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Selected Essays from Book 2
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Bachelor
Declaration
Granola
How We Learn
Inventing Distinctions
Urgency
Winning & Losing
INVENTING DISTINCTIONS
Excerpt from Chapter 21
By now, everyone knows that tobacco causes cancer. And much has been said in the media and by government about 'second-hand smoke'. But one day I realized there was a similar Distinction that negatively affects all of our lives: 'Second-Hand Stupidity'.
You know: the clerk who is unable to fill out the form; the compulsive and-or unthinking litterbug; the person in line in front of you who has to tell their life story to the clerk to justify their problem; the co-worker who won't stay home with whooping cough or dengue fever or whatever, infecting the whole office; the mechanic who forgets just one little screw on the engine of the jetliner; the designers of the voice-mail option lists that don't include what you are calling about.
Second-hand stupidity!
Your reaction right now is an example of the Power inherent in Distinction. You never heard the term before, but this simple invented Distinction has the possibility, the potential to forever alter your patience with the attitudes of ignorance and non-responsibility and the disgusting and boundless apathy that you come upon in your daily dealings from this point forward.
Just to remember the Distinction 'Second-Hand Stupidity' alters your relationship with each subsequent incident that qualifies.
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The Distinction 'BACHELOR'
Excerpt from Chapter 22
This is an example of the inherent Power of a simple, everyday Distinction that you have never considered to be a key means for the Culture-Structure's enforcement of the status quo.
The forms that you fill out for anything and everything usually have a section labeled 'Marital Status' or some such, with a Distinction Set for you to choose from: check or X the appropriate box. The standard choices given are always 'Single', Married', 'Divorced, and 'Separated'.
Those are all the choices that the Culture-Structure allows: no box for 'Other', no write-in category. If you do not fit readily into the four given categories of this Distinction Set, then you are a problem to the Culture-Structure: You won't get the job or credit or loan that you are applying for, because you are strange, you do not conform to the acceptable givens.
Now, my present lifestyle is that of 'Bachelor'. I was Married; the divorce happened; but I do not live inside of Divorced no grudges, no kids to swap around on weekends so that that Culture-Structure-approved category does not reflect who I am or what I do. So I chortle and write-in 'Bachelor' on the form, and put an X next to it, and the form-shufflers can have an anxiety attack because I chose something outside their sacred routine.
Your False Mind is nattering at most of you this very moment because I say that I am a presently a Bachelor. "Oh, this author couldn't..." or any other such denial is par for the course from every False Mind. C'mon, what do you really care if Bachelors exist, except as a reaction to an imaginary threat to the Culture-Structure, which wants everyone to conform to A and B and C.
You will get no defense of Bachelorhood from me. I don't even have to cite the grand tradition of the Norwegian Bachelor Farmers as popularized by Garrison Keillor on the Prairie Home Companion radio show. As Popeye the Sailor Man always said: "I yam what I yam." [Thanks, Popeye. Very Zen of you.] That is all that need be said on the subject.
When your False Mind gets all excited about any such issue, there is only one powerful response: To laugh out loud. When you can laugh at the blatherings of your False Mind, then you will have reached the Seventh Step on the Path to establishing your Working Mind. Ignore your False Mind, on this and other matters.
The given pseudo-choices of the 'Marriage Status' Distinction Set ignores and dis-empowers Widows and Widowers too, even though that is an accepted lifestyle category within the Culture-Structure, though usually sidestepped. Nor is the category 'Single Parent' given to you on such forms: Best hide the shameful fact and check a box that is not true. And the Culture-Structure certainly doesn't want to deal with 'Life Partners', such as applies to committed relationships in the homosexual community.
Jack Smith, the late columnist for the Los Angeles Times, played around with the term 'POSSLQ' over many columns. He discovered the abbreviation for 'Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters' in use by the Census Bureau, and tried to use it to introduce people at parties and such. But he ended up having to explain what the damn term meant each time, and got all embarrassed because of the common reaction to the fact that the couple in question was living together and not married for shame, for shame!
There is no other term for such a lifestyle arrangement in English lovers? paramours? shacked up together? and Jack's columns on the subject, though syndicated and widely read, never got the term 'posslq' [pronounced 'possel-cue'] into popular usage, try as he might.
Where the Culture-Structure is, if there is no little box, no acceptable or in-use term, then any exception to the given choices becomes an outright problem. There are four [only!] approved forms of Marital Status in this Western Culture-Structure, and don't you dare be part of any exceptional category, or the Culture-Structure will make it very clear to everyone that You Do Not Belong.
