An American Perspective: Volume Four (2019-2020)

By Garrison Gibson

The author's point of view of contemporary events and American national interests during 2019 and 2020 are essayed in this contemporary historical review of more than a quarter million words. Garrison C. Gibson took a minor in history and philosophy (depth concentrations at Excelsior College) and has an eclectic, egalitarian approach to considering the issues concerning the body politic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716911781

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An American Perspective - Volume Four (2019-2020)

ISBN 9781716911781

Copyright

©2020 Garrison Gibson

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An American Perspective volume four is a compilation of essays written on U.S. national interests and contemporary affairs the author regarded to be worth addressing in the years 2019 and 2020.

Garrison C. Gibson took a minor in history and philosophy (depth concentrations at Excelsior College) reading more philosophy and history outside of college than in. He evaluates political and social works from a classical point of view. Analysis of contemporary affairs presenting in the course of American history provides plenty of material for evaluation, occasional criticism and suggestions for better and/or alternative development. This volume comprise somewhat more than a quarter million words. Hyperlinks used in the essays were removed for this volume while some hyperlinks are included.

Essays

Quantum Field Theory and Immanuel Kant

6/17/20

The 18th century German philosopher contributed numerous important ideas to the advance of philosophy. Some of Immanuel Kant’s most well known concepts concern epistemology and logic regarding how people think about the world they experience. The world people experience cognitively, interactively, the world of sight and sound as Rod Serling might have said, is phenomenal in Kant’s lexicon. One may consider it with a posteriori, a priori and synthetic a priori judgments. The phenomenal world exists in contrast to the noumenal. The noumenal is the world as it really is in-itself (to borrow Sartre’s terminology). There is quite a difference between the world and things of the world that are perceived by humans and the things or substance of the world as it actually is for-itself.

Quantum field theory is a way of describing the fields in which quanta of energy occur. The electromagnetic field is one such field and the Higgs field is an example of another. The Higgs field is of special interest these days because its description is mostly undefined and its existence allows particles of other fields to slow down enough to have a third dimension instead of just two dimensions as they are flattened traveling at a velocity near the speed of lights where Einstein’s special theory of relativity kicks in to affect mass and energy. To a certain extent Kant’s phenomenal world is comparable to the actual world of the mass of the Universe that has three dimensions because of the action of the Higgs field on all particles.

It is said that mass is convertible to energy and vice versa and that mass is a secondary quality of energy. Like the phenomenal world of appearance that is present when humans observe it with select cognitive capabilities and with a particular molecular composition that allows certain kinds of interactions with non-self mass/energy, the world that physicists observe of the quantum realm in field theory descriptions of where packets of energy known as mass probably occur is a phenomenal world with somewhat deeper structural characteristics than the more general and topological phenomenal realm of experience. Maybe the boundary or frontier of the deepest intuited noumenal realm keeps moving back to deeper, unfathomable regions more remote from common sense.

Kant’s noumenal realm today might be thought of as that of pure, unknowable energy for-itself that emits all of the energy and fields that appear as a phenomenal world and Universe. If the noumenal realm of pure energy is unknown, so is its nature. Pure energy for itself may be conscious and without spatial or temporal location; it could be without dimensions or any determinative quality that would reduce it to a finite status. If it were thought of as a string-cable of pure energy there could be an infinite number of Universe-phenomenalities-for-others that arise in an infinite number of spaces, perhaps like solar flares from a star- the topic is interesting to consider, and one of the challenges is that the possibilities lead readily to theological speculations in addition to the problem of considering a no-dimensional, non-space-time pure energy being in-itself as the basis for all fields that exists as they run through their thermodynamic quantity of original energy.

Black Deaths Matter; Improve Police Non-Lethal Arrest Methods

6/17/20

Black deaths from Police encounters matter. A Democracy that is more or less egalitarian except for great economic inequalities should not accept lethal arrest procedures as any sort of normal condition. While the statistics do not show much of a race factor in the killings considering that white people have a most common age 30 years older than blacks and also have a near zero population growth, killing people as a method of arrest is wrong unless it involves extreme circumstances such as hostages, armed robberies, terrorism and etc.

One gets the feeling that some police regard a gun and shootings as if it were a video game. A killing of a black man who ignored a female police officer in Oklahoma last year showed that shooting people because of frustration or incapability of making an arrest is not discouraged sufficiently. Any citizen should feel safe walking the streets of the nation, and of course that includes a police presence. Even so police should be able to use non-lethal methods to subdue offenders resisting arrest.

A choke hold or headlock is one of the most common roughhouse grappling holds that even children use in fights. If it is to be entirely replaced training police officers in M.M.A. skills for a year before hitting the streets will perhaps become necessary for the safety of policemen. In a fight police of course can use in the hold as may any citizen in self-defense. Common sense however will inform anyone including police that the hold must be released before the individual on whom it is applied is killed. A possible circumstance would be if a policeman has already been shot and stabbed and to release the hold would afford the attacker an opportunity to finish the killing of the policemen too weak to otherwise defend.

The Original Political Sin

6/17/20

The will to dominate and subjugate others including their interiority (e.g. thoughts) is the primary political sin.

A secondary quality of the original sin is deceiving others about another individual or individuals concerning what they think, do, their history, goals etc. Misrepresentation and dissimulation reinforce the primary political sin.

In case one wonders about the relation of political sin to original sin the bridge (shared rem) is thermodynamics and the human trait of the need to consume energy including others.

