Forced Into the Mask

I find myself barraged by reasons that others wear a mask during this CoVid-19 hysteria. I will tell you why I can be seen wearing a mask. It is probably for different reasons than justify those around me.

Unlike so many others, I don't do wear the mask to protect the health of someone else or the health of myself. I firmly trust that as this virus moves throughout the population (sooner better than later), individuals will either build up an immunity to it or die. I believe that mask use, "social distancing", and curbs on commerce designed to "flatten the curve" only serve to destroy an otherwise healthy economy and empower evil people with copious amounts of time to devise nefarious ways to dominate others and destroy our sacred American liberties. I firmly hold that everyone will eventually be exposed and either survive their exposure or not and we should not allow any time for terrible people to find ways to capitalize on people's fears.

I see the mask as a symbol in our complicity to allow fear, deception, and duplicity to control us. Every reputable source available has reported on the ineffectiveness of the mask in blocking the virus, making the mask nothing more than some strange symbol of obedience to an either ignorant or pandering emergency authority. I reject such authority and the managed hysteria that drives it. For this reason, I detest the mask and only wear it because I am compelled to do so as follows.

The Threat of My Employment

It has been made very clear that I must wear a mask in the office as a new condition of my ongoing employment. I avoid this issue currently by working from home, but that situation is likely to change at some point. As a state-funded entity, my employer is just as compelled as I am to behave this way, though administrators may also cheer the state mandate individually. However, when you see me wear a mask in my work setting, it is because I am compelled to do so under threat of state-dictated employment termination.

The Threat of Citation or Detainment

As time has passed, suggested actions against the virus have been strengthened into mandates with real punishments. Although I have not seen anyone prosecuted for "mask mandates" in my town, I have seen such emergency orders used to accost citizens and prosecute them elsewhere. I have largely avoided this threat by choosing to remain in my home as much as possible. I do not do this because it is a recommended method to "flatten the curve" but to avoid entanglements with law enforcement and a larger circle of purtanical "snitches" that may lie in wait to report me.

The Priestly Ability to Serve

I also wear the mask when I perform my priestly duties and serve in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though exception allows me to avoid the mask by staying away from church buildings, I would feel derelict in my duties to God and his children if I took such an exemption from service. In this case, I only wear the mask in church to attend the priestly service I perform under covenant with God.

The New World Religion of the Mask as a Replacement for American Exceptionalism

Over the last ten years, I have watched my country change into a place I can hardly recognize. The mask serves as a poignant symbol of the new government-established and compelled "public health" religion that has infused our land.

Liberty and a pluralistic society have not just disappeared, they are routinely belittled and punished in this time of ideological opportunism born of fear. Our national value of having different peoples living together in peace is simply no longer acceptable to agitating cultural squatters who seek to "divide and conquer" the United States and its founding principles.
Our Constitution that defended my liberal values of equal freedom from government coercion and equal justice and laws that pertain to all is flatly ignored in the perverse names of the newer demands of "social justice" and "public health". I have little allegiance to a system that officially separates people into groups and then showers such groups with either special privileges or cruel repressions, all praised by legislatures and stamped with an executive seal.

Recent weeks have seen urban centers terrorized by mobs and the reluctance by many "leaders" to re-establish order. Even elected officials join in the action to politically pander to "disgruntled" groups. Again, this is not the America of ten years ago and it is made much more like the squalid, corrupted, and enslaved parts of the world every passing day. Where will Central America's refugees go for real asylum in the future when our country is just as ruined as theirs?

Our independence has been buried and our revolution from foreign oppression is ultimately recorded as a loss. We have extinguished the "shining light on the hill" and watched as our families and communities are plunged into a repressive state darkness under the guise of a "saving" mask and other actions. The soul of The United States of America has simply died and this foundling tyranny that still bears its name is a cruel mockery of our founding. I would rather perish defending the principles of our liberty than die cowering in some corner, trusting to some purported salvation from schemers and a bit of fabric on my face.

Selling Your Soul for Easy Money

I recently published an intriguing little booklet called Feeding the Soul of Steve Jobs, which is about finding the sort of life and success that Steve Jobs enjoyed. It dove-tailed so well with my popular blog-post about The Psychic Proximity Principle that I used it as the framework for the booklet, giving all of you a wonderful case study in putting the power of weak magnetism to work!

As I was writing, I went off on a tangent about the evils of acquiring money for its own sake. I was going to use it as a bonus chapter in the booklet, but I decided against it.  I still find it useful, so I decided to put it here for your "fun and profit"!  Enjoy!

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For those of you who have no interest in realizing your potential beyond a low money-grab, I will happily share two legal and honorable methods for becoming "well-off".
I and several friends have used these two methods to become financially "set".  Either will provide anyone with enough money to get the playthings shallow people seems to desire and "the good life" as far as our modern "easy path" society defines it. Regardless, I am here to help you accomplish this small goal.

Before I begin, the best advice I have for the money-motivated (and everyone else as well) is to never get into financial debt or get out of it as soon as possible. Dave Ramsey or any number of personalities can be found on the Internet to help you eliminate debt. It is a good thing to do no matter your personal attitude toward money as it frees you from bondage and provides you the resources to act independently. You can't really accomplish much if you are a slave to creditors!

Following either of the routes below, you should be financially set in a surprisingly short time. Hopefully, after you have the money you want, you might find a way to discover your soul and make use of The Psychic Proximity Principle, though it may be a huge course change.  Until that transcendent day, here are two simple and proven routes to financial security:

The "Hot Job" Route

1. Get the current list of "hot" jobs and choose between either the first or second job on the list,
2. Get low-level work in a bigger company hiring people in your chosen hot job (even as a janitor to begin with) and develop relationships with the hot job holders and their managers.
3. Get the education needed to get your chosen hot job (the company will often help you do this), and
4. Take any advancement opportunity you are offered toward the hot job.

This route also works with the traditional professions, such as medical doctor, lawyer, MBA, etc.

The "Military" Route

1. Join your national military or local military reserve unit,
2. Serve for an enlistment or two (or if how you spend your days doesn't matter to you, stay through retirement),
3. Secure work with a military contractor,
4. Take any advancement opportunity you are offered.

This route requires no real planning or formal education but lots of diligent effort. It works best if you are enlisted as contractors don't need many former officers.


There will always be money in the professions, hot engineering roles, and the military. The point is to get in the front door, rise to the needed requirements, and work hard. Money will readily flow as a result.  As always, I suggest you pursue The Psychic Proximity Principle first to protect yourself from the "empty soul" disease of the money-grab.

There are no Rat-holes to Respectability

In my time working for the military, I have been introduced to the concept of the "rat-hole". This is a situation where a lot of time, money, and other resources are spent on something that ultimately accomplishes very little or nothing. There are rat-holes all around us and we often don't realize it until they have already stolen a lot of our precious time and money!

I'll tell you about one of the bigger rat-holes where I have wasted a lot of life: disability exemptions.

