The Beginning of Slavery-- a Devolution of Aberration

Please try to imagine for yourself a large picture, as complete as possible of the ideal scene of group creation, participation, growth and maintenance in a time probably long ago and possibly in a different place altogether. In fact, the time and place is really not an important part of the picture. The idea is to get a clearer picture of what to strive for as the ideal scene.  There would have been elements that we still see today, at least to some degree, but there also would have been other elements that are very rare or missing in today’s world. 

First, there would have been a high degree of literacy and mastery of language, including grammar. Although in the local area one language would most likely predominate, it would be safer if the civilization included several different languages that would act in a similar way to water-tight compartments in a ship. If a social aberration that tended toward “sinking” the civilization developed in one area it would be more difficult for it to spread rapidly throughout the rest of the civilization. Such aberration would be concentrated in the non-analytical or less analytical areas of culture. Those who could speak more than one language, and so were able to pass through a “water-tight door” into another language area, would be on average more analytical, and so less likely to transmit or carry with them such aberration from one area to another. Of course, there could be some “bleed-through” of aberration from one language area to another, but hopefully the rate of spread would be slowed enough to allow the analytical elements of the culture to effectively deal with it. 

 Individuals would have a strong sense for and awareness of self-determination in themselves and others. They would respect and value the competent application of same towards advancement of pro-life purposes and achievement of pro-life goals. They would be motivated by a desire for self-improvement and work towards accumulating good life experience to achieve this.  They would recognize that self-determination was an active ingredient in gaining such worthwhile experience, and that self-improvement was not possible without it. They would not embrace any religion or philosophy that did not support the self-determination of the individual. 

Each person would be able to apply themselves with simple or more advanced tools in carrying out small pieces of work or small projects. They would have a good sense of how to optimize their resources of time, space and material to best carry out such work. They would have developed a good ability to face up to, understand, operate and maintain machines and equipment to carry out larger projects or higher volumes of specialized work. 

Having achieved a good understanding, judgement and “feel” for the application of optimized systems of interconnected parts (machinery or equipment) to the successful carrying out of purposes, it would an easy  step for an individual to integrate himself or herself into larger optimized systems that included other individuals for the achievement of larger and long-range goals beyond what they were capable of themselves. They would value such groups as a large-scale servo-mechanism for their own self-determination which allowed them to achieve their own long-range goals, and so would be quite interested in developing them, correcting them, maintaining their health, growing and operating them.   

Individuals would accumulate skills in developing, modifying or expanding the “DNA” or policy of a group that would contain base DNA common to all groups, with layers of more and more particular DNA laid on top of each other. These skills would also be used in protecting and better controlling their private lives.  

If a person did not want to interact personally with someone, or not include them in their personal life, then he or she would have the analytical skills to develop “on-the-fly” and utilize the impersonal interface of that part of a formal group that would be inclusive of and appropriate to the interaction with that other person. He or she would also be confident that the not-so-well-liked party of the other part would have the analytical skills to recognize and respond appropriately to the desire of the party of the first part to interact on a formal, non-personal basis. This would be the case because the second party would value and respect the self-determination of the first party (and visa versa) to a greater degree than any desire they may have to interact personally, and so would respect the wish to interact impersonally. People would value not only in themselves, but in others, the skills in creating these optimized formal interfaces on-the-fly. Thus it would be possible even for individuals who did not like each other to still have good experience in working together in a formal group to achieve a common self-determined purpose. This would be true even if that formal activity was only temporary-- as in a clerk/customer, teacher/student, or driver/passenger or just a citizen/citizen interaction. Both parties could have confidence that the other’s reservoir of good experience in group participation would allow them to easily stay focused on the common purpose and forward it to a successful conclusion. 

