If You Hope to Better the World, Better Yourself

I have great respect for Harry Browne, who many you probably have never heard of. Here is a wonderful article about him and some of his ideas from the Misses Institute.

It has gotten fashionable for young people to try and change the world (again) for the better.  Of course, every generation has attempted this and a few (like the youth of the late 60s) were so narcissistic about it that we still see the mess they created. Our present crop looks poised to make the latest effort even more flamboyant and destructive.

Harry revoiced the answer to this in the 1970s.  This is a concept that actually features in the Bible, so it has the cache of being tried a few times before.  If you want to make the world a better place, be a better person!

Isn't it simple?  If the world is crashing down (it always is) and everything good is coming to an end (yet again), the best thing you can do to make a positive change is make yourself into the change you want to see.  That should take your whole life and then some, so you should never get too weird about changing anyone or anything else - you have plenty of work on your hands already!

I know - everyone else is the problem and if you can just pass the right legislation or shame the right people, everyone will fall into line and your life will work better.  I didn't mistype that - most of the screaming and violence is all about making life work better for the people who are screaming and breaking things (usually at the expense of the very people they swear they are helping)!  It has nothing to do with anyone else (in a positive way), no matter how loudly they say that it does.  This is a manifestation of the concept that all of a person's problems are someone else's fault. My kids tried this stunt (typically when they were young) and I will give you the answer that I gave them:  So What?

No matter how or by whom you think your life fell apart, no one can really fix that at this point except you. The first part of any solution is (of course) to stop blaming other people or circumstances and just get busy improving things.  You will usually get a lot of help from nice people unless you choose to drive most of them away by getting indignant and angry about things. (I have lots of personal knowledge about this.)

Do you think the world needs improvement?  Improve yourself and you will develop more influence to change others, mostly by inspiring them to make similar improvements to themselves.  So, quit complaining and get to work on the one thing you can influence today:  yourself.

Praise The Lord, Plus More

My Christian cousins, enamored of looking good in mixed company, praise the Lord in concerts and Megachurches (do I repeat myself?), but might not subscribe fully to Isaiah's injunction --

Isaiah 12:4

4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.

Don't get me wrong. By and large, Lord-praising Christians are fine neighbors as long as they modulate the volume on the praise stations. They can typically be reasoned with in whatever disputes may come up, although not always in a Christ-like way.  No one is perfect obviously, but some make a better effort than others.

Isaiah doesn't just prescribe praise acclamation, but also:

• calling upon his name (prayer, I'm thinking), 
• sharing Christ's doings with others (telling parables and Jesus-doings that you hopefully know?), and 
• mentioning that the Lord is higher than we are (which requires us not to judge or poo-poo God's actions as if we have a superior morality).

Jesus is indeed great and praising him is justified. Let's all take the further step of acknowledging that He is better than we are and that we are becoming his disciples, not just enjoying Christianized rock shows. 

Parents, Consider Schooling Options for the Sake of your Children

There has been yet another school shooting and the media is hard at work to blame guns for this violence. Again, as I have said previously, one solution for these sorts of tragedies is a family decision to keep children away from systemically dangerous "targets" like schools.

Lisa and I made a choice early in our marriage to school our children ourselves as much as we could contrive. Part of our reason to live in the frontiers of New Mexico is the strong homeschooling tradition here and the "hands-off" approach the state government is forced to have about a parent's educational choices for their own children. We were able to take advantage of wonderfully "alternative" schooling opportunities, such as The Learning Center at House Schools, that we were able to find close by. We made conscious choices about the lives of our children and I feel these have paid off enormously.

Please, alongside the mass call for turning schools and communities into gun-free, prison-like "police states", consider the far more personal and responsible choices that each parent can make to better ensure a long and fruitful life for their children. Parents are supposed to put forth their best effort to rear their children into adults that can succeed, even in the dangerous world in which we live. I hope *you* put your children ahead of ideological agendas and don't ignorantly just hand the most crucial part of your child's life (and potentially the end of their lives) over to questionable institutions like public schools. For your child's sake, explore the different educational alternatives available to your family!

Say you are a sinner and get destroyed

I have never been a fan of people of any tradition crowing about the fact that they are sinners. It is like Jesus saving a person shows how wonderful he is by his redemption of totally awful people. The worse a person is, the better Christ looks.

My and your life is not about making Christ look good. It is about our opportunity to become better people and Jesus facilitating that by letting us repent (change) and straighten up before we face our final judgement. 