Many people know my son Matt, who was diagnosed with autism just before his third birthday. If you spend time with him, you will quickly learn that he is disabled. He doesn't have the judgment needed to live independently, to contribute as an equal partner to a marriage, or to lead a family. He was determined by experts to be disabled. A determination of disability is essential to help a person get the added help they need and to get recognition by society that such aid is justified and needed.

The resources and time spent to determine Matt's autism was not a trip down a rat-hole. Sadly, as a result, I took a personal journey to explore my own relationship with autism, which ended up being a long stroll down a very useless rat-hole. I even went so far as taking all my children to be professionally evaluated and wasting a lot of time and money on it. While Matt was obviously disabled and needed a determination of what future expectations family, friends, and society should have for him, I and my other children are not disabled and should have somewhat capable lives. We may be odd in ways similar to Matt, but that doesn't include an inability to meet the requirements of society.

Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking! What would an "autism" determination have accomplished for any of us? If some diagnosis was coming (it didn't), would we get some hoped-for special pass or government benefit? No. I think my wonderful wife tried to get me to realize this, but I wasn't listening. In my case, a diagnosis might have actually interfered with my ability to provide for our family. Can you imagine if I was suddenly prevented from operating a car or if I was required to take drugs that wrecked my work performance? My family and life could have been ruined by continuing down this silly rat-hole! In the end, it only wasted some time and money.

There are plenty of rat-holes out there, leading nowhere useful and causing far more harm than just the loss of some time and money. As an acknowledged surveyor of some rat-holes, I feel somewhat qualified to identify a few. Let me address the gargantuan rat-hole of "difference".

Everyone is different. However, those differences typically don't preclude a person from participating effectively in society. The problem comes when people think their particular difference justifies some special treatment or exemption from common responsibility. In the past, a proper term was applied to this situation - discrimination - and was soundly and rightly discredited. Whatever perceived differences you see in yourself or others, it didn't take away from everyone's responsibility to provide for themselves, overcome obstacles, to start and raise a family, and be a decent neighbor. In a word, we are all expected to become respectable members of society, differences notwithstanding.

Over the years, a growing number of people have rediscovered rat-holes of "difference" that earlier generations largely dismissed as foolishness. Many people now pursue "new" (actually age old) re-definitions of gender and sexuality that rob them of respectability as they purposefully reject family creation and responsibility. Others manufacture or "blow-out-of-proportion" perceived mental or physical illness to justify being a bad neighbor or expecting others to provide resources for them. There are now larger numbers of people who choose to live in such rat-holes; far more people than the larger society can afford to deal with.

I will tell you from experience the pursuit of such exemptions from responsibility are a complete waste of time and energy. There is nothing to be gained by examining yourself against "new" gender definitions and exploring self-absorbing sexual "preferences". I have gone down similar roads of extended navel-staring myself and it proved to be a worthless effort. Sadly, society is now redefining respectability to accommodate such things and forcing everyone to respect people who waste precious social resources. Courts and psychologists are demanding that society treat people who refuse to create families and take on adult roles as both highly respectable and totally acceptable! The shrill voices of far too many militantly childish people are forcing our entire culture down their own self-indulgent rat-holes just when we need to spend our "adult" attention and resources facing real problems.

Take it from someone who has wasted some life exploring a few rat-holes: There is no rat-hole to respectability! Put childishness aside and embrace time-honored definitions of responsibility. You will find that you accomplish far more with the same effort, enjoy far greater happiness and satisfaction, and people of true worth will honor you!  

Field-book for Our Times - Liberty and The Book of Mormon

In my continuation of verse-by-verse scripture study, I have been reading about the rise of Amalickiah and Captain Moroni's response to it. If these names or things don't mean anything to you, I would suggest that you read a bit of a tome called "The Book of Mormon" (forget the trashy, tawdry, and cynical play by the same name - the book is better) which I have dubbed "the Field-book for Our Times".  Hopefully, after reading this, you will see one reason why I call it so.

Amalickiah wanted to be king of the Nephite nation. The Nephites were founded on this kooky idea that God had granted people their liberty and their government was formed to support this. The Book of Mormon's editor, a man named Mormon (it's his book), goes so far as to reveal Amalickiah's methods.  He promised lower government officials positions of expanded power under his kingship in return for their support. In a word, Amalickiah employed "flattery" to win supporters to his cause. The national church of the Nephites was firmly opposed to having a king and supported personal liberty, so Amalickiah used his flattering words to turn people against the church as well.

This situation caught the attention of a man named Moroni, the chief captain of the Nephite armies and a recent war hero. Moroni had fought to retain Nephite liberty that had recently been threatened by the neighboring kingdom of the Lamanites, who wanted to enslave them.  Moroni was "angry" that these defended liberties of his people were being subverted from the inside by Amalickiah and his conspirators. He chose to tear up his coat, write on it, and use it as a flag to stir the hearts of his countrymen to reject the idea of a king.  The coat-flag said this: "In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children."  Moroni called it "the Title of Liberty" and spoke on liberty himself, rallying supporters to the cause of religious and personal liberty and the defense of that liberty. He put on his war armor and those who took up his call to arms did the same. Amalickiah took stock of his position, figured he didn't have the needed support, took his most loyal supporters, and ran away.  Although he caused much havoc and pain in the years ahead, that is another part of the Book of Mormon.

A good field-book gives you the tools you need to face certain circumstances.  The Book of Mormon, as the field-book to our times, lets us know what to do about the circumstances that we are in right now.

America has become a strange thing - a country that gives its President near-kingly powers in four-year terms, a mockery of a democratic republic.  Recent presidents have boldly spoken of their power to rule without Congress via executive order and found few willing to really oppose them. Elections have become full-scale ideological gang-wars between conspiratorial parties bent on using "flattery" and fear to galvanize voters against their political enemies and raise up their own flavor of a president-king.

I have not heard our present presidential candidates utter the word "liberty" with any conviction, if they mention it at all. They crow very hard with what they will do with the kingly powers of the American imperial presidency! They echo the fear and hatred of our "easily-flattered" citizens through a bull-horn and win primaries.  The presidential kingship will likely be won by the loudest, nastiest, most "flattering" person on the field, not anyone who would defend our liberty.

What would the Book of Mormon suggest?  Raise the "Title of Liberty" afresh! Raise the call to arms in behalf of religious and family-based liberty!  Captain Moroni would shed light on the evils of kingly people and seek to bring them down.  At this time of Easter, when Jesus liberated us from the consequences of death and sin, we should all read Alma 46 of our field-books again and not be taken in by the "flattering words".

Trump's Next Big Surprise and How the Establishment Can Really Stop Him

As a matter of disclosure, I am not a Republican. Before most of you scamper off in the face of a Limbaugh "program caller", I also have no love for Democratic ideals or either of the potential Dem candidates. Actually, I am not a member of any political party and am a registered "Independent" at the local courthouse. Hopefully, I won't be perceived as some underhanded double-agent of your political enemies trying to snooker you. I truly want to help you, my beleaguered friends of the Republican Establishment!

