THE EARTHIAN — 40 - Effective Learning Report

THE EARTHIAN, Number Forty, April 6, 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

A man with white hair and plaid shirt looking to his left.

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)

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…

AN EARTHIAN HUMAN TELLS IT LIKE SHE THINKS IT IS, WHICH IT PROBABLY IS…

“To scale the pinnacles of corporate, political or military power in the United States requires certain rigid deficiencies of character, specifically the absence of compassion, decency and humanity. In their personal lives, powerful individuals may possess these qualities, but as an elite class, they lack them utterly. How else to explain the abandoned cruelty of U.S. foreign policy since 1945, the wars, with napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium and white phosphorus in Iraq, the massive bombing campaigns that destroyed 85 percent of all buildings in Korea, to say nothing of the deliberate destruction of Iraq and Vietnam, the millions upon millions of dead all over the planet, the regime changes, setting countless countries back, developmentally, decades, even centuries, and installing fascist rulers throughout what used to be called the Third World?

“True, a president, four-star general or corporate chieftain can be a nice guy, somebody you’d like to have a beer with, someone who’s polite, cultured, agreeable. But to get to where they got in this system, they did things that are unforgi…

Read more…

“Human Destiny in Ukraine,” by Eve Ottenberg, COUNTERUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/07/human-destiny-in-ukraine/.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

1 – Observations and Analyses of Current Earthian Human Existential States of Affairs by Earthian Humans Stationed around Spaceship Earth, Cathecting all Ego States Feeling, Thinking, and Writing

2 – A Posting by a Hypothetical Exonexus Observer from a Planet Beyond the Earthian Solar System

3 – On the Need to Co-Construct a Sustainable Long Run Earthian Political-Economic-Management System

4 – A Democratic Earthian Game-Free Case Method Teaching and Learning Process for Producing Democratic Discussions, Learning, and Policy Formulation Around Spaceship Earth

April 6, 2023

I had about decided this Bragg investigation was just another nothing burger like the pusillanimous Mueller, January 6th Committee, and Garland investigations, all sound and no fury. The Bragg investigation and indictment in the Manhattan District of New York have restored some of my previous respect for and faith in the USian rule of law. I had begun to think USian law-enforcers were very good at bullying, arresting, prosecuting, indicting, and imprisoning poor and hapless young black and white males and females for petty theft and drug selling but too cowardly to prosecute a dangerous older white male con artist with access to serious money and good lawyers such as the law-disrespecting playground bully Donald Trump. Hallelujah. Apparently, the Bragg investigators uncovered and developed facts and reasoning they think prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the hush money paid to Stormy Daniel and at least one other woman was not merely to make sure Trump’s wife would not learn about one more act of adultery…

More on the same bull….

“Thirty-four Felony Charges is a Lot of Felony Charges,” by Ron Jacobs, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/05/thirty-four-felony-charges-is-a-lot-of-felony-charges-2/?fbclid=IwAR1Pc1IDolbtXVzemTsWinLv97VMS8FjGmJYJIZl0qkh1g_tkl8-JoP5Og4.

Aoril 5

Let’s face it, insisting on more freedom in some cases is irresponsible

“Tinpot Legislators,” by Stan Cox, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/04/tinpot-legislators/?fbclid=IwAR0ZcwYSTvixrGX4D4t_LAglIrie7AHhqbWxw2QJ5Z7jx_-g_vsAqkA7yE8.

April 5

You mean Henny Penny was right, the sky is falling

“The Climate Time Bomb,” by Mel Gurtov, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/04/the-climate-time-bomb/?fbclid=IwAR0cv6uzQo2qnB6UtfnXDVzGwPwT9lUEFG2djcQMEkhQx5nRt6oEMERLmEs.

April 4

All because of the infernal combustion engine, plenty of oil in the ground, and lots of cheap land in the US to farm and ranch

“Passenger trains in the United States v. Europe,” LONGISLAND.COM, https://www.facebook.com/LongIslandCom/photos/a.2102477679766738/6807018102645982/.