John chapter 6-"47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me

hath everlasting life.

48 I am that bread of life.

49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are

dead.

50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven,

that a man may eat thereof, and not die.

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven:

if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the

bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the

life of the world.

52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying,

How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto

you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink

his blood, ye have no life in you.

54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath

eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink

indeed.

56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,

dwelleth in me, and I in him.

57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the

Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

58 This is that bread which came down from heaven:

not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that

eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught

in Capernaum.

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard

this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?"

Matthew chapter 26 : 26"¶ And as they were eating, Jesus    took bread, and

blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and

said, Take, eat; this is my body.

27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to

them, saying, Drink ye all of it;

28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is

shed for many for the remission of sins.

29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this

fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with

you in my Father's kingdom."

Though faith in Jesus humans overcome the criterion of original sin. The Lord provides the atoning sacrifice replacing human nature with his own.

New Names for Old Forts, etc.

6/13/20

Some politicians seek to appease rioters by renaming U.S. Army Forts after the race that rioted most recently. Ft. Hood was named for the one-armed Confederate General who lost the battle of Atlanta and fled toward Charleston, S.C. with Sherman in hot pursuit. Hood was a tough guy though not a professional soldier at all- he had replaced the ineffective General Bragg who was relieved from those concluding defensive battles on the S.W. front. I have a few suggestions for more suitable names for those two forts.

The preferred alternative for Ft. Hood is Ft. Benavidez. The S.W. is becoming largely Hispanic and naming a fort for the excellent soldier awarded a medal of honor would be inspirational for many enlistees who would admire the former Green Beret with one of the more glorious records that is second to none. There are more possibilities for the tanker base such as Ft. George Patton, Ft. Crazy-Horse, Ft. Taxes and Fort Tubman.

Renaming a fort is tough business. It is like making a choice of running mate that former Vice President Joe Biden is facing. So let’s consider Ft. Bragg’s possible new names carefully.

Ft. Eisenhower works best in my opinion. Honorable mentions go to Ft. Bobby Fischer, Ft. Bowie, Ft. Fitness, Fort Armstrong and Fort Pac-man.

Keeping U.S. military facilities named for those white men of the confederacy defending human slavery is bad P.R. for white men. As a minority on the planet white men don’t need to shoot themselves in the foot voter speaking, associating themselves with symbols of oppression and inhumanity.

If white men are to have a good place in the future national and world societies amid a majority of non-whites on Earth they need to be the best examples themselves of the philosophy of the founders. That is, equal justice, equal rights, an egalitarian distribution of wealth, freedom from tyranny and today, a recovering world ecosphere should to be regarded by the people of the world as good works of white American men that benefit everyone. Strong national border security for a secure electorate can only exist with strong popular support from all of a nation’s citizens that recognize their own valuable personal interests and those of the ecosphere being reinforced by a stable population with secure borders.

If white men choose to be known as slick capitalist oppressors without true allegiance to national borders and ideals or respect for the citizens of the nation so much as viewing them as utilitarian objects for exploitable labor it is likely their interests will decline amid a restive populous. Since 10% of Americans will soon own 90% of the national income white men of the 90% would be rather daft chumps as well. White men instead should be known for personifying the best democrat ideals of all human beings (that does not mean the most libertine or decadent).  While all men and women should have the ideals of the founders in their hearts regardless of race, it is evident that the retardant failure of an advantaged class of white men with regressive social views are particularly harmful to their own race that aren’t in the 10% or 1%.

Changing the names of a couple of forts given confederate labels that have outlived their usefulness should be a trivial matter for President Trump. Democrat party opposition will attack the President with vague demands of allegiance on voters for support of marginally productive policies the President disdains such as environmentalism. President Trump doesn’t want to alienate select southern voters, yet the number of confederate racist cranks is far fewer than independents that support equal justice across the south.

Not everyone in the world believes or wants an aristocracy of plutocrats, elite communists, aloof oppressive imperials and media that control and own most wealth while the 90% have just a minority of national or global income, making life bad for all, minimizing  efficiency of human potential, and leading periodically to economic disaster and/or war for various reasons not the least of which is the massive majority are regarded as trashy subjects of the rich that can be pacified with media, dope and occasional riots. So carefully choosing a populist name, one that supports the ideals of the 90% rather than the 10% could be useful. The 1% are globalists; their interests differ quite a bit from democratic, economically egalitarian, free enterprise oriented, limited capital concentration, ecologically responsible nationalists.

Actual Facts about Police Killings vs. Arrests in U.S.A.

6/8/20

There is a lot of loose talk and virtually urban myth about police killings in America. One often hears that two and a half times as many blacks are killed as whites, and twice as many Hispanics as whites in support of the idea that the cause is racism. There is more to it than that.

Violent crime is decreasing in the U.S.A. during the Trump administration. Still the F.B.I. estimated that in 2018 there were 1,206,836 violent crimes. Some sources report that police made ten and a half million arrests in 2019 and that four and a half million Americans went to jail. The Washington Post reported that about 1000 Americans are killed by police every year. That statistic seems reasonable considering how many arrests and violent crimes occur each year although of course it would be best if there were none.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww5GXbk58R0 Bad Company

There are a couple of obvious reasons that blacks have a little more than twice as many people being killed as whites though blacks are a minority in comparison to whites;

1) Blacks have a much higher birth rate than white and many more youth

2) The most common age of whites is 58, of blacks 27 and of Hispanics 11.

