A major feature of BORN TO LEARN: A TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN LEARNING is its analysis of the significance and importance of classroom layouts, teaching methods, and testing methods used by teachers of all kinds in all environments, parents in homes, teachers in schools, managers in businesses, Sunday School teachers in churches, and others.
If you are someone with the responsibility of teaching others–a parent, a school teacher, a manager, a preacher, a leader of a civic club, a fraternity or sorority, or some sort of military organization–you should read this book.
Why?
Because it might help you do a better job of teaching yourself and others and gain more satisfaction from the process.
The most important lessons in life are not lessons memorized in school; they are messages learned about how to live life so as to enjoy life.
The more you can teach people, your children, perhaps, how to do this the more successful you will be as a teacher.
Born to Learn points out an obvious fact: We are all born to learn. And we will learn, no matter how good or poor our teachers are or what we learn. The question is, what will the learning cause us to do?
Born to Learn is based on clinical observations and research conducted by Eric Berne, MD, the founder of transactional analysis, a psychiatrist, and millions of people have used his findings since the early 1960s to help themselves and others learn better messages for getting on with the business of surviving and winning in the world, often under unfair and treacherous conditions.
To learn how to teach people, including yourself, better messages for getting on in the world click here.
I wrote and published a short piece I called Appendix I at the back of Born to Learn recommending readers read our (Stapleton & Murkison) article “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations: A Study of Correlations Between Instructor Excellence, Study Production, Learning Production, and Expected Grades,” published in the Journal of Management Education in 2001 by the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society. The JME is printed and published by Sage Publications, a major publisher of academic materials. I pointed out in Appendix I “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by 2019 been cited in 72 refereed professional journal articles in several academic disciplines, proving the article has been read and used by serious researchers and educators as a guide for evaluating teaching productivity.
I told readers in Appendix I of Born to Learn they could access a free PDF copy of “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” by clicking on this web address, http://www.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf.
I decided today (July 11, 2016) to add another page to our Effective Learning Company website called Games Educators Play on which I re-published a case “Games Educators Play” I published in Business Voyages, another book I wrote offered for sale on the Effective Learning Publications page of this website, which covers in some detail the research, reasoning, findings, substantiations, and recommendations in Appendix I of Born to Learn, including a recommendation that academic departments and schools use a CITP, a Composite Indicator of Teaching Productivity, to evaluate teachers. The CITP is a metric I invented that measures the productivity of a teacher by weighting equally instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and relative expected grades as variables taken from computerized student evaluation forms used for evaluating teachers.
“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” is thirty-three pages long and contains numerous exhibits, charts, graphs, diagrams, statistical significance tests, correlation coefficients, and the like substantiating the findings. The article provides hard evidence, proof some say, that teachers can in some cases increase their student evaluation scores and their merit raises by lowering the requirements and grading standards of their courses, by dumbing them down and teaching to easy tests.
Using a CITP, a Composite Indicator of Teaching Productivity, in the department or school will eliminate this possibility and optimize fairness for all teachers in the department or school. Most teachers are just like most people in any vocation or profession. They like to be recognized for doing a good job and want to be fairly rewarded based on their relative productivity and contributions. The CITP will insure this happens.
Read the Games Educators Play page on this website now to see how the CITP works and why it should be used.
These issues are discussed to some degree in all my books offered for sale on this website on the Effective Learning Publications page. Business Voyages covers the CITP in more detail than Born to Learn or Recommendations for Waking Up From the America Nightmare. On the other hand, Born to Learn provides a more comprehensive coverage of transactional analysis (TA) concepts and techniques, showing how they apply to specifics such as teaching methods, classroom layouts, testing and grading methods, student motivation, classroom management, and learning contracts.
Published in 2001 by the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society in the Journal of Management Education, “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” shows how difficult it is to fairly evaluate teaching and learning and why relative expected grades questions should always be included on student evaluation forms to provide a modicum of fairness.
The major recommendation of Optimizing Fairness is the Composite Indicator of Teaching Productivity, CITP, the fairest and most sophisticated metric for estimating teaching productivity I have seen. Please note the key word here: Production.
What do productive teachers produce? Learning. The CITP entails students estimating their relative learning in the course, caused not only by what the teacher told them in class but by how much time they spent studying for the course, which they also estimate. The CITP gives teachers credit for being interesting speakers and entertainers, fair, interesting, etc., by requiring students to estimate the relative instructor excellence of the teacher. Students are also required to estimate the relative grade they expect in the course. The CITP is an equally weighted average of ranks of teachers for four variables, instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades. A teacher’s CITP score will give a teacher a relatively accurate idea of his or her relative production of learning for merit raises and tenure and promotion decisions.
The 72 citations of Optimizing Fairness in the student evaluation professional literature, some in the last few years, one this year, proves the analysis and recommendations of the article have been seriously used by serious educators. To verify the citations just punch Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations into any search engine and read the numbers for yourself.
Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations gets to the heart of intractable problems of the teaching profession, the most serious of which is probably teacher evaluations. How can you or a teacher know how well a teacher is doing his/her job? What sort of criteria can you use for making this judgment? Certainly the purpose of teaching is to cause learning to occur in students, but how do you measure this? What kind of learning? How much learning? How much learning relative to what? What percentage of a prescribed content or syllabus a teacher causes students to memorize? Or how much learning a teacher produces in students relative to how much peer teachers produce? In other words are you attempting to measure absolute learning or relative learning?
Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations presents a unique Composite Indicator of Teaching Productivity (CITP), one of the most sophisticated metrics of teaching productivity yet developed in the teacher evaluation literature.
Born Richard Coston Stapleton November 3, 1940, Corpus Christi, Texas, on the Gulf Coast, United States. Legally changed middle name to John in 1978
Origin of genes according to ancestry.com: Scotland, 53%; England & Northwestern Europe, 30%; Wales, 11%; Ireland, 4%; Norway, 2%
Reared in Wolfforth, Texas ten miles southwest of Lubbock on the South Plains in Northwest Texas, 1941-1963
Academic career at Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, fifty-three miles northwest of Savannah, on the Atlantic Coast, 1970-2005
In the interests of full disclosure, here is a video created by the Statesboro Herald showing what look like now (February 19, 2020) in context with members of Southeast Georgia Scottish Heritage Society carrying in the haggis at 17th annual Robert Burns Supper at Forrest Heights Country Club
ATHLETICS
RJS is Number 37 second row from bottom fourth from left in above picture. Head Coach Joe Moring is on the right. Coach in football, basketball, and track 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, by far best coach ever had in any sport at any level. Coach Jerry Helmer is on the left, second best coach ever had, and best teacher had at Frenship. Taught English and plane geometry in high school. Made A’s in both courses, two out of three A’s made at Frenship in twelve years. Made an A in Dr. Jim Mallard’s physics course in high school senior year taken with five senior male students. Won Gold Medal in physics in Regional Science Fair for individual class project, “Simple Means of Producing and Measuring Electricity”
All-district four years in high school basketball, Frenship High School, Wolfforth, Texas, 1953-1958, honorable mention all-state one year, all-tournament five tournaments, every tournament played in
All-district, all-regional, second leading scorer in Class A high school football on South Plains of Texas at age 17, 1958
According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, probably the youngest and smallest Class A high school starting quarterback in the US in 1953 at age 13, 5’3″ tall, 110 pounds
Played basketball on scholarship two years, Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, Texas, 1958-1959. Averaged 18 points a game on freshman team. Only holdover from freshman team. May or may not have made the starting lineup as a sophomore on the varsity team. Had never sat on the bench in any sport at any level. Had serious problems freshman year with twisted ankles and blisters causing chronic pain during basketball season, exacerbated by skeletal birth defects. Threw in towel as a competitive athlete before the first varsity basketball game sophomore year. Coaches understood and continued full scholarship remainder of fall semester
Had spinal fusion back surgery between sophomore and junior years in high school. Bone was slipping out of spinal column in lower back, caused by birth defect, exacerbated by spinal scoliosis, S curve from front and C curve from side. Would have been paralyzed from waist down rest of life had bone fully slipped out. Dr. Herbert E. Hipps (actual name of orthopedic surgeon) in Waco, Texas, “The best bone man in Texas” at the time, according to Dr. Olan Key, family doctor in Lubbock, Texas, cut bone off top of right hip, ground it up, and pasted it from tail bone up to fifth lumbar vertebra. Stayed in bed in body cast three months during summer of 1956, lying on stomach ninety percent of time. It worked. The bone fused. Dr. Hipps said, “It will be like driving a Model T instead of a Cadillac but it will get you there,” and so it has. Had no back pain after the surgery
Was a water boy junior year during football season wearing a back brace as part of recovery process. Wore a back brace playing basketball junior year. Got rid of back brace later in spring for good. Had no restrictions but chronic heavy lifting, over fifty pounds. Did not consider playing college football because of back condition and size, 5’10” and 150 pounds at the time. Stiff lower back exacerbated ankle and blister problems playing college basketball. Had to run faster, jump higher, and stop and cut quicker in this league playing against taller and more talented competitors
Was an accurate passer in football and shooter in basketball. Completed about 70 percent of passes playing football. Cannot remember throwing an interception. Kicked extra points, punted, and kicked off. Made about 50 percent of shots in basketball as point guard. Rarely missed a free throw
Was quarterback and team captain of undefeated football team in the 8th grade, playing against Class A junior high teams in towns on the South Plains. Won eleven out of eleven games. Threw touchdown pass on first play of first game of season
BUSINESS
Worked in family businesses during public school and college years, Stapleton Lumber Company and Spear-X Ranch. Involved in lumber and hardware retailing, construction, natural gas pipeline installation and service, submersible water pump sales and service, farming, ranching, and banking at Wolfforth, Hamilton, Eastland, and Dumas, Texas, all started from scratch by parents with no inherited money. Did odd jobs building houses at age 8. Did a little of all of it through the years. Worked installing the fixtures in the first bank of the town started by father, the Wolfforth State Bank. Most satisfying task working for parents was riding a horse and roping a calf on the ranch at Eastland
Tired of being told what to do by austere hard-working intelligent successful parents, at age 21 after graduating with undergraduate degree in economics from Texas Tech in May of 1962, resisted parental entreaties cajoling working in family businesses indefinitely, causing family conflict and turmoil. Wanted to make own mark in world
Started and managed the WOLFFORTH-FRENSHIP GAZETTE, a weekly newspaper, and Rick Stapleton Agency, a fire and casualty insurance, real estate, and mortgage loan agency, 1963-1965, with funds saved working in the summer of 1962 as an office manager for Pioneer Brick and Tile Company in Dallas and working in the fall of 1962 for the Frenship Co-op Association weighing cotton at a gin
Made a profit of about $5,000 per year, about$30,000 in 2024 dollars, as a diversified small business entrepreneur at Wolfforth, not bad compared to most small business start-ups at the time, but opportunities seemed limited in small rural hometown, so sold out in early 1965, planning to work for a large corporation and experience more of world. A farmer and community leader, Milton Kirksey, father of one of best friends, who had a degree from Texas Tech, on the board of the Frenship School System and the Frenship Co-op Association, in Wolfforth, a good Wolfforth-Frenship Gazette advertiser and supporter, said, “Aren’t you a little young to be retiring”
Still single at 25 wanted to experience what life was like on other side of fence
Forced to accept two one thousand dollar loans from parents in this period, paid back within two years. Paid own way financially after age 21 with no subsidies from parents. Inherited no family money until after parents died in eighties and nineties
Worked seven months in the winter, spring, and summer of 1965 for Litton Industries, an international corporation with a defense industry electronics assembly plant in Lubbock, ten miles from Wolfforth, with 300 or so employees, mostly women who soldered resistors, diodes, capacitors, and wires into circuit boards that went into military guidance and control systems, as a production control dispatcher and expediter
Fired for being “too sensitive to the needs of people for production control work.” Told in exit interview,”You don’t move fast enough from job to job” and “You ought to get into something like personnel”
Fired in the afternoon after playing an engineer, the best chess player in the plant, up to that time, to a draw in a chess game at lunch in the plant cafeteria, in the presence of most of the male managers and engineers in the plant who became aware of the event
Started work on MBA degree at Texas Tech in Lubbock in the fall 1965
Hired as a management teaching assistant while working on MBA. Liked teaching and received good student reviews. Was offered a part-time instructor of economics position after finishing the MBA and went into the Texas Tech business doctoral program. Had not thought about becoming a professor before starting MBA. Accidental or inevitable it happened. Spent next 39 years as a professor. Went by like “the flash of a firefly in the night” as Chief Crowfoot said about life in general
Owned and operated a forty-acre cattle farm in the Sink Hole District of Bulloch County, GA, 1971-1977 as a weekend hobby business while a professor at Georgia Southern. Got tired of feeding and taking care of a bull, cows, and calves, and fixing fences. Sold farm and moved back to town
Founder and Owner, Effective Learning Publications, 1979-present; invented, wrote, produced, and marketed DE-GAMING TEACHING AND LEARNING and the CLASSROOM DE-GAMER to approximately 400 school systems in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Great Britain, Turkey, Greece, Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and India. DE-GAMING TEACHING AND LEARNING has been updated, re-titled, and re-published as BORN TO LEARN
Published four books through Effective Learning Publications after retiring from Georgia Southern–Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds; Recommendations for Waking Up From the American Nightmare; Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning; and As the Rooster CrowsEarthian OKness Increases
Was efficient, effective, and productive doing business if Adult and Free Child ego states could be cathected in democratic Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK organizational systems. Was not efficient, effective, or competitive if required to cathect Adapted Child ego states in I’m OK—You’re less OK Game-infested hierarchical Parent->Child top-down organizational systems doing repetitive mundane tasks dictated by supposed superiors
