating across this information barrier, I stick with the term “psychopath” or occasionally “professional criminal” or “compulsive liar.”

A psychologist named Robert Hare is known for his research into the psychopathic personality. He co-authored Snakes in Suits in 2006 which (I hope) opened the eyes of some intellectuals to the problems being created by some individuals in the corporate world. Of course, these people operate in all social strata and cause untold human suffering and violence wherever they are active.

The psychopath is the great “secret” of our crime problem. They perpetrate major crimes to create environments where lesser crimes (the ones that get the most police attention) can become common. They create gang wars, tribal wars, civil wars, and world wars. The mechanism they use is covered in Hubbard’s Third Party Law. The first step any peace keeping body should take in the face of war is a Third Party Investigation. This information has been available since the 1960s and still is not widely known. This shows you the power of the psychopath, especially when organized, to prevent the general public from learning information that could be useful. The data in Dianetics is still not well-known, and that was published over 70 years ago. Many have benefited from that information, due mainly to the efforts of my church. Corporate players wish to keep this information hidden, and not because it is useless or harmful, as some of them might argue.

Examples

Reincarnation. This reality of life has been taught since the time of the Vedas. Secular science found no evidence for it, until Hubbard came along. Later, a chair devoted to the study of “parapsychology” was established by inventor Chester Carlson in 1968. That chair was filled by Ian Stevenson, who is famous for his work researching the reincarnation stories of children. He built a scientific case for the reality of reincarnation that can never be denied. Other researchers using other methods have verified that this phenomenon is quite real. Corporate media still considers it “pseudoscience.”

ETs. Extraterrestrials have been a part of human stories at least since the time of the Vedas. Hubbard’s research into past lives, along with the work of MANY others, has made it clear that ETs exist. The corporate media relies totally on the unbelievability of these stories. Meanwhile, per Pew Research, 60% of Americans believe intelligent life exists on other planets.

In this context, the people of the corporate media seem hopelessly naive and confused by “why don’t more people believe the news?” Why don’t they believe us that Russia is the bad guy? That Trump is the bad guy? That COVID is the bad guy? That those misinformation doctors are the bad guys? The answer is that they have lied too much. Here are some more examples:

Building Seven. On 9/11 “Building Seven” free-fell into its footprint a while after the towers went down. This was obviously a controlled demolition. This is one reason the rest of the “official” 9/11 story is no longer believed by many people. Farsight Institute (Courtney Brown) has already found it to be an inside job. How many more incidents that “everybody knows” happened a certain way are actually cover-ups?

JFK Assassination. The mainstream still maintains the Oswald did it. It is now an open secret that this is a lie. Again, Farsight has confirmed that this was an inside job.Similar findings have been made concerning many other major violent events.

Roswell. The spaceship crashes in July of 1947 have also been confirmed to be real ET crashes. Many researchers have long maintained that this must be so. Per the corporate media, this is a conspiracy theory.

Theory of Evolution. Hubbard’s work is mostly responsible for convincing me. Evolution, it seems, is a minor contributor to the incredible diversity found on Earth. These life forms were created by an ancient form of genetic engineering possibly part of an ancient corporate system that has long since disappeared from this universe. The corporate world continues to insist that Intelligent Design is the work of religious fanatics.

United we Stand?

So far, Corporate and their various lying subdivisions have held together in their insistence that their truth is more real than reality. Will their narratives survive even though so many of them are obvious lies? They don’t survive in my heart. And apparently, approximately half of the adult population also suspects that it is being hoodwinked. Let’s look at some other areas that Corporate is getting wrong:

Education. It has long been asserted that some group has been intent on infiltrating and destroying American culture in order to cripple us as a potential barrier to their planned world takeover. Researchers have identified this invasive group in various different ways. Some call them psychologists, others call them Neo-Marxists. Are they all psychopaths? Maybe – maybe not. But their work has, by many accounts, caused an increase in crime and a decrease in scholastic achievement in American students. While most conservatives who don’t like what their children are being exposed to in modern public schools advocate simply returning to a more basic curriculum, Scientologists advocate reforms in the educational system that would achieve better results for more students. We both agree that the current trend is destructive.

Racism. Racism is one of many divisive ideologies that was planted by psychopathic personalities. The seemingly endless emphasis on sensitivity training and seminars to handle the problem of criminal ideologies will never get us there. The perpetrators of these ideologies must be located and exposed for the criminals that they are. Then we have techniques that can be used to help victims of these ideologies rethink their beliefs with the falsities removed.