Older adults with just two children per family or less are more stable and don’t commit the kind of crimes that a younger, restive, uneducated urban black youth might-especially those in gangs, thus police interact with them more and some fatalities occur. Using racism as a coverall explanation for the higher percent of blacks being killed than whites seems intended to provoke racism in America at least among blacks.

If 50-60 something whites begin hanging out on street corners to form criminal gangs increasing muggings and drug trafficking it is certain that they will experience more adverse contact with police.

Incidentally there have been more than 60 million abortions in the U.S.A. since Roe v. Wade and most of those babies were white, though blacks were a close second; 49% for whites, 40% for blacks. As a minority blacks have a higher percentage of abortions these days. I would guess that is because whites have already achieved ZPG and use more contraception.

https://nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf

https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/state-indicator/abortions-by-race/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/2018/05/03/d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/most-common-age-among-us-racial-ethnic-groups/

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2018-crime-statistics

One might wonder why anyone should care about rationality when rioting and marching can perhaps help elect a Democrat to the White House and the answer is? (Probably no Democrats).

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/good-policing-saves-black-lives 

Anthem Anathema, Riots, Ethics and Economics

6/8/2020

Recently the onerous issue of football players protesting during the national anthem returned to the public square under the category of all things blacks find wrong with America loosely affiliated with law enforcement brutality. With the D-Day commemoration just past it is worth considering the moral rightness or wrongness of holding the national anthem hostage to knee-taking millionaire protesters. Lebron James brought the subject up in a tweet regarding compliance with disrespecting the national anthem for partisan racial purposes as the sole morally correct choice in a right or wrong disjunctive paradigm. I wrote a post on moral norms last year that reviewed some of the philosophical ground from one approach concerning macro-social behavior that I will include following a couple of comments.

Colin Kapernik’s original organization of national anthem protests seemed like a kind of intifada against the anthem itself, or an interminable protest without an end in sight because of the lack of particular demands for releasing the anthem-hostage. Black Americans since the end of the civil war in 1865 have fared collectively worse than some other Americans economically speaking because of their racial, cultural and color clash with integrating normally with lighter-skinned people with better education and technically more proficient culture back in the day.  Slavery was an economic choice of avaricious ruling classes of prior centuries that made educating and integrating former slaves a problem for everyone else to the present day. Race as a political issue is easy to recognize and use for dividing the body politic helping to keep income inequality among abstract American masses going. Race as a motive to drive blacks to street protests and riots during the Covid 19 milieu may bring about the needless deaths of 10 to 20 thousand blacks that may contact the illness from marchers infected during marches.

It is said that the Tsar when experiencing attacks on himself and the Russian aristocracy would prompt a program of Jews to keep the masses distracted; race politics serve much the same purposes in keeping the masses occupied with intractable problems without solutions arising to end problems that require a more egalitarian income equality for all non-rich American regardless of race.

Millionaires of pro sports taking a knee of protest during the national anthem are perhaps willing pawns of the most rich that pay them. Taking a knee during a half-time show in support of national income equality was an alternative possible time-slot that would have disambiguated the perceptible attack on the national anthem, nation and one race against another.

The anthem attack, or anathema crap, could be construed as a support for globalism and basic anti-Americanism from millionaires of the hyper-meritocratic ilk that have made income inequality in the United States about the greatest on Earth. General racism can be a great diversionary issue to cover and conceal the deeper and objective problem of income inequality that is keeping the half of the populace living with just 4-5% of the national income.

Correcting that problem is the greatest economic challenge facing the nation now along with the shared top-rank problem of ecological sustainability economic transition. Income inequality has occurred in every society under the old order of classical economics, yet it is mal-adapted today with the demographics of the people of the planet and the natural tendency to repress intellectual potential of the masses of the poor not just national, but globally. More egalitarian income allocations and opportunity will promote greater human efficiency in maximizing human potential for productivity, invention and learning.

Racism that is subjective is psychological and personal and will always be present. Objective social structures and measurable, quantifiable income inequality can however be corrected by the will of competent congressional legislation and government such as may exist if competent individuals are elected and the broadcast media doesn’t always screw everything up because they are owned by the wealthiest Americans.

Objectively speaking, organizational management is virtually a science. Correcting police management deficiencies through numerous means including legislative should be easy to accomplish. Correcting income inequality isn’t too easy because of the political and media power of concentrated wealth that may control American democracy as a kind of black-box.

In brief the richest control maybe 20% of national capital and are few in number of less than 1% of the 1% of wealthiest Americans. A grossly overpaid hyper meritocratic class of elite managers are aristocrats loyal to the most rich and their existing structure of income inequality. The corporate management class is globalist as are the elite rich and keep American wages suppressed through numerous means including cheap foreign labor, illegal immigration and low minimum wages. One simple remedy to keep U.S. wages competitive with cheap foreign labor would be to pass a law requiring corporations to share profit-dividends with their workers who could build capital even while their wages are low. Another remedy would be free public education through graduate school; free education eliminates basic inability of the poor to afford education at higher levels easily affordable for the prosperous.

The present structure of national income inequality is not the best one for meeting the demographic and environment challenges of the nation and world in the present- the existing structure is built on certain empirical assumptions of the past environmentally and educationally that are no longer valid. Free enterprise and capitalism can function within structures that are far more egalitarian and efficient at promoting human health, education and security in addition to ecospheric restoration to robust health.

