Siz əl istehsalı kartlar, bank köçürmələri, internet əsaslı komissiya hesabı kimi müxtəlif üsullardan istifadə edərək Mostbet üzvlüyünə pul qoya bilərsiniz. Təhlükəsiz bir mərc tapmaq üçün, siz yaxşı ixtisaslı bir mərc yaratmalı və ya müəyyən oyunlar üçün əla xüsusi məbləği mərc etməli ola bilərsiniz, əks halda futbol. Mostbet hesabından pul çıxarmaq üçün fiziki şəxslərin pul çıxarma prosedurları mövcuddur. Continue reading “Mostbet Hindistan: Rəsmi Veb saytı, Üzvlük, Əlavə 25000 Daxil ol”

Yeni Pin-Up proqram təminatını əldə edən hindli oyunçular həqiqətən müalicə olunur ki, siz çox müxtəlif maraqlı stimullar əldə edə biləsiniz və siz daha çox oyun hissini tərifləmək üçün hazırlanmış təkliflər verə bilərsiniz. Gözəl təbrik təkliflərindən davamlı üstünlüklərə qədər bütün platformamız hər bir istifadəçi üçün maraqlı oyun səyahətini təmin edir. Pin Right up təkcə Hindistanda deyil, beynəlxalq kazinolarda da məşhurdur. Continue reading “Android-ə sahib olmaq üçün Pin-Up Gambling müəssisə mobil tətbiqini quraşdırın və siz iphone 3gs olacaqsınız”

By Richard John Stapleton

The biggest problem facing USians right now is the upcoming 2024 presidential election, eight months away.

If Trump wins most likely his first step will be to pardon himself of all his crimes and consider himself a de facto fascist dictator of the USian government for life.

Probably his next step will be to put his cronies and lackeys in positions of authority in executive branches of the US government as soon as possible.

The next steps will entail trying to keep poor immigrants out of the US and changing as many USian government policies as possible to further entrench and solidify idiosyncratic beliefs, aims, wishes, hungers, and desires of Trump’s far right MAGA Christian nationalist white supremacist fascist supporters—such as eliminating the legal right of women to control their own bodies with abortions and the legal right of all USians to identify themselves sexually as they were naturally caused to sexually function by accidental and inevitable concatenations of cause-effect chains.  

Next could come attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and other policies and programs considered evil by Trump’s supporters, mostly things considered socialistic, considered evil despite socialism advocating humans being kind to everyone—trying to create policies and laws that will increase the perceived hegemony of members of authoritarian Christian denominations and the actual hegemony of members of the authoritarian capitalistic USian deep state.

Other steps would likely be trying to cut taxes for the rich even more, cut government spending for social programs, increase military spending, ignore the federal debt and exploding yearly deficit, eliminate student loans, do nothing about credit card interest and debt, do nothing to rationally regulate health care and health insurance, weaken or eliminate environmental laws, increase nuclear weapons proliferation, reduce nuclear weapons treaties, and create transactional business deals with the leaders of Israel, Russia, Ukraine, China and various other countries around Spaceship Earth.

Then there will be the matter of dealing with the backlash the above could cause, possibly World War III, or a civil war of sorts within the US.

There will be plenty of narcissistic psychological Games for Trump and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves to play to get strokes and attention if they get in power, persecuting, rescuing, and victimizing humans on a drama triangle ad nauseam, not only inside the US but around Spaceship Earth. Rest assured they will be in your nightly news every day.  

There is even the possibility Trump and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves will try to create concentration camps in the US to confine or do worse to USians who oppose MAGA policies and actions, clamping down with an iron fist, like Trump’s fuhrer hero Hitler did.

Trump’s cronies, lackeys, and knaves will have little respect for the US Constitution and the USian rule of law as they will have proved merely by supporting and voting for Trump again given the irrefutable visual and auditory evidence against him in public media showing he tried to overthrow USian constitutional government with lies and intimidation about the 2020 election being stolen from him and by inciting an insurrection January 6, 2021 in the USian Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

One of the most depressing side effects of this Trumpian-USian affair is Earthian humans learning how inefficient and ineffective is the USian federal justice system.

Apparently, the USian federal justice system works efficiently and effectively only in the cases of humans indicted for crimes who do not have access to large enough sums of money to hire enough lawyers to defend them with appeals in higher courts and frivolous tactics and motions that can legally delay the starting of a trial.

It now appears Trump and his lawyers, paid millions of dollars, can, maybe will, delay justice for Trump long enough for him to get elected president of the US so he can pardon himself of his crimes.

It was sad for most USians to learn that Trump may not get convicted of a felony crime before the 2024 presidential election, that might have eliminated the possibility of him becoming president again, because of a hesitant and seemingly pusillanimous federal justice system that should have indicted him sooner than they did for the felony crime of inciting an insurrection against the USian government.

But it’s sadder for most USians to learn there may be enough USian voters who will vote for Trump again to get him elected president again, despite evidence he has a character disorder and having been well informed in public media about his lies, incompetence, malfeasance, and crimes, in and out of office.

Not only are there some seemingly weak, greedy, unethical, and pusillanimous USian federal justice officers and judges, including supreme court judges; there are millions of needy USian voters who have little respect for ethics and truth. 

We’ll have to wait eight more months to find out how sad this 2024 USian concatenation of presidential political cause-effect chains shall be.

BACKSTORIES

“How Governments Waste Their Time,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, May 19, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/how-governments-waste-their-time/.

“Earthian Empowerment Systems,” by Richard J0hn Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, August 26, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/earthian-empowerment-systems/.

“The USian Trumpian/Repuglican Dilemma,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, September 30, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-usian-trumpian-repuglican-dilemma/.

“The Ordeal of Trumpism,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, August 18, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-ordeal-of-trumpism/.

“Will Don Trump’s Hamartic Script Enmesh Us All Before His Story Ends?,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, July 8, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/will-don-trumps-hamartic-script-enmesh-us-all-before-his-life-story-ends/.

“Hopefully This is the Last Straw for Trump on His Way Out of the White House,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, November 29, 2020, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/3222-2/.

HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. He taught management systems, researched, published, and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.

All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Whomever the spinner of the Classroom De-Gamer™ selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.

The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case. All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.

Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.

A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works as well as a Classroom De-Gamer™ to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.

How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system—relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.

According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N² – N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.

It can be seen that Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehnsion in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.

When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it’s time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can. In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.

Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.

Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.

Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER™. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process. The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course “content” was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He learned how the Harvard case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA, Harvard Business School doctorates, at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475. The data were also used in several refereed articles.

See also Stapleton, R.J. (1989-1990). “Academic entrepreneurship: Using the case method to simulate competitive business markets.” Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. Vol. XIV, No. IV, pp. 88-104; Stapleton, R.J., Murkison, G., and Stapleton, D.C. (1993). “Feedback regarding a game-free case method process used to educate general management and entrepreneurship students.” Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Southeast CHAPTER of the Institute for Management Science. Myrtle Beach, SC, October, 1993; and Stapleton, R. J. and Stapleton, D.C. (1998) “Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach.” Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2: 157–167

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.  

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

 

By Richard John Stapleton

I was dismayed and depressed when the USian movie star president, Ronald Reagan, lowered the top federal income tax rate on USian incomes down to 28 percent in the 1980’s; but nobody I knew around here seemed to care.

What I thought would happen did happen: morbid inequality.

I also worried about the incipient income inequality caused by lowering the tax rates of the rich being exacerbated by the computer revolution.

It seemed obvious to me that copyrights on computer software, giving lucky Earthian humans like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg monopoly rights on software packages demanded by millions of Earthian humans would also lead to income inequality.

It costs almost nothing to copy, paste, and sell more copyrighted copies of demanded computer code to almost unlimited numbers of Earthian human consumers using personal entertainment and communication devices, and to corporate profit-making organizations in all countries operating agricultural, financial, insurance, health care, mining, manufacturing and distribution systems who use copyrighted software to cut their costs of production by employing simulated and real robots in menu talking systems, management information storage systems, and in manual labor systems rather than use expensive Earthian human robots.

Rather than say to hungry Earthian humans demanding bread “Let them eat cake” as Marie Antoinette did during the French revolution, the Earthian billionaire elite since 1980 has said the equivalent of “Let them eat information” as the Earthian computer revolution happened, and their net worth grew exponentially larger, automatically, with little work on their part, thanks to computer software and income tax cuts, among other things, as the poorest Earthian humans got poorer.

So far hordes of hungry Earthian humans have not brandished their pitchforks, or guillotines.

BACKSTORY

“The Gilded Age Then, the Gilded Age Now,” by Sam Pizzigati, COUNTERPUNCH, March 11, 2024, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/11/the-gilded-age-then-the-gilded-age-now/?fbclid=IwAR1Btb3frOzTjszaLMSDUInVYPMMTyRObkcudwhKAU_2RDrFR4pPA2rG2OE.

How it Happened

Everything that happens is an inevitable accident; it was not planned using free will, but it was caused by inexorably-progressing cause-effect chains. It behooves Earthian humans to tie loose ends together in comprehensive whole pictures trying to let Earthian humans know what is really going on around Earth, regardless of the problems, given the robot-like programmed beliefs and behaviors of most Earthian humans, ensconced in their worm hole tunnels of existence, shut off from relevant outside information inputs, caused by concatenations of inexorably progressing infinitely-regressive cause-effect chains all around Spaceship Earth.

TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF SUSTAINABLE EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as described and recommended in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases might develop consensual answers regarding existential matters from the bottom up that might help save Spaceship Earth. These ideas would filter up to randomly-selected humans who would count the consensual answers to make necessary changes. Consensual tactics, strategies, and policies would then be developed around Earth for dealing with the computerized Spaceship Earth management system, operated and controlled using artificial intelligence programming and supercomputers.

Randomly-selected groups of Earthian humans of high intelligence with impeccable moral and ethical character and credentials would control codes for changing the Earthian Magnum Computer System programming to implement bottom-up recommendations of millions of members in discussions in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth. Each member of the group in charge of the codes for the magnum computer system would serve limited terms. These members would not vote or decide what to do. They would see to it that the computer system implemented the consensual answers of millions of Earthian humans from all walks of life, as determined by honest, free, fair, and frank democratic GAME-free discussions in democracy chapters all around Spaceship Earth, as explained and shown in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. The overall objective would be to manage the system in such a way as to maximize the lifetime satisfactions of all Earthian humans, as well as all other species of life aboard Spaceship Earth, while insuring the indefinite functioning of all Spaceship Earth ecosystems.