And the boxes for Professional Status Self-Employed, Retired, Student, Employed Part-Time, etc very seldom include Housewife, and never, never will you see House-Husband.
If you happen to be a conscientious objector in the relationship wars, you are made to feel an outcast. There is constant pressure by the Culture-Structure to conform, to pair up unless you are homosexual or bisexual and then to stand before the magistrate or the clergy-person and sanctify your marriage.
Lots of birds and mammals and even crustaceans mate for life, no ceremony or license required. But Mankind, thru the Culture-Structure and the False Mind, insist that you find an official partner with no Free Choice on who your partner might be and then you must get a license and have the Culture-Structure certify the existence of your Relationship. The Power to make this important Choice is taken from you, because those before you gave that Power away, and your 'education' does not include any options outside the officially-sanctioned.
I liked being married; right now I am a Bachelor; when I locate an empowering Relationship, I will participate in that Relationship with every skill and ability that I possess {see Chapter 28}.
The little boxes on the sacred forms of the Culture-Structure will not limit the options that are available to me; likewise your mature Working Mind will operate inside the Distinctions that are real and present in Life, and ignore the limitations enforced by the Culture-Structure that are designed to dis-empower you.
You that are human resources professionals, or who are executives that oversee h/r professionals, can step out there and alter this aspect of society, as part of the actions taken to demonstrate the existence of your developing Working Mind. The next time that you order new employment application forms for your company, add 'Bachelor' and 'Widow/er' and 'Single parent' and even 'Housewife/Househusband' to the appropriate block.
This will likely start a minor fight, from the brain-dead defenders of the status quo. But that is perfect: You can take this minor Stand and practice not giving an inch to the opposition. You don't need to give a reason, just exercise your Power in the matter. This will keep the Forces of Endarkenment occupied trying to deny Empowerment, which will divert their energies to the suppression of chickensh**.
You other growing Working Minds can devise a similar project, related to your field: Make sure that the mail is delivered or sent on time; get the turn signals on the company vehicles working properly; make sure that the fries are warm and fresh at all times; write your Congressperson or somebody and tell them something empowering; donate a magazine subscription to your local library, in your name or that of your company; bring sushi to a potluck affair; institute No Tie Day at your company...
The essence of Empowerment is Action; the Culture-Structure wants ignorance and incompetence and delay. Stand in Silence and think of an empowering Action and employ that Action, then stand back and watch the shark-like frenzy of the knee-jerk opposition. Where there is not opposition but support, then you will accomplish your Action. You may also find a source of support, one person among the more common opposition, in which case you may have found a fellow Working Mind, however that person may have reached that state.
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GRANOLA
Excerpt from Chapter 22
Another observed Distinction is the way that the Culture-Structure is designed to keep the citizenry 'fat and happy'. I think the latest statistic is that half of the population in America is ten or more pounds [five kilograms] overweight.
Is this intentional? Maybe: All those pudgy people have to buy gym clothes and gym memberships and home exercise machines that don't get used, and also buy book after book on diets that never work because they don't address the actual problem, which is Values. The three most popular non-fiction genres are: 1) general self-improvement; 2) cookbooks; and 3) diet books. Weight Watchers and Overeaters Anonymous certainly depend on there being lots of chubby folk.
But I do not think that there is some unholy conspiracy here either. There was no meeting on a yacht in some obscure corner of the Caribbean where 'They' decided that armies of obese people were a benefit to the Culture-Structure. Didn't happen.
Not a conspiracy: Just a bunch of individual corporate executives making dis-empowering decisions under the advice of their personal False Minds, as designed and implemented over time by the Culture-Structure.
Case in point: Back in the 1960's, hippies and health freaks and fellow travelers discovered the [supposed] benefits of wheat germ and unsalted nuts and soy anything, so that the use and availability of 'trail mix' -- varying mixtures of oats and nuts and dried fruit for the use of back-packers; also called 'gorp' -- became all the rage.
Then corporate America saw a product that they could take control of. The health food industry produced and packaged 'power bars' made of granola, which are still available. But what was noticeable to the objective observation of the itinerant Working Mind was the following progression: simple granola bars had more options added -- almonds, walnuts, coconut; then chocolate chips were added; then caramel, then marshmallows; then chocolate and carob or strawberry candy on the outside. Still called granola bars. But with three times the calories and lots of added fat. And the latest 'improvement' is Butterfinger and Snickers branded granola 'health' bars.
