I dare you dear reader to watch the fabulous film Cartel Land by Matthew Heineman for the sheer guts it took to film it. This was a movie I had on my radar for a while and due to the long Memorial Day weekend and the easy access of it on Netflix, I was able to finally watch it. If you really want to see the tip of the iceberg of what’s going on in Mexico—just the tip—then watch this movie today. It shows a lot of good people wrapped up in a completely destroyed system where government institutions have been entirely wiped away and yield to organized crime. Here is a clip of the filmmaker and some sample scenes.
Drugs are death—there is nothing good that comes from them in any way. If you take drugs, you are feeding these organized crime elements, and you are part of the vast evil they are spreading. I can’t say there was a single good guy in Cartel Land, but there were a lot of people who dared to think of themselves that way. For some standing up to the cartels was their very last act at some sort of redemption and to them I say, wonderful. Better late than never. But people in America better get it through their thick skulls quickly just how bad the situation truly is. Mexico is a destroyed country and the illegal immigration is technically an invasion against ours for the open destruction of American sovereignty. And to be honest, who could blame the Mexican people for wanting to leave such an armpit of a country. If there is one thing that Matthew captured so well was the many good people stuck in a situation where death, poverty, and oppression were the only things they have to look forward to. If any country should do any invading its America into Mexico. After watching Cartel Land I think we should invade Mexico, free all their people—clean up the cartels completely, and turn the whole county into an American state—like Texas. Those poor people would be a lot better off.
It was an amazing film. I already felt quite passionately about the drug cartels and the people who suffer most by them. But this movie really captured the desperation. You should watch it today. With Netflix, it doesn’t get any easier—so there’s no excuse not to see it.
I have a special relationship with a David Harber sculpture at Liberty Center next to the upstairs portion of the Kona Grill. When I get time during mid-day it is not uncommon for me to go there to read. I love the way the designers of Liberty Center created a reverse spiral leading up to the sculpture hidden by evergreens. In the center there is revealed rather majestically a large planetary shape of smooth rocks placed together to form a very unique sculpture. It is called “Dark Planet” and it is but one of the many Harber sculptures featured at the high-end shopping complex known as Liberty Center located in Liberty Township, Ohio. I have been intrigued by the many Harber sculptures located around the property and people who visit are lucky to have them. The sculptures bring with them a sophistication that is quite appropriate to our times and I find them fascinating—immensely. The Steiner Group was very wise to feature them so boldly.
I happened to be at the Kona Grill during a fabulous late spring evening where the sun set behind the luxury Marriott across the courtyard and I had a full view of several of these Harber sculptures. The restaurant had the patio walls all pulled up to enjoy the outside air and everything was just fabulous, the food, the atmosphere and the company. But my thoughts were on a rather intense project that I’m working on, something that is bigger than anything that I know that literature has ever created. Yet I’m working out the details moment by moment and that was heavy on my mind while dining at the Kona Grill and looking across the bar at the Harber sculptures.
It was late at night when I left but I had to take the moment to see my favorite sculpture, the “Dark Planet” just upstairs, so I proceeded through the dining room to the stairs which take guests to the upper level and dodged servers coming and going with sushi to guests enjoying the open air on the upper floor. The blue sophisticated glow of the bar shown against the faces of the many guests enjoying the NBA playoffs over drinks and fine food as the stars looked on from above, but my target was just a few steps to the east of that fenced off area. The vegetation had grown full now that winter was over and the “Dark Planet” was hard to see until the long spirally path was walked, which I did, only to come upon the sculpture looking like a planet coming apart from inside before molten lava exploded it into some other form.
Not to give anything away too far in advance, but since I have learned about a rogue planet coming and going through our solar system every tens of thousands of years apparently creating havoc each time it swings in between Mars and Jupiter before shooting back around our sun for the cold space beyond—I have been mildly obsessed with the concept and that David Harber sculpture makes me think about it constantly. I had been wondering if the Harber sculptures were formed by some secret society of Illuminati maniacs who knew well about such things hidden from the masses. I was a little relieved to discover that David Harber was just an artist—not necessarily a cosmic doomsayer complete with hidden knowledge. After a little investigation from his website I found this curious quote about him.
