BETWEEN COURTENAY BARNETT AND RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON
CB to RJS and Others December 20, 2019 6:45 PM
AND
Peace to all Men and Women of Good Will (and may the evil ones all go to the burning “Bush” and “Blairly” be lost forever)
To Our Muslim Brothers
SALAAMU ALAIKUM
To Our Hebrew Brothers and sisters
Happy Chanukah
To my African brothers and sisters in and out of Africa
Happy Kwanza and Kwanzaa
To our atheist and agnostic brothers and sisters
Have a good day
( and if you are of a group that I forgot or did not specifically mention – good will to you nevertheless, but send me your details and you will be included next time in the list above – promise)
This
email is sent as a “love gift” for Christmas 2019. It is also a “health gift” –
the best gift a human can have – compliments of Dr. Courtenay.
There are six gifts in this package.The inner health gift.
1. The inner health gift
We
unwittingly ingest parasites at times from vegetable and other foods. Normally
our system will deal naturally with these, but there is a way in which we can
improve our inner health. The papaya fruit is a fruit with dual healing
properties. The papaya is a natural meat tenderizer. This also means that it
has properties that are beneficial for our digestive system. It will literally
melt what we have in our digestive tract, and in its natural state it is
absorbed quickly by our body. So, eat a complete papaya once a week, and you
are assured that it will do its cleansing best in your system. Next, do not
throw away the little black seeds – eat them. The reason for this is that the
seeds have anti-parasitic properties. So, about once every two weeks eat a
handful of papaya seeds. You can dry and store these and have them in your
kitchen cupboard, and make this a part of your regular diet.
2. The healthy nerves health gift.
There is
a fruit that grows in the Caribbean known colloquially as the ‘sour sop’. It is
green with a soft spiny exterior, and has white flesh on the inside. It is used
to make a drink, which when taken has natural properties that are good for the
nerves. Some of the other health properties can be found at this web
site: http://hubpages.com/hub/Medicinal-Benefits-of-Soursop
3. The good night’s sleep and clean skin health gift.
Fever
grass – also known as lemon grass – makes a tasty tea, and as a lotion does
wonders for the skin. It naturally assists with a good night’s sleep. When
rubbed on the skin as a lotion, it has anti-fungal properties and naturally
cleanses the skin. Dr. Courtenay recommends “Country House products” out of
Jamaica, for this lotion:countryhouseproducts@yahoo.com
4. The overall good health tip.
Try consuming the Moringa plant. I have it on island and I make a tea from the leaves which Idrink. It has been scientifically proven to have a wide range of beneficial properties. Rea here, for more information:-
Use the peel of the banana on your teeth. Rub the inside on your teeth. You will find that any yellowstains or discolouration is naturally removed, and this method does not in any way damage the enamel.
6. The healthy body tip
Exercise
two to three times a week – nuff said.
Now, these six (6) tips are worth a million dollars in total N.B. US and not Jamaican dollars ( i.e. measured in dollars – each tip brings to you a total of US$250,000). Therefore, for free you are receiving a very valuable present which you should treasure. Dr. Courtenay has packaged these six gifts in this exclusive package, and is sharing this special gift only with you ( well – to be truthful, with all my family and friends, because it really is a lot cheaper than buying conventional presents).
Disclaimer:
The natural products are made by God, so if any one does not work, you are free
to sue Him. I am available for all retainers ( having sued a Chief Justice – I
will ratchet the challenge up to the high heavens). The exercise tip is
left totally to you and your use of your body, so if you want to
over-stress your heart, then don’t blame me , nor should your estate bother me
with any law suit.
Comment: If my day job does not work out, then via Barnett Enterprises Inc. these love gifts will be packaged and marketed globally at the heavily discounted price of $2.50 each. But, for now just appreciate and accept at the true value with all the extra zeros added on, and remember – that we can’t put a true value on good health.
These
gifts come in our standard internet package, which requires:-
1. That you open
2. That you read
3. That you apply your mind
and not the delete button
These
gifts are meant as an instructive and easy to use way towards better health –
valued at least at a million dollars in total. Have a happy and healthy
Christmas 2019, and even healthier new year.
Love,
Dr.
Courtenay
RJS to CB December 21, 2019 12:24 AM
Hello Courtenay. Apparently you have had good parenting for all your ego states and you have a winner script. You are one of the lucky ones. I too am one of the lucky ones despite having been poorly parented. My father was a high functioning autistic and my mother was chronically depressed, both having high IQs. I am where I am largely because of being programmed to seek out good professional help. Born with a serious scoliosis and other bone problems I had to lie in bed three months during the summer of my fifteenth year lying on my stomach ninety percent of the time in a body cast after s spinal fusion operation, that prevented me from becoming permanently paralyzed from the waist down, which enabled me to live without back pain. Now seventy-nine years old I am sometimes amazed I made it as far as i have. I read on the internet a few months ago a doctor about fifty saying he did not want to live past seventy-five since life really was not worth living past that age for most people. I think he was about right but life past seventy-five is not that bad for me, not bad enough that I want to euthanize myself yet, but not good enough that I worry about exercise and what I eat and drink to live longer. I basically live from moment to moment doing what I have to do to get some satisfaction, dopamine spurts in the brain, one satisfaction being thinking I have helped someone feel, think, and behave better so as to live with more satisfaction than they otherwise would have. Not thinking it’s possible that any god such as those described by the religions you list could exist, I nevertheless hope that should there actually be some sort of loving spiritual thing eternally existing after I die, if there is any sort of human-like consciousness left after death, which I doubt there will be, that any such thing will at least give me a little credit for the good I have done on Earth, despite my not thinking any god described by mainstream Earthian religions can exist. Best wishes for an enjoyable end of the year holiday, or any other holiday anytime anything might cause you to have one. Cheers, Richard
CB to RJS December 21, 2019 9:24 AM
Dear Richard,
Thanks for sharing with me.
You have
indeed had challenges to meet and nevertheless done extremely well in life.
I am off
today to Jamaica to spend the holiday with family.
We will
communicate further.
Later,
Courtenay
CB to RJS December 21, 2019 7:12 PM
Here is
my reply to your God( un-Godly?) reflections.
I am fully aware of who we are as human beings; the challenge is to deal with us as we are. So here ( I wrote it several years ago) and here share:-
Wow.
You had great parents. It’s a beautiful garden they planted based on and
dedicated to humanity with the best of sentiments, thoughts, and ideals, a
great legacy. Thanks for sharing.
I enjoyed and appreciated your essay “Myth as Inspiration.” As usual it like your other writing I have read is well referenced and reasoned, artfully written, and rational, interesting, and informative. I agree with the notion that the development of myths such as those in your article were helpful and maybe necessary for human survival. I have advocated for the renewal of similar processes along the lines of anthropologist Michael Adzema’s thinking cited in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” which is posted on the masthead of the Effective Learning Report.
Christmases were not merry in the immediate family I was inevitably caused to be born in and those negative feelings get “rubberbanded” in my psyche every year caused by Christmas. I have a green sweatshirt with the words “Bah Humbug” printed on the front of it I wore again the other day. Regardless, my wife and I do Christmas rituals and she gets truly merry about it at times. We buy gifts for friends and family and ourselves, especially for my son and his wife and our three grandchildren in Vermont. Debbye and I had an enjoyable Christmas dinner with friends yesterday at the Country Club. I ordered sweet tea to drink and a friend told me I could get a glass of wine on Sunday. I told her no, that this was Sunday, and Jesus’s birthday was only a few days away. Another friend at table, an Episcopalian, said “We drink real wine at communion.” And I said, “Yeah, but we Methodists always drank grape juice for communion, and I know Jesus may have served and drunk real wine with his friends, even at ‘The Last Supper’, but I think I will pass this time.” She smirked a bit, others raised their eyebrows and smiled some, and the dinner pleasantly progressed.
While I have no problem with cultural myths and rituals that promote peace and satisfaction I do have a problem with the politics of organized mainstream religions, Buddhism being the least harmful in my opinion. Most large organized religions are aggressive, coercive, manipulative, divisive, and exploitative, just what capitalism needs, and they encourage an I’m OK—You’re NOT OK attitude among members with respect to non-members, which in many cases leads to hatred and war. In my opinion these religions do more harm than good. In many cases they dumb members down, absolving them of responsibility for rationally talking action to solve existential problems, turning them into passive gullible sheep, since they are taught to believe an all powerful all loving god answers prayers and will forgive and save them no matter how much they fuck things up if they profess to love and glorify him in religious ceremonies and pay his priests, preachers, and such to build churches, temples, mosques and various edifices to awe and intimidate more people into joining (Notre Dame comes to mind), thereby increasing the power of the religion overall, helping it win competing with other religions for prestige and the top dog position in the religion industry of the nation, in some countries almost eradicating competing religions over time. I lived in Turkey three months in 1982 and was astounded sightseeing around southeast Turkey near Adana where I lived that the area contained numerous well-preserved historic Christian churches, one founded by Paul of Tarsus of New Testament fame, at Tarsus today, with interesting frescoes and preserved pews, altars, and such; but there were no Christians in the region, the original Christians having long since been driven away.
As a child I thought Sunday school and church, and the Bible, were fantasies or irrelevant. My mother saw to it I went to Sunday school and church and I conformed but I more or less tuned it out. Those were my true feelings and thoughts on the matter of organized religion as I experienced it in the environment into which I was accidentally caused to be born without my consent. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a Methodist minister, and he wanted me to become a minister. He was about as heretical as I was about Christian dogma and doctrine, not believing in the virgin birth, and telling me “There is not an old man with a long white beard sitting up there in the sky on white puffy clouds with a walking stick in his hand looking down on us.”
I have always had a problem “willingly suspending disbelief” having read few novels, considering it a waste of time to read something as if real that someone just made up out of thin air. Regardless, I have been writing a “novel” off and on for about six years, an allegory, which is more factual than fictional. My problem with the novel now is figuring out how to end it. How much should I lie? If I want to maximize my chances of selling a few copies I probably should make up a happy ending. To make the book sell via word of mouth I probably should tell readers that what they have just read will cause them to spend eternity in a heavenly paradise. On the other hand, at the rate I’m going most likely the book will never get finished and published, so the ethical question of how to end it is moot.
It seems the closer I get to death’s door at age seventy-nine the more intellectually honest I get about what I really feel and think, proving the less I have to lose the more intellectually honest I get. I would never have said to my students in class what I have written here. It’s always been risky to speak honestly in public about what you really feel and think about religion, as my Methodist minister grandfather told me, even, I might add, if you are retired with a good defined benefits pension, as you slowly but surely walk up the sidewalk closer and closer to death’s door.
Regardless, time may also be running out for dysfunctional technologies, economic systems, political systems, political parties, religions, and cultural myths. Unfortunately the possibility exists today that there will be serious hell to pay if serious feeling, thinking, and behaving corrections are not made fairly soon in all Earthian human populations. Human caused global warming and climate change, a massive global economic collapse, and nuclear bombs can bring Earthian human affairs to a screeching halt.
Best
wishes,
Richard
CB to RJS December 24, 2019 9:50 AM
“Human caused global warming, a massive global economic collapse, and nuclear bombs can bring Earthian human affairs to a screeching halt.”
Sad – and
– I agree.
CB to RJS December 24 10:20 AM
This man is a college mate of mine; he is now a
Professor of world religions…
* COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending his views, has been subjected to death threats, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He has published several articles in the Effective Learning Report. He lives and works in the Caribbean.
* RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, a certified transactional analyst, is an emeritus professor of entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and business policy at Georgia Southern University. He has a BS, MBA, and PhD from Texas Tech University. His areas of study were economics, organizational behavior, and management science. He is the founder, editor, and publisher of the Effective Learning Report.
THE ADDRESS TO CONGRESS WHICH ( IN MY WILDEST IMAGINATON NEEDS TO BE HAD) – AT THE TIME OF IMPEACHMENT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.
Honourable Chairman, distinguished members of this joint sitting of the Congress of the United States of America, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am truly honoured to have been asked to address this august body.
The historical context
I am Jamaican by birth, human by accident of existence, and an aspirant to be of a higher order’s making, yet truly humanitarian at heart. Why this humble person should have been asked to address one of the world’s ( if not the world’s – save and except the UN General Assembly’s) most powerful bodies ( if not bodies combined) – totally astounds and defeats my wildest imagination. Nevertheless, here I am, so I advance in response to the three(3) issues I have been asked to speak on:-
What is my opinion of what is the greatest strength of the Constitution of the United States of America?
What is my opinion of the Constitution’s greatest weakness?
What is my opinion on the recent impeachment of President Donald J. Trump?
The first question
In answer I can be very brief. It is that the U.S. Constitution is a well crafted document designed to ensure that there is strong governmental oversight with accountability and checks and balances.
The second question
This is a more complex matter, for the Constitution as a living document subject to the socio-economic environment within which it operates lends itself susceptible to the power within and impact from that very environment. I shall explain with one (1) central and important example.
Now let us raise two(2) important names in US Post World War 11 history. The first is George Kennan – but – who was he? He was the US Ambassador to Moscow and then the US architect of the ‘Cold War’. Truly a brilliant man who authored a series of foreign policy papers which defined more than over half a century. Here is what he said with foresight:-
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
He was correct and presaged what then in his farewell speech General ( Later – President) Eisenhower had to say with great sagacity and prescience to the American people:-
“So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Stated briefly – he was saying – beware the military-industrial complex.
That is the nub of this, my Congressional address. All of you are there.
Where is the rationality in building and stockpiling more armaments ( many nuclear ones) which can never be deployed against another nuclear power without the predetermined outcome of mutually assured destruction ( MAD)?
What sense is there in building this global arsenal of bases and war planes and armadas and more weaponry – on and on and on?
Where in your Congressional oversight and is there anyone who ever begins to ask rational questions – such as the forgoing just posed?
I could proceed – but you would have to invite me back to present a full-throated delivery. Far too diplomatic to proceed further on this occasion – lest I offend.
The third question
Here, I see that there is both a Constitutional and political problem in the United States of America.
So, here I stand, before you as an invitee to address the difficulties which your country presently faces.
I could lay a foundation to build on a structure of historical references. Rather, I speak and shall limit myself to the truth about and immediate impact of the impeachment. I do believe that what I have to say can be coded and encapsulated in quite diplomatic terms from which your own honest determination can make as an informed decision. I do so by way of an analogy.
Problem
The problem in essence is that there is a President who is alleged to have abused his high office?
Issue
Did he?
Answer
I am not an American and so, while on American terrain, let me then address you in this wholly diplomatic manner.