Okay, you Rep leaders don't like Trump but he is winning in the polls. If you try to undermine him and replace him with someone more to your liking, you likely alienate the disgruntled (at you?) majority that keep pulling the large wins in for the Donald, against your supreme political wisdom. What is a misunderstood, under-appreciated, and apparently ineffectual major party apparatus to do?

Some people say to undermine Trump, quietly help Hill, and let the Dems have the win this election cycle so you can build a winning strategy for 2020. Sadly, there are already an uncomfortable number of Reps that would go with Hill anyway just to defeat Trump and they may just stay away for good if this is the Rep Party of the future. Others suggest some trickery to get the coming convention "brokered" and to fight it out in a concentrated battle on live television.  That would likely fracture the party permanently and leave the Dems as the sole political "superpower" for the foreseeable future. I am sure other procedural maneuvers are in the works, but it will be hard to convince anyone that it isn't just a bunch of old white operatives (who look strangely like you) trying to eliminate a guy who isn't their favorite flavor of old and white.

You must be kicking yourselves right now as the Dems should be suffering just as badly with an avowed Socialist running decently against the anointed Hillary. However, your prime opponents fixed the problem of a disobedient electorate a while back with those Super-delegates. The "powers" don't like Bernie, but the Super-delegates then swing into action to effect their establishment's will for the Hill. Too bad the Reps didn't pick up that little trick in the past as well. I haven't heard much angst from the disenfranchised Dem voters - that's the way their system works (but not yours).

I will tell you in a minute why none of this matters and the Republican Party, as you control it today, may not last into August, much less through the general election.

In the end, the Republican Party can only front one candidate for President and it is going to be Donald Trump, like it or not. The Donald figured out how to game the primaries, he will bully you into nominating him, and he will obnoxiously and inexplicably carry straight through to a general election win, first woman president and her "governing experience" notwithstanding. He knows what it takes to win and he has the desire to do it at any personal cost, which makes him practically unstoppable. Neither you nor I have any serious doubts that this will indeed happen.

Here comes the terrible truth that will destroy the Republican Party if you don't act fast.

You should know that Trump will offer Hillary Clinton the vice-president side of the ticket in the grandest gesture ever to "unite the country" against the evils of "party politics".  They have few authentic political differences to trouble such a partnership. Hill is a political pragmatist - she gave up her bid against Obama in 2008 for the added gravitas of being Secretary of State and a more "experienced" presidential candidate resume in the future. The more you ponder a Trump-Clinton ticket, the more it seems not just "outsider" possible, but nearly inevitable - someone like Donald, the corporate guy who knows the power of merged competitors, would propose it and someone like Hillary, who knows a VP has an easier course to the big chair than anyone else, would take it.  It is a complete political "slam-dunk" for both and final curtains for the old GOP, whom both would like to see disappear.

The final question is this: how badly do you of the fading Republican Establishment want to see a different future?

Straight to it -

You need to embrace the Libertarian Party, the #3 political party that no one takes seriously.  Trump is stealing and redefining your Rep platform, Hill will continue to dominate the Dems (even as Trump's sidekick), and that means you have to find a new ideology to front your need to win (sorry to be so blunt).  As a disaffected yet pitying friend, I suggest you adopt the Libertarian platform. The Republican Establishment has been losing young voters since Reagan, mostly to that detestable Ron Paul and his talk of personal liberty, responsibility, and smaller government.  The young people, who haven't taken Bernie's socialist bait, are very attracted to the elder Paul and liberty.  For a few years, you tried to woo these kids back with Ron's "liberty-lite" son Rand and a basket of undelivered "artificial-liberty-flavored" promises, so it wouldn't be completely out of character for you to ally with the Libertarians and work to actually deliver the real thing. Libertarians actually have your most high-minded ideals without the baggage of having proven to be liars about it once in office.

Libertarians have been hungry for years to be real contenders for major political offices.  They front a presidential candidate every cycle, occasionally a person you may have actually heard of.  They became so desperate once that they nominated Bob Barr, congressman from Georgia, who had a shaky "liberty" record. Sometimes, Libertarians are willing to forgo nominating a "true believer" to get a better chance to win, making them willing to "merge" with a group (like you) who are vaguely like-minded and basically compatible. You should probably consider pulling Ron Paul out of retirement and convincing him to be the Libertarian presidential candidate as part of the deal. You do believe in liberty, right?

The two things the Libertarian Party brings to the table of any candidate are:

1. ballot access in almost every state, which no other "third" party has, 
2. a compelling list of platform issues that appeal to young voters, anti-war liberals, abortionists, Christians, atheists, "Conservatives" who will vote as instructed by you (sorry to be blunt again), and people of every persuasion (political, social, sexual) who currently feel disenfranchised or over-regulated (who doesn't feel like this?).

What the Libertarian party needs most is:

1. a bigger organization, and 
2. a bigger bankroll.  

You wonderful Rep establishment folk have a huge organization and the money that such an organization generates! The Libertarian Party would kill to have your assets and gladly ally with you in exchange for the commitment to actually make good on their principles of smaller government and liberty beyond just "lip service". I know it may pain you to actually come through on some of this (it would be a loss of regulatory power), but you have to remember that Trump is going to destroy your Republican Party come November anyway and then you will have nothing and become nobody.  Is it really worth going down with that ship?

While you still control the Republican Party, re-open the "loopholes" that you closed to kill off Ross Perot and his Reform Party, which also hurt the Libertarians.  The Dems will readily agree to the change as it typically damages Rep candidates more than Dems. The Dems will think you are taking the option to throw the 2016 election in favor of being back in 2020, rather than abandoning the Rep Party for the Libertarians. You are going to need those openings in a few months when the conventions are over.

The Dems will be weak and scrambling to replace Hillary when she teams up with Trump. In desperation, they will probably draft Bernie. The Libertarian Party, strengthened by your money, your machinery, and the sincere Ron Paul, can come into the now-opened debates out of left field, steal away the Trump/Clinton thunder, and take back the votes of those who see and will be shown the trickery and hostage-taking being perpetrated by Donald and Hillary. You, Ron, and the Libertarians will be the "knights in shining armor" shedding light on political calculation and subterfuge while bringing LIBERTY to an electorate begging for real change!  What a winning combination! (You like to win, don't you?)

In the end, when you are up against the ropes like Rocky Balboa was against Clubber Lang in Rocky III, you finally see the truth, you look for your real friends, and you train for a new kind of fight. Trump is stealing the GOP "champion belt" from you of the Republican Establishment right now and laughing in your face (literally). Are you going to find the new friend in the Libertarian Party, combine forces, and gain the ultimate victory against the common foe? For your survival's sake, I hope so.

The Miracle of the Quilt

Every now and again, I write fiction.  Then for some unfathomable reason, I give it away.  Today, you can read my first published short story right here.  If you like it, please pass the link around to others by commenting and "liking" it on Facebook.  If you want to support my writing, you can purchase the Kindle version of "The Miracle of the Quilt" which is the first story in The Joys of Autism and Christian Ethos e-book.