The Culture-Structure blurs the Distinction between health food and candy, pandering to the fat and sweet-tooth fixations of America and of developing countries influenced by us and our media. The intention is that healthy citizens are of no benefit, you can't charge people for being healthy, only for being unhealthy -- by providing some worthless solution, and if that doesn't work you should try another.
Sugar-blissed and overweight couch potatoes present no threat to the Culture-Structure. The same kind of process occurs in education and in entertainment and in politics: sugar-coated material displaces the fitness -- mental, physical, medical, organizational, societal -- that is absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of Mankind's potential, and without which Mankind will revert to its worst: uneducated, uncommitted, self-destructive, complacent sheep tippy-toeing to the slaughter.
Mankind will ascend the proverbial mountain and fulfill Higher Values, or hedonism, greed, gratification, sloth, and violence will triumph.
You owe it to yourself, to your children and grandchildren, and to future generations to Will into existence the Values that counteract the Culture-Structure-led slide into the abyss.
The Distinction that is here presented is 'Direction'. There is a Here and a There; there is movement from Here to There [the future] or from There to Here [the past]. Part of your job as a Working Mind is to detect the Direction of things that occur in the Objective World. The movement from health food into candy is visible, if you are looking; the movement from actual learning to status quo education to dubious child care (as the official purpose of our school systems) is visible; the movement from heroes in our culture to celebrities is visible. And yet so very few of us see these Directions, and even less do anything about it.
When the Working Mind Distinguishes the Direction of cultural movement, the aware individual -- the individual with a Working Mind -- can then determine whether his/her participation in such activity will Empower or dis-empower. This never-ending existential and objective Choice is necessary for the fulfillment of Mankind's Highest Value.
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A DECLARATION
Excerpt from Chapter 24
Power is strictly a Non-Right. Power cannot exist unless it arises from Empowerment, from an Act of Will that results in Empowerment. No one has the right to take your Power away, nor the right to accumulate any Power not available to everyone. The bullies of the world succeed because fear-ridden False Minds give up the Power inherent in the Free Individual.
The Divine Right of Kings was eliminated in 1215 AD at Runnymede, deposed by the writers of the Magna Carta. The Declaration of Independence in July 1776 ended forever the notion of a God-given Right to Subjugate. What the signers of the Declaration of Independence stood for was the Right to Be Self-Governed, which has largely been un-taught and bred out of even the American population.
I trust the Silence. I have to trust the Working Mind. I have to trust my own Working Mind as well, as even the naive, beginning-to-develop Working Minds of my readers (or wherever any operative Working Mind derived from).
You and I must learn to trust ourselves, to remain Independent of the False Mind, to rely on our personal Working Minds. How we will know if we are living up to that trust that is to say, whether we are fulfilling this New Social Contract is by measuring the amount of Empowerment that you or I or our dear ones are generating.
Dis-empowerment is a Non-Right, and in fact is the willful destruction of the Right of Everyone to The Best That Mankind Has To Offer, the Right of everyone to participation in the generation of Mankind's Highest Value, which is the fulfillment of Mankind's potential.
You have the Right to be Free to Empower. You have the Right to be empowered! You have the Right and obligation to oppose the Forces of Ignorance and Endarkenment. Remember the Fourth of July. Remember the Alamo.
Remember your Working Mind.
Remember the Silence.
Access Silence, then read this and sign it.
I hereby exercise the Choice to be a Free Individual, my Self. I Stand Free of the tyranny of my False Mind, the dis-empowering agent of the Culture-Structure. My Power cannot be taken away.My Stand for Freedom is based on Mankind's Highest Value, which is Mankind itself, and the fulfillment of Mankind's potential. The fulfillment of Mankind's potential requires that I fulfill my own potential, which I will achieve by empowering others.
One on-going result of my Empowerment of myself [of my Self] will be the enrollment of others in signing this Declaration after me.
At this point in the book, there are seven lines for each Well, the nasties discovered that Guest Books can be spammed. Mostly the entries are from In place of the Guest Book, click here to opt in for the FREE monthly 'WMail' newsletter.
reader to Declare him/herself as being on the Path to a Working Mind,
by signing and dating the page.
The following Guest Book serves the same purpose.
Be sure that you have
read the above Personal Declaration
before signing up via the Guest Book here.
dealers in medicine & car insurance, and promoters of hotels in Europe & Turkey.
So in order to halt this wasteful game, the Guest Book here is removed.
Thanks to the folks who posted a pledge.
(Include a short note to make known your pledge.)
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