Politics will Never Hold the Answer

Success in achieving long-range and/or far-reaching goals requires healthy, dynamic organizations organized around a purpose that leads towards the goal. The active ingredient of this group dynamism is self-determination on the part of the group members— competently applied within the framework of policy of the group. There is a need for enough competency on the part of each participating individual (and the self-determination to drive it) to be able to meet the minimum requirements or standards for the job he is assigned and of the position to which he is posted. Many times this is not hard to come by.

A leader, whether a political leader or otherwise, can only bring his/her own self-determination to bear on the group purpose and goal. He can try to inspire others to apply their self-determination along the same lines, and may have some success in doing so, but the only thing he has under his own certain control is his own self-determination. In a large, healthy group that operates above the personal level in the “What Band” rather than the “Who Band”, the self-determination of the leader amounts to only a small fraction of the total amount of self-determination competently applied by all members of the group (or country). When this is understood it can be seen that by far the greatest amount of drive that results in progress along the group purpose line comes from the application of self-determination by the many within the framework of group policy, rather than by a particular personality, no matter how prominent.

The argument so far assumes that the leader is knowledgeable about groups and group health, and is relatively deaberrated in the area of groups. Unfortunately this is often not the case, especially in the field of politics. Most political campaigns are geared towards name and face recognition, along with large doses of “up close and personal” as the top priority. Any treatment of issues comes in second to all of this “Who-ness”. Putting the “Who” before the “What” is like putting the cart before the horse, only worse. The “Who” (or social) band of group activity occupies the bottom level of group causation. To be effective a group (or country) must rise above this into the “What” band. There is usually plenty of room for improvement in the “What” band for most groups and all countries. Any emphasis on “Who-ness” will act as a tether to keep a group from rising above a given level of causation, even if it gets somewhere into the “What Band”. A commitment to continuous improvement in group causation requires the cutting or loosing of all tethering to the “Who” band—letting all such “Who” concerns remain in the social band without impingement into the “What” band.

Most politicians in the United States today 1) do not know what a group is, let alone a country 2) are aiming at shallow-depth sound-bytes that are intended primarily to provoke a non-analytical response in the “Who Band” from the voter. Any actual “What” issues are relegated to the rear.

Politics promotes the idea of Democrat vs. Republican, conservatism vs. liberal. The Democrats rail against any Republicans who have won or who might win an office, and visa versa. Really I think the Republicans would do less damage in office (though you might make a case that W. was an exception to this rule). All elections represent for me is a chance to vote for the one who would do less damage to the country. I don’t expect either to go far, if at all, in the pro-life direction, but I do want to avoid the one who will go further in the wrong direction.

Talk radio and the media in general promote the idea of conservatism vs. liberalism as a fundamental and lasting choice in life. This does not make a lot of sense to me. I go back to the pro-life purpose line. The senior idea is to make as much progress in this direction as is possible with a given amount of time and resources. With this in mind it can be seen that in some cases liberalism will go further, and other times (probably most times in this civilization) conservatism has the bigger payoff.

Liberalism has the better payoff when the environment is so peaceful, rich and nurturing that a seed thrown anywhere has a high chance for successful growth and fruition. In this scenario the “bottleneck” that determines the amount of pro-life progress is just the amount of seed that can get thrown out in a given time period. A classical example of this scenario is the Golden Age of Greece. Conservatives of today in the United States might want to take a breath and realize that the inspiration for our democracy was a liberal one— democracy was an extremely liberal idea in 450 B.C. Greece.

Unfortunately, the scenarios when Conservatism is the better choice are far more plentiful in our civilization. In these cases the greatest progress along the pro-life purpose line requires preparation of the soil, careful placement of the seed, followed by irrigation, fertilization, and defense and cultivation of the resulting sprouts.

It is far more common to have small pockets in time and space where liberalism flourishes rather than have it as the best choice of wide areas or long periods of time. War is a bad time for liberalism. When the enemy is at the gate it is time to take careful stock of your resources and make sure effective use is made of them. It is interesting that pockets of liberalism seem to show up at the end of a war. This is true even for the vanquished if the victor is willing to allow them to rebuild. In this case the vanquished have much to do to get things back in order and there is a pervasive will to get it done. This tends to pull the scene towards the end of the scale that allows for seeds to take root easily and grow with seemingly less care requirement than usual. Actually, I think the care requirement is still there, but there is more care available to be supplied from those in the area who all feel strongly about rebuilding.

Rebuilding after a war is also a time where an enthusiastic personality that is not taken aback by or does not go into agreement with the misery and devastation about him can come to the forefront. These types are usually seen as liberal since they want to take bigger, quicker steps in rebuilding than others would if left on their own.