If you like "The Miracle of the Quilt", you will absolutely love my best story ever, Rachel and her Knight in Shining Armor, also available as an e-book.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy "The Miracle of the Quilt"!

3 Ways You can Be an Effective Philosopher Now!

Jason uses a few marketing gems to help you become the amazing philosopher you always wanted to be! Here is how the "master" does it!

Check Out Culture Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Xenos Now on BlogTalkRadio

A Few Anniversaries

I am happy to note that Lisa and I have been married for 25 years this coming Tuesday!  We will be off somewhere and sleeping in and having the sort of fun we tend to have, which is probably terribly low-key compared to most...

I also calculated something else and it has been fifteen years since "The Great Writing Year", where I penned many of my short stories, the awesome novella Rachel and Her Knight in Shining Armor, and wrote the first complete draft of a book from The Navigiary Series.  That was 1998, while I was bobbing about on the waters off the US Gulf Coast and the west coast of Africa as a seismic navigator.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of my big writing push, I am giving everyone A Free Copy of "The Joys of Autism and Christian Ethos", which is a collection of many of these stories that is available from my Amazon store.  The book will only be free for a few days, so don't hesitate to get it right now! Of course, I welcome your kind reviews of my writing!

If you are really in a celebratory mood, you can certainly check out other books by Jason Nemrow on Amazon and make me a a little money.

I'll be celebrating over the next few days and you can, too!  Happy days for us all!

Seeking Virtue

The BBC today reported what I would consider to be a rather local story of a circumstance in Ohio where two young American football players were convicted of raping an supposedly unconscious girl at a party. I suppose what makes this, on any level at all, international news is the fact that this incident was played out on Facebook, complete with pictures of the act and is creating quite a stir.

Let me say that I have not studied this Ohio incident at all and that I will make some assumptions in the case. I think this is a honest thing to do, as I seriously doubt that any media reports I could find to expand my knowledge of the matter would be rather tainted by one side or the other in the legal battle, therefore run through with misdirection and half-truths. I really don't want to study it and I don't want to particularly hear the rationalizations on either side on the matter. In the short report that I heard, it was obvious that significant camps on both sides were making excuses, accusations, and bald-face threats, also through Facebook, and I weep for the effort toward justice on the court's part. Given modern tactics, I would be surprised if this situation ultimately even made it to a courtroom past the plea-bargain stage of American jurisprudence. Frankly, I don't want to waste precious life digging into the slanted particulars of this story, but only to use aspects of it to highlight larger cultural and societal ills.

I want to write most here about the idea of virtue. I hear that this is a very quaint thing in the modern world, but I do see it as the only way to a better world that I, who may very well stand alone, hope to create. If there were more virtue in the world, the situation in Ohio would have never happened and, at the very least, would not have made international headlines.

At numerous points in a process that began the night of the alleged alcohol-saturated party, an injection of virtue could have made the outcome better and kinder for all involved. I suppose that it is beyond anyone's reckoning that the girl and the two football players could have skipped the party as everyone was likely aware that there was going to alcohol present. My local police often complain that they spend their weekend-night shifts breaking up "keg parties", typically with a nice mix of adults, youths, and young children present. My town is not unique in this way and I would imagine that each weekend features over a million such alcohol-laced gatherings across the United States. Basically, this looks like a typical case of a bad party.

Lest you think I side with the poor, little, "victimized" girl, I think she was just as culpable as anyone else on the scene. The girl could have chosen to avoid the alcohol, which I am sure will set off much moaning in my readers, or chosen to imbibe lightly to avoid a blackout. I am sure everyone will complain that I am being unrealistic toward teen behavior, but that is actually at the very root of the problem: society expects teens to go to parties and expects them to get "pass-out" drunk. Can I sneak ahead in the possibilities and say that the societal view must be that girls have no restraint when invited to parties and are offered alcohol and that this is an untouchable "women's issue"? Basically, this looks like a typical case of a bad girl.

Lest you think I am protecting the football players here, the behavior of the boys is totally inexcusable. Again, our society is quick to forgive them, as they are likely lionized local "sport figures" in embryo and intelligence tells us that such people are little more than animals and should be avoided by decent folk. Their behavior is acceptable as long as they score points in games and bring victory for their school, as far as sport sensibilities are concerned. Those boys could have chosen to help the girl avoid drinking so much, left the passed-out girl alone, avoided snapping photos and uploading them, or a number of other opportunities to exercise even a particle of self-restraint. Nothing of the sort happened, as far as my BBC report concluded. Basically, this looks like a typical case of some bad boys.

Lest you think I defend the justice system in the handling of this case, the outcome seems a classic case of political-correctness in siding with the girl. In my mind, no matter the specifics, she is likely just as culpable as the boys, though she will likely get fawned over, wined-and-dined by the media, and perhaps even get a book deal or become a well-paid spokesperson for underage drinking. One night's "indiscretion", properly manipulated by prosecutors and image consultants, could net her a fine career! Surely, this "victory" is a notch in the prosecutor's belt and justice, which should have seen the girl punished as well for her own lack of self-restraint, pats itself on the back in protecting "snookered and easy" girls everywhere. Basically, this looks like a typical case of bad justice.

I suppose I could go on with the "blame game", as it is called. Everyone wants to blame objects, circumstances, attitudes, and everything else for what happened here. In my estimation, everyone involved should get some punishment. Frankly, I think there should be some good, old-fashioned "hickory switch" action for everyone, from the owners of home that tolerated an alcohol party to go on, to the judge that tolerated the term "victim" being applied to the girl. Better yet, let's just line them all up for a stiff Southeast Asian caning. It seems the perfect punishment for a system gone horribly wrong. Perhaps everyone should take a few stripes for allowing our society make any step of this farce acceptable in any way.

I may have a better solution.

The parents of that girl should have whipped her for going to such a party. Whatever fallout (Facebook or otherwise) she "suffered" should be chalked up as natural consequences for getting herself into such a situation. After the whipping is done, give her a hug and help her face the damage.

The boys should be completely banned from sports along with their jail time. They should expect to be shunned by society and have no respectability except as much as they can piece together from very kindly people. I hope the parents of those boys hug them a lot as they face such punishment, which is very deserved. Hopefully, they will learn that actions have consequences and those must be faced rather than covered over or dismissed through the excuse of small fame.

I don't know what to do about society, which both excuses the sins of "celebrities" and deifies every act of perceived "minorities". We need to stop rationalizing bad behavior, no matter who does it or what the circumstances. We need to applaud those who do the right thing, even when that right thing includes admitting fault and accepting punishment. I know that I have far more respect for a person who admits their wrongdoings rather than the one that twists words and "gets off" punishment based on legal technicalities or adoring masses. Above all, we must consistently encourage people toward being and acting better and better.

Again, at any point in the situation in Ohio, any one of the people involved could have made just one better choice and this whole maelstrom could have been completely avoided. We should give virtue a try occasionally. One right step...