April 3

But what are the chances it might work? Pretty slim it seems

“The Simple Reason Why the U.S. Wants Full Spectrum Dominance of the Earth,” by Roger McKenzie, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/03/the-simple-reason-why-the-u-s-wants-full-spectrum-dominance-of-the-earth/?fbclid=IwAR2yf3IusAMcSkA2zQoNDYhJsNDf_1Qdif1R84FpV5yd5LZ3mA-l474qTCc.

April 3

I’m not for “overthrowing” the existing economic and social order. I’m for evolving a better one, peacefully, ASAP. How to bring that about is the question. Violent revolution is not the answer. All violence in the form of all-out war does is temporarily tear down the existing economic and social order, doing no permanent good. Oligarchies just start over again rising from the ashes and evolve the same sort of top-down tyranny as the one that just got torn down, which is in turn also ultimately torn down. Unfortunately, GWCC and MNWP in the current age may have made it inevitable that the existing economic and social order will be torn down, while this time around eliminating the possibility of a new Earthian human economic and social order rising from the ashes, since Earthian humans will have been rendered extinct. Comment by RJS

“Novel Reflections: On Dickens, Marx, Bronte, Zola, Bernie, and Orwell,” by Paul Street, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/31/novel-reflections-on-dickens-marx-bronte-zola-bernie-and-orwell/?fbclid=IwAR2mTKwlvUJHg69KpEXBWWtvNmDIe5QOAX0W17Kxr_BrK4zYAVN3YP0iD1g.

April 3

Good point

“‘They’re All Libertarians’ Until Their Deposits Are At Risk,” by Roy Sebag, GOLDMONEY.COM, https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/theyre-all-libertarians-until-their-deposits-are-risk?fbclid=IwAR0jWUv7nH4b1m0qiWYPNcpoVapcXgdGEMtHlvNHO9fDKxr83OZQC5I9pRk.

April 1

Say it aint so Joe

“Two decades later, US senate votes to abolish Iraq war authorization,” by News Desk, THECRADLE.COM, https://thecradle.co/article-view/23087/two-decades-later-us-senate-votes-to-abolish-iraq-war-authorization?fbclid=IwAR2FuusDmVIGyd9BNSl9EKIA9654iCWkAHWfljJ381pN05SDTw8Wnbt5g2Y.

April 1

Wise words from my favorite author

“Mark Twain’s Book: The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today,” PHILOTHOUGHTS, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=770893751072312&set=a.643405673821121.

April 1

Ben Barnes, a Texas state legislator, was a crony of John Connolly and a major player in Texas politics. Connolly was a Texas governor and a US sec of treasury under Nixon, who was shot in the front seat of the same car in Dallas, Texas as USian president John F. Kennedy in 1963, when JFK was assassinated in the back seat. I was working as an expediter and dispatcher in production control with an undergraduate degree in economics from Texas Tech in a Litton industries plant in Lubbock, Texas that assembled electronic components for USian military aircraft guidance and control systems one evening in 1965 when Barnes and Connolly came strolling through the plant shaking hands with everybody. The plant was put there by Tex Thornton, originally from Stamford, Texas, the Litton Industries founder, and an ex crony of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War secretary of defense Robert McNamara. Both Thornton and McNamara were Harvard Business School graduates who worked as whiz kids in production control at Ford Motor Company for a while. They were all flying high back in those days. I was hired at Litton by a Harvard Business School graduate. A few months later he fired me. He said I was too sensitive to the needs of people for production control work, telling me I ought to get into something like personnel. Basically, he was right, and he did me a favor firing me when he did from the ill-scripted Litton plant, saving me months and maybe years of wasted time. I worked there seven months, learning a lot that I did not want to know. The HBS-educated fellow who hired and fired me left Litton himself a few months later, taking a new job with the international management consulting firm Booze Allen Hamilton. Comment by RJS

“Reagan’s Treason, Two Bushes and the “23 Million Payoff,” by Greg Palast, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/30/reagans-treason-two-bushes-and-the-23-million-payoff/?fbclid=IwAR1L8Qh79X1bh0MGWzisK_ARzcJYYxIt7WENvJqOM5eiwfCFmVytS0cpXkQ.