With a deep appreciation of the cosmos, David is inspired by the night sky as well as appreciating it as a means to escape life’s hectic pace. Harber’s keen interest in astronomy and the stars allows him to bring celestial mechanics to life, capturing the passage of time and space
It was a serendipitous event for David to find, a few years ago, that he was a direct descendant of the Elizabethan mathematician and scientific instrument maker John Blagrave, and that this historic figure lived most of his life some twenty miles from Harber’s workshop in Oxfordshire
It’s not the purpose of art to define itself, but to evoke thought—which for me Harber’s work does. Just a few nights prior to my visit to Kona Grill, my wife and I were in our hot tub looking up at the stars as the moon wasn’t yet up over the horizon and again I was working out the sheer majesty of my literary project—the scope of which involved that “Dark Planet” hidden out there coming back toward us between Mars and Jupiter which I could see clearly above my head. I couldn’t help but think of the cataclysmic consequences of that occurrence. The tides on earth would become very violent, probably flooding the entire world with the awesome gravity pull of such a cosmic event, in much the way that the moon makes our tides on earth roll in and out. A planet the size of Neptune suddenly arriving so close to earth would have a major impact depending on the nature of the elliptical orbits. For me, the Harber “Dark Planet” sculpture represents the hidden monstrosity and fact of life looming large, unseen in the night sky—until it’s too late.
But with destruction also comes rebirth and such things aren’t necessarily bad unless you are madly in love with the way things are. We live in a world of constant change, yet that which is immortal in us all steps beyond such concerns of trees, oceans, and flowers. Earth will be destroyed probably many times over as that “Dark Planet” roars throughout solar system constantly wiping the slate clean for us to continuously reemerge as a civilization time and time again. It’s not the rocks and bones we take with us, it’s the ideas we generate through our lives and the impact that has on the cosmos. We are not meant to sit forever looking up at the stars waiting for them to pass judgment on us. We are meant to go into those heavens and to conquer them into our own imaginative impulses and to ride that “Dark Planet” the way a cowboy rides a bucking bull. We are meant to make the universe into our own image. Thus spoke Cliffhanger.
If you have not stopped by Liberty Center to appreciate the work of David Harber—you should. The “Dark Planet” is obviously my favorite. But a very close second is his “Torus” which is like a wormhole through time and space. It sits right outside of the Kona Grill in front of the Cinebistro movie theater and is worth a visit by itself.
The answer is that our country has been invaded by diabolical scum bags who use the Democratic Party to destroy all that is good in the world—and they are on a global crusade to literally ruin the lives of everything that calls itself human through their mass collectivist philosophies. They are horrible people and it was great to hear the individual speech of Wayne LaPierre at the NRA meetings in Louisville, Kentucky.
The type of America that Charles Bronson and Wayne LaPierre stand for is the only kind of country I am interested in living in. I’m fine if people from other countries want to come to the United States and enjoy our freedoms. But they are not allowed to come to our county and make in it into the garbage they left behind. They have to respect our culture and at the heart is our love of guns. Listening to LaPierre speak makes me very proud to be a member of the NRA. Those values which Charles Bronson represented so well in that great movie classic are not dead. They are alive and well within the type of people who belong to the NRA. But they should be present in every American. So if you are not an NRA member and worse yet—you vote for Democrats—you are on the wrong side of history. And like those spoiled kids in that movie—you need a spanking. Too bad that Charles is no longer with us.
But some of us are keeping the fires of freedom burning—and LaPierre is certainly one of them!
Obviously, Obama lost a Obamacare lawsuit, and it was embarrassing. So his administration wanted to change the news cycle. Literally, within hours of losing the court case Obama exceedingly overstepped his executive powers once again by imposing a ridiculous transgender rule against public schools.
Remember what I have said about public schools. If you vote for a school levy you are stupid. If you send your kids to public school, you are taking a serious chance of destroying their minds forever. If you love them, you should home school them, or send them to a private school. Public schools are dangerous, lazy, and obviously corrupt, and by Obama’s actions–are a part of the transgender psychosis promoting the advancement of mental illness as a substitute to logic.
I wasn’t going to say much about it, but now that Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee and tempers have abated a bit, proper analysis can finally be possible. Context is needed before everyone can move forward. I would think that Objectivists would be happier about Trump than they are. I would also think that Tea Party types would as well. Apparently they have in their mind something else that a POTUS is supposed to be which is really too much to ask. Trump essentially to me is the first Objectivist oriented candidate to ever truly make it to such a high position, and I think the benefits philosophically to our society will be immeasurable. It really comes down to the public versus private sector ability. Public sector approaches are too costly and grossly ineffective where private is much more driven by individual performance and that is the world that Donald Trump comes out of—and it will be exciting to watch.