I therefore reason, as I said I would, by way of analogy.
Say, for instance, a lawyer of great experience finds himself or herself asked by a Judge to represent on legal aid, an indigent female client.
The lawyer accepts.
The lady attends for first interview – and she happens to be extremely attractive.
The lawyer after accepting the professional obligation, in private, in coded language, makes clear to the client that while he is willing to advance her case, it would be subject to conditionalities of an amorous sort. He effectively seeks a ‘favour’ from the lady. He goes further and indicates relative to his professional duty that he could expedite to trial or he could await a longer route to trial. Unbeknown to him, a member of his office staff overhears the conversation and is appalled. The staff member anonymously brings the matter to the attention of the Ethics Committee of the Bar association. In effect there is this ‘whistle blowing’.
The lawyer discovers that a formal complaint has anonymously been lodged against him in a two(2) pronged process:-
To the Ethics Committee of the Bar Association to see whether or not there is a serious matter to be addressed and then be referred upwards.
Reference to the Disciplinary Committee of the Bar Association, if there is a case to be answered.
The lawyer treats the Ethics Committee with total contempt and tells them that he will not be present and says further that the process is a total sham and that it is a ‘witch hunt’ and forbids all his staff from speaking to the Ethics Committee.
The Ethics Committee in those circumstances examines the limited evidence which they have and in turn decide that the conduct ( read: misconduct) is sufficiently serious to be referred to the Disciplinary Committee. There is a case to answer.
The lawyer, knowing full well that his close and personal associations with all the members of the Disciplinary Committee, who are friends of his and/or persons who are wholly dependent upon him for referral of case work – which he is most able to feed to all and sundry – sits back with ease.
Conclusion
I am a total outsider – yet – I posit a humble opinion based on my legal knowledge. It is for you to decide whether or not the conduct of such a person, be it the lawyer or the President of the United States is ethical, is principled, is in accordance with the requirements and requisite standards of his office.
As I said, I am not an American citizen, but I realise that America has a Constitutional crisis on her hands.
Thank you for having afforded me this opportunity.
While the lawyer in my analogous reference, is standing on safe ground – what does that auger for the future of the integrity of the lawyer’s Bar Association and legal system? Without undue interference – in any future American electoral process – what does President Trump’s situation auger for the American Constitution?
I remain most appreciative that this, again stated, august body, thought me worthy to address to their elected members.
________________________________________
* COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London
University. His areas of study were economics, political science and
international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty
years, has been arrested for defending his views, has been subjected to
death threats, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He
lives and works in the Caribbean.
I dispatch this missive to those who are thoughtful, intelligent ( whether from the right or the left) and who do believe that in this globalised world of ours, we actually all do need each other. In fact, even back to ol’ Ghengis Khan’s time and before – ‘globalisation’ is not, on an accurate historical assessment, a new phenomenon. It has so been packaged to serve the interests of a narrow modern day elite ( but that commentary for another day and another time). Today we shall examine, in a brief way, the recent British election results.
First, let me go wide to narrow my observations.
For those of us who follow global political processes, then this becomes evident. Jo Swinson, of the Liberal Democrats, took a position which did defeat Labour remainders. She lent her support to Boris Johnson and his call for an early election. That is where it all started. Comment: Swinson lost her seat to the Scottish National Party ( SNP) – a point to which I shall return.
Put the politics aside for the moment and let me share my opinion ( for what it is worth) on the more important issue of the economics of the moment as it may impact the United Kingdom going forward.
Frist, across the wide Atlantic we find some similarities between the US and Britain:-
In the US there is a so-called ‘rust belt’.
In the UK there is the midlands and then Northern England.
With regards to both A and B these are primarily working class and blue collar people areas which traditionally are either solidly Democratic or Labour voters.
So, what happened in the UK?
I answer my question in this both practical and theoretical way.
It is not highly likely that persons faced with daily bread and butter issues are going to be raising questions in their minds about what is structurally dictated unemployment? Or, what is, as related to the first question, globally dictated structural unemployment? The first question relates to domestic shifts in investment and the latter to the global situation. But, what does all of that have to do with anything? Actually – everything.
When global capital decides that it is investing in a region, or country ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C’ as the case may be, the decision is made in totally pragmatic terms. More profit relative to the level of investment.
So, when jobs move from the traditionally established Western countries to more attractive and profitable regions of the world, such as China, then there is an unemployment hole left in the former US and UK industrial belts.
What then?
Well, the unemployed, or under-employed situation and others suddenly need an economic answer. How does that come?
It comes in the US from Donald Trump making a series of anti-immigrant; anti-Muslim; anti-Semitic embraced speeches and statements ( such as that there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville Virginia where the neo-Naizs were marching) and a general anti ‘other’ set of politically motivated speeches – which help to create tensions amongst diverse people within a country. Playbook followed over in Europe too.
But what is the real problem?
Well, ‘dear leader’ Boris – may I suggest that your real challenge is as follows:-
How do you address the issues which the people in the Midlands and the North of England face – especially regarding jobs and unemployment?
If you can succeed in striking a US/UK trade deal – then on what terms and will same be proven to be mutually beneficial for both the US and UK? We already know that Donald, as with all his other ‘successful’ business ventures will be angling to do as he did with China – only to find that he has absolutely no basis of understanding of economics 101 when it comes on to trade-wars. But, be forewarned – the UK does not wield as much power as China.
You have promised more, much more investment, in education – and – you are to be commended for that.
There is the question of the future treatment of the NHS – and that remains to be seen.
The relationship with Northern Ireland and whether you prove to be a man to your word – remains to be seen.
Last, but not least, there is the SNP victory, which now necessitates an early, if not immediate second referendum on Scottish independence.
Boris, I am not your enemy, for at heart and throughout my legal career I have demonstrated and proven myself to be a humanitarian. Hate not – and – try to assist as best one can as a human being – one to the other.
I have given you a short ‘dirty dozen’. Do not despair – my hearty congratulations on your victory.
My short six( 6) points constitute just an adumbrated form of the challenges which you face going forward.
But victor Boris and vanquished Jeremy, really and truly do not despair. I am on the cusp of completing my five(5) star Villa in the Caribbean, hopefully to be operational by mid-February, 2020. When the post-election stress hits both of you, be assured that both of you shall be welcomed. As regards you Boris – you are an avowed capitalist; and you Jeremy are an avowed socialist.
Let me give both of you a warning.
Boris – you will have to pay top dollar, for that is what the market commands and you will have to pay full price for a top retreat and your much deserved relaxation.
Jeremy – there shall be no Turks and Caicos Islands state subsidy paid out for your retirement and a justly due vacation. Full price as usual.
Based on that understanding, please book in advance.
________________________________________
* COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending his views, has been subjected to death threats, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He lives and works in the Caribbean.
About thirty percent of US citizens love Donald Trump, mostly true-believing conservatives, evangelicals, etc.
About fifty percent of US citizens detest Donald Trump, mostly liberals, freethinkers, etc.
Some
say the most significant difference between the two groups is racism, pure and
simple. Who can prove it?
And
some say there are fundamental differences in how the two groups see their
worlds and think they should be run.
True
believer conservatives are in general authoritarians, generally seeing the
world as black or white, with clear-cut rules that must be obeyed.
Liberals
(moderates at least) are more democratic, more open-minded, more inclined to
see shades of grey, and are more tolerant of differences.
And
the personalities of the two groups are different.
True-believing
Conservatives use more critical parent and adapted child ego state energy than
Liberals. They believe more and question less.
Since
extreme Conservatives and Liberals know they are right they have permission to
do less unto others than they would have others do unto them.
They
are more militant and warlike, more clannish. Their attitude is I’m OK and You
(if you are different from me) are NOT OK.
Dyed-in-the-wool
Liberals use more nurturing parent and free child ego state energy transacting
with others. Being less authoritarian and less rigid they experiment more and
are more respecting of the rights, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of others.
Members
of both groups think they are smarter than the other. Since they know they are
right they must be smarter or they would not have decided what they decided in
the first place, about how the world works and how it should be run, and about
what and how one should adapt and flex transacting with others.
Trump
may be the least hypocritical president the US has had, the most transparent,
the least deceptive, thanks to his Tweets, in which he often blurts out
whatever happens to pop up in his mind, despite generally being a venal ungodly
selfish lying clown, who was smart enough not to lose all the money his family
gave him, and who was smart enough to parlay his simplistic ideas and behaviors,
and that inherited money, into becoming President of the (dis)United States—winning
the biggest ego trip contest around Spaceship Earth.
Since
Trump thinks like his supporters his supporters therefore think he is smart and
they are smart for electing him president, confirming how smart they were all
along, smarter than Liberals.
What needs to be drained in the Earthian political swamp is the pernicious pentagonal paradigm of organizational perversity, described by Stephen Karpman, MD, and the five deadly organizational sins, told to me by Martin Groder, MD, one of my transactional analysis mentors, described in detail in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds (2008), still in print, available at Effective Learning Publications listed on the masthead of this blog above.
The
Five Deadly Organizational Sins (drumroll please) are: Power, Money, Sex, Righteousness,
and Smarts.
Why
are these sins deadly in organizations? They’re deadly because they corrupt
organizations, rendering them incapable of achieving effective goals
efficiently.
If
an organization’s members focus most of their mental and physical energy on
proving how powerful they are, how much money they have (regardless of how
gained), how sexy they are, how right they are, and how smart they are they
will naturally waste energy that should have been used to achieve the
organization’s legitimate goals.
Teaching organizational behavior in a business school and doing organizational development work with organizations as a consultant, I used to draw a pentagon on a flip sheet and then label the five points of the pentagon with the words power, money, sex, righteousness, and smarts, and then explain to my learners how each of the points could erode and maybe destroy the functioning of their or any organization.
In order to be effective and worthwhile an organization has to do work in its environment, changing something for the better or producing necessary goods and services in its environment, that cannot be done efficiently, or maybe at all, if people in the organization are primarily focused on adapting and flexing to the power, money, sexual, righteousness, and smarts urges and messages of others, especially if supervisors and managers up the organizational chain of command are demonstrating in multifarious social and psychological ways they are more OK than others, playing Top Dog, the most ubiquitous psychological Game in organizational life, caused by organizational leaders engendering an organizational culture in which subordinates are required to recognize socially and psychologically using verbal and body language signals (by saluting in fascist organizations) how powerful, rich, sexy, right, and smart their supposedly superior organizational leaders are.
For more detail on why and how this is true read my e-book, Recommendations for Waking Up From The American Nightmare, at Amazon.com, or my paperback book, Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, also available at Effective Learning Publications above.
One
can build a case the US under Trump as an organization is now more sinful than
any previous US administration, and the US is now the most organizationally
sinful nation around Spaceship Earth.
The US has been sinking into its power-mad narcissistic self-righteous egotistical sinful ways for decades after inevitably winning WWII, electing relatively sinful presidents, starting in 1946 with Truman, with since then one relatively sin-free president, Jimmy Carter, but including three off-the-chart sexual sinners, Kennedy, Clinton, and Trump.
Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were among the worst money-grubbing, power-mad, and self-righteous US presidential sinners since the 1950s, dislocating and killing millions of Earthian humans, trying to prove capitalism is right, communism is wrong, and the US is entitled to a disproportionately large share of Earth’s wealth and resources.
Trump seems to think he is the smartest, calling himself a stable genius.
How to get the populations of all nations around Earth off the Five Deadly Organizational Sins Pentagon, not only top dog leaders, is another matter.
Whether it can be done before the consequences of past organizational sins destroy all Earthian species through global warming and climate change or shooting off nuclear bombs remains to be seen.
Fascist economic and political systems encourage the five deadly organizational sins more than most, but no Earthian nation has been without organizational sin.
The
US and China are now the economic and political leaders among Earthian nations.
Both the supposedly capitalistic US and the supposedly communistic China have
become more fascist in recent years. Whether Communist China becomes as fascist
as Communist Russia did before it imploded remains to be seen.
One can build a case all national governments throughout Earthian history eventually ruined themselves committing The Five Deadly Organizational Sins, Power, Money, Sex, Righteousness, and Smarts, eventually becoming ruled by fascists mired in orgies of organizational sin, attempting to gratify themselves ensconced in isolated centralized power-mad hierarchies. Nero comes to mind.
Nations
as organizations exist because of historical evolutionary forces that caused
existing human practices and problems to be moved into new territories enabling
individuals and groups to accumulate enough power to delineate and defend
geographic boundaries, within which Earthian humans with similar beliefs,
ideas, practices, and so forth could live with a modicum of peace and satisfaction.
This process naturally entailed conflict, competition, and wars among nations
and people.
Through
time humans became addicted to competition and war, many finding it satisfying,
raping, killing, pillaging, etc.
Many Earthian humans now think the major purpose of a nation is to win wars and prove it’s more powerful, rich, sexy, right, and smart than competing nations, as if playing college or professional football and basketball games in conferences and leagues, hoping to win a national championship.
Not so. The only legitimate justification for the existence of a nation is to produce services that enable Earthian humans to live peaceful and satisfying lives, proving in the process its salaried teachers, politicians, judges, civil servants, and military employees actually do some work, rather than waste their time and energy engaged in entropic time structuring such as playing Top Dog, I’m Only Trying to Help You, If It Weren’t For You, and other psychological Games not doing much for citizens and doing violence against other nations, imposing sanctions, invading and looting, and dropping bombs; reciting, performing, marching, and participating in ceremonies and rituals; and bullshitting with individuals, groups, and organizations.
The
best hope in the short run would be for deep-thinking hard-hitting politicians
like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard to resign from the contaminated ineffectual
DNC to run in 2020 as Independents for president and vice president.
There
might be enough of us disillusioned US voters and non-voters out there to put
them in office.
They could not fully drain the swamp in eight years, but they could make a good start, proving third party candidates are more likely to drain the swamp than Deep State bought and paid for pork barrel establishment politicians, touted by conservative establishment Demos and Repugs in the DNC and RNC National Committees.
Feel free to repost, reprint, or otherwise share this essay any way you see fit.
Richard
John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, is a certified transactional analyst, and the Editor
& Publisher of the Effective Learning Report and The Earthian Forum at www.effectivelearning.net
THE EARTHIAN FORUM 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 articles written and published by writers in Internet posts on ecological, economic, social, psychological, sexual, political, religious, and military states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked below as sources.
“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, PhD, CTA,
Editor & Publisher
According to Michael Adzema, an anthropologist I encountered on the Internet a few years back, humans had it pretty good before they started growing their own food and raising livestock. Back in the day, say maybe thirty thousand years ago, the human species made a living by hunting and gathering food that nature provided in abundance in a few hours per day without straining and stressing themselves doing hard supervised labor for wages and salaries.
