The WMail Newsletter
Volume VII   [Year 2006]   Part 2

Issue #59: "The Distinction SOURCE"
[May 2006]

>+<    G.E. Nordell, editor    >+<

N E W S    &    L I N K S    o f    I N T E R E S T

==>  Discovered this website by accident, which looks like a treat for film-makers, such as to use for
        making animé rough drafts of a film script which could then be promoted around Hollywood via CD-ROM:
        http://www.machinima.com

==>  Bush’s War Department is testing an atomic bomb in Nevada next month, postponed from June 2 to June 23.
        http://datelinechamesa.blogspot.com/2006/04/june-2nd-bomb-testing.html

==>  Primary elections around the country soon, many on June 6th.
        "Citizens who don't vote are quitters." ~~ G.E. Nordell

==>  New/updated pages on the Working Minds website:
        http://www.working-minds.com/2006election.htm
        http://www.working-minds.com/corruption.htm
        http://www.working-minds.com/TreasonGate.htm

        New/expanded pages on the editor’s main website:
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/western/billy.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/atomicUSA.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/CFLummis.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/UptonSinclair.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/lantern/WSFF.htm

==>  My blog "Dateline Chamesa: A Revolutionary Blog" now has 48 posts:
        http://www.DatelineChamesa.com

==>  The reconstruction of the Working Minds book from paper onto disk is progressing nicely, chapters 1-15
        are finalized (out of 40 chapters). I plan to publish thru iUniverse in the Fall of 2006.

==>  This week is Memorial Day in the U.S.A.: Hug a military veteran (any war, any country), or thank two.

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T h e    D i s t i n c t i o n    ‘S O U R C E’
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        There is no Source in Nature. Nature exists, a vast chemical-biological machine whose only purpose seems to be to exist. This planet where we live, the solar system, the cosmos have form, and the machinery operates, and here we are.
        Evolution is part of Nature’s machinery. The design of Nature combines chaos with Existential disregard, and species appear and thrive for a time, and then the species either evolve further – successful evolution – or the species dies off – unsuccessful evolution.
        Einstein chose the metaphor of the closed pocket watch to represent the Universe: we can see that it exists, but we can neither read the results nor describe with certainty the internal mechanism. Science is able to infer the nature of the hidden mechanism, but all is theoretical – if the theory is consistent with previously ‘proven’ Laws of Nature and-or to new measurements, then the theory is valid.
        Science goes only so far, and statements are valid only to the extent that they are replicable and work in practice.

        Source arises only in the realm of human affairs. The pine tree does not source, it just performs according to the instruc- tions encoded in its D.N.A. – it sends out roots and converts sunlight & air & water into chlorophyll and produces seed cones and lives out its span.
        Cetaceans & canines & cockroaches & algae do the same: they exist, they grow, they eat to survive, they procreate, and they fight or resist aggression from other species while reacting to changes in the environment.
        But no Source. The biological machinery operates, and events occur, and survival of the individual or the species is never certain.

        The species Homo sapiens has existed about 150,000 years, which is a mere tick in the existence of Einstein’s closed watch, A teeny, tiny, micro-moment in the timeline of the Universe, and only the most recent tick. Project out a future of another dozen billion years, and perhaps Homo sapiens and ‘civilization’ will last for another tick. (Maybe two ticks if Mankind works real hard, putting a real effort into the survival of Mankind, thru Reason.)