Necessary moral and ethical requirements and constraints could be programmed in the Magnum Management System that Earthian humans at the top would be obliged to obey. If changes should be made in the moral and ethical codes in the overall program they would be sent back to the Earthian democracy chapters for discussion and then tabulated and analyzed before algorithms programmed in the system would create changes in the magnum operating system.  

This computerized management system would require a strict system of security controls like the current codes of nations possessing nuclear weapons, hopefully providing security several magnitudes more secure than current nuclear codes, to make sure a madman could not get in control of any aspect of the system

A management system such as this would significantly improve previous systems used around Spaceship Earth that have historically empowered fickle, egotistical, greedy, power mad, grandiose, poorly educated, not-very-bright individual Earthian humans to make existential decisions affecting the OKness of thousands, millions, and billions of humans around Earth, that have been used over and over again for millennia, resulting in incredible losses and suffering at various moments of history caused by the unfair and indiscriminate inexorable tunneling out of bad, ok, or good luck for hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, resulting from the cosmic evolution commencing with a big bang some fourteen billion years ago. Humans thus far in Earthian human history have not been caused to develop knowledge and decisions that prevents them from empowering greedy, selfish, power mad, narcissistic, not very bright leaders in their largest management systems over and over again.

A tough lesson for Earthian humans to accept propositioned in Effective Learning Publications books is that everything that happens in human states of affairs is either predetermined or accidental and therefore individuals are not to blame or praise for what happens in human states of affairs. This is easier to swallow after accepting that believing and acting otherwise will support and perpetuate the I’m OK—You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled, sabotaged, and undermined Earthian humans since time immemorial, causing wars and other disasters.

The best way significant numbers of Earthian humans can be caused to be significantly changed psychologically and socially by others is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical, analogical arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs over a relatively long period of time. Yet, this rarely happens.

What is considered natural, unnatural; normal, abnormal; right, wrong; ethical, unethical; righteous, sinful; worthy, unworthy; or sane or insane by a particular Earthian human is caused by information lodged in her/his brain caused to be lodged there by the concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains causing her/him to exist and slowly inch through the Earthian worm hole of existence inexorably tunneled out for her or him by her/his specific unbroken infinitely-regressing cause-effect chains inexorably-progressing throughout his/her infinitesimally short cosmic life, regardless of how bad, ok, or good that luck or fate might be as judged by any Earthian human; and all Earthian humans must keep on inching forward in their worm holes as best they can dealing with inevitable problems and opportunities caused to exist at stages in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen externally and in their subconscious and conscious minds, however bad, ok, or good their inherited luck might have absolutely been, which cannot be proved, however easy it might be to relatively estimate.

Changing the life scripts of Earthian humans for the better requires changing the course of unique tunnels of existence in which individual humans accidentally and inevitably live, a tall order indeed. Some biological constructivists would consider this notion a pipe dream, while considering the whole process a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space.

What is God? Whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis  to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds

Read  “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,”  for some management science ideas on how Earthian humans might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. 

Read As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

This novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction if widely implemented that requires participants in a seminar to speak up when randomly selected by a Truther rooster positioned in the center of a randomly-selected group of forty humans sitting in a circle.

The Truther rooster resembles a spinning weather vane. The rooster is programmed to bob its head up and down and crow after being twirled by a randomly-selected seminar participant, as it spins round and round winding down, letting group members know it’s time to wake up and get to work, before it’s too late. When the Truther rooster stops spinning whoever is at the end of a line of imaginary fire extending from the rooster’s beak to her or him sitting in the circle is automatically selected as the Leader of the Moment for the group.

The Leader of the Moment then leads the group into a democratic discussion of what s/he considers the most serious existential problem around Spaceship Earth.  Forty participants from all walks of life were paid $5000 monthly for participating in weekend seminars conducted in central city hotels in various cities randomly selected around the US. If randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment the participant would define what s/he thought was the most important problem facing Spaceship Earth, present alternatives, and make a recommendation for change. What s/he said was discussed by members of the group on a free-flow first come-first serve basis. It was against the law of the seminar to interrupt speakers or raise hands to get permission to speak. Discussions lasted until they ran out of steam. The results of the discussions were published to wealthy donors who financed the process.

Rout Logger was convinced most Earthian humans would not volunteer to participate in this sort of seminar to merely help save Spaceship Earth from GWCC (Global Warming and Climate Change) and/or MNWP (Militarization and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation) using their Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child Ego States, given the reality that their life time and energy was already programmed and consumed with various forms of withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, psychological games, activities, and intimacy in their unique tunnels of reality, as they acted out their inherited life scripts; so they were paid $5000 per month to participate in a game-free, Adult-Adult democratic seminar that would require them to honestly discuss existential problems with forty other participants from disparate walks of life, if they were randomly selected by the spinning Truther Rooster as the Leader of the Moment.

Achieving Earthian human sustainability entails such things as Earthian humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births) the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, assuming sufficient quantities of non-human clean energy can be discovered and developed using mind grants.

This general algorithmic matrix algebra form can help bring this state of affairs about,

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi,

explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.”

This mathematical formulation could help develop power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation, Max CjXj, subject to, AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi, is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses.

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as Albert Einstein’s formulation E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species the power to exterminate itself.

Riding aboard an airliner about to land at night traveling at four hundred miles an hour at thirty-five thousand feet with clouds, rain, wind, and lightning below, what would you rather have figuring out the path, speed, and angle of descent of the aircraft for touch-down, the plane’s auto-pilot, radar, and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows below but clouds and lightning?

The main reason why delegating the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI programs and magnum computers would be a good idea is that magnum computers and algorithmic AI programs do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological GAMES. Thus far in Earthian human history most leaders and rulers atop large organizations such as nations have become corrupt one way or another playing psychological GAMES, acting out selfish greedy ego trips, hogging all the power, money, strokes, stimulation, and recognition they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, leaving the hindmost to their underlings. Whatever their limitations and possible threats, algorithmic computer programs and super computers are not egotistical, greedy, and power-hungry.

Thanks to Buckminster Fuller for providing the above airplane-landing metaphor in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, first published in 1969, and for planting seeds for other ideas in the essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” published in the Effective Learning Report, such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. He was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

Many Earthian humans like to win BALANCE SHEET psychological GAMES, to feel superior and lord it over others, regardless if Spaceship Earth is going to hell in a handbasket around them because of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), regardless of how much they have failed in other areas of their lives, and regardless of how heinous were crimes and misdemeanors they may have gotten away with in the process of amassing their riches, since they were saved, as it were, by taking in and controlling more almighty monetary units than other lesser mortals.

If you want to learn more about transactional analysis, such as Ego States, Scripts, and psychological GAMES, read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.

Most Earthian humans know what it is to be egotistical, but they have little understanding of how specific human egotistical manifestations, such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, can be used to control and manipulate human behavior for nefarious ends.

Most likely it would take several generations using learning processes such as the process described above including millions of Earthian humans all around Earth to change Earthian human behavior enough to cause the evolution of an Earthian management system such as described above that would be able to produce loving and cooperative Earthian humans and Earthian peace and sustainability, gradually rendering obsolete the greedy and selfish slash and burn competitive systems that have been caused to exist around Spaceship Earth.

For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems see the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty .

HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. He taught management systems, researched, published, and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.

All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Whomever the spinner of the Classroom De-Gamer™ selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.

The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case. All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.

Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.

A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works as well as a Classroom De-Gamer™ to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.

How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system—relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.

According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N² – N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.

It can be seen that Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehnsion in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.

When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it’s time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can. In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.

Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.

Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.

Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER™. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process. The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course “content” was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He learned how the Harvard case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA, Harvard Business School doctorates, at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

See also Stapleton, R. J. and D. C. Stapleton. “Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach.” Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2 (1998): 157–167.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.  

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THE EARTHIAN, Number Forty-Three, February 25, 2024, Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, Richard John Stapleton, Writer, Editor & Publisher, Copyright 2024, All Rights Reserved

Ask more what your country can do for all Earthians to reduce the probability of catastrophes caused by global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), the two major existential threats confronting humans and all Earthian species of fauna and flora.

Everything that happens is an inevitable accident; it was not planned using free will, but it was caused by inexorably-progressing cause-effect chains. It behooves Earthian humans to tie loose ends together in comprehensive whole pictures trying to let Earthian humans know what is really going on around Earth, regardless of the problems, given the robot-like programmed beliefs and behaviors of most Earthian humans, ensconced in their worm hole tunnels of existence, shut off from relevant outside information inputs, caused by concatenations of inexorably progressing infinitely-regressive cause-effect chains all around Spaceship Earth. — Richard John Stapleton

“I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere, there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior. I need a superior inferior man.” — Heddy Lamarr, Hollywood actress who invented wireless communication. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d….

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller, who said in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth that Earthian humans are “abysmally ignorant and omni-befuddled.” https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d….

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESKTOP COMPUTER KEYBOARD

It’s been over two months since the last issue of The Earthian was published. The asymmetric Hamas/Gaza-Zionist/Israel killing field has been the most horrible event around Spaceship Earth. It grinds on seemingly with no solutions in sight, with about the same rhetoric about what to do in the short run, with some discussion of whether a two or a one state solution would be best in the long run. As pointed out below it seems to me a one state solution is best. But for right now, there is only one viable solution: a ceasefire. Likewise, the Ukraine War also continues to grind on. I have no suggestions for how to bring it to a halt, but I will say I think the leadership of all the parties to the war—the US, NATO, Ukraine, and Russia—is the root cause of the fiasco. How to get better Earthian human leadership is another matter, a horrendously complex problem, involving the internal political processes of all the countries. How the United States will sort out its troubling internal political and legal problems is probably foremost in the minds of most USians. Will it be Biden or Trump as president after November 24, 2024? Will the US be able to work out democratic solutions, or will it sink into a fascist authoritarian anti-intellectual dictatorship? Meanwhile Planet Earth continues to heat up and more polar ice melts, causing more destructive and costly extreme weather events all around Earth irrespective of religious, economic, and political ideologies and boundaries.

Everything that happens is an inevitable accident. Nothing planned it using free will, but it was caused by infinite cause-effect chains. — RJS.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

1 — RECENT EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS BY HUMANS ABOARD SPACESHIP EARTH

2 — OPINION OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM

3 — TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF SUSTAINABLE EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (SEPDC)

4 — A GAME-FREE I’M OK—YOU’RE OK DEMOCRATIC CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT COULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

AN EARTHIAN ELDER SPEAKS

“So, I guess what I’m saying is that, as we can establish that the earth is a sphere, and thus finite, then growth in your population and artifacts must have limits. And, your lack of a social-economic system to recognize those limits is leading us all to diaster.” — KOKO

See and read more about KOKO, the gorilla who knew over 1,000 words.