I’m certainly not an Objectivist from Ayn Rand’s camp. While I admire the work and think it is the best thing the human race has come up with to date regarding management of government resources, it doesn’t go far enough for me. I make it no secret that one of my favorite books is Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet I would say that my thinking about things is naturally evolved further along than Nietzsche—which is understandable. That was over 100 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot since then. Ayn Rand’s work was 50 years ago, so it’s not exactly current. I have decided that I need to take those types of ideas to the next level before I can have meaning in them which is what I’m doing in the Curse of Fort Seven Mile series. I can’t just write stories for commercial endeavor. Even though I enjoy it, there has to be some earth-shaking sense in the work that steers the mind toward the answers for living. While Ayn Rand denied it, I see clearly that her novels were certainly extensions to Thus Spoke Zarathustra—which was to say, a graduation of mankind from a kind of dependent sacrificial being, into a self-aware, self-sustaining creature capable of immeasurable creation through sheer imagination.
Glenn Beck lost me back when he was on Fox News when he’d speak with ill will toward Nietzsche because Beck needed a “God” figure in his life. He and a lot of people like him apparently needed to feel that a “god” was guiding them through some divine providence toward some heavenly revelation—as if the plans for America were tied to the plans extracted from Heaven. To me, that’s lazy thinking—and I deep dive the reasons in my Curse of Fort Seven Mile series. You can’t just trust something that may not be even concerned with our dimensional reality. What might call itself a “god” to us may in fact be a disgraceful devil of some kind and we need our intellects to guide us through those decision gates. Ultimately however, the problem that these types of conservatives have with Donald Trump is that he has certainly graduated in his life away from the need to feel guilt about anything and is living as a self-professed intelligence. Trump to me is very much the character from Thus Spoke Zarathustra who lived in the mountain cave and came down to the village below to teach the world about the Overman. Biblically, Donald Trump is not an icon of virtual, but as a graduate from the necessity to sacrifice one’s essence for the benefit of the collective whole—Donald Trump is the first of his kind to emerge into public office. I say that now because the Hillary Clinton antics with Elizabeth Warren just aren’t going to be able to stop him in a general election. Yet Glenn Beck in his early days and even as recently as the latest Atlas Shrugged movies was very supportive of Ayn Rand, as was Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul. They apparently don’t understand what makes the characters great in Rand’s books. It certainly wasn’t a propensity to sacrifice themselves to some “divine providence.” Glenn Beck actually called on people to “fast” to beg God to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidential nomination. That is just ridiculous. Talk about sacrifice—Beck doesn’t understand—he has clearly lost his mind.
I understand that some people need a “god” to hold their life together. You can’t just live a life leaning toward meek sacrifice for 70 years of a life then stop on a dime and say that man has within its mind the power of the universe and that “god is dead,” as Nietzsche did in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, the need for a “god” is in mankind’s intellect, and the need to hold on to that crutch has kept our society in this ridiculously infantile state for far too long. You will never get to John Galt’s engine of the world by sacrificing bits of yourselves to a being beyond time and space. Whatever is out there in those folds of time needs to be properly vetted before trust can properly be established—you certainly can’t trust some Roman interpretation of a Christ metaphor passed down to us from the ages of Zoroastrianism. That’s just stupid. While I don’t fault people for their needs intellectually, I do when it comes to crossing the streams of proper government. Thinking is the key to human endeavor, not hoping that a “god” will show mercy and guide us to some Promise Land. We have to make that Promised Land though our intellectual gifts provided by “god,” but we can’t be passive recipients in our approach.
Donald Trump’s harshest critics are those who find it appalling that he is completely a man of his own making, that he seeks only his counsel when making a decision, that he loves himself and isn’t meek, and that he shows an indication toward the complete domination of his enemies. They can’t understand such a person because Trump is free from the need to sacrifice anything to make something—so they can’t understand how it will be possible as president. But praying for a god to save a nation is just as stupid as the athlete who scores a touchdown and points toward heaven as though “god” made such a thing possible. To say that America is great because God is behind it is just as stupid as the Muslims believing that Allah wants them to kill infidels. America is great because the thoughts of mankind have been free to unleash the gifts of imagination manifested into invention and that is something new. Donald Trump is a product of the American system. He is a graduate of individualism and that is what will make him a great president. I know I can trust Donald Trump because he works by the rules of individual integrity—he doesn’t need the judgment of God to keep him from smoking cigarettes or doing drugs—the way Glenn Beck uses God to keep back the demons from his past. Trump cares about himself and his family and he doesn’t want to be viewed by history as being bad, tyrannical, or a loser in any way. He wants to be loved as he loves himself and he wants to give people that feeling that he has when he gets up each morning—it’s the one thing that billions of dollars in the bank can’t buy, and it’s the one thing he wants more than anything in life. He wants the respect of those around him and the way he intends to get it is by the means of the individualists who have written in literature the foundations of our present circumstances—philosophers like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand.