* *          * *          * *          * *
        Where did the Declaration of Independence come from?
        Historians like to point to forces within Civilization that produce ‘progress’ as the inevitable result of History. Pure bunk. No such thing is inevitable.
        While Locke and Hume and the Iroquois Confederacy did precede the American Revolution of 1776, they did not Source the upstart patriots who met in Philadelphia to change the future of America – and the world.
        Only 25 percent of the residents of the British Colonies of America favored breaking with King George III and the power- ful British Empire. The remaining 75 percent worked their farms, ran their businesses, drank their ale, and couldn’t be bothered. The majority just wanted to be left alone, their lives were tough enough already, they preferred to avoid all the fuss about rights and taxation and freedom.
        But a conversation arose in the Thirteen Colonies, and less than 100 Individuals took on the importance of the suppression of liberties and oppressive taxation and ill-treatment of the populace. The commonly-noted heroes of the American Revolution are of course Jefferson & Adams & Washington & Franklin, but no one of the Forefathers was the Source of that Revolution and what followed.
        What happened then – and is needed now – is that several committed Individuals took responsibility for the future of America, many Individuals holding clandestine meetings and communicating on paper – letters written by quill pen and delivered by a postal system based on horses traveling over dirt roads – and finally met and wrangled for 3 weeks in Philadelphia. There they produced a document that was signed by 56 men who ‘mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor’ for the cause, that document being the most important ever written. (A dozen or so delegates did not sign.)
        These men, Individuals working as a group, Sourced a new Future for Mankind. And they fought the most powerful empire of the time – and they won.
        Because these men did so, everyone born since then has access to (at least) the concept of Freedom From Tyranny, though the majority of now-living humans have never experienced any such thing. And of course, the neo-fascists currently running America into the ground are determined to UNDO everything that the Forefathers stood for, that the Declaration of Independence spoke into existence, and that the later U.S. Constitution established forever in the form of Law.

        Today, the Republicans follow orders lockstep, especially within Congress, and the Democrats flail about without leader- ship, and third party believers hawk irrelevant dogma. And the majority of the citizen-sheep again work their jobs and imbibe their drug-of-choice (mindless television) and cannot be bothered – What’s all the fuss?.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        Most people live inside a ‘they’ world. Their internal False Mind tells them that the Individual does not matter, that Reality exists according to ‘everybody else’. They watch television, therefore you must; they are in danger, so your reality can only be fear; they are ‘better off’ as complacent sheep, so that is your best move also; they don’t want the boat rocked, so you are left to sink or swim (So what’s the problem?); they say whatever, so it must be true; they who made the mess insist that they are in charge by right, so please leave them in charge until they figure out a solution, any change of horses in midstream is too awful to contemplate.
        ‘They’ want control but do not want Responsibility or Accountability.

        The opposite of Source is anything that destroys. The Working Minds definition of Evil is “the dis-empowerment of oneself or another being”. {See WMail essay #27, from Chapter 4 of the Working Minds book.}
        King George of England exploited the Colonies ruthlessly, and American patriots severed all relations with England: the absence of tax monies from the Colonies severely cut revenue to England’s treasury (though the British had lots more Empire to exploit). {Visit the Working Minds ‘Boycott W-9 Project’}
        The government of today’s Emperor George accepts as its god-given due your taxes (under duress) and the lives & future of your children (under economic duress) and massive invasion of your privacy (by secret use of force) because terrorists in Asian caves hate us. The neo-fascists have entirely dis-empowered the U.S. Constitution, piece by piece, right by right – only a Revolution to re-enforce the practices & intentions of the Constitution will prevent Emperor George from declaring himself dictator before 2008.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        We humans hold onto tales from the past because they embody lessons for the present. Whether historically accurate or not matters little, for we choose these folk tales and hand them down – and the tales taught or not taught in school – to serve as metaphor, as guidance for the future. The metaphors tell us what to do and what to expect.
        The metaphors of today, however all derive from media (television, video games, music, news show propaganda). Our model is now the bickering that has replaced adult political discourse; the lawless government agent on TV who violates the rights of anyone in his path to ‘save the world’; voting is for “America Idol” contestants; and ratings-driven choices (x-percent watched this program or bought a ticket for opening weekend, and if you did not join the mob then you are a loser and uncivilized scum).