Humans lived in small groups that worked cooperatively to make a living. There would have been no need for hierarchical authoritarian management structures such as those in large corporations, governments, armies, and political parties today.
While most lives were probably shorter than they are now they could have been more satisfying and peaceful.
But when humans started growing crops and raising livestock they had to compete with other humans for land, which they had to defend.
Over thousands of years humans created stories about how their states of affairs evolved. A common story was that human-like gods created humans to alleviate boredom and loneliness for themselves.
When things went wrong on Earth, such as droughts, diseases, and famines, humans assumed they had displeased their gods, so they created priests to figure out ways for humans to say and do things to please the gods, especially to obey things the gods told the priests they required.
Humans gradually developed warriors and more and more powerful military forces to defend their tribes from competing tribes and to conquer land from other tribes.
This process of development stemming from moving from hunter-gathering to agricultural enterprises inevitably led to the creation of more and more specializations of ways of producing things and structuring time.
Most humans grew crops and herded cattle and sheep, but others spent most of their time fighting and training to fight, while others spent most of their time praying and conducting rituals and ceremonies to please or appease the gods; and some spent most of their time building houses and lodges, or erecting things such as pyramids, and doing many other things.
Over centuries or millennia some of the religious stories told humans they had once lived in a fabulous garden free of strife wherein they were happy, secure, and satisfied—until they angered the gods so much they were banished from their bountiful garden, according to one story, caused by eating a forbidden apple.
Stories about humans being banished from a fabulous nurturing garden to a hostile miserly world are still true in some particulars. Some humans still have to work long and hard most days to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, and it remains true that most humans today live lives in miserly environments vastly different from life in any sort of Garden of Eden.
But evolution since the supposed human banishment from nurturing generous gardens has caused drastically different forms of misery for humans brainwashed in disparate inevitable cause-effect chains. Most Earthian humans today are relatively or absolutely impoverished, working long and hard most days, if they have a full time job, or two or three gig jobs, to stay alive; while about fifty percent of Earth’s wealth is now owned and controlled by about one percent of the Earthian human population, who do no hard physical work, or maybe no work at all of any kind, while all humans (rich and poor, workers and non-workers) are threatened with extinction caused by global warming, climate change, and nuclear war.
The major cause of the unfair economic inequality now existing among humans that evolved after most humans stopped their hunting and gathering ways many thousands of years ago is the Earthian capitalistic economic system, which enables some humans to acquire their necessities of life and other goods and services not by working but by owning capital; and the more capital they own the easier it is to acquire more capital at an exponential rate, to further increase their wealth through time.
It’s worth mentioning that a few hunter-gatherer tribes still exist today in biological jungles around Spaceship Earth, and most of their members are probably more satisfied with their egalitarian non-polluting lives than are most humans not living off the land in remote jungles, who are subjected to authoritarian hierarchical organizations to make a living and who are addicted to technological devices of all sorts that necessitate the polluting of Earth’s land, rivers, oceans and atmosphere.
Present day hunter-gatherer tribes seem to be doing everything they can to keep on hunting and gathering to make a living while non-hunter-gathering humans are slowly but surely destroying the environments of the hunter-gatherers.
However successful today’s hunter-gatherers may be defending themselves and their environments from invaders in their remote isolated biological jungles, most likely they too will become extinct if technologized Earthian humans mostly living in apartments in concrete jungles in large cities do not change their ways.
Assuming some anthropologists are right and the remote ancestors of humans today did live for many hundreds or thousands of years in a natural garden of sorts, hunting and gathering to make a living, what caused their good times to come to an end?
Did they displease their gods by doing something like eating a forbidden piece of fruit, or did they screw up some other way?
Most likely the hunter-gatherers were not banished from their good life in their garden because of violating an arbitrary godly commandment about not eating forbidden fruit. A more plausible answer is that they had to give it up because of having too much fun having sex making too many babies.
Despite having to work hard and long as farmers and ranchers to feed, house, and clothe themselves immediately after leaving their natural garden the former hunter-gatherers continued their overly-fecund sexual ways, producing by now 7.7 billion Earthian humans living aboard Spaceship Earth.
According to some versions and interpretations of the forbidden fruit story, the god was not arbitary, capricious or brutal. He did not forbid humans to eat a real apple, and humans were not altogether to blame for taking a bite of the forbidden fruit. A snake seduced humans into eating a metaphorical apple, and the snake was a metaphorical devil, or some sort of evil.
According to this interpretation, the god tried to protect humans from what has happened since then by metaphorically warning them about the consequences of unwise economic, social, psychological, sexual, political, and technological activity and policy-making.
An assumption of transactional analysis is that humans can learn to “see what is really going on” with themselves and others as they transact with one another socially and psychologically living their daily lives so as to increase their chances of living satisfactory lives, regardless of how not-OK their economic, social, psychological, sexual, and political worlds might be.
According to transactional analysis theory there are three naturally occurring generic life outcomes caused for humans: winner, loser, and non-winner—caused by inherited physical characteristics and “messages” one is exposed to throughout life—and by the decisions humans accidentally make from earliest childhood about the messages that become quasi-permanent determinants of emotional, intellectual, and behavioral responses throughout their lives.
Whether one naturally introjects a winner, loser, or non-winner script is determined by naturally-occurring inevitable cause-effect chains one is accidentally exposed to in one’s environment and the accidental early decisions one makes before the age of eight about the messages. Some transactional analysts assume proportions of winner, loser, and non-winner scripts in the Earthian human population remain relatively constant from one generation to another.
A purpose of TA is to help individuals and groups insert new causes and decisions into natural cause-effect chains so as to increase the probabilities and proportions of winner scripts and outcomes in the populace.
Superceding a loser script with a winner script requires hard work but it can happen if a person somehow acquires new script messages powerful enough to control frustrating, debilitating, or harmartic script messages stored in subconscious memory. TA can provide people basic concepts and tools for attempting such a thing, requiring perhaps learning to use different ego states and transactional patterns and learning how to communicate in more effective ways psychologically and socially.
Superceding a loser script may entail changing the way one structures time, learning how to spend more time in work activity rather than playing psychological Games, or learning how to spend more time transacting intimately with others rather than spending time bullshitting, flirting, and doing rituals with others.
Using TA in some cases can help people gain more satisfaction from living, regardless of external circumstances, by enabling them to see more clearly what is going on in their lives and in their personal emotional, intellectual, and behavioral processes to make salutary changes, or in some cases by learning to accept one’s natural processes and script to focus on finding a niche in which they’re compatible.
On the other hand, a relevant question is whether serenity is possible for most humans in today’s world, beset as it is by global warming and climate change and by escalating tensions, agitations, and Game-playing among families, groups, and organizations around Earth.
TA never promised anyone any rose gardens, or eternal bliss in heaven, but it does advertise that it can help individuals, groups, and organizations become more ok, ok not only in terms of achieving goals but more ok transacting with others so as to live with more dignity, satisfaction, peace, and tranquility, based on contracts agreed to in Adult-Adult social transactions.
No one could blame you if you believe in tuning out TA and blogs such as this one. Maybe the best strategy for increasing your serenity is to tune out the world, burrowing up in your burrow as much as possible, reading no newspapers and not watching television, with no Internet. A problem however if you do this is boredom. Most humans have an innate need for stimulation, achievement, and recognition.
Regardless of what sort of cognitive structures humans might use, TA or whatever, sooner or later they have to take action, and this entails defining problems and goals, delineating alternatives, making recommendations, choosing things, trying new things, trial and error, over and over, till something works.
1—What is the problem or opportunity?
2—What
are the alternatives?
3—What
do you recommend?
We live in precarious times that probably encourage people to play AIN’T IT AWFUL more than usual, a psychological Game in which Game players collect strokes for talking too much about the evils and troubles of world, positioning themselves as Victims of obsolete economic, religious, and political systems manipulated and exploited by greedy self-interested power-mad sociopathic oligarchs and leaders and their corrupt bought and paid for lackeys, especially lobbyists and politicians, however true that might be in reality.
By the same token, it will do no good for humans 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 called GREENHOUSE by transactional analysts, in which players are rewarded with plastic strokes for making nonsensical positive cheerful upbeat comments about the environment and political, economic, social, sexual, and psychological states of affairs, regardless of how bleak they are in reality.
It seems to me the most dangerous psychological Game increasingly played today is IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, involving polarized agitated angry individuals, groups, and organizations who experience increasing insecurity and hopelessness causing them to blame others and find scapegoats for their plights, escalating their anger as they transmit threats from their angry Parent and Child ego states to the Parent and Child ego states of others, sometimes attacking others verbally and physically for their perceived misdeeds and beliefs. Some of the threats include the threat of international and civil war.
IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU entails aggrieved aggressive humans psychologically believing that opposing competing parties maliciously and arbitrarily decided using free will to commit the harmful actions and deeds they are accused of committing, instead of realizing the others were caused by circumstances and script messages to do what they did just like the aggrieved aggressive people were. Getting rid of the other will not solve underlying problems such as poor family scripts, poor educational systems, poor religions, and poor economic and political policies and systems.
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 viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth. This entails Earthians 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 accomplished 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 computer system or the pilot and
co-pilot looking out their windows with their hands clutching their steering
wheels?
As usual this month’s THE EARTHIAN FORUM links and cites as SOURCES recent articles written and published by clear deep-thinking hard-hitting independent writers in various Internet publications on ecological, economic, social, sexual, political, religious, and military affairs around Spaceship Earth. I generally agree with these writers about what is most relevant about Spaceship Earth states of affairs, but each of them brought up facts, analyses, conclusions, ideas, or perspectives that were new to me when I read them during the last thirty days or so, thereby teaching me something, which is why I included them in this issue of THE EARTHIAN FORUM.
Some Game playing goes on in these 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 is really going on economically, socially, sexually, psychologically, and politically. Unfortunately it seems to me one can build a good case that politicians spend most of their time playing psychological Games.
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 economic, social, psychological, sexual, 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, meaning it’s less harmful to tell someone something is true when you really do not know it’s not true than it is to tell someone something is true when you know for a fact it’s not true.
I am not sure which is most harmful: lying by commission or lying by omission. It seems to me most lying is lying by omission, people deliberately not telling people things they know are true that would be good for people to know. Lying by commission is deliberately dispensing fake news, telling people things you know are not true. Seems to me it’s getting harder for most people to know what’s true and what’s not, especially with a prolific Tweeter and consummate psychological Game-player like Donald J. Trump occupying the loftiest international leadership position around Spaceship Earth, thanks to about twenty-five percent of US eligible voters. It’s hard not to play LET’S YOU AND THEM FIGHT in these times, another psychological Game identified by transactional analysts.
Feel free to respond with comments about any of the SOURCES listed below using our RESPONSES page; but please don’t make ad hominem attacks. Criticize the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles any way you want to; but don’t slander the characteristics of the authors to illogically try to prove their arguments and conclusions are wrong and yours are right.Even Donald J. Trump is right about something ever now and then.
I don’t sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for THE EARTHIAN FORUM, but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve gained value from THE EARTHIAN FORUM 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 .
“The whole repo rigmarole underscores the sleight of
hand on which our money and banking systems are built, and why it is time to
change them. Banks do not really have the money they lend. To back their loans,
they rely on their ability to borrow from the reserves of other banks,
generated from their customers’ deposits; and if those banks withhold their
deposits in the insatiable pursuit of higher profits, the borrowing banks must
turn to the public purse for liquidity. The banks could not function without
public support. They should be turned into public utilities, mandated to serve
the interests of the people and the productive economy on which the public depends.” Ellen Brown
Now here is an interesting conspiracy theory for you, which
seems more right than wrong to me. This fellow Pollock is the most tenacious
and fearless truth teller I have heard in a while.
THE EARTHIAN FORUM, Number Twelve, Effective Learning
Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, October 2019
THE EARTHIAN FORUM is a digest of articles containing facts,
analyses, perspectives, and recommendations concerned about existential states
of affairs affecting all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth.
Recent articles written and published by writers in Internet publications on
ecological, economic, social, political, religious, psychological and military
states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked below as sources.
“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, PhD, CTA, Editor & Publisher
So
what. It’s common sense. Most likely if present trends continue, the human
species around Earth will become extinct. Reducing the Earthian human
population can be done peacefully over several generations, with more people naturally
dying than being born. A rule such as no more than one child per female would
do it. What is so horrible about that?
Warning. This story contains opinion
trotted out as fact, not fake news per se, and probably qualifies as a
conspiracy theory. Generally it’s a right wing extreme defense of free
enterprise. The author asserts everything would be just fine if central bankers
would just leave the wonderful capitalist economic system alone, not arguing
there were would not be recessions and depressions, and much suffering caused
by them, but making a case the suffering would be less than what is coming when the whole charade created by government
intervention comes crashing down, like the sky falling. No way to prove any of
this, but there is a grain of truth in it here and there. Fact is nobody knows
what will happen any time soon. Unfortunately if Earthian human history does
repeat there will be hell to pay by a sizeable percentage of the Earthian human
population too soon. Carpe diem!
Remember Madlyn Albright? Secretary
of State under Clinton, a former college professor who smarted off one day,
“What good does it do to have this beautiful military if you never use
it?” Well we should never have had this beautiful military in the first
place, but if we had to have it we should not have used it. We were never threatened
by a serious enemy. Part of the problem was the Great Depression taught the US
how to avoid depressions. WWII solved the Great Depression
by getting USians back to full employment killing people overseas and making
tanks, airplanes, ships, ammunition, bombs, and what have you in US factories,
via Ruby the Riveter who learned how to do man’s work in US factories while US
men were making the world safe for democracy fighting Germans and Japanese in
their countries. Assuming it was necessary for the US to enter WWII the US
should have kicked its warmaking addiction as soon as WWII ended and developed
a peacemaking economy, assuming such a thing is possible under capitalism, an
economic system that requires halloween-like vampire nations to periodically
suck blood from victim nations to stay alive longer than the rest. If the US
had really wanted to be a peaceful nation the Korean War, Vietnam, and the
Middle East wars would not have happened. On the other hand was it really
necessary to do all this warfighting to capture enough oil to keep the us
economy powered and USians rolling around in the US in cars, trucks, tractors,
Harley Davidson motorcycles and what have you, making USians much richer than
other folks around Spaceship Earth, for a while after WWII at least?
Another
spot on article by Jake Johnson. Pretty much the same thing happened to retired
faculty in the University system of Georgia health plan about four years ago when
they were notified they were fortunate to be having more choices from now on.