1 — RECENT EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS BY HUMANS ABOARD SPACESHIP EARTH

February 29, 2024

Here’s a major elephant in the room most USians do not want to talk about. — RJS

“Joe Biden wants you to believe that spending money on weapons is good for the economy. That tired old myth — regularly repeated by the political leaders of both parties — could help create an even more militarized economy that could threaten our peace and prosperity for decades to come. Any short-term gains from pumping in more arms spending will be more than offset by the long-term damage caused by crowding out new industries and innovations, while vacuuming up funds needed to address other urgent national priorities.” — by William Hartung

“War is Bad for You…and the Economy,” by William Hartung, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/28/war-is-bad-for-you-and-the-economy/?fbclid=IwAR1dJMKxyHl23bxDgYrVFev_zbUzitdkKf-Yg7m-enTG0weF206MPiqS_C0.

February 29

“Putin is responsible for Alex Navalny’s death. Again, this is true but irrelevant to the subject at hand. Whether or not Russian agents had anything to do with Navalny’s poisoning in 2020, the regime did try him on trumped up charges and did imprison him in a colony on the Arctic Circle, where he died at the age of 47. This was a tragedy but not a great surprise. With the brief exception of the Gorbachev regime (1985-1991), Russian rulers from the czars onward have often persecuted domestic dissenters, and Putin’s government is no exception. But this does not constitute a threat to Europe unless one is a neo-con ideologue trying to construct a neo-Cold War struggle between “democratic” and “authoritarian” blocs.” — Richard E. Rubenstein

“More Anti-Russian Hysteria From the New York Times,” by Richard E. Rubenstein, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/29/more-anti-russian-hysteria-from-the-new-york-times/?fbclid=IwAR1oS1qSajmobS5eiM3Z_Kvsouwcz7JkDT2NH5ZxBAcb-pmT1LzGaav3w84.

February 29, 2024

“In the minds of many, the US state of Vermont is an idyllic place of trees, mountains, ski resorts, craft beer and people with lots of money. In all honesty, Vermont does have its share of all these things. However, like any other place in the world’s capitalist economy, they come at a price. Until recently, that price was mostly hidden from the bulk of Vermont’s residents and even more of its visitors. However, the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the drastic reordering of that capitalist economy that followed has revealed the ugly underside of Vermont’s picture-book reality. Like most of the rest of the world, the unhoused live on the streets of the state’s small cities, panhandling, living out their lives’ dramas and wondering where they can sleep out of the cold. An epidemic of drug addiction uglier than any I have ever seen makes its presence known in those streets, in the property crime statistics and in the numbers of overdoses reported by various public health officials and police. Given the visual evidence, I can’t help but wonder how many more addicts hide behind their rural and suburban homes.

“As is all too often the case across our nation, Vermont’s governor is joining the chorus of those calling for more people to be put in prison because the media and various conservative groups are exaggerating the crime situation in Vermont. The question is how many liberal legislators will go along with the governor’s alarmist and reactionary rhetoric. Already, how to respond to the rise in illegal activity in the state’s largest city, Burlington, is becoming a major election issue in the contest between the candidates.” — Ron Jacobs

“Unchained Capitalism: A Demonic Theology,” by Ron Jacobs, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/29/unchained-capitalism-a-demonic-theology/.

February 23, 2024

A Ray of Light

I have watched and listened to this video for the second time all the way through, and I do not think it’s bullshit, and I have read much of Jeremy Griffin’s 595-page well-thought, well-reasoned, well-researched, well-crafted, well-documented, well-presented book, entitled Freedom. Griffin provides the best summary answers i have seen and heard explaining how Earthian human states of affairs got as “upset” (Griffin’s word) as they are and what must be done to make corrections. This video is not a book sales pitch. His book Freedom really is free. You can download it to your desktop free at www.humancondition.com. Jeremy Griffin is an Australian biologist, inventor, entrepreneur, researcher, author, and speaker who has done some serious thinking about human behavior. He presents his case with his authentic Australian accent speaking and writing in a straightforward manner devoid of manipulation, hyperbole, and drama, backed by a well-funded and well-organized ethical worldwide movement. This video is well worth a watch and listen and the free book is well worth a read. I guarantee you have never seen a book like Freedom. — RJS

“The Breakthrough Biological Explanation of the Human Condition,” by Jeremy Griffin,, a video interview, WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT, https://www.humancondition.com/?fbclid=IwAR1LMWMVfLVXd7QXbyScoojIpJ4WjJyrz001duKz1UdqcuckDhdzt1rfDtA.

February 25

Jeremy Griffin is the first international thinker I remember explicitly pointing out that a solution to the current Earthian human “upset” (Griffin’s word) cannot be solved overnight by a magic bullet like socialism or fascism. He says it will probably take several generations to change the current brainwashing of Earthian humans to create a new way of life lived by loving and cooperative Earthian humans instead of the current way of life lived by selfish, aggressive, competitive Earthian humans. — RJS

“The Human Condition and Fix the World,” by Jeremy Griffin, a video of endorsements, https://www.facebook.com/worldtransformationmovement/videos/6100488106723694.

February 25

“If Gaza falls, all Palestinians in the rest of Palestine will become the new target for Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing and, if necessary, genocide.

“Reducing all these issues to that of finding creative political solutions that would merely sell false hope to the Palestinian people is not only ignorant, or devious, but also a diversion from the real issue: Israel’s Zionist ideology.

“Zionism, like all racist colonial ideologies, operates with a zero-sum approach to their relationship with the natives of colonized land: dominance through ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“For ‘long-term peace’ to take place, Zionism must end.” — Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

“’Two-State Solution’ as a Distraction: The Problem is Zionism,” by Ramzy Baroud, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/two-state-solution-as-a-distraction-the-problem-is-zionism/?fbclid=IwAR2ErtiDWTuktaDOS9_TISbhAzfD3u-LJQyvsep-RWDz9_onYTm6yw9-v7U.

February 24

Yuk

“The Fastest Warming on Earth,” by Robert Hunziker, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/the-fastest-warming-on-earth/?fbclid=IwAR2SoBKuBD4wtVn0E9iP7YdLZAJFL0877lx4UIGJyNLDmMADU5wJ2dFhzmI.

February 23

How many USians just want to watch the US burn to the ground? — RJS

“The researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the “need for chaos,” which they defined as “a mindset to gain status” by destroying the established order. In their study, nearly a third of respondents demonstrated a need for chaos, Petersen said. And for about 5 percent of voters, old-fashioned party allegiances to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party melted away and were replaced by a desire to see the entire political elite destroyed—even without a plan to build something better in the ashes.

“’These [need-for-chaos] individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone,’ the authors wrote in their conclusion. ‘Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.’ To sum up their worldview, Petersen quoted a famous line from the film The Dark Knight: ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn’.” — Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

“The Americans Who Need Chaos,” by Derek Thompson, THE ATLANTIC, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-americans-who-need-chaos/ar-BB1iLqx6?ocid=socialshare&fbclid=IwAR3sTDzY9J90QrPNFbvoOKQctAC8jhlFkg9TYmYpfX37DVfIXmHcuw934HU.

February 23

Barbarity and Insanity — RJS

“’We Didn’t Get All The Way There On Jan 6’: Trump Booster Pledges to End Democracy in CPAC Rant as Bannon Cheers On,” by Jennifer Bowers Bahney, MEDIAITE, https://www.mediaite.com/trump/welcome-to-the-end-of-democracy-trump-booster-jack-posobiec-vows-to-finish-what-began-on-jan-6-as-steve-bannon-cheers-on/?fbclid=IwAR1erMWgHDd_H9SbZHIA92UeryI72iJKHoKlPPVyvdP8CuJkY0Btv7c-AW0.

February 23

Parasitical all right — RJS

“Unheeded Urban Warnings,” by Gray Brechin, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/22/unheeded-urban-warnings/?fbclid=IwAR0OBBJz91Tj1daAD_sJLprG10qKSSYFkNVRxloWdCQ4TkUjSHia04nn7cI.

February 23

Another excellent summary article by the indefatigable Paul Street tying together loose ends to let Earthian humans know what is really going on, as if that makes much difference, given the robot-like programmed beliefs and behaviors of most Earthian humans, ensconced in their worm hole tunnels of existence caused by infinite concatenations of cause-effect chains all around Earth, shut off from relevant outside information inputs. — RJS

“500,000 Dead and Maimed in Ukraine, Enough Already,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/22/500000-dead-and-maimed-in-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR3CXUdjAtI1e1YK1o7xv4bLfQcUyMCcRSp4ggKWix3q3lPdmFQKHEhDlxc.

February 21

Why a two-state solution cannot work

I posted on my Facebook page about this several weeks ago. It seems obvious to me that a two-state solution cannot work. How could it? How could you possibly fairly divide what Israel has conquered and stolen since 1948 into two plots of ground that would satisfy both ethnic groups? This would entail millions of Jews moving back into what would be called Israel from what would be called Palestine. No, only a one state solution stands a snowball’s chance in hell of creating a fair and sustainable solution. It would entail changing the name of the whole plot of ground to something that would be acceptable to both Zionists and Palestinians, writing a new constitution fair to both ethnic groups who could live wherever they wanted in the whole plot of ground, and Jews giving back to individual Palestinians land and houses Zionists stole since 1948. This solution might not stand a snowball’s chance in hell either, but at least it might melt slower than the two state absurdity. — RJS

“CRITICAL CONDITIONS

“Instead of pushing for a two-state outcome that has almost no prospect of materializing, Washington should recognize the current reality and use its influence to enforce adherence to international laws and norms by all parties. The United States has long avoided holding Israel to those standards; the Biden administration has gone further, shielding Israel from the United States’ own laws. (In January, an investigation by The Guardian found that since 2020, the U.S. State Department had used “special mechanisms” to continue providing weapons to Israel despite a U.S. law prohibiting assistance to foreign military units involved in gross human rights violations.) That needs to change. Simply by upholding the rules-based liberal international order, Washington could do much to mitigate the darkest injustices of the present situation. Such an approach would not be about Washington dictating what the Israelis and the Palestinians should do. Rather, it is about ending the anomalous practice of using significant U.S. resources to empower behavior that the U.S. finds objectionable and that even conflicts with U.S. interests.” — Foreign Affairs, read more in the article below

“The Two-State Mirage,” by Marc Lynch and Shibley Tehami, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/two-state-mirage-gaza-palestinians-lynch?utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3gTD6FYZlwPLsuOqG1_F-8bKzNxEalIVJftNdsPYXuS54B45RCjV4KE3M.