* *          * *          * *          * *
        George Washington was one of the half-dozen landed gentry who Sourced the United States, as an idea and as reality, and he/they also made of it an ideal for Mankind. Washington stood as Source the rest of his life, alongside others who carried on the Torch of Freedom. He is called the Father of His Country.
        Perhaps Washington’s most telling achievement was the Winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge. His men were underfed, the cold was extreme but often mild enough that the roads were muddy and supply wagons unable to travel, and firewood was scarce. But this George stayed true to his mission, true to his commission as general of the Continental Army, and that is what Source is.
        Washington’s men knew that their lives were in dire distress, but more importantly they knew that they each were necessary to the fulfillment, the success of Washington’s chosen mission, that they each had to make a choice for Freedom (against tyranny), for the Individual (against sheep-hood), for the Future (against living in fear).
        Source is taking a Stand that is uncertain and provides a Future for other people.
        The men who Sourced the First American Revolution went to their graves knowing that they had done so, that they had lived true to their pledge of ‘Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor’, that they had each risked everything for an idea Sourced by a few.
        Where are, who are the few who will Source the Second American Revolution? Who are the few who will stand up and lead the sheep away from the slaughterhouse of the Oligarchy? Who are the men and women who are ‘not going to take it any more’?
        Who are the patriots who dare to speak Revolution into existence, who dare to Source action in the existential (real) world, who dare to Stand for taking back this country from the neo-fascists, for restoring America as the Beacon of Freedom, and re-building America as a government “of the people, by the people, [and] for the people”?

        And why exactly is it not you?

[copyright 2006 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]

Each issue of WMail is posted on the Working Minds website; quotations are posted alphabetically by author.

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Q U O T E S
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"The best things in history are accomplished by people who got tired of being shoved around."
— Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices."
— French philosopher Voltaire [1694-1778]

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
— T.S. Eliot [1888-1965]

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."
— Tallulah Bankhead [1902-68]

"What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

"The principle of spending money to be paid by future generations, under the name of funding,
is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
— Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
— Grace Murray Hopper, U.S. Navy Captain [1906-92]

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
— Bill Cosby {after Herbert Bayard Swope [1882-1958]}

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
— Frank Zappa [1940-93]

"Time flies even when you're not having fun."
— Lauren Bacall

"Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre."
— Philip Roth

"It is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it."
— William Deresiewicz

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
— James Madison [1751-1836]

"I don't think [that] there are two equal sides to every story."
— Edward R. Murrow [1908-65]

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied."
— Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]

"Live your life like you're not afraid to die."
— country western song [2005]

"All important writers [ask] us to consider if this is the way it has to be."
— Christine Smallwood

N E X T   I S S U E: To Be Determined

Issue #60: "Climate & Politics"
[June 2006]

>+<    G.E. Nordell, editor    >+<

N E W S    &    L I N K S    o f    I N T E R E S T

==>  Visit the Dateline Chamesa blog: http://www.DatelineChamesa.com

==>  Many changes posted on the Working Minds ‘Corruption & Scandals In Politics’ Page:
        http://www.working-minds.com/corruption.htm

==>  Many additions & changes posted on the Working Minds ‘2006 Election’ Page:
        http://www.working-minds.com/2006election.htm

==>  Have a serious Fourth of July (with fun).