The result has been more and more costs for prescription drugs and other
things. Overall health care costs for insurance and copays went up thousands of
dollars per year for most retirees. Yes the retirees have more freedom of
choice but so what if their costs and frustrations
are greater? Buttegeig, Biden, and all the other Washington politicians bought
and paid for by big pharma be damned. Profit making healthcare does not work
for consumers. Healthcare is a natural monopoly. If the industry is not
regulated as a monopoly by the government resources will inevitably be
mismanaged and costs will not be controlled to benefit consumers. Providers
will not be able to resist the temptations they will have to gouge people. Free
enterprise is best in some industries, but not in this one, where consumers
have to buy the product at any price or die or become maimed or chronically
impaired. See my article “Why Healthcare Should be Managed as a Natural
Monopoly,” at http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/21752.
Basically
the federal government needs to regulate the healthcare industry like
electricity is now regulated by states, setting equitable rates and prices
based on return on investment criteria using mathematical processes, the only
way in this industry to minimize cost for consumers and provide fair returns
for producers.
For
sure infinitely greedy oligarchs like Bezos will not minimize healthcare costs
for their employees. What do you want to do, impoverish everyone but the elite
rich who know how to game the system, for whom health care costs are trivial
for them personally?
“’We
Need Medicare for All’, Progressives condemn Bezos decision to shift more
health insurance dosts onto Washington Post staffers,” by Jake Johnson,
INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/28467.
October
31
Can
you believe this? Money is so worthless as an investment you have to pay a bank
in Denmark to allow you to deposit your money in their bank. How long will it
be before US banks do this?
Another truthful right on
hard-hitting article by Paul Street, except he left out that Tulsi Gabbard won
the CNN DN C debates. See my article “Why large powerful political parties
are evil” to set this matter straight at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/why-large-powerful-pol…/….
Sick. It seems they’ve robbed Peter
(such as the Social Security system surpluses) to pay Paul as much as they can
internally, so now the Fed and the people have to caugh up more to buy the
debt. How long can this go on? Before tax rates have to be raised back to where
they were in 1980 and military expenditures are cut dramatically? Or the debt
is repudiated? Or hyperinflation is ignited by the privately owned Federal Reserve
System punching digital funny money into their computers approaching infinity
to purchase treasury bills and notes?
Here’s what’s wrong with US politics,
pay to play from the git go. To win a primary you’ve got to solicit big money,
aka bribes, or be a billionaire and fund your own campaign like Trump did at
first.
Sanders is probably still the best
bet for we the people, but the corrupt DNC, caring only for their own
interests, will probably sabotage him again if he gains traction again.
The Tories and their followers made
a mistake. They should have voted to remain in the EU. What Earthian humans
need is an even broader EU, an Earthian Union, to combat global warming and
climate change, to stop Earthian extinctions of fauna and flora, probably also
including sooner or later the human species, at the rate states of affairs are
deteriorating around Spaceship Earth.
Here is a well-said explanation of
what it means to call someone a “Russian asset” without evidence, a
despicable defamatory low blow political smear job, especially when said with a
merry smile.
Now here is an interesting post, showing clearly
something is wrong with political reporting in MSM and CNN land (Mainstream
Media), and in DNC land. According to
this poll Tulsi Gabbard won the sixth DNC debate handily with forty percent of
the vote, far head of the next best, Yang, with about twenty percent. Biden and the rest got less that seven
percent each. Gabbard also won another
such debate I saw with about the same results as this one. Yet there has been
no mention of this I have seen in MSM.
It’s not that MSM publishes fake news so much by comission; apparently
they mainly publish fake news by omission.
According to MSM and the DNC Tulsi Gabbard is not a serious Democrat
candidate. Are these Drudge Report Internet polls anomalies? Or what?
Here’s a sophisticated video by a talented presenter taking
advantage of state of the art facilities and computer technology, maybe the
best I have seen, telling and showing you how your brain works. Well worth a
watch and listen for about twenty minutes.
Acceptance my foot. They used him to
assert their family scripts. To learn about the significance of family scripts
in political states of affairs, read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional
Analysis of Human Learning at www.effectivelearning.net.
Gabbard was probably the smartest and most truthful candidate in the DNC debates, now marginalized because of DNC rules and pork barrel politics. She won a Drudge Report poll I saw after one of the debates she was in that showed she won hands down, about forty percent of the total votes of eighteen thousand or so cast. This is DNC “democracy” in action, playing the psychological Game MOTHER KNOWS BEST, and to hell with the truth, get the man, in this case, you want, Biden, to keep everybody in Washington and throughout the Deep State in the US employed and well fed, especially DNC hangers-on, with better than average income increases. Sad state of affairs.
Here is another well researched,
informative, and timely article by Courtenay Barnett, an international lawyer,
who unfortunately points out the US by and large ignores international law.
This essay shows with compelling evidence and analysis that Tulsi Gabbard won the CNN DNC primary debates by a large margin in the eyes of viewers of the debates.
Unfortunately the DNC establishment, CNN, and MSM (Mainstream Media) hid the fact. This is a classic example of MSM creating fake news by lying by omission.
Tulsi Gabbard would be the “frontrunner” in the eyes all US citizens for the 2020 ellection, if only the US had a truly democratic unrigged system.
I posted
on my Facebook page a Drudge Report poll October 16, 2019 showing Tulsi Gabbard
handily won the sixth Democratic National Committee primary debate televised by
CNN, garnering 40 percent of some 47,000 votes clicked in by respondents at
that time, which by today October 22 has grown to 207,726 votes clicked in for
this poll, of which Tulsi Gabbard garnered 38 percent of the total votes in the
last count, Yang being second with 18 percent, Buttigieg being third with 12
percent, Warren being fourth with 7 percent, Klobuchar being fifth with 6 percent,
Biden being sixth with 5 percent, Sanders and Steyer being tied with 4 percent
each, O’Rourke had 2 percent, Harris 1 percent, Castro 1 percent, Booker 1
percent. These percentage ranks changed
very little from October 16 to now October 22. The poll was programmed in such
a way that no respondent could vote more than one time. I tried to vote twice
after deciding to cast another vote for another candidate in addition to the
one I had already voted for. The program would not accept the click and
reminded me I had already voted, indicating the process was legit.
I included the following comment with my Drudge Report poll post where it says Say Something on my Facebook page October 16 shortly after seeing the DR poll results.
“Now here is an
interesting post, showing clearly something is wrong with political reporting
in MSM (Mainstream Media), and in CNN and DNC land. According to this poll
Tulsi Gabbard won the sixth DNC debate handily with forty percent of the vote,
far ahead of the next best, Yang, with about twenty percent. Biden and the rest
got less than seven percent each. Gabbard also won another DR poll about
another CNN debate I saw s month or so ago with about the same results as this
one, which unfortunately I did not post on my Facebook page.
“Yet there has been no
mention of this I have seen in MSM, which does not say much considering I
rarely watch or read MSM, but my wife does and she has not said anything to me
about seeing or hearing any news about Gabbard handily winning the DNC CNN
debates. Apparently it’s not that MSM publishes fake news so much by commission;
apparently they primarily publish fake news by omission. According to MSM, CNN
and the DNC Tulsi Gabbard is not a serious Democrat candidate. Are these Drudge
Report Internet polls anomalies? Or what?”
To which I received the
following post in response on my Facebook page.
“Why would anybody even consider
paying any attention to Drudge on the Democratic debate? Like listening to what
a dog has to say about a cat beauty contest, run by cats, for cats.”
To which I responded with:
“There have been 205,918 Total Votes cast in this poll so far. Are you saying this is irrelevant? Or that everything posted on the Drudge Report is fake news? i watched the debate on CNN, and i think Tulsi and Yang were the smartest and the best. Unfortunately they have little chance of being nominated given the way “democracy” works in the US. On the other hand, I voted for Steyer, probably a mistake.”
Which prompted this response:
“The purpose of the Drudge Report is
to present fake news. Sometimes this goal is best served by telling the truth
but this does not make them a trustworthy source. About a (sic) reliable as
DT’s tweets. And everybody knows you solicit any result you want in a poll.”
Which prompted this response from
me:
“Wrong in your first sentence. Basically the Drudge Report is an aggregator. It links articles from all over, the New York Times. Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Internet blogs nobody ever heard of, such as my Effective Learning Report. Yes, it’s basically a tabloid type thing primarily designed to attract casual readers and thinkers, but some of the shit linked is pretty good, overall giving any reader one of the best general pictures they could find free in a hurry of what is going on in the minds of all Earthian humans right now, of all persuasions and faiths, caused by hundreds of publication sources that are linked, MSM or social media, just by reading their headlines. Who needs a “trustworthy” source? If you need a “trustworthy” source that means you cannot think for yourself, and are being indoctrinated, being unable to figure out what is fake and what is not. Of course all the responses were solicited or the Drudge Report would not have gone to the trouble to make this voting process available. Did they try to manipulate people into voting as they did? Hell no. The Drudge Report is less contaminated by bias and prejudice than MSM since they are not dependent on charging customers for subscriptions. I have never paid the Drudge Report a cent for the information I have received from them. Don’t believe me, ask Google “how many hits does the Drudge Report get per day?””
Which elicited this response:
“Good topic for next time I can make
The Ogeechee Economic Forum.”
And then this from me:
“Great. See You There.”
The Ogreechee Economic Forum is a
Game-Free group I moderate the third Saturday of the month at 11-12 a.m. at the
Eagle Creek Brewing Company in my hometown, Statesboro, Georgia, USA. For
details about the forum go here https://www.effectivelearning.net/ogeechee-economic-forum.html.
There is nothing like face-to-face political discussions in small groups to get to the truth of the matter. You can often tell by looking at the faces of people in a group when they are lying and telling the truth. These truthful body language signals are not as obvious in mass media. On the other hand, unfortunately despite emailing to one hundred or more people within driving distance of Statesboro inviting them to the Ogeechee Economic Forum meetings, and inviting them to invite their friends, most people are not interested. Having moderated the forum about a year once a month by now, no more than three participants have shown up for any meeting. Unfortunately this small group is like most groups and organizations; we are mostly preaching to our own choir. Almost all the participants have been well-educated relatively intelligent relatively unprejudiced white males. In order for face-to-face groups such as this one to produce significant learning you need participants of all persuasions, faiths, sexes, ages and races in the group to generate dialectical give and take Adult-Adult ego state transactions that can produce consensual answers capable of generating peaceful life-sustaining policies and processes. Unfortunately, based on my experience trying to establish a Game-free open free fair face-to-face Adult-Adult ego state economic and political discussion group in my town, it appears to me a good bet is that most Earthian humans are too apathetic or too afraid to engage in such groups. One Ogeechee Economic Forum participant said most humans do not have psychological permission to discuss economic and political problems in public, being afraid their bosses and cohorts in various groups, primarily at work, will “talk down to them” about participating in such activity.
Having gained satisfaction from the above Facebook exchange about Tulsi Gabbard on my Facebook page with one of the participants in the Ogeechee Economic Forum, I decided to venture forth with some other folks on my Facebook page newsfeed who were posting comments about various articles about Tulsi Gabbard that had been recently posted on Facebook, mostly about Gabbard’s reactions to her treatment by the DNC, having accused the DNC of trying to hijack the primary debates, and her truthful and courageous responses to Hillary Clinton’s allegations that she was a “Russian asset”, framing Hillary as a hypocrite, calling her the “queen of warmongers” and “the embodiment of political corruption,” as reported at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/19/20922122/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-queen-warmongers-russia-2020-election. .
Other Democrats in various posts
have accused Gabbard of plotting a third party challenge maybe in the Green
Party if Jill Stein would let her, to which Gabbard allegedly promised she
would not run as a third party candidate if she did not get the DNC nomination,
which, if true, seems to me to be a mistake. Being a Jill Stein voter in 2016,
I posted a video October 22, 2019 on my Facebook page presenting Jill Stein in
an interview truthfully and courageously telling Hillary Clinton what she
thought about Clinton’s comments about Gabbard and herself being Russian assets.
See this U-tube video interview posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY5KIcK2iug&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3Ysm8XKxqna5Zhb8SqFdOZ2UQA7NSV-xDXm__huGigKEqgfvmAuv2Whsw/
Most of the respondents and
commenters on my Facebook newsfeed I randomly got involved with as mentioned
above apparently were Democratic true believers, being convinced Biden, Warren,
and Sanders were clearly the leaders in the primary process and the rest should
just willingly drop out to make things smoother for the DNC, to which I responded
with, “But what about Tulsi? She is obviously a strong candidate? Have you seen
this Drudge Report poll? According to this poll Gabbard won the sixth debate
hands down,” posting the comment and the Internet address for the DR poll
showing the above results in the thread of comments.
And then three or four of the participants immediately started attacking me for having the temerity to post a Drudge Report post in their august midst, posting Parent ego state tirades about how low brow and fake the DR is, as anybody should know. One of them said she hoped I was getting paid for this since I was making such a fool of myself, implying I was a troll.
One person in the thread allowed
they should at least cut Tulsi some slack and wait for more information, but
none of the rest would hear of it, being convinced Warren, Sanders, and Biden
were the only candidates worth considering. And then one of them posted a fact check
website in response to one of my posts in which I asked them if they had any
evidence the DR was an untrustworthy fake news site? According to the fact
check site the DR did publish some fake news, also conspiracy theories, and was
generally untrustworthy, recommending fact checking any post you might want to
remember and use posted by the DR. The fact check site also criticized the DR
for linking articles posted in ZeroHedge, another so-called conspiracy theory
site. The fact check site said about seventy-five percent of DR readers were
conservatives some of whom listened to Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk.
Having never listened to Rush Limbaugh nor watched Fox So-called News,
considering myself a staunch Independent, I nevertheless began to think I might
be more conservative than I thought I was.
The Facebook posts mentioned above convinced me the Drudge Report is labeled and villified as a fake news conservative site by a lot of Democrats, which I had not considered or concluded in four or years of perusing and reading the DR, mainly reading headlines just to see what is going on around Spaceship Earth, which I am still convinced is worthwhile, the DR being one of the best sites for this sort of thing. The negative posts about the DR and the fact checker information caused me to do a Google search about the DR in which I found out the DR now has probably the greatest number of hits per day of any web news source anywhere, over one million hits per day.