Contemporary democracy ought to evolve to a transparent state with a well-informed electorate living within egalitarian income equality criteria who understand the demographic and environmental limits and challenges facing themselves and the entire planet and working to solve those challenges. Everyone should have basic income security and with free enterprise and capitalism reformed to a more egalitarian and ecospherically configured condition.

Hume- Is, Ought and What Not of Moral Norms

All prescriptive theory is quite a large field that isn't even finished. Formal logic and the square of opposition has the A proposition being 'All are". One learns to be very careful with that. All are x or none are x can allow zero exceptions to be true. Hume wanted to disprove cause and effect relationships, so he necessarily would have pointed out the looseness of 'is' propositions to 'ought' or should propositions, quite reasonably.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/

Prescriptive theories can be applied in fields beside moral philosophy, and in some case the formal logical tests would be applied equally and in others the tests fall outside of simple formal logic and within larger structures for analysis that might best be compared to dead reckoned sailing judgments. Rather than being logically rigorous propositions formally the use was analytical. One could say for instance that 1 + 3 equals 4 and the answer they provided is 5, and they ought to have written '4'. That kind of statement is reasonable.

Moral propositions though, unlike Kant's categorical imperative that has some logical validity in a dead reckoning sort of way, are descriptive of actually existing human behavior and suggestions to improve that in some cases. In others it could be a simple observational use of the word 'ought' for a moral circumstance where variant behavior did not comply with the prevailing idea of the normal correct behavior.

An example for that might be that a baby is crawling across a street amidst heavy traffic, the mother is lying on the sidewalk knocked out from a falling brick, and a passerby walks past the scene and allows the baby to be squished by a truck when he could have easily rescued the tyke from the road. While not legally responsible to rescue the infant, a police officer that saw the scene from a distance says to his partner the the rogue ought to have saved that baby. 

https://www.livescience.com/solution-to-worst-prediction-in-physics.html

Experience of exigent circumstances are rather subjective and conditional, yet descriptive and normative (prescriptive) ethics describe situations in space-time, Situations that are recurrent can be emergent though not unique. Consider the Nurmagomedov vs. Porier UFC 242 fight- It was like a martial arts match where each knew various katas or forms. None were unique or original, and there is lots of prescriptive analysis about what ought to have been done to get outcome A, B. or C. Prescriptive ethics about what people think they should do probably never would be over regarding humans. Hume's Fork (good point) about empiricism and rationalism going separate paths, disregarded by Kant, might be a subject of more modern philosophical research in the developments of 20th century empiricism and Ayer's book 'Language, Truth and Logic' wherein only empirically based statements-more scientific ones, had validity and the remainder were psychological and subjective. W.V.O. Quine broke that paradigm in 'The Two Dogmas of Empiricism'. Epistemologically speaking the separability of the world and statements about it was renormalized or returned to something closer to a Kantian rather than Humean position. I think a lot of moderns like Dewey's paradigm of everything being subjective, and so they like Hume's ideas. He seemed to want to dismiss common ideas about the relation between words and objects-fair enough, yet he went too far in several ways, from a much later point of view in regard to subsequent developments.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics

Normative ethics are also known as prescriptive ethics that are usual contrasted with descriptive ethics. Hume created an epistemological battle taken up by Kant. The resolution of the epistemological war was settled by logic and logical analysis of the relation between words and objects. Ethics falls into valleys between the hilltops of epistemology and logic. Subjectivists like Hume later tended to justify moral paradigms with epistemology that broke the ties between rationality and the world itself experienced by individuals. Prescriptive theory is an ethics about what people think they should do in a particular circumstance, descriptive theory is about what people actually do.

Black Democrats Riot in More than 14 Cities across the Nation

5/31/2020

Of note this month as Summer Solstice draws near is the rise of seasonal rioting in many American cities by mostly black Democratic voters. A white policeman apparently murdered a black man by kneeling on his throat for seven minutes that stopped the victim from breathing. Someone filmed the incident and riots immediately began with looting and burning in lieu of equal protection of the law. In this era of ubiquitous cameras and social media uploads the need for riots to serve instead of regular legal procedures isn’t too credible.

Criminal events such as murders are not soon going to be entirely stopped, thus a mad rush to riot when a single crime occurs without any particular change in the law as an object for protesting or looting, burning and rioting is not easily justifiable. Unfortunately social media can generate emotions that can cause mass social irrational choices such as rioting to be made. Crimes occur in every occupation of society including law. If a policeman commits a crime that is recorded for social media that cannot be a justification for the retribution of several million crimes through rioting.

The riots caused many to be arrested and harm their employment prospects needlessly, in the future after the economy starts to recover from Covid 19 recession. Also noteworthy is the fact that the failure of social distancing by rioters will perhaps cause hundreds of blacks to lose their lives to Covid 19, needlessly. Former rioters aren’t likely to cooperate with contact-tracing work either.

There is an American tradition of public demonstrations and protest marches with deep roots i.e. the Army Vet Bonus demonstrations in D.C., those led by Dr. King and anti Vietnam War rallies. Demonstrations that are effect have actual legal or political measures that want specifically changed. Politicians in the U.S.A. aren’t inevitably the brightest bulbs and have a need to know what legislation protestors actually want done if they are to work to that end; it is not enough to say that ‘the system’ is at fault and trust that some ethereal insights will appear to politicians whom will then fix it. If the protests are about economics then particular economic remedies need be advanced if change or reform is to occur.

