THE EARTHIAN DIGEST, Number Thirty-Eight, February 23, 2023, Effective Learning Publications https://blog.effectivelearning.net/ , 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, Richard John Stapleton, Writer, Editor & Publisher, Copyright 2023, All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
Current Earthian Human Existential States of Affairs
Observations of a Hypothetical Exonexus Observer From Beyond the Earthian Solar System
Co-Constructing a Sustainable Long Run Earthian Economic System
Democratic Earthian Game-Free Case Method Teaching and Learning
ASK MORE WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR ALL EARTHIAN HUMANS–TO MINIMIZE THE PROBABILITY OF EARTHIAN HUMAN EXTINCTION–CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE (GWCC) AND/OR MILITARIZATION AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION (MNWP)
FOLLOWING IS THE MOST PRESSING PART OF THE EARTHIAN, A COLLECTION OF RECENT FACT-BASED INTERNET POSTS BY TRUTH-TELLING WRITERS AND ARTISTS AROUND SPACESHIP EARTH, FEELING, THINKING, WRITING, AND CREATING USING ALL EGO STATES.
CURRENT EARTHIAN EXISTENTIAL STATES OF AFFAIRS
February 23, 2023
Let us grieve this does not happen
“War in Ukraine and ICBMs: The Untold Story of How They Could Blow Up the World,” by Norman Solomon, COUNTE3RPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/23/war-in-ukraine-and-icbms-the-untold-story-of-how-they-could-blow-up-the-world/?fbclid=IwAR2daDB23TieLZ64AO8Htt8pMtBOy-BZG6Tt9LU2v2ClRe9YA6DI3Th5q4o.
February 23
Was there ever any doubt about what he did?
“Georgia Grand Jury Foreperson Implies Trump Will Face Charges for Raffensperger Call,” by Chris Walker, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/ga-grand-jury-foreperson-implies-trump-will-face-charges-for-raffensperger-call/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR3s4W3M37VikX_b17vhZ831x3pxxg3wFi76fGULgPnJy5bdkt_-AFjE36M.
February 23
Chomsky does have a way of getting to the bottom of things
“Chomsky: A Stronger NATO is the Last Thing We Need as Russia-Ukraine War Turns 1,’ by CJ. Polychroniou, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-a-stronger-nato-is-the-last-thing-we-need-as-russia-ukraine-war-turns-1/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR13G3MsSWyImnZpi-EEnxCW6C80bZZm6K8WWfaSUn8XpHS_oZ6DRDXDQHA.
February 23
Here’s another move in the global Cold War II forever wars chess Game the USian military is now playing on two fronts, against Russia and China, using Ukraine and Taiwan as pawns in the Game
“US To Quadruple Troop Presence in Taiwan, Simultaneously Ratchets Pressure Over China-Russia Ties,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-quadruple-troop-presence-taiwan-simultaneously-ratchets-pressure-over-china-russia?fbclid=IwAR0aQKWq3rENJXcZnGE-V67q2TzhzSe-HnmKSQ_VACD4K0lG6BTofjxOtRU.
February 23
Say it aint so Joe
“This ‘Strong’ Economy Is A Façade Built Out of Debt,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/strong-economy-facade-built-out-debt?fbclid=IwAR2sYcg7rLQU162aS46oWq-5Jwf5T0_CSMVu7kYjODhNsH69b6zwjkaDbCU.
February 23
What happens if the US cannot sell its Treasury bills and notes?
“Ugly, Tailing 7y Auction Prints At Highest Yield On Record,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ugly-tailing-7y-auction-prints-highest-yield-record?fbclid=IwAR0v7Ur0uGpYnfTLjyqz7IDpwmFl5SxMRIy0cEeSTxYnv0wETkoJ1MoFXa4.
February 23
What next?
“‘Lunatic’ Forewoman in Trump-Georgia Case Shocks Media With Overt Bias, Trump Lawyers Pounce,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lunatic-forewoman-trump-georgia-case-shocks-media-overt-bias-trump-lawyers-pounce?fbclid=IwAR1zRPottNQrVwyDpaeFx7yB0BoqDNDUKQW0TUymU7_lgZkod4vHkN20zv0.