Trump will unlock through his mouth the potential of America and that is the force behind the movement that is now afoot. That movement is what these #NeverTrump people are scared of. They fear that America will head toward Sodom and Gomorra with the inauguration of Donald Trump because they essentially don’t understand the power that drives people on the individual level. For instance, I was at a baseball game at the Cincinnati Reds home park and my wife and I were having diner in the Diamond Club. It was all very nice, the food was on the upside and the drinks were flowing all around us. People were happy, festive and we were all living a life of extreme opulence. The food was too good and many of us were still enjoying it when the game started. When the National Anthem came on everyone stopped and stared at the televisions to watch what was happening out on the field. That entire place went dead silent and everyone was enrapt with reverence toward the greatness of our country. Nobody told anyone to behave that way; it came out of the individual inclination of the collected masses. That is in essence the Donald Trump life. Work hard, have plenty so that there is an excess, and be gracious with that excess. But don’t be a loser, because if you are, you deserve to be bitch slapped into oblivion. Nobody likes a loser and America isn’t a nation of such people. It has been made to feel that way, but it’s time to stop feeling that way. And only Donald Trump can invoke that character once again by returning our nation toward an ideology centered on individual achievement instead of collective salvation. That is where the psychosis of the #NEVERTRUMPs crosses the line because their judgment of good and evil is in violation of the principles of actual success. America can’t afford their immature interpretation any longer. People don’t need to be told to be silent when the National Anthem is playing, and they don’t need to be told to be kind to their neighbor by someone like Glenn Beck. We certainly don’t need any more preachers. We need action by individuals to make our county great again—and we need a salesman to resurrect it within our culture. That is why Donald Trump will be such a great president. He offers a continuation of the philosophies which have evolved over the years toward individualism and now society can see a fine example from the White House which perhaps will save our nation by unlocking that potential in others. That is why the Trump nomination is such a big deal, and why so many people are having a difficult time with it. They don’t have the proper philosophy in their own life to understand–and that isn’t our fault. It’s their problem.
For me Star Wars has always been something of a vacation for my mind—a place to go for leisure and to think about basic formulations regarding good and evil. I am one who believes that books are far superior to movies made from them, so I am still extremely disappointed with what Disney has done with the franchise. However, I accept because of the Metaphysics of Quality that they do not understand at Disney how to do anything original and that they are essentially mining the old Star Wars novels for their new projects and claiming them as originals from the new regime at Lucasfilm. It has really bothered me. But of late I have respected what Lucasfilm has been doing with Disney—some of it anyway. I think Rogue One will be a great movie. It will likely be a combination of a lot of books that I’ve read, especially the A.C Crispin Han Solo novels and the video game Dark Forces but I have come to think that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The essential stories are still good even if they are mangled by Disney. To me, the books will always rule. But for kids, the way that the books have been reinvented and put up on the silver screen has value—real value and I have found that in this really rough world that we are all living in, that Star Wars certainly is one of the best things in it for families and little kids. They aren’t as good as they were when George Lucas was in charge, but they are still pretty good. My mood lightened a lot about Star Wars after I watched Harrison Ford introduce the new Star Wars land in Disney World, seen below. Lucasfilm finally announced that they found their pick for the new Han Solo films, and I had an opportunity to watch a Reds baseball game on their yearly Star Wars weekend where on Friday night they always do a fabulous fireworks display to John Williams music—which is always wonderful.
It was a beautiful night in May 2016. I was at the Reds game watching the sold out crowd enjoy the Star Wars festivities and noticing how much the kids in the audience were excited about the event. I was also thinking about the kid Alden Ehrenreich who got the part of playing the new Han Solo in the upcoming stand alone films. As I said many months ago I thought they would be smart to put Han Solo into all three of those new movies, and it looks like that’s what they are going to do. With the casting of Alden Ehrenreich I was suddenly very excited about that possibility. Even though I was very disappointed with The Force Awakens death of Han Solo, the possibility of a lot more Han Solo adventures suddenly perked me up and I found myself enjoying Star Wars for really the first time in months.