Such systems caused withdrawal into Free Child ego state downtime observing, analyzing, and manipulating flow of three-dimensional technicolor objects and situations appearing in mind in brain, caused by auditory and visual episodic eidetic memory
Was good team player only if was team leader. Was a loner most of time, unable to adapt group imago and flex personality enough to conform satisfactorily over time to ego state, Game, and script requirements of most individuals in ordinary life and leaders and members in most groups and organizations. Was incorrigible free-thinker
ACADEMICS
CURRICULUM CONTRIBUTIONS AT GS PARKER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Wrote the first syllabus for the computer-based Management Information Systems course at Georgia Southern and supervised its incorporation into the curriculum and course catalog in 1971. Was the only teacher of MIS in the business school from 1971-1978 laying the groundwork for MIS study at Georgia Southern
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Was the only operations management (originally called production management) teacher in the Georgia Southern business school from 1970-1978. Taught Production I and added Production II to the curriculum, which led to the creation of the operations management emphasis area in the College of Business Administration
BUSINESS POLICY
Added the capstone case method Business Policy course to the undergraduate core curriculum for all majors in the business school in 1971, enabling the Georgia Southern business school in 1974 to achieve accreditation by the AACSB, the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business, the highest academic accrediting association in the business field in the United States. Was the only teacher of Business Policy using the case method in the undergraduate business curriculum at Georgia Southern during 1970-2005, teaching approximately four case method Business Policy courses per year
SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Taught all but three small business management courses offered by the business school at Georgia Southern during 1970-2005, at least one per year, all with the case method
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Founded the teaching of entrepreneurship at Georgia Southern. Wrote the syllabus for the first entrepreneurship course in 1987. Taught most entrepreneurship courses offered during 1987-2005, all with the case method
SMALL BUSINESS INSTITUTE
Supervised approximately 350 Small Business Institute student teams consulting with and writing cases about area small businesses during 1974-2005. Served as the Small Business Institute Director during 1987-2005. Supervised students producing approximately ten SBI cases per year funded by the US Small Business Administration at $500 per case during 1974-1992, at which time the SBA discontinued funding the national SBI program because of decisions of the Clinton Administration in their program led by vice president Al Gore to balance the USian federal budget, for the first and only time in recent memory, probably not a good idea in the case of the SBI program, regardless of balancing the USian federal budget, since those SBI cases were also borrowers of money guaranteed or directly loaned by the Small Business Administration, and the student consulting and recommendations in some cases helped them pay their loans back, making the $500 per SBI case outlay a good investment by the Federal government, probably generating more Federal revenue than it cost, possibly the only such investment the Federal government ever made. Served as the SBI Director at Georgia Southern from 1992-2005 without SBA funding, still participating in National Small Business Institute Director’s Association programs
RUNNER-UP NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
Supervised Hartie Cliatt, Reagie Eakin, and Scott Johnson, a Georgia Southern Small Business Institute team, runner-up winners of the National 1992 Case of the Year case research and writing contest conducted by the US Small Business Administration, competing with some 2,000 undergraduate SBI teams at some 500 Small Business Institutes at colleges and universities throughout the US. The team was recognized and presented undergraduate Runner-Up in the Nation awards by Erskine Bowles, national SBA Director, at the 1992 Annual Small Business Week luncheon, Washington, D.C.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP/SMALL BUSINESS EMPHASIS AREA
Founded the Entrepreneurship/Small Business (E/SB) emphasis area at Georgia Southern in 1987, now known as the Center for Entrepreneurial Learning and Leadership. Developed the E/SB area and taught all courses required for the emphasis from 1987 to 2001, three courses per year, all with the case method
E/SB BOARD OF ADVISORS, ANNUAL MEETING, AND CASE OF THE YEAR CONTEST
Started an advisory board for the E/SB emphasis area in 1996 composed of area entrepreneurs, retired executives, and former students who owned and operated small businesses. Conducted an Annual Meeting in the spring of the year at which E/SB advisory board members interacted with students and judged the Small Business Institute Case of the Year contest. First, Second, and Third place winners were selected from among ten or so cases developed in the Spring Applied Small Business course by students in teams of three members
THE BUSINESS PLAN
Was instrumental as a member of the COBA (College of Business Administration) Task Force 2000 committee set up by Dean Carl Gooding in 1996 in which the committee established a new course The Business Plan to be taught by faculty in all departments, a one-hour course that was required for all undergraduate business students at Georgia Southern, along with two other new innovative one-hour courses, requiring students to analytically and creatively think using their Adult and Free Child ego states. The business plan course required undergraduate students of all majors in small groups to research and write a plan for a new business. The course provided a unique environment in which students integrated all business functions—accounting, finance, management, marketing, operations management, and management information systems—while developing communication and inter-disciplinary teamwork skills
Taught one or two business plan courses per year for two academic years after the course was added to the required core curriculum and tried to teach the COBA faculty, now the Parker School of Business faculty, how to teach the business plan course by disseminating teaching notes dealing with the course process and discussing the course with faculty members. Unfortunately COBA faculty in specialized disciplines after a few years organized a coup and voted to eliminate the business plan course, and the other two one-hour courses, from the core curriculum for all majors, despite its value according to student feedback, because it was inconvenient for departmental administrators to schedule and stressful for teachers in various disciplines to teach. Most faculty preferred to teach their three-hour courses in their specialized disciplines in their departmentalized wormhole tunnels dispensing standard doctrines and techniques peculiar to their disciplines with their Adult/Critical Parent–>Adapted Child ego state teaching and learning processes (using lecture and telling methods of dispensing information, militaristic row and column classroom layouts, and multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and solve-the-arithmetic-problem tests), rather than lead and coordinate three one-hour business plan courses in which class members had to use Adult ego states integrating what they had been taught in a team of three or four class members researching and writing a real business plan for a new business that included pro forma income statements and balance sheets using realistic financial data, who had to be graded wholistically using Adult ego states based on overall performance, not graded based on ostensible percentage of course content memorized for so-called objective tests using multiple-choice questions, and the like
Read BORN TO LEARN by RJS for more on how classroom layouts, teaching methods, and testing methods used by teachers of all sorts affect the ego states learners have to use to succeed in teaching and learning processes, showing why most learners are confined to seeing, hearing, reading, and memorizing gossip, dogma, doctrine, and procedures in Parent–>Child learning processes, in which Adult ego state analytical thinking ability and Free Child ego state creative ability on the part of learners are squelched in the learning process, not recognized, graded, and rewarded at all in most teaching and learning processes in most learning venues, including those of families, churches, schools, universities, businesses, political organizations, governments, military units, civic clubs, militias, newspapers, TV networks, movies, etc., in which learners are mostly taught how to remember and obey what their “teachers”–parents, sunday school teachers, preachers, public school teachers, university professors, supervisors, department heads, drill sergeants, admirals, presidents, fascist dictators, actors, comedians, writers, editors, publishers, etc.– tell them or show them. Rarely do they get to look at, analyze, or discuss any kind of raw data
GEORGIA SOUTHERN STUDENT EVALUATIONS
Conducted research and writing during 1990-2000 that resulted in Georgia Southern adding study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide in all departments and schools. These questions were formally adopted by Georgia Southern in 2000
“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (April 15, 2024) been cited in 89 refereed professional journal articles in several academic disciplines, including 21 citations since 2021, proving the article is still being read and cited as a reference in refereed professional journals
High Pass, Management and Finance doctoral comprehensive exams
TEACHING POSITIONS
Teaching Assistant in Management, Texas Tech University, 1965-1966
Part-time Instructor in Economics, Texas Tech University, 1966-1969
Associate Professor of Management, University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana–Lafayette), 1969-1970
Associate Professor of Management, Georgia Southern College, 1970-1976 Graduate Faculty, Georgia Southern University, 1975-2005
Professor of Management, Georgia Southern University, 1976-2005
Visiting Professor of Management, Troy State University-Europe, 1982-1983. Taught systems management in a management master’s degree program offered by Troy State University (now Troy University) in Montgomery, Alabama in the US on US Air Force NATO bases at Incirlik Air Base, Adana, Turkey; Hellinikon Air Base, Athens, Greece; Soesterberg Air Base, Soesterberg, Holland; Hessich Air Base, Hessich, Germany; Aviano Air Base, Aviano, Italy. Courses were composed of interested class members from all ranks of Air Force personnel and their dependents, Department of Defense personnel, and local business people in Greece and Holland. Taught three or four courses each academic quarter. Was the only Troy State professor at each of the sites at any time. Had full autonomy. Had from one to a few informal meetings with the USAF base ESO, Educational Service Officer, each quarter of 1982-83, at each site.Had interesting and satisfying relationships with diverse USian class members and local nationals in very interesting environments. Lived among nationals at all sites in housing similar to that of middle class neighbors arranged and paid for by Troy State University—Europe.Had a US security clearance and officer’s club privileges similar to those of US GS-13 civil service employees
Senior Professor, College of Business Administration, now Parker School of Business, Georgia Southern University, 1990-2005
Senior Professor, Georgia Southern University, 2005
SUBJECTS TAUGHT
Economic history, systems management, entrepreneurship, small business, organizational behavior, quantitative methods in business, operations management, management information systems, control, business policy, transactional analysis
Taught Eco 133, American Economic History, two courses per semester, during the fall and spring semesters at Texas Tech University during 1966-1969 as a part-time instructor. Paid way through doctoral program with $3300 salary per academic year as a part-time instructor, while taking a full load of courses each semester working on doctor’s degree in business, majoring in management science, minoring in economics, taking doctoral courses in all business fields
ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE
Acting Head, Department of Management, Georgia Southern, 1970-1971 Chairman, Department of Management Self-Study Steering Committee, 1971-1972 Member, Dean’s Search Committee, School of Business, 1971 Chairman, Admissions Committee, AACSB Self-Study, 1972-1973
Member, Athletic Committee, 1971-1973 Member, Library Committee, 1973-1974 Member, Dean’s Search Committee, School of Business, 1974 Coordinator of Graduate Studies in Business, 1974-1976 Chairman, Graduate Program Committee, School of Business, 1974-1976 Chairman, Graduate Curriculum Committee, School of Business, 1974-1976
Chairman, Faculty Evaluation Committee, School of Business, 1976-1978 Chairman, GSC Continuing Education Committee, 1977-1979 Long Range Planning Committee, Department of Management, 1984 Dean’s Search Committee, Division of Industrial Technology, 1984 Library Committee, 1986-1988 Director, Small Business Institute, School of Business, 1986-2005 Member, Tenure and Promotion Committee, School of Business, 1987-1989 Chairman, Tenure and Promotion Committee, Department of Management, 1988-1989 Chairman, Academic Affairs Committee, Department of Management, 1989-1993 Member, Strategic Planning Committee, School of Business, 1990-1992 Chairman, Entrepreneurship/Small Business Committee, School of Business, 1993-2005 Member, COBA Task Force 2000 Planning Committee, 1993-1997 Member, Georgia Southern Institutional Effectiveness Committee, 1993-1998 Member, COBA Governance Committee, 1997-1998 Entrepreneurship/Small Business Emphasis Coordinator, 1997-2005 Member, GSU Judicial Review Board, 1999-2002 Member, COBA Tenure and Promotion Committee, 1999-2001 Member, Dept. of Mgt. Tenure and Promotion Committee, 1999-2001
CREATIVE AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITY
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
AN ANALYSIS OF RURAL MANPOWER MIGRATION PATTERNS IN THE SOUTH PLAINS REGION OF TEXAS,published in the National Technical Information Service (PB 188048), 1970. This research was funded by a $6500 grant awarded by the Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation and Research of the U.S. Department of Labor pursuant to the provisions of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1964. Summaries of the dissertation were published in MANPOWER (1970) and MANPOWER RESEARCH PROJECTS (1970), U.S. Department of Labor. The full dissertation is still available free from Texas Tech University by clicking on the title highlighted in blue above
ARTICLES IN JOURNALS AND BOOKS
“The Process of Environmental Structuring–A General Perspective,” THE BUSINESS SYMPOSIUM, Texas Tech University, 1:1, 1969
“When You Have to Say ‘You’re Fired’,” SUPERVISORY MANAGEMENT, Vol 16 (September, 1971)
“The Velocity of Youth Mobility,” ATLANTA ECONOMIC REVIEW (March-April, 1973)
“Terminations: Lower-Level Dismissals,” reprinted in PRIMER IN SUPERVISORY MANAGEMENT, by Bernard Keys, McCullough & Fryet, (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company, 1974)
“The Chain of Ego States,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 8:3, July, 1978
“Classroom De-Gamer,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 9:2, April, 1979
“How Managers Influence Superiors: A Study of Upward Influence Tactics,” LEADERSHIP ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL, 9, 4, 1988, with B. Keys, G. Murkison, and L. Dosier
“Scripts and Entrepreneurship,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 20:3, July, 1990, senior author with Gene Murkison
“Academic Entrepreneurship: Using the Case Method to Simulate Competitive Business Markets,” THE ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR TEACHING REVIEW, Vol XIV, Issue IV, 1989-1990, pp 88-104
“Scripts and Decisions: An Empirical Analysis,” JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC STUDIES, 3, (4), 1992, 123-127, senior author with G. Murkison
“Scripts and Entrepreneurship,” translated into French and reprinted in ACTUALITES EN ANALYSE TRANSACTIONELLE, 17:66, April 1993, Brussels, Belgium
“The Significance of Schemata and Scripts in Entrepreneurship Education and Development,” (1997), senior author with D. Stapleton and G. Murkison, in T.G. Monroy, J. Reichert, F. Hoy, and K. Williams (Eds.), THE ART & SCIENCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: VOLUME IV, pp. 89-104, Akron, Ohio: The Project for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education
“Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach” (1998), TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 28:2, April, 1998, pp. 157-167, senior author with D. Stapleton
“The Formulation of Strategies for Teaching Business Policy or Strategic Management,” (2000), BUSINESS RESEARCH YEARBOOK: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, Volume VII, J. Biberman and A. Alkhafaji, editors, International Academy of Business Disciplines, pp. 928-932, senior author with D. Stapleton. Saline, Michigan: McNaughton & Gunn, Inc.