If some seventy-five percent of the DR hits per day are conservatives that means some of the other twenty-five percent could be people like me, Independent Jill Stein-voting-for Progressives, and many are people like Democrats of various persuasions, ranging from true believers to ordinary liberals, and that means a sample of 207,726 Total Votes cast in a DR poll over a week or so about a CNN DNC televised primary debate would be biased to some extend by an overweighting of conservatives, all other things being equal, but it would not necessarily be biased about what most US presidential eligible voters think, including about 50,000 non-right wing conservative eyeballs, and it is worth noting that the DR poll no doubt included eligible voters who voted in 2016 and those who did not vote in 2016, and those who will not vote in 2020, increasing the accuracy of the picture the poll painted about who won the debates, namely Tulsi Gabbard.
As I understand political polling in
the US, the sample sizes for most polls are not that large, much smaller than
the DR poll referenced here, and thus would be more biased than the DR poll
based on sample size alone. According to this CNN article about a CNN poll at https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/23/politics/cnn-poll-biden-lead-increases/index.html,
Biden is way out in front as the winner of the DNC primary process, having the
support of 34 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, as of
October 23, with the next best Warren having 19 percent support and Sanders
having 16 percent.
Here is a CNN comment from the above
article: “But Biden has seen big spikes in
support among moderate and conservative Democrats (43% support him now, up from
29% in the September poll), racial and ethnic minorities (from 28% among all
nonwhites in September to 42% now) and older voters (up 13 points since
September among those 45 and older) that outpace those among younger potential
Democratic voters (up 5 points among those younger than 45)”.
The CNN poll write-up went to say
Biden was considered by Democrats to be most likely to vote for issues that
could be passed in Congress and he had the best grasp of foreign policy. The
article said however that viewers of the last debate in their poll, the sixth
one referenced by me above, viewed Biden less favorably than those who did not
watch the debate.
Here is the CNN description of the
poll size in the above referenced CNN article: “The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from
October 17 through 20 among a random national sample of 1,003 adults reached on
landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer, including 424 registered voters
who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. Results for the full
sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
For results among potential Democratic voters, it is plus or minus 5.8 points.”
If
you want a view of what US voters as a whole think it seems to me the above
referenced CNN poll was more biased than the above referenced DR poll, based on
sample size alone, plus the CNN poll targeted Democratic true believers and
likely Democratic voters with no mention of the political leanings of the
remaining five hundred or so of the sample. In any case, a sample size of one
thousand in the case of the CNN poll pales in comparison with the DR poll sample
size of 207,726. Not
being a statistician I have no idea how you would go about proving which poll
had the highest statistical reliability and validity, but it seems to me the DR
poll paints the clearest picture about who won the debates, and that picture
shows most US eligible voters prefer Gabbard rather than Biden.
On the other hand, my
homegrown sample of one, my Democratic professor emeritus statistically-expert
mathematician wife had this to say: “So what, all those conservatives in the DR
poll said they think Gabbard won the debate because they think she is the best
looking, and they think she would be the easiest one to beat in a race with
Trump.”
Regardless,
it seems to me the statistical reliability and validity of the DR poll would most likely be just as high as the
reliability and validity of the CNN poll.
The question remains, who do
most US eligible voters think is the best presidential candidate: Gabbard or
Biden?
Seems to me it boils down to
what you think is most enlightening, relevant and least fake, your own eyes and
ears watching and hearing the debates, the above referenced DR poll, or the
above referenced CNN poll?
While there are several
possible arguments one might make based on an analysis of this case, I have
neither the time nor the energy to discuss them here. I also realize it is
impossible to prove anything about the candidates or the DNC primary process
based on the facts of this case; and I also know it is always impossible to
find or generate provably-true right answers for political, economic, and
social states of affairs anywhere anytime, the best you can hope for being to
generate consensual answers satisfactory to most of the humans subject to them.
Nevertheless, following are my conclusions based on evidence presented in this
case. Call it fake news if you will.
It seems to me the DNC is again rigging their primary election, with Biden as the new Hillary, as Michael Moore has pointed out in a Facebook post. It was obvious to my eyes watching the first CNN debate referenced above that the show was rigged in favor of Biden. The debate questioners over and over referred to Biden as the “frontrunner,” giving him more deference and air time than the others. It was less evident in the sixth debate but it was still there. CNN has conducted the debates to generate advertising revenues and then proceeds to conduct a poll about who won and then writes up the poll results for their advertisers and viewers. How unbiased is that?
I have no idea what is really
going on internally within the DNC, but it seems to me there are parallels
between their behind the scenes machinations now and whatever it was they did
to sidecar Sanders in 2016. Warren in recent days has been saying the 2016 DNC
primary election was rigged against Sanders, which seemed obvious to me at the
time. Gabbard has recently said the DNC is trying to “hijack” the primary
election now. Rigging, hijacking, whatever, this sort of the thing seems to be
standard operating procedure for the DNC.
It seems to me the DNC is
primarily interested in finding a presidential nominee who they think will
preserve the perks, legacies, jobs, and careers of Democrat politicians and
bureaucrats in Washington than they are in finding a nominee that can defeat
Trump and improve conditions for we the people, humans not only living in the
US, but homo sapiens and other species still alive all around Spaceship Earth,
including about fifty percent of eligible US voters who did not vote in the
2016 election, which no doubt was to some extent caused by having to vote for a
supposed lesser of two evils.
There is no proof that Trump
has been more evil in office than Hillary would have been. At least Trump has
not destroyed any more nations yet. Look what Hillary did to Libya when she was
secretary of state under Obama.
It seems to me Tulsi Gabbard would have a much better chance of beating Trump and doing something to significantly improve the functioning of the US government than Biden, but she apparently does not stand a chance of getting the DNC presidential nomination, primarily because of the way the DNC primary process has been hijacked and rigged, primarily by forcing DNC presidential primary candidates to solicit large sums of money from elite rich and corporate donors to stay in the race, donors who in general will not donate to young highly intelligent creative and energetic progressive female candidates they cannot trust to do their bidding in office, in a process that in effect forces most presidential primary candidates to accept bribes psychologically obligating them to pay back their elite rich and corporate donors after they get in office by voting in their favor. Bernie Sanders was an exception in this regard in 2016 but it did him no good in the end, thanks to the rigging of the DNC.
It also seems to me most Democratic true believers are naively playing a DO ME SOMETHING psychological Game, socially pretending they primarily want a presidential candidate who will improve the US government and benefit we the people, whereas psychologically they want an older not so bright pork barrel male politician who they falsely think will help them personally (rather than elite rich and corporate donors) with more perks and benefits, which in my view are necessary in many cases, but which should not be the driving force behind voting in US presidential primary elections, otherwise the US and Spaceship Earth will continue their downward spirals.
Unfortunately large political parties become corrupted—having been bribed by the elite rich and large corporations, having created voting rules and processes that require politicians running for high office to take billions of dollars in bribes to purchase air, screen and print time and space from Mainstream Media to broadcast campaign propaganda to targeted audiences to get elected. They are authoritarian; evolve into fascism; cause humans to act like sheep; accomplish nothing of significance obvious to everyone when terms of office end, after promising to solve everything, after spending billions of dollars on elections; function like gangs fighting other gangs; encourage intolerance, polarizations and enmity among the populace; cause conformity and group think in organizations everywhere; create dependence; foment wars and warlike behaviors; foster obedience to party lines; waste money and resources; function with faux democracy like high school students winning popularity contests, where most of the time only those with narcissistic movie star-like looks, mannerisms, and speech win; create grandiose illusions that turn to ashes when terms of office end and poor people realize their lives have continued to deteriorate, causing anger, disillusionment, and depression; play psychological Games instead of doing things to solve real problems, such as poverty, inequality, and the like; exploit family scripts, preying upon generationally ingrained dysfunctional scripted family feeling, thinking and behaving, rather than encourage learning, growth and script-free feeling, thinking, and behaving; dumb people down; cause and reward immoral and unethical behavior, selecting leaders who have character and intellectual defects, often selecting sociopaths with little enough empathy to be able to maim and destroy nations and people with a straight face and keep a clear conscience, while presenting an innocent-looking face in public; use ad hominem slurs, innuendoes, and verbal attacks to slander humans who argue against their party line doctrines, dogmas, and slogans; create discord, mayhem, sanctions, and wars, frustrating, undermining, bullying, and destroying other countries and people around Spaceship Earth, playing one-upmanship psychological Games and plundering resources that justifies war making behaviors and expenditures to combat blowback and create jobs, profits, and votes internally; ignore global warming and climate change, to maintain their grip on the populace, telling their sheeple fairy tales instead of the truth, while not doing things to prevent the extinctions of Earthian species of fauna and flora, probably including sooner or later the Earthian human species.
Richard John Stapleton, PhD,
CTA is an emeritus professor of operations management, management information
systems, organizational behavior, business policy, and entrepreneurship at
Georgia Southern University, using the case method in all courses. He is a
founder and owner of Effective Learning Company, and the founder and moderator
of the Ogeechee Economic Forum at https://www.effectivelearning.net/ogeechee-economic-forum.html .
The Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour will again be open for discussion this coming third Saturday of the month, October 19, 2019 during 11-12 a.m.
This Saturday we will again meet at the Eagle Creek Brewing Company.
Franklin Dismuke, entrepreneur, owner, and CEO of Eagle Creek Brewing Company, a graduate of the Georgia Southern Parker College of Business, agreed to us doing the forum while his pub is open for business.
Invite your friends who are also invited and drop by Eagle Creek Brewing Company at 106 Savannah Avenue in Statesboro at eleven a.m. this coming Saturday, October 19, for an hour of interesting and stimulating economic, political, and social discussion. We’ll have more room and better parking than we had at my office.
The main purpose of the Ogeechee Economic Forum is to provide an equal opportunity for responsible citizens to test their ideas for dealing with economic, political, and social problems and opportunities. If you don’t know a good answer for a problem maybe someone else in the group will. Hopefully the process will make us all better citizens.
The process utilizes a Classroom De-Gamer™. A spinner attached to the De-Gamer will select the LEADER OF THE HOUR who will create the agenda by answering three questions, whatever pops into mind, about what s/he thinks is the most significant economic, political, or social problem or opportunity right now.
What is the problem?
What are the alternatives?
What do you recommend?
Rarely will the De-Gamer select a leader who knows right answers for these sorts of problems and issues, since there are no “right” answers for them, or at least there are no provably-true right answers.
Once something is codified into a rule, law, or doctrine, it’s true that the rule, law, or doctrine entails such and such, and if one knows what is codified s/he knows a “right” answer; but it’s almost impossible to prove that what was codified should have been codified in the first place, or as it was. It’s even more difficult to prove, even with hindsight, that economic and political decisions were “right”, so anything the LEADER OF THE HOUR brings up will generate interesting and stimulating discussion.
Anyone can respond to what the De-Gamer-selected leader said with what s/he thinks are better answers, on a first-come first-serve basis, after the De-Gamer-selected leader stops talking.
One spin of the De-Gamer most of the time generates about one hour of back and forth discussion about what the De-gamer-selected leader said and about what others said. If the discussion runs out of steam before the hour is up we can spin the De-Gamer again, or quit for the day.
The purpose of the discussion is to learn and educate, not to indoctrinate, by co-constructing consensual answers. About the best you can hope for in most groups, organizations, and systems is to co-construct consensual answers that are good enough to satisfy most people affected by them.
The Ogeechee Economic Forum is non-partisan. Persons of all political persuasions and faiths are welcome.
The “Spinner” makes sure all participants (including me the moderator) have an equal shot at being the Leader of the Hour. If the spinner lands on me I will present and answer the three questions just like any other participant would. Once the De-Gamer-selected leader breaks the ice it’s free flow from then on. Anyone can become the LEADER OF THE MOMENT by diving in the discussion first. There’s no holding up of hands to get permission to talk to the whole group. No one can be interrupted once s/he starts talking to the whole group, assuming s/he does not talk too long. If someone talks too long I will clang my cowbell to give someone else a chance. There are no side conversations. All talking must be to the whole group. Anyone can get up and leave at any time if s/he has any sort of personal problem.
A major purpose of the group is to create democracy, not autocracy.
Another purpose is to learn how to avoid playing psychological Games such as BALANCE SHEET, AIN’T IT AWFUL, GREENHOUSE, MINE’S BETTER, NIGYSOB, KICK ME, POOR ME, IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, LET’S YOU AND THEM FIGHT, DO ME SOMETHING, and I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU.
A major purpose is to learn how to create win-win economic, political, and social outcomes rather than win-lose outcomes.
Lastly, another purpose of the forum is to learn how to have fun while coping with serious problems.
Believe it or not, in most sessions this Game-free process generates a full hour of interesting, stimulating, informative, and satisfying experience for all participants, and the time passes quickly.
At the end of the forum hour Saturday I recommend recognizing the contributions of Coach Erk Russell, who named a drainage ditch running through Statesboro, that bordered his football practice field, Eagle Creek, who won three national championships during his tenure at Georgia Southern University, who stopped by my office one day and told me he appreciated what I was teaching some of his football players.
According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in 1954 I was probably the youngest and smallest Class A high school starting quarterback in the US.
I think I could do a better job quarterbacking the US than Donald Trump, if only a great football coach, such as Joe Moring, my high school coach in 1954, or Erk Russell in 1985, or some sort of national presidential Classroom De-Gamer™, could send me in the game and put Trump on the bench.
It also seems to me most reasonably bright US adult citizens with decent educations could do a better job quarterbacking the US than Trump. I read recently his approval rating is now thirty-eight percent. If you participate with the Ogeechee Economic Forum you will have an opportunity to tell me and the group why you think Trump is doing a better job as president than I could, or why you think Trump’s doing a better job than a reasonably bright well-educated adult US citizen selected by a Classroom De-Gamer™ could.
Come to the Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour this Saturday to participate in some Saturday Morning armchair economic, political, and social quarterbacking. Armchair quarterbacking about Ogeechee Economic Forum problems and opportunities is more relevant and satisfying than armchair quarterbacking about football games. There’ll be plenty of time to watch and talk about football over the rest of the weekend.
Please share this invitation with your friends who are also invited.
THE EARTHIAN FORUM, Number Twelve, Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, October 13, 2019
THE
EARTHIAN FORUM is a digest of
articles containing facts, analyses, perspectives, and recommendations
concerned about existential states of affairs affecting all species of fauna
and flora around Spaceship Earth. Recent articles written and published by
writers in Internet publications on ecological, economic, social, political,
religious, and military states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are linked
below as sources.
“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, PhD, CTA,
Editor & Publisher
Well, here we are again. Good to have you here again
as readers, whomever or whereever you are.