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C L I M A T E    &    P O L I T I C S
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CLIMATE
        Al Gore, Jr. is on a mission, and has been since his college days, when he helped with early studies of atmospheric CO2, under Prof. Roger Revelle [1909-91] at U.C.S.D. {Revelle coined the term ‘greenhouse effect’.) Those studies in the Fifties accurately predicted the serious eco-damage known as global warming.
        The new Al Gore-centered feature documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” finally reached Albuquerque and I drove up and saw it. The film is a clear and unvarnished case for emergency action by every citizen or resident of America – we who are causing the most damage (30%) – and by every other resident of Planet Earth.
        I will not repeat the statistics from the film here, because your homework assignment is to go see the film – and the visuals are an important part of the impact: charts, photos, video, etc. (Stay for the credit roll: there is further thought & information during the end credits.)
        The Working Minds website and the WMail ezine have been citing factual evidence for the problem of global warming from inception; you have but to use the Google® search box on the WM homepage to find what has been posted therein on the topic.
        (The primary location is www.working-minds.com/energy.htm, but other facts & quotations are scattered around the site.)
        Just this week, Associated Press polled 100 climate scientists; 19 had seen the film and all agreed with every fact presented by Al Gore. Small poll, but telling.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        According to the film, Al Gore basically got into politics for the purpose of getting Congress to take proper & timely corrective action, to make corrections to our poisoning of the eco-systems. Some eco-legislation did get enacted, but most of that has recently been undone by the corporate lackeys in Congress.
        The movie begins with the phrase ‘moral imperative’, which puts Gore’s mission & stance absolutely in line with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy: the purpose of Mankind is the survival of Mankind, which is threatened by the polluting practices of our corporate rulers (and also threatened by the ignorance of the sheep-ly majority). Then you also have the Progressive philosophy of making the world a better place for all, and Al Gore becomes the only American political leader to operate in both pro-humankind realms.
        Al Gore seems not to want another run for the U.S. presidency, but if he gets drafted, he will run on a platform centered on progressive ecological action. He will have my backing, since the Democrats have no one of equal integrity (and the G.O.P. is self-destructively corrupt).

POLITICS
        The title of this essay came to me before seeing "An Inconvenient Truth" because I have been noticing the abject failure of the U.S. political system. Will Durant [1885-1981] said that “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” The Constitution lately has such a fragile hold on the political system that many now foresee the neo-fascists declaring Constitutional law null & void and then instituting martial law on some pretext (i.e. a ‘Pearl Harbor III’ attack).
        Such historical events will play out through and after the November 2006 general elections: If the G.O.P. saves their skins by well-managed propaganda campaigns and-or by theft of the elections, they will have a free hand to wreak further havoc. If the people do take back control of both houses of Congress, then the imminent expectation of impeachment proceedings will loom large, and like rats backed into a corner, the G.O.P. are stupid and valueless enough to fight to the death. Either option is quite frightening.

        Meanwhile, Congress does nothing but yell and snipe and waste time on gay marriage and ‘preventing’ flag-burning – both real non-issues. So why the hooferaw?
        The current Congress is scheduled for so few days in session that they will actually surpass the record for indolence set by the 80th Congress [1947-48]. President Harry Truman accused the Republican-dominated House of being a ‘Do-Nothing Congress’, and the Democrats won an additional 75 seats in November 1948.
        So what passes for political activity these days is a climate of hate and invective and name-calling and soap-opera bickering that would shame a first-grader. X happens and the (literal) G.O.P. talking points are repeated and passed & thrown around, from Ann ‘The Man’ Coulter to Faux News to Limp Rushbaugh and back again.
        A great noise signifying nothing.
        The intention of all the noise is to generate and maintain a climate of fear.
        We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and the Bush-Rove-Cheney Machine is the no-bid contract supplier of fear.

        F.D.R. organized America around the New deal, and then fought World War II to free Europe & the world from the evil designs of the Axis Powers.
        J.F.K. inspired America to be first on the moon, and we did that.
        L.B.J. pushed for a New Society, which included the civil rights laws recently undone by the neo-fascist Congress.
        Clinton campaigned on fixing the economy, and fulfilled on it so well that he proved the lie of ‘conservative’ Republicans’ fiscal shenanigans.
        What we need is a vision FOR something that Americans (and perhaps the world) can rally behind.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        The U.S. National Debt today stands at $8.5 TRILLION and is expected to reach $10 TRILLION by years’ end; the occupation of Iraq is falling apart (and will add another $2 trillion to the National Debt); real unemployment has reached 12%; the Federal Reserve can’t figure out why we are in stagflation; the West is in record drought and the East Coast is suffering killer floods; and the hurricane season has just begun.
        It seems that we have every reason to be afraid of the anti-American dastards who have control of federal (and many state) government offices, but that is only valid if we are indeed sheep.
        Individuals who understand the basis for America, for what it took to secure and maintain our Rights and Freedoms over 200-plus years are not likely to be afraid.
        We are angry.