There would be a large pool of individuals who were deaberrated enough in the area of work and groups that they could be counted on to respond towards opportunities to participate in groups that were organized towards achieving one of their own goals, or at least one similar to their own, or just towards a general pro-life goal that allowed for good experience in organization and participation at a high level. A person with a specific goal could form up a set of group DNA (policy) and present it to members of the pool. If it was a good enough purpose, and the group DNA was formed up well enough around it, then he could expect to elicit some self-determined desires to join and participate in this new group. If there were enough positive responses the group could go forward to form up and grow and carry out the purpose—hopefully to a successful end. 

An individual looking to forward his self-determined purpose would not always need to start from scratch. Often an existing group would have a purpose line matching closely enough to his own purpose.  He might then be able to join, participate in and help grow this group as a means to forwarding his original purpose. 

This scene, or at least an approximation of it must actually have occurred at some point in the past. That is because it is the optimal operating basis to allow the most “bang for the buck” in terms of progress made along self-determined purposes for a given amount of effort by the largest number of individuals. So a large number of individuals, all of which were well aware of the game of gaining good experience, and with the intention of growing their own self-determination and respectful of the desire of others to do the same, all working to optimize resources to allow the most success along this line would have formed themselves into just such an optimal configuration. What would have held it together was the awareness of and respect for the self-determined purposes of others more than just those of self, and the desire to allow the opportunity for others to be successful in forwarding those purposes as much as for self. The motivation for this would just be the recognition that this whole scene depended on a large pool of deaberrated group members capable of going into agreement with  and operating on a self-determined basis being available, and that the best way to guarantee such a pool would continue and grow into the future would be to allow each an opportunity for success along these lines, so as to give each a reason to stay in the area and accumulate more good experience. 

Actually this scene may have been only a sub-scene of a wider, less optimal scene, and maybe it did not happen everywhere, but I think it is still a good philosophical tool to help point the way from the current scene we find ourselves in towards an improved civilization. Please take a moment to imagine a civilization operating in this manner before reading on. 

How did this scene devolve into what we see today? One way to look at it is that the average level of group health must have declined for various reasons. The environment could have changed more quickly than the ability of the group to modify its policy framework to accommodate it. The group members may have had less than adequate training on their jobs, which led to mistakes and errors which were withheld or hidden from the rest of the group, which led to poor communication and withdrawal and individuation of the group member or a subsection of a group from the group as a whole, which led to less than complete agreement on the group policy set, which led to fractionation of the group into factions, which led to worsening production, etc. The pool of available group members shrank so that fewer and fewer new groups would be able to be manned up. 

Finally a point was reached where  someone who had developed a set of group DNA (a policy set) for their own particular purpose was selfish enough to adopt the attitude of “I want my purpose forwarded and I don’t care about your self-determination and your purposes”,  and solved his problem of not having enough self-determined response to participate in his group by forcing participation on those unwilling, or not willing enough. Thus slavery came into being. It is a not facing up to or non-confront of the pro-life way to organize and participate in groups. It is a lazy, selfish solution that sells out the future of the overall scene for what seems to be a temporary gain in the ability to forward the slaver’s selfish purposes in the present. 

Slavery institutionalizes a lack of regard for and a closing of the door on the forwarding of the self-determined purposes of others. This was a vital motivation that held the ideal scene together, so progress towards it is effectively barred.  