The United States isn’t a dictatorship that can have a single individual change everything the way he wants or if a benevolent one (an oxymoron usually) would adapt the economy to conform to the expressions of protestors. With 50 states governments and a federal government that made permanent tax cuts to very low levels during the Obama era with a Democrat-controlled congress the ability to reshape the national economy is very difficult. Protestors that want to change the economy should have an idea of what and how they want economics or political economy to change and let the public know instead of working unintelligent tantrum-rioting.

Many Americans would like the economy to change too, besides black Democrat rioter-voters. A move toward ecological economic would be good, and it could have a guaranteed minimum income, free tuition through graduate school and a free walk-in national health service for the poor. Capitalism could be reformed so no-one could invest in more than three corporations at a time or have more than 300 times the income of an average worker. If human life productivity efficiency is to be maximized everyone needs adequate capital and good health to not fall into deep, dark whirlpools and undertows of social economic evils the comfortable and aloof are often unaware of (including well of technicians that fawn over the ideals of the rich).

Rioters of average or below average intellect with little to do with their lives that could be regarded hopefully or productively encounters average policemen that interact all day with criminals that are controlled by politicians of average intellect without a lot of good ideas for reforming capitalism or to ecological economics. Expecting miracles in economics from uncomprehending average people without the ability to reform global corporate power and the concentration of wealth in 1% of national citizens is daft. Electing neo-liberals would produce more rich neo-liberal politicians that would probably not do much for poor Democrat rioters to make meaningful economic reform inclusive of ecological sustainability and healthy wilderness portions of flora and fauna. Wealth is built up slowly, annually; rioting is the antinomy of that. One of the greatest economic injuries the poor can experience is simply termination of work and discontinuity in the process of slowly building up their own capital. With the recent Covid 19 problems perhaps millions of people may experience home mortgage problems as they did a little more than a decade ago during the housing crisis. It seems that every decade or so some crisis appears that trims home buyers to subvert their slow acquisition of capital. It is the one per centers that profit from national crisis well as Wall Street in regard to political power- racism misses the point entirely when so many white people live paycheck to paycheck themselves.

The economy in the U.S.A. today is quite complex, and millions of people of all races experience a log-rolling contest of trying to stay meaningfully employed. Balzac’s published a book in 1835 named Pere’ Goriot concerning the issue of inherited capital versus labor as a better way of building wealth. Balzac found that the advantages of inherited wealth were so great that the work of labor was comparatively inefficient. The U.S.A. today concentrates wealth because of the shape of the economy that accentuated consumerism rather than saving, and illegal immigration laborers to help expand the economy and increase of capital. I wonder if black rioters have a clue about the way economics work or of the relationships between capital, labor, national income and ecological health.

Black culture in the United States has a much higher birth rate than that of the white population that is about zero population growth. There usually is a higher savings rate when demographic growth is stable. Disparities between different cultures and the sort of economic activity they pursue are interwoven with demographic and cultural facts, labor supply and demand and the kind of quality growth versus quantity growth economics that benefit from intellectual versus physical labor. Stable societies have better situations for educating fewer children than rapidly growing and poorer cultures. It is ironic that black democrats support illegal alien immigration that directly soaks up wages and work opportunities for physical labor such as were more common for American men in the 1950s.

I think there is no simple remedy for the challenges facing American black societies yet I am fairly sure that rioting exacerbates the problems as does racism. If blacks have good scientific education and support good scholarship values then they likely would find more work opportunities with the global corporations that employ so much of the work force today. If there were 10 million Americans of the 320 million citizens who actually make or invent new materials for qualitative improvements to the economy isn’t it better to be one of the ten million rather than one of the rest that fabricate or distributes product, finance or serve the people using new material product? A culture that reinforces qualitative materials science and quiet scholarship, even at home or independently, is of greater social merit concerning economics than those experiencing social instability and chaos socially.

Three-Piece Philosophy

5/17/20

Sometimes people wonder about philosophy and regard it as a confusing jumble of vague ideas. I view philosophy differently than that. Actually I have a very simple view of philosophy.

Academically speaking philosophy has many divisions and areas of formal inquiry i.e. ethics, politics, metaphysics, social, cosmology, ontology, logic etc. For myself, concerning cosmology and the phenomenon of being, I have distilled a three-piece philosophical outlook.

Like the historical accumulation of science, philosophy as a body of academic material has accumulated over millennia. Reading primary philosophical texts developed over the past 2500 years or so and is therefore something of a venture in reading history. Explaining to others what Plato’s ideas were or how Plotinus used Plato’s ideas concerning a realm of forms in his Enneads (54 treatises) can be quite challenging outside the context of a course in ancient philosophy.

The ideas of ancient philosophers quite often built upon the work of their predecessors and that process continued to the present. Modern symbolic logic has its origins in the classical logic formalized by Aristotle. Learning the history of philosophy is something of an historical reading program that has a lot of abstract ideas in it rather than descriptions of battles, dynasties and social events one finds in general histories of civilization.

Philosophy as an historical body of work has a certain inert status to it. There is more to philosophy than that, for one may sort through the ideas and evaluate them as one learns and eventually classify some ideas as remaining useful and others as being more of archival value. Modern philosophy tends to be live and valid more so than the old, yet that is just a general paradigm rather than a comprehensive one. Some of the ancient ideas remain valid and may be infused with new ideas arising from philosophers and even physicists. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason continues to be a valid thesis regarding the ties between perception, cognition and reason although contemporary quantum field theory and neurology explain matters somewhat better.