        It is for the neo-fascists, for the intolerant Baptist Taliban, for the traitors in the White House and the crooks in Congress and on K Street to be afraid.
        Patriotism is when an Individual stands for the Constitution (the rule of law), stands for Freedom and Liberty and Justice and Equality. (And not for the Holy Bottom Line.)
        The sheep have reason to fear their oppressors, because the actions of oppressors are intended to destroy chances for Mankind’s survival. Yet the oppressors are beginning to fear the Fate that they have earned for themselves.
        The neo-fascists live in fear of Objective Reality, the climate where they can no longer steal your Power.
        In America, the People have the Power, it says so in the first line of the U.S. Constitution.
        And We The People are going to take this country back from them.

[copyright 2006 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]

Al Gore "An Inconvenient Truth" movie official website: http://www.ClimateCrisis.net
        ADDED Nov 2006: the DVD is now available at Amazon: Paramount color DVD with update [11/2006] for $16.87

‘Stop Global Warming’ website: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

Each issue of WMail is posted on the Working Minds website; quotations are posted alphabetically by author.

=============
Q U O T E S
=============

"Capitalism is the creation of jobs and products and services."
— G.E. Nordell

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give."
— Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"The white men are like locusts."
— ad for DreamWorks mini-series, 2005

"Global warming has to become a campaign issue, and it never has, either in congressional campaigns
or senatorial campaigns or presidential campaigns."
— U.S. Senator John McCain

"All politics is local."
— Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O'Neill [1912-94], Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

"Fight global warming! Be cool."
— Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio

"The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe."
— George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Is living well the best revenge? No: revenge is the best revenge."
— Ron Faust

"Necessity is the mother of hard work; vision is the mother of invention."
— G.E. Nordell

"We ... tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize [that] that's a lie."
— Roberto Bolaño Ávalos [1953-2003]

"George Bush is a servant of the American oligarchy."
— Lewis Lapham

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."
— Charles Bukowski [1920-94]

"At the current rate of legal & illegal aliens entering this country, August 2013 will be designated White History Month."
— Bill Balsamico

"Vote like your nation's survival depends on it... because it does."
— Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio

"Poco a poco se anda lejos." {Little by little, one can go far.}
— Hispanic-American dicho {saying}

"Too bad. The rocks go with the farm."
— talk show host Ed Schultz [1954-2018]

"If you want to succeed in business, don't get an MBA. Study philosophy instead."
— The Atlantic Monthly subhead, June 2006

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
— Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826], in 1791

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
— Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity."
— aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records."
— William A. Ward [1921-94]

"Whenever you find youself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain [1835-1910]

N E X T   I S S U E: to be determined

Issue #61: "Non-Monetary Economics"
[July 2006]

>+<    G.E. Nordell, editor    >+<

N E W S    &    L I N K S    o f    I N T E R E S T

==>  Deniers of global warming have no science to stand on:
        http://www.working-minds.com/energy.htm#oreskes

==>  "Plant trees. Plant lots of trees."
                ~~ ending credits of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth"

==>  The War Against the Middle East may not be going well, but the neo-fascist plan continues to move forward.
        A report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in 1996 details the five major
        steps for a takeover of the Middle East, and the recent attacks by Israel against Lebanon leave future attacks
        on Syria and Iran to fulfill this plan.
        "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

==>  Economic & political items:

        "Taxation above 19% shrinks government and taxation below 19% makes government grow."
                ~~ Jonathan Rauch, in Atlantic Monthly, June 2006

        "There are 63 lobbyists in Washington, DC for every Congressman."
                ~~ U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont of Vermont

        New Mexico has the fourth highest hunger rate in the U.S.
        New Jersey has the highest population density in the U.S.

