Month: August 2010

The Impact of Free Will

The Impact of Free Will

A topic that always comes up regarding what role the individual plays in a social context against the responsibility of government is the idea of what free will is by definition. There is always a lot of debate on what government should do for the people, which we will hear a lot about during this coming political season. But none of them seem to grasp all aspects of the argument. And to do that, one has to go down the Rabbit Hole a bit. Politicians in general are unequipped to contemplate anything much beyond the law because they are generally, classically trained, and unable to see much beyond the field of their specializations. And the public often looks to politicians incorrectly as their leaders. So the true natures of things don’t often get discussed.

So let’s discuss free will.

What if we take the explanation from the film, What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole where they explore the quantum nature of a particle and compare that to the larger concept of the nature of choice, or otherwise, free will? In What the Bleep, a very good and informative film, they used a basketball player to describe the multiple tangents of the shooter tossing the ball in the basket. In that situation, all variations of the actions of the player exist simultaneously most of them involving the ball missing the basket, however only one or two of all those simultaneous possibilities involve the ball going into the basket.

I am using a basket ball here because that was the example used in the film. I tend to think about these types of issues while practicing bull whips, which bring about the same types of conclusions. Anyone that aims at a target will experience these types of ideas.

So given that thought, it is determined that all those potentialities will occur. But it is free will that chooses the one that involves the ball going through the basket. Now to grasp that thought, one has to accept that there are simultaneous realities occurring at any given moment for every object in existence and the way those objects interact with other objects is mathematically infinite for the sake of discussion. Such concepts are part of quantum theory, and just because it is difficult to accept such a thing, it is foolish to discard the theory. It’s like saying radio waves don’t exist because we can’t see them. In fact they always existed, all through time, and we were unable to detect them until we invented the radio.

So back to our issue of tossing a basketball into a basket, the entity making the choice is the one shooting the ball into the basket.

This brings up the idea of what an enlightened society is. Is it a society that does not have war, but yet has a social hierarchy where everyone understands their peeking order? Is it a society where nobody acts out of self interest or aggression? Or is a society where everyone climbs into bed together without care of gender or social pact, such as in marriage, where thoughts of property are the center piece of such a covenant and abandoned in favor of community property. Or is it to mimic nature, where the strong survive and lift up the weak by example and peer pressure? Where an occasional forest fire destroys all but the most robust plant life and the killing of a thing is done by the one that eats it, and not shared as a social burden? Many politicians pick one of the above as their platform, and all of them lack a true understanding of the total situation.

I would argue that all forms of social engineering are subject to corruption, because governments don’t understand all the mechanisms at work. They function from a vantage point where each individual soul thinks itself to be a bodhisattva on their own kingdom lotus petal. And no enlightened society will ever occur with laws, but with the proper understanding of one’s own ego in relation to the universe. And we have a long way to go on that path. Each individual is the ruler of their own existence. It is each and every person that moment by moment must chose the correct choice among the countless possibilities in the shared timeline of collective existence.

I personally think the world the way human beings truly want it now most exists in Key West, Florida. There, under the protection of the United States, that tiny island has no dictators, or power hungry politicians. Mallory Square nightly and without organization of any kind has performers breathing fire and escaping from coffins of nails like Houdini, but the heart of much of the island gathering there is to watch the sun set. There are many different ideologies co-existing in Key West within a fairly confined space.

Now some of that bothers me, in that much of the interest in such a place is to be free of inhibitions. But, it does provide a good window into the kind of world humans would make for themselves if left alone, without politics. There is virtually no crime in Key West, and people for the most part leave other people to live the way they want. It says to me, that it is politics and the politician needing bloc voting, and for people to always be in conflict that causes most of the trouble in a society.

A drive down US 1 will show this tendency very well. I had the fortune to make the trip to Key West by motorcycle last year with my wife, and I can say from the back of that steel horse, I could see the subtle change island by island as politics from Miami, and the United States in general gradually fell away more and more the closer we got to Key West.

I would say that is one of the best examples in the world of such a society, because there aren’t many places that have a nice road that takes you 160 miles into the middle of the ocean away from the mainland of a country. And the people there have decided for themselves how they want to live.