Rich, poor, well educated or not; working with your hands or working
with your mind; or not working at all as a member of the elite rich or as a
member of the retired class with a defined benefits pension plan and social
security, or with a well-funded 401 (k); or not working period as one of the
unemployed looking for a job, or one of the unemployed who would like to have a
job but who are not counted as unemployed because they have given up on finding
one; powerful or powerless; living in mansions or homeless; smart or not so
smart; handsome or beautiful or plain; eloquent or too shy to speak up, this
article’s for you.
So to whom am I really writing? Who knows.
Maybe only to myself.
Given the general scope of what my mind tends to land
on these days, economics, politics, transactional analysis, life experiences
and script messages and such, what should I write at this moment that might be
of some significance? Should I write a story that might entertain or one that
might cause readers to learn something?
Unfortunately I can’t spin a Classroom De-Gamer™ to
select a topic. My subconscious mind has to do it somehow. Here it comes,
maybe. Still have not had a real thought about something to write about. Do we
force our thoughts, or do they just spontaneously bubble up from the
subconscious? How does the subconscious mind do this? Don’t have a clue, but
here comes a thought, almost. Well maybe not. Maybe I should just forget about
doing this now and go to town and get some supplies at the Little Walmart,
almost a daily ritual for me these days. Maybe just walk around the store and
observe some real people doing something necessary right now. Better than just sitting here waiting to make
up something to write about. No, write something. Write whatever pops into your
conscious mind.
As you can see from the following articles selected as sources for this issue of The Earthian Forum, number twelve, I as usual have been reading about our superhero Donald Trump and his adventures around Spaceship Earth, so it looks like he has just popped into my conscious mind for something to write about for this article. Does he pose a threat to all Earthians, not caused by maliciousness or malevolence necessarily on his part but caused by incompetence and irresponsibility? Is he unfit for the office of president of the US?
For starters it seems to me right now anyone would have to be mentally deranged to want to be president of the US in the first place given the dire consequences of what a US president can cause in the job intentionally and unintentionally. Those possible consequences would worry me to death.
Should he be impeached? I don’t know, and probably
nobody knows for sure.
As is implied in a comment I made about one of the articles sourced below, it seems to me the biggest problem most people have comprehending Trump is caused by the fact he is so unusual. I for one had never heard of or seen anyone quite like him before, so-called billionaire, poor student, barely able to read, telling his staff he wants to read as little as possible, maybe dyslexic, having no morals or ethics to speak of, yet having no criminal convictions with jail time, considered a messiah of sorts by evangelists, hated and vilified by millions, loved almost as s saint by millions, yet there he is, president of the US.
Love him or hate him, despite his being a narcissist or sociopath, or whatever he is according to the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Trump is not insane since he has been doing his shit for several decades having fun and lording it over people, and he still has a relatively large net worth on his balance sheet, the exact number of dollars of net worth he has having been seen by only a few people working for the Trump Organization, some CPAs and IRS agents, and maybe some family members.
Sourced below is a good article with public data showing the market value of Trump’s properties exceed the money borrowed against them, thus it appears his assets exceed his liabilities, and he’s not almost bankrupt, assuming he doesn’t owe humongous debts hidden from public eyes that are not collateralized, and assuming his physical collateral is worth what it’s appraised at, marked to market, sellable. If so he is indeed a wealthy man, irrespective of how much wealth he inherited from his father and grandfather, his grandfather having started Trump’s family fortune by starting, owning and running a restaurant and whore house in Canada servicing miners during the Klondike gold rush days in Alaska, as shown here. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-trump-family-fortune/?fbclid=IwAR1Vpewy-HZk6GD
Most people believe free will exists and subconsciously think humans have caused themselves to be what they are though their decisions and actions, therefore believing that individual Earthian humans are thus deserving of blame or praise; but it seems to me, not only right now, but since I was about twenty-one years old, that everything is caused, including human feelings, thoughts, beliefs, decisions, and actions. I never did fully believe there could be a non-caused cause, which I now concede there may have been, somehow, some sort of god-like thing, the most potent phenomenon imaginable, that always existed and therefore was not caused, that for some reason started the evolution of our universe some ten billion years ago, and maybe also other universes, then, or at other times.
To find data and evidence as to whether free will exists you can ask Google “does free will exist” and if you do you will find, as I did, 875 million results. No Earthian human could possibly read all these sources, but I would be willing to bet if a supercomputer did at least half the sources would support the proposition that free will does not exist.
Free will is rarely discussed in polite society or in politically-correct
media. In general it’s a taboo subject. Most people want to read and hear the
same public narratives, that everything is basically hunky dory as it’s always
been and god is in his heaven and bibles are all you need to know and all you
have to do is believe and have faith and go to church, temple, or mosque and
pay the preacher, priest, rabbi, or imam, and recite the doctrines and dogma,
and you will be fine, throughout eternity.
What a deal that is, which Trump seems to support.
It’s surprising that some percentage of USian citizens now think Trump is some sort of messiah, who will save them, and say they will take up arms against other USians to keep him in power, regardless of how many votes he gets in the next election. Many of them are angry that some USian citizens have the temerity to criticize their dear leader in public, considering it a form of blasphemy.
What caused these hateful thoughts and stories?
It seems to me hate stories are caused by various things such as over-population, increasing poverty, dysfunctional political and educational systems, increased militarism, and ever-widening income inequality; but one of the most insidious psychological causes of hatred is Earthian humans believing free will exists.
If humans did not believe free will exists they would have no justification for hating anyone, being forced to realize all humans have been caused to feel, think, decide, and do in ineluctable inexorable cause-effect chains infinitely regressing and progressing through time, and therefore they are not to blame, praise, or hate for what they believe and do.
Earthian humans are merely lucky or unlucky and syntonic or dystonic in their environments.
If Earthian humans could miraculously stop believing in free will hatred around Spaceship Earth would diminish immediately, and possibly disappear.
This is not to say that Earthian humans do not need rules and laws and should not reward or punish derelict deleterious humans (regardless of what caused their harmful effects) to cause them to stop doing harmful things and to do beneficial things.
Despite the probability free will does not exist, major structural changes have to happen right now on Earth to prevent more and more extinctions of native fauna and flora, including homo sapiens. Some structural changes are happening, but are the right kinds of changes happening at a fast enough rate? If they’re not most Earthian species, homo sapiens included, are probably toast, kaput, done, sooner or later.
Scientists estimate that about two hundred Earthian species of fauna and flora now go extinct daily around Spaceship Earth as shown here.
How much longer do Earthian humans have before the extinction process reaches them? I don’t know and probably nobody knows. Hopefully Earthian humans have a decade or more to go before it’s obvious the show’s over if drastic changes are not made ASAP.
In the halls of the USian congress right wing politicians commonly assure their voters there is nothing to worry about in regard to global warming and climate change because throughout Earthian history there have been random variations in temperature and climate, and what Usians have been experiencing of late is just another normal anomaly, and therefore human production and consumption systems have not caused any permanent observable changes in the climate; so just vote for me and everything will work out for you and yours just hunky-dorily.
Which is bosh and bullshit, a fairy-tale told to adults.
Given that the average Earthian temperature has been rising in recent decades, polar ice caps are melting at an increasing rate, sea levels are rising, and devastating weather events around Earth occur with increasing frequencies—floods, droughts, cold spells, wildfires, and hurricanes—Earthian humans had better hope they caused it.
Because if Earthian humans caused it they can theoretically do something to correct it.
On the other hand, if humans did not cause it, they are at the mercy of natural cosmic evolution, no better off than any Earthian species rendered extinct by natural causes in any Earthian Ice Age.
Be sure to ask your cocksure self-righteous all-knowing right-wing politician if s/he thinks observable devastating changes in weather patterns will revert back to normal soon enough to save the Earthian human species from extinction, regardless of who or what caused it?
As the saying goes, “If it (human-caused global
warming and climate change) walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and
it looks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
Unfortunately, one can build a case that what will happen to Earthian humans is already baked in the cake.
Most Earthian humans seem to assume the on-going process of change will inevitably work in their favor and will result in structural improvements in human life that will insure indefinite sustainability; when it’s possible infinitely regressive and progressive inexorable ineluctable cause-effect chains now in place will inevitably cause worse causes, not better, causing even more Earthian extinctions per day, part of a natural cosmic process that may have already run its course on thousands of planets once harboring life in various solar systems, galaxies, and universes.
Various planets may have produced life forms
intelligent enough to produce AI robots that wiped them out, their suns may
have burned out, a large asteroid could have hit them, and probably other
things could have done them in, such as nuclear weapons, or global warming and
climate change they caused on their planets.
Thank you, my subconscious mind, for giving me some content today for my usual “Or So It Seems To Me Right Now” column in The Earthian Forum. Most likely you produced what you did because you were caused to do it by what I have been caused to read in the last month or so, including the articles listed below as sources, and because of whatever it was that caused the writers of the sourced articles to write what they wrote, and on and on through time in unbroken cause-effect chains.
Unfortunately Trump caused a lot of what was written about in the sourced articles because the USian electoral college contains mistakes made by the writers of the US Constitution that unfairly gave Trump the US presidential election in 2016, irrespective of his having lost the popular vote, causing him to do what he did recently that caused him to get written about, entangled with myriad cause-effect chains moving forward at various speeds at various angles through time, part of the magnum web of Earthian cause-effect chains determining human experience around Spaceship Earth.
It’s possible that natural entropic processes might eventually reduce everything in all universes back to mere fermions, bosons, quarks, and similar particles in space.
If you ask Google “is human extinction inevitable” as I did you will find almost seven million results, some asserting human extinction is inevitable, some saying it’s not inevitable. My guess is nobody knows for sure. Regardless, it seems to me it can happen as a force majeure.
As the writers of the song Que Sera Sera were caused to write, “The future’s not ours to see; whatever will be will be.” You can see and hear this truism sung right now at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc.
A fundamental teaching of transactional analysis is that humans should learn to “see what is really going on” with themselves and others as they transact with one another socially and psychologically living their daily lives so as to maximize their chances of living with satisfaction, despite how not-OK their economic, social, psychological, and political worlds might be.
Transactional analysis, or TA, teaches there are three naturally occurring life outcomes caused for humans: winner, loser, and non-winner— caused by the sum total of inherited characteristics and “messages” one is exposed to from the moment of birth, including electrochemical messages one is exposed to in one’s mother’s womb some say—and by the decisions irrational offspring are caused to make about the messages—that become permanent determinants of emotional, intellectual, and behavioral responses throughout life that determine the three generic life outcomes, or life scripts.
In other words, it’s all a matter of luck in the naturally-occurring unfair world of inevitable cause-effect chains causing human scripts and outcomes, a blind unfair process that produces in the aggregate predictable outcomes that recur in about the same proportions within the Earthian human population generation after generation.
A major purpose of TA is to help clients add new artificial causes of causation to alter the path of the naturally-occurring cause-effect chains determining an individual, group, or organization so as to increase life satisfactions for clients, helping them to escape banal and harmartic “scripts” naturally causing their outcomes.
Changing a loser script to a winner script requires a lot of hard work but it can happen if a person somehow acquires artificial script messages powerful enough to control the naturally-occurring deleterious or debilitating script messages. TA can provide people basic concepts and tools for attempting such a thing, requiring perhaps the use of different ego states and transactional patterns, learning how to communicate in more effective ways psychologically as well as socially, psychological messages being ulterior and non-spoken, social messages being overt and spoken.
Changing a loser script may also entail changing the way one structures one’s time, learning how to spend more time working rather than playing Games, or learning how to spend more time being intimate instead of chit-chatting and bullshitting about pastimes such as casual sex, sports, and soap operas, or reciting rituals, or playing Games, especially playing Games similar to those Trump plays, who probably rarely achieves real intimacy, as evidenced by his baggage of failed marriages and corrupt relationships. Trump is now one of the most visible Game-players around Spaceship Earth, constantly persecuting, rescuing, and victimizing individuals, groups, and organizations somewhere around Spaceship Earth, one way or the other.
One can build a case it’s better not to try to change a loser script, however unfair the script might be. The Prayer of Serenity goes something like this: Lord give me the intelligence and strength to change what needs changing, and the wisdom to know what I can and cannot change, knowing full well that some suffering, losing, and grieving are inevitable.
A basic problem or question is whether serenity is possible in today’s world, beset as it is by global warming and climate change and by escalating hostilities and agitations within and between organizations and groups around Earth, especially between big organizations and groups, such as the US and Iran, with the US government trying to goad Iran into doing something rash that will give the US government an excuse to tear Iran to shreds with another war in the Middle East, a gruesome Game indeed, called by transactional analysts IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU.
How could anyone be serene knowing his or her country is being led by a misogynist leader such as Trump? And how serene could anyone be knowing the US Supreme Court is ruled 5-4 by prejudiced and biased right wing judges, including at least one or two misogynists?
TA never promised anyone any rose gardens on Earth, or eternal bliss in heaven, but it does advertise that it can help specific individuals, groups, and organizations become more ok, not only in terms of achieving personal goals but becoming more ok transacting with others so as to live with more dignity, satisfaction, peace, and tranquility, based on Adult mutually agreed to social contracts.
No one could blame you if you believe in tuning out TA and blogs such as this one. One can build a case the best strategy is to tune out the world, burrowing up in your burrow as much as possible, reading no newspapers and not watching television, with no Internet, to maximize your mental health, and serenity. The problem however if you do this is boredom. Most humans have an innate need for stimulation, achievement, and recognition.
Regardless of what sort of cognitive structures you use, TA or whatever, sooner or later you have to take action, requiring defining the problem, delineating the alternatives, and making recommendations for changing things, and choosing things, and then trying things, trial and error, over and over, till something works.
1—What
is the problem?
2—What
are the alternatives?
3—What
do you recommend?
Unfortunately this Adult problem-solving process does not seem to work with nations, at least for long for most. Who would be idealistic or grandiose enough to think he or she could define the problems of a nation, generate alternatives for solving them, make recommendations for change, and then start an action plan of things to do to cure the not-OKness?
It
seems nations never solve their problems. All they ever do is change the actors
of roles required by the script, which may involve trivial script changes over
time, say changing from a monarchy to a republic, or from feudalism to
capitalism to socialism to communism to fascism, and maybe back again to
capitalism; but so what, the dynamics remain the same. The top leaders wind up
manipulating and exploiting the members regardless of the economic or political
system de jure, caused by the innate greed and corruption of top leaders
competing for more money and power, playing Games, trying to be the top
dog.
Yet so
far humans have kept on muddling through somehow despite their chronic problems
doing about the same things over and over, despite the fact no single human or
nation has been smart enough or wise enough or powerful enough to start and
implement an action plan that results in real improvement and correction for
everyone.