        "95% of Fortune 500 companies pay less than 5% in taxes."
                ~~ David Sirota

        The current U.S. consumer and government debt is now $41 trillion; this combined debt has increased
        more in the last 16 years than in the previous 200 years.
                ~~ gold-merchant interviewed July 2006 on Ed Schultz radio show

==>  New/expanded pages on the editor’s main website:
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/blackhat/filmnoir.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/HLMencken.htm
        http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/woodies.htm

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N O N - M O N E T A R Y    E C O N O M I C S
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STROKE ECONOMY
        Part of Transactional Analysis – see Wmail issues #17 and #38 – is the ‘Stroke Economy’. Elements include Strokes (‘warm & fuzzy’ strokes or ‘cold & prickly’ strokes) and Stamps (which are collected until one can redeem them for a ‘prize’).
        When each human decides or senses that he/she is lacking in Strokes, the impulse is to seek them. If one cannot locate Warm Fuzzies, then the choices are to continue the search, to find some way to earn them, or to settle for Cold Pricklies.
        Stamps are designated by color: Red stamps, for example, are for anger – save up enough and you can blow your stack. Such a blowup is not based on strict accounting, it just happens and the ‘account’ is depleted. The next insult adds back to the accrued collection, and more is added whenever the person holds their anger in check, or stifles a reaction, or turns the other cheek.
        Green stamps are about envy. Brown stamps are about taking crap from people (real or perceived snobbery or slights, actual physical attack, etc.). Righteousness comes with a fool’s gold stamp. Real gold stamps (love, joy, acknowledgement) are often difficult to deal with, since Game-playing humans don’t expect them and are unclear where to put them. There are also counterfeit stamps, where the holder did not actually ‘earn’ them.
        The Stroke economy and the collecting of Stamps both work much like mountain snow pack: it builds, it melts away, and the cycle repeats.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        The central T/A element of Games has an economy where each player keeps score. If one sits in the stands (of Life), then one misses the accrual of genuine Strokes. So we play Games. In the realm of Games, Strokes occur in the form of Win-Lose.
        We each play the Games that we are best at, while dealing with the Games presented by everyone around us. The best-equipped among us are able to (metaphorically) swat a tennis ball, kick a soccer ball, and catch a Frisbee all at the same time: The adept are able to handle many such human-games at one time. Or better yet, get others to play the Games that the adept gamer wins at.
        Gamblers don’t play to win, they play in order to be in the Game, i.e. to collect Strokes.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        Money is not Power unless you believe that that is so. The Oligarchy controls 83% of the assets of America, but they are unsatisfied and they kill and destroy in an attempt to grab the rest. They lack self-esteem and are bankrupt of Strokes, and are scared because all they know how to do is collect (mere) money.
        The Oligarchy hungers for what it cannot obtain, except by use of propaganda, manipulation, coercion and force. (How we know this is that this is what the Culture-Structure machinery of the Oligarchy is designed to do.)
        The Oligarchy can only steal. They are caught in a destructive Game, one that is their best shot at protecting their DNA. The False Mind tells them what to do, and the results are damage to the environment and human suffering – all of it caused by their societal commitment to anti-Reason Values, i.e. dis-empowerment.
        The Oligarchy seeks Power by taking it from others, which digs deeper the hole containing the emptiness in their lives. They rob themselves, and then steal more to replace the missing Power.

        Reason gives entirely different Values, and also different results. Reason, invoked for the purpose of Mankind’s survival, will produce Mankind’s survival and an idyllic life for everyone. It can be done, but existential effort is necessary.
        The sheep will never revolt, it is up to Reasoning Individuals to lead the way. Sheep being sheep, some of them will follow, and that is enough to ignite the Revolution.