At the end of much reading of philosophy over the years one tends to develop their own outlook on things that could be regarded as a philosophical viewpoint. Though learning the history of philosophy may be time consuming and complex especially when comparing the ideas of one philosopher with others, the result of the personal evaluation of systems and addition of additional concepts from other sources can result in a very simple view. My point of view on matters of philosophy is quite simple these days.

I have two live philosophical interests in addition to one besides the history of philosophy and its content that may be viewed as a kind of large scale scaffolding that allows one to assemble their own Mt. Rushmore of most valuable thought. My two ideas are Christian faith and the convertibility of matter and energy. Those two ideas are easy to say. Each of course has great depth conceptually if one is interested in pursuing them farther.

Recently I read a book named ‘Mass’ published I believe, in 2017. It is a great book describing what mass is. The world and universe of solid objects is regarded as being made of ‘mass’, yet it is actually energy in a different form, and mass is a secondary quality of energy. The author pointed out that in Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity he actually used the formula M=E/c2 rather than E=M/c2. The Universe as pure energy is quite a mysterious topic. Mass is actually an appearance of energy, yet isn’t energy also a secondary quality of something else unknown? The Higgs field is thought to slow subatomic particle from light speed enough to allow them to have a third dimension instead of two dimensions flattened at relativistic velocity at c. Even two dimensional particles are energy; quantum field theory advances may have much more to learn about energy for-itself and its relationship to time and space.

The enigmatic and mysterious nature of pure energy in regard to matter, space-time and being is an example of how old philosophies can be tied in to new. The neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus was considered by the early church to be pagan because he believed he could directly experience God in a mystical transcendence of matter that was named heyschasm. It is as if he could experience pure energy rather than matter and form as a kind of stream of pure good or God. Plotinus had other ideas. He wrote of his idea of Plato’s realm of forms in relation to God, whom he called ‘The One’.

To make a long story short I will skip to the realm of forms idea of Plato’s. He thought that some kind of abstract realm of forms existed from which everything that is in the material world is a copy. I would guess it is comparable to the Swiss patent office when Einstein worked there as a patent clerk having a copy of everything that was manufactured under patent in Europe in his day, except the realm of forms is more metaphysical and may exist in the mind of God. Plotinus thought the One emanated all that is from his perfect, omniscient, omnipotent being and the Intelligence presided over the realm of forms and selected what things would be made in the material world of mass and solid objects in which humans exist too.

The realm of forms could be compared to the quantum world in which all energy appears to become mass in certain forms from gluons to quarks, protons and neutrons to antiparticles and so on. If something exists it will need to be in a pre-fab form and built up from some of the 100+ elements of the periodic table according to certain physical behavioral forms. That is somewhat remarkable.

My other idea of philosophical merit is Christian faith. Christian faith occurs subjectively, phenomenally and existentially. Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher for good reason; he viewed Christian faith and practice as personal and apart from social structures and values; phenomenally rather than socially. Kierkegaard was himself something of a social iconoclast. Like so many German 19th century romantic philosophers that considered society somewhat mundane and inferior with people following conventions as if they were drone ants following meat trails, Kierkegaard also viewed too much of society as following spiritually dead roles through life acting in what Socrates considered to be unexamined lives; that is they were philosophically dead and for Kierkegaard perhaps, spiritually dead.

Christian faith and being occur in a world that is phenomenal. Solid objects seem solid because people are made of atomic elements that are bound in physical laws to experience particle compositions in pre-formed ways. Evolution occurs in forms that are constant though from certain perspectives and levels, changing.

There is no evidence against the existence of God anyplace in nature; ask an evolutionary biologist to show a particular physical form or material that does so and one will see vacuity of intelligent response. The best an atheist scientist could do would be to leave science altogether and act as an incompetent anti-theologian bungling some malfeasant hermeneutics or misinterpretation of Bible scripture. Even theologians are in disagreement about interpreting the beginning and end of the Universe in Biblical hermeneutics (interpretations) as some as pre-millennialist, some post-millenialists and others amillennialists, for example.

Christian phenomenology and Christianity existentially are nothing more than descriptions of a posture of Christians to the experience of life, matter and energy for those that care to consider it. Reconciling scripture with science is something that some try to do- even I have published a couple of books with my thoughts on the subject, in the Bible itself though God is recorded by history as having mentioned that what is wisdom to man is foolishness to God. Such wisdom and foolishness may include the idea of constructing cosmology about mass when energy is generic and incomprehensible for-others, as a kind of mystery that mass and human thought cannot really comprehend as secondary characteristic of energy. Time and history including natural history may occur though one knows that relativity and time, being and nothingness are phenomenal themselves with a relative duration perhaps of 13.5 billion years seems vast in one sense, from certain perspectives and might be as nothing at all from other viewpoints, or even from God’s if one could understand that.

Pro and con hermeneutics from theologians and anti-theologian scientists are interesting yet really not so much from a philosophical point of view, in the context of the history of philosophy as the third element of my own regard for the main stuff of philosophy. Simple material with M=E/c2 and Christian faith occurring phenomenally amidst much temporal and unknown physics. Augustine was himself a student of Plotinus and neo-Platonism before he became Christian. He was always looking in the right direction. What is, is. Whatever the primary quality of energy in-itself is, it seems capricious to differentiate it into categories called Universes (U1…U∞) when there is a continuum of the primary quality albeit with ample nothingness thrown in.

Social Inventing and Consuming Faster Than Nature's Supply etc.