The Psychic Proximity Principle

UPDATE! The Psychic Proximity Principle is all grown up now, rendered as a Kindle booklet, and even fools around on the altar of Steve Jobs! Check out Feeding the Soul of Steve Jobs today!

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From Fiddler on the Roof:Tevye: [to Chava] As the good book says 'Each shall seek his own kind'. In other words a bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together? 

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The Psychic Proximity Principle:
You will gravitate toward a place and circumstance that actually fit you and your nature.

So, if you are unhappy:

• You might be in the wrong place.
• You might be in the wrong circumstance.
• You might be ignoring your true nature.
• You might like fighting gravity or inertia a little too much.

Hey, I believe in God and I believe that God wants us to reach our potential and find happiness. I also believe that God knows how to accomplish these goals better than we do. Therefore, we have a really secular-sounding thing called "The Psychic Proximity Principle" that tries to explain how it works.

Ready?

I really worked for a long time to explain this thing that I felt was happening to me. That weird name came first and then, during one of my early morning walks, it hit me. You would be surprised at what strikes me in the wee hours and I am frankly surprised that a big vehicle piloted by some bleary-eyed dude has not also struck me as well.  So far, only epiphanies, no SUVs.

The Psychic Proximity Principle works on the principle of very weak magnetism.

You know about magnetism.  It is really fun to bring two magnets into the neighborhood of each other and figure out that, depending on their orientation, they either smack together pretty hard or get as far from each other as they can. This is an example of strong magnetism, that can actually move stuff and create electricity and might keep you on the ground rather than flying off into space.

Weak magnetism is attractive like the strong sort, but it just isn't irresistible. If you played with two little magnets as a kid, you could keep them apart pretty easily with what muscle power you could muster.  That was what made magnets fun - how much fun could it be if they got stuck together so firmly that you couldn't get them apart? The weak magnetism involved in The Psychic Proximity Principle is great fun (sometimes) but seems especially so for someone like God. It wouldn't be as interesting if you and your perfect circumstance slammed hard into each other very early in life!

You are attracted to your potential and your happiness, but you can resist it if you want. Sometimes the attraction is so weak that you have to "feel it out" to "find your way".

If you have noticed that a lot of people are unhappy and never seem to "come into focus", my theory is that they are ignoring or not feeling out the weak magnetic pull toward happiness and their potential. I have some big problems with finding happiness myself, but I am starting to figure things out. I don't know if that magnetic pull has different strength for different people, but I have learned one thing: Successful and happy people often describe their "journey" in terms that sound suspiciously like The Psychic Proximity Principle. Sometimes they even say that these things seemed to find them or that their success and themselves crossed paths one day. This sounds a lot like magnets attracting each other and people trying to figure out which magnet attracted the other - the answer is that both you and your "happy potential" (for lack of a better term) attract each other. The great part is that God set things up that way - what a great guy!

There is an analogue to this idea in religion, at least among Mormons. We call it "following the Spirit". Most Christians struggle with this because they fear "spiritualism" as some sort of parlor trick. It is just another way of describing what we can see operating around us all the time, whether some preacher says that God spoke to her in a dream about something she should do, or Dr. Emmett Brown from the movie "Back to the Future" saw the Flux Capacitor after hitting his head on a toilet. While atheists would contend that I am "deifying" the creative process, I can just as easily say that "inspiration" is God tickling your brain toward your potential. My contention is that if you simply chalk up The Psychic Proximity Principle to some atheistic coincidence or "luck", you will find it difficult to recognize that this happens all the time and that there is a weak magnetic pull between you and some large vats of happiness and finding your best potential that often leads to such nice by-products as financial success. In order for it to work, you have to trust that it works, which as a one-word term to describe it:  FAITH. These things don't often happen to atheists because, along with not believing in God, many also don't believe in anything as wonky as weak magnetism.

I call it the Psychic Proximity Principle because it is a fun name and it describes something that I have noticed again and again. I also think it helps Mormons understand "the workings of the Spirit" better. If people poo-poo the "religious" flavor of spiritual things, it can jokingly be called "psychic" and the principle still works until you are ready to acknowledge "a higher power" or just smile and admit that there must be a God up there that does fiddle with knobs.

My final point is that God is working to bring together you and your best potential, fraught with happiness and often with "success". You can call it "inspiration from the Spirit" or "weak magnetism" or "psychic proximity", but it is reliable and it lets me know (and perhaps you know as well) that God is there and that He loves you! Someday, we might figure out that we can take those promises to the bank and beyond!

Monkey Work

I remember watching television re-runs of the television cartoon "The Jetsons" as a child. I actually liked it for its social commentary, for which I don't recall that it was known for. Honestly, I found the whole idea that George Jetson's job, that he was often complaining about and desiring a deserved pay-raise, was pressing a button. I don't remember him having to press that button very often, but it seemed vital to things, for the constant threat of a firing always seemed to dissolve away in the twenty or so minutes of any episode that featured his boss' angst. This was my first exposure to "monkey-work", which I define as paid work that trained monkeys could easily do. On "The Jetsons", George's "monkey-work" was a funny running gag that probably would be a little embarrassing in today's world as almost all of us just press occasional buttons as employment these days.

Monkey-work is everywhere. In my first job at a movie theatre, I had a checklist of things that needed to be done on my shift.  Other people did about the same thing on their shifts and that list varied very little over the months that I did that job. It was really easy to get bored with the monotony of it all, but the pay was supposed to make up for that. I got a few promotions, which meant that I had a different list of tasks which might require a slightly higher IQ, but typically only meant that I made slightly more money. Over the years, I can say that more than half of my paid employment was basically a list of simple tasks to do, for which I received increasingly larger amounts of money. Most times, I have functioned basically like a monkey, albeit an increasingly better-trained one.

I only really notice this these days because I don't really engage in monkey-work. The stark contrast came because my job just before this one demanded that I behave like a monkey, basically just following an intricate flowchart of canned procedures in diagnosing and repairing computer problems. If you followed the process religiously, the solution would reveal itself ultimately. Sadly, as a non-monkey, I never looked at the flowcharts and just found solutions by "the seat of my pants", often with far fewer steps than expected. One time, my supervisor both praised me for my efficiency and chastised me for not following procedure. It is interesting how much I like my present job and how much I disliked my previous one - the work was basically the same but the "monkey-ness" was really different.

If you want a sad realization, just know that most people, armed with some training and a decent procedure, would make adequate medical doctors or corporate executive officers, both basically very(,very, very) highly paid monkey-work jobs. If you find a better version of almost any paid employment, you are probably not looking at a better person, but a more detailed and involved procedure adhered to more strictly.

It brings to mind the global obsession these days with "STEM" training, which stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math", which are supposed to be the tickets to a vaunted high technology, high wage economy. Sadly, the extent of creativity imbued in the entire effort was basically spent in coming up with the acronym. The curriculum, for the most part, is an exercise in slavishly following a flowchart, reading detailed instructions completely (the mantra of schools and societies), and doing so quickly. If you look at education today, it can be summed up in the "timed test" culminating in college entrance exams that really only measure one's ability to quickly follow instructions. Apparently, these are the sort of skills the modern "college" and the larger society desires and rewards.