February 23
Here’s some straight information on the LGBT question. There’s a very high probability LGBT Earthian humans are caused to be LGBT by natural genetic, psychological, and social cause-effect chains, that cannot be changed, and LGBTs should be protected by the same human rights laws as straight Earthian humans, who were caused to be straight by natural genetic, psychological, and social cause-effect chains.
“U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%,” by Jeffrey M. Jones, GALLUP POLL, https://news.gallup.com/poll/470708/lgbt-identification-steady.aspx?utm_source=facebookbutton&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=sharing&fbclid=IwAR26M_RUxgId5STZbhhPjKw6Lax5iQsvR8CB0NVteoeHBgPC_3mx_516-2U.
February 22
Goes without sayin’
“We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution,” by Carl Sagan, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=6093756760688117&set=a.1125362514194258.
February 21
The Repug controlled USian house shows its true colors, fascism. Unbelievable they would stoop this low. What do they think the USian military is, free enterprise or something? What do they think Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are? What do they think agricultural subsidies are? What do they think any subsidy or bail-out to any industry is? What do they think food stamps are? The US is and has been socialist in many ways for a long time. These Repug Earthian humans elected to the USian House are living in some sort of dream world and could care less what reality is. This resolution not only demeans USian allies it demeans all rational Earthian humans by insulting their intelligence.
“US Anti-Socialism Resolution Demeans US Allies,” by Edward Hunt, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/20/us-anti-socialism-resolution-demeans-us-allies/?fbclid=IwAR0Uz1TowbrV_MiUK8rHXd6pf9A_T9t8bhMlKiKT0FykEcVf8h4kLjPkNsc.
February 21
Biden looks more and more like a warmonger
“While We’re Laughing About a Balloon; Biden Paves a Path to War,” by Melissa Garriga, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/20/while-were-laughing-about-a-balloon-biden-paves-a-path-to-war/?fbclid=IwAR1giCQzxV_3y-_78j32hBrkw01DDj5RdLfDcC8t08Qp9rkp3Uo2Ghv7XMQ.
February 21
Functional family policies. Yes, that’s what Earthian humans need
“Humanity’s Secret War Against the Environment, Ourselves, and Our Children,” by Carter Dillard, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/20/humanitys-secret-war-against-the-environment-ourselves-and-our-children/?fbclid=IwAR0mNRi-jymUfht99WEUr8jwO7jb2I98R69wRUdBPs3K3R0In9lHx4Axmc0.
February 21
Velly stlange
“Whatever They decide These UFOs Are, The Answer Will Be More US Militarism,” by Caitlin Johnstone, MEDIUM, https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/whatever-they-decide-these-ufos-are-the-answer-will-be-more-us-militarism-17c0954a3406.
February 19
It was an interesting well-played closely-matched football game; but all the rest was a fantastical rendition of Earthian human experience produced to hype goods and services produced by the USian economic system and to glorify the USian military system
“Super Drought Super Bowl: The Goddess Sings,” by David Yearsley, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/17/super-drought-super-bowl-the-goddess-sings/?fbclid=IwAR3LDXlnoWH26hb1x_ADPOUTHOS1XbbOrO2NiOZE9UltWhypRTxmonzbOZU.
February 19
Paul E. Ziegler
Still trying to decide if this applies and how much truth it contains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
Excellent article on “The Iron Law of Oligarchy”. Thanks for sharing Paul. Contains a good bit of truth. My Game-free I’m OK–You’re OK democratic sortition process used in the Ogeechee Economic Forum is an attempt to manage things from the bottom up rather than from the top down, as demonstrated in my novel As The Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. It can work in certain situations. One can build a case that only about twenty percent of Earthian humans can critically think about existential states of affairs, the rest having been successfully brainwashed and cowed into permanent conformity to authoritarianism and oligarchy at an early age, having learned to actually want to be told what to do by ordinary Earthian humans in positions of power in oligarchic hierarchical fascistic authoritarian organizations. Yes the words oligarchy and organization are synonymous in several ways. Unfortunately, this brainwashed cowed conformity may cause the extinction of Earthian humans sooner or later by allowing GWCC and MNWP to continue to march through time on courses set by natural cause-effect chains.