Religion. Though the more modern religions are full of deceptive teachings, the core belief that we are more than mere humans and survive death in some form is persistent because it is true. We should not speak too dismissively of religions or religious people. They are “onto” something true and valuable. Their faith helps them to cope with and navigate the vagaries of life, Their freedom to practice their teachings should not be abridged. Meanwhile, it is estimated that about half of all journalists are non-religious.

Spirituality. The corporate world hates “mysterious” forces that are difficult to locate and control. The spirit is such a force. However, it is also the basis of all life and our door into the world of deeper knowledge. Our aversion for spiritual knowledge renders our society much less able than it otherwise would be. If we cling to the superstition of life as just a mechanism, we will never catch up with the ET societies that surround us.

Science. This of course means that many of our current scientific theories are lacking. Not only is this frustrating for those of us who know better, but it acts as a barrier to our further development as a planet. What propulsion systems are used by the ETs? We should know by now, and a few of us probably do. This might be the clean energy source that we need to become more sustainable. But Corporate has decided to keep this a secret. Why?

Progress. There is a general agreement that human progress is a totally human creation. This has been demonstrated to be a false idea. Computers, for instance, are millions of years old, as are robots. There is some evidence that we were given some of that technology by ETs in the fairly recent past.

Cultural diversity. There is evidence that cultural diversity on Earth is a recently-implanted fictional construct. ETs who did not want us to develop are said to have installed these cultures on Earth with the idea of keeping us in a state of disagreement if not war. Now we get all involved in our cultural traditions without knowing how they actually came about. Knowing something about our past lives would give us a fuller appreciation of how diverse many of our experiences actually are.

Politics. This is mostly a dog and pony show put on for the benefit of Corporate and the detriment of their target audience – us. It is probably safest to regard politics as a form of entertainment. Unfortunately, governments and corporations can take actions that can be widely destructive or widely beneficial. So it would probably be wise to recapture this sphere of human action and force it to be honest and sensible. Currently the political realities on Earth are so different than the political stories we have been told that it is difficult to envisage a world where this problem is corrected. But it does need to be done.

Who Runs This Planet?

Is it a secret ET group?

Is it a secret human group?

… Or, is it something else?

Putin

I am watching the PBS special about Putin that totally (and conclusively?) demonizes him.

I suppose only time will tell to what extent this story is true.

Remote viewers make a contribution

On April 16th, Courtney Brown released his video about his latest project, and it was about Putin.

The project found ET (Reptilian) influence in the mind of Putin and one or more of his advisers (Shoigu his Defense Minister in particular). Viewers reported Putin to be troubled by decisions he had made. And Shoigu seemed even more troubled.

Of course, a human with a strong enough personality could in theory resist the externally-created mental torment and continue on their planned course without wavering. I don’t see these two leaders as that spiritually strong.

This new information brings into question whether this war was fully the intention of Putin and his people, or was something they felt pushed into by “higher forces” they felt they could not control.

Children’s Entertainment

During the Thanksgiving weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time around the 9 year old daughter of my Bay Area friend (girlfriend).

During this time the girl watched (or half-watched) several shows on TV and we also went out to a movie (Encanto). She also played a video game on her mom’s computer.

The entertainment choices available to internet-connected youth today are probably more than ten times more numerous than the TV-based programming that I grew up with.

Thus, one way I entertained myself was to draw pictures. Below is a picture I made for a 2nd grade class assignment for an illustrated story “What Is Important About Me.” I have manipulated this image to make it more interesting to look at.

In my opinion, though the variety of shows has exploded, the quality of this material has not. During my lifetime, society has been transforming into a “techno-space” society where obedience is so valued that those who run the show in the background wish to actively discourage childhood exposure that would encourage too much creative thinking or intellectual curiosity. On Earth, though, this material must be presented in the context of a freedom-loving and diverse population (not so true on many other planets) which requires a certain amount of artful deception (when well done) or when more poorly done (often the case) results in material that is simply maudlin, trite or confusing.

The techno-space context is full of magical technologies and overwhelmed people. This results in a bunch of superheroes who have a hard time of it, autism spectrum disorder, and similar conundrums. Without the spiritual component available to help us understand our situation, the overall reaction of most people is that we are in an impossible predicament where there is no hope that we could ever best the “super smart” technologists that control the tools that we use to produce, travel and communicate.

The Powers That Be don’t want us to learn about the spiritual component. They fear a loss of control in the face of beings who are spiritually free, A few of them, perhaps, can even remember encounters with such beings and what had be done to put them down. It wasn’t pretty.