More often liberalism is generally not the best choice for making progress in the pro-life direction. Local exceptions to this are if liberal-minded people decide to concentrate themselves in a given area. In those cases liberalism can be the better choice for that local area, but only if the will of the people involved is enough to overcome and surpass the different results that would be had with a more conservative approach. I would call this artificial liberalism. It only is viable or approaches viability through support of the liberal-minded. If the concentration of liberal-minded people is not high enough, or they do not feel strongly enough to increase their participation, then it can still not be viable even in the local area.

The mass media of the USA is pushing the idea of liberalism and conservatism as two fixed poles of polarization. Talk radio is full of liberals and conservatives yammering back and forth at each other. This is not very productive, or not as productive as it could be. From an analytical perspective it is pretty obvious that a conservative approach will be required to get the USA out of the hole of national debt and deficit spending we have gotten ourselves into. It is so obvious a choice that the main requirement to go in this direction is just to educate John Q. Public enough so that he can operate and evaluate for himself analytically. The conservatives could make better progress in this by taking the high road of just educating others in some basic philosophical knowledge of what groups are, how they can be built up and maintained, and how they can be used as servo-mechanisms for the will of the individual to effect improvements with minimal reference to the noisy sideshow of politics. Clean people will stop complaining and take action to improve a situation when the possibility to do so is present. Dirty people will just keep complaining and yammering away, taking little or no effective action.

Politics is not the answer. There is a lot of yammering going on there by people whose priorities are to be elected or re-elected, most of which do not have much of a clue about what sane groups are. Vote for the one who will do the least damage, but count on making real progress on your own initiative.

The Character of a Group

A group exists as an optimal configuration of resources to maximize progress along a particular purpose to achieve a particular goal. Of course, it has a name too, but the name is only a label or identifier. The actual character and form of the group is determined by the group goal, purpose, and the set of policies that allow the purpose to be forwarded.

It is interesting to note that the policies that define the form of the group are the actual agreements between members that are acted from. In an aberrated group these may have little or nothing to do with written or formal policy, and there may be a lot of informal “localized policy” that is followed by some part or parts of the group, and which may be unknown to other parts of the group. Such “localized policy” results in the individuation of parts of the group. The individuated parts become less in touch with or involved with the overall group purpose and more into their own separate “thing”. This is symptomatic of dirtiness in the area. There will be found some sort of unethical or criminal activity happening in these individuated areas that undermines or cuts across the group purpose.

What happens if the goal, purpose or policies of the group change, either formally or through an accumulation of dirtiness as described above, but the group name does not? Is it still the same group? Should it still demand the same loyalties as before?

If the change was a reconfiguration of resources to follow the same purpose to achieve the original goal, then yes, it is still the same group. If the purpose, or even the goal, has been effectively changed, then it has become a different group, and should not expect to hold the same loyalties that were applied to the original purpose and goal. This can be a little confusing if the group retains the same name. It can get a lot confusing if the “change” of purpose/goal is the result of an accumulated amount of group dirtiness rather than a formal change.