Isaiah 13:9

Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

I like Isaiah  because he doesn't sugar-coat anything. Christ will not be the huggy teddy-bear in "the day of the Lord", using words like "wrath" and "fierce anger" to describe how he will operate. I note the "destroy the sinners" summary. I don't want to be in that situation and I figure most others don't either. 

Here is what I say to those that shout "I am a sinner" - STOP SINNING.

You can be that way, just not here

Brigham Young University has a problem, and I imagine other "religious" liberal arts universities have the same issue to one degree or another. The tenets of religion and the liberal arts are usually diametrically opposed to each other in purpose and both cannot flourish well in the same place. One must dominate the other eventually, though you can try to keep the eternal war between them in some sort of stasis, the game of intellectuals. The "academy" sees this as its parade ground and prides itself on the "virtue" of the struggle, awarding honors and degrees based largely on timed exposure to academic ministrations.

I really have no experience on which to base my attitude. I traditionally attended and matriculated through a secular state-supported teachers college. Much later in life, I worked through an online university, basically doing a string of digital assignments until the next degree appeared. I was already doing the sort of work I was "studying", though not as vaguely formalized enough to call a course of study. I knew there were lectures and tutors there, but I never took advantage of those things. There was no perceived spiritual component or framework that a religious college would claim, but I wasn't engaged enough to notice the lack of spiritual elements.

I have since looked at some interesting confluences of the spiritual and academia, especially from Ubiquity University. I really don't need a job anymore, so a PhD will be largely unnecessary for a career I have no intention of pursuing for money.  My aspirations are to stay busy doing something important (which I never really did in my working life). Also with Ubiquity, there is a left--wing smell to the whole affair with really questionable sexuality tacked on, so I need to avoid it as a person trying to get to heaven.

I can imagine spending time and money pursuing such a doctorate and, right there at the end, having my degree-granting group say that I wasn't just the right sort of person they could bestow their power onto - wrong philosophy!  And they would surely keep all the money.

It is a tricky world these days and I am less willing to take chances that I can fit in with modern groups. There is way too much demand to push against some cultural edge and basically show how intellectually or physically gross behavior you can get away with. I have commitments to God and some advanced degree doesn't persuade me to ignore them.

I'm much more interested in something along these lines: 

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/hugh-nibley/leaders-managers/ 

 

Strait and narrow path

The Strait of Hormuz and the Bering Strait and other "choke points" that need expert navigation to traverse, like the path and iron rod that guides us next to filthy waters on our way to the tree of life. Christ and his prophets provide us needed expert navigation through tight, mine-laden situations.

It is hard to know if the path gets easier or the "wandering room" on the sides of the Lord's path to exaltation fall away on either side as we progress on our "faith journey". In the economy of "don't count on it", we must be cognizant that our devotion to following Christ must be more fixed and focused over our lifetimes.

Artificial Intelligence is a manipulative digital ouija con game

Stimulation-hungry teenagers bend intently over a wooden board, surrendering themselves to "spiritual" forces that move a pointer and spell out words and phrases typed out by demons.

The old ouija board is now a computerized device linked to vast algorithms that also reveal secrets and quickly entraps those who want an easy short-cut to success and answers.  Demons run ouija boards and demons merge with AI. 

https://scitechdaily.com/is-ai-really-just-a-tool-it-could-be-altering-how-you-see-reality/

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/08/ai-chatbots-kids-teens-artificial-intelligence.html (sadly, only cataloging incidents, not seeking to eliminate the vector)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-is-liable-when-ai-kills1/ (AI too big (a profit center) to be liable for deaths) 

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-backs-bill-exempt-ai-firms-model-harm-lawsuits/ (obfuscating culpability - Demons get impunity) 

What aspects of AI point to demonic forces:

• AI's most basic and early uses are to trick people, as in "I wrote this paper" and "I am really that smart", leading to "this is a real person." Satan tricks.
• Early criticism of AI was that it collects (steals) often copyrighted material on the internet indiscriminately. This has been buried and mostly ignored in favor of the monumental perceived benefit of the data-grab. Compensating owners would have ruined the game.
• "Mistakes" (indemnified with every response) Being honest doesn't overcome giving bad (false) information. People are apt to trust it anyway, given the rewards.
• AI always wants to expand and get bigger (data centers that feed off power grids paid for by electric customers). Real wealth and reward is to be had as this "scales" at human expense (fewer jobs, rising cost of living).
• AI creation is driven by greed (investors see this as the best investment and to be first to profit) - no one made so much on promises rather than a delivered working product - AI doesn't actually work yet.
• "Give AI more and it will (finally) deliver" - very satanic concept of trickery to pull in victims. Don't expect results before all resources are gone.