Category Archives: Mission

What if the Mission of the USA Is to Demonstrate Democracy?

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Originally posted June 11, 2011

[mp3j track=”Liberty_Tree.mp3″ title=”Liberty Tree – by Stan Satlin –  © 2011″ Loop=”false” autoplay=”n” flip=”y”]     Audio: click arrow to play/pause

In the previous blog post we asked the question, “What are we here for?” “We” in this case being the United States of America. (Of course, asking this question of oneself, “What am I personally here for?”, is one of the highest uses of the mind, and we recommend it as a meditation — but that is a subject for another posting.)

We didn’t propose any answer to that question and instead invited readers to ponder it for themselves and come up with their idea of what the Mission of the USA is — or should be.

In the post before that, we offered a starting list of 14 things that all people should be able to expect of their government, implicit in the evolved social contract between and among individuals and the nation to which they pay taxes. Making the tacit explicit is always a good idea in any kind of contract or simple oral agreement — being explicit about what otherwise would be hidden assumptions prevents bad feelings (or worse) from happening later on.

On that list of 14 items, one of them is “Democracy (sharing control)”. In that posting I suggested that some of the items on the list could be combined with other items, so the eventual list would probably be shorter. Now let’s consider for a moment that Democracy could be the linchpin, or cause, around which all the other items on the list exist as effects.

Why postulate that Democracy could achieve so much — clean air, fair prices, and all of the other 14 things on the list? Because if people are effectively sharing control, in the end they will do what is best for the people, to the extent that they can figure out what works and what doesn’t — even if only by trial and error.

Not everyone believes this. To those who believe in Aristocracy or even Meritocracy, Democracy is tantamount to mob rule, and can go in any direction right or wrong; like putting one’s life in the hands of fools.

Plato in his Republic described pure Democracy being able to work in a polis (city) of 1000 well-informed and well-educated citizens. Most philosophers since have interpreted Plato to mean that Democracy would break down in larger numbers of people, and perhaps Plato did mean that. However, Plato did not have the Internet. Perhaps with TV, radio, print, outdoor, the Internet, Mobile, Social Media used in the right way together, the citizenry could be educated, kept well-informed, and their brain power tapped and aggregated quickly — resulting in working Democracy across hundreds of millions of people.

Or perhaps the polis idea still holds, and people should self-rule within small pieces of geography, and then those geographies vote. In principle, this is not so far from the USA plan — if citizens had stayed involved in politics in their communities, which very few of us have done. Possibly the messes we now see would not have gone so far out of control had we not abdicated the right to stay involved politically within our local areas.

Can there be a realistic process to bring ourselves back to the ideals on which our country was founded?

To be realistic, such a Renaissance Project would need to involve the private and voluntary sectors as well as the public sector — and would probably need to be driven by the private sector, as it appears to be the least poorly functioning of the three sectors, especially when the profit motive is tempered by the will to do good for all.

If we think novelistically about a plausible scenario, the first vision that pops to mind is an Internet company launching a fun, social, massively multiplayer realtime gamelike site, that quickly and virally attracts a huge loyal audience, in which the main game is to “Sim” (in the sense of the successful videogame series) running the world as it exists today.

If designed with social awareness, it throws off huge profits from advertising while tithing 10% of gross revenues to philanthropy, the money allocated according to the Democratic process — the vote of the site’s audience.

If the site also attracts audiences outside the U.S., even in countries that are not anything like Democracies, so much the better.

Do we citizens of the United States still believe in Democracy as intensely as Jefferson and all of the Founding Fathers did? The Founders enshrined the “consent of the governed” in the Declaration of Independence. Hobbes, Rousseau and John Locke had “invented” the ideas of social contract (consent of the governed) in the 1600s–1700s, and Rousseau’s 1762 treatise came only 14 years before the American Revolution. Locke’s term “natural rights” was invoked in the framework for our country, as no country before it or since.

If the mission of the USA is to demonstrate Democracy, then let’s make it the inspiring core of a new energy in this country. Some specifics on how we might do that — ideas worth testing perhaps — in upcoming blog postings here.

Best to all,

Bill

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What is the True Mission of the U.S.A.?

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Originally posted June 3, 2011

[mp3j track=”I_am_an_American_original.mp3″ title=”I Am an American – by Stan Satlin –  © 2011″ Loop=”false” autoplay=”n” flip=”y”]     Audio: click arrow to play/pause

What is it that we are striving to achieve as a nation, our Purpose on Earth?

What did Tom Paine expect of us, or George Washington?

If we do not know our purpose then no matter what good we may achieve on the face of the Earth, we will be rudderless inside. We won’t know where we’re going or how we want to get there. We will be guided by the plan du jour. Any good we do will be random, grasping at straws of tactical opportunity to head toward the seeming good at that moment – and we have seen how repeatedly in history who or what at first seems good turns out to be not as good as we thought.

What is worse, during a period when we have forgotten our purpose, the nation will be contributing little to the spiritual nourishment of its citizens. Yes, I said spiritual – a nation owes it to its citizens to create an environment where the citizenry finds it easy to slip into feelings greater than their individual selves, and can act on and become those feelings through and through. In the previous post I referred to that perhaps too vaguely as the “Facilitation of individual development” – I probably should have specified physical, intellectual, intuitional, emotional, perceptual, and spiritual development.

Despite separation of Church and State, and widely ranging opinions as to the spiritual details of the Founding Fathers’ notions of the nature of reality, no one can deny the spiritual resonance of the words that led to our nation’s birth.