So as the magical nature of life bubbles up through our “new” technologies, and beings begin to remember who they used to be before they were forced to come here, our rulers feel justified in putting in place a narrative that they hope will divert us, amuse us, and confuse us, or otherwise suppress our desire to regain our freedom and our actual abilities.

The first set of shows this little girl wanted to watch was Maya And The Three. Then we saw the fully animated Pixar (Disney) movie Encanto. Later she was watching the cartoon series Phineas and Ferb (also Disney), and then played a video game against the computer featuring “Gumball.”

Maya and the Three

This is a brand new TV mini-series streaming on Netflix and produced in Mexico by Jorge R. Gutiérrez. They produced it with open-source animation software called Blender. The story is sloppily based on the culture of Mesoamerica, has a slew of magical elements and “peoples” similar to Lord of the Rings, and is comedic. The heroine of the story is 15 years old. The characters speak English. It is full of challenges and fighting (at least the episodes I saw). And what does it teach? That indigenous American culture is rich, colorful and … funny? The current trend is to simply put indigenous cultures into our entertainment to “celebrate” them. There is no attempt (at least not at this level) to dig in to what these people believed or how they lived. Any address to spiritual elements is extremely superficial. And the big problem of history, which is to say how their culture was overwhelmed by invaders and other forces (perhaps including climate changes) is not really addressed in materials like this. All we are doing is celebrating the spirit, sounds and colors of the culture, not its more troubling aspects.

Encanto

This deeply animated film features people involved in the culture of Spanish South America (Colombia to be exact). It features many strong female personalities who clash and attempt to resolve their conflicts which center around the “magic spell” that has protected their family for at least three generations. The characters are ethnically diverse, for the most part lighthearted, but burdened by the thought that their “magic” could come to an end at any time.

It is not clear to me that the little girl with us understood the concepts underlying this story, nor all the plot twists. She told me that she identified with the heroine, and we decided that the character that matched her mom the best was the one who had received the gift of extraordinary physical strength. The “gifts” received by most of the family members, and their reactions to the various abilities they gained, were in some way the centerpiece of the plot. Yet the source and full meaning of their gifts remained vague and unexplored. Though there were elements obviously pointing to Catholic tradition, there was also an indigenous factor. Perhaps in the interest of remaining strictly secular, the film addressed neither of these issues very deeply. It became, in the end, a sort of instructional fable dealing with the interpersonal dynamics of a family that considers itself “gifted.”

Phineas and Ferb

This is also a Disney-sponsored cartoon series. It ran from 2007 to 2015. I consider this series highly ridiculous to the point of near worthlessness. The young lady watching it, however, seemed quite happy with it. Each episode features a new “summer project” by the two boys, who are step-brothers and nerds. There are a lot of obtuse references in the script to science fiction and conspiracy theory subjects. The main subplot involves their sister Candace who is continuously appalled by how many rules the two boys are always breaking, and how they never seem to get caught by the many adults in the stories. Another subplot includes the boys’ “pet platypus” Perry who secretly works as a spy trying to keep a mad scientist from doing something really horrifying. Perry always succeeds somehow, and usually in a way that completely covers the mischief being caused by the boys. There is also a brownie (or bluebird?) girl scout troop involved, which always demonstrates impeccable organization and effectiveness. All the characters are so ridiculous that they barely seem human. The basic story line of every episode is totally predictable, and my main impression of the whole thing is that it is one entire goof-off session, and that the writers see real life that way, too. A valuable lesson for our youth!

Gumball video game

This is apparently a feature of Cartoon Network, which offers video games based on many of its series, in this case The Amazing World of Gumball. The main characters are animated animals that live somewhere in suburbia. The other characters that Gumball fights against are also in the cartoon series.

The game my young companion played (she claimed for the first time) follows a classic “fight” style where the (usually) two fighters take turns deciding how to respond to the previous attack. In this case, the program ran one of the fighters. As the two fight, they both “lose energy” until one goes to zero, or “dies.” In these children’s games, the fighting is quite stylized, though obviously involves weapons and violence which ends in the death of one of the fighters. The entire point of play seems to be to stay in the game by winning most of the fights. In the game I watched, the fight environment (background) was totally irrelevant, as were the exact personalities or identities of the various fighters. Strategy and skill were only minimally required. It was basically a do-nothing, bored way to do something more interesting than nothing at all.

What does it all mean?

I made no attempt here to treat this subject thoroughly. This all is based on sharing just one weekend with a little girl and her mom. I did not sample a full range of programming so my response is not based on very complete information.