April 1

A “final warning” before what happens?

“Climate Options are Available Now, Nuclear Power Isn’t One of Them,” by Linda Pentz Gunter, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/30/climate-options-are-available-now-nuclear-power-isnt-one-of-them/?fbclid=IwAR1OLZ35Rhbav86lTGNwGlWXgoY_CeHCCyfSMCoPtPadZV-dSUPzY18WHV8.

April 1

How the USian West works

“Uncle Sam’s Dams on the Border,” by Bill Hatch, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/30/uncle-sams-dams-on-the-border/?fbclid=IwAR2tpr452f6qkZtk42swhYPo20GGVY0B2mCAQd_wnTuanqS8RQSV7rKmE10.

March 27

October surprises do seem to work for Repugs

“The ‘October Surprise’: Throwing History Off Course,” by Melvin Goodman, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/27/the-october-surprise-throwing-history-off-course/?fbclid=IwAR0NiSrIzNXVKOs0x3dehwZoKj7vV0faE0YX5u2lK6MOuHSLwox6lzU2nqc.

March 27

No s….

My, what nice smiles you all have

“Report: Trump and Bush Tax Cuts – Not Government Spending – Are Primary Drivers of National Debt Issues,” by Sharon Zhang, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/report-trump-bush-tax-cuts-have-largely-driven-national-debt-issues-since-2001/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR3N9MgNYOyFAez5hG05fsEfFVIlg6sP9twhrsVFVOvufPAU08slH_oVJ04.

March 25

The biggest mistake of all

“After the Cold War’s end, a small circle of policymakers and academics calling themselves neoconservatives argued that the United States, rather than drawing down, should wield its now mostly unchallenged power to enforce an era of ‘global benevolent hegemony.’ The United States’ military dominance, rooted in American ideals, would smash the last vestiges of despotism from the world, allowing democracy and peace to flourish. Any resistance, they warned, however small or remote, was a threat to the entire American-led order.”

“20 Years of Iraq Denialism: The New York Times Continues to Get it Wrong on U.S. Empire,” by Anthony Dimaggio, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/24/20-years-of-iraq-denialism-the-ny-times-continues-to-get-it-wrong-on-u-s-empire/?fbclid=IwAR2aGUTp1MyMbb1piYGdQDKGSAUQ2kclTY40ZfoUmwpQvXy1O5bXU2Z8TiE.

March 23

I remember when Putin announced the development of their new hypersonic missiles in 2018. USian mainstream media have done a good job of lulling USians into a sense of complacency about the danger of these missiles by not saying much if anything about them. Apparently, these hypersonic missiles can destroy aircraft carriers without using nukes. If this Croat admiral is competent and honest, Russia can sink all USian sailing aircraft carriers in a heartbeat by shooting off hypersonic missiles from as far away as two thousand miles from submarines and other launch vehicles. Comment by RJS

“Why Hypersonic Weapons Change Everything,” by Alex Krainer, TRENDCOMPASS, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-hypersonic-weapons-change-everything?fbclid=IwAR1KCiSTsVogl9TyMrjGVfooK3kxDtRYqQd4tzUMTAqjkWe6PCfaxQIyVPU.

March 22

A sticky wicket no doubt about that

“China Backs Russia’s Draft UN Resolution On Nord Stream Probe,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-backs-russias-draft-un-security-council-resolution-nord-stream-probe?fbclid=IwAR1OkPvyrOm27s91T83zmLvb1jtFdCQ6MkonsZMFLoyF0I1N6kM8ep2g000.