A slaver does not want to face up to this truth, or he would not be able to stand himself for very long, so he tells himself some lies. One of the main lies he uses is the false notion that position or case state is a mandate to arbitrary rule. Arbitrariness does away with agreement on group DNA or policy sets.  An arbitrary is the antithesis of policy, so this degrades group health further. Institutionalizing arbitrary rule on a large or small scale acts as a further barrier to progress. The slaver is continually committing the crime of barring the way, or at least making it more difficult to forward the pro-life purpose of approaching and operating in the ideal scene of civilization in his environment. This contra-life activity is enough to bar his own success in the game of recovery of self. To “win” he must now drop into a lower game of materialism and lie to himself about the existence of the higher game in which he has failed. He becomes less and less able to face up to not only the ideal scene of group health and anything that approaches it, but even anything that seems to be going in that direction.  Since a high ability to align data is required to put together group DNA or hierarchies of policy that forward a group purpose, or even to understand and operate an existing set of policy, this cutting across or thwarting progress towards higher levels of group causation results in a degradation of analytical abilities to align data in those responsible. The slaver becomes very dirty in the area of group causation, group health, group dynamics. He loses his abilities to face up to and deal with systems of policy, and to a lesser degree, any other kind of system. He now must reach for something simple enough that he can still understand that he can use as a substitute for a healthy group. The most common substitute is a personality-based hierarchy.  It doesn’t require much in the way of analytical abilities to apply. In fact, you could call it an analytical cop-out. To operate in such a hierarchy you just have to keep in mind 1) “Who is my boss?” 2) “Who do I supervise?” This is in common use by organized religion, organized crime and other areas of high levels of dirtiness in the area of groups.

Math for Philosophy

There are a few mathematical concepts that can be quite useful in evaluating life situations or options, yet are simple to explain and can be applied without any number crunching or Math classes. Usually approximate answers will do. The usual use for philosophical math is to compare the answer for a given scenario against the answer for an alternative scenario to see which is the better choice. If the two answers are far enough apart to give a clear answer after accounting for margins of error, then it is obvious which is the better option.

First, a vector is simply something with magnitude and direction. It is usually symbolized by a line with an arrowhead at one end. The longer the line, the greater the magnitude. This idea of a vector is useful because it can represent a purpose.

Purposes also have magnitude and direction. Usually the direction is taken with reference to the pro-life purpose. (See earlier blogs for how to find the pro-life direction). The magnitude would be the strength of the purpose, which is a function of how strongly the individual feels about it or supports it. The direction, of course, would show how far off or how close to the pro-life purpose (or another purpose used as a reference) the given purpose is.

Use a diagram (which can often be “drawn up” mentally) to get an idea of how valuable a given purpose is. The value is determined by how long of a “shadow” the given purpose vector would project onto the reference purpose vector (which would usually be the pro-life purpose vector). The projection is done by drawing lines from the ends of the purpose vector to be projected to the reference purpose vector in a direction perpendicular to the reference vector. The longer the shadow, the more valuable the given purpose being evaluated. Remember to take into account the direction-indicating arrowhead of the shadow. If it points in the same direction as the pro-life purpose vector all is well and good. If it is pointing in the opposite direction to the pro-life purpose vector then you have gotten ahold of a bad one. The length of the projected shadow will determine how bad or good it is. For those of you interested in tying this in with more formal mathematics, the concept just described is called the “dot product” or “inside product” of two vectors.

Note that vectors are like butterflies— they are free! You can move them anywhere you like as long as you retain the direction and magnitude. This leaves you free to place them near one another in making specific comparisons.

The next concept of philosophical math is called “area under the curve”. It is another way to compare two or more alternatives to see which is best.
First I need to define pleasure as movement or advancement in the direction of the pro-life purpose. Now, make a graph of pleasure versus time, with the amount of pleasure shown as the distance in the direction of the Y-axis or vertical axis, and the amount of time shown in the direction of the X-axis or horizontal, and to the right from the starting point. The total amount of pleasure, then, is the area beneath the “pleasure curve”, to the right of the starting point in time, to the left of the ending point in time, and above the X-axis or “zero pleasure “ line. You can usually approximate the areas under two curves well enough to compare them-- but if not ask a calculus student to show you how, because finding the area under the curve is an important area of calculus called “integration”. You don’t really need to know calculus. You could always write a computer program (or use pencil and paper) to approximate the answer by breaking up the area into little rectangles having lengths equal to the height of the curve at a given point and small widths. How small? That is up to you. The smaller the widths, the closer the approximation, but the longer it will take to calculate. You just find the area of each of the small rectangles, which of course is just length times width, and add them all up. In most cases, though, an absolute value for the area is not needed. It is enough just to know which of two or more options has the greater area under the curve, and that can often be readily seen without resorting to any kind of calculation.