But I do sense a certain “glee of insanity” among entertainment writers and performers. In other words, they act funny or happy, but the humor and content is often dark if not actually deviant, like the news (also a form of entertainment). Magical and supernatural phenomena, though very real, are treated with awe and confusion. This is a product of ignorance in the face of an increasing amount of evidence that these things are real, coupled with the influence of criminals who fear these phenomena.

Adults decide what content to show their children, so this is more about them than it is about their kids. It could be said that all this is just a reflection of the times we live in, but it is more than that. I am living in those times, too, yet the content I write is very different that most of what I have seen so far. The difference, I suspect, is that I take ET and magic seriously, and give children credit for being more sophisticated than most adults seem to. I am no longer trapped in the 19th century concept of “evolution” but instead have embraced and extended my understanding of a different 19th century trend; spirituality. It is my belief that Evolution and all that came with it was popularized in an attempt to stamp out spirituality as a competing approach to life. Evolution, with its Materialism, temporarily won out, but Spirituality never died. And it lives on, though quite distorted, in modern entertainment, including what we give our children to watch. I hope those distortions will soon be resolved.

“All the world’s a stage” still holds true, and I personally have always had a preference for live entertainment. I studied Shakespearean theater for a junior high project once:

Socialism: The Gateway Drug of Politics

Many think of Karl Marx as the “father” of Socialism.

But I think of it in its modern form as starting in France in the early 1800s. Marx wasn’t even born until 1818.

Most forms of Socialism were a reaction to the effects of industrialization on cities, transforming them from refined habitats for the well-to-do into grimy places full of slums where the workers lived. In my brief exposure to socialist-type writings (such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward) I did not detect any great awareness of rural society and how it compared (for the poor) to urban life. Though urbanization eventually became a path to upward mobility for many economically disadvantaged people, in the early 1800s it was not clear that any such thing would ever occur.

The actual phenomenon that troubled many thinking people of those times (and earlier) was what seemed like conscious attempts by members of the elite classes to maintain a disadvantaged class that they could take advantage of. In those years, the European world was just beginning to realize that slavery was wrong, but also arising were new theories about human nature that would justify the mistreatment of people in new and “more scientific” ways.

Opium of the people

Marx famously described organized religion as the “opium of the people.” It is clear from this statement – and many others of course – that Marx had problems with all elements of the “status quo,” not just the behavior of the wealthier capitalists. Marx himself was a sickly person who had trouble holding down a job and doing right by his family. So, besides trying to explain why so many workers were so willing to live in poverty, he was also trying to explain why he, an educated person originating from the upper classes, was also having so much trouble.

Following in the line of many earlier troubled thinkers, he was unable to become self-aware enough to notice his own complicity in his problems and chose instead to blame them on “the system.” He called this system “capitalism” and blamed it – or so it seemed – for all evil in the world, including his own psychological problems.

I hope you can see that this is a ridiculous claim. Though many churches, businesses and government institutions were run by very short-sighted, if not vicious, men, they were following patterns that seemed to work for them and to some extent for society at large. It was their own spiritual weaknesses, I contend, and not “the system” or “capitalism” that was responsible for the results they were getting.

If anything, religious study, whether that be the Bible, Buddhism, or Lao Tzu, would have assisted them to rule with more humanity and humility. They, on the other hand, were being taunted by the allure of materialism, which they were helping to strengthen with their manufacturing efforts, their marketing to the public, their support of the hard sciences and engineering over the humanities, and their own conspicuous consumption.

And Marx was also a materialist!

Damned lies, and more damned lies

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” This is a quote from Mark Twain (1835-1910, for reference) which he attributed to a politician of his age, though we cannot find any evidence that the particular politician in question ever said it.

But Twain was often cursing popular leaders for how deceptive they were, and in this he was, I am sure, quite astute.

It is just that he wasn’t really saying anything new. Some of the most cherished narratives of this planet are based on lies. Everything from biblical Genesis, to the Vedas, to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Big Bang and New Age “ascension.” Someone’s been doing a real good job here on Earth of hiding the truth from us.

Marx in his turn promised that all we had to do was replace Capitalism with Socialism and everything would be fine. On this planet? Really? But people believed it. Marx advocated for violent (if necessary) “revolution” to destroy the “status quo.” And we got a classic example of this in Russia in 1918. China worked a little differently but resulted in the most enduring Communist regime so far. Western democracies also played around with Socialist and “welfare state” ideas to deal with the collapse of older safety net systems in the face of — what?

If you ask a psychologist what sort of personality lies the most, they should answer you “the psychopath.” And if you then ask them what we can do about it, they would normally answer “it’s incurable.” If you ask a Scientologist the same question they will tell you, “the Suppressive Person; keep them out of positions of power, they are pure poison.” It’s basically the same answer with slightly different concepts.