March 22

Insanity at work

“Deficit Hawk Hypocrites And Warmongers Unite, Apparently Hoping to Start WWIII,” by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/deficit-hawk-hypocrites-and-warmongers-unite-apparently-hoping-start-wwiii?fbclid=IwAR2_xHMbFiZqXWlNfRHBSJ2IqeHSHoKoyj2WITgKlIyR0m4d4-FHiaVBBEg.

March 21

“With the world only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, scientists stressed a sense of urgency. The goal was adopted as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).”

“World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning,” by Seth Borenstein and Frank Jordans, APNEWS, https://apnews.com/article/un-climate-change-report-ipcc-guterres-science-30d8451c0f3fb7b8a857e3ed4fd01172?fbclid=IwAR3EdVb52IH2-1aPe6QXZCQQYCNzceFbHlCxDbFj0abqmoxmE7bF9Kd_Z6o.

March 21

Say it aint so Joe

“Full-Blown Capitalism is not the Answer,” by Albert Einstein, WORKING CLASS HISTORY, https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2230476593804145/.

March 20

An update on the MNWP (Militarization and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation) problem

“Why China’s Actions Toward Ukraine and Russia Shape the Course of Future Geopolitics,” by John P. Ruehl, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/20/why-chinas-actions-toward-ukraine-and-russia-could-shape-the-course-of-future-geopolitics/?fbclid=IwAR1KCiSTsVogl9TyMrjGVfooK3kxDtRYqQd4tzUMTAqjkWe6PCfaxQIyVPU.

March 20

Yuk

“For 20 Years, Team Bush Has Escaped Prosecution for War Crimes in Iraq,” by Marjorie Cohn, TRUTHOUT, https://truthout.org/articles/for-20-years-team-bush-has-escaped-prosecution-for-war-crimes-in-iraq/?utm_campaign=Truthout%20Share%20Buttons&fbclid=IwAR0_md1J9G2Xaij-NYECkZxQ81LA1cR9njVVRvwSxjePbWNMNAM1GVJkl3s.

March 19

Say it aint so Joe

“Child Labor is Back…with a Vengeance!,” by Eve Otttenberg, COUNTERPUNCH, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/17/child-labor-is-back-with-a-vengeance/?fbclid=IwAR1OkPvyrOm27s91T83zmLvb1jtFdCQ6MkonsZMFLoyF0I1N6kM8ep2g000.

March 16

Here’s a great video interview of Michael Hudson on what’s wrong with the USian economic modus operandi

“Why 3 US banks Collapsed in 1 week: Economist Michael Hudson explains,” YOUTUBE.COM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvm9qrXhqf8.

2 – A Posting by a Hypothetical Exonexus Observer from a Planet Beyond the Earthian Solar

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.

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 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 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 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 in calculating average Earthian temperature.

However, one can build a case based on available Internet data that it will take over 35 years for the mean Earthian temperature to rise enough 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 that has enabled them to produce over 10,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy human life aboard Spaceship Earth if dropped and detonated on defined enemies around Spaceship Earth, as they have the capability to do.

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 in this case called KING OF THE MOUNTAIN by Earthian humans, caused by egoistic leaders and top members of the two countries who are primarily 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 known as 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 helluva 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.

The probability of a MNWP catastrophe at any time has significantly increased in recent years.

3 – On Co-Constructing a Sustainable Long Run Earthian Political-Economic-Management 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 ten 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 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.

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 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.

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 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, 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 at Amazon in a restricted KDP option.

https://www.amazon.com/Rooster-Crows-Earthian-OKness-Increases-ebook/dp/B0B9XY3HKR/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1666385534&refinements=p_27%3ARichard+Stapleton&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

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/.

4 – A Democratic Earthian Game-Free Case Method Teaching and Learning Process for Producing Democratic Discussion, Learning, and Policy Formulation Around Spaceship 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.

A book is on the table next to a wooden shelf.

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.

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. (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 (April 7, 2023) been cited as a reference in 85 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including ten 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,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.

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