        We are indeed all in this together: genocide is not an empowering activity. The definition of a progressive is someone who intends to make the world a better place. The world is better without fear, without exploitation, without pollution, without slavery, without death by starvation, without war for any reason.
        The war-mongers reduce their Power by using Force against their fellows, then rally the mindless sheep for another war, seeking some economic steady-state where they have enough False Power to stop, to relax, to be able to let the machinery take over. Yet they can never get there because their Values cause the dis-empowerment of others, which then causes dis-empowerment of themselves.
        And then there are those pesky things like Reason, Freedom, Tolerance, and the Rule of Law that get in their way.

        Every action of the Working Mind derives from the intention to cause Empowerment. The Culture-Structure (which perpetuates False Mind) has no access to Empowerment, which is why they can only steal and bully and threaten and propagandize for what they want from others.
        The Individual receives Power by giving it away.
        Only an individual can perform any action.
        All wealth is created by the labor of an Individual. (As I’ve said before, "Labor is the source of all wealth.")

* *          * *          * *          * *
INTERNAL ECONOMICS
        The internal economy of an Individual is an accrual of various values, much like a bank account, from the external world. These imaginary values are stored in many forms, alongside external values, such as reputation and money and underlings. But settling for external values without awareness that internal values matter most leads Mankind to hollow lives and suffering. Addressing the internal economy – of a person, of a group, of a society or country – is the only route to a Satisfied Life.
        And satisfaction in one’s Life derives only from the empowering actions that the Individual performs.
        You can resist the Universe – by sheep-ly obedience to the Oligarchy, the Culture-Structure, and the False Mind – but you cannot cheat, you cannot cajole, you cannot threaten the Universe to get your way.
        This is how the Universe works.
        Mankind will not survive unless Mankind takes a Stand to act for Mankind’s survival.
        If you do not, then Mankind is soon extinct.

* *          * *          * *          * *
        Bill Gates may be the wealthiest man in the world, but he smiles a lot because that is secondary. Bill Gates values and operates from and for Empowerment. Which Warren Buffett agrees with, so he donated $30 billion to the non-profit machinery that Gates set up for Empowerment of others.

        One thing that really frustrates and frightens the Oligarchy is that Power cannot be hoarded. One can only Empower (others) and the resulting Power lasts however long it does. To generate more Power (in one’s personal and internal economy) one can only Empower another.
        Bill Gates smiles and travels the world solving health crises, and Warren Buffett drives his pickup truck and plays with his grandchildren, while Donald Trump snarls at his betters and struts on television, Limp Rushbaugh doses his emptiness with OxyContin & Viagra, and George W. Bush stomps on the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention and prays for Armageddon.

        The path that you choose gives you your destination. Choose and intend Empowerment, and Power is the result.
        Or choose and intend ‘winning at all costs’ or “I deserve it because I want it”, or the psychopathology of ‘nobody else matters’ and the result will be depletion of Power.
        The machinery of the Universe works the way that it does, and Mankind as a whole avoids operating consistent with that machinery to its (literal) peril.
        Empower. Or die.
        Reason. Or subjugation.

        The Universe does not care what you do.
        Accept that you are the source of Power, of Satisfaction, and the Universe will deliver more Power, and more Power, and still more Power.
        Bill Gates has not exceeded the level of Power that the Universe is willing to provide, nor should you limit yourself.
        Power is created from acts of Empowerment, and your chances to Empower others are limitless.
        Just empower. Any way that you can. Every chance that you get, with strangers and loved ones.
        The emptiness fills with Power, the internal accounts swell with esteem and Satisfaction, and one has nothing more to seek – except for further opportunities to Empower.