Was Marx a psychopath? I can’t answer that question. He acted a lot like one. Was Hitler one? Most of us think so. Who else? We know several psychiatrists who have been caught behaving like psychopaths. Undoubtedly there are many more like this in positions of power, as they are attracted to such positions. There are also the millions who operate at lower levels in society. They cause plenty of havoc, too. So, why all this talk of changing political systems? Why don’t we attack the correct target?

A problem of responsibility

If you fell sick, would you be willing to take total responsibility for the illness, rather than blame germs, or something else, for “making me sick?” If you could, I guarantee you would get well faster.

We have similar problems in many other areas of life, including especially politics. We want our governments to be as strong as the criminal organizations they oppose. But expecting our governments to fight criminals is the perfect way to transform governments into criminal organizations. Because the criminals will feel threatened and thus plot to take over. And they are often successful. And that’s when you get a “status quo” which is totally intolerable!

If you got sick and were knowledgeable enough to look around and find the psychopath in your environment that wanted you to be sick, and then competently handled your connection to that person, you would be on your way to staying permanently well. But that takes a lot of responsibility on your part. You have to face the fact that you must have been willingly involved in a toxic relationship.

It is similar in politics. If we don’t take sufficient responsibility for our own condition and the choices we made to get into them, we’ll never get out of them. Though the first step is to handle the suppressive connections, after that you have to go ahead and take responsibility for handing the reasons you agreed to those connections. It’s not always easy to do. Anyone who says it is is lying. But if you want to really improve your life and the lives of those around you, you have to take that much responsibility. It’s not easy for me, either. And I’m the one trying to remind you of this!

Temptations versus real answers

Most of us wish that we could do better, that life could be easier, that we could be as secure in life as the rich guy who lives on the hill. And so when something happens that threatens our income or our health or our children, we tend to curse the situation, blame it on others, and look for someone else to rescue us from something we obviously weren’t to blame for.

It’s probably true that some of those rich guys out there didn’t really earn their riches honestly or under their own steam. But some of them did. And if they have managed to remain in good shape for a long period of time, chances are they are very able beings. You have the choice to simply resent them and their “privilege” or to do something to strengthen your own life, and confront and handle your own toxic connections.

Are there “systemic” problems in this society that unfairly support those who are already successful? Undoubtedly.

Will a “new socialist (progressive or ?) revolution” solve those problems? No!!! The best you’re going to get is a band-aid.

Will a thorough study of the psychopathic personality and how to deal with it solve those problems? It would be a good start.

And after that, we need to follow through and strengthen ourselves spiritually. That’s the permanent answer. At least it is in theory! We won’t know for sure until more people actually try it. But for sure, no “system” no matter how tempting or well thought out will solve life on Earth. Our problems didn’t even originate on Earth! And if you haven’t discovered that yet, you still have a long way to go!

Could all this talk of a way out just be a “higher level” delusion? I suppose it could. But it has worked for some people. Why not give it a try? What do you have to lose? Your problems? Don’t worry; there are plenty more where those came from!

Tolerance

From Merriam-Webster online:

Tolerance: “Sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.”

Intolerant:

“a: unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression especially in religious matters.”

“b : unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights.”

The engineering definition of this word is also pertinent to my discussion.

Tolerance (engineering): “The allowable deviation from a standard.”

Tolerance has been the watchword of the liberal. (“One who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways.”) And at contentious moments, liberals are likely to accuse conservatives of being intolerant.

The paradox of tolerance

This was first voiced in the modern era (1945) by philosopher Karl Popper:

“…the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.”

For an individual or society to show tolerance and remain so, their tolerance must have limits. And so, the engineering definition of this term is worth considering.

In a designed system, as long as all parts function within their specified tolerances, the entire system will continue to function adequately. When as little as one part falls out of tolerance, the entire system can cease to function!

And we do, in fact, live in a “designed” system, where we – human beings – are the most important parts. As in a machine, if any single part begins to operate beyond its specified tolerance, it must be removed and replaced, or repaired.

Societies principally use law for this purpose. When applicable, this may include religious laws or moral codes. In secular societies attempts have been made to include all important moral limits in civil law. The big problem has been that true repair seldom occurs.

A spectrum of tolerance

People, as you may have noticed, fall somewhere on what might be seen as a “spectrum” of how tolerant they are willing to be of others. The less tolerant may be referred to as “strict” or worse. The more tolerant may lapse into being “too lax” or “permissive.”