“The Core of the Economy – The Middle Class – Is Crumbling,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/core-economy-middle-class-crumbling?fbclid=IwAR2Q73Y4AGwgjXV3YVMrUTOqYEW3h2VKrH1rniPxDRnZFoARCyvsZqbXAyU.
February 19
How to analyze this article? What is causing what? Scary stuff indeed. The author paints a clear picture of what’s really going on in the US. Well worth a read. It appears poor white Republicans in rural areas are suffering in a self-perpetuating degenerative spiral.
“Why Conservative Parts of the US. Are So Angry,” by Mike Males, YESMAGAZINE.ORG, https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2022/03/21/republican-conservative-america-angry?fbclid=IwAR2Ike8OT2CKEVGvFd6ReiqQpTpIKJTzRVcwpCOM_8rHO1QOuwGS1pa59lM.
February 16
Here’s Chris Hedges again, telling it like he sees it. Identity politics is just more I’m OK–You’re Not OK bullshit. White Repug oligarchs came within a hair’s breath of installing Herschel Walker as a Georgia senator.
“Woke Imperialism,” by Chris Hedges, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/chris-hedges-woke-imperialism?fbclid=IwAR2omz1vuyq0ivsvFIjLA_yPPAeaA_5UoMCSYlwO6g_zWH8Ttxk89xJCIVQ.
February 16
Seems to me this is a major new computer software innovation. I still think however that computers cannot think for themselves. If AI chat comments are dystopian it seems to me the Earthian humans who wrote the new algorithmic code for the new AI software are the dystopian ones.
“Dystopian Artificial Intelligence Is Not Near, It is Already Here,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/dystopian-artificial-intelligence-not-near-it-already-here?fbclid=IwAR3rM16JqlzL7VFXYCftug4M-2ilYRIWkxp0afz3RHavJp0QTW14FeIKXgQ.
February 15
A new novel showing how to increase Earthian human OKness in a new kind of discussion process in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth that might help save Spaceship Earth from the two modern horses of the apocalypse, global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP)
AS THE ROOSTER CROWS EARTHIAN OKNESS INCREASES, by Richard John Stapleton, KIRKUS REVIEWS, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-john-stapleton/as-the-rooster-crows-earthian-okness-increases/?fbclid=IwAR1HI0RdtLpopoeKrkqnXDwbLgWQZFWP5tgqaOtXJ-UqNrD3OpFgwkHoGoE.
February 15
Depressing indeed
“A Shocking 30% Of High School Girls ‘Seriously Considered’ Suicide Last Year,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shocking-30-high-school-girls-seriously-considered-suicide-last-year?fbclid=IwAR0Z6FsfKi_jGED0s8GFbMqW_TNKQIA7ggjfwwYGEgf6MGnnnAlLhgZNGb4.
February 15
I lived in Italy three months in 1983. Tuscany was the most beautiful part. The city of Florence had more beautiful women per capita than any place I have seen.
“The house where the Renaissance master Michael Angelo was born in 1475 not far from my mother’s birthplace of Arezzo, Tuscany,” by Varushka Franceschi, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10228084896214891&set=a.1486102759751.
February 15
Say it aint so Joe
“Cuba is Not a State-Sponsor of Terrorism,” by Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/14/cuba-is-not-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/?fbclid=IwAR0eZO1xWSVrHw10KyxaYk0c4oAC97OPypGqSNcc2jB7b0PeHAagT0s-9T8.
February 15
Do Earthian humans want to be deceived?
“Hersh, the US and the Sabotage of the Nordstream Pipelines,” by Alfred De Zayas, COUNTERUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/15/hersh-the-us-and-the-sabotage-of-the-nordstream-pipelines/?fbclid=IwAR2jtGwo8YDp8YeWNhCL4_fPq2ifCIVrgQ67ROr3og8prEaPw83VATBJ05c.
February 15
Afraid Falk is right. I thought as I watched the SOTU address that Biden was amazingly effective at making USians feel better by selectively harping on slogans and hot button words. He seemed energetic, fluent, and mentally alert, but his story was just too good to be true
“An Open Letter to President Biden on Optimism of the State of Union 2023,” by Richard Falk, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/15/an-open-letter-to-president-biden-on-optimism-of-the-state-of-union-2023/?fbclid=IwAR3ZZucMilO0RC24UQqykuuNddMxt22-THJZ22KB7hUd7zlxRAB2dDWCl_I.