The
problem now however if climate change and global warming are real in ways
thousands believe they are we may be living in
The
Age of No More Muddling Through.
Politicians promise to start and implement action plans for real improvement if you will just vote for them. Most of their promises are snake oil such as “socialism” or “cutting taxes” or “more military spending” or “Make America Great Again”—but It never happens or does any good, despite the billions of dollars spent on campaigns, and the new characters acting out the same roles after the elections; and the country keeps sliding downhill, as if the purpose of the whole charade was to give winners of elections the pleasure of winning something and acting out the roles they tried out for, giving them a taste of power and recognition as a top dog, with no real achievement for everyone.
We
live in precarious times, but it will do little good to play AIN’T IT AWFUL, a psychological Game identified and labeled by
transactional analysts, in which psychological Game players collect strokes
by constantly complaining about the evils and troubles of the cold cruel world,
positioning themselves as Victims of obsolete economic, religious, and
political systems manipulated and exploited by greedy self-interested power-mad
sociopathic oligarchs and leaders and their corrupt bought and paid for
lackeys, especially lobbyists and politicians, however true that might be in
reality.
Yet,
it seems to me humans should discuss serious economic, political,
environmental, social, and psychological problems in Adult Game-Free ways to
develop consensual bottom-up policies and strategies, and the more groups
around Earth the better, which increases the odds of developing workable and
cooperative approaches for staving off the dire consequences of global warming
and climate change.
At the same time, it will do no good for Earthian humans 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 (fake) strokes (units of recognition) for making nonsensical positive cheerful upbeat comments about the environment and political, economic, social, and psychological states of affairs.
But it seems to me the riskiest psychological Game played politically right now is IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, involving polarized extremists that continue to experience increasing insecurity and hopelessness as they continue to blame others and find scapegoats for their plights, escalating their anger as they transmit threats from their dogmatic Parent ego states to the Parent ego states of others, sometimes attacking others verbally and physically for their perceived misdeeds (as if they did what they did of their own free will). Some of the threats include international and civil war. The dishonesty of the psychological Game IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU entails Earthian humans psychologically pretending to believe that opposing evil parties have decided using free will to cause the heinous actions and problems they are accused of diabolically causing, when the Game players probably suspect at their Adult social levels that other things caused the problems. Getting rid of the other will not solve the problems, whether the other (the enemy) is a competing political party or a regime. The real causes of extremist plights such as over-population, poverty, poor educational systems, poor family scripts, poor religions, and unfair economic policies and systems are ignored and unresolved; the insecurity, anger, and misery escalate until finally the shooting starts; things get blown up and destroyed; millions of humans are killed; societies collapse, and somehow rise from the ashes; and then the Game begins again.
Unfortunately, Earthian humans have now progressed technologically to a level where they may be powerful enough to blow up and destroy things to such a degree that there will be nothing left to rise from again, if they start seriously shooting and bombing again in an all-out no-holds-barred war, in which case there will be no live Earthian humans left to play IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU again.
Regardless, individual Earthian humans should assume responsibility and take action for conserving energy as best they can in their daily lives to reduce greenhouse gases and the effects of climate change; but especially they should help select politicians who will vote for economic and political policies and strategies that will help correct environmental, economic, political, social, and psychological problems on a mass scale, not just play psychological Games, before it’s too late.
For at
least two centuries humans have lived under the illusion that technology and
labor-saving devices, new chemical applications in agriculture (fertilizers,
herbicides, and pesticides), and new scientific discoveries of all sorts would
enable them to live happily ever after, while producing as many offspring as
they wished, thereby increasing the world human population without limit,
despite the admonitions of humans like Thomas Malthus, an English parson, who
published in 1798 in an essay titled “An Essay on the Principle of Population”
what became known as the Malthusian Concept, namely that human population grows
geometrically while the human food supply grows arithmetically, and therefore
most humans were doomed to suffer food shortages, poverty, subsistence living,
and premature deaths. Up until the last few years economists have
generally taught that Malthus was wrong, arguing that technology, chemical agriculture,
better seeds, and better irrigation would enable an ever-increasing human
population to be adequately fed and housed. Unfortunately it now appears that
Malthus was right after all. World hunger, poverty and misery are increasing,
even in the United States; and, even worse, it appears that some forms of
technology, however beneficial and enjoyable they have been in the short run,
have led human Earthians down a precarious path to possible extinction, namely
electricity and the internal combustion engine used to power billions of cars,
pickups with big tires, trucks, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, John Deere riding
lawn mowers, tractors, airplanes, boats, ships, houses, refrigerators, central
heating and cooling systems, factories, computers, and what have you around
Spaceship Earth, requiring the ignition and burning of many millions of
barrels, cubic feet, and tons of fossil fuel (oil, gas, and coal) every day as
an energy source, the burning of which is causing global warming and climate
change by putting ever more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in Earth’s
atmosphere. All forms of technology aren’t good things; and humans have to
learn how to use good technology instead of bad technology, however addicted to
bad technology they may be; and the Earthian human population should be
peacefully reduced through natural attrition, natural deaths exceeding births,
thereby reducing the need to deplete resources necessary to sustain the
Earthian human population in the short run, irrespective of long run
consequences. Bringing that about will require many different kinds of changes
not only in the behavior of human Earthians but especially in the behavior of
large human institutions controlled and manipulated by mentally-bounded self-interested
sociopaths, such as the US. The situation is especially ominous when one
considers that if humans were to give up all their addictions to bad technology
cold turkey they would immediately cause an economic and political catastrophe
of unimaginable proportions, possibly immediate extinction. Humans are cornered
or trapped in a Global Catch-22 or Gordian Knot—in a
damned-if-they-do-and-damned-if-they-don’t situation—and there are no easy
answers for getting loose.
See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” at http://www.effectivelearning.net/spaceship-earth–inc..htmlfor 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. This entails Earthian humans 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 Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi , as shown in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.”
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 computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, looking out their windows with their hands clutching their steering wheels?
As
usual this month’s THE EARTHIAN FORUM links and cites as SOURCES
recent articles written and published by clear deep-thinking hard-hitting
independent writers in various Internet publications on ecological, economic,
social, political, religious, and military affairs around Spaceship Earth.
I generally agree with these writers about what is most relevant about
Spaceship Earth states of affairs, but each of them brought up facts, analyses,
conclusions, ideas, or perspectives that were new to me when I read them during
the last thirty days or so, thereby teaching me something, which is why I
included them in this issue of THE EARTHIAN FORUM.
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, or irrelevant authoritarian
make-believe certainty, to be memorized and obeyed as dogma and doctrine by
sheeple.
If you
have ideas on how to democratically discuss in Game-free ways economic and
political problems and opportunities in something like the Ogeechee Economic
Forum at
Feel free to respond with comments about any of the SOURCES listed below using our RESPONSES page; but please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. Criticize any of the facts, data, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions in any of the articles; but please refrain from slandering the characteristics of the authors, illogically trying to prove their arguments and conclusions are wrong and yours are right because they are personally heinous and despicable.
I have
no desire to sell subscriptions or advertising or solicit donations for THE
EARTHIAN FORUM, but I would like to sell more books. If you feel you’ve
gained value from THE EARTHIAN FORUM and would like to reciprocate go
to our Effective Learning
Publications page and purchase one or more copies of my
books at
Now here is an interesting post, showing clearly something is wrong with political reporting in MSM and CNN land (Mainstream Media), and in DNC land. According to this poll Tulsi Gabbard won the sixth DNC debate handily with forty percent of the vote, far head of the next best, Yang, with about twenty percent. Buttigeig got ten percent. Warren, Biden, and Sanders and the rest got less that seven percent each. Gabbard also won another such debate I saw and Drudge poll with about the same results as this one. Yet there has been no mention of this I have seen in MSM. It’s not that MSM publishes fake news so much by commission; apparently they mainly publish fake news by omission. According to MSM and the DNC Tulsi Gabbard is not a serious Democrat candidate. Are these Drudge Report Internet polls anomalies? Or what?
Here’s a sophisticated video by a talented presenter taking
advantage of state of the art facilities and computer technology, maybe the
best I have seen, telling and showing you how your brain works. Well worth a
watch and listen for about twenty minutes.
Here’s a spot on snapshot meme showing how Repugs and Dems (especially Johnson, Clinton, and Obama) crippled the USian economic system since 1965, Johnson escalating the Vietnam War and going in debt with guns and butter; Clinton signing one of the worst pieces of economic legislation in US history, the Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act that got rid of the Glass-Stegall Act of 1933, that allowed the USian money and banking system and regulated capitalism system to become a gigantic gambling casino, funny money machine, and war machine; Obama caving in to Wall Street too-big-to-fail banks and the Pentagon; and bought and paid for Repugs since 1980 lowering tax rates for their elite rich and corporate paymasters and starting unnecessary wars, all of the above causing the angry, precarious, unfair, unequal, highly polarized, militarized debt economy the US has now, that could implode at any time.
The DNC is still playing MOTHER KNOWS BEST, now doing to Tulsi Gabbard what they did to Bernie Sanders in 2015, just pretending they care about real democracy, only caring about preserving the perks and privileges of the DNC establishment, and hangers-on within the party, and DNC funding from rich patrons in the Deep State.
“All that said, it’s not clear
there’s any real geopolitical reasoning behind Trump’s decision to let the
Turks run roughshod over Kurdish Syria. The president, like his predecessors,
is always willing to sacrifice masses of peoples to some greater interest, but
in this case it’s unclear what that interest is, other than perhaps to declare
an empty victory against the Islamic State and try to claim credit for ending
one of the U.S.’s smallest and newest military engagements. That, at least,
fits with the nationalist “populism” that brought him to power. “He’s just
pulling us out of the Middle East, into an isolationist position,” Baer told
me. “There’s no constituency [for this] other than ‘Why are we wasting all this
money on these ragheads?’” “
And what’s the probability planting billions of trees will happen anytime soon? It would however be nice if publishing this article would cause human Earthians to plant more trees than they are now.
Acceptance my foot. They used him to assert their family scripts. To learn about the significance of family scripts in political states of affairs, read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning at http://www.effectivelearning.net.
But they were taught and learned how to accumulate a family fortune. Trump is where he is today, like everybody else, because of his family script. He became what he was scripted to be. He did not invent himself using free will. Read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning to learn more about the significance of family scripts in political states of affairs. Despite being venal they look almost angelic in this picture, resembling most televangelists. Trump’s grandfather Fred got his start running a restaurant and whore house servicing miners during the Alaskan gold rush days.
“The Trump family has no record of
military service in five generations, 2 world wars and over 150 years—Let That
Sink In,” a spot on relevant meme, by Prissy Hamilton, FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397.
October 3
Sad and depressing. The DNC establishment in action playing
MOTHER KNOWS BEST.
Most detailed and thorough critical
review of Trump I have read. puts heavy reliance on the DSM, the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual, giving lengthy descriptions of mental illnesses such as
narcissism and sociopathy, as have numerous writers, including psychiatrists
and psychologists, on the Internet. For sure Trump is on the spectrum for both
of them, but as this author points out quoting a supposed expert in the field,
Trump is not technically mentally ill because the
man can function given his goal to have fun in the here and now and lord it
over people. He has been doing his shit for decades now and he still has a
large positive net worth on his balance sheet. What most people can’t get their
heads around is that Trump is just like all people. He is what he is becasue of
family scripting, not free will. He did not invent himself. He was caused to be
what he is by inexorable unbroken cause-effect chains running through time. To
better understand family scripts read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional
Analysis of Human Learning at www.effectivelearning.net.
Yes, empathy is beneficial in
ordinary human affairs. But under corporate capitalism empathy is mainly
appreciated by bosses when it somehow profits them personally. Bosses may want
employees to have empathy working with peer employees, to get along and create
harmony, but empathy’s considered detrimental much of the time in overall
corporate affairs, especially when dealing with competing corporations. A common
attitude among corporate winners is I’m OK and everyone working for me is OK,
but everyone else is less OK, especially competitors.
Gabbard was probably the smartest
and most truthful candidate in the DNC debates, now silenced and marginalized
because of DNC rules and pork barrel politics. She won a Drudge Report poll i
saw after one of the debates she was in that showed she won hands down, about
forty percent of the total votes of eighteen thousand or so cast. This is DNC
“democracy” in action, playing the psychological Game MOTHER KNOWS
BEST, and to hell with the truth, get the man, in this case, you want, Biden,
to keep everybody in Washington and throughout the Deep State in the US employed
and well fed, especially DNC hangers-on, with better than average income
increases. Sad state of affairs.
The Netherlands is a beautiful and
intellectual country. I lived there three months in 1983. It was the most Nurturing
Parent, Adult, and Free Child country I ever lived in, and the happiest and
most satisfied. Apparently they have slipped a bit in recent decades, largely
caused by problems in the Middle East, but they probably remain one of the most
advanced and happiest countries around Spaceship Earth, far ahead of the US in
my estimation.
I went back to Holland for a
transactional analysis conference is about 2003. They have some of the best
transactional analysts around Spaceship Earth.
I taught at Soesterberg, Holland in
the winter of 1983, living in the village of Leersum, teaching in a masters of
management systems program offered by Troy State University in the US at a US
NATO fighter pilot base there, also teaching at a US base in Hessich, Germany. I
would teach in Soesterberg on Tuesday and Thursday nights and then travel by
train to Hessich, Germany to teach there on Friday nights. This was by far the
most educational and satisfying winter quarter of my teaching career.
I got to know some Dutch TA people
at Zurich, Switzerland in about 2001 at an International Transactional Analysis
Association conference, and got to know them better at Utrecht, Holland at a TA
conference in 2003, and then touched base with them again in Edinburgh,
Scotland in 2005 at another ITAA international conference.
While I had a natural affinity for
Dutch TA people, Scottish TA people in Edinburgh seemed like the least foreign
native people of any country I ever lived in outside the US, probably because I
am about forty percent of Scottish descent.
Notice Trump’s tweet embedded in the
presentation congratulating Chairman Xi on the success of the Chinese communist
party, for this gruesome display of military might, a major escalation of the
new cold war insuring more money will be spent on the USian military, putting
all Earthians aboard Spaceship Earth in even graver danger of near term
extinction.
Could not agree more with the Republican
air force congress person shown here. It’s like Trump is doing anything he can
to keep himself in power, maybe indefinitely as a dictator. Evidently he must
like the stuff, power and attention.
Right. Penny wise and pound foolish,
like ethanol. Takes more fossil fuel to cook the stuff from corn than it saves
when burned in an infernal combustion engine in a car instead of gasoline, but
it makes some corn farmers a little more money.