“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations: A Study of Correlations Between Instructor Excellence, Study Production, Learning Production, and Expected Grades,” lead article, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION, 25:3, June 2001, pp. 269-291, senior author with G. Murkison. (This article has now been cited as a reference in 89 refereed professional journal articles in several disciplines, 21 since 2021, proving it is still being read and used)
EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING LEADER’S GUIDE (Statesboro, GA: Effective Learning Systems, 1980). Contains detailed instructions for conducting EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING seminars and using the Classroom De-Gamer
EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING: AN INNOVATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (Statesboro, GA: Effective Learning Systems, 1981). Demonstrates how to apply the de-gaming process to organizations in general
BUSINESS VOYAGES: MENTAL MAPS, SCRIPTS, SCHEMATA, AND TOOLS FOR FINDING AND CO-CONSTRUCTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS WORLDS (1998), Class Notes, Georgia Southern University, used in The Business Plan course, 88 pages
GEORGIA SOUTHERN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: ACTIVITIES, CONTRIBUTORS, CASES (Reprinted 4 times, originally printed in year 2000), Class Notes, Georgia Southern University and Georgia Southern COBA Office of Publications and Faculty Research Services. Contains cases about businesses owned and operated by ex-COBA entrepreneurship students written by students in the Applied Small Business course during 1999-2004, an overview of the E/SB program, and feedback from ex-COBA entrepreneurship students 1972-1999
PROCEEDINGS ARTICLES
“The Classroom De-Gamer,” RESEARCH IN EDUCATION, November, 1978, School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
“Implications of Business Prospectuses Developed by Small Business Students,” PROCEEDINGS of the 1984 Southern Management Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 1984
“Causes of Unsuccessful Entrepreneurship,” (abstract), ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH, Fourth Annual Conference on Organizational Development and Policy, University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky, Spring, 1986
“A Total Systems Approach to Simulating Free Enterprise in a Small Business Course in a Business School,” published in PROCEEDINGS of the 1987 National Meeting, Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Hilton Head, SC, March, 1987
“Entrepreneurial Learning and Small Business Failure Rates, ” with G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS of the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, 1988
“What is Most Important: Entrepreneurial Teaching or Entrepreneurial Unlearning,” (abstract), JOURNAL OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, Vol IV, No. 1, Fall, 1988
“Entrepreneurship, Decisions, and Scripts,” with G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS of the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Region of the Decision Sciences Institute, February, 1989
“Entrepreneurial Autonomy and Success,” PROCEEDINGS of the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of The Institute of Management Science, Columbia, SC
“Scripts and Decisions,” with G. Murkison, (abstract), bulletin of the National Meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Science, New York, October, 1989
“The Value of Entrepreneurial Experience: What Entrepreneurs Learn When they Start and Operate Businesses,” PROCEEDINGS of the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, Myrtle Beach, SC, with G. Murkison
“Game-Freer Teaching and Learning: How to Increase Productivity in Schools by Decreasing Psychological Games,” The Stamford Papers: Selections from the 29th Annual ITAA Conference, Bruce R. Loria, Editor, Stamford, Connecticut, October, 1991, pp. 250-267
“Feedback Regarding the Use of a Game-Free Case Method Process to Educate General Management and Entrepreneurship Students,” (1993) with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, 1993, Myrtle Beach, SC
“The Case Method, Business Success, and Masculinity,” with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, 1994 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, Myrtle Beach, SC
“Randomly Selecting Participants to Lead case Method Discussions: Problems and Pitfalls in Performance Evaluation,” (1996), with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 32nd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, pp. 117-119
“The Selection and Assessment of Teaching Methods in Business Schools“ (1997), with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 33rd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, pp. 107-109
“The Student Evaluation of Teaching Process Revisited,” (1997), with B. Price, C. Randall, and G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 33rd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, 178-180
“The Scripting of Family Businesses,” (1999), with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 34TH ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, CD-ROM, October, Myrtle Beach
“In Search of a Better Mousetrap: Can a Composite Profile Accurately Evaluate Teaching Effectiveness?” C. Randall, B. Price, L. Tudor, and R. Stapleton (1999) PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL DECISION SCIENCE INSTITUTE, New Orleans, November, pp. 266-268
“What Do Entrepreneurship Teachers and Students Know?” (2000), senior author with D. Stapleton, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Allied Business Disciplines Association, Ft. Myers, FL, CD-ROM November 2000
“An Investigation of Script Decisions in the Creating, Operating, and Disposing of Family Businesses,” (2001), senior author with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL USABE/SBIDA JOINT NATIONAL CONFERENCE, CD-ROM, February, Orlando, FL
“Basic Policies Affecting the Longevity of Family Businesses,” (2001), senior author with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 36TH ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, CD-ROM, October, Myrtle Beach, SC
“Attitudes of Family Business Owners Regarding Policies for Transferring the Wealth of Family Businesses,” with D. C. Stapleton, Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA), San Diego, CA, February, 2002
“What is Good Business Teaching,” with D. C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, October 2002, Myrtle Beach, SC
“The Nature of SBI Learning,” with D. C. Stapleton, Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA), New Orleans, LA, February 2003
“The Morality of University Grading,” with D. C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and The Management Sciences, CD-ROM, October 2003, Myrtle Beach, SC
“Factors in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah. C. Stapleton and Meredith Tomlinson, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association, Clearwater Beach, FL, February 2004
“Factors in Family Business Planning” was reprinted in the 1 April 2004 edition of the SBANC Newsletter, the online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://sbaer.uca.edu/ and in The Script, Vol. 34, No. 6, the newsletter of the International Transactional Analysis Association, August 2004
“Mixing Business and Family,” with Deborah C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Meeting of SEInforms, Myrtle Beach, SC, October 2004
CASES
“The Dig-Deep Mining Company,” with Grady L. Allen, INTERCOLLEGIATE CASE CLEARING HOUSE, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, 1971
“Tesk: The Upside-Down Desk,” INTERCOLLEGIATE CASE CLEARING HOUSE, Harvard Business School, November, 1971
“Model Cities Program,” ICCH, August, 1972
“Regency Estates,” ICCH, September, 1972
“Graham Repair Shop,” ICCH, January, 1973
“Igo and Green,” ICCH, January, 1973
“Berry’s Home Builders,” ICCH, January, 1973
“Mitchell Foods,” ICCH, January, 1973
“David Handlen and Frito-Lay,” ICCH, January, 1973
“T.J. Morris Company (A),” with Arthur G. Butler, Jr., ICCH, November, 1974; “T.J. Morris Company (B),” with Arthur G. Butler, Jr., ICCH, November, 1974
“Business Skylab Conference,” ICCH, July, 1976
“Charles N. Aronson,” a 163-page longitudinal case showing the development of a highly successful entrepreneur from ages 14-59, Harvard Business School Case Services, June, 1982
NEWSPAPER AND INTERNET ARTICLES
“Entrepreneurs Face Many Challenges When Starting a Small Business,” Savannah Morning News, Business Exchange, July 5, 1998, p. 2D
“Is Your Business Plan a Plan or Is It a Script?” Savannah Morning News, November 21, 1999, p. 4D
“Newspapering Business Has Changed with the Times,” Savannah Morning News, August 26, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 11
“Microsoft Uses Its Clout to Build Its Market, Keep It,” Savannah Morning News, September 9, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 7
“Attacks also Assaults on Global Business,” Savannah Morning News, September 23, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 7
“Economic Development, Tariffs, and Trade Wars,” Savannah Morning News, October 21, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 6
“Making Money in America Not as Easy as One Thinks,” Savannah Morning News, November 4, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 6
“Globalization Creates Ethical Dilemmas,” Savannah Morning News, December 30, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 5
“Even in Information Age, Everything You Read is not Whole Truth,” Savannah Morning News, January 27, 2002, The Business Exchange, p 6.
“Difficult to Gauge Scoring in the Big Game,” Super Business, Savannah Morning News, Februrary 24, 2002, p. 8
“Steel and Other Tariffs Show the Customer is Not Yet King”, Savannah Morning News, March 24, 2002, The Business Exchange, p. 8
“Living with the CEO Disease,” Savannah Morning News, April 21, 2002, The Business Exchange, p. 5
“Today’s Stock Market: How Safe,” Statesboro Herald, February 2, 2004
“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, feature article in SBANC Newsletter, online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://.sbaer.uca.edu, April 2004
“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, The Script, International Transactional Analysis Association, Vol. 34. No. 6, August 2004
“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, feature article in SBANC Newsletter, online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://.sbaer.uca.edu, February 2005
“Market will determine if you’ve got goods,” Savannah Morning News, Business Innovation Section, page 01, June 29, 2019
Internet Journals, 2005-
Too many to list, primarily in the Intrepid Report and the Effective Learning Report. For a partial listing go to https://blog.effectivelearning.net/
PROFESSIONAL MEETING PARTICIPATION
New Manpower Researcher’s Conference, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., September, 1970, presented grant/doctoral dissertation findings, “An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas”
Southwestern Management Association Meeting, 1970; presented a paper “In Pursuit of Equilibrium,” Dallas, Texas
Southern Management Association Meeting, New Orleans, 1973; discussed a paper “Experiences with Policies Regarding Employees on Drugs of Twenty Large New Orleans-Area Firms,” by Gerald Langdon
Trained and consulted with the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, NC, during monthly weekend training sessions, 1975-1977. Participated in 24 training sessions of approximately 16 hours each at the Southeast Institute, co-conducting 12 of the sessions
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute (of Chapel Hill), Atlanta, GA, March, 1977; conducted a three-day organizational development workshop and presented a paper “The Chain of Command Re-visited”
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Atlanta, GA, 1978; conducted a workshop and presented a paper “De-Gaming the Classroom”
Southern Management Association Meeting, November, 1978, New Orleans; served as Program Chairman of the Policy and Organization Planning area; chaired Session I of Policy and Organizational Planning on the program
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Washington, D.C., March, 1980; conducted a workshop and presented a paper “De-Gaming the Organization”
Southern Management Association Meeting, November, 1980, New Orleans; served as Chairman of the Public Sector section of the program
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Nashville, TN, March, 1981, conducted a workshop, “Elements of Entrepreneurship”
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Raleigh, NC, March, 1982; conducted a workshop and presented a paper, “An Analysis of Business Fantasies”
First Annual Conference on Classroom Communication, Georgia Southern College, 1984, presented a paper, “Establishing Relevant Oral Communications Among Students in Classrooms”
Southern Management Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 1984, “Implications of Business Prospectuses Developed by Small Business Students”
Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, “Relevant Communications in Classrooms through TA,” March, 1985, Myrtle Beach, SC
Fourth Annual Organizational Development Conference, Center for Continuing Studies, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, May, 1986, “Causes of Unsuccessful Entrepreneurship”
1987 Annual Meeting of ABSEL, Hilton Head, SC, presented “A Total Systems Approach to Simulating Free Enterprise in a Small Business Course in a Business School”
Co-conducted two 2-hour Organizational Development sessions and presented a paper, “Positive Organizational Ego State Trips in the Land of Harkaval,” at the International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, August, 1987
Presented a plenary session program entitled “Entrepreneurial Unlearning” at the Region IV Small Business Institute Director’s Association Annual Conference, Savannah, GA, April, 1988
Presented “Entrepreneurial Learning and Small Business Failure Rates,” 24th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of The Institute Of Management Science, Myrtle Beach, October, 1988
Presented “What is Most Important? Entrepreneurial Teaching or Entrepreneurial Unlearning” at the annual meeting of the Association for Private Enterprise Education, Cleveland, Ohio, September, 1988
Presented “Entrepreneurship, Decisions, and Scripts,” Annual Meeting of the Southeast Region of the Decision Sciences Institute, Charleston, South Carolina, February, 1989
Described the activities of the Georgia Southern Small Business Institute to the Southeast Georgia Small Business Consortium, May 25, 1989
Conducted two Catalyst Sessions at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, Columbia, MO, June, 1989, demonstrating how to use the Classroom De-Gamer teaching organizational behavior
Attended U.S. Department of Commerce Export Conference for Small Business, Savannah, GA, January 16, 1991
Presented material on how to direct a Small Business Institute and conduct an SBI case course to the State of Georgia Small Business Institute Director’s Conference sponsored by the Small Business Administration, Atlanta, August, 1992
Attended all Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA) Region IV meetings, 1987-1992
Attended National SBIDA Conference, San Antonio, TX, 1992
Attended National SBIDA Conference, San Diego, CA, 1993
Attended National Small Business Week luncheon, Small Business Administration, Washington, D.C., June, 1993
Attended National SBIDA Training Conference, Small Business Advancement National Center, Little Rock, Ark., August, 1993
Participated with 12th Annual U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, Washington, D.C., September, 1993
Participated with 13th Annual U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, Washington, D. C., September 1994
Attended National SBIDA Conference, Nashville, TN, 1994
Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 1995
Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, Calgary, Canada, August 1996
Refereed presentation, “Constructivism in the Classroom,” (1998) 2nd Major International Transactional Analysis Conference, Irchel University, Zurich, Switzerland, August 1998
Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 1999
Attended Annual Meeting of International Alliance of Business Disciplines (AIBD) Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, Spring 2000
Presented “Managing Transactions in the Classroom,” with D. Stapleton, and served on two examining committees for certified member oral examinations, at the Annual Meeting of the International Transactional Analysis Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 2000
Presented “De-Gaming Teaching and Learning,” with D.C. Stapleton, 2002 World Transactional Analysis Conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2002
Served as program and session chair and refereed cases and articles in various years for meetings of the Southern Management Association, the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, the North America Case Research Association, and the Small Business Institute Director’s Association
GRANTS
U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation, and Research, 1968, An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas, received $6,500 to research and write doctoral dissertation
Georgia Southern College, 1973, received $1,000 in funding for case research
Georgia Southern College, 1987, received $1,900 in funding for a national study of entrepreneurial startups, with G. Murkison
Georgia Southern College, 1989, received a $600 travel grant to attend the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society
Spring 1989 wrote a grant proposal to Georgia Power Company for computer and laser-disc hardware and software for an entrepreneurial laboratory at GSU which was funded for $13,000
Georgia Southern University, Spring, 1991, received $600 for “A Longitudinal Study of GSU Management Graduates,” with G. Murkison
During 1987-1994 supervised the development of 96 Small Business Institute cases for the Small Business Administration, generating $48,000 in funding
CONSULTING
Jones and Hill Insurance, Savannah, March-April, 1976, Organizational Development
Zetterower-Oliff Realty, Statesboro, July, 1976, Organizational Development
Department of Biology, OD, May, 1977
Brooks Instruments, Statesboro, Georgia, a Division of Emerson Electric, Organizational Development teaching and consulting, September, 1977. This program lasted five years, involving teaching transactional analysis to some three hundred employees from all areas and levels of a plant producing and selling meters and valves in international markets. Conducted Game-free, I’m OK—You’re OK, Adult-Adult, democratic intermittent meetings with groups of ten or so employees from relevant areas and levels of the plant discussing interrelated problems and issues on an as needed basis.