February 15
Another hard-hittng article by Caitlin Johnstone
“Pentagon Wants To Return Special Ops Propagandists to Ukraine,” by Caitlin Johnstone, MEDIUM, https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/pentagon-wants-to-return-special-ops-propagandists-to-ukraine-b9160ec082f5.
February 14
What the hell?
“‘Octagonal’ Object Shot Down Over Lake Huron,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/faa-briefly-shuts-down-airspace-over-lake-michigan-department-defense-activities?fbclid=IwAR2dSkLemQYvLlwSvVC3PyI_g06J30h0LFwSOrv-3fmK-RPzLXvbuma4AsI.
February 13
Here’s another high-minded technological article on the overall problem of Earthian human sustainability, discussing relevant points, but never mentioning the biggest cause of Earthian human unsustainability. You would not need to increase the size of the economy every year if you did not have an ever–increasing Earthian human population requiring the consumption and destruction of more and more Earthian resources every year to satisfy basic human needs, causing the consequent necessary pumping of more and more greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere causing global warming. While the author of this article has some good ideas she as usual never mentions the elephant in the room: human over-fecundity. How to peacefully and painlessly reduce the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, that is the problem. The answer is to birth fewer Earthian humans every year than naturally die every year. The way to co-construct a peaceful and prosperous future for Earthian humans is to bake smaller global economic pies every year for a peacefully-caused smaller and smaller Earthian human population that shrinks more per year than the yearly Earthian economic pie, thus producing more pie per human alive on Earth per year despite reducing yearly the global production of goods and services around Spaceship Earth to combat global warming.
“From the Unsustainable Here to the Sustainable There,” by John Feffer, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/24/from-the-unsustainable-here-to-the-sustainable-there/?fbclid=IwAR0-TCkuWdCIyZCH1vXdv9TYRe53h_CGqYGzpRP4AF96oIDlZ61jk74Wmdg.
February 12
Ecological problems have been evident in Region 6 for a long time. I left the region in 1969. See my doctoral dissertation from Texas Tech University, at Lubbock, Texas for more detail, An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas, at https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/handle/2346/11659?locale-attribute=es .
“Can Political Ecology Save Us?,” by Evaggelos Vallianatos, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/10/can-political-ecology-save-us/?fbclid=IwAR0n_PjSNnXYsEfHGK3GwX4Ko9NQHisKIj0Tz01PkOsXdgTVBv_VnHDuwWo.
February 12
War is good business? Humbug
“The Leopard’s Tale: U.S. Weapons Makers on a Marketing Spree,” by Eve Ottenberg, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/10/the-leopards-tale-u-s-weapons-makers-on-a-marketing-spree/?fbclid=IwAR17jMPWvr7dQ5JhY9fZQ09IYvYzscOgA-m4u9GU6rTIel4JolZvRFZ663s.
February 11
What Spaceship Earth needs now
“The Island of Discussion in Scotland,” by Varushka Franceschi, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10228053305465142&set=a.1486102759751.
February 11
Yuk
“We’ve Never Been Closer to Nuclear Catastrophe,” by Helen Caldicott, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/10/weve-never-been-closer-to-nuclear-catastrophe-an-interview-with-helen-caldicott/?fbclid=IwAR2_0fbPiY8l7WVYBUFIHRsH1cm9lAvA0Qdsol2UsVppU9II6WP-82WjbqE.
February 10
A brave statement in his time considering what most religions said about the consequences of death, considering Twain almost certainly knew what they had said about the consequences
“I do not fear death,” by Mark Twain, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3425611681038835&set=a.1989934524606565.
February 10
What shared values exactly?
“Throughout the relationship between our countries, what we come back to time and again is that it is rooted both in shared interests and shared values. That includes our support for core democratic principles and institutions, including respect for human rights, the equal administration of justice for all, the equal rights of minority groups, the rule of law, free press, a robust civil society – and the vibrancy of Israel’s civil society has been on full display of late.”