Working Below the Radar: Make Yourself a More Valuable Employee, or Prospective New Hire

Note: The following is meant to refer to “add-on” level software that may be created with compiled languages such as C#.NET or VB.NET. It is not meant to refer to the creation of applications with integrated, proprietary interpreted languages such as VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), or AutoCAD’s LISP language.

Most of the large “out of the box” software tools used in today’s office work environment have a built-in customization capability. This customization capability allows the tailoring of data flows, processing, reporting, etc. A customizer niche (which is often unoccupied) is created by the facts that:
· Most users of the software do not know how to make use of these capabilities, or may not even be aware they exist.
· The above goes double for levels of management above the software users.
· Users who do not understand how to customize usually also are not aware of what types of customization could possibly be accomplished by others, so are not even at the level of making a “wish list”.
· There is usually no time or money available to train an employee on how to do desired customization.
· There is usually no time or money to hire a professional programmer to address such needs.
· If a professional programmer were hired there would have to be a formal contract developed that would fully list expected functionality and interfaces, and the final software tool would not be capable of being further evolved or revised.

In order to occupy this niche, the occupier will have to find for himself alternative motivation(s). Some possible motivations are:
· An opportunity to be creative. Someone familiar with the existing work practice can imagine or envision software tools that would increase speed and/or quality of work. It is quite satisfying then to create such tools and integrate them into an upgraded work process. Many technical jobs do not allow for as much creativity as an employee would like. Here is an opportunity to add that desired creativity as an avocation.
· Increased quality and quantity and even standardization of production, which increases the morale of the software tool user (which could be the customizer or other employees), while decreasing stress in meeting commitments and dead-lines.
· Some broader use software tools that have a high ratio of utility output to programming time input may be suitable for issuance as freeware or shareware to help to “raise the baseline” of what users of the software in other offices or companies are capable of accomplishing, and so in a small way contributing to an upgrade of production and a resulting upgrade to the economy.
· If any such shareware tools are popular enough, there may be a (usually) small financial return on the programming time invested.
· If any such shareware or freeware tools become popular enough they may serve to motivate the parent software company to incorporate them into new revisions of the parent software.
· Opening new doors by learning programming languages and becoming experienced in their use.
· A long-tenured successful niche programmer may find it desirable to “work himself out of a job”. Possible reasons for this are:
o Most or all of the large-scale customizations are done in the current job, and he would like to have further opportunity to upgrade a new work environment.
o He may want to help lower or remove some of the barriers to hiring a “green” or less-experienced employee by enabling such an employee to continue an existing viable level of production through the use of such software tools. If he has put a lot into upgrading his current position he will probably feel a strong desire to see it be continued into the future at the higher levels of quantity and quality of production he has achieved.
o He may have acquired sufficient experience to work exclusively in software development (doubtful).

If a person decides to become a “niche programmer” here are some guidelines he may find useful:

· He should plan to do most, if not all of the programming as an avocation rather than as part of his vocation. This means devoting enough of his own time to complete the creation of such software tools.
· Prioritize prospective projects according to improvements in the work flow versus time required to effect them.
· Try to get a “payback” of work flow improvements as quickly in the process of development as possible, so that the increased production can then be used to justify further development/debugging of the tool.
· Break down larger projects into smaller “steps”, or levels of functionality that can each be brought into service on their own to increase productivity and also serve as a base for further steps to build upon.
· Use existing tools regularly in the work process to help justify the development of other tools.
· Try to leave “hooks” in software tools that can be tied into or built out from with future tools.
· Try to incorporate consistency in the interfaces and functionality of such tools.
· Do not let other employees use developed tools until:
o They are fully “Beta tested” and are stable (will not crash).
o They have a simple, straight-forward GUI (graphic user interface), incorporating normal Windows functionality (or at least a subset of it), and have a complete compiled Help file that can be accessed from the GUI and gives a description of the functionality, purpose and usage of the software tool, and supplies a FAQ section.
o They meet any other agreed-upon criteria (see below).
· The niche programmer will have to realize that he is his own boss in the process of software development.
o Since he is not being financially compensated for his work he must maintain his independence from hints, directions or orders of others as to what should be developed.
o He should be sensitive to the inputs of other employees in regards to the GUI and functionality, realizing that a large part of the acceptance of a new tool is the affinity another user has for it as a result of
§ Ease of use
§ Low learning curve
§ Significant improvements in desired areas
§ “transparent” invocation or even self-invocation on an event-driven basis
o He should work out an agreement with his supervisor regarding criteria that must be met by his software tools before they can be entered into use by other employees. Such agreement should be made AFTER he has developed at least some software tools for his own use and has made significant use of them, but BEFORE he allows the use of such tools by other employees.
o He should make an effort, with the cooperation of his supervisor and other employees to collate in a central location any tools he has made that qualify according to the agreement mentioned above.
· He should realize that many companies have an employee agreement that stipulates that software developed on the job becomes the property of the company. For this reason (and for the larger reason that such development is usually not even possible at work due to the lack of an Integrated Development Environment for the chosen development language) he should do all development and compilation of larger jobs on his own time (not at work). He should also recognize that the final compiled tools he develops to the point that they can be used by other employees will then become the property of the company (if he has brought them into the office place), but that he retains full control of the source code as long as he has developed and compiled it on his own time and outside of the work place.
· He should write straight-forward, maintainable source code, realizing that at least some of the tools he creates for a particular company could also be modified for use in a possible future job in another company.
· It is recommended that the niche programmer maintain a profile “below the radar” of the IT (Information Technology) group of his company. The reasons for this are:
o The IT group usually likes to maintain the large view. This means pushing for standardization and automation rather than getting pulled into particularization. All forms of customization will be a type of particularization. Keep such off the IT plate.
o The niche programmer should recognize that there are limits to the size and scope of a project that he is capable of developing. These limits may become larger as he gains experience, but they will always exist.
o The niche programmer should always be a “good IT citizen”. This means that he should never need special attention or resources more than any other user, and that he should never jeopardize existing IT resources, such as shared network drives, shared databases, etc.
o Some guidelines to use for being a “good IT citizen” are:
§ Never write programmatically to a file or database on a network or shared drive.
§ If a database is used, make it a small, local, proprietary database. Any requirement for a large, frequently-accessed, or shared database will be a sign that the prospective project is beyond the reach of a niche programmer.
§ Keep programmatic data storage within a standard file-type of the parent software to a minimum (e.g. within AutoCAD drawing files, or Office application files).
§ Limit himself to no more than the development of “add-on” software to parent software packages that can be added by individual users and that operate in the local workspace of the parent software.
§ Do not modify, or even read from the Windows Registry.
§ Do not require that the user would need Administrator privileges on his account to make use of a developed software tool.
§ Do not require an installation program to be run.

All of this takes time and commitment. It is not for everyone, but it can be quite valuable to upgrade some of the lower-level workplace data management activities that take place at the “Indian” level.

Tip to employers:
While it is not legal to require or direct such software tools to be created by an employee on their own time without compensation, there is nothing wrong with regularly assigning tedious, repetitive tasks that are crying to be automated to someone who is capable of creating software tools to automate them and has shown a desire and willingness to do so. ;) Just be careful not to state or imply the need for such automation, or set unrealistic timetables for the completion of such work that could only be met with the use of automation unless you are willing to compensate for the creation of the software tools or allow them to be created in the workplace on company time. Remember, there are lower-level programming languages such as VBA and AutoCAD’s LISP that can be used for on-the-job development of general or ad-hoc solutions for simpler tasks.