“Steps in Starting a Small Business,” conference at Sea Island Bank, Statesboro, November, 1977
“Adventures in Attitudes,” DeSota-Hilton Hotel, Savannah, February, 1978. A three-day goal-setting and communications conference for middle and upper level management. Sixteen people attended representing organizations such as Piggly-Wiggly Southern, Ft. Stewart, Vidalia Hospital, Oxford Industries, and the Savannah WMCA
“Transactional Analysis for Educators,” workshop presented to the Georgia Association of Adult Educators at their annual meeting, Jekyll Island, GA, March, 1978
Adventures in Attitudes,” Hinesville, GA, August, 1978; a three-day goal-setting workshop for the senior-level civilian management of Ft. Stewart
“Adventures in Attitudes,” Hinesville, GA, September, 1978; a three-day workshop for the middle-level civilian management of Ft. Stewart
“How to Start a Small Business,” short course taught through the Georgia Southern Small Business Development Center, GSC, November, 1978
“Adventures in Attitudes,” Continuing Education, GSC, Winter, 1979
“Explorations in Learning,” Continuing Education, GSC, Spring, 1979
Brooks Instruments, OD, July, 1979
“How to Start a Small Business,” Small Business Development Center, GSC, Spring, 1979
“Explorations in Learning,” Continuing Education, GSC, Fall, 1979
Candler Hospital, Savannah, Spring, 1980, Organizational Development
“Strategic Planning in Small Business,” 2nd South Carolina Minority Business Networking Conference, Orangeburg, SC, November, 1989
Supervised approximately 350 student teams consulting with area small businesses after 1974 through the Georgia Southern Small Business Institute program
Taught two business plan short courses sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Development Center, Chamber of Commerce building, Statesboro, Spring 2000
Assisted the Chamber of Commerce in a study of past Chamber of Commerce Directors in Statesboro and Bulloch County after the inception of the Chamber of Commerce, Spring 2000
Taught accounting and financial professionals how to construct business plans, Accounting Seminar for Financial Professionals, Continuing Education, Brunswick and Savannah, May 2001
Editorial Board Member, Journal of Small Business Strategy, 1994-1996
Editorial Board Member, TAJnet, (http://www.tajnet.org/) an internet journal published by the International Transactional Analysis Association presenting articles to readers in medical, consulting, organizational, and educational fields worldwide, 1998-2002
Listed in Outstanding Educators of America, Personalities in the South, and Contemporary Authors
Member, Phi Gamma Delta social fraternity, Texas Tech, 1960-1962
Member, Scottish Heritage Society of Southeast Georgia, 2004-
Member and Director, Georgia Southern Retired Faculty Association, 2016-
Published scores of Internet articles from 2005-present, most still accessible using Google or any search engine.
SCORE MENTOR, US Small Business Administration, pro bono mentoring of entrepreneurs, 2018-2020
Member, Board of Advisors, Business Innovation Group, Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, Parker College of Business, Georgia Southern University, 2016-
Founder & Moderator, The Ogeechee Economic Forum, Effective Learning Company, Statesboro, Georgia, United States, 2019-
Founder, Owner, Writer, Editor, and Publisher, Effective Learning Report, an internet journal, 2016- . at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/
Writer, Editor, and Publisher, The Earthian, an Internet journal, in the Effective Learning Report, 2018- . Now April 15, 2024 in its 43rd edition, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/
HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS
Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMERin his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.He taught management systems, researched, published,and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.
All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Whomever the spinner of the “Classroom De-Gamer” selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.
The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case.All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.
Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.
A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works about as well as a Classroom De-Gamer to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.
How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system–relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.
According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N2-N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.
Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehension in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.
When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it is time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can.In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.
Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.
Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK-You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.
Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course knowledge was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.
Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.
Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.
Published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled the Classroom De-GAMER he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.
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).
Learned how the Harvard business school 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.
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).
Taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major. He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.
Class members 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 class member 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.
Appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.
Solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.
Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475. The data were also used in several refereed articles.
See also Stapleton, R.J. (1989-1990). “Academic entrepreneurship: Using the case method to simulate competitive business markets.” Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. Vol. XIV, No. IV, pp. 88-104; Stapleton, R.J., Murkison, G., and Stapleton, D.C. (1993). “Feedback regarding a game-free case method process used to educate general management and entrepreneurship students.” Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Southeast CHAPTER of the Institute for Management Science. Myrtle Beach, SC, October, 1993; and Stapleton, R. J. and Stapleton, D.C. (1998), Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach”Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2: 157-167.
Ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.
For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.
Had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.“
To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.
“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.
As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.“
If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.
His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.
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This definition covers a lot of ground. What is a mental picture, whether conscious, pre-conscious, or unconscious? What is a group for that matter?
A mental picture of a group would depend on how a person visualizes things in his or her brain which would be a function of many possible variables, genetic brain architecture and neurological hardwiring, and also subjective messages exposed to in life plus any decisions made about the messages. Would the picture include colors or wound it be purely black and white? Would it be accompanied with audio recordings as in some sort of documentary?
Regardless, it seems to me it is fair to say that all people have fantasies, ideas, and pictures in their brains of what groups are and what they are like, based on previous experience. Berne wrote a book titled Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Dynamics-Organizations-Groups/dp/0394172493in which he discussed not only groups but organizations, that is, groups of groups.
So much for group imagos that have to be adapted to if you want to succeed. What about personalities that have to be flexed to? Well, they are the personalities of the people in the groups and organizations you have to work with. What is a personality? Well, it’s the way people come across to others. How many adjectives can you think of to descript someone’s personality? Cheerful? Gloomy? Stingy? Living? Conscientious? Most likely if you really thought about it you could come up with a hundred or more.
Eric Berne was a great believer in using Occam’s Razor, that is getting to the heart of the matter in the most efficient way possible, using the fewest possible words to get your ideas across, so he comprised all adjectives one might use to describe a human personality into three concepts: Parent, Adult, and Child. In other words, does someone have a Parent, Adult, or Child personality or persona? Or, in a particular moment is s/her coming across as parent-like, child-like, or adult-like?
In transactional analysis (TA) terms flexing to someone’s personality entails trying to please the person by coming across as parent-like, adult-like, or child-like.
To get along you have to go along, not only adapting to the group imagos of people but flexing to their personalities, in groups and organizations. Transactional analysis gives you concepts and techniques for discerning where you and others are coming from so as to maximize your chances of success in the situation.
What is success? It seems to me success is a matter of achieving your goals and objectives. If you want to feel, think, or do something and you do it you’re successful. The problem is what you want to feel, think, or do may not be what someone else wants you to feel, think, or do, which entails frustration, compromise, not being true to yourself, not getting what you want, especially in groups and organizations.
The first group humans are exposed to in most cases are families, composed of a mother and a father, such as Number 1 in the Chain of Ego States diagram above.
Ego states are states of being including thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, gestures, body language, and other signals determining how people come across with others in communication episodes, whether parent-like, adult-like, or child-like. People switch ego states depending on who they are communicating with and what sort of circumstances they are in, whether they are working, socializing, teaching, training, having fun or whatever. They transmit messages from ego states in themselves to ego states in others in various combinations, parent-parent, child-child, child-adult, adult-parent, or whatever. The diagram above applies to situations in which there is some sort of authoritarian organization involved, such as parents dealing with children, or bosses dealing with subordinates in a business. Child-child ego state messages are known as injunctions, since they forbid feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of various sorts.
Script messages are transmitted socially and psychologically, social messages being represented in the Chain of Ego States diagram above by solid lines and psychological messages being represented by dotted lines. Social messages are verbalized overt auditory messages; psychological messages are covert non-spoken ulterior messages transmitted by body language, emotional states, and after the fact positive or negative stroking as people react to situations and feel and do certain things.
Scripts in families are created automatically when parents transmit various messages to their children from various ego states socially and psychologically, in and out of awareness. Scripts are life plans generally decided before the age of eight by offspring based on script messages transmitted to them by their parents. Since parents by and large transmit the same script messages that were transmitted to them before they were eight years old script messages in families can remain intact for many generations. According to transactional analysts script decisions made before the age of eight have lasting effects determining three general life outcomes: winner, loser, and non-winner. These decisions can be redecided and updated later in life but it’s not easy for most people.
Psychological Child-Child ego state script injunctions are what cause the most trouble for people in their lives. Script injunctions in most cases are currently inappropriate and ineffective emotional and behavioral requirements logically created by families through time to solve problems or correct injustices in past harsh inhospitable environments that cause problems for offspring in current different and possibly more benign and hospitable environments.
Opposing, or opposite script messages transmitted by parents can put a child in a Not-OK bind throughout childhood and adolescence, assuming a divorce has not already occurred, causing considerable trouble within a family, since the child cannot please both parents, which can put both parents in Not-OK positions vis-a-vis each other if the child makes a decision about which parent is right, creating Not-OKness in the family system as a whole.
What many people need is psychological permission to violate and ignore their own psychological outdated obsolete family Child ego state script message Injunctions, not only to increase their own OKness, but the OKness of all the living members of the family system.
I became a certified transactional analyst, a CTA, after passing written and oral comprehensive exams administered by the International Transactional Analysis Association in 1978, after undergoing three years of once a month training, all day Saturday and half of Sunday, at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
I have covered ego states and scripts in my books Business Voyagesand Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, listing common Parent ego state script messages and Child ego state injunctions. All parents do not transmit the same script messages creating considerable variety among family scripts and outcomes. Certain life scripts conveniently fit certain roles, jobs, professions, careers, and what have you more than others, providing fresh recruits already trained for job openings, slots, and positions in an economy, which is fine so long as the economy does not change too much. Unfortunately in recent years in the United States the offshoring of high wage blue collar jobs to foreign low wage countries and the use of more and more automation has rendered many family scripts obsolete.
Here are some chain of ego states messages I have observed working in organizations and groups as a professor and consultant taken from a passage on pages 187-188 from Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning:
PARENT CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Be productive. Work hard. Make money. Be strong. Hurry up. Be firm. Be slow. Be pompous. Be polite. Be serious and reverent. Be silly and irreverent. Walk fast. Use em- phatic hand gestures. Make small talk. Don’t violate the chain of command. Go through channels. Be attractive. Be unattractive. Be short. Be tall. Look harried. Please me. Be perfect. Make the organization look good. Use innocu- ous, euphemistic words. Take your glasses off, and point with them. Wear a pinstriped suit. Dress nicely. Drive a Buick Electra. Play golf. Drink scotch. Cross your legs nonchalantly. Stroll coolly. Have another beer. Have some wine. Don’t wear a tie or dress nicely. Go bowling with the guys/gals. Ride a bicycle. Get a Toyota. Be a nice gal/guy. Act/be old/young.
ADULT CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Hiring costs are $100; firing costs are $97. We need 1,000one thousand more units a month to keep up with the present sales rate. Enrollment increased/decreased X percent. X percent of our students /trainees report back that our teaching/training was beneficial to them. X percent of our students think they learn valuable, relevant learning in our classes/courses/programs.
CHILD CHAIN OF COMMAND MESSAGES: Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t be powerful. Don’t feel what you feel, feel what I want you to feel. Don’t be close. Don’t be you, be what I attribute you to be. Don’t belong. Don’t be well or sane. Don’t be sexual. Don’t be intelligent. Don’t be imaginative. Don’t make it. Don’t feel glad. Don’t learn. Don’t achieve. Don’t grow up. Don’t be energetic and confident. Dô°€on’t be spontaneous.
It’s not that easy to take care of Number 1 in life much less everyone else; but given global warming and other problems around Spaceship Earth one can build a case we should at least give the idea some thought. The capitalist economic system based on the premise that taking care of number one is the highest possible ethical goal is no longer working for most people.
Are there now more unsuccessful people than successful people? Based on incomes and wealth alone so it would seem. If so, what should be done? One idea is to get involved in Game-free groups to discuss what people might do to become more successful.
Assuming Berne is right, what people need to do is get together and discuss script messages emanating here and yon to develop consensual ideas for adapting and flexing with economic, political, and environmental problems and issues. A major problem is separating relevant focal points from irrelevant noise in order to comprehend what is really going on.
It will do little good to play AIN’T IT AWFUL, a psychological Game identified and labeled by transactional analystsError! Hyperlink reference not valid. to stroke humans for being innocent helpless Victims of obsolete economic, religious, and political systems manipulated and exploited by rapacious sociopathic Persecutor oligarchs and leaders and their corrupt bought and paid for lackey politicians for selfish gain, however true that might be in reality.
On the other hand, it will do no good for Earthians to stick their heads in the sand to passively pretend everything is just hunky-dory and swell, with everything coming up roses for everyone, living in small imaginary Candide-like best of all possible worlds, playing a psychological Game labeled GREENHOUSE by transactional analysts, in which players are rewarded with plastic strokes for making nonsensical positive comments about the environment and their lives.
Regardless of the causes of the Earthian plight, it seems to me individual humans should assume responsibility and take action for conserving energy as best they can in their daily lives to reduce greenhouse gases; but especially they should select politicians who will create economic and political policies and actions to correct environmental and social problems on a mass scale.
An existential question right now is whether humans can learn how to look after everyone, not merely number one, to prevent the extinction of the human species.