February 13

Not only an army general but a USian president — RJS

“Ulysses S. Grant: Speech at the Annual Reunion of the Society of the Army of Tennessee at Des Moines, Iowa, 29 September 1875″, by Mike Marion, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10229678728819934&set=a.3225424401929.

February 13

“Sapolsky says that we have no choice in how to react and respond to a situation. According to him, there is no such thing as free will, Sapolsky argues that “Put all the scientific results together from all the relevant scientific disciplines, and there’s no room for free will.”

“The lack of free will, he says, means that people are not accountable for their good or bad behaviors, a perspective that has attracted some skepticism.

“’If we ‘freely’ choose to do something but there was never a possibility of choosing something else, we’re not free. And if we’re not free, Sapolsky says, there is no more reason to castigate a killer than to punish a broken machine. Killers should receive medical and psychological treatment to address the larger issues that caused the problem,” Stanford magazine states about Sapolsky’s concept of the absence of free will in humans.” —Marjorie Hecht

“Prepared Learning: What Are Humans Hard-Wired for at Birth,” by Marjorie Hecht, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/12/prepared-learning-what-are-humans-hard-wired-for-at-birth/?fbclid=IwAR1CJAjdt3jmZc0OuYuAE5k4mqs8zu637C3CHLC_DAPQhlhqViRuNz_vQcY.

February 13

Perspectives on economics and politics

About 25 percent of USian eligible voters are Republican Trumpites; about 25 percent of USian eligible voters are traditional Biden Democrats; about 40 percent of USian eligible voters are Independents; about 10 percent of eligible USian voters are left-leaning Democrats and Moderate Republicans.

If a USian presidential candidate such as Cornel West, RFK Jr, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitcomb, Elizabeth Warren, or Jill Stein could receive 60 percent of the votes of eligible Independents, left-learning Democrats, and moderate Republicans she or he could win the USian presidential race of 2024, without stealing votes from traditional Biden Democrats.

Forces of change are more likely to foster a more peaceful and sustainable Spaceship Earth than forces of conformity. One can build a case in the real world of economics and politics there is no such thing as right or wrong, that there is merely functioning, OK, Not-OK, or Not at all.

If only the US had a rank-order system of voting USians would have truer democracy; but, alas, if only a frog had wings….

Unfortunately fascist forces in the US through time have done their best to eliminate democratic processes via petty rules in the US to gain unfair advantages for themselves in competitive endeavors, working for their own selfish interests rather than for the interests of all citizens, sub-optimizing, damaging the whole by debilitating a part. — RJS

read more…

“West is Best,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/west-is-best/?fbclid=IwAR2mirkX02eDvFScsGmROlOG6rnBwZ6gEjAKy9GImmITzQVTC6YjnPAQtj8.

August 24, 2023

According to biological constructivists, Earthian humans are closed systems that will not or cannot change unless forced to change by force majeure events. They will conserve as long as possible their original sources of biological, psychological, social, religious, cultural, economic, and political satisfactions. As psychiatrists and clinical psychologists know, Earthian humans cannot change their early psychological programming in the short run even if they want to.

Randomly-selecting leaders of the moment in democratic Adult-Adult Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK discussion processes is a way of creating pseudo-free will, a way of causing concatenations of Earthian human cause-effect chains that would not have happened in naturally-evolving states of nature.

What Spaceship Earth needs now are bottom-up Game-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK democratic discussion processes that can significantly empower all Earthian humans.

“Earthian Empowerment Systems,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT,

EARTHIAN EMPOWERMENT SYSTEMS

2 — OPINION OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Earthian humans are enthralled, manipulated, and in various degrees controlled by their leaders in some two hundred countries aboard Spaceship Earth. Leaders became leaders because of being caused to be leaders by concatenations of unbroken cause-effect chains resulting after our universe started evolving some thirteen billion years ago in the infinity of time and space.

Leaders are generally products of the same sorts of differentiated configurations of cause-effect chains as differentiated followers and members in differentiated countries. All Earthian humans are doing what they were caused to do in their daily lives starting at birth.

Earth as a planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and has undergone innumerable transformations in the meantime. Humanoid creatures have been aboard Spaceship Earth for some two million years, and they too have undergone numerous evolutionary changes, as have other Earthian species.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have now reached a precarious and dangerous stage in their evolution as biological creatures. After slowly evolving more and more accurate, complex, and powerful understandings, technologies, and ways of life for two million years on Earth, during the last two hundred years Earthian humans evolved new technological devices at exponential rates that enabled them to increase the overly-fecund Earthian human population of Earth so much that they now threaten not only to destroy their own existence as a species aboard Spaceship Earth but also the existence of most other species alive on Earth.

Keeping eight or so billion Earthian humans alive on Earth has required so many goods and services to be produced to satisfy human biological and psychological needs and wants and so much carbon-based fuel to be burned to produce the goods that the climate of Spaceship Earth has been altered by carbon dioxide and methane gas released into the Earthian atmosphere in large-enough quantities to cause extra heat to be trapped on Earth causing the mean Earthian temperature to increase at a yearly rate that threatens to destroy Earthian human life as it now exists, within centuries, if not decades.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have also developed technological knowledge that has enabled them to produce over 10,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy human life if dropped and detonated around Earth, as they have the capability to do.

3 — TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF SUSTAINABLE EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDC)

Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as described and recommended in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases might develop consensual answers regarding existential matters from the bottom up that might help save Spaceship Earth. These ideas would filter up to randomly-selected humans who would count the consensual answers to make necessary changes. Consensual tactics, strategies, and policies would then be developed around Earth for dealing with the computerized Spaceship Earth management system, operated and controlled using artificial intelligence programming and supercomputers.

Randomly-selected groups of Earthian humans of high intelligence with impeccable moral and ethical character and credentials would control codes for changing the Earthian Magnum Computer System programming to implement bottom-up recommendations of millions of members in discussions in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth. Each member of the group in charge of the codes for the magnum computer system would serve limited terms. These members would not vote or decide what to do. They would see to it that the computer system implemented the consensual answers of millions of Earthian humans from all walks of life, as determined by honest, free, fair, and frank democratic GAME-free discussions in democracy chapters all around Spaceship Earth, as explained and shown in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. The overall objective would be to manage the system in such a way as to maximize the lifetime satisfactions of all Earthian humans, as well as all other species of life aboard Spaceship Earth, while insuring the indefinite functioning of all Spaceship Earth ecosystems.

Necessary moral and ethical requirements and constraints could be programmed in the Magnum Management System that Earthian humans at the top would be obliged to obey. If changes should be made in the moral and ethical codes in the overall program they would be sent back to the Earthian democracy chapters for discussion and then tabulated and analyzed before algorithms programmed in the system would create changes in the magnum operating system.  

This computerized management system would require a strict system of security controls like the current codes of nations possessing nuclear weapons, hopefully providing security several magnitudes more secure than current nuclear codes, to make sure a madman could not get in control of any aspect of the system

A management system such as this would significantly improve previous systems used around Spaceship Earth that have historically empowered fickle, egotistical, greedy, power mad, grandiose, poorly educated, not-very-bright individual Earthian humans to make existential decisions affecting the OKness of thousands, millions, and billions of humans around Earth, that have been used over and over again for millennia, resulting in incredible losses and suffering at various moments of history caused by the unfair and indiscriminate inexorable tunneling out of bad, ok, or good luck for hundreds, thousands, millions, or billons of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, resulting from the cosmic evolution commencing with a big bang some fourteen billion years ago. Humans thus far in Earthian human history have not been caused to develop knowledge and decisions that prevents them from empowering greedy, selfish, power mad, narcissistic, not very bright leaders in their largest management systems over and over again.

A tough lesson for Earthian humans to accept propositioned in Effective Learning Publications books is that everything that happens in human states of affairs is either predetermined or accidental and therefore individuals are not to blame or praise for what happens in human states of affairs. This is easier to swallow after accepting that believing and acting otherwise will support and perpetuate the I’m OK—You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled, sabotaged, and undermined Earthian humans since time immemorial, causing wars and other disasters.

The best way significant numbers of Earthian humans can be caused to be significantly changed psychologically and socially by others is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical, analogical arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs over a relatively long period of time. Yet, this rarely happens.

What is considered natural, unnatural; normal, abnormal; right, wrong; ethical, unethical; righteous, sinful; worthy, unworthy; or sane or insane by a particular Earthian human is caused by information lodged in her/his brain caused to be lodged there by the concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains causing her/him to exist and slowly inch through the Earthian worm hole of existence inexorably tunneled out for her or him by her/his specific unbroken infinitely-regressing cause-effect chains inexorably-progressing throughout his/her infinitesimally short cosmic life, regardless of how bad, ok, or good that luck or fate might be as judged by any Earthian human; and all Earthian humans must keep on inching forward in their worm holes as best they can dealing with inevitable problems and opportunities caused to exist at stages in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen externally and in their subconscious and conscious minds, however bad, ok, or good their inherited luck might have absolutely been, which cannot be proved, however easy it might be to relatively estimate.

Changing the life scripts of Earthian humans for the better requires changing the course of unique tunnels of existence in which individual humans accidentally and inevitably live, a tall order indeed. Some biological constructivists would consider this notion a pipedream, while considering the whole process a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space.

What is God? Whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis  to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds

Read  “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,”  for some management science ideas on how Earthian humans might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. 

Read As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

This novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction if widely implemented that requires participants in a seminar to speak up when randomly selected by a Truther rooster positioned in the center of a randomly-selected group of forty humans sitting in a circle.

The Truther rooster resembles a spinning weather vane. The rooster is programmed to bob its head up and down and crow after being twirled by a randomly-selected seminar participant, as it spins round and round winding down, letting group members know it’s time to wake up and get to work, before it’s too late. When the Truther rooster stops spinning whoever is at the end of a line of imaginary fire extending from the rooster’s beak to her or him sitting in the circle is automatically selected as the Leader of the Moment for the group.

The Leader of the Moment then leads the group into a democratic discussion of what s/he considers the most serious existential problem around Spaceship Earth.  Forty participants from all walks of life were paid $5000 monthly for participating in weekend seminars conducted in central city hotels in various cities randomly selected around the US. If randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment the participant would define what s/he thought was the most important problem facing Spaceship Earth, present alternatives, and make a recommendation for change. What s/he said was discussed by members of the group on a free-flow first come-first serve basis. It was against the law of the seminar to interrupt speakers or raise hands to get permission to speak. Discussions lasted until they ran out of steam. The results of the discussions were published to wealthy donors who financed the process.