What factors drive these variations? As much as I wanted to write about this subject, I had no exact idea of how I might explain the variation we see in people on this subject. The best I can do is refer you to the Emotional Tone Scale. A person’s emotional response to any given situation can depend on many different factors. But two important ones are: 1) where they prefer to be on the tone scale and 2) how free they are to move up and down the tone scale.

Both of these factors are involved with what could be called the study of human psychology. Without getting into this too deeply, various incidents in one’s past can hold one’s attention out of the present moment and stick them in the tone level of that incident. If it was a scary incident, the person will tend to get stuck in fear. If it was an angry incident, then in anger. The lower tones (like grief or apathy) tend to be more “sticky” than the higher ones (like boredom or cheerfulness).

Educational influences from family, group or society can also train people to react certain ways in certain situations. But these influences tend to be less powerful, unless the “lessons” were laid in with pain or threats of punishment.

From this discussion, you might see that it is a little hard to tell how a person will react in any given situation, but the more stuck they are in apathy, grief or fear, the more likely they are to react at that level. So some people – and in particular the more dangerous people – are more predictable than others.

It should be noted that “intolerance” is often associated with conservatism (3.0), anger (1.5) and to a lesser degree with lower tones. While “tolerance” is often associated with cheerfulness and boredom, but also with the lower tones of fear (1.0), grief (0.5) and apathy. However, the “intolerance” of a conservative is of a very different quality to that of a person stuck in anger, where it could turn violent. And the same goes with the higher-toned tolerance of someone who feels confident in their ability to handle “unusual” situations, compared to the lower-toned tolerance of someone who is simply too afraid or hopeless to object.

Thus, what we are really seeing at the higher tones is a saner approach to tolerance, where it has limits that the individual is willing to enforce on the people around them. At the lower tones, the being may really be intolerant of almost everything happening around it, but may fake “tolerance” out of cowardice or uncertainty.

The reality of what it means to be tolerant

In fact, the need to be “strict” or “intolerant” varies with different situations. A high-toned person can tell the difference between different situations, and adjust their tolerance level to one appropriate to the situation.

An instructor of airline pilots must be extremely intolerant of flubs committed by his students, but should be able to come home and “relax” with his kids and let them horse around a bit.

Anyone who is new to a job or position has the right to expect some tolerance for errors at first, but less tolerance for errors when they become a seasoned professional.

The problem of social classes and dogma

When we get into questions of social mobility and civil rights, we run into more problems with tolerance because these subjects deal with lower-toned situations.

People in politics, for instance (which can include many people besides the elected politicians) normally feel under some stress to defend their positions from attack. This can easily leave them with a fear mentality. They have developed as a class a sort of catty or covert way of dealing with both allies and rivals. Anyone who doesn’t follow these niceties isn’t “playing by the rules.” This led many, for instance, to blindly criticize Trump, as he never agreed to behave this way. Sometimes their criticisms had some substance, but they were just as likely to be totally irrational, as operating from fear is not going to result in rational behavior.

More generally, the various different social strata develop different cultures with different levels of tolerance along various dimensions.

Someone in the upper classes may see clear speech as an important survival factor, and be intolerant of slow, slurred, or ethnic speech. However, they may tolerate grossly immoral conduct in one’s personal life as long as it is kept hidden.

A working class person may show intolerance to over-dressing or ostentatious behavior, but be willing to tolerate a certain level of sloppiness that would be unacceptable to a professional person.

In some scientific circles, expressing disagreement with the basic theories that everyone has agreed to can result in the loss of one’s job. While in arts and entertainment, wide variations in appearance and behavior are normally encouraged.

I have experienced a lot of criticism (online) for asserting the importance of Spirit in understanding life. This is a problem of dogma which has actually been laid in at a very low tone level. Any contradiction of this dogma will tend to produce an anger reaction, or else irrational ridicule. Other conflicts between religions have had similar causes.

Tolerance and criminality

Criminals are uniformly low on the tone scale, and we see grossly irrational behaviors from them when it comes to tolerance.

An angry criminal can be violently intolerant to the point of murder. A fearful criminal (more common) can feign tolerance for all while secretly trying to do everyone else in.

Any society doing even half well does not tolerate criminal behavior, as gone over earlier. So criminals have the problem of being constantly not tolerated (as they can’t help themselves from feeling the way they do, and attempting to act on those feelings.) Under these conditions, locking up a criminal does nothing for them. The truly dangerous need to be separated from society, but would do better if they had access to a very large open (but secure) space. And the ones who aren’t so separated will usually be found secretly working very hard to get society to tolerate criminal behaviors.

Special issues in the news

A biological man who wants to compete as a woman in women’s sports is being a criminal. I’m sorry, but that’s my view.