In the last six months I have tried to set up a De-Gaming Democracy group as explained in my article, “De-Gaming and Saving Democracy,” here in Statesboro, Georgia, USA, where I live, hoping to engage citizens of various persuasions, whether red, blue, green, or any other color, in discussions of relevant economic and political problems and opportunities to develop consensual realistic approaches to the environmental problems we face, in what I call the Ogeechee Economic Forum meeting the third Saturday of each month, with little success. So far four participants have shown up. It appears most people are not interested in, or are afraid of, transacting in a Game-free Adult way in public dealing with environmental, economic, and political problems and opportunities. Hopefully interest in this forum will pick up. It seems to me right now that humans all around Spaceship Earth should get busy in Game-free groups right now developing consensual answers for problems threatening their existence as a species.
See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc. for some management science ideas on how Earthians might eventually co-construct an economic and political system that is viable and satisfying for everyone.
Going Back to School as a Veteran: Why You Should Do It and Tips for Succeeding
By Lisa Walker
Although it comes with many challenges, going back to school after the military could be one of the best things you do for your career (and life in general). Not only can it help you to transition more smoothly into civilian life, but earning a degree also improves your job prospects and allows you to train and learn in a new industry/field.
However, if you’re thinking about pursuing a college degree as a veteran, it’s important that you prepare and approach it the right way. From knowing your benefits to utilizing resources like effectivelearning.net, here are some practical tips to keep in mind:
Explore your benefits.
As a veteran, you have many more resources to help you in your college endeavors than most civilians do. The Post 9/11 G.I. Bill, for starters, was established to provide funding for veterans pursuing job training and education. If your program of choice is approved under the G.I. Bill, you can receive up to 36 months of benefits. There are also tons of scholarships, grants, and loans available to veterans. Do your research and apply for as many assistance programs as you can.
Turn to online programs.
If you want to save money and add convenience to your life (and who doesn’t?), enroll in an online college. If you pursue an online degree in computer science, for example, you can learn skills that will prove invaluable in the workforce, making you a sought-after professional. Getting a bachelor’s degree in business administration or marketing could also open you up to a wide range of job opportunities.
Think about what you want to do.
Before you settle on the type of degree you will pursue, carefully consider what kind of work you would like to do for the foreseeable future. First, think about the skills you’ve acquired up to this point in your life. While you’ll expand your knowledge and skill set by going back to school, you probably have some natural talents that should be factored into your career choice. Brainstorm ideas, and research fields and niches where your talents would serve you well.
Also, don’t be afraid to try something new. Maybe you went into the military straight from high school. Now, perhaps you have a better idea of what you want to do. Consider your passions, and work toward garnering the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed, whether that means entering a specific industry as an employee or starting your own business.
Start networking immediately.
Networking is critical, no matter what kind of career path you take. And it’s never too early to start. While in school, you’ll have the opportunity to meet a lot of students, professors, professionals, and other people in the community. Make connections, and be intentional about developing relationships. Not only can you learn from others, but having a solid team of people around you can significantly improve your job/business prospects for the rest of your career.
Get help when you need it.
Finally, don’t be afraid to seek help whenever you’re facing challenges. For example, you can find a mentor who can offer guidance and introduce you to people in the industry you’re interested in. SCORE is a free program from the Small Business Administration that connects mentors with new and aspiring small business owners, so it’s a great resource for veterans. They even offer remote sessions via video chat and phone calls, so you can work with someone on your schedule from the safety and comfort of home. It’s also wise to work with a financial advisor if you’re thinking about starting your own business in the future so you can plan and budget for startup costs.
As a veteran, going back to school can help you transition smoothly into civilian life while significantly improving your prospects in the job market. If you decide to go to school, remember to research all of the resources available to you and look into your options with online degrees. Also, factor in your passions, interests, and skills when choosing a career path, prioritize networking, and look for assistance anytime you need it. Following the advice listed here will put you in a better position to succeed – no matter your choice of career.
To find tutoring services or a variety of other educational resources, visit effectivelearning.net today!
THE EARTHIAN is a digest of articles containing facts, perspectives, theories, models, analyses, and recommendations concerned about existential states of affairs affecting all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth. Recent relevant articles written and published by intelligent hard-hitting truth-seeking writers in Internet journals about psychological, social, economic, political, military, religious, and ecological states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked below as sources, following a usual comment by the editor.
“ASK LESS WHAT YOUR NATION CAN DO FOR YOU–ASK MORE WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR SPACESHIP EARTH”
OR SO IT SEEMS TO ME RIGHT NOW
By Richard John Stapleton
Here’s an email I sent to my Effective Learning Report mailing list in the last two weeks that I also posted on my Facebook page several times:
“FIRE TRUMP! 2020
“Yes, Biden’s a weak and flawed candidate, and he should not have been nominated by dim Dem voters and corrupt DNC insiders rather than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
“And, it’s too late now for banal subjective arguments and comparisons about lesser evils.
“For whatever it’s worth, however, I will say, this being my own email, I think Trump is the most dangerous of the two. He sees himself as a fascist dictator, as evidenced by his admiration and affinity for fascist dictators such as Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, Kim Jong Un, et. al., plus he’s a narcissist seriously addicted to playing psychological Games. While there’s probability Biden will do harm if elected, it seems to me the probability of Trump doing worse harm is much higher.
“More chickens keep coming home to roost from mistakes made by USian Dem and Repug voters and their federal governments for many decades, and the prognosis is not good.
Which prompted a response from a fraternity brother of mine from our college days at Texas Tech University:
“WHEN YOU FIRE SOMEONE, YOU NEED TO HAVE A REPLACEMENT THAT WILL MAKE THINGS BETTER.
“TRUMP BELIEVES IN THE AMERICA WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE. HE WORKS TIRELESSLY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER.
“BIDEN, THE CORRUPT, CAREER POLITICIAN, AND HIS RADICAL LEFT CRONIES, DO NOT LIKE THIS AMERICA AND WANT TO MOVE TOWARD CHANGING IT TO A MORE SOCIALIST TYPE COUNTRY! AND THEY WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF DIRECTING THOSE CHANGES….WHERE THEY ALONE HAVE THE POWER!
“IT’S NOT ANYMORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT!”
It seems to me right now these two emails exemplify one of the most debilitating problems of USian government–polarization. The country is and has been for decades split almost fifty-fifty between left-wingers and right-wingers, between Democrats and Republicans, causing constant conflict, agitation, and stagnation, if not decline, and no one it seems can do anything about it. The problem has been obvious for several decades and little or no progress has been made correcting it. Biden has made a big deal of this in his speeches this year assuring us he is able to get along with both Dems and Repugs in Washington and he will work for all USians if he is elected. We’ll see.
To my knowledge the polarized attitudes and beliefs have not changed much if any in my adult life. National presidential elections are always about fifty-fifty and senate and house races always seem to result in small numerical differences on both sides of the aisle in congress, thanks to the votes of voters in Red and Blue states.
Consequently, problems don’t get solved, and sanctimonious self-righteous ideologues generally rule the roost with platitudes and politics as usual in the house, senate, presidency, and supreme court, mainly trading favors to get bills enacted and cases decided that will get their side elected again, heedless of the cost of their pork barrel bills for all USians in the long run, and regardless of how much their behavior and unethical sub–optimum decisions increase the budget deficit. And the devil continues to take the hindmost and the good times continue to rollin the short run for politicians and lobbyists.
Assuming a good law is passed, such as the Glass-Steagall Act, sooner or later another side will get enough votes to get rid of it. The military keeps getting bigger and bigger and the courts keep getting more and more political and ideological. The distribution of the national income keeps getting more and more unequal and unfair. Poverty keeps increasing and inequality keeps getting worse.The taxes of large corporations and the elite rich keep getting lower and lower. And thefederal budget keeps getting more and more bloated with bigger and biggeryearly deficits, with a larger and larger pile of debt dropped on the USian balance sheetevery year.Meanwhile global warming and climate change keep getting worse, more consequential, and more threatening.
Part of the problem is there is no way for anyone to prove what is really right in politics, and not only is “All’s fair in love and war,” all’s fair in USian politics is also true, if your party can change the rules and back out of agreements to suit selfish interests.
In general, what’s true for most people in economics and politics is whatever butters their bread, or, as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
We are not only talking about “a man” in this context: Sinclair’s maxim applies to every human, man or woman, adult or child, saint or sinner, all sexes and gender classifications, all humans of any age, all forms of salaries, all forms of daily bread, all forms of security, recognition, status, structures, etc.
Why do people believe what they believe? They are paid to believe it, that’s why. They are paid in many more ways than money, including strokes, or units of recognition, prestige, security, power, structure, acceptance, bonding with like-minded people, satisfying feelings of all sorts, appreciation, love, safety, and many other things. Who knows what the real psychic satisfaction or payoff for anything is in the cases of specific individuals in specific cases?
Most humans are always needy or greedy for something and after being stroked, rewarded, punished, reinforced, and paid over and over again, sooner or later they come to believe the ideas, notions, fantasies, social structures, religions, ideologies, groups, organizations, transactions, time structuring patterns, beliefs, hobbies, social relations, psychological Games, and life positions they have inherited and use are without doubt the way, the truth, and the light, which are by now set in concrete in rock-like heads, almost impossible to change with any kind of facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and arguments.Thus voters stay Repug and Dem; and Red states stay red and Blue states stay blue.
I don’t know how many times lately I have read or heard on my Facebook page newsfeed and elsewhere someone expressing exasperation and consternation about how so and so as intelligent or well educated as he or she is could possibly believe what she or he believes, often not being able to understand how so and so could possibly believe Trump, a chronic liar and Game player, misogynist, ego maniac, narcissist, crook, and whatever else, who favors himself, the elite rich, and the military, is a good president.
Well, I can’t imagine it myself, but I also think I have at least connected in the immediately above paragraphs some of the relevant dots explaining how human beliefs happen and get set in concrete in individual human heads, inexorably and inevitably through time, causing the perpetuation of the USian political polarization problem.
Unfortunately, throughout human history around Spaceship Earth when humans have accidentally stumbled upon optimum political solutions for social and economic problems sooner or later some greedy SOB, group, organization, or government came along with enough brute force powerto change them to suit his, her, or their personal beliefs, tastes, interests and greed, set in concrete in their heads, winning elections and fighting wars causing enormous human suffering, which is why I think after all is said and done the only hope for Earthian humans is to sooner than later turn all major decision-making about economics and politics around Earth over to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers working in a new organizational structure similar to what I have called Spaceship Earth, Inc., using organizational processes similar to what smart humans running organizations such as Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative investment management company, now use to “make” billions of dollars.
Human males and females in all countries around Spaceship Earth have proved time and time again to be too weak, dumb, and greedy to take care of all species of flora and fauna, inexorably gradually creating up to now an Earthian ecological crisis that threatens the existence of the entire human species, as thousands of other living species become extinct every year because of habitat destruction, caused by ever–increasing numbers of encroachingneedy and greedy humans hungrily devouring Earth’s resources, creating a human population bomb that threatens all species.
Someone asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government on the North American continent he, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. al. had created. He famously replied it was “A republic, if you can keep it.”
A republic is not a full democracy but it’s freer than a monarchy or a fascist dictatorship.
Not only is freedom not free, as advertisements for the US military remind us: freedom is also grossly unequally distributed.
Freedom in any country is distributed on a continuum from most free to least free–regardless of whether the country is democratic, fascist, monarchist, capitalist, socialist, communist, or whatever. The most free are an elite minority at the top who can do more than all the rest, travel, learn, experiment, whatever, doing about whatever they want to do at any time. The least free are those at the bottom who have to do what they are told, having no power to travel, study, learn, start a business, whatever, being almost totally dependent on getting some sort of job to be dictated to by some sort of boss day in and day out, if they are lucky enough to find and hold a job. The rest of humanity are situated at fine gradients of freedom in between the grossly unequal polar extremes.
In most cases where one is situated on the freedom continuum is a function of her or his accident of birth, not free-will ability, work, or merit. Earthian human life is not fair, or at least it never has been. Maybe there’s hope though. Who knows?
Suffice it to say the USian presidential election process culminating once again next Tuesday, November 3, will provide one more answer for history tests–who became the new president of the US in 2020? Assuming Biden or Trump receive a clear majority of votes the answer could be clear November 3. If not, the country may once again be thrown into an agonizing ordeal of trying to prove with electoral votes who won; and if this does not work, the six ideological Repug judges now on the US Supreme Court could wind up creating the answer their way.
One way or another there will be another right answer for history test questions about the names of US presidents within a month or so from November 3; but no matter what happens there will never be right answers in history books proving the whole process was fair and just, from the primaries through the final verdict.
See my essay “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 humans to develop an I’m OK–You’re OK life position.
This entails humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition 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.
This can be done using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form
Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?
I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for teaching me in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the metaphor in the above paragraph and planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work that machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what he called mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.
As usual this month’s THE EARTHIAN links and cites as SOURCES recent articles written and published by clear deep-thinking hard-hitting independent writers on various Earthian states of affairs.
Some Game playing goes on in the articles, i.e., a writer is psychologically persecuting, rescuing, or victimizing someone, but it seems to me the writers are generally trying to paint accurate pictures of what they think is really going on.
Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a case politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games, mostly wasting their time and energy pastiming (bullshitting) and engaging in rituals (shuffling paper, filling out unnecessary forms, attending useless meetings with lawyers and others, and the like). Almost everything done in so-called foreign policy is a move in a psychological Game it seems to me.
It’s not easy, impossible some say, to separate relevant from irrelevant focal points in order to comprehend global cases, systems, and processes, while being inundated with fake news and true facts of states of affairs generated daily around Spaceship Earth, made public on the Internet, and elsewhere, to see what’s really going on, using primarily inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about psychological, social, economic, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.
It’s better to be honestly wrong than dishonestly wrong. Telling someone something you know is fake as if it were true is worse than telling someone something that’s fake because of genuine ignorance. A good case in point these days is most USians calling FICA insurance premium payments “payroll” taxes. It’s hard to know if sayers calling FICA payments payroll taxes really do not know any better or if they really do know better but are overtly lying about it go along with the crowd to get political brownie points for conforming to a group lie.