I remembered how much I loved Han Solo as a kid. Of course I’ve long outgrown that character, but I still love the idea of Han Solo and always loved Star Wars because of him. Without Han Solo for me there is no Star Wars. But now, with this new kid whom I am very impressed with, I am suddenly having fun in that world again. I am actually looking forward to the new films which is a bit of a relief, because like I said, for my mind which is very active, Star Wars was always kind of a vacation. I probably enjoy the behind the scenes art stories about how Star Wars is made more than I do the actual movies. So for the prospect of new Han Solo stories—of seeing some of the elements of the old A.C. Crispin novels about a young Han Solo being put up on a screen for everyone to enjoy, I’m excited about it.
As I was thinking of Rogue One, coming out this Christmas the prospect of Han Solo making a guest appearance is pretty exciting. It will be nice to share those new adventures with my grandkids even though they may never read the same books I did. I decided it was more valuable to share those experiences with them than to just check out. I am still concerned about all the progressive trends that are emerging because essentially the young people making all these new Star Wars movies are fans of the original films that grew up with more progressive values as opposed to the original westerns that George Lucas grew up on. I don’t think the new films will be nearly as good for me as the originals were, but for kids who don’t know any better—it will be very special to them.
More than anything, which was very obvious to me while watching the fireworks at the Reds game, the John Williams music alone was a proper bridge that is just beautiful to behold. The new themes from the most recent Star Wars film fit in quite nicely with the old ones and it was a special fireworks display for me because of it. It’s the first time I have heard the new pieces put together with the old and that’s when I thought—what the hell. There will be six new Star Wars films over the next 5 years and a lot of new music—and Han Solo will be back in the Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca, and those are some fun stories. And in just a few years there will be my dream of seeing a full-sized Millennium Falcon in Disney World. That will be a dream come true and I am far more excited about that than I should be. So even though Matt Clark and I torched Disney’s handling of Star Wars on the radio when The Force Awakens came out—I will give credit when I do see a reason for it and Disney is doing a good job—lately. Hopefully that trend will continue.
For the imagination, there is a lot to look forward to. For me, Star Wars is all about imagination and possibilities. That quest for the imagination is what makes me get up each day to face real world problems and work through massive tribulations. At the end of all those tribulations, it has always been nice to have Star Wars to rest my mind in. So in that context, it is nice to see that I may be able to continue enjoying it. Alden Ehrenreich was a very good pick.
I think it was way back in August of 2015 that I said I’d considered not contributing articles everyday like I do presently if Donald Trump were elected president—mainly because his presence in the race for the White House, or from the White House does much of what I have been doing with all this work. Well, after tonight’s performance in the East and the strong showing once again in five more states with clear indications of a strong finish in the biggest of all, California—it is clear that Donald Trump should be the Republican nominee for POTUS in 2016. Even with the silly little Kasich/Cruz alliance, the only hope they have is to get to a floor fight at the convention to be president—which won’t go over well as it goes against the popular vote. A lot of people never got over the Bush/Gore tie in 2000 where technically Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral votes. This Trump situation is much more flammable than even that, so I don’t see anybody but Trump running as a Republican against Hillary Clinton. And as for Hillary, she barely beat Bernie Sanders. She won’t be able to withstand a focused attack by Donald Trump every day. He will simply outwork her, and she won’t win a general election. So for all practical purposes, Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States.
I am an excellent judge of character and it may take five or six years for others within the Republican ranks to see what I do in Trump, but history will agree with me. Conservatives are not going to win major elections trying to shift the country radically back to the political right after 100 years of liberal erosion—so you have to pick your battles. Trump is all about the economy, border security, and trade negotiations—which is an excellent place to begin. Real conservatives need to keep their eye on 2024 for all the social issues. You have to fix the economy first and sustain the integrity of our sovereignty before we worry about guys wanting to use the restrooms of girls. These are all big issues but moral depravity escalates when people don’t have money in their pockets. Morality is a lot easier to sell when people have something of value that they appreciate—and right now—we just don’t have that type of society.