So I would argue that as a bench mark, Key West is the reference of what humans want from a Republic. And it is one of the best examples on planet earth of what free will in a collective society will chose as each person navigates their own decisions along with every object they come in contact with. Everyone must choose wisely for themselves in order for all life to flourish.
There isn’t a single politician alive that is capable of shooting the ball for you. They can’t even see the ball. Just a metaphor, but hopefully, you get the point.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com

Education Funding and Institutional Delusion

We’re coming up on the levy season, and Lakota, which is the school district closest to me, is asking for another levy after we just voted no on the last one initiated in May.

There are many, many reasons I don’t support a new levy. Many of those issues are dealt with in the below video done by John Stossel for a 20/20 assignment. This video reflects my own experience with public education, that it has become an entitlement culture for the staff, weakened by union connections, and the philosophy has become too progressive for my taste. Not something I wish to spend almost $10,000 per kid.

In my business experience, anything over $6,000 per child is a complete waste of money. Anything over that number, I believe you need to restructure the administration, and benefit packages to support $6,000 per child. But as shown in the 20/20 film, there are schools that have cut their cost per child below $5,000 and they are performing at a superior testing level.

What voters have to admit to themselves before they can see this issue clearly, is that the system is essentially a scam. The state sets standards schools have to live up to. The state has to create those standards based on federal mandates which are imposed because the state accepted federal money.

From there organizations like that which reside in Ohio, my home state, such as the OSBA lean on state officials to shape education policies which of course are expensive to follow. The more money spent, the more jobs created, which the administration can then take credit for creating at tax payer expense. The reality is, most of those jobs created could be consolidated, and would be in the private sector.

In February of 2010, I put together this video about progressive education policies.

It is important to understand that things don’t have to be like this. That the control is truly in the people’s hands, and that the education policies of our modern age are doing very little to shape positive aspects of our national pride, teaching students to be self-reliant human beings, heck, most of the kids coming out of the school system don’t know basic geography and history. So what are we teaching kids if they don’t even know where Iran is in the world? And if they know more about American Idol than what’s happening in the next election cycle.

True, most of us would rather not pay attention to the details of an election cycle. There are many things more fun to think about. However, for a republic to work, people have to invest a bit of themselves in understanding what to tell their representatives in government, what to do. When those representatives know that the population doesn’t care, and aren’t watching, they’ll do what most people do when the boss isn’t looking; they’ll goof off. And that’s why we have corruption in those offices, because the people are apathetic and not watching.

And that is how people who are employed by education have scammed the system. The word was when they were getting education degrees and putting in their years, earning their pensions, that the money was good in education. They didn’t have any thoughts that someday, like social security, the funding may run out.

In Ohio, led by the OSBA, they have become very good at twisting the arm of the voter through school superintendants. And they use the dirtiest trick in the book. They hide behind children to make their argument. It is impossible to attack their position once they stand behind children and tell you that if you cut their funding, then you’re kids will suffer.

Edgewood, a community just to the north of Lakota lost it’s levy passage by just a few votes, and the reaction toward the community is the same as it is to every district across the state; as taught by the OSBA in their seminar for superintendants, they cut busing, cut sports programs, and make other schedule changes that make it difficult for parents to adjust. Their thinking is that if they put enough hardship on parents, then the parents will vote their way during the next election, because the increase in taxes are less than the fuel of driving their kid to school, or paying for the sports programs on their own.

To call it what is it, would be to call it a form of extortion. Only the assailants have smiles on their faces, and we are forced to trust them because they care for our kids. You see, they know what many don’t want to admit, that they are day care providers first, and educators second. They know that parents are strapped for time and cash maintaining their careers, and don’t have time to watch over their kids during the day. And they certainly can’t afford day care for their children over age 5. For many parents, finding a way to deal with summer break is challenging enough. As long as they see the light at the end of the tunnel at the end of summer, they can get by. But parents now more than ever, rely on schools to watch their children while they work. And school officials know this, and use that information to pad their pensions, and provide incomes for themselves that would be unheard of in the private sector.

And before anyone says it, I raised my kids with the same principles. Even when my own kids were in the middle of their educations, I still didn’t support the wasteful spending. And at the heart of my opposition is a strong dislike that I have for institutionalism.