Study Principles

There are several barriers to successful study. Two are often taken for granted, but should be given some consideration at the beginning of any course of study. They are false data and skipped prerequisites. Is it a valid subject that is to be studied? Is a valid text on this subject available to the student?
Have all prerequisite courses been taken? Are there any lower level subjects that the student is presumed to understand in order to continue with this subject?
In order to be successful in a study the student must have a self-determined desire to understand and apply the subject. There must first be a desire or intention there to get into communication with and make a mental duplication of the theory, facts and objects of the subject. This starts with an intention to get, receive, and have his own mental “copy” of the material . There is an agreement with self to understand what was actually communicated by the author or the lecturer. The communicated media is written or spoken language. Language is composed of words governed by the language grammar. Words are composed of etymons— the smallest phonetic units that carry at least a bit of meaning of their own.
When a student, in reading a text or listening to a lecture, comes to a word that he does not understand, at least not in the given context, he must clear up for himself the meaning of the word in order to stay true to his own self agreement to understand what was communicated. If he continues on without clearing up the meaning of the not understood or misunderstood word then he has violated this agreement with self to make his own copy of the studied material. At some level the student knows this is wrong. How deep or shallow this level is depends on how honest the student is being with himself. He is in violation of his own self-agreement, which may be rather strong. The physical manifestation of continuing beyond a word that was not understood is a yawning or a desire to yawn. There is also a mental “blanking out” or inability to duplicate that begins right there at the not understood or misunderstood word. The desire to yawn will disappear, and the “blanked out” area immediately following it will reappear if the meaning of the word is clarified using a dictionary. Do not overlook the idea that clarification of the meaning of a word using a dictionary may also require the clarification of any other not understood or misunderstood word(s) encountered in the dictionary definition. So another barrier to successful study is the word that is not understood or misunderstood. It can be overcome by a student who is honest with himself.
The key part of this is self-honesty. It is really very simple. If the student clears up the meaning of the word he will be able to successfully and comfortable continue with his study and the door will remain open to successful application. If he does not clear it up he will have diverted himself off his purpose of making a duplicate of the study material and will be less successful in his study. He will feel less comfortable in continuing to study, and less able to face up to continuing it. His ability to apply the data that he has studied will be compromised, possibly severely.
The last barrier to study is a lack of the physical presence of the object or objects under study. A common manifestation of this is when the student is attempting to remedy this by holding or rubbing his head with his hands, or fiddling with or playing with some object. A better remedy, for the purpose of study, is through the use of photographs, diagrams, pictures or models of the object(s). The student can also create his own diagrams with pencil and paper or model using clay. Small objects can also be used by the student as representations of the real objects so that he can then show himself how these objects would interact with each other according with the theory under study. These last few actions listed of creation and demonstration are also a good cross-check to verify that the student is able to apply the knowledge studied so far. If he is not able to apply competently and comfortably then his study has gone astray somehow. A review of the study should then be done to see at what point this occurred, and any needed corrections should be made.
During the course of study the student should frequently refer to his own desire to apply what he is studying. Once he has made a duplication of a part of the study material he should then apply his own volition to it. All data are not of equal value—some are more basic than others. It is a good exercise to periodically make an alignment of the data studied into a hierarchy of most fundamental to most specific data. He should also make a point of bringing the new data into application. How could he apply it? How useful is it? Can he diagram it or “show” himself in some way how it would be used?
The barriers to study, then, are false data, skipped prerequisite, misunderstood or nonunderstood words, and lack of physical presence of the object under study. Each can be avoided or remedied. Be honest with yourself for best results.

A Trick of Group or Team Awareness

A large part of the reason that knowledge and understanding of groups and group dynamics is not so easy to come by or to communicate about is that a component of the universe we live in is a scale or set of steps of different levels of analytical awareness of components of groups. The steps are always traveled in sequence. At each step the individual will be aware of, and so able to deal with and communicate about the group component or quality pertaining to that step and the group components of all steps below his current level. The awareness is an analytical awareness rather than a spiritual awareness. A person in a good spiritual state may not necessarily be high on this scale. The analytical awareness is a self-determined recognition of specific items within the individual’s team environment as belonging to a general category in the list below.

The trick is that he will NOT be aware of, and so UNABLE to deal well with or communicate well with any of the group components that relate to any of the specific scale steps ABOVE his current level of awareness. A partial exception to this is that if a person is really applying himself in a group context he will begin to be aware of the group component of the next higher step. If he continues along this line he will at some point fully gain the awareness of the next scale step component. This process can be made easier if the individual acquaints himself with the scale, determines at which point he is located, then informs himself what the next step is. He can then bring his focus to bear more fully or directly on the group component “in the offing” as he participates successfully in a team or group activity.

I first came across this scale listed in a writing by Ron Hubbard. It is such a useful philosophical tool, and such a part of the fabric of the universe we are all living together in that I hate to see it tucked away in an out-of-the-mainstream publication where few will ever see it and fewer still apply it. I hope you will see through your own application of it that it is more than just one person’s subjective ideas, that it can be independently observed, and so should be made available for all to freely use and communicate about. It is a terrific philosophical tool for use in de-aberration and improvement of the group or team member.

A Terminal, as used here, is just an ending point or terminus for a Line. A Terminal can be a machine, a piece of equipment like a telephone or computer, or a person occupying a post with the viewpoint of a hat for a particular job.

A Line is an established route or path for particles to flow along.

By Particle is meant any unit object that gets moved, relayed, transferred, changed, modified or communicated within an organization.

So an organization is a set of Terminals with Lines laid out between them for Particles to flow along. Hopefully the organization Terminals are of a high enough quality, quantity and competency and with proper Lines arranged between them to allow a viable flow of Particles that can be changed, modified, combined or separated to form a viable flow of Products (another type of Particle) that can then be exchanged with the environment for support and tolerance.