Rout Logger was convinced most Earthian humans would not volunteer to participate in this sort of seminar to merely help save Spaceship Earth from GWCC and/or MNWP using their Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child Ego States, given the reality that their life time and energy was already programmed and consumed with various forms of withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, psychological games, activities, and intimacy in their unique tunnels of reality, as they acted out their inherited life scripts; so they were paid $5000 per month to participate in a game-free, Adult-Adult democratic seminar that would require them to honestly discuss existential problems with forty other participants from disparate walks of life, if they were randomly selected by the spinning Truther Rooster as the Leader of the Moment.

Achieving Earthian human sustainability entails such things as Earthian humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births) the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, assuming sufficient quantities of non-human clean energy can be discovered and developed using mind grants.

This general algorithmic matrix algebra form can help bring this state of affairs about,

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi,

explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” .

This mathematical formulation could help develop power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation, Max CjXj, subject to, AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi, is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses.

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as Albert Einstein’s formulation E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species the power to exterminate itself.

Riding aboard an airliner about to land at night traveling at four hundred miles an hour at thirty-five thousand feet with clouds, rain, wind, and lightning below, what would you rather have figuring out the path, speed, and angle of descent of the aircraft for touch-down, the plane’s auto-pilot, radar, and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows below but clouds and lightning?

The main reason why delegating the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI programs and magnum computers would be a good idea is that magnum computers and algorithmic AI programs do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological GAMES. Thus far in Earthian human history most leaders and rulers atop large organizations such as nations have become corrupt one way or another playing psychological GAMES, acting out selfish greedy ego trips, hogging all the power, money, strokes, stimulation, and recognition they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, leaving the hindmost to their underlings. Whatever their limitations and possible threats, algorithmic computer programs and super computers are not egotistical, greedy, and power-hungry.

Thanks to Buckminster Fuller for providing the above airplane-landing metaphor in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, first published in 1969, and for planting seeds for other ideas in the essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” published in the Effective Learning Report, such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. He was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

Many Earthian humans like to win BALANCE SHEET psychological GAMES, to feel superior and lord it over others, regardless if Spaceship Earth is going to hell in a handbasket around them because of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), regardless of how much they have failed in other areas of their lives, and regardless of how heinous were crimes and misdemeanors they may have gotten away with in the process of amassing their riches, since they were saved, as it were, by taking in and controlling more almighty monetary units than other lesser mortals.

If you want to learn more about transactional analysis, such as Ego States, Scripts, and psychological GAMES, read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.

Most Earthian humans know what it is to be egotistical, but they have little understanding of how specific human egotistical manifestations, such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, can be used to control and manipulate human behavior for nefarious ends.

For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems read free the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty .

4 — A GAME-FREE CASE METHOD I’M OK—YOU’RE OK DEMOCRATIC TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT COULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER™. The psychological GAME roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-Gaming rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana– Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department of the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened Game-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 2001, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (March 2, 2024) been cited as a reference in 90 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 15 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used by educators.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,”

Feel free to share this journal any way you see fit.

By Richard John Stapleton

The title of this article came to me as I was pondering some recent experiences. I thought it had an allegorical ring to it, so I posted it standing alone as a comment on my Facebook page. But after giving it more thought I decided it was absurd standing alone so I trashed it. But waking up today I decided it did make a little sense so I re-posted it with the following attached.

At age 83 I have been having arthritic-like pain with my bones and joints, especially in my left knee. I had knee problems playing football in high school. Had to wear braces on both knees on the football field my senior year in high school.

A friend who had undergone some physical therapy for knee problems told me recently about a technique for standing up she had learned in her process of treatment. I have been using it for a few weeks and by golly it worked. The pain in my left knee has about gone away. All you have to do to strengthen your knees when you get up and out of a chair is put your knees together, clasp your hands together, hold your arms out and up, and stand up straight.

To maximize the benefits of the process you also need to do this when you sit down in the first place. It’s not easy but it strengthens muscles and ligaments above and below your knees, in my case lowering and lifting about 180 pounds of weight (210 pounds total weight minus approximately 30 pounds in my legs doing the lifting) maybe half the times I stand up or sit down in the house (it would look a little strange doing this out in public but it could be done there).

As to the walking in a straight line phrase in the above utterance, since my left leg, the leg with the worst knee, is 5/8 of an inch longer than the right one, I have always had a tendency to walk in curved lines. Because of muscle and ligament realignment caused by my new way of lowering and lifting myself in and up and out of chairs it’s now easier to walk in a straight line.

On the other hand, the above utterance is not as absurd for all Earthian humans as it might seem, being somewhat metaphorical, since it generally behooves everyone to walk in a straight line achieving goals and getting things done, not getting distracted by irrelevancies causing you to walk around in circles, getting nowhere.

And one thing most older people need to do to maximize their chances of living as long as they might is to lift themselves up and out of chairs and walk anywhere, not only to slow the degeneration of their muscles, ligaments, and joints, but improve their blood circulation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a democratic discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-Gaming rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana– Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department of the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened Game-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 2001, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 14, 2024) been cited as a reference in 90 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 16 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,”

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

By William John Cox

If the State of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people is justified by the Holy Bible, their story begins with the migration of the family of Abraham from Ur (Iraq) and his obeisance to King Melchizedek, the “Priest of the God Most High,” at Jerusalem. According to Genesis (18:19), Abraham and “his children and his household after him” were commanded by GOD to “keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice.” As the covenant of Abraham to peacefully share Israel-Palestine is organic to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who are the legitimate heirs of the land?

There is little archeological confirmation of the expansive realms of Kings David and Solomon described in the Bible; however, there are extensive ruins of the contemporary northern Kingdom of Israel. Following the conquest of this biblically “sinful” kingdom by the Assyrians around 720 BCE, the northern “ten tribes of Israel” were not “lost,” but their leaders and chariot warriors were deported to northern Iraq. Ninety percent of the population remained, with some migrating to the area of Jerusalem, where their separate religious books were combined.

Although the southern Kingdom of Judah never extended much beyond the city-state of Jerusalem, its walls and temple were destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, who removed its leadership. During their exile, a scholarly sect of rabbis (masters of the law) began to teach an “Oral” Torah. When the Persians (Iranians) conquered Babylon (Iraq) in 539 BCE, King Cyrus freed the Judahite captives, allowed them to return to Jerusalem, and helped them to rebuild their temple.

During the following centuries, the descendants of Israel in the north and Judah in the south continued to populate the land throughout its conquest in 329 BCE by Alexander the Great, and its subsequent rule by the Greeks. The religious leaders of the priestly Sadducees supported Hellenization, and later, the Pharisaic rabbis collaborated with the Romans, who defeated the briefly independent, indigenous Hasmonaean Kingdom in 63 BCE and
subjugated the inhabitants of the province the Romans labelled Syria Palaestina.

The poor people of the land continued to follow the ancient Abrahamic religion, and increasingly they were led by the Essenes (Osim, or “Doers of the Law”) who documented the Way of Righteousness and whose library at Qumran included the Dead Sea Scrolls. They established an alternative priesthood and provided the priestly “Sons of Light” leadership of the Zealots who rebelled against Roman domination.

With the Roman defeat of the Zealot revolution in 74 CE and the destruction of Jerusalem, the youth of the land were transported into slavery. The Sadducees and Levite priesthood disappeared from history; however, the rabbis of the sect of Pharisees continued to cooperate with the Romans and relocated their academy to a coastal village. Expanding their Oral Torah, the Pharisees evolved into rabbinic Judaism, with their descendants in the Diaspora becoming the Jews of today.

The people who remained in the land continued to endure the rule of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, when most were converted to the Abrahamic religion of Islam. Generally, as “People of the Book,” the status of Rabbinic Judaism improved within the Islamic Empire, while the Jews in Europe suffered
discrimination under the Holy Roman Empire and other Christian governments that falsely accused them of murdering Jesus Christ.

Following the deadliest of the Jewish persecutions–the Nazi genocide of European Jewry known as The Holocaust–the survivors and members of the Zionist movement revolted against England’s Mandate for Palestine and established the State of Israel in 1948 as a homeland for the Jewish people. The victors violently expelled hundreds of thousands of the resident Palestinian descendants of ancient Israelites and Judahites from the land.

At the same time, a legal “right of return” and automatic Israeli citizenship was provided to all Rabbinic Jews, worldwide, including the Sephardic Jews from areas once occupied by the Islamic Empire and the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe.

Modern genetic testing establishes that Israeli Jews and Palestinian men descended from the same parental ancestors who resided in the land 2,000 years ago. Ostensibly, Orthodox Judaism (and the state) only recognizes matrilineal descent; however, 8 percent of the mitochondrial DNA maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews are traced to mothers of European descent.

Today, the only realistic difference between the two groups of Abrahamic descendants residing in the land is their relative military power to violently achieve and maintain religious, political, and social dominance–all in defiance of the original commandment to peacefully coexist with righteousness and justice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William John Cox is an America public-interest lawyer who represented an Auschwitz Survivor and prosecuted “The Holocaust Case” in 1981 against the radical organizations that denied the Nazi genocide, contracted for the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls in 1991 on behalf of a still-secret client, and authored The Way of Righteousness: A Revealing History and Reconciliation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For more on William John Cox go here.

The Forty-Second Issue of a Management Systems Journal Concerned About Existential Earthian Human States of Affairs, December 1, 2023, Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, Copyright 2023, All Rights Reserved

ASK MORE WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR ALL EARTHIANS—TO REDUCE THE PROBABILITY OF EXTINCTIONS—CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE (GWCC) AND/OR MILITARIZATION AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION (MNWP)

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

1 — PERSPECTIVE OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM.

2 — RECENT EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS

3 — TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

4 — A GAME-FREE CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT WOULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

AN EARTHIAN ELDER SPEAKS

“So, I guess what I’m saying is that, as we can establish that the earth is a sphere, and thus finite, then growth in your population and artifacts must have limits. And, your lack of a social-economic system to recognize those limits is leading us all to diaster.”

See and read more about KOKO, the gorilla who knew over 1,000 words.