And what does the modern economy demand of us? It is the manufacture and consumption of a high volume of highly-marked-up and low-quality trinkets. Monkeys build such, monkeys consume such, and their masters profit from both ends by providing low-value products at exorbitant prices. The monkeys find it difficult to complain as they are often paid proportionately for their extremely low-skill labor, they are foolish enough to desire and buy over-priced and valueless trinkets, and they have few scruples to comprehend that they could do and have better. Every marketer knows that the best profits are to be made from the most naive and stupid consumers and therefore our schools manufacture these as well.

It brings to mind the excellent wisdom of John Taylor Gatto, the man who taught school for about thirty years and then walked away because he couldn't live with himself and what he and his fellow teachers did to children. As he began to look about for more purposeful learning, he investigated how the most elite American private schools prepares our next generation of masters and was stunned to see how different it is from a public education. The next leaders of the world don't engage in "monkey-work" themselves but know how important it is to impart such a living on their underlings so that their own superiority is an unquestioned reality. If all you need to aspire to is "monkey-work", you only have to be a monkey and your natural masters don't need to be much more capable.

If you are interested in avoiding a "Jetsons" future for yourself and your children, I would suggest a few things that anyone can do:

Avoid School-ish-ness.  If you can physically avoid it by homeschooling or perhaps fishing, that is best. On the other hand, if circumstances don't allow a real divorce from the institution, you can avoid the "dumbing-down" effect of school by putting what bits of time you have to better use than cruising the halls or creating pools of slobber on your desk.  I raced through math with good grades and spent my earned "free time" in class creating a little comedy called the "Term O' The Day" that I distributed covertly. No monkey could produce that!

Emphasize Production over Consumption. Fight the urge to spend your time and money trying to buy happiness or prestige. The only reason to have an iPad is if you are developing "apps" for it. Convince your kids that the only decent reason to be a "gamer" is to be a game developer. You will always do well to be more productive than consumptive, which I harp to the kids about a lot. Since you live in a "monkey" world, why not profit from them?

Build Your Creativity. Even if your creative efforts don't make you a dime (like this blog), you will be a far better person for having made the effort. Instead of watching TV, put on your own play. Instead of just reading a book, why not write one? Rather than eat pre-prepared meals out of the freezer, why not buy the ingredients yourself and make your own (and likely better)? Don't bother so much with a monetary cost/benefit analysis because being creative pays off in dividends far beyond the bank account.

Be "Value-Added". I used to do monkey-work for a government program, handing out food vouchers to poor families. I joked around with my clients and had fun bringing them "raw entertainment value" and I had one of the highest caseloads because my clients liked to come around! (I am not advocating the government dole here.) It would have worked in any endeavor and made people's days more pleasant and my life far more fulfilling.

Everything around us seems to encourage toward "monkey-work" and a sad life that accompanies a lack of real accomplishment.  Don't let it happen to you!

Flickers of Light, Enclaves of Righteousness

It is my thought that this world and circumstance must be among the lowest in the domain of our Heavenly Father.  There has always been stories of how this world was the only one in which the Christ would be crucified, but as I read scripture and view the expanse of history, I can come to the conclusion that righteousness is a very rare commodity here on Earth and often taken away from this place to find its promised thriving elsewhere.

I think of the people of the city of Enoch, who built a Zion Society that lasted for perhaps 400 years and then "fled", literally taken off of the Earth.  We also have a little reference to a group that was assembled at Salem, led by the great high priest Melchizedek, who are mentioned once and never heard of in scripture again, perhaps also removed from this sphere. We also have the case of the "lost" ten tribes of Israel, who legend says repented whole-heartedly of the behavior that led to their capture by the Assyrians and were eventually also taken from the Earth, perhaps. We have amazing satellite technology that has eliminated the thought that these people are hiding on some island or hitherto unknown place, so where did the larger part of Israel get to?  It seems that when the righteous come together, they are taken from the Earth by the hand of God, presumably to somewhere distant, maybe off the sphere entirely, no matter how fanciful that might seem.

In the time of this planet, the surface of the Earth has been changed, separating one land mass into different continents.  God says that he did this and proclaimed the land that we call North and South America as a chosen land for the righteous to dwell.  The miraculous "bringing" of the Jaredite, Nephite, and Mulekite nations to this chosen land are documented to varying degrees in the Book of Mormon, adding credence to the idea that God regularly separates the righteous from others, often by divinely inspired migrations.  It is no less telling that the seventeenth and eighteenth century Protestants braved the seas to come to the "New World" to practice a more biblical way of life and the nineteenth century Mormons fled Europe and the United States in order to pursue the restored Gospel in the Rocky Mountains.

Wherever the righteous are found, there always seems to be a migration and "gathering" involved, bringing them together.  Righteousness in concentration seems to increase it, so-much-so that it seems the only thing for the Lord to do is to ultimately take it away from this telestial world altogether and let its righteousness continue elsewhere for a time. In our own time, instead of gathering to one locality or two, we are instructed by God to remain physically dispersed as we can gather together through technology.  This time might be referred to as the Last Gathering, where the message of the Gospel will flood the whole earth and ultimately in no place will the words of God be inaccessible.  Further, in no location will the authorized servants of God and the saving ordinances they provide be unavailable.  It is an incredible time to live and to participate!

In the not-too-distant future, the chosen land of the Americas will be cleansed of unrighteous people, this time by plagues, famines, and such rather than a great flood, and the righteous of the Earth will be invited to migrate a "chosen land" once again, yet another enclave of righteousness.  All of the "fled" righteous people, those of Enoch and Melchizedek and Israel and perhaps others that we have no record of, will return to this place of gathering and endure the final destruction of the wicked when the entire Earth and all its people are cleansed and promoted to a terrestrial status and the millennium beyond.

I look forward to such things and I hope you do as well.

Navigiary Begins

After years of effort and trying to walk away from the thing, the first book of the Navigiary series: Escape, is finally out and available on the Kindle store.

There is also another blog that I have just for Navigiary. Surprisingly, I also allow commenting on that blog as well!

See what I have been working on all these years but know that Escape is but an introduction - the meat of the story is yet to come!

I am Harry Tuttle as well

A while back, I talked about my George Bailey circumstances.  Of course, some people will get confused and say that I am some sort of altruistic credit union sort, which I can be on the odd Thursday.

Archibald (Harry) Tuttle

I am more like Archibald (Harry) Tuttle, the rogue heating engineer in the Terry Gilliam movie "Brazil".

Harry Tuttle: Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6... Bloody paperwork.
Sam Lowry: I suppose one has to expect a certain amount.
Harry Tuttle: Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.