Commitment

For those who have made progress into the impersonal zone of group dynamics it is usually easier to commit to a purpose or goal than to commit to an individual or personality. Commitment to a purpose or goal is a reach in the positive or pro-life direction (as long as it is a positive purpose) from the current position regarding the relevant life area.

Committing to a personality is a pull back down-scale to the lower band of group dynamics – the personal or social band. It can feel demoralizing or interiorizing. A better option in many cases—even for only two people—is to set up a framework of policy around a purpose that leads to the desired goal, then have both parties make a self-determined commitment to carry out this purpose rather than commit to each other. People change. They have their ups and downs, their good days and their bad hair days, but the purpose and goal committed to will remain constant. The only variable with regard to these is the degree of commitment. This is usually easier to control and maintain.

P.S. Women may want to take into account that men more commonly have advanced farther into the impersonal band of group causation and so may feel or sense more intensely the demoralization or interiorization described above.

An Alternative View of the Founding and Purpose of Christianity

I hesitate to write this since Christianity as we know it today is so well established moving along in a certain direction, but I have put together a data set from existing facts that makes so much more sense to me of the life and purpose of Christ that it is hard to keep quiet about it.

The story we are told of Christ’s life has always felt to me to be lacking in coherency. Why would He have felt so strongly regarding us, Mankind, as to go through all that he went through, then leave a legacy that has little comprehensibility and thus little value? The legacy I am speaking of is the statement “I am the way.” It makes so little sense that I doubt He even said it. It is just confusing, which is definitely NOT what I would expect to find in a legitimate legacy of a spiritual leader.

Here is the gist of my alternative story of the purpose of His life:

• He was aware of a group that was (and still is) an enemy of mankind. We have an account in the Bible where He is tempted by one of the enemy while he was fasting in the desert when he was told “All this could be yours”.
• He was aware of the enemy plans to disrupt and tear apart the existing Roman civilization and pull Man into a permanent state of ignorance and enslavement which we call today the Dark Ages.
• Because of this He was motivated to give Man tools he could use to defend his civilization and so thwart the plans of the enemy. This was the purpose of His life—to communicate and allow for the propagation of practical philosophical tools that could be used by Man to defend the civilization and prevent it from falling into the Dark Ages and under the influence of the enemy.
• These philosophical tools would have been simple enough so that they could be readily understood and applied by the people of that time. There was no widespread system of education that we have today. Formal education would have been spotty if it existed at all. Most of the education available would have been directed towards practical purposes: how to build a house, how to plant crops, how to cook, how to hunt and fish, how to make clothes, etc. Spending time studying an impractical philosophy would not have been popular.
• Towards the end of his life He had gathered a group of men together—His disciples—that He spent time in teaching these philosophical principles to. He spent several years with these disciples. It sounds like there was a lot more to say to them than “I am the way”.
• The philosophy He promoted was directed at an area of life which was (and is) a weak point of the enemy, but which was something that was well within the capabilities of honest men to handle. He knew Man was capable of learning and applying this philosophy and thus defending his civilization from the efforts of the enemy to undermine and destroy it.
• He trusted his Church to promote and propagate this knowledge that He imparted to his disciples.
• The philosophy dealt with how to form and operate within strong, causative groups—above the personal level. See this blog for more on this. Strong groups add up to a strong civilization. Strong groups are hard to face up to by the enemy, much as fire is hard to face up to by wild animals.
• The Church began this work but was quickly infiltrated by the enemy and perverted from its purpose.
• It failed. Rome did fall. Man did fall into and spend a good while in the Dark Ages of ignorance and enslavement.
• There doesn’t seem to be any record of it, but somehow this philosophical knowledge of group health seemed to have reached St. Patrick in Ireland a few centuries later. St. Patrick was able to communicate his inspiration to his followers well enough, and they to theirs, that western Europe was able to rebuild itself to a large degree over the next couple of centuries. See the book How the Irish Saved Civilization as a reference on this. Unfortunately the Irish made the mistake of turning over the results of their success to the Church in Rome, which was still very much under the influence of the enemy. So an alternative title to this book could be How the Irish Saved Civilization and Then Lost It Again.
• The philosophy of group dynamics is still available today. I have written some of it here, but it is so simple that much of it could be derived by honest men (or women) who direct their attention in this area. It has been well demonstrated that organized religion cannot be trusted to forward this purpose. I suggest that it be forwarded in the area of practical philosophy rather than religion, simply because it affords less cover for the enemy who would pervert it. I recommend a decentralized format of propagation rather than a formal organization for this same reason. The internet is ideal for this.
• The enemy still has the purpose to undermine civilization and pull us down into ignorance and enslavement. He will do so if allowed to.
• The Founder of Christianity would no doubt be pleased to see His followers wising up to the point where they can at last successfully forward His life’s purpose.