1 — OPINION OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Earthian humans are enthralled, manipulated, and in various degrees controlled by their leaders in some two hundred countries aboard Spaceship Earth. Leaders became leaders because of being caused to be leaders by concatenations of unbroken cause-effect chains resulting after our universe started evolving some thirteen billion years ago in the infinity of time and space.

Leaders are generally products of the same sorts of differentiated configurations of cause-effect chains as differentiated followers and members in differentiated countries. All Earthian humans are doing what they were caused to do in their daily lives starting at birth.

Earth as a planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and has undergone innumerable transformations in the meantime. Humanoid creatures have been aboard Spaceship Earth for some two million years, and they too have undergone numerous evolutionary changes, as have other Earthian species.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have now reached a precarious and dangerous stage in their evolution as biological creatures. After slowly evolving more and more accurate, complex, and powerful understandings, technologies, and ways of life for two million years on Earth, during the last two hundred years Earthian humans evolved new technological devices at exponential rates that enabled them to increase the overly-fecund human population of Earth so much that they now threaten not only to destroy their own existence as a species aboard Spaceship Earth but also the existence of most other species alive on Earth.

Keeping eight or so billion humans alive on Earth has required so many goods and services to be produced to satisfy human biological and psychological needs and wants and so much carbon-based fuel to be burned to produce the goods that the climate of Spaceship Earth has been altered by carbon dioxide gas released into the Earthian atmosphere in large-enough quantities to cause extra heat to be trapped on Earth causing the mean Earthian temperature to increase at a yearly rate that threatens to destroy Earthian human life as it now exists, within centuries, if not decades.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have also developed technological knowledge that has enabled them to produce over 10,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy human life if dropped and detonated around Earth, as they have the capability to do.

2 — RECENT EARTHIAN EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS    

October 19, 2012

ON WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” — Holy Bible, New International Version

Seems prophetic alright, but it also normalizes war, and hopelessness, except for the “saved”. Saved from what, the eternal fires of a vengeful god? What greater torture could there be than that, created by a supposedly loving god. It’s bad enough to be bombed and tortured in wars by deranged not very bright sadistic Earthian humans, but getting punished and tortured eternally by a god for not keeping a “faith” is off the charts for cruelty and callousness. — RJS

November 21

“WERE THE BIBLICAL PROPHETS ANTI-SEMITIC,” BY MICHAEL HUDSON, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG.

Michael Hudson, the greatest economic historian alive, ties it all together in this article, the most relevant and illuminating article I have read in a good while. It’s a should-read for all Earthian humans. Seems to me there was not an old man up there in the sky with a long white beard wearing a long white robe on a white puffy cloud with a walking stick in his hand telling Jewish prophets what to do about economic policy: It was some highly intelligent Earthian humans called prophets considering rationality itself (truth, justice, mercy, love, etc.) God. — RJS

July 29

“THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD,” BY PAUL STREET, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Grieve this doesn’t happen. –– RJS

October 19

ISRAEL IS COMMITTING AN EPIC WAR CRIME WITH US BACK AND US ARMS, BY DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe — RJS

October 14

“THE WAR IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON,” BY ADMINISTRATOR, THE BURNING PLATFORM

This article is too cynical perhaps but it contains more than a grain of truth.

Here is what a renowned USian diplomat and historian had to say about the problem:— RJS

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), quote published in Foreword to ‘The Pathology of Power’” by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century’s Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2), Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118. Read more at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

October 14

FREE PALESTINE, BY AMEL MENJOUR, FACEBOOK

Why not just create a new name for the place, like the United States of Western Asia, or some such, perhaps something like the United State of Judah, Palestine, Israel, and Edum, giving all inhabitants equal rights of citizenship, with no mention of religion in a new constitution, save perhaps one sentence stating the United State of Judah, Israel, Palestine, and Edum shall pass no laws respecting the efficacy or irrelevance of religion, like the United States of America did in its constitution, the bravest and best thing the USian founders did. — RJS

October 36

DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST?, (W/MIKO PELED), YOUTUBE.COM

Here is the best video I have watched and listened to on the problem in Israel/Palestine. Well worth a look and listen.— RJS

October 25

“THE GREEN IS THE ARAB WORLD. THAT TINY SPECK IS ISRAEL,” BY ELISHEVA NEUMAN, FACEBOOK

The land of Israel has been populated by the Jewish people since 2000 BC. Here’s the timeline, in case you didn’t realize that it is their homeland.

1900 BC: Abraham chosen by God as the Father of the Jewish Nation.

1900 BC: Isaac, Abraham’s son, rules over Israel.

1850 BC: Jacob, son of Issac, rules over Israel.

1400 BC: Moses leads the people out of Egypt and back to Israel.

1010 BC: King David unites the 12 tribes into one nation.

970 BC: King Solomon, son of David, builds the first temple structure in Jerusalem

930 BC: Israel is divided into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.

800s BC: The rise of the prophets, God’s messengers.

722 BC: Kingdom of Israel is conquered by Assyrians.

605 BC: Kingdom Judah is conquered by the Babylonians.

586 BC: Solomon’s Temple is destroyed by the Babylonians.

539 BC: Persians conquer the Babylonians and take control of Israel.

538 BC: The Jews return to Israel from exile.

520 BC: The Temple is rebuilt.

450 BC: Reforms made by Ezra and Nehemiah.

433 BC: Malachi is the end of the prophetic age.

432 BC: The last group of Jews return from exile.

333 BC: The Greeks conquer the Persian empire.

323 BC: The Egyptian and Syrian empire take over Israel.

167 BC: Hasmonean’s recapture Israel, and the Jews are ruled independently.

70 BC: Romans conquer Israel.

20 BC: King Herod builds the “second” temple

6 BC: Yeshua is born in Bethlehem

70 AD: Romans destroy the temple

After that, the people were captives to the Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Crusaders. Through all of these events, the Jewish people continued to live in Israel. There were more or less of them, depending on the centuries, but there was never a time when the Jews didn’t live in the land. They stayed, they built their communities, they raised their families, practiced their faith and they suffered at the hands of many outside rulers, but they always kept their faith. It is what sustains them, even now.

In 1948, the UN established the State of Israel, the nation of Jews. Don’t listen to the Palestinian lies that they are entitled to the land. It simply is not true. God will also provide a way for his chosen people to live in Israel, as He has for thousands of years. Pray for the people of Israel. — copied by Elisheva Neuman

Very sad. Map makes the stark reality of the problem clear. Why would anyone have wanted in 1948 to put a state like Israel in this situation in the first place? Included in the comments below is an excellent utube video containing a refreshing answer. Well worth a look and listen. — RJS

Shows ya competent Arabs are — SB

In my fantasy novel, the dragons and witches promised that land to me! — MR

I’m an Atheist so I’m not buying any of that right to ownership crap. Israel can have their land. However, the Palestinian people also deserve to have their land with their own government and not continue to live in an apartheid state. And yes, Hamas should be destroyed. — PB

Can you show in scripture where Israel is mentioned and where exactly on that map is Palestine? — DS

As you know, Richard, this is a myth-filled fake history, until it gets to 1948, and even there he falsifies the one solidly accurate sentence with fundamentalist prophecy. — PG

The land of Israel, is a greater land mass now, than during the time it had two states (Israel and Judea). There were many of other groups residing in Palestine. Elisheva Neuman, Do you live in Israel? If not would you like it if someone tried to expel you from your home? — CS

I see a lot of Zionist live out of Israel. So how do they justify their rights to ownership in a foreign land? When you consider that you may then have sympathetic understanding of the Palestinians plight. We need to dismantle borders. — CS

Israel including the USA makes a difference – GC

The Bible is made up bullshit. — TS

The Zionists and Hebrews have been manipulating the Bible in their favor. Israel is the barren fig tree, the modern Pharisees. Israel is so racist, that they killed Jesus because He wasn’t from David’s house. — MR

The only problem is, it’s presenting mythology as fact and then using that to justify genocide…otherwise yeah sure, spot on. — JS

Why do you think that these people of today are the same as two thousand years ago? And why don’t you understand that when Jesus came the covenant changed? — JK

Get rid of religion and treat everyone as an equal

It’s not hard

Both think they are superior to the other because of religion — MJ

Though I sympathize with the people of Israel this argument is faulty for if man gave back the land to its ancestral beginnings then dismantle America, England Europe and so many other countries. Why would Israel be the only country restored to its ancestral lands. The only argument I can see is why not let them both learn to share a small slither of earth and have other countries stay out of the affairs the region. Stop the racism and apartheid. Both nations need leaders that want to get along and live in peace versus destroy one another and get the world out of your nation. They are both being used by other nations for their own political financial agenda that doesn’t seem to benefit either group who live in the region. Overly simplistic answers to a complicated problem or is our only solution when we don’t like one another is to destroy the other. If so then man still lives in caves and progress is just a dressing. We are not ready for the stars because we can’t solve our oldest problems. — HP

The god stuff is Made up nonsense. The land is land. It’s not holy and it’s not worth losing one life over — MS

We are all inhabitants, temporarily placed here to know ourselves and learn how to get along with each other… all places are good for all of us… humankind has been on this earth for millennia. there is a real purpose for our temporary life on this Earth…which we still need to understand so we move forward, instead of keep coming back to make the same mistakes. — AA

A bunch of Eastern European Slavs and Western Jews who had never set foot on this Unholy Land, nor their ancestors for over 2,000 years, are suddenly, by Biblical fiat, entitled to displace its residents and apartheid these untermensch, this life unworthy of life, into Warsaw-like ghettos to be treated like animals? — CJ

Doesn’t that prove Jews can live in peace with Arab Muslims, and it’s the Zionists who are the problem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIX368TtOJs… — TD

Exactly! It’s really just geopolitical. — SC

Palestinians are Semitic peoples — AO

Maybe this video will help set the matter straight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M0mYzD8ZY — RJS

The territory of Palestine is one of the most strategically located parts of the planet, flanking the Suez Canal which is vital to the world economy. Having a Western style nation in control of it is advantageous to US Imperialism. — DK

DK, wise fellow. — EC

DK, good point. Sad but true — RJS

November 14

THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION FOR PALESTINE HAS LONG BEEN A “JOKE” EVEN IN UNITED NATIONS CIRCLES,” BY PETER BOLTON, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Here is my take on the situation.