Trump from the White House will utilize the power of positive thinking to unlock America’s potential. It won’t be Trump’s policies that do it—it will be his mouth and charisma, and I see a path where he can do a lot more from the White House than the slow trickle that I perform with all my articles trying to teach people to do the same thing in their private lives. The next four to eight years will be a whirlwind and situations will change—and a chapter of our lives will close as a new one begins. That means I need to shift my personal role as well.
I have talked prior about a rather epic novel that I’m working on and I have been flushing out the ideas for quite some time. The articles on this site have played a part of that. But now it’s time to put pen to paper and to pound out the manuscripts. Rather than write the 1200 to 1500 words each day that I do here, my efforts need to go into that commercial work. It’s not the writing itself that is the challenge, it’s the editing and working out the details that takes all the time and that is where I’m going to put my focus at this point That’s not to say that I won’t make any more contributions—I certainly will. But as for the daily articles, it is time to let the chain reaction that many of us in this marketplace have set forth to do their thing and to move to the next phase as we see it.
My path is clear and it will take everything I have to get there. It’s certainly time for me to make this decision. I’ve delayed my indulgence for about a year because of all the volatility at the presidential level. It is hard for people to imagine that one guy like Donald Trump might have such a large impact on our culture but I’d ask those who can remember to recollect the difference between 1979 and 1980. I think the switch from 2016 to 2017 will be much greater and there will be so much news flashing by in such a whirlwind that nobody will be able to keep up. Meanwhile, I have quite an encyclopedia of articles here to help people through that phase and to guide them into making the correct decisions. My next role will be context through art—not in the definition of interpretation—which is what I’ve been doing. Now we need the artistic effort to expand culture and that will be my new focus. For me the work will be similar, I will write everyday toward a known objective—only people won’t see it as they do now. They’ll see it in bulk when the projects are released. For me it is the work of the Great American Novel, something I have been thinking about for quite a long time. How that novel gets published I’m not sure at this time—because that industry has changed so much. But first, you just have to write it then measure how best to distribute it.
As for Donald Trump, I know his people have read here and I hope this site continues to be a source of inspiration. But it’s time for the student to leave the classroom and to utilize what they’ve learned—and I expect that to be the case for everybody—even those silent lurkers who depend heavily on my written words. I’m not going away—I’m just turning inward so that I can build up to the next great phase which we will see a few years from now. When we get there—we all need to be ready and I need to focus on getting it right. I am proud to have played my part in all the multiple fissures that are emerging along the front of establishment debacles. I consider all this a major mission concluded even if people aren’t aware of the explosions and dawn has not yet revealed all the damage.
Trump winning against the establishment—and I consider Cruz part of the establishment—the church wielding branch—I see an open window for a reiteration of the American idea in much the way that Henry Morgan led the pirates of the Caribbean toward the first free establishment of a constitutional republic without the influence of a king. I’m not saying that it will be a moral quest, but it will get us where we want to go as a country among the world. The situation is complicated beyond measure, but ultimately the power of positive thinking will go a long way to getting us there. So enjoy the victory for those riding the Trump train. For those not yet there, see you when you arrive. It might take a while but I trust that you’ll arrive in your own way in your own time. And as for this site, this won’t be the last article. But they won’t come as often as my focus will be on more commercial material—because that’s what’s needed at this point in time. When the smoke clears—all this will make a lot more sense.
As my third grandchild was being born at the West Chester Hospital recently I carefully read Matt Vella’s article in Time magazine on driverless cars and felt it was necessary to offer a few important observations to the debate which will evolve over the next decade. As a driver, I am fantastic. If I wasn’t so interested in global mythology, business management, literature, archaeology, and the western arts, I would have been a stunt man for Hollywood movies. I love driving cars, and I like the role they play in a free society. They are the center of American culture. However, I’m not against the driverless car as many conservatives like me might be. I don’t see them as a globalist’s takeover of our independence—although I’m sure there are treacherous personalities who fall into that category. I see the driverless car as an evolution of our species, but I don’t wish to see complete domination of non-thinking cars taking over our society.
When it comes to highway driving, I am 100% on board. If I’m in a car for three to nine hours at a time—I would rather be sleeping, or working on something else instead of wasting my time driving. In that respect I am quite excited about a driverless car. As I’ve also said, I enjoy very much the idea of skycars which obviously would have to run automatically—so I fully support cars along the same lines. Automatic driving is a more useful way to travel because it takes away the dead time in transit. If I’ve been up all night working and I have a meeting in Chicago at 11 AM, it would be wonderful to leave and take a nap along the way. I could arrive refreshed and maybe have time to get a review of a proposal finished before the actual meeting which would be a big step in human evolution.