Like me, he tends to be competent, efficient, quietly conspiratorial, and appropriately paranoid.  Harry understands how his world really works and has found his own ways to cope that work well enough, although against all social norms.  Above all else, Harry Tuttle seems to eek out happiness and authentic purpose in a stupid and superficial world!  What a great guy!

Getting the Best of "31 Flavors"

I was a kid in Clovis, New Mexico and one of the things that my family did occasionally, as a treat, was visit the local Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Shop.  They had all those flavors (31 varieties was advertised at the time) and I could get a scoop of anything I wanted, although I was very, very shy and always went conservative with "Rocky Road" or some such.  It was a nice memory and good ice cream!

I don't know when I noticed it, but I finally figured out the concept of "taste spoons".  I suppose I was watching other kids and they would buzz around the counter like flies and constantly ask for a stream of free tastes of ice cream.  It didn't take me long to decide that these little devils were working some kind of pre-adolescent scam, abusing the marketing generosity of the shop just to "score" some free ice cream with no intention of ever really legitimately buying anything.

The shop in Clovis is now closed and I can only think it was because too much ice cream was being doled out for free on tiny taste spoons and not enough ice cream was getting purchased.  The whole point of the shop was selling ice cream products, not handing out an unlimited stream of free samples.  Promotional tastes of ice cream are fine, but at some point, you have to discriminate between paying customers and thieves that are taking your stock away one plastic spoon at a time!

This brings up a certain class of people that I absolutely abhor:  "free-stuff" hucksters.  People getting ice cream for free one tiny spoon at a time is just one example.  You have surely seen others.  There are the people selling intricate information about how to get grants and interest-free loans from the government by posing as something they are not.  There are the people who show you how to spend your life cutting coupons and saving hundreds of dollars on groceries that they would normally never have bought.  I have even heard of a guy that sells the free baseball caps he hoards at fairs and farm shows on eBay as his sole source of income!

These things are not illegal of course, but I find them distracting to the sort of honest life people might be living.  It is all just a variant of the classic "get-rich-quick" scheme designed for gullible people with, in this case, little "scamming" money.  Of course, people can spend their time on whatever they choose, but I hope there are better things to do with time and effort than trying to save or make a few pennies by working some small hustle.  For some people, this "free ride" becomes a severely limited lifestyle and desire is lost for a better, more expansive and fulfilling future.

The Hunt for a Cheap, Long, Light Sleeping Bag

I don't even like to talk about how many sleeping bags I have.

For years, in my camping and hiking adventures, pathetic though they may seem, I have always struggled with the problem of sleeping bags.  I am too tall apparently, and only relatively short people are supposed to do such things.  Of course, I am an anomaly in a lot of ways from other camper/hikers (besides all the other anomalies I have generally with humans), as I prefer my equipment ultra-cheap and relatively light, in that order.  If I pay more than $50 for a piece of equipment, I must really, really think it is going to save the world or some such.

Over time, I have collected an assortment of bags, each with features I had hoped that I would like, hoping one day to stumble upon that "holy grail" of fit, comfort, and utility.  Lightning hasn't struck yet, but even so far as yesterday, I keep trying.

Of course, when it comes to sleeping bags, cheap and light rarely come together.  I am told that part of the fun of camping and hiking is the procurement and testing of new equipment, but I have never gotten into that aspect particularly.  If a bag is lightweight, it costs a ton, as it is typically stuffed with down (a whole bunch of it) or contains some new-fangled synthetic batting that hasn't come down in cost yet.  The cheap bags end up being crammed full of shredded jeans or other recycled fluffy stuff (they may even have an asbestos one for all I know), so they end up weighing 5 or 6 pounds.  That's heavy, as Marty McFly would say on several levels.

Then, you couple that with the length issue.  I am 6'3'' tall and standard bags are cut all wrong for me, just like beds, pants, and just about everything else that seems to be standardized back in the days when 5'0" must have been the average height.  Tall bags are definitely made, but they seem to be a specialty item and the price reflects that.  By nature, a tall bag needs more material and more batting to cover more area, so it will also be heavier than standard, to add insult to injury.

Some cheap, tall, and light bags are actually starting to make an appearance, but I can now add a new criteria to the mix:  thermal rating!  The bag that meet my original criteria are often only rather down to 50 degrees and get described as "summer-only" bags.  That really doesn't work for me because I often car-camp on into the edges of winter, ending as late as December and picking up again as early as February.  However, as my lovely wife will attest, I am one hot-blooded guy and put out heat like a furnace, so I higher-temp-rated bag might actually work for me out of its intended season.  This would be the first example of a hope that I have always had about life which I call the Psychic Proximity Principle:  You will gravitate toward a place and circumstance that actually fit you and your nature.

So, I am brought back to the cunundrum.  But, I happened to be a Sam's Club yesterday and they had a Coleman 4-in-1 sleeping bag for about $30.  Of course, it weighs like it is filled with rocks, but I bought it and will try it out tonight for the car-camping that I do when I overnight for my work.  I have yet to even try a bag made for tall people (they say it works up to 6'6" or 6'4" depending on who you ask) and I am hoping it goes well.  I am really tired of having to fold myself like a pretzel to fit in a bag and stay warm!


Update:  Well, I used the bag on 8/3, but it was so hot all night long that I just opened it out and slept atop it.  It has a nice-feeling liner, which you can take out and use separately, which is one of its selling points.  So, I cannot say if it even fits, but I am hanging onto it.

Living Comment-Free Next to a Bear

I was just looking at other people's blogs and all the interesting comments that get attached to each post.  I suppose "interesting" is a bad word to use as I find many of them inane and just pointless.

When I started this blog a few days ago, I decided against entertaining comments.  I have seen too many creative people eaten alive by trying to interface a bit too much with their readers.  I once read the blog of a writer that I enjoy (the writer, not the blog) and it seemed like he was having such a time in the give-and-take of corresponding that he didn't have time to actually write books anymore.  He was busy answering endless questions about what his favorite food was and describing his writing process over and over again.  All this chatter just seemed to be hero worship and buzzing static, which I could never personally manage to work with or even alongside.

I long for the experience of writers from a hundred years ago.  You write a book.  It gets published.  You write and publish a few more books.  You made a good deal of money.  You buy a nice little retreat far from people, perhaps an island.  You may or may not write any more books.  Years later, People find your half decomposed corpse in a nice rocking chair with an shredded afghan pulled around your lap.  Maybe a Bear got to you.  Your chair facing toward a scenic landscape out the window.  Heavenly life.

You may notice that in my vision, People only show up after I am dead.  I like to keep People at a distance.  A few hundred miles seems good.  That is my vision for the future.

Okay.  Instead of working with single-mindedness toward my dream, I got married and now have six kids.  My wife likes People, at least some of them.  I now feel obligated to live in town, surrounded by People (rather than Bears).  God must have something else in mind for me rather than my plan, which I have apparently botched terribly so far.