Here is the list of steps listed from top to bottom:

• PROPERLY CONFIGURED TERMINALS
  Operating to handle particle flows and correctly change particles
• GROUPED TERMINALS
• LINES
• PARTICLES
• SIGNIFICANCES
• FALSE TERMINALS
• MISDIRECTED LINES
• WRONG PARTICLES
• FALSE SIGNIFICANCES
• MYSTERIOUS TERMINALS
• CHAOTIC LINES
• MENACING PARTICLES
• DANGEROUS IMPRESSIONS
• NONEXISTENT TERMINALS
• NONEXISTENT LINES
• NONEXISTENT PARTICLES
• UNCONSCIOUS IMPULSES
• NO ORDER AT ALL = CHAOS

Notice that there is a repeated pattern on the way upward: some kind of Significance, then a kind of Particle, then a type of Line, and finally a type of Terminal.

Everyone is at some point on this scale of steps. In order to effectively communicate to a particular person you will have to talk about group components that are at or below his level. I hope this helps in coaching or communicating about teams or groups.

Advice to Those Considering Going to War

It is good to successfully defend yourself, your family, your country, though it is often avoidable and usually regrettable that it is necessary. A person who successfully defends from an analytical viewpoint will, when recalling the experience at a later time be thankful or glad at the continuance of the pro-life activity or purpose, and will not regret the required vanquishing of others, but will not take joy in it either. So, when considering whether to participate in an alleged defensive activity it is recommended to:

1) Educate yourself thoroughly in the pro-life purpose that you would be defending.

• Will you be defending your country? If so, then make sure you understand what any country is, what your country is, what makes it weaker, what makes it stronger. A country is a large group composed of groups of groups, which are composed of smaller groups of groups. For a country to be strong the groups should be strong. For a group to be strong it must have a coherent set of policy that allows a purpose to be forwarded to reach a goal for which the group members have a self-determined desire to reach. This set of policy should be known, agreed on and acted from. This is a different thing from a social group, which is a lower and weaker form of group, and which may have little or no formal structure. Please make sure you understand the difference.
• Has the country been stronger at any point in the past? If so, when and why?

2) Verify that a defense is necessary and from who and for what reason

• Have you been personally threatened?

• Do you know anyone who has been personally threatened?

• Have there been reports of fellow citizens being attacked? If so, take an independent look at the evidence. Does it all make sense to you? Does it all add up? Are there any doubts or conflicting reports? Do not accept the conclusions of others. Make up your own mind regarding it on the basis of factual evidence rather than opinion. It is your life and your decision. Unlike other generations, Uncle Sam is not drafting—he is only taking volunteers. Keep in mind that the determination of right and wrong in the larger sphere depends on alignment or misalignment with the pro-life purpose line. This is what it is, not what you may wish it to be.
• Have there been reports of returning soldiers killing your fellow citizens? If so, are these isolated instances, or do they outnumber the count of those killed by the alleged enemy?

3) Observe the effects of participation in this defense on the lives of others.

• Defense of a pro-life purpose is good life experience. Are returning veterans more alive, more “with it”, or are they dispirited and more “out of it”? Of course, this will vary from veteran to veteran, so try to take the average case.

• Contributing to something in a positive way makes it easier to face up to it in the future. Are returning veterans more able to face up to and participate in American life, or are they less able to do so?

4) If, as Americans, we feel so strongly about democracy that we are willing to send our young men and women half-way around the world to fight and die for it, and ask other countries to join us in doing so, then why do we not feel strongly enough about it to educate them in the public school system about the Golden Age of Greece in which the first democracy was born and which was the common inspiration of the founding fathers of the American Revolution? It would not be a new thing to do so. This was a regular part of the school curriculum for much of our history, and still is in some parts of the country. If you have not studied it, please take the time to do so before you may be required to aim at another human being and pull the trigger in a cause you do not fully understand.

5) If there is no immediate threat, consider whether you may be able to help your country more by taking action in the “offensive” front rather than the “defensive” front, by helping to make progress in the pro-life direction— farther away from the Dark Ages towards higher levels of group causation. This is progress in a direction that an enemy would not want to see made, but there is more of a requirement for analytical thought, teamwork, ability to align data successfully and to think and act for yourself rather than always following a path determined by others. War is an activity where there are many opportunities to become spiritually “dirtier”, but cleanliness is required to make progress in the direction of higher levels of group causation. You can teach a “dirty” person to aim a gun and pull the trigger, but you will have much more trouble getting that same person to operate on a self-determined basis within a framework of policy in a group with a high level of causation. If you decide to try this “offensive” front, consider that you may also be able to have influence beyond what you can accomplish yourself . You may be able to influence others by promoting a paradigm or paradigms for group participation that go above and beyond what has been common until now. Ideally every generation should build on the success of previous generations and reach farther and stabilize their gains so that the following generations may start from a higher point. An enemy would want to see us pulled back to the Dark Ages and re-enslaved. We don’t have to go there again, but we need to progress on the “offensive” front as well as successfully defending ourselves from real threats.