All the US needs now is another costly war in Western Asia. Europeans, Zionists, and USians have made a hell of a mess of the situation in Palestine for over seventy-five years, having done seven or so times as much damage to Palestinians as Palestinians have done unto them. Zionists and their supporters have projected onto the Palestinians what they have done unto the Palestinians: destroying their existence as a state, stealing more and more Palestinian land and property, having by now reduced Palestinian territory to two small apartheid slivers of its original size before 1948, concentration camps for surviving Palestinians, having hypocritically used the Jewish religion and the German Jewish holocaust as an excuse for their colonial-settler crimes. End this barbaric merciless cruelty and callousness. Cease firing and bombing now! Both sides! Change the name of the state now called Israel to something acceptable to all inhabitants within its borders. Write a new constitution providing equal rights for all inhabitants, including a sentence in the new constitution stating the state shall pass no laws respecting the efficacy or irrelevance of religion, one of the things USians did right in their constitution. This would cure the overall problem in Israel/Palestine, if anything would, as screwed-up as Earthian human states of affairs are now in general. — RJS

November 13

BIDEN VISITS HITLER’S BUNKER, SENDS FOR A DECORATOR: ISRAEL AND UKRAINE EDITION, BY ROB URIE, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe

November 2

NO LONGER A DEMOCRAT, BY L. MICHAEL HAGER, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe

November 2. 

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A “JUST WAR”?, BY ALFRED DE ZAYAS, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

More on war than most Earthian humans want to know — RJS

“What we know of history is mostly a form of literature akin to politicized fiction. Histories are written to legitimize the authority of the powerful, to justify the result of the wars and apportion blame as necessary for the desired political narrative. The ideal of history-writing proposed by the 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, according to whom a historian should “simply” write history “wie es eigentlich gewesen” – how it actually happened – is not that simple, and has never been achieved.” — Alfred de Zayas

November 17

THE REPUBLI-FASCIST SPECTER LOOMS, BY PAUL STREET, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

“Those Who Call Us Fascists Will Have Their Sad, Miserable Existence Crushed!” — DJT

Well, I guess I am crushed because I have said quite a few times lately I think Trump is a fascist. I am not so sure about his base. I think most of them just don’t know what they are doing. I think what is happening now in the US is similar to what has happened over and over in Earthian human history: a have-less class of people accumulate enough hatred for a have-more class that they become willing to commit crimes under an irrational dictator to take what they think they deserve from the targeted have-more class using violent physical force. In the case of the US now the have-more class is a relatively well-educated group that has more economic security and prestige than the have-less class. Seems to me the same sort of thing happened in situations that empowered Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Hutu Power and other Earthian dictatorships that caused millions of deaths and massive suffering. Whether the have-less class and their leaders call themselves fascists, communists, socialists, democratic socialists, christians, magas, nationalists, or anything else is irrelevant. Rationality is irrelevant in these situations. The only thing that counts in the end with the have-lesses in these situations is their exaggerated hatred of the scapegoated have-mores that gives them permission to do anything they can to take what they think they deserve by violent brute force. Seems to me this process is now going on to some degree in several Earthian countries. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. — RJS

He is so scary! — S McW

November 27

THE LIFE AND PUBLIC ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY BY THE CIA, BY EDWARD CURTIN, OFF-GUARDIAN.ORG

You can build a case this assassination started the downward spiral of the US into what it has become today, an economy and society dependent on its military expenditures for its economic functioning. On the other hand, you can build a case this process got started during WWII when it became obvious military spending can get a country out of a great depression, causing the USian deep state to decide to perpetuate a war-machine system after winning WWII, the excuse at the time being it had to be done to fight communism. Well, after defeating Russian communism in the cold war in 1989, the military economy was perpetuated using Bush II’s War on Terror after 9/11. Both the Ukrainian and the Israeli/Palestine Wars have done a good job keeping a new cold war and cash flows flowing for the USian military-industrial-intelligence-banking-media economy.

Of course, there is no proof that the CIA was responsible for the JFK assassination. How could such a thing ever be proved to all Earthian humans? Nothing can be proved to all Earthian humans given the way their beliefs are caused to exist in all their learning processes and systems.

Up to now the USian military has not supported Trump in his efforts to turn the US into a full-fledged military dictatorship, thanks to General Milley’s handling of Trump during Trump’s January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt. But if Trump should be elected again in 2024 it’s possible a new insurrection attempt could work if Trump increases his power more and more by hiring and appointing more and more obsequious bootlicking USians to high offices who would follow his orders to destroy USian democracy in another insurrection. — RJS

October 14

“THE WAR IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON…,”  BY TYLER DURDEN, ZEROHEDGE.COM

This article is too cynical perhaps but it contains more than a grain of truth.

Here is what a renowned USian diplomat and historian had to say about the general problem: — RJS

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), quote published in Foreword to ‘The Pathology of Power’” by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century’s Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2), Part II: –Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118. Read more at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

August 21

MY YEAR TEACHING ON USAF NATO BASES, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT

I took Army ROTC for one year at Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist college with about 1,700 students, at Abilene, Texas in 1958-59 as a freshman on a basketball scholarship. ROTC was required for two years for all males at Hardin-Simmons. I basically detested it, thinking marching, saluting, presenting arms, shining brass, etc. was the dumbest thing I ever did. I got out of the second year of required ROTC after finding out I could never be commissioned as an officer in the military because of a spinal fusion back surgery I had when I was a sophomore in high school. All I had to do was show a medical doctor in Abilene the ten-inch scar running up my back and have him sign a form affirming he had seen it. I was called up for the USian draft in 1962 and was required to take a standard Army physical at Amarillo, Texas. As I stood in line naked with other potential draftees during the physical a medical doctor took one look at the scar and told me, “I’m sorry but you are permanently disqualified from military service.”

I thus never had to worry about getting drafted and sent to Vietnam to get my ass shot off, as a lot of not-yet-drafted young males in the States used to say back in those days. I would have volunteered to help defend the US in a war from a serious enemy threatening to invade the US. I am not sure there have been any since the War of 1812. — RJS

September 27

WHAT WOULD REAL “NATIONAL DEFENSE” LOOK LIKE? BY WILLIAM ASTORE, COUNTERUNCH.ORG

Interesting article, but I agree with the writers of the constitution that the commander in chief should be a civilian. We need politicians with these values to build a military to support them.

I’ve often wondered if professionalizing the military by eliminating the draft was a mistake. — PEZ

September 15

I WATCHED A DEMOCRACY DIE. I DON’T WANT TO DO IT AGAIN, BY ARIEL DORFMAN, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it cant happen here Joe

November 16

WAR IS A RACKET, BY NOT ME US, FACEBOOK

I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to a major general. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer. — Smedley Butler, Two Time Medal of Honor Recipient

November 27

SEEMS TO ME MOST USIANS ARE LIKE SITTING DUCKS FACED WITH A POSSIBLE TRUMPIST DISASTER IN 2024, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, FACEBOOK

Bidenism is old and outdated. Seems to me what is needed is younger new blood in a Dem, Independent, Green ticket comprising a combination of Newsome, West, RJK Jr., Harris, or Warren, to reduce the probability of the Trumpist threat to USian democracy. — RJS

You gotta be kidding!!! — VBC

I’m no expert on these matters but it seems like a good idea to me. All USians are entitled to express their opinions about these matters as of now. — RJS

Rick you are so right. Many have given the ultimate price to give us the freedom of speech and opinion. —VBC

Biden is nothing more than Trump in blue drag. — ML

November 8

EARTHIAN EMPOWERMENT SYSTEMS, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, EFFECTIVE LEARNNG REPORT

There may be hundreds of dead planets in our Universe that were once inhabited by human-like creatures that lived, learned, and evolved on their planets in learning processes resembling the learning processes of Earthian humans, who through eons on their planets learned how to develop lethal weapons like Earthian nuclear bombs and complex industrial processes requiring burning fossil fuel who became extinct because of what they were caused to learn and develop through natural evolutionary cause-effect chains.

The same sort of thing could happen to Earthian humans if they do not quickly in cosmic time learn how to satisfy their biological, psychological, social, economic, and political needs in significantly improved social, psychological, economic, political, and military systems that do not require or entail the burning of carbon-based fuel or the decision-making of ordinary and sometimes demented Earthian humans in fascist organizations.

Up to now, overthrowing existing economic, social, and political orders with new economic, social, and political orders in violent revolutions or wars has not been not a good idea. Existing dysfunctional orders were torn down or disintegrated and were replaced by new dysfunctional orders. — RJS

November 22

REAL WINNERS ARE RARE FROM 80 ON, MOSTLY HAS-BEENS WITH GOOD LEGACIES OR LOTS OF MONEY, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, FACEBOOK

I’m recently 40…any advice? — JM

Assign the best probabilities you can to the possibilities confronting you and choose the best one. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid risk. — RJS

Somewhat agree but many people would feel like a winner making it to 80 even as a has-been or having a lot of money. The rest definitely did not win and most have difficult lives. I think the key is for one to be thankful for what they have or had and be very tough to grow old. Hope you are doing well Dr. Stapleton. — AO

Thanks, Andy. Well said. I’m doing ok I guess. A wellness nurse asked me recently doing a Medicare checkup, “How much pain do you feel on a scale of 0-10?” I told her probably about a 2.  So far no life-threatening maladies. I’m probably one of the lucky ones. Cheers. —  RJS

3 — TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as described and recommended in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases might develop consensual answers regarding existential matters from the bottom up that might help save Spaceship Earth. These ideas would filter up to randomly-selected humans who would count the consensual answers to make necessary changes. Consensual tactics, strategies, and policies would then be developed around Earth for dealing with the computerized Spaceship Earth management system, operated and controlled using artificial intelligence programming and supercomputers.

Randomly-selected groups of Earthian humans of high intelligence with impeccable moral and ethical character and credentials would control codes for changing the Earthian Magnum Computer System programming to implement bottom-up recommendations of millions of members in discussions in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth. Each member of the group in charge of the codes for the magnum computer system would serve limited terms. These members would not vote or decide what to do. They would see to it that the computer system implemented the consensual answers of millions of Earthian humans from all walks of life, as determined by honest, free, fair, and frank democratic GAME-free discussions in democracy chapters all around Spaceship Earth, as explained and shown in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. The overall objective would be to manage the system in such a way as to maximize the lifetime satisfactions of all Earthian humans, as well as all other species of life aboard Spaceship Earth, while insuring the indefinite functioning of all Spaceship Earth ecosystems.

Necessary moral and ethical requirements and constraints could be programmed in the Magnum Management System that Earthian humans at the top would be obliged to obey. If changes should be made in the moral and ethical codes in the overall program they would be sent back to the Earthian democracy chapters for discussion and then tabulated and analyzed before algorithms programmed in the system would create changes in the magnum operating system.  