It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people not telling people things they know are true that others need to know. Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful than lying by commission, telling people things you know are false and fake, is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to know what’s fake and what’s not. Political parties, Earthian governments, and Mainstream media lie by omission with alacrity, information about the Julian Assange case being a case in point.
Feel free to respond with comments and criticisms about any of the SOURCES listed below using the RESPONSES post on this blog masthead at the top of this page; but please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. Criticize and correct any of the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles; but please refrain from slandering and defaming the characteristics and reputations of the authors illogically using slanderous or defamatory comments trying to prove their arguments and conclusions in their articles are wrong, and yours are right.
I have no desire to sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for THE EARTHIAN or the Effective Learning Report but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve gained value from THE EARTHIAN and would like to reciprocate go to our Effective Learning Publications page and purchase one or more copies of my books at https://www.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications.html .
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Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher.
SOURCES:
October 29, 2020
A cogent article it seems to me. Say it ain’t so Joe.
If free enterprise capitalism is so great why can’t the USian govt just let supply and demand set prices for all goods around Spaceship Earth and buy what it needs like everybody else?
“American militarism marches on: No discussion or media coverage of Washington’s war against the world,” by Philip M. Giraldi, INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/31126.
If all politicians are psychopaths and you should not vote for a psychopath how can you vote at all?
“Remember, education precedes action. Citizens need to the do the hard work of educating themselves about what the government is doing and how to hold it accountable. Don’t allow yourselves to exist exclusively in an echo chamber that is restricted to views with which you agree. Expose yourself to multiple media sources, independent and mainstream, and think for yourself.”
This is not anti-intellectualism; it’s truth-denying no matter what, nihilistic rockheads protecting their make-believe dream worlds to further their idiosyncratic interests and fantasies.
“Scientific advice on resource allocation is best handled by generalists with a comprehensive view on health. Disease experts wish to capture public attention and sway resource allocation decisions in favour of the disease of their interest. We referred previously to the principles of guidance on health by the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), cited as “We make independent decisions in an open, transparent way, based on the best available evidence and including input from experts and interested parties. Support from disease experts is crucial in delivering opinion, scholarly advice and evidence to a team of independent general scientists. But this team should independently propose decisions to policy-makers and be held accountable for them.”
After watching and thinking about Donald Trump’s Town Hall meeting last night, it seems to me white supremacy is not the biggest issue in this presidential race. It’s human superiority in general.
At issue is whether Trump or Biden are superior enough to serve as president of the United States. Trump’s told us he’s a stable genius, and we now know his parents gave him four hundred million dollars.
You might think you were superior too if your parents gave you four hundred million dollars. You might even think you were superior enough to be president of the United States.
A lot of people think Donald Trump is superior, but is he superior to leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Albert Einstein? Definitely not, but does he know what is going on better than anyone else that could be president of the US right now, by virtue of learning what he has learned throughout his life experience?
He has psychological nuances and mannerisms that obviously work for enticing votes. He has a sophisticated New York accent he uses to interject voice inflections and intonations to express superlatives at the end of sentences, and within parenthetical phrases, such as, “and it will be wonderful,” or “beautiful”, that apparently a lot of people find appealing and consoling.
Donald Trump has a body type, however artificial his hair and the color of his face, that must remind some people of past heroes and great deeds. He has a limited but effective vocabulary he uses to communicate psychological messages that convince many people he is superior, that is also effective for communicating messages that encourage his followers to think they too are superior, because of their ethnicity, their religion, and their cultural beliefs, regardless of how impoverished or poorly educated they might be.
He’s a world class winner playing psychological Games, especially playing NIGYSOB, NOW I’VE GOT YOU, YOU SOB, which enables him to act out as president his business and reality show plots and climaxes, primarily hiring and firing people and being the boss.
But he’s still a would-be emperor wearing no clothes, all hat and no cattle, as I used to say back in Texas when I was growing up.
His anger and fear were more apparent than usual in his first and possibly only 2020 presidential debate with Biden, and in his Town Hall meeting last night. Anger is the primary psychological cause of NIGYSOB playing, along with a desire to be superior, to be one-up.
What’s he angry about? Like a lot of people he’s probably angry about the problems he had as a child dealing with psychological messages and requirements laid on him by his parents and the way his life has turned out up to now, and what might happen to him from here on.
While NIGYSOB players mainly come across socially as Persecutors and Rescuers, they also consider themselves Victims psychologically. Trump complained about the “maniacs” that had been trying to ruin his presidency for three years in his last town hall meeting. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone like this considering how little sympathy he has shown for millions of others.
Now he too is worried about getting fired.
Has Donald Trump done a good job serving as the chief executive of the United States government and serving as the commander in chief of the US military?
I don’t think so.
FIRE TRUMP! – 2020
_________________________________________
Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, educator, writer, editor, and publisher
I am convinced the art of politics around Spaceship Earth now and always has been based on a psychological Game I have named YOU STARTED IT in which politicians, militaries, citizens, subjects, and voters act out roles on a Drama Triangle composed of Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims, switching about from time to time from one role to another, depending on which person, interest group, identity group, organization, or nation they are dealing with, feeling sanctimonious and self-righteous attacking, threatening, sanctioning, and possibly destroying the other because the other attacked or threatened them first.
One can build a case theYOU STARTED ITpsychological Game builds employment and makes the elite rich richer in all countriesandprovides a form of entertainment for the masses. Manyhumans consider fighting in warsas Rescuers and Persecutorsfor Victims to be more heroic, exciting and exhilarating than staying at home doing boring routine work.
YOU STARTED IT playing under capitalism necessarily entails zero-sum competition and non-winner outcomes among individuals, groups, and organizations, including nations, and precludes Earthian humans from establishing I’m OK–You’re OK life positions.
Love does not make the Earthian human world go round: Insatiable greed–for stimulation, recognition, structure, money, and power–is the prime driver.
How much longer humans will survive aboard Spaceship Earth remains to be seen if they continue playing psychological Games at their historical levels. If global warming and climate change does not do them in nuclear bombs will. Both threats are increasing by the day. The increasingly severe droughts and wildfires of 2020 are a wake-up call that most humans are ignoring. Economic and political troubles are also increasing around Spaceship Earth, especially in the US. The same causes and forces that caused WWII have recurred, becoming stronger by the day, especially in the US, thanks to humans playing YOU STARTED IT at all levels.
The Covid plague and USian presidential boss Don Trump are probably the most serious threats facing Spaceship Earth at the moment. The plague–Trump or no Trump–could cause a severe Earthian economic depression and many millions of premature human deaths. Trump is now playing YOU STARTED IT with China and others using the Chinese govt handling of the Covid-19 disaster as a pretext. He would destroy democracy in the US if he starts a civil war playing YOU STARTED IT with what he calls the radical left in the US. He has poured gasoline on fires of hate in tweets andin speeches at racist rallies. His Mussolini-like demeanor, posturing, belligerence, and bullying in the first and possibly only presidential debate of 2020 was telling. Let’s face it: he wants to be a fascist dictator, to better Rescue his Victim followers and supporters, and to better Persecute their enemies on one of the most dramatic Drama Triangles of all time.He’s one of the most addicted drama addicts of all time on national and international stages.
His personal fate is now in the hands of his Covid-19 infection that he probably brought on himself trying to prove what a tough guy he is by not wearing a mask, probably causing Covid-19 infections among his supporters and followers who copied his idiotic leadership behavior.
The Julian Assange trial in England is also telling. USian and British governments, despite their imperialist actions around Spaceship Earth squelching democracy and freedom for others, playing YOU STARTED IT persecuting enemies to rescue their victim citizens, have historically been among the most democratic and ruled-by-law countries internally for their own citizens and subjects. Both countries have espoused free speech and truth-telling. They have also probably practiced it more than most countries, which is not saying much. Both countries strongly believe in keeping secrets from their subjects and citizens.
The Assange trial has not received much coverage in USian mainstream media. Was it squelched? You be the judge.
The main issue in the Assange trial is free speech, more specifically whether Earthian investigative reporters have a human right to tell the truth about the secrets of governments, including the US govt. Up to now the precedent in the US has been that they do, if they can get the facts. If Assange loses the precedent will change and investigative reporters all around Spaceship Earth could be reduced from truth-tellers to mere lackeys of fascist states.
If Assange loses the first trial in England he still has two appeals left in England before a final decision to extradite him to the US is made. If he loses three trials there it’s possible the English government will still decide not to extradite him to the US. If he is extradited to the US he faces aharsh sentence if convicted of whatever it is the US Govt finally decides to charge him with.
For doing what? Telling the truth about war crimes of the US government.
Also at issue in the Assange case is whether so-called Great Britain is really a great independent nation or is merely a vassal of the so-called United States.
As reported by investigative reporters Craig Murray, John Pilger, and Alexander Mercouris the integrity of the Belmarsh trial has been suspect from the beginning because of the way it has been conducted. For one thing it’s sited in an isolated courtroom almost impossible for the public to access, and few reporters are allowed. Assange inhumanely has been forced to sit in the courtroom in a glass cage, barely able to hear what is going on. Some have called it a show trial and have accused the judge of being biased, establishing arbitrary short time limits for defense presentations, not allowing certain evidence, and what have you.
The oral testimony of expert witnesses has not only been cut short but entirely excluded in some cases, the judge having decided to only accept written testimony from some expert witnesses that is simply read into the court proceedings. One such expert witness has been Noam Chomsky, a professor, the truth-teller laureate of the US in my opinion, whose books and writingson US imperialism have been suppressed in USian mainstream media. His written testimony read into the Assange trial record is posted below in an article by Craig Murray.
The case of United States v. Julian Assange in England has not gone well for the US govt’s lawyers. They have submitted two superseding indictments and are having problems proving just what crime it is Assange committed. An underlying issue is whether he is being tried and persecuted for political, not legal, reasons.
Courtenay Barnett, a British lawyer practising in the Caribbean, has published several articles in the Effective Learning Report explaining the Assange case, reposted below as sources for this article.
If justice is not served in this case democracy will have been mocked and both the UK and the US will have been pushed backward, back toward serfdom and fascism.
Benjamin Franklin, a major force behind the writing of the USian government Constitution, was asked by someone on a street in the 18th Century what kind of government he, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. al. had created on the North American continent after rebelling against the English hereditary monarchy. He famously replied that it was “A republic, if you can keep it.”
He also said the former British colonistsfomenting the rebellion had better unite and hang together in support of the new republic, otherwise “We shall all hang separately.“
A republic is not a full democracy but it’s freer than a monarchy or a fascist dictatorship.
Human life all around Spaceship Earth would become less free if the new precedent in the Assange ordeal becomes law, since citizens or subjects of all countries could then theoretically be imprisoned in the US for disclosing secrets of the USian government.
For Assange such a change could result in cruel and inhumane punishment. Experts in sources such as those posted below have estimated if Assange, an Australian, is extradited to the US he could receive a sentence of up to 175 years in solitary confinement in a USian maximum security prisonfor disclosing Wikileaks files.
Unfortunately, not only is freedom not free; it’s unequally distributed in all walks of life.
Freedom in any country is distributed among the population on a continuum from most free to least free–whether the country is democratic, fascist, monarchist, capitalist, socialist, communist, or what have you. The freest are an elite minority at the top who can feel, think, learn, and do about what they want to, much more than all the rest, having many options in adult life. The least free are those at the bottom of the human hierarchy who have to feel, think, and do what they are told, having but one option in adult life outside of prisons, getting some sort of job, if they’re lucky, to do the bidding of some sort of boss day in and day out. And then there are all the rest situated at myriad gradients of freedom between the two polar extremes of the continuum.
In most cases where one is situatedon the freedom continuum is a function of her or his accident of birth, not free-will ability, work, or merit. Earthian human life is not fair, or at least it never has been. Maybe there’s hope though. Who knows?
Suffice it to say the next month of USian history, up to the 2020 presidential election November 2, will be interesting, probably disgusting, and possibly terrifying.
See my article “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 fair, 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.
This would entail Earthianhumans peacefully reducing through natural attrition 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.
This can be done using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form
Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer systems or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?
I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for making it possible for me to read in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the metaphor in the immediately above paragraph and for planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” such as computersand AI robots being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work that machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.
Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a case Earthian politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games, mostly wasting the rest of their time and energy pastimingand engaging in rituals (shuffling paper, filling out unnecessary forms, attending useless meetings and rallies, and the like). It seems to me almost everything consequential in both domestic and foreign policyin all countries entails moves in a psychological Game, i.e., Rescuing, Persecuting, or Victimizing individuals, groups, or organizations in some way, which it seems to me is why completely unemotional AI robots and supercomputers coulddo a better and fairer jobcalculating the wins, losses, and tradeoffsinvolved in global decisions thanimperfect, untrustworthy, limited, emotional, immoral, unethical humans, such as most of the presidents, prime ministers, dictators, and monarchs of some 200 nations now delineated aboard Spaceship Earth,especially the current president of the US, so as tocreate policies and systems that would maximize the chances of survival of the Earthian human population in the long run.
It’s not easy, impossible some say, to separate relevant from irrelevant focal points in order to comprehend global cases, systems, and processes, while being inundated with fake news and true facts of states of affairs generated daily around Spaceship Earth, made public on the Internet, and elsewhere, to see what’s really going on, using primarily inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about psychological, social, economic, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.
It’s better to be honestly wrong than dishonestly wrong. Telling someone something you know is fake as if it were true is worse than telling someone something that’s fake because of genuine ignorance. A good case in point these days is most USians calling FICA insurance premium payments “payroll” taxes. It’s hard to know if sayers calling FICA payments payroll taxes really do not know any better or if they really do know better but are overtly lying about it go along with the crowd to get political brownie points for conforming to a group lie.FICA payments are premium payments for a retirement insurance policy.