Two men or women who want to “marry” each other are spitting at the tradition of marriage as the foundation of family life and of society. But perhaps they can be tolerated, as some even wish to raise children.

The problem of gender identity is misunderstood because most people do not realize that we are immortal spiritual beings. As I have stated elsewhere, I believe that most people would be willing to live with the gender dictated by the sex of their body if they knew that as beings they have no gender and as immortals, they will always have another chance to “get it right.” Without an understanding of Spirit, the subject of gender becomes a totally confused mess.

And then there is Critical Theory. This movement comes from a very low-toned and messed up place, for they somehow think that they can achieve total tolerance for the oppressed by being totally intolerant of the oppressors. This sounds to me like a bid by the criminals to be allowed to run free and do whatever they want.

Yes, there are sticky patterns of racial and ethnic injustice across this planet. But these cannot be understood or resolved without an appreciation for Spirit and a recognition of the existence of Suppressive Persons, neither of which Critical Theory does. For a society to survive well, anti-social acts cannot be tolerated. Critical Theory does not accomplish this, and so it cannot succeed. It, instead, tolerates crimes against anyone who can be identified as intolerant, not for their personal actions, but due to some group they supposedly belong to. This becomes a suppressive generality, a sure sign of criminal thinking. We don’t need Critical Theory to bring true justice to this planet; we need Scientology Ethics!

World’s Strongest Man…as metaphor

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. Merriam-Webster online.

I could not restrain myself from waxing philosophical about these games.

On the face of it, World’s Strongest Man is an annual competition where several really buff guys all try to excel in various events having to do with lifting, pushing, pulling and throwing heavy objects. The one who does the best earns the title of “World’s Strongest Man” for that year. They “represent” different countries, but this is not stressed, as most of them are from the U.S. The annual competition is also made into a series of TV episodes which in theory will be entertaining and help the sponsors get brand recognition for their products.

Beyond this, it should be noted that, though the competitors take it seriously, and fans all have their favorites, in the end it is not a matter of life and death who wins or loses, and if you were caught cheating in order to win, you would be thrown out. It’s a game in the long tradition of sport. It is expected to be played honestly and its purpose is primarily entertainment.

In these ways, it differs from some other games, or contests, played in this universe. While in the context of Spirit, the elements of fair play and entertainment may still be present, in our context, the context of biology living on a frail planet, these same games become filled with deceit and dire, if not murderous, consequences.

This is a force universe

My teacher often mentions that this universe is ruled by the laws of force. To survive well as a spiritual being in this universe, or a group of beings, requires a proper balance of force and intelligence.

Thus a single tremendously powerful being can be defeated by a less powerful group of beings if they can outwit him.

And so a contest of strength correctly points out the importance of being able to muster sufficient physical force to deal with the situation you are facing. But it downplays the range of intelligence that can be brought to bear.

Thus a weak being, or a group of them, may acquire a weapon or organize a plan of attack that allows them to overwhelm a much stronger being who is acting stupidly. He may complain that they didn’t play fair. But in a universe ruled by force, “fairness” becomes a relative concept. If you are overwhelmed by an opponent, you may lose your right to complain that the rules were broken. In the end, your only sure defense is to be able to muster enough force and organization to keep you opponent at bay. The history of Earth is full of examples of individuals and whole peoples being overwhelmed unfairly by individuals or groups possessing superior strength or intelligence. In a universe of force, these “wrongs” can never be righted, through there may be a spiritual price to pay.

The ugliness of strength

It may occur to some that these strongmen, even though good musculature has a certain attractiveness, are not very pretty to look at. Writers and thinkers have been playing with this theme for a long time. I think of Beauty and the Beast as a very good example of a magical story that covers this topic. The beautiful woman – representing the nurturing side of life as well as the literal feminine – must be willing to get over her revulsion to the ugliness of male strength and what it can be used for (to kill game in a hunt, for example) in order to have the man as a “handsome” mate and friend. The man, in turn, feels obligated to give the woman beautiful gifts and a castle in order to convince her that he is worthy of her love.

This is also an issue for many of us individually. Many feel compelled to embrace vegetarianism for no more good reason than the ugliness connected with killing animals. It is also common practice for the woman to enhance her beauty with makeup or clothing, while men who pay too much attention to such things are considered “effeminate.”

The game of politics

On Earth at least, the game of politics – as opposed to sports – is considered to be one that will never be played fairly. “All is fair in love and war,” as they say.

Yet we often see sporting events – particularly those involving male strength – as metaphor for the game of politics. Were it so!