This computerized management system would require a strict system of security controls like the current codes of nations possessing nuclear weapons, hopefully providing security several magnitudes more secure than current nuclear codes, to make sure a madman could not get in control of any aspect of the system

A management system such as this would significantly improve previous management systems used around Spaceship Earth that have frequently empowered egotistical, greedy, power mad, grandiose, poorly educated, not-very-bright Earthian humans to make existential decisions affecting the OKness of thousands, millions, or billions of humans around Earth, that have been used over and over again for millennia, that caused incredible losses and suffering at various moments of Earthian history, that were basically caused by indiscriminate unbroken cause-effect chains inexorably tunneling out through time bad, ok, or good luck for Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, starting with the evolution of our universe some fourteen billion years ago.

A tough lesson for Earthian humans to accept propositioned in Effective Learning Publications books is that everything that happens in human states of affairs is either predetermined or accidental and therefore individuals are not to blame or praise for what happens in human states of affairs. This is easier to swallow after accepting that believing and acting otherwise will support and perpetuate the I’m OK—You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled, sabotaged, and undermined Earthian humans since time immemorial, causing wars and other disasters.

It follows that significant changes must be made in the way Earthian humans feel, think, and behave if the probability of human extinction is to be reduced..

Probably the best way significant numbers of Earthian humans can be caused to be significantly changed psychologically and socially by others is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, inductive, deductive, analogical, or whatever, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs over a relatively long period of time.

What is considered natural, unnatural; normal, abnormal; right, wrong; ethical, unethical; righteous, sinful; worthy, unworthy; or sane or insane by a particular Earthian human is caused by information lodged in her/his brain caused to be lodged there by the concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains causing her/him to exist and slowly inch through the Earthian worm hole of existence inexorably tunneled out for her or him by her/his specific unbroken infinitely-regressing cause-effect chains inexorably-progressing throughout his/her infinitesimally short cosmic life, regardless of how bad, ok, or good that luck or fate might be as judged by any Earthian human; and all Earthian humans must keep on inching forward in their worm holes as best they can dealing with inevitable problems and opportunities caused to exist at stages in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen externally and in their subconscious and conscious minds, however bad, ok, or good their inherited luck might have absolutely been, which cannot be proved, however easy it might be to relatively estimate.

Changing the life scripts of Earthian humans for the better requires changing the course of unique tunnels of existence in which individual humans accidentally and inevitably live, a tall order indeed. Some biological constructivists would consider this notion a pipedream, while considering the whole process of Earthian human evolution a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space.

What is God? Whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds

Read  “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” for some management science ideas on how Earthian humans might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK—You’re OK life position. 

Read As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

This novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction if widely implemented that requires participants in a seminar to speak up when randomly selected by a Truther rooster positioned in the center of a randomly-selected group of forty humans sitting in a circle.

The Truther rooster resembles a spinning weather vane. The rooster is programmed to bob its head up and down and crow after being twirled by a randomly-selected seminar participant, as it spins round and round winding down, letting group members know it’s time to wake up and get to work, before it’s too late. When the Truther rooster stops spinning whoever is at the end of a line of imaginary fire extending from the rooster’s beak to her or him sitting in the circle is automatically selected as the Leader of the Moment for the group.

The Leader of the Moment then leads the group into a democratic discussion of what s/he considers the most serious existential problem around Spaceship Earth.  Forty participants from all walks of life were paid $5000 monthly for participating in weekend seminars conducted in central city hotels in various cities randomly selected around the US. If randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment the participant would define what s/he thought was the most important problem facing Spaceship Earth, present alternatives, and make a recommendation for change. What s/he said was discussed by members of the group on a free-flow first come-first serve basis. It was against the law of the seminar to interrupt speakers or raise hands to get permission to speak. Discussions lasted until they ran out of steam. The results of the discussions were published to wealthy donors who financed the process.

Rout Logger was convinced most Earthian humans would not volunteer to participate in this sort of seminar to merely help save Spaceship Earth from GWCC and/or MNWP using their Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child Ego States, given the reality that their life time and energy was already programmed and consumed with various forms of withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, psychological games, activities, and intimacy in their unique tunnels of reality, as they acted out their inherited life scripts; so they were paid $5000 per month to participate in a game-free, Adult-Adult democratic seminar that would require them to honestly discuss existential problems with forty other participants from disparate walks of life, if they were randomly selected by the spinning Truther Rooster as the Leader of the Moment.

Achieving Earthian human sustainability entails such things as Earthian humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births) the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, assuming sufficient quantities of non-human clean energy can be discovered and developed using mind grants.

This general algorithmic matrix algebra form can help bring this state of affairs about,

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi,

explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” .

This mathematical formulation could help develop power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation, Max CjXj, subject to, AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi, is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses.

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as Albert Einstein’s formulation E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species the power to exterminate itself.

Riding aboard an airliner about to land at night traveling at four hundred miles an hour at thirty-five thousand feet with clouds, rain, wind, and lightning below, what would you rather have figuring out the path, speed, and angle of descent of the aircraft for touch-down, the plane’s auto-pilot, radar, and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows below but clouds and lightning?

The main reason why delegating the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI programs and magnum computers would be a good idea is that magnum computers and algorithmic AI programs do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological GAMES. Thus far in Earthian human history most leaders and rulers atop large organizations such as nations have become corrupt one way or another playing psychological GAMES, acting out selfish greedy ego trips, hogging all the power, money, strokes, stimulation, and recognition they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, leaving the hindmost to their underlings. Whatever their limitations and possible threats, algorithmic computer programs and super computers are not egotistical, greedy, and power-hungry.

Thanks to Buckminster Fuller for providing the above airplane-landing metaphor in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, first published in 1969, and for planting seeds for other ideas in the essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” published in the Effective Learning Report, such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. He was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

Many Earthian humans like to win BALANCE SHEET psychological GAMES, to feel superior and lord it over others, regardless if Spaceship Earth is going to hell in a handbasket around them because of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), regardless of how much they have failed in other areas of their lives, and regardless of how heinous were crimes and misdemeanors they may have gotten away with in the process of amassing their riches, since they were saved, as it were, by taking in and controlling more almighty monetary units than other lesser mortals.

If you want to learn more about transactional analysis, such as Ego States, Scripts, and psychological GAMES, read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.

Most Earthian humans know what it is to be egotistical, but they have little understanding of how specific human egotistical manifestations, such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, can be used to control and manipulate human behavior for nefarious ends.

For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems read free the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty .

4 — A GAME-FREE CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT WOULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER™. The psychological GAME roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Be it noted that Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-Gaming rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana– Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department of the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened Game-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 2001, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (November 24, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,”

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

 

 

By Richard John Stapleton

Don Trump has been warned by judges in his criminal trials that they may issue orders to have him gagged from making inflamatory statements that might intimidate witnesses in his trials. Here of late he has made some extreme public statements that could intimidate or threaten anyone having critical thinking ability. He has said in public if he is elected president again he would punish NBC and MSNBC for making treasonous statements about him, and he has also said recently that General Milley, the head of the joint chiefs of the Usian military, should be executed for treason.

“If you come after me, I will come after you.”

How could statements such as these threaten witnesses in his criminal trials? Well, they could intimidate any USian citizen who criticizes or decides against Trump, in any way, since if he were elected president again, even if found guilty in his criminal trials, he might still serve as president. He has already said “If you come after me, I will come after you.” That means using his street level crime boss words and grammar that he might track people down if he becomes president again to get even for their having done him harm in any way, which for sure would include judges, witnesses, and jury members in his criminal trials, or anyone who criticizes him in public media of any kind. Trump told us when he was USian president that he believed in

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

So far, no gag orders have been issued to Don Trump. Will there be? If they are issued, how will they be enforced? Will Trump be put in jail for contempt of court if he is gagged and continues to make intimidating and threatening statements in public?

I watched last night on MSNBC, after the first repugnant Repuglican primary debate, a group discussion in which six or so of MSNBC’s brightest and most astute analysts/commentators/discussion leaders compared their opinions about the debate. They agreed the candidates were loquacious babbling lightweights who were not presidential material, compared to average or above past USian presidents, and that, not that Trump is not a lightweight himself, Trump remains without question the leading Repug candidate in the primary race, even though he refused to participate in the debate, possibly even increasing his lead as the Repug front runner, by not being there.

“Most people are too moral to make any money.”

The MSNBC group also generally agreed about why the above is true. How can it be that Trump can be qualified to lead anything now that he is going to several trials for multiple crimes, and after a New York judge in a civil case recently ruled that he lied about billions of dollars on financial statements to get loans from banks and evade taxes, in a trial that could cause him to lose his holdings in NYC, including his penthouse atop his Trump Tower. How dumb it was of poor Don to blurt out in public after he decided to run for president in 2016 that “Most people are too moral to make any money.” He should have said most people are too moral to extort money from banks and evade taxes by lying about how rich or poor they are on financial statements.

This New York civil trial, his upcoming federal criminal trials, other litigated cases, and his actions in various and sundry public episodes show that Don Trump has a character disorder. That being the case, how is it possible that Trump might be elected president of the US again?

Well, sadly, the only answer is that millions of USian voters do not care if the president of the US is a character-disordered criminal. I reached this conclusion some time ago, and last night the MSNBC discussion group reached this conclusion in so many words, the first time I have seen, read, or heard in any mainstream medium anyone state such a conclusion. They agreed that large numbers of USian voters, perhaps forty percent, have given up on democracy, because of becoming aware that the quality of their USian life has relatively declined over several decades; and they have decided what they need is a “strongman” who will do anything, legally or illegally, to solve their problems. In other words, they want a fascist dictator, however mentally, emotionally, morally, and behaviorally deranged he might be, who will tell everyone what to do, rather than deal with the responsibility, complexities, frustrations, and uncertainties of free, fair, rational, open democratic policy-making, deciding, and doing.

Will Trump be put in jail before trial if he does not refrain from making intimidating and threatening statements in public? Probably not, if it appears to judges that doing so would cause him to ignite some of his gun-obsessed cult members in violent shooting nationwide.

It’s unbelievable that USians would now be faced with this fascist dilemma, but that’s where we’re at; and it will probably take over a year, until after the 2024 presidential election, to find out what will happen to the US because of Trumpism.

Here’s the dilemma in a nutshell: If you put him in jail for contempt of court some of his deranged followers might start shooting; if you let him run free he might take over the country and turn it into a fascist dictatorship.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER™. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER™ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMER™ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult—Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (August 27, 2023) been cited as a reference in 88 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including thirteen new citations since April 2021.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.  

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