* *          * *          * *          * *
EXTERNAL ECONOMICS
        While internal Stroke accounts ebb and swell based on local activity among one’s circle of relationships and on random meetings with strangers, the False Mind is hardly able to generate enough Strokes for Satisfaction to be present.
        Thus the phrase ‘lives of quiet desperation’ [Thoreau’s “Walden”, 1854]. The common man lives in a poverty of Strokes. Even having a spouse or kids or a large family circle brings little in the way of Real Strokes, because nobody else knows how to generate them (thru Empowering each other).
        So the False Mind advises bogus strategies, which produce only more False Strokes. Need self esteem? Buy a Lexus. Or answer that email offering fake Rolex watches.
        The single individual escalates from dating to ‘scoring’, to ‘prove’ that they are legitimate in the world of relationships. Corporate executives award themselves more money than they can legitimately spend in a lifetime to ‘prove’ they are good managers – while the books are cooked to cover for their mismanagement. Football/soccer fans chugalug the suds to demonstrate that they know how to have ‘fun’. Kids with cars turn the sound system volume up so high that it sets off car alarms – to block out their emptiness and to demonstrate that they have the latest machinery of entertainment, that they obeyed the propaganda and bought the most popular tripe.
        Their emptiness causes them to seek a solution, and the solution provided by the Culture-Structure makes matters worse.

        And if mass consumption finally leaves them unsatisfied, they expand their grasp. The MySpace website may serve a social function for most, but the Stroke-deprived will soon spend hours and hours ‘scoring’ new friends, as if a displayed list of pseudo-‘Friends’ makes them popular.
        And feckless dweebs who cannot make small talk with their peers fixate on celebrities, becoming stalkers. The economics of such activity is that when a person lacks Strokes from within his/her environment, then the only way to fill that void is to kiss the hem of somebody in People Magazine. Local-life, real Strokes have no value in this mindset, but going to the same club as Paris Hilton, or being first in line to see “Star Trek 27” adds a million counterfeit Strokes.
        Better than nothing, huh?

        Nope. Counterfeit Strokes are still counterfeit. False Values from the False Mind are always False. Empty lives cannot be filled by seeking what is provided by the emptiness of the Culture-Structure.
        The design of the Universe is this: The internal economy of each human receives Real Strokes by action to Empower another. External, materialist consumption cannot and will not provide the same result. In fact, consumption is the opposite of Empowerment.
        Eric Hoffer said that “You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”
        As all wealth is generated by the Individual, so is all sense of worth. When a person values external, materialist ways of ‘proving’ self-worth, they begin a never-ending spiral of ‘more, more, more’. The Individual becomes worthy by standing AS an Individual, in the face of the onslaught of counter propaganda from – surprise! – the purveyors of those materialist products.

        The Individual with a developed Working Mind causes the generation of Power externally in another. The task is never certain, nor easy. But the determination is quite simple: You have empowered another when your internal sense of Value increases. When you attempt to Empower, and it works, then the other person experiences Satisfaction, and your own Satisfaction accrues a precisely equal increase.
        The other way – that of the pervasive Culture-Structure machinery – does not work.
        To choose another result, Mankind must choose another path.

[copyright 2006 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]

Each issue of WMail is posted on the Working Minds website; quotations are posted alphabetically by author.

=============
Q U O T E S
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"The question isn't who is going to let me, it's who is going to stop me."
— Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
— Sally Berger, Museum of Modern Art, NYC

"What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean
is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion,
but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
— Adlai E. Stevenson [1900-65]

"The real opposition to [the Bush] administration is normative reality and the U.S. Constitution."
— Eric Alterman

"I'm more and more easily disgusted by the fact that we're living in this society committed to making us
spend more than we have, or more than we should, for stuff we don't really need or want, and that furthermore
is killing us slowly as well as filling all the landfills and making the birds sing less."
— John Updike [1932-2009]

"It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
— from the 1955 play "Inherit The Wind" by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee

"A challenge does not build character, it merely reveals it."
— mutual fund commercial, 2006

"Cut and run? The Republican policy is to cut taxes for the wealthy and run up the National Debt."
— G.E. Nordell

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
— Henry David Thoreau [1817-62] (in "Walden", 1854)

"It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt."
— Eric Hoffer [1902-83]

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle."
— Eric Hoffer [1902-83]

"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."
— Eric Hoffer [1902-83]

N E X T   I S S U E: topic to be determined

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