It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people not telling people things they know are true that others need to know. Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful than lying by commission, telling people things you know are false and fake, is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to know what’s fake and what’s not. Political parties, Earthian governments, and Mainstream media lie by omission with alacrity, information about the Julian Assange case being a case in point.
Feel free to respond with comments and criticisms about any of the SOURCES listed below using the RESPONSES post on this blog masthead at the top of this page; but please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. Criticize and correct any of the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles; but please refrain from slandering and defaming the characteristics and reputations of the authors illogically using slanderous or defamatory comments trying to prove their arguments and conclusions in their articles are wrong, and yours are right, starting more YOU STARTED IT psychological Games.
SOURCES:
October 4, 2020
Here is John Pilger’s opinion of the Assange ordeal.
“The lion’s share of today’s Old Bailey proceedings in Julian Assange’s extradition trial was spent on battles over mental health and dire risk. The prosecution continued its attempt to minimise the dangers facing Assange were he to be extradited to the United States for 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. While the defence has its case on Assange’s fragile mental health well plotted, the prosecution is hoping that witnesses such as Dr Nigel Blackwood, consultant psychiatrist with the National Health Service, will punch holes in the argument. They will certainly hope for better efforts than those made by their own witnesses, Seena Fazel, a psychiatry professor who seemed too professionally tentative to land firm blows against Assange’s diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome, or dismiss the health risks facing him in the US prisons system.”
Here is another cogent article by Courtenay Barnett, in which at issue is whether the UK and the US are already functioning fascist states joined at the hip or still have some hope as independent democracies.
Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher
THE EARTHIAN, Number Nineteen, Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, October 4, 2020
THE EARTHIAN is a digest of articles containing facts, perspectives, theories, models, analyses, and recommendations concerned about existential states of affairs affecting all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth. Recent relevant articles written and published by intelligent hard-hitting truth-seeking writers in Internet journals about psychological, social, economic, political, military, religious, and ecological states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked below as sources, following a usual comment by the editor.
“ASK LESS WHAT YOUR NATION CAN DO FOR YOU–ASK MORE WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR SPACESHIP EARTH”
OR SO IT SEEMS TO ME RIGHT NOW
By Richard John Stapleton
I am convinced the art of politics around Spaceship Earth now and always has been based on a psychological Game I have named YOU STARTED IT in which politicians, militaries, citizens, subjects, and voters act out roles on a Drama Triangle composed of Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims, switching about from time to time from one role to another, depending on which person, interest group, identity group, or nation they are dealing with, feeling sanctimonious and self-righteous attacking, threatening, sanctioning, and possibly destroying the other because the other attacked or threatened them first.
One can build a case theYOU STARTED ITpsychological Game builds employment and makes the elite rich richer in all countriesandprovides a form of entertainment for the masses. Manyhumans consider fighting in warsas Rescuers and Persecutors to be more heroic, exciting and exhilarating than staying at home doing boring routine work.
YOU STARTED IT playing under capitalism necessarily entails zero-sum competition and non-winner outcomes among individuals, groups, and organizations, including nations, and precludes Earthian humans from establishing I’m OK–You’re OK life positions.
Love does not make the Earthian human world go round: Insatiable greed–for stimulation, recognition, structure, money, and power–is the prime driver.
How much longer humans will survive on Earth remains to be seen if they continue playing psychological Games at their historical levels. If global warming and climate change do not get them nuclear bombs will. Both threats are increasing by the day. The increasingly severe droughts and wildfires of 2020 are a wake-up call that most humans are ignoring. Economic and political troubles are also increasing around Spaceship Earth, especially in the US. The same causes and forces that caused WWII have recurred, becoming stronger by the day, especially in the US, thanks to humans playing YOU STARTED IT at all levels.
The Covid plague and USian presidential boss Don Trump are probably the most serious threats facing Spaceship Earth at the moment. The plague–Trump or no Trump–could cause a severe Earthian economic depression and many hundreds of thousands of premature human deaths. Trump would destroy democracy in the US if he starts a civil war. He has poured gasoline on fires of hate in tweets andin speeches at racist rallies. His Mussolini-like demeanor, posturing, belligerence, and bullying in the first and possibly only presidential debate of 2020 was telling. Let’s face it: he wants to be a fascist dictator.
His fate is now in the hands of his Covid-19 infection that he probably brought on himself trying to prove what a tough guy he is by not wearing a mask, probably causing Covid-19 cases among his supporters and followers who copied his idiotic leadership behavior.
The Julian Assange trial in England is also telling. The US and England, despite their imperialist actions around Spaceship Earth squelching democracy and freedom for others, have historically been among the most democratic and ruled-by-law countries internally for their own citizens and subjects. Both countries have espoused free speech and truth-telling. They have also probably practiced it more than most, which is not saying much. Both countries strongly believe in keeping secrets from their subjects and citizens, as the Assange case shows.
The Assange trial has not received much coverage in USian mainstream media. Was it squelched? You be the judge.
The main issue in the Assange trial is free speech, more specifically whether Earthian investigative reporters have a human right to tell the truth about the secrets of governments, including the US govt. Up to now the precedent in the US has been that they do, if they can get the facts. If Assange loses the precedent will change and investigative reporters will be reduced from truth-tellers to mere lackeys of fascist states.
If Assange loses the first trial in England he still has two appeals left in England before a final decision to extradite him to the US is made. If he loses three trials there it’s possible the English government will still decide not to extradite him to the US. If he is extradited to the US he faces aharsh sentence if convicted of whatever it is the US Govt finally decides to charge him with.
For doing what? Telling the truth about war crimes of the US government.
Also at issue in the Assange case is whether so-called Great Britain is really a great independent nation or is merely a vassal of the so-called United States.
As reported by investigative reporters Craig Murray, John Pilger, and Alexander Mercouris the Belmarsh trial has been suspect from the beginning because of the way it has been conducted. For one thing it’s sited in an isolated courtroom almost impossible for the public to access, and few reporters are allowed. Assange inhumanely has been forced to sit in the courtroom in a glass cage, barely able to hear what is going on. Some have called it a show trial and have accused the judge of being biased, establishing arbitrary short time limits for defense presentations, not allowing certain evidence, and what have you.
The oral testimony of expert witnesses has not only been cut short but entirely excluded in some cases, the judge having decided to only accept written testimony from some expert witnesses that is simply read into the court proceedings. One such expert witness has been Noam Chomsky, a professor, the truth-teller laureate of the US in my opinion, whose books and writingson US imperialism have been suppressed in USian mainstream media. His written testimony read into the Assange trial record is posted below in an article by Craig Murray.
In general the case of United States v. Julian Assange in England has not gone well for the US govt’s lawyers. They have submitted two superseding indictments and are having problems proving just what crime it is Assange committed. An underlying issue is whether he is being tried and persecuted for political, not legal, reasons.
Courtenay Barnett, a British lawyer practising in the Caribbean, has published several articles in the Effective Learning Report explaining the Assange case, posted below as sources for this issue of The Earthian.
If justice is not served in this case democracy will have been mocked and both the UK and the US will have been pushed backward, back toward serfdom and fascism.
Benjamin Franklin was asked by someone in the 18th Century what kind of government he, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. al. had created on the North American continent after rebelling against England. He famously replied that it was “a republic, if you can keep it.”
A republic is not a full democracy but it’s freer than a monarchy or a fascist dictatorship.
Human life all around Spaceship Earth would become a little less free if a new precedent is set with the Assange ordeal that citizens or subjects of all countries can be imprisoned in the US for disclosing USian classified secrets.
For Assange such a change could result in a cruel and inhumane punishment. Experts in sources such as those posted below have estimated if Assange, an Australian, is extradited to the US he could receive a sentence of up to 175 years in solitary confinement in a USian maximum security prison.
Unfortunately not only is freedom not free; it’s unequally distributed in all walks of life.
Freedom in any country is distributed among the population on a continuum from most free to least free–whether the country is democratic, fascist, monarchist, capitalist, socialist, communist, or what have you. The most free are an elite minority at the top who can feel, think, learn, and do more than all the rest, having many options in adult life. The least free are those at the bottom of the human hierarchy who have to feel, think, and do what they are told, having but one option in adult life outside of prisons, getting some sort of job, if they’re lucky, doing the bidding of some sort of boss day in and day out. And then there are all the rest situated at myriad gradients of freedom between the two polar extremes of the continuum.
In most cases where one is situatedon the freedom continuum is a function of her or his accident of birth, not free-will ability, work, or merit. Earthian human life is not fair, or at least it never has been. Maybe there’s hope though. Who knows?
Suffice it to say the next month of USian history will be interesting, probably disgusting, and possibly terrifying.
See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/ for some management science ideas on how human Earthians might eventually co-construct an economic system that is fair, 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.
This would entail Earthianhumans peacefully reducing through natural attrition 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.
This can be done using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form
Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer systems or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?
I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for making it possible for me to read in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the metaphor in the above paragraph and for planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” such as computersand AI robots being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work that machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.
As usual this month’s THE EARTHIAN links and cites as SOURCES recent articles written and published by clear deep-thinking hard-hitting independent writers on various Earthian states of affairs.
Some Game playing goes on in the articles, i.e., a writer is psychologically persecuting, rescuing, or victimizing someone, but it seems to me the writers are generally trying to paint accurate pictures of what they think is really going on.
Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a case politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games, mostly wasting their time and energy pastiming (bullshitting) and engaging in rituals (shuffling paper, filling out unnecessary forms, attending useless meetings with lawyers and others, and the like). Almost everything done in so-called foreign policy is a move in a psychological Game it seems to me.
It’s not easy, impossible some say, to separate relevant from irrelevant focal points in order to comprehend global cases, systems, and processes, while being inundated with fake news and true facts of states of affairs generated daily around Spaceship Earth, made public on the Internet, and elsewhere, to see what’s really going on, using primarily inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about psychological, social, economic, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.
It’s better to be honestly wrong than dishonestly wrong. Telling someone something you know is fake as if it were true is worse than telling someone something that’s fake because of genuine ignorance. A good case in point these days is most USians calling FICA insurance premium payments “payroll” taxes. It’s hard to know if sayers calling FICA payments payroll taxes really do not know any better or if they really do know better but are overtly lying about it go along with the crowd to get political brownie points for conforming to a group lie.FICA payments are premium payments for a retirement insurance policy.
It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people not telling people things they know are true that others need to know. Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful than lying by commission, telling people things you know are false and fake, is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to know what’s fake and what’s not. Political parties, Earthian governments, and Mainstream media lie by omission with alacrity, information about the Julian Assange case being a case in point.
Feel free to respond with comments and criticisms about any of the SOURCES listed below using the RESPONSES post on this blog masthead at the top of this page; but please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. Criticize and correct any of the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles; but please refrain from slandering and defaming the characteristics and reputations of the authors illogically using slanderous or defamatory comments trying to prove their arguments and conclusions in their articles are wrong, and yours are right.
I have no desire to sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for THE EARTHIAN, but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve gained value from THE EARTHIAN and would like to reciprocate go to our Effective Learning Publications page and purchase one or more copies of my books at https://www.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications.html .
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Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher.
SOURCES:
October 4, 2020
Here is John Pilger’s opinion of the Assange ordeal.
“Over the span of eight years, 15 traders at the biggest US bank caused losses of more than $300 million to other participants in precious metals and Treasury markets, according to the court filings. JP Morgan has admitted responsibility for the traders’ actions. The three-year DPA will allow the bank to walk away from the scandal – and two counts of wire fraud – so long as it self-reports any future violations.”
“Most people go through life not questioning the motivations of their political, financial, economic and religious leaders. They naively believe they have achieved their positions of power because they have earned it through hard work, intellectual superiority, and moral authority. Most people are not sociopaths. They are just trying to steer around the potholes of life, raising families, earning a living, finding some enjoyment, leaving a positive legacy and trusting those in positions of power are looking out for their best interests”
Got to hand it to him. His getting up in the morning, getting his face painted and his hair fixed, and then going out in public to spout more of his bullshit requires a unique talent, a talent most moral and ethical USians his age could never develop. Right after he got elected, or maybe when he was running in 2016, I distinctly remember him saying on TV, “Most people are too moral and ethical to make any money.”
Yes, there are loopholes for the rich. Why are they there? They were passed into law by legislative lackeys of the rich whom the rich paid to do it. And look what happened. The US has a $3 trillion Fed budget deficit this year, and it’s going to get much worse, largely thanks to Repuglican tax cuts for the rich since 1980, boosted significantly again by Trump to get reelected.
I had Scotch Irish/English ancestors living in Texas when it was a nation. I was born and raised in Texas. I always thought my ancestors moved to Texas to get away from slavery in the south. It never occurred to me a reason they rebelled against Mexico was because Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829. I documented some of this in my book Business Voyages.
Wow. Now we can have a real live grown up Barbie Doll with seven children as a Supreme Court justice. She supposedly has a great legal mind. I have yet to see any credible evidence of that great legal mind, but she does have a pretty face.
Wow, now here is something new, first time I at least ever saw or heard of this happening on a street. We’re living in a brave, and frightening, new world.
If trump and Pompeo wanted to make the US a great enemy for Iran, Russia, and China, they also made those countries great enemies for the US for quid pro quo return, making sure the top leaders of all countries involved win playing the cards they were dealt in the psychological Game “They Started It,” played universally in all times and places by aggressive greedy Earthian leaders of countries, making sure the top leaders and militaries of countries retain can increase their perks, power, and privileges within their countries vis a vis underlings in their own countries, in the short run, regardless of long run consequences.
Notice the size of the Gross National Product of supposed arch evil enemy Russia. Why Russia is considered such a threat escapes me. It is about the size of Spain in terms of GNP. All about nuclear bombs I suppose.
“The lion’s share of today’s Old Bailey proceedings in Julian Assange’s extradition trial was spent on battles over mental health and dire risk. The prosecution continued its attempt to minimise the dangers facing Assange were he to be extradited to the United States for 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. While the defence has its case on Assange’s fragile mental health well plotted, the prosecution is hoping that witnesses such as Dr Nigel Blackwood, consultant psychiatrist with the National Health Service, will punch holes in the argument. They will certainly hope for better efforts than those made by their own witnesses, Seena Fazel, a psychiatry professor who seemed too professionally tentative to land firm blows against Assange’s diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome, or dismiss the health risks facing him in the US prisons system.”