Want to Go in a New Direction?

For those thinking things are not right and are looking for a new direction, here is a suggested set of guidelines directed at improving the current scene:

1) Discontinue communication with data sources promoting unethical conduct or criminality, including organized crime:

a. Hollywood

b. Rap music

c. Cults

Rationale: Should be obvious. Organized crime is a non-analytical, non-volitional compulsion to link up in a pyramid-form structure rather than confronting and facing up to participation in groups analytically.

2) Develop the ability to monitor yourself to stay out of the mob mentality or group think. Keep yourself in the analytical band of thought.

3) Reduce the size of the U.S. military. Do what you can to reduce its role to no more than defending our borders.

Rationale:

a) Our economy cannot afford for us to be the world’s policeman.

b) Reduce the chance of a military coup or planned and contrived martial law police state.

c) It is not trustable.

4) Learn how to study well, then study simple, practical knowledge.

5) Face up to the fact that organized religion has had its run and has failed. The Age of Religion should be declared to be over. In its place an Age of Philosophy should begin, but with the recognition that those exist who would pervert it, as organized religion has been perverted. To help to avoid such perversion, any legitimate philosophy should meet these criteria:

a. Should be simple and practical. No transcendental or metaphysical B.S. Should be able to be organized into a fully coherent set of data.

b. Should not ask for or require donations or financial support.

i. Any legitimate philosophy will support a more stable civilization where honest people will be able to have good life experience . The improvements in civilization should be payment enough for the small effort required to promulgate a legitimate, effective, pro-life philosophy.

ii. If it is viable then anyone applying it should be able to earn their own way without requiring financial support.

c. Should be based on increased competency rather than social connections.

d. Should recognize the self-determination of the individual as vital.

e. Should appeal to the reason of the individual rather than relying on subjugation, subordination or forcing in agreements against the will of the individual.

f. Should include mechanisms that protect society from the destructive use of self-determination by incompetent individuals.

g. Should support the resolution of problems or issues through the application of a known set of straightforward, coherent policy rather than arbitrary rule by the few or based on exclusive or hidden policy or laws.

h. Should be able to be studied, understood and applied by an individual independent of any organization or institution.

i. Use a peer-to-peer, consultant or mentoring paradigm rather than a central organization paradigm to ward off perversion.

6) Move civilization in a pro-life direction through education in sound, practical, simple philosophy and the application thereof.

7) Use strong, competent, well-organized groups directed to a specific practical purpose (not religious or philosophical) as a servo-mechanism to extend the reach of the will of the individual toward making improvements in society and civilization.

8) Put reliance on the application of individual competence rather than on God or a Supreme Being. If there is a God, He will be happy to see us making progress in the pro-life direction while protecting our purposes from perversion.