5/17/20

The human race has quite a few clever and inventive members. They can invent new technologies and machines to convert raw natural resources into consumer product readily. If the entire solar system were a vast Dyson Sphere with more natural resources than 10,000 Earths, new technology could be invented to consume those vast natural resources much faster than anyone could protect those natural resources and ecology. Economic practices need be adapted to the planetary resource paradigm instead of driving with Mr. McGoo on meth intensity chasing after marginal productivity of capital increase.

If the Earth’s natural resources were limitless and the space to live without end the present economic system called capitalism that seeks after increase of the marginal productivity of capital might not be too harmful. At least if the economic system that seeks profit as an end in-itself without concern for vague philosophical issues like the global ecosphere limit had no capability of exhausting the ecosphere it would be understandable. Unfortunately the ecosphere has very definite limits and the economic activity commonly called capitalism is exhausting the ecosphere; keeping the ecosphere intact and healthy simply is not a concern of capitalism. Capitalism is just a license to go about business largely without regulation. Some have gamed the system and indexed funds and investments to make purely abstract profit without actually creating real business; that practice is rather devastating to the ecosphere. In a better version of free enterprise public capital would be available to finance start up businesses of ecological benefit or of compelling scientific or social interest.

One example might be a Department of Defense perception of the need to defend the citizens against Covid 19 casualties so they put out to bid modified clear plastic Halloween masks with replaceable filters and eye protection that will stop people in congested social areas from being infected with that virus. D.O.D. also might adapt Star Wars storm trooper helmets to survive biological war and stockpile a half a million. D.O.D. seems pathetically ill-equipped for practical survival of pathogens from terrorists or nation-states.

If capitalism is blind to ecosphere health of planet Earth it has got the loyalty- blind loyalty as it were- of most of the people of the United States and perhaps the world. The antipathetic Orwellian foe reinforcing the urge to capitalize is the smitten Communist system aka ‘Marxism’. That greatest ism specter is of pure bureaucracy for itself.

Pure bureaucracy administering equal portions of capital for all citizens except communist party members that get quite a bit more than an equal share has a mirrored anti-political partner, like so many particles of the quantum world, in corporatism. Corporatism concentrates wealth for the one percent; whom may be considered the communist elites of the west. In communism and corporatism elites had a higher standard of living (I refer to the former Soviet version of communism 1.0) than the proles or masses. Concentrated wealth coincides with concentrated power in both systems. In the west ordinary citizens have an illusion of democratic power, yet the facts of concentrating wealth and tax cuts to increase the marginal productivity of capital for the most rich speaks for itself.

As more machines, science and technology are added to the inventory of things owned by the most rich and millions of investors in the capitalism market it is the ecosphere that is the primary victim of ‘development’. Mass extinction of species occur while sophisticated ant-like in coordination societies process the natural resources sometimes converting it into heat-absorbing cities and skyscrapers that collapse with the first few aircraft stolen by uneducated sand people. Wars occur over resources, water, and more reasons that comprise of anthropology of regional wrong human ventures. If a protracted war in S.E. Asia or Central Asia occurred, that was a blind desert storm and fire in a portion of a planetary ecosphere itself being cut down in a variety of ways that follow seeking a marginal productivity increase of capital return on investment as an abstract good. Sometimes it can be better to seek particular material constructions beneficial to the ecosphere or society rather than abstract profit even if the marginal productivity of capital is less.

Free enterprise is different than networked capitalism. Free enterprises can be regulated to work in particular ecological niches beneficial to restoration of a health ecosphere while vast corporations and the networked capitalist market is a bull in a china shop that everyone wants to ride. I once met a fellow that had started riding bulls for pay when he was a teenager, and frankly, he was a physical wreck as a middle aged adult; humanity should not expect its future on Earth with a degraded ecosphere to be better off.

Some day science may learn to produce mass from virtual energy and create new planets, stars and ecospheres nearly instantly where nothing existed before. I suspect that day is quite a way off and that it will not arrive before human society has destroyed most free wildlife on the planet and endangered its own social survival because of ecospheric insults  perpetrated by a blind ecosphere victimizing economic predator named capitalism.

Capitalism at its core isn’t really a system of economics. Capital in the most pure sense is anything of value; those things that support life, that cohere in the integral ecosphere of the Earth are the most vital capital of all (I don’t believe it reasonable to consider Christian merit as spiritual capital since no one deserves to be saved and all salvation is a result of the grace of God). Free enterprise can continue to build technical and scientific capital as well as to advance the quality of life for all of the people of the world if it is put to work within an actual reformed democracy that has maybe 50% public capital and 50% privately held capital, and several other reforms.

People should not be allowed to own shares of more than three corporations to prevent deleterious networking and pursuit of marginal productivity of capital increases anywhere simply for-itself without concern for the harm to ecosphere in the means of production.

Corporations should have no more than 30,000 employees. If larger projects need be done then several corporations would need to work together. It would be good to prevent formation of too large to fail corporate and financial structures that corrupt the political system.

No citizen should be able to earn more than 300 times the average annual income. If a fellow cannot live on 300 times the average man’s income he is a really pathetic creature, wasteful and pitiable.

Society should set criteria and objects for new enterprises of value to the ecosphere and society. New enterprises would need to cohere within those criteria.