“We Can’t Just Let Blinken Give Israeli Apartheid the Stamp of Approval,” by Michael Moushabeck, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/we-cant-just-let-blinken-give-israeli-apartheid-the-us-stamp-of-approval/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR3QNFSQHvUybdNSKJVi8fvOhjEDZ6n7hA2YwGZJJuxyYQIOqE6wSONjL6s.
February 9
Great evening
“Marching in the Haggis,” by Richard John Stapleton, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/ScotHeritageSocSEGA1/photos/a.1859003107673676/1863258717248115/.
February 9
Well said
“Life in a Destabilized California,” by Rebecca Gordon, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/08/life-in-a-destabilized-california/?fbclid=IwAR0OhzMS0FKNHHy-WrwSHYBCjDJThCYarfPwX8sfZV2Jp6RL7wSmD4X7ve0.
February 9
Quite a place
“Seattle Goes Global: a Center of Empire,” by Patrick Mazza, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/08/seattle-goes-global-a-center-of-empire/?fbclid=IwAR1SCEmzkPkAezNxMfMRgptGVvrp0Ae4wwK4Q71k142xeWCDq0-YP77XrY0.
February 9
Say it aint so Joe
“A World Fragmented by Inequality,” by Liz Theoharis, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/09/a-world-fragmented-by-inequality/?fbclid=IwAR0-QQz0CqMe_ljOOCyclNfYQzULFPqyaQqrmZXdzAYe7mifYci2gLVDgn8.
A POSTING BY A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM
The poor Earthian humans are enthralled, manipulated, and in various degrees controlled by their leaders in some two hundred countries aboard Spaceship Earth. The 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.
(You might think this post is the same as it was in The Earthian – 37 but it’s not. It contains some polishing and new paragraphs)
Leaders are generally products of the same sorts of cause-effect chains as followers and members in differentiated countries. All Earthian humans are all 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.
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 humans 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 billion or so 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 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 cannot determine exactly how long this catastrophic scenario will take to unfold, even after an Internet search, since information sources show average Earthian temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit and use different base years, different assumptions about causes of rates of change, and changing rates of change when calculating average Earthian temperature.
Come what may, one can build a case based on historical Earthian temperature data that a catastrophic GWCC situation could evolve on Spaceship Earth in about thirty years, sufficient to cause the Earthian polar ice caps to melt causing enough sea level rise to displace billions of Earthian humans living on sea coasts and to cause enough decrease in food production to cause billions of Earthian humans to starve–if Earthian humans do not significantly change in the meantime their life scripts, technological processes, and political and economic systems.
Unfortunately, Earthian humans have developed technological knowledge and processes that enabled them to produce over 10,000 nuclear weapons that they can drop on defined enemies that can quickly destroy human life aboard Spaceship Earth.
Earthian countries dependent on fossil fuel energy in the short run are pitted in a zero-sum struggle for control of oil and gas supplies around Earth, with the two largest military nations on Earth possessing over ninety percent of the nuclear weapons now threatening one another in a war they started in a minor country, a pawn in their Earthian game of chess, a tissue-tearing psychological Game called KING OF THE MOUNTAIN by Earthian humans, caused by egoistic leaders and top members of the two countries who are concerned about maintaining and enhancing their personal power, wealth, prestige, lifestyles, and legacies.
Top leaders of one of these countries, fighting in the pawn country with non-nuclear weapons so far, have publicly declared they will fire and detonate some nuclear weapons if necessary to prevent their being defeated and humiliated in the war/Game started in the minor pawn country. Hopefully this is just a bluff in another reincarnation of the Earthian human psychological Game called CHICKEN.
As dangerous as this psychological high-stakes Game-playing is most Earthian humans find it stimulating, interesting, patriotic, heroic, and so forth in their nightly news, a release from the normal grind of their boring and banal daily routines and rituals, and their pastimes, jobs, activities, and intimacies.
The new war Game in the minor country is a macabre way to generate strokes, aka units of recognition, to get attention, to get recognized, stimulated, and affirmed, now that some Earthian human strokes, nuclear strokes, have become so powerful they can cause the elimination of all Earthian human strokes forever.
Without doubt the probability of a MNWP catastrophe at any time has significantly increased in recent years.
TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF A FAIR AND SUSTAINABLE LONG RUN EARTHIAN ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as recommended in the Effective Learning Publications novel 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 MMS operating system.
This Magnum 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 Magnum Spaceship Earth Management 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, an incredibly dumb thing to do, that has been done 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 at all times since time immemorial, resulting from the cosmic evolution commencing with the creation of the Universe some thirteen 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, making losers out of most of them.
About the only way Earthian humans can be changed psychologically and socially is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical, analogical discussiion processes arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs.
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 combination of 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 that stage in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen in their so-called real worlds, 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.
It follows that 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.
Constructivism is considered relevant in Effective Learning Publications books recommended below, having been discussed in some detail in Business Voyages and listed as a source in the bibliographies of three books.
For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis https://www.itaaworld.org/ to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=born+to+learn++richard+john+stapleton#imgrc=6JdwDPzcAQ1kSM%253A
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
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=business+voyages+richard+john+stapleton
Read free “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” https://blog.effectivelearning.net/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. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=as+the+rooster+crows+earthian+okness+increases#imgrc=ZY7nv3jiN9jMCM%253A
This recently-published novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist of the novel, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction that requires participants in a seminar to speak out and 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 raucously 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, proving pure democracy can happen. The Leader of the Moment must then lead 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 had to 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 would then be 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 with most issues covered. The results of the discussions would be published to the wealthy donors financing the process and the Earthian public.
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.
According to Effective Learning Publications books, 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.
The general algorithmic matrix algebra form below can help bring this state of affairs about,
Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi,
explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/ .
This mathematical formulation might one happy day develop for Earthian humans power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc2 in physics. This formulation, Max or Min 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 formula 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 Earthian human 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. Buckminster Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.
Most 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, saved, hallelujah, as if by Jesus, who forgave them their sins.
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.
One of the biggest egotists of Earthian human history, a narcissist, playing BALANCE SHEET psychological Games, is Donald Trump of the US. He is also a world-class liar and loser playing BALANCE SHEET, and he might go to jail for it, just like other political USian BALANCE SHEET psychological Game players in the US have, such as Georgia US representative, Bo Ginn, in 1995, and cotton farmer Billie Sol Estes of Pecos, Texas in 1965, who had political ties to the USian president from Texas Lyndon Johnson.
Trump psychologically told voters and bankers using his Parent ego state he was extorting votes and money from he was a stable genius and billionaire who could pay them back for their votes and loans. How many billions worth of a billionaire he was he never said, at least not to voters, arithmetic not being his strong suit; but it now appears it’s possible he’s no billionaire at all, using generally-accepted accounting principles and real market values, which he has refused to show since walking on the USian political stage for the 2016 presidential election. It’s possible he’s no kind of naire at all, not even a millionaire, possibly having liabilities that exceed the market value of his assets, being close to bankruptcy.
It now appears as shown in recent public posts that Trump, his loyal Trump Organization lackeys, and his chosen loyal family members lied to bankers about his net worth to get loans, proving once again that “All that glitters is not gold.”
P.T. Barnum is said to have proved there’s a sucker born every minute. If so, Trump may have proved there’s a sucker born every second, in high and low places.
If you feel you’ve gained value from THE EARTHIAN, go to the Internet or any walk-in bookstore around Spaceship Earth and purchase or order one or more Effective Learning Publications books. As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases is the latest and probably most engaging Effective Learning Publications book, including an overview of USian economic history, including the Trumpian affair. Rout Logger is the protagonist of the novel story. It’s available now at Amazon.com for immediate unrestricted digital reading on any device as a Kindle book for $4.99. You can read it free using Amazon trechnology in a restricted KDP option.
For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems read free the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/freefairprogressparty/.
EARTHIAN DEMOCRATIC GAME-FREE CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING
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.
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.
Stapleton 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.
He 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 professor 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 tests, such as 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.
For more information on related classroom management ethical issues 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 (February 24, 2023) been cited as a reference in 84 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including nine new citations since April 2021.
He retired as a university professor at Georgia Southern in June 2005, as the senior professor of the university for the 2004-2005 academic year, after thirty-five years of service.
As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned, “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,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.
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