The Value of Team Sports

The average man, despite not being taught much about it through education or religion, has some sense that teamwork is the right direction to go. In today’s world the best opportunity for supporting and emphasizing teamwork is team sports. In the USA, football, and to a lesser extent basketball are the primary team sports that lend themselves best to be learned from through participation, spectating and analysis of the game. In most other countries it is soccer that affords the best opportunity.

Basketball is more variable in its value for promoting teamwork because it can more easily be warped away from the ideal of teamwork in favor of an overweighting centered on a particular star player or players and still be successful. Mostly this is due to the smaller number of players. There are only five players on the court at one time, so it is much more possible for a single player to be a large part of the success of the whole team. In some cases all that is required of the other players on the team is to space themselves widely around the court and just stand there as a potential receiver of a pass from the “star”. These potential passes to an “open”, or undefended player, limit the ability of the defensive team to apply extra attention to the star player and allows him room to work in a given area of the court against a limited part of the defense. At this point the game has dropped away from being a true team sport and has taken on more of the character of an individual contest.

That doesn’t happen in football. There are no plays in football that will be successful when most of the players are standing around watching. The success of football plays requires each, or at least most of the players on the field to successfully carry out their assigned part of a coordinated team action. Such team actions are usually part of an overall strategy designed to make best use of team strengths and/or to exploit perceived weaknesses of the opponent’s defense. A good play is designed to have a lot more value and success than the sum of the individual efforts. That is the value of a group-- to be so configured and arranged as to maximize the betterment of results obtained over the individual group members working on their own in parallel.

The fact that teamwork in basketball can more easily be warped or degraded down towards the level of an individual contest is the minus side of the ledger, but there is a plus side also. There is much more of continuous action in basketball than American football, thus giving the game more “life” and therefore more opportunity for the players and spectators to observe and sense changes in the “flow” of the game (because there will often be more of such changes). The ability to observe these changes, and beyond that to make appropriate changes in response, is a valuable skill that can be carried on into other areas of life. That is because what is being observed or felt are changes in the state of communication or interchange with the environment of the team, or even a sub-unit of a team, and sometimes (most often in basketball) even of an individual player. These states can be called interchange states vis-a-vis the environment, or “interchange states” for short.

There is a scale of such interchange states that applies to any group, sub-group or individual in any activity in any area of life. The interchange states are always traveled up or down in the same order, one after another. The more “life” the group or individual has with respect to interchange with its environment, the more often these interchange states may be expected to change, and so have more value as a subject of study or observation for those who may want to develop a skill in recognizing and responding to changes in them. Team sports have a value in this regard—both through participation and spectating.

So, the states of communication are determined by the amount and quality of exchange of communication and production with the environment of the group, sub-group or individual. These states apply in every aspect of life, so that a single individual can be in different interchange states in the different parts of his life. Within a group, each separate hat that an individual wears will have its own interchange state, and be capable of moving up or down the scale of interchange states.

Some general rules that apply to the scale of interchange states:

1) They are arranged in a scale, with each state being a step or stage in the scale.

2) The higher stages govern higher levels of communication and interchange with the environment than lower stages. The higher stages can be considered to be more viable or “lively”.

3) They must be passed through in sequence, one by one—at least that is true in the upward direction.

4) Each interchange state has its own set of rules or actions appropriate to it. If these rules/actions are carried out fully then the next interchange state in the upward direction will be reached.

5) If too long of a time is spent in a particular interchange state without successfully applying the rules/actions appropriate to that state, then the group, sub-group or individual will fall down to the next lower interchange state.

Every individual, every group, every sub-group will always be in one of these states of interchange with their environment (whether they are aware of it or not). A group member will have a separate interchange state for each hat that he wears. You can probably imagine that an individual or group that is unaware of its interchange state is less likely to follow out the appropriate rules/actions to reach the next higher state, and so is more likely to eventually fall to the next lower interchange state.

See a later blog for a listing of the individual steps on the scale of interchange states and the rules/actions appropriate to each.