So, in favor of trying to reclaim a few bits of my visions and dreams for my life, I choose not to bother with comments on this blog.  It took some time to convince Blogger that I didn't want comments.  It seems to think that blogs are all about the feedback, which I obviously don't want.  I think I disabled that feature somehow, but if you cunning readers come up with some way to circumvent my anti-response efforts, rest assured that I will ignore any comments you somehow force onto this blog.

Of course, please click on the ads, buy the books, and use the Amazon store to enrich my quest to acquire some distant hovel and rocking chair.  I may also need some money for that lobotomy for Lisa so she will actually be content with rocking beside me until the Bear comes and ends it all.  I suppose you can email if you really feel the need, but I may or may not respond.  I wouldn't want to get your hopes up...

As an aside, I would probably go stir crazy in that cabin and tear up the landscape for some diversion.  The Bear would likely feel compelled to put me out of my misery!

I don't even like bears.

Words to Strip From the Vocabulary

After I got rid of offense from the vocabulary of children in a previous post (vaguely Orwellian, I know), I recall how I excised the word fair from the household some years ago.  I made the kids stand up at the dinner table if they used it (which is not effective for hyperish kids like our twins), typically in phrases like "That's not fair".  The kids just used riaf (yes, fair spelled backward) as a substitute for "not fair", but it put the point across that one should not be expecting equal treatment, no matter what society promises.

Of course, this bothers lots of people, but my point is that you should not be expecting something that you are never going to get, as it just breeds a long stream of disappointments that tear the happiness from life.  Also, it may prevent the universal sin that many people have of being demanding, especially in matters that make other people's lives miserable.  The only thing worse than being unhappy is to build your own happiness from "happyy bits" you have torn away from other people.  You must help other people be happy, which will actually add to your happiness as well!  (Sounds syrupy, but it is true.)

Wanting the best for yourself and of yourself is one thing, demanding it from others is quite something else.  Of course, as parents training children, one must impress upon them how they must behave.  You can't treat children (especially your own) like little adults with rights they have not learned to handle!

On Being Offended

Everyone always focuses on a person who is being offended, their tender feelings, and moving mountains in defending that tender heart. I think it is high time we spend a bit more time on those who offend, what makes them so offensive, and either helping them or, more often, ourselves to change.

Now, I am certainly not advocating for some "anything goes" attitude about something as important as how people live.  There are such things as community standards and these need to be honored when we are out in public.  It is sad to see some glorified "do-good-er" from a far-away, culturally-denuded place come to an area and immediately begin working diligently (as only "community activists" can) to remove aspects of life that, here it comes, they find offensive.

As an eleven-year-old, I attended a tiny country school in a village called Grady in the arid grasslands of eastern New Mexico.  I was not a hunter, nor were my parents or grandparents, but it became obvious to me that everyone else in this area, where my mother's family has lived and worked for four generations, obviously love hunting quite a lot.  School was even interrupted during the late fall as the Hunter Safety Course came to town so that all the school children could attend before the beginning of the big deer and elk hunts.  This was a ranching and apparently, a hunting village.  Although I never participated, I tried to be supportive of the local cuture in my own ignorant way.  We got along well enough in spite of our cultural differences.

Now, a nice couple moved in from California, attracted by the cheap land, wide open spaces, abundant sunshine, and the cool, starry nights that are punctuated by coyote (a native wild dog) calls that are almost the calling cards of the American Southwest.  I suppose all was well until this gentle couple ran up against some local traditional cultural event which offended them:  the school-sponsored annual coyote shoot.

You see, in eastern New Mexico and most of the rest of the western US, coyotes are a menace. They chase down and kill livestock upon which ranchers and the economy that surrounds them depend.  Every time you eat a hamburger or a steak, it is because a coyote didn't manage to get to some cow first.  Since ranchers originally came to this area, killing a coyote has not only been legal year-round (there is no "season" for it as with other species) but has been rewarded by government payments.  Supporting the local economy is just that important!  In Grady, it is a major annual fund-raising event to kill as many coyotes as you can and bring the carcases to the government agent for payment.  At least, that's my understanding of it.

Now I know a bit about California as well;  I was born and raised in Orange County until I was eight-years-old.  I knew that beef came magically from some butcher shop and that it was wrong to kill any animal because they are all part of a beautiful circle of life upon which humans are evil predators.  Or so I was taught by Disneyland that was only five miles from my home.  I don't really think I had seen a dead animal, except on TV or as occasional street-kill, until I moved out to live in my mother's homeland on the prairie.

I can imagine that these nice California folks had taken many trips to "the West", slept in some fine B&Bs, watched the long stretches of yellow, brown, and red from their speeding automobile, met the cheery tourist trap operators along the interstate, and fallen in love with dressing in leather clothes, donning turquoise jewelry, and going "native American earth-mama" like Hollywood and popular culture portray.  Now that they finally sold their over-valued California home and bought their surprisingly large bit of "retirement" prairie, they get all upset about what it takes to live and work in a real ranching place.  Their precious coyote calls are occasionally silenced and, like paying admission to see a horror movie with a deceptive and enticingly romantic trailer, they started complaining loudly and demanding that things change to suit their postcard dreams.

Well, politics being what it is, the school had to pull out of the event it had sponsored for probably almost 100 years, all for offending two Californians who had arrived a few month earlier.  Fortunately, a local group of families held the event anyway and just gave the proceeds to the school - the culture has managed to limp forward somehow against the wishes of tourists.  Although probably angry at getting trumped in their desire to rescue the majestic "Santa-Fe-watercolor" coyote from those satanic ranchers, the "hippies" have come to the village and made their mark in destroying a culture and way of life.  I am sure they congratulate themselves often when they write home to their California friends and report how they are "civilizing" the heathen Westerners.

Of course, I don't know that couple at all and can be sure that I paint this situation unfairly, but it highlights the biggest problem I have with the whole concept of "offense":  the hideous things offended people force everyone around them to do.  If it wasn't so acceptable to be offended, this would be recognized as the most brutal tool of the passive-aggressive behavior!

I am against acts of force categorically.  I think much time and discussion should be invested into any decision to force any situation on others, especially if the person wanting force to be applied is new to the scene and not a real contributor to the local culture.  Of course, that is what a democratic government is designed to do: inflict the standards of one group on another through force.  However, we constantly hear a cacophony of shrill voices chanting that they are offended by one thing or another that other people are saying or doing, and that means something has to stop and has to stop right now.  I would even go so far as to call "taking offense" a variant of ethnic-cleansing and race-baiting.

The word "offended" should be excised from our vocabularies.  We should punish our children when they use it and we should ignore or (better) shun adults that say such unintelligent and over-emotionalized things.  So much wickedness and hemogeny (a terrible evil all its own) is bred by outside influences "tut-tutting" the ways and means that have served a people well for centuries.  So many places, livelihoods, and ways-of-life have been eliminated by the far-too-often whined and Disney-esque emotional offense.

So, the next time you go out of your way to placate someone who is being offended, remember Grady and that something that contributed to their life and livelihood has been stolen away from them, just to please the convenient sensibilities of some outsiders.  Don't let it happen and don't ever allow yourself to become offended!