Sad news out of Sweden, and to think
I talked with a Swede on a bus in Montreal, Canada, also a tourist, about
twenty years ago, who proudly and adamantly told me, “Sweden does not have
any social problems.”
Here is another well researched, informative,
and timely article by Courtenay Barnett, an international lawyer, who
unfortunately points out the US by and large ignores international law.
Minutes of the Ogeechee
Economic Forum Hour, September 21, 2019
As announced the forum
took place at the Eagle Creek Brewing Company at ten o’clock before the pub
opened for its normal business hours at eleven, per the invitation to the
public posted below. Three participants attended, A, B, and C. Near the end of
the hour C suggested that next time the forum start at eleven o’clock so the
participants could order something to eat and drink during the forum. This will
happen at the next meeting, the third Saturday of October, at eleven o’clock
instead of the usual ten o’clock hour of the forum, at Eagle Creek.
The Classroom De-Gamer™
selected B as the Leader of the Day. B said he thought the major economic and
political problem right now is the increasing polarization between extremists
on the right and left caused by economic inequality and frustration that seems
to be causing increasing violence and fascist attitudes and actions around
Spaceship Earth. He said he had no idea what alternative for change would be
best, being convinced everything that could be done has been tried at one time
or another, such as higher or lower taxes, voting for different politicians,
more government regulation, civil wars, world wars, regime changes, monarchies,
republics, democracy, socialism, communism, fascist dictatorships, religious
revivals, and what have you. He said he recommended hoping for a better day and
the accidental or inevitable evolution of new and better economic, political,
and social systems through synergistic learning, similar to what is recommended
in the article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” posted in a page on the
Effective Learning Report masthead at the top of this page labeled Spaceship
Earth, Inc.
Minutes of the Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour, September 21, 2019
As announced the forum took place at the Eagle Creek Brewing Company at ten o’clock before the pub opened for its normal business hours at eleven, per the invitation to the public posted below. Three participants attended, A, B, and C. Near the end of the hour C suggested that next time the forum start at eleven o’clock so the participants could order something to eat and drink during the forum. This will happen at the next meeting, the third Saturday of October, at eleven o’clock instead of the usual ten o’clock hour of the forum, at Eagle Creek.
The Classroom De-Gamer™ selected B as the Leader of the Day. B said he thought the major economic and political problem right now is the increasing polarization between extremists on the right and left caused by economic inequality and frustration that seems to be causing increasing violence and fascist attitudes and actions around Spaceship Earth. He said he had no idea what alternative for change would be best, being convinced everything that could be done has been tried at one time or another, such as higher or lower taxes, voting for different politicians, more government regulation, civil wars, world wars, regime changes, monarchies, republics, democracy, socialism, communism, fascist dictatorships, religious revivals, and what have you. He said he recommended hoping for a better day and the accidental or inevitable evolution of new and better economic, political, and social systems through synergistic learning, similar to what is recommended in the article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” posted in a page on the Effective Learning Report masthead at the top of this page labeled Spaceship Earth, Inc.
The participants then discussed on a free-flow basis the ramifications of the Spaceship Earth, Inc. article, which would more or less entail turning the Earthian economic system over to Artificial Intelligence programming and supercomputers. The discussion touched on authoritarianism and democracy and their relations to mathematics. Mathematics is inherently authoritarian, being provably-true based on deductive logic, almost the antithesis of democracy which is based on inductive logic and analogical reasoning, at best producing non-provably-true consensual answers that are generally satisfactory for most humans in groups, organizations, and systems. Regarding which is best, computers or democracy, consider what you would rather have landing an airliner you are riding on that is flying at night at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, the plane’s computer system or the pilot and co-pilot who are looking out their windows?
The discussion at one point considered whether more and better teaching of mathematics might help solve the Earthian economic and political problem, since it would make human Earthians more inclined to lay down their swords and follow the dictates of AI programming and supercomputers regarding how to produce and distribute the necessities of life for all human Earthians. How to improve the teaching of mathematics was discussed. C suggested one reason why many humans do not do well in mathematics is because of the way math is often taught, with math teachers “preaching math instead of teaching math.” According to B there is nothing worse than a NIGYSOB-playing math teacher, NIGYSOB (Now I’ve Got You, You SOB) being a psychological Game inherently insecure and angry human Earthians play to get “one up”, looking for chances to catch people making mistakes and doing misdeeds, attempting to prove they are superior. While it would be nice if more humans learned not to play NIGYSOB in families, groups, organizations, and systems, it is essential that NIGYSOB players do not take control of nations through democratic elections.
C suggested more people do not attend the Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour because of perceived incompetency and lack of psychological permission to attend, being concerned that participation in the forum would somehow lessen their security and positions in other groups, which if so is a shame since a major purpose of the Ogeechee Economic Forum is to foster feelings of social and psychological equality, an I’m OK—You’re OK life position.
End of minutes of the September 21, 2019 Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
by Richard John Stapleton
The Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour as usual will be open for discussion this coming third Saturday of the month, September 21, 10-11 a.m.
This Saturday however we will meet at the Eagle Creek Brewing Company.
Franklin Dismuke, entrepreneur, owner, and CEO of Eagle Creek Brewing Company, a graduate of the Georgia Southern Parker College of Business, agreed to make his pub space available to us free of charge from 10-11 Saturday morning.
Invite your friends who are also invited and drop by Eagle Creek Brewing Company at 106 Savannah Avenue in Statesboro at ten a.m. this coming Saturday, September 21, for fifty minutes of stimulating economic and political discussion. We’ll have more room and better parking than we had at my office. We’ll stop the discussion by 10:50 to straighten up the tables and chairs so the Eagle Creek Brewing Company pub can open for their normal business hours at 11:00.
No food or drinks will be available during the forum hour, 10-11. Bring your own cup of coffee if you want one for the forum. You can buy whatever you might want off the Eagle Creek menu at eleven o’clock.
The main purpose of the Ogeechee Economic Forum is to provide an equal opportunity for responsible citizens to test their economic and political ideas in a public group about what to do about economic and political problems. If you don’t know a good answer for a problem maybe someone else in the group will. Hopefully the process will make us all better citizens.
The process features a Classroom De-Gamer™ with group members sitting in a circle. A spinner attached to the De-Gamer will select the leader who will create the agenda by answering three questions, whatever pops into mind, about what s/he thinks is the most significant economic and political problem right now.
What is the problem?
What are the alternatives?
What do you recommend?
Rarely will the De-Gamer select a leader who knows right answers for general economic and political problems, since there are no “right” answers for real economic and political problems, or at least there are no provably-true right answers.
Once something is codified in a rule or law it is true that the rule or law entails such and such, and if one knows what is in the rule or law then s/he knows a “right” answer; but it’s difficult to prove that it was “right” that the rule or law should have been codified in the first place, or as it was. It’s even more difficult to prove, even with hindsight, that economic and political decisions were “right”.
Anyone can respond to what the De-Gamer-selected leader said with what s/he thinks are better answers, on a first-come first-serve basis, after the De-Gamer-selected leader stops talking.
One spin of the De-Gamer most of the time generates about one hour of back and forth discussion about numerous related problems. If the discussion runs out of steam before the hour is up we can spin the De-Gamer again, or quit for the day.
The purpose of the discussion is to learn and educate, not to indoctrinate, by co-constructing answers. About the best you can hope for in most groups, organizations, and systems is to co-construct consensual answers that are good enough to satisfy most people affected by them. Or at least it seems to me this proposition is generally “right”.
The Ogeechee Economic Forum is non-partisan.
The “Spinner” makes sure all participants (including me the moderator) have an equal shot at being the Leader of the Hour. If the spinner points me out I will present and answer the three questions just like any other participant would. Once the De-Gamer-selected leader breaks the ice it’s free flow from then on. Anyone can become the leader of the moment by diving in the discussion first. There’s no holding up of hands to get permission to talk to the whole group. No one can be interrupted once s/he starts talking to the whole group, assuming s/he does not talk too long. If someone talks too long I will clang my cowbell to give someone else a chance. There are no side conversations. All talking must be to the whole group. Anyone can get up and leave at any time if s/he has any sort of personal problem.
A major purpose of the group is to create democracy, not autocracy.
Another purpose is to learn how to avoid playing psychological Games such as BALANCE SHEET, AIN’T IT AWFUL, GREENHOUSE, MINE’S BETTER, NIGYSOB, KICK ME, POOR ME, IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, LET’S YOU AND THEM FIGHT, DO ME SOMETHING, and I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU.
A major purpose is to learn how to create win-win economic and political outcomes rather than win-lose outcomes.
For more information about the De-Gaming process and facts and evidence it works go here:
Lastly, another purpose of the forum is to learn how to have fun while coping with serious problems.
Believe it or not, in most sessions this Game-free process generates a full hour of interesting, stimulating, informative, and satisfying experience for all participants, and the time passes quickly.
After the forum hour’s over Saturday I recommend recognizing the contributions of Coach Erk Russell, who named a drainage ditch running through Statesboro, that bordered his football practice field, Eagle Creek, who won three national championships during his tenure at Georgia Southern University, who stopped by my office one day and told me he appreciated what I was teaching some of his football players.
Coach Russell’s spirit is still with us and the Eagles almost beat Minnesota last Saturday, in one helluva football game.
In the interests of full disclosure, I always wanted to be the quarterback of the team, as I documented at
According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in 1954 I was probably the youngest and smallest Class A high school starting quarterback in the US.
I think I could do a better job quarterbacking the US than Donald Trump, if only a great football coach, such as Joe Moring, my high school coach in 1954, or Erk Russell in 1985, or some sort of national presidential De-Gamer, could send me in the game and put Trump on the bench.
It also seems to me most reasonably bright US adult citizens with decent educations could do a better job quarterbacking the US than Trump. I read yesterday that his approval rating is now thirty-eight percent.
Come to the Ogeechee Economic Forum Hour this Saturday to participate in some Saturday Morning armchair economic and political quarterbacking. Armchair quarterbacking about the economy and politics is more relevant and satisfying than armchair quarterbacking about football games. There’ll be plenty of time to watch and talk about football over the rest of the weekend.
Please share this invitation with your friends who are also invited.
It is said
that maybe Iran was behind a recent attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.
The Iranian
Government denies that any attack was launched from Iranian territory.
Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack; other accusations have been made, inclusive of, but not limited to, a possible launch from Iraqi territory without any complicity from the Government of Iraq.
In an
adumbrated way, that is the essence of the problem; yet, there has not been, so
far, any historical context placed on the issue.
Saudi Arabia
has indeed been the source of much bombing and killing in Yemen in a war
killing many Yemeni civilians now with loss of life estimated to be in the
region of seventy thousand people. No doubt, from a Houthi perspective there would
be much motive, willingness and perceived justifiable cause to attack Saudi
Arabia. However, the US has primarily shone the spotlight on Iran – so let’s
start there.
Historical and legal facts
Between 1917
and 1919 Iran suffered a great famine claiming some eighth to ten million
lives. How did it happen? Simply stated, there was a British presence in Persia
(subsequently changing the country’s name to Iran in 1935) and a commandeering
of food from Persia for the feeding of British troops during World War 1.
Britain invaded Persia in 1916 and thereafter confiscated the country’s
harvests, one reason Iranians, to this day, look suspiciously at Britain in
particular and the West in general.
In 1953 Iran had a freely and fairly elected democratic leader in the personage of Mohammad Mosaddegh. The CIA overthrew Mosaddegh in a CIA staged coup in 1953 ( the first of its kind post World War 11 with many to follow thereafter for the installation of leaders supportive of US policies). The issue concerned the nationalisation of Iranian oil interests ( i.e. with compensation to be paid) as was tested and upheld as lawful under international law by the then World Court. However, yet again, Anglo-American interests saw it fit to impose their will on Iran. By reference to the 1953 coup one can trace and note the seeds for the 1979 Iranian revolution having been sown by way of the installation of a leader who was more supported by the West than being credible with his own people.
The US also
backed the Iraqi war against Iran of 1980-1988.
There is a
resolution in the Untied Nations numbered UN Resolution 2231. By way of Article
25 of the UN Charter and as lucidly as can be stated:-
“Article 25.
“The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions
of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”
There was an
extensive process of negotiations with a number of powerful Western countries,
inclusive of the US, and also Russia and China and Iran agreed to comply with
terms under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA). The UN Security
Council unanimously had approved that plan. That Resolution 2231 ended other
Resolutions on other Iranian nuclear issues and became binding upon Iran, as
duly and legally agreed under international law per UN Charter Article 25. The
International Atomic Agency as well as the EU was involved in monitoring the
agreement. Up to the point of a unilateral withdrawal from the JCOPA, under the
Trump Presidency, Iran had been found to be in compliance. Since there is an
extant UN Resolution in place that had not been violated by Iran, then the
unilateral withdrawal by the US quite clearly is in violation of international
law. So, as of 2018 President Trump unilaterally pronounced:-
In his
January 2018 speech on the JCPOA.
President Trump said, “the United States will not again waive sanctions
in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal.” and he went on and said “will
withdraw from the deal immediately” unless the JCPOA is renegotiated.
By contrast
to the US withdrawal, it is quite evident and logical that if Iran had violated
the terms of the JCPOA, then the international community would logically have
concluded that UN Resolution 2231 had been breached. Thus, unilateral action by
the US ought not to be judged by the same standards of International Law, by
which Iran is judged?
Yet,
legalities for some who think it prudent to abide by the Rule of Law both
domestically and internationally is one level of rationality; US foreign
policy, however, works on another level of power. There are specific procedures
within the UN system intended to apply to all nations and thus such nations are
governed by the rules for any withdrawal
from international agreements falling within the purview of the UN. Yes –
“apply to all nations” – but, in this as in other acts of international
unilateralism and/or aggression – not to the US.
Let us stop
there and think for a moment.
Breaches and non-compliance
Was there
any material breach of the JCPOA by Iran?
Which
country complied with the JCPOA?
Which
country unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA?
Which
country has shown disregard for UN Resolution 2231 and the procedures
applicable thereto?
Conclusion
Four simple
questions; four easy answers.
So who
is/was lawful; and – which country is a law unto itself?
The
questions, it appear, shall be answered primarily in the arena of realpolitik
more so than in a civilized dispute resolution, Tribunal, Court or International
agency. Sad, but true. However, do consider that Iran is not Iraq and Iran is
definitely not the Iran of 1953.
That is the
lawless world in which we live!
________________________________________
* COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His
areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has
been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending
his views, has been subjected to death threats, and has argued public interest
and human rights cases. He lives and works in the Caribbean