However, companies making driverless cars will likely lobby to get rid of independent driving completely and that would be a mistake. I would not want to lose the ability to make independent decisions with my car—for instance, to drive off-road or to take evasive action that no computer program could simulate. There are times that I want to turn off the automated braking systems and take complete control of my vehicle—and I would not want to lose that. There is something very important in the skills humans have nurtured to drive a car and the decision-making process it evokes is important to our continued development.
The technology should evolve along the lines of convenience for the driver not to protect the insurance industry from collision payouts. Without question the insurance industry is salivating at the prospect of Vella’s Time article, because it would greatly minimize the accidents that are imposed on insurance companies each year by taking away human error. However, humans need to think and they should not automate their lives to the point where they no longer make decisions to survive. It’s one thing to make decisions for a career, it’s another to stay sharp enough to make decisions that are life and death and driving a car forces humans to stay close to that ultimate responsibility. If you make a mistake you could kill people and I think psychologically, that is an important distinction that our species needs for its furtherance. What good is safety on the roadways if you lose the soul of our species?
We already see the effects on our society now. My brother is a diver and he had to attend a safety class recently where an orange triangle sinker was thrown into the water. They were questioned what if there is an active shooter above the water and the orange triangle was to signal the divers to stay underwater for their own safety. Many of the guys in this class were Special Forces guys and their first reaction was dismay. Their instinct was to surface then shoot whoever the antagonist was—yet here was some government pin-head trying to dull the instincts of the special forces guys into a safety compliance priority that preserved their life in a physical aspect but slowly destroyed it intellectually. That is the problem with driverless cars—the life and death aspect of it is actually beneficial to the value we all have for each other as a species.
While turning onto a road in an industrial park this past week there was some road construction and the lanes had been narrowed to just wide enough for a tractor-trailer to drive between. There was one tractor-trailer trying to turn left and another turning left across the lane of traffic of the other truck. For about five minutes I watched some of the most amazing driving as the two trucks worked together to navigate to their intended destinations in opposite directions with literally no room to spare. No computer will ever be invented that could perform that task and we should not have a society which diminishes that skill set. Outside of those trucks the drivers were probably not very sophisticated people, but behind those big wheels, they were modern Mozarts of driving. We should not have a society that destroys the skills which makes those types of people.
Safety is not the first priority if it destroys thinking in the process. The value of a human life is not defined by its years lived, but by the quality that it lives—and driving a car or a truck enhances that quality immensely. As this technology develops it needs to evolve around the randomness of human error and not the perfection of an automatic society where everyone is passive participants to the machines. We should not dumb ourselves down to make it easier for Google or Tesla to put their driverless cars on the roads fulfilling the utterances of Matt Vella’s Time article. We should not surrender our liberty to insurance companies who will obviously support that automatic quest offered by the driverless car. It should be optional not mandatory to drive a car that drives itself. People should still retain the ability to take over the controls if they so desire.
On a highway I can certainly see the need, but in roads around town, automatic cars would just slow everything down. Human beings move faster because they can account for the randomness of other human involvement, where machines never can be intuitive enough to compensate for random calculations. Just last week I had someone come completely over into my lane of traffic. If I had not jumped over into their original lane it would have been a head on collision at about 50 MPH. My decision had to be split second and no computer program would have told my car to do the exact opposite in that situation that any logical decision gate would have provided. Yet I made the decision quickly and as soon as the danger passed I was back in my lane and headed where I was going alive and well. To celebrate being alive, I stopped by McDonald’s and grabbed a Sausage and Egg McMuffin—that is life in America centered around the car and the independence it offers. I would rather have that randomness than the safety of automation. So if it comes down to the machines won’t work unless human randomness is removed from the equation, then I’d say the technology isn’t worth the loss to intellect. But if the two could work hand in hand—then I’d be a fan. I would be one of the first to sign up for highway travel. In that respect, it would be a tremendous benefit. But giving up that ability to drive on everything but the highway—it would slow our society down too much—and that wouldn’t be worth it just to have the diminished car wrecks that occur as a result. Such a thing should never be made mandatory—it should remain and evolve around voluntary participation. And if the technology cannot be kept voluntary—then it shouldn’t become a reality in the first place.