In some ways, the history of politics on Earth – and in this universe – has been a history of attempts – mostly failed attempts – to bring rules to the game that will somehow stand as unbreakable. But in a universe ruled by force, a superior force combined with intelligence can always take over the game and set new rules. We have seen this happen over and over again.

To extend your credulity overmuch, I offer you the example of The Domain. This group has been one of the oldest and most powerful groups in this universe for a very long time. One reason for their power is their superior intelligence in the subject of organization. To quote from Alien Interview:

“As I mentioned, there is a very highly regimented and fixed hierarchy or “class system” for all IS-BEs (Immortal Spiritual Beings) throughout the “Old Empire”, and The Domain, as follows:

“The highest class are “free” IS-BEs. That is, they are not restricted to the use of any type of body and may come and go at will, provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.

“Below this class are many strata of “limited” IS-BEs who may or may not use a body from time to time. Limitations are imposed on each IS-BE regarding range of power, ability and mobility they can exercise.

“Below these are the “doll body” classes, to which I belong. Nearly all space officers and crew members of space craft are required to travel through intergalactic space. Therefore, they are each equipped with a body manufactured from light weight, durable materials. Various body types have been designed to facilitate specialized functions. Some bodies have accessories, such as interchangeable tools or apparatus for activities such as maintenance, mining, chemical management, navigation, and so forth. There are many gradations of this body type which also serve as an “insignia” of rank.

“Below these are the soldier class. The soldiers are equipped with a myriad of weapons, and specialized armaments designed to detect, combat and overwhelm any imaginable foe. Some soldiers are issued mechanical bodies. Most soldiers are merely remote controlled robots with no class designation.

“The lower classes are limited to “flesh bodies”. Of course, it is not possible for these to travel through space for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, flesh bodies are far too fragile to endure the stresses of gravity, temperature extremes, radiation exposure, atmospheric chemicals and the vacuum of space. There are also the obvious logistical inconveniences of food, defecation, sleep, atmospheric elements, and air pressure required by flesh bodies, that doll bodies do not require.”

This quote does not mention the importance of free beings in this structure, as today there are few, if any, left. It mentions their power (strength) only indirectly “… provided that they do not destroy or interfere with the social, economic or political structure.” Free beings, in fact, did have the power to do such things, and that’s why most if not all of them ended up being “limited” in important ways. Apparently free beings were not considered trustworthy, though I can think of many less honorable reasons why they may have been wiped out. But the result of this is that The Domain is now struggling a bit, as free beings were an important part of their success. Needless to say, the other forces in this universe, and particularly the remnants of the Old Empire (mostly Reptilians) also developed ways to limit or trap free beings. So whether the loss of all free beings was the fault of The Domain itself, or pushed along by the efforts of their competitors, the result has been bad for everyone involved. Because they had no way to “unlimit” beings after they were limited. They had no way to reverse the process, to restore, revive, or salvage a crippled free being to a state of perfect health and freedom. The big secret of our planet is that this has been accomplished here. Hubbard (a former operative in The Domain) figured out how to do this. And my group is in the process of making 10,000 free beings on Earth. This promises to be the start of a universal salvage operation, assuming we are able to complete this work before Earth is crippled or destroyed.

The promise of the free being

If we can succeed in restoring some beings to a free state, complete with the wisdom gained during their long descent into the relative slavery of flesh and blood, the future holds great promise.

Hubbard called this promise the New Civilization.

The new free beings will be able to generate the force (strength) necessary to protect planets and societies from undue attack. Free from such attacks, those societies can concentrate on reviving even more beings to a fully free state. These societies will operate on the intelligence gained from billions of years of living experience, and will be able to honestly work for and defend the cause of spiritual freedom in this universe. Spiritual freedom alone can combine the physical strength and spiritual intelligence needed to maintain a state of exhilarating playfulness in this universe, a state only dreamed of up til now, and only briefly, if ever, previously attained.

Like the human child, the years of carefree fun have always been too short. Too often cut off early in life by the mistreatment of some suffering adult, or a war, or a famine, or some criminal act. And if none of those misfortunes befell the child, then certainly puberty and the emotional pressures surrounding sex would end the fun soon enough, even if seeming to replace it with a new form of fun. Sex is a highly degraded form of “fun” compared to what is possible to experience in a freer state.

Think of, for example, how amazing a contest for the “Universe’s Strongest Man” could be! Instead of playing with little stone balls in a park in Sacramento, they could play with planets or stars (not populated ones!) in a playground as big as a galaxy! All brought to the comfort of your home by universal TV. Or leave your body and go out to watch the games in person!