Anyone with just a bit of investigation can see that there has been a progressive political movement in the United States for most of the last century. The strategy is as clear as a battle plan from The Art of War, Sun Tzu’s classic book. First break up the American Family. Second replace the family with a centralized authority, which is public education, and change the values of the youth through that centralized authority.
In my experience with the western arts, cowboys are the symbol of American values. They stand for rugged individualism, which was the spirit in founding the country. And as I meet young people these days, I don’t see them learning those elements in school. They are learning interdependency, and other values that my experience say’s is mostly irrelevant to a good and happy adult life.

The video below are people I’d consider to be amoung the best and brightest in this country. Not becaue they have degrees, which some of them do. Or because they have extremely high IQ’s, which some of them do. These are the type of people I call friends and all of them represent what is best about America. They don’t do what they do for fame or money. They do it because of what is good and right in their hearts. And they have what’s right for America in the front of their ideas.

I live by a saying; advice is only as good as the person that gives it. If the person giving the advice is an unhappy person, then the American dream is something lost to them, and they aren’t in a position to advise young people how they should live their lives. Happiness is not something obtained through money, so throwing money at a situation is not an answer I endorse. So my position on taxes, public welfare, and school levies is that I generally don’t support them, because I believe that institutions in most every instance, will fail by their nature, institutions lack accountability and allow for poor strategists and lazy minded employees to hide in the massive structure of an institution.

And passing a school levy only feeds the institutional monster. It won’t get rid of it for good.

Rich Hoffman

http://www.overmanwarrior.com

Sheriff Jones Interview over Immigration

Recently, we did an interview of Sheriff Jones, the popular Southern Ohio personality after he returned from the Arizona border on a fact finding mission regarding the new Arizona Immigration law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N53YIzOCm_s&hd=1

The problem with immigration, especially illegal immigration, is that it’s not just about people seeking a better life in the United States.

As the Sheriff points out, a majority of the illegal drugs in the world go to the United States.  And most of that is brought in across the southern border.  It can be argued that drug lords are only answering to the demand of the public.  But in reality, the drug problem, like many other social problems, are perpetuated by rival economic powers to undermine the strength of our nation and culture.  So just because there is a demand, the merit of that demand is an internal issue that must be dealt with. 

In the mean time under the Tenth Amendment, Arizona has a right, and obligation to create a law to stop the terrible effects of illegal immigration.  And the President of the United States has absolutely no right, or authority to question it.  To do so is an abuse of power.  And anyone that thinks otherwise does not understand how America is supposed to be running. 

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com

Tides Foundation’s Story Of Stuff

 

I watched this video from the Tides Foundation, the Story of Stuff.  It is inescapable that it is communist propaganda.

How Stuff Works, Communist Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

This video shows exactly why our school systems are broken and is being shown to classrooms across the country using our tax dollars to do it. 

In the very fine book A Patriots History of the United States it is easy to see that when the Cold War started between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviet’s spent a great deal of effort through espionage to infiltrate the American way of life.  They did this through their spy network and specifically through propaganda.  This has given rise to the Communist Party of America, and other organizations that use the protection of the First Amendment to attack the very Constitution which built the principles of the United States in the first place. 

Hind-sight shows it is apparent that the cold war strategies of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, all the way up to the 80’s have had their affect.  The American family was collapsed starting with our public education system where traditional roles were question, men marginalized, and women encouraged to take on different social roles.  It didn’t happen quickly, but over a 40 year span with the most radical developments occurring during the 1960’s.  

And at the center of that propaganda strategy was public education, as a way to change the way we see American life. 

So for those who proudly proclaim that their child must have certain grades in a high school so they can go to college and be taught by a college system that is very friendly to socialist principles, consider that you are participating in a system initiated through war, to allow the spread of the Communist Soviet Union to defeat their arch rival, The United States. 

So as the levy issues come up for your local school systems, consider not what the cost to your home value will be if the levy fails.  Consider what the money is spent on, and the over-all damage to our culture as a result. 

I was against these videos before Beck brought it up, but I agree with Glenn Beck entirely in this case.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com