Most religions believe in some form of reincarnation around the world—where the spirit of an entity returns to the world of the living in some other form, whether it’s a dog, cat, or another human being—it is something that is heavily revered around the world. Even George Patton believed that he was an ancient warrior from days long gone and that he had been on earth before. One of the things I have always liked most about Star Wars is that they took kid’s topics and wrapped them very carefully into modern religion. The nature of the “Force” is an unusual concept that combines many world religions into an updated moral grounding that I have always thought was healthy.
Star Wars for me was the gateway to Joseph Campbell’s teachings which I discovered during my college age days. I was so affected by Joseph Campbell that traditional college lost its meaning and it sent me into a five-year deep dive from about 19 to 24 years of age reading all his books, particularly The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Masks of God series from his work in Transformations of Myth Through Time. When I wasn’t reading Joseph Campbell I was listening to him. I had about twenty hours of lectures by Campbell on tape which I listened to at my various jobs for several years to the point where I knew the material backwards and forward. For another five years I spent reading all the supplement books which inspired Campbell—books like Finnegan’s Wake and Thus Spoke Zarathustra and studying great artists like James Joyce and Thomas Mann so that I could understand Campbell much better. I did all this essentially because Star Wars had inspired in me a desire to deep dive the material of myth and how it informed the human mind about the world we live in and the world that exists beyond four-dimensional living.
I probably could have become something of a museum curator or some world traveler doing work in this field of mythic interpretation—but instead I wanted to turn even further inward and read more and think more. I took jobs that would give me time to read and write yet still take care of my growing family. For me—for about twenty years—from age 20 to 40 years of age I was in my own version of Luke’s Dagobah—working hard, but intellectually developing myself rather intensely and I loved it. My mother told me that when I was one and two years old that I said strange things about the world around me as I was learning—as if I had always known certain things. I don’t think it had anything to do with reincarnation but instead being able to understand what pours forth from the eternal spring of life essence which is at the heart of everything—call it God, call it the “Force” it is beyond human definition. I’ve described my teenage years as being extremely fearless—because I felt I understood that the universe wanted me to live and I pushed my limits to the extreme to see how forgiving it was—and I turned out to be right—it wanted me to live. This evoked in me a strong sense about individualism because it takes such people to tap that well. So this life spent over the subsequent twenty years was designed to figure out the essence of that well the best I could—mostly through literature and artists from the previous 2000 years and a study through Joseph Campbell of comparative religions around the world. I felt that the Star Wars novels were some of the greatest explorations into the nature of life beyond life that I had come across and they were great contributions to the tapestry of mythology. The plot lines in some cases could have been better but the explorations into the “Force” were important in my view—and it was a shame to eject all that for some Disney commercial tripe.
However, in my view this revelation about Rey is something I think advances Star Wars properly—let me just say that. It’s a fairly high concept that will conceivably provoke in many young people hopefully a similar journey as I have been on over most of my life. I will say that if it turns out to be the case, that I will be impressed—which is likely why the information was leaked in the first place. I have been very down on Star Wars since The Force Awakens. Like I said, I haven’t played any video games, or even watched the television show Rebels since seeing The Force Awakens on December 17th 2015.
The mind bender which is pretty important and contrary to our lives is that a soul in whatever configuration that it entails isn’t necessarily the sex it was while it resided in a body during what we might call “life.” When first thinking about the possible direction of the next Star Wars movie, Episode 8, I thought it was a Disney attempt to appease gay rights advocates. But, it is deeper than that—and that’s important. I think it’s so important that I’d consider giving Star Wars another chance because it just might advance the human race—not into the sexual rolls that we play as human beings but into the essence of what we are all made of in the eternal aspect.
However, the roles we play as a culture is important too. Men are men, and women are women—nobody would think to walk into a Navajo tribe and start telling them to make sand paintings different or to rearrange their culture in some disrespectful way—and nobody should attack traditional American culture in a disrespectful fashion the way that progressives do. I would argue that only American culture could produce something like Star Wars in this modern age—because it requires freedom and financial resources to extrapolate from the depths of imagination and to put it in front of the masses in such a spectacular fashion where literally the Internet was buzzing around the globe at the leak about Rey’s parentage. So forcing gay subject matter down the throats of Disney fans is not what I’m talking about. But a sexless existence that is eternal is something I can get excited about. If Star Wars is knocking on the door to heavy mythic representations—then I will go in the door behind it. If not, I’ll be done with it forever. This news about Rey is encouraging to me. I could get on board with that. There may be hope for Star Wars yet.
The Overmanwarrior 