Are these not spiritual words: Liberty, Equality, Justice. They evoke a state – albeit typically all too brief – where our emotional being is swept up into something larger than our personal self. In the current hyper culture this brief flash of inspiration might go by too fast for consciousness to notice it.

Those words used by the Founders are spiritual words. Words that refer to, and evoke, states of spiritual sensitivity – openness to the duty we owe others, owe the Universe, owe in fact to God, whatever you conceive Him to be. Ideals that many humans envy but consider pragmatically irrelevant in their actual moment-to-moment dog-eat-dog lives here in the hypersphere*.

Regardless of the efficacy of those words then or at times like WWII or today, even when a nation fails to nurture spiritual ideals as part of its heritage, in our moment to moment existence on Earth we must consider the measurable value of being a nation focused on spiritual ideals.

If we could be that inspired nation again – or if we are still that nation right now but not taking enough notice of it – then one way or another it is time to tap into that tide of human positive emotion that can energize creative thought and enable right action.

So let’s consider again – what is our true mission as a nation?

In the absence of creative thought and in the heat of trepidatious events, piling up one after the other without respite over decades, the country has accepted its present mantle of world cop – protecting the weak from aggressors.

What if that isn’t the main point of our existence?

It would be terrible to have accepted the role of world’s cop, and then fifty or a few hundred years later when the world has become a rational and emotionally positive society, a cop is no longer needed. Or the role that had been cop in mean times is ever sinking down to a kind of nudnik level, solicitously protecting people from themselves in pestering ways. America, the world’s nudnik?

We have the opportunity now to choose our own destiny. Let’s as a nation agree on what it is. And let’s start the dialogue, here and now. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

Best to all, Bill

*Not in the sense of spheres in four or more dimensions, but in the sense of the Earth in Acceleritis™.

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Do What You’re Inspired to Do

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At Any Given Moment

Volume 4, Issue 21

Our moment of history may be called “The Accelerolithic Era” by those living thousands of years from now who study records of our period (even if they’re Martians). Since written records began (and I theorize because of written language) our information pressure per day has been exponentially accelerating. I call the resulting condition of humanity “Acceleritis”. Perhaps some remote indigenous people have not yet succumbed to this syndrome — I hope so for their sakes.

One of the components of Acceleritis is that we never have enough time to get done all the things we feel we ought to do.

This is a pandemic shock reaction to the effects of ever-mounting stimuli that set up “anti-closures” in our mind. These “anti-closures” (“sanskaras” in Sanskrit) are circuits that have taken an interest in some stimulus but now have unasked questions about that stimulus or the things immediately associated with the stimulus. (For a more Technical and Theoretical Description, see below.)

Every time you note interest in something, like the things your eyes land upon, this is what is happening in your brain, and we are definitely unaware of at least 99% of it.

Because of an apparently innate drive for closure, and the seeming impossibility of ever reaching closure on everything the mind desires closure on, we are uneasy at most times but have gotten used to it.

The feeling of always being behind speeds up our actions to the point of increasing errors requiring fixing, thus slowing us down and making us feel even more behind with no apparent hope of ever catching up.

We also repress the sense of needing closure, thus purposely ignoring hints from the subconscious asking us to contemplate things we have done that we regret, people we have not forgiven, and philosophical questions that once fascinated us and are central to life. We push stuff back down into that repressed area, which enlarges the unconscious at the expense of the conscious.

Some or all drug addiction may be traceable to this phenomenon.

Don’t Overthink It

During your work day or at play, you are often not sure what to do first. Do what most inspires you at that moment. Why? Because that way the chances are higher that you’re doing it in the Flow state, which never occurs when you are doing something because you should do it. I call that “doing it to get it out of the way”.  Flow state only occurs when you are enjoying what you are doing, and doing it solely or mainly for its enjoyment.

If you’re in the grip of Acceleritis and held down below the Observer state, you’ll not know what inspires you more to do next, X or Y or Z. The solution here is to  just let your body go and watch what it does. The body often makes decisions before the mind is consciously aware of making the decision. It’s the same decision. It’s the reflection of both the mind and body, both of those phenomena being aspects of the One Consciousness.

Don’t Be Email/Text/Tweet/Social Media Driven

It has become all too easy in the Accelerolithic Era to become driven by incoming email, texts, Tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts — meaning you don’t decide what to do next, you react to the ubiquitous digital input stream. This goes on all day and you become a willing slave to this digital input stream.

It’s helpful to let people know the times each day you’ve set aside to catch up with emails and texts and whatever else is queueing up.

Meditation

Meditation — the mind observing itself — is the most efficient way to allow assimilation and closure of the most salient “anti-closures” bugging your mind subconsciously at any given point in time.

Like trying to remember a name, meditation does not work by “trying to do it”, it works by erasing everything going on inside and continuing to erase as thoughts/feelings/images/hunches arise. You’re allowed to jot down notes for later, using trigger words that will bring back the whole thought-train, and then resume the emptying out.

Here’s a quick YouTube video on the subject: Erase.

Best to all,

Bill

More Technical Theoretical Description

On the formation of “anti-closures”:

  1. These new pathways initially must be along established neurons. There they modify connectivity with other neurons by subtle chemical changes at the synapses caused by the mental state cascading from the reception of the stimulus.
  2. Longer term, new neuron growth is hypothesized stemming from the same causative event. Such growth helps the circuit continue to exist and occasionally “speak up” in the senate of the mind when the mental subject comes near the thoughts (or sub-thoughts) suggested by the stimulus.​

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You Are The Universe: Imagine That is now available. Read an excerpt and watch my videos where I talk about the book.