“Will Michele Flournoy be the Angel of Death for the American empire?,” by Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J S Davies, INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/30865.
September 24
Well said, but left out any mention that all leaders of large powerful countries aboard Spaceship Earth play the psychological Game “They Startred It” in which they justify military expenses to preserve their own perks, privileges, and power within their own countries who tell underlings in their own countries such action is necessary to rescue them from heinous persecutors in other countries and such underlings should be grateful to have powerful rescuers such as themselves to take care of them. Unfortunately it seems there really is a lesser evil this time in the US election, much as i hate to say it; Biden. Trump is a genuine monster with a high probability of causing monstrous harm not only to the US but Spaceship Earth if he stays in office four more years.
This article like most does not mention the biggest problem, the population bomb. The Earthian human population will also have to be reduced through natural peaceful attrition, natural deaths exceeding natural births. No more than one child per woman would be a good place to start.
Here is another cogent article by Courtenay Barnett, in which at issue is whether the UK and the US are already functioning fascist states joined at the hip or still have some hope as independent democracies.
Major corporate profit making media have gone from trying to paint accurate pictures of general truth relevant for everyone to publishing target market content focusing on segments of society, telling the segment what it wants to feel, see, hear, and know, positively stroking naturally existing isolated and polarized world views, ideologies, and lifestyles within society, thereby further encouraging and reinforcing them, thereby engendering more and more hubris, chauvinism, and hate.
“Commoners in ancient Rome occasionally exercised a social strategy called secession plebis, or secession of the plebs,” by Matthew Iverson, RJS Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397.
Pathetic excuse for a human being. McConnell has done nothing but obstruct humane ideas for improving USian society for at least eleven years, vowing to oppose and tear down any constructive thing Obama advocated and did, such as the ACA. The man is bought and paid for by his rich corporate donors. His only principle is doing what his corporate paymasters have told him to do. He has not done one constructive thing in the Senate I am aware of.
This article provides a good overview of what has happened since the great recession of 2008. The Fed Reserve was used to restore the US economy using monetary policy, pumping as much funny money into the system as necessary to restore stock, bond, and housing markets, while pursuing goals of full employment and two percent inflation, which never happened. The so-called full employment Trump crowed about a year a so ago he said he singlehandedly created for workers did not include workers who had given up looking for work, and most of the new jobs were low paying jobs. Thus not enough new spendable money was put in the hands of consumers to bid up the price of goods, and thus inflation stayed low, below two percent. thus the rich got richer and the poor got worse off, albeit supposedly employed, which is where the US is now. Trump by decreasing the taxes of the rich and increasing military expenses and providing stimulus money to fight the Covid plague has managed to increase the US budget deficit to three trillion dollars this year, which is peanuts compared with what will happen if the same Fed Reserve and US govt policies continue unabated. How much funny money and deficit spending can you create without igniting hyperinflation? Well apparently quite a bit for a while if you keep reducing the disposable income of the poor making inflation not happen because they can’t buy very much. How long the poor will put up with this machination before Trump or some other president gets the “insurrection” Trump has been running his mouth about lately?
A trillion here a trillion there, pretty soon you are talking about real money, to paraphrase Irv Dirkson back in the 1960s who talked about a billion here and a billion there; but today it’s not all real money, a big chunk of it is Fed Reserve funny money, created out of thin air by punching digits into Fed Reserve computers and calling the resulting numbers money, with which to buy US treasury bills and notes to generate cash to pay the bills of the US govt, such as military bases in eighty or so foreign countries, and to prop up stock and bond markets, and maybe to stimulate the economy for poor folks some, and such. The longer this spending and tax cutting binge goes on the more debt piles up, at an exponential rate.
Say it aint so Joe, Seems hopeless, no way to win, Unfortunately all govmints and militaries around Spaceship Earth know how to play the psychological Game “They Started It” pointing out the heinousness of what their enemies did to extract more resources from their own countries to increase their own perks, privileges, money, and power at the expense of we the people of Spaceship Earth. Seems no way out of the Game. The end result? Maybe human extinction.
Who gives a rip about Russian meddling? So what. What real difference does it make? Russia is not even in the USian league as an economic competitor. Putin may be a ruthless dictator internally in his own poor unproductive country in control of nuclear weapons, but externally he’s an adept public relations expert doing a good job of manipulating USian mainstream media, politicians, and maybe a few voters. Mainly he’s another useful idiot to play “They Started It” with by USian leaders bent on preserving and increasing their own personal perks, privileges, money, and power flowing from lower taxes and/or larger shares of the money taken in and created annually by the US govt .
The Fed Reserve has been injecting more funny money into the stock market rigging and propping it up. How permanent is QE or quantitative easing that is the question. Most of the rise lately in the stock market has been in tech stocks such as Apple, caused by retail buying in addition to Fed Reserve funny money. The Covid plague has been good for tech stocks. The more humans get locked in their houses and apartments the more they want and need electronic devices to get basic needs met, causing tech stocks to be insanely overvalued based on general business policy. The more you know about historical business policy the crazier and scarier Earthian finance seems. Humans are now living in uncharted economic water.
Not only are tech billionaires not necessarily geniuses, their fortunes are a function of luck, being at the right time and place to get monopoly control of software necessary to do something a lot of people need or want, such as the MS-dos operating system required for most PCs, to generate untold millions of dollars of free cash flow that enables you to buy not only other bright software ideas written by others but also hire genius software designers and programmers to exploit and embellish the monopoly software you already have.
I almost never post stuff from Fox So-Called News, but this does contain an interesting video interview of Li-Ming Yan, the virologist who supposedly fled. Fact checkers have found there is some fake news in the post, but what about the body language of the young Chinese virologist who has MD and PhD degrees. If it’s fake she’s a good actress.
More “They Started It” psychological Game playing to increase the perks, privileges, and power of political and military leaders at the expense of we the people of Spaceship Earth. Part of the psychology of course is that the leaders would have you believe they are doing it to Rescue you from other Persecutors, be you Greek, Turk, USian, or whatever.
I have agreed more than I have disagreed with Paul Craig Roberts. This post seems unbelievable, but one thing’s for sure: Roberts has no compunction about telling it like he sees it. He worked in the Reagan administration as Undersecretary of the Treasury and knows more about how the USian govmint really works than most folks.
Here is another cogent article by Courtenay Barnett, in which at issue is whether the UK and the US are already functioning fascist states joined at the hip or still have some hope as independent democracies.
Unbelievable video of the situation in the west with Amy Goodman and an environmental researcher. Enough Trump, Trump, Trump. It’s time to get real about climate change.
Unbelievable. If true it should be stopped. whatever happened to separation of church and state in the US? If these priests don’t have to pay income taxes like everybody else then let them keep their mouths shut about political matters. It’s one thing for religionists of any sort to believe anything they want to believe, but it’s another matter to try to cram their beliefs down the throats of everyone else in the form of secular laws and executive orders. Large churches like large business corporations are not citizens with free speech, or at least should not be, as was the case in the US before the Citizens United US Supreme Court Case of 2010, in which five right wing US supreme court judges decided large corporations were citizens with free speech, and therefore could spend as much money as they wanted bribing us senators and representatives and presidents to lower their taxes and enact legislation in their favor. Face it, most religions and large corporations are not democratic. They are authoritarian fascist organizations.
Yep, it’s Trump, Trump, and more Trump. Almost nothing but Trump counts in the phantasmagoria of USian reality show consciousness in mass media and social media.
Johnson and Trump seem cut from the same mold, Yet Johnson does not seem as threatening as Trump regarding the probability of a fascist coup. The UK it seems to me is inherently more democratic than the US, especially regarding the matter of getting rid of the top leader of the country. It is much easier for Brits to get rid of a British prime minister than it is for USians to get rid of a USian president, who thanks to the US constitution is almost guaranteed a four year stay in office once put in office, even if he did not win a majority of votes in the presidential election that put him in office, thanks to the anti-democratric USian electoral college enshrined in its constitution.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is right when he states that, “Instead of nonviolence being the ethic demanded of protesters, what if it was the ethic demanded of the state?… If nonviolence is such a beautiful way of living, I think we should imagine that for the state. I think it’s actually worth doing.”
No end of Games can be played by the top military leaders of the US and Russia to increase their personal power, perks, and privileges and garner a larger share of their respective govmint budgets, easily paid for in the US by Fed Reserve funny money. How much does it cost to fly these things per hour in fuel costs alone?
Interesting article. Agree and disagree with parts of it. Agree Switzerland has an excellent system of government, maybe the most democratic aboard Spaceship Earth. Disagree the US could copy them given its development. Disagree there are only two general alternatives facing Spaceship Earth, totalitarianism and socialism or freedom and capitalism. There is also the possibility of freedom and socialism and totalitarianism and capitalism, aka fascism, and all sorts of mixed systems in between extreme forms of the basic categories used in this article, such as free enterprise for small businesses and regulated nationalized or pseudo nationalized large corporate socialism, my favorite possibility.
Top leaders of all countries playing the psychological Game “They Started It” to preserve and expand their own personal power, perks, and privileges within their own countries, a dangerous Game possibly leading one day to human extinction.
It’s Saturday, September 26, 2020, 8:22 pm EST and I just watched the Texas Tech University/University of Texas football game on TV, Channel 10, Fox Sports, played at Lubbock, Texas.
Texas Tech has not been a super-star winner at anything I know of in sports. Last year they had a great basketball team almost winning a national championship. But in football they have never been a national winner, despite having promise, year after year. As I recall Tech beat Texas last year, for the first time in history, and I thought it was going to happen again today, but it didn’t in one of the most improbable games I ever saw, or played in.
I was according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal the youngest and smallest Class A high school starting quarterback in the US in 1954, the second highest scorer in Class A high school football on the South Plains of Texas in 1958, all district four years in high school basketball, among other things, at Frenship High School at Wolfforth, Texas, ten miles southwest of Texas Tech.
Tech was behind at halftime after being ahead at the start of the game, so I assumed as usual they would fade away in the second half. After a nap I woke up surprised to learn they were ahead. They led by one touchdown late in the fourth quarter.
And then, amazingly, one of Tech’s running backs got loose on a long run putting them ahead two touchdowns, as if the Texas defense let him loose, after being surrounded by Texas tacklers, increasing Tech’s lead to either 15 or 16 points.
And then the Texas Tech coach, or someone on Tech’s coaching staff, with two minutes and forty eight seconds remaining, as I recall, decided to kick a strange kickoff, a high lofting kick that landed on about the forty yard line of Texas, where Texas took possession. It’s possible the Tech kicker somehow flubbed this kickoff, but I cannot see how. Seems to me it had to have been done on purpose. I also used to kick kick-offs in high school. Why in hades Tech didn’t kick the ball into the Texas end zone, which would have wound up on the twenty-five yard line with Texas in possession amazes me. Trying to burn a few seconds off the clock I suppose.
Well, anyway, to make this sorry story short, with about two and one-half minutes remaining in the game and 15 or 16 points behind Texas scored two touchdowns and tied the game at 56-56, having to score in the process at least one two-point extra point to tie the game, and recover an on-side kick-off, which they accomplished with an on-side kick-off after the ball passed through the hands of a Texas Tech receiver who could have recovered it. And then they proceeded to win the game in overtime. It was as if the Texas offense in the last two and one-half or so minutes magically got about three times better than they had been and the Tech defense got about fifty percent worse than they had been.
It’s commonly known that national political races in the US between dim Dems and repugnant Repugs are now manipulated and rigged as much as corporate money can buy, but before now I never thought college or any kind of amateur sports might be rigged. But now, thanks to this University of Texas/Texas Tech University football game of 2020, and the 2020 USian presidential race, I am beginning to wonder.
Surely the powers that be in collegiate and TV finance are not now so desperate for revenue that they are manipulating college football games to make them more exciting and exhilarating.
I am not accusing anyone of rigging the Texas Tech/Texas game but the weirdities and improbabilities of this game did make me wonder. Maybe the Covid plague and social distancing visible in the stands had something to do with it.
I have a grandfather who managed the chemistry lab at Texas Tech and a father who studied agronomy there, and I have three degrees from Tech. I was a member of a social fraternity at Texas Tech, Phi Gamma Delta. I sat in the stands for Texas Tech football games when I was in high school seriously impressed by the grandeur of the players, coaches, bands, and fans.
For all I know Texas Tech has never beaten Texas in football. I have watched one or two Texas Tech football games each year on TV for the last fifty years. Because of writing this comment, it came to me that Tech beat Texas last year. Is that right? I believe it is.
In another exciting, exhilarating, improbable football game this Saturday I watched the Ragin’ Cajuns of Louisiana University-Lafayette on ESPN beat the Georgia Southern Eagles of Statesboro, Georgia. I taught management in the business school at Louisiana Lafayette in 1969-70 after finishing my doctorate at Texas Tech, moving on to Georgia Southern in the summer of 1970, where I taught management thirty-five years, retiring in 2005. Georgia Southern won four national championships in football during my tenure as a GS professor.
My wife and I are now living our last days aboard Spaceship Earth within the confines of the beautiful Georgia Southern University Golf Course six miles south of Statesboro. My cheering, yelling, and cussin’ in our great room watching the Texas Tech and GA SO Univ games did no good this football Saturday, a surreal afternoon of frustrated desires.
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Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, is a certified transactional analyst, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, educator, writer, editor and publisher
Here’s a way you can learn at low cost how you can improve your performance and increase your satisfaction dealing with others in humane relationships.
Transactional analysis is a process for self-discipline, sometimes called verbate, the verbal art of self-defense, a set of concepts and tools you can use to help defend yourself, and others, from stress or loss in interpersonal states of affairs.
Humans transact with one another to get their psychological, social, and economic needs met using ego states. The first thing to learn in a TA tutoring session is what ego states are so you can recognize them in transactional episodes.
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