Disconnecting the Higgs Field (poem)

5/17/20

Here and there

pointillist continua build

rowing the skiff

clambering over the road

staying in shadows until spring

insouciant compact snow

mirthfully compiled

just to melt

like thick shadows standing tall

Recall those human ventures

in sunshine and heat waving

structures squat and vast

sheltering every manner of idea

swilling the environment

pig-hooves hogging one ecosphere

blanket covering the Earth

It was simply one answer

to numerous questions

working well and input loopily

with the Higgs field disconnected

Locally service shut down

three-dimensional particles dropped

down into two dimensions

their flatness a consequence

of speed of light atomic components

shorn of Higgs field syrupy slowdown

Two dimensional particles-

formerly three,

no longer cohered within quarks

neutrons and protons

waferish thin diet

infinitely thin poker chips

without strong force attraction

without electro-weak conventions

they were columns and stacks

of potentially being something

A good measure of the Universe

left free to its own devices

two-dimensionally speaking

gave its energy up to nothingness

what vast black holes remained

when gravity was gone

where information was stored

why the energy need be someplace

with change and form together

engines of actualization

in three dimensions

was a solitary questions

Two dimensional quantum maps

direct quantum chips

through Higgs fields

being and becoming soap bubbles

rightly in place as surface tension

structures in motion

trillions of cells like one

Shaping the Higgs field

like electro-magnetic lines

with apportioned signs

meaning lessness than nothings

mechanics of quantum creators

nano-machines’ centrifugal

color forces

Partially disconnecting Higgs field (s)

micro-designers in the fog

would modify galaxies as if they were

emulating the Creator to modify space and time

from the beginning

alpha and omega

fields that ever were/are

mind plans of the One.

Obamacare Flunked the Covid 19 Stress-Test

5/17/20

Obamacare has flunked the Covid 19 crisis. Maybe half of former American workers will be without health insurance as stressed employers cut employees and costs. Obama-Care was a neo-liberal corporate ream-job designed to enslave younger, healthy workers in order to pay rents to the richest corporate shareholders. When the first pandemic in a few decades blew into town Obamacare collapsed like a 9-11 house of cards.

There were better alternatives to neo-liberal corporate health insurance for all Americans. I have about a U.S. government direct provisioning of health services for the poor and veterans since the Obama administration. Expanding the V.A. and networking it with poor peoples and community clinics and hospitals was the right way to go.  Speaker Pelosi said to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it; now we know that it was preponderantly a scheme to enrich the rich and earn post-employment gratitude for the dishonest servant.

A better system was possible; free, walk-in public health service could have been designed to provide care to all of the nation’s poor and for those with pre-existing conditions unable to be insured. The nation public health service should have been designed to treat as many as 30 million Americans at one time, as it would also serve as a national crisis health care service in addition to V.A. network.

Most of the beds would have been mothballed and brought into active public health duty only as needed. Bringing the poor into the V.A. network would help to fill the mothballed service to a high enough capacity to keep it working realistically and ready for a future national health care crisis.

American politicians are daftly infatuated with capitalism and Wall Street and without any kind of solid base in comprehending political philosophy. Capital is nothing more than things of value, and communism is not the only alternative to unlimited unregulated capitalism. It is on the contrary quite reasonable for a democracy to regulate and direct free enterprise ventures to serve vital public interests such as ecosphere defense and restoration, public health and so forth.  There are innumerable ways to reform capitalism such that it is well adapted to the demographics and physical limits of growth on Earth.

Some regard capital as liquid, relocatable funds for investment. The marginal productivity of such capital cannot be regarded as capable of being a rational or desirable management system for the conservation and restoration of the planetary ecosphere.

Compare capitalism to automobiles; should automobiles be free to travel as fast as they can be made to because to regulate highway speed would be communistic? Government regulation is an important public function necessary for the continuity of life on Earth. The problem with the U.S. government today is that it hasn’t got enough enterprising individuals in it able to reform, innovate or lead in a practical way. Communism is a kind of evil, bureaucratic domination of the stupid over everyone. That bureaucratic evil spirit can be found in about any form of government as it becomes ossified, stupid and has concentrated wealth and power with bureaucrats becoming neo-liberal loyalists of whatever fuehrer or fearless leader promises them more wealth and authority. Good government cannot be led by Mister McGoo political philosophy that interprets capitalism as a system of government possible just with concentrated wealth and power. As I noted above capital is nothing more than things of value. It should be noted that things that are valuable to human survival and health like natural resources may be grossly undervalued. Value systems arise from intelligence, and a paucity of intelligence one might observe, seems too common for most politicians. Why not create Covid 19 defense masks that cover the entire face with protection for the eyes? Plastic Halloween mask manufacturers could make clear adapted Covid 19 defense masks to enable vulnerable people to safely venture in public without playing Russian roulette with the virus and live breathing virus vectors on subways and buses.

Communists of the former Soviet Union also had values; they did not redistribute commodities willy nilly. Values for capital can be of two kinds primarily; things of value economically that are recognized and those that are not. The economic philosophy argument today should be about management style rather than about capitalism since capitalism means nothing more than things of value that compile. Communists also wanted to increase capital, just like western ‘capitalists’, yet with a different method.

Communists converted all private capital into public capital. In the west today’s public capital is about zero in light of public debt, and private capital is most all and mostly concentrated by a very few.  A better balance between public and private capital is desirable if competent political management style is made to exist- perhaps a 50-50 balance would be good, yet with all the work being done through free enterprise that is regulated and selected for ecospheric quality and for increasing the quality of life for the majority.

In Some Respects Americans are Lost

5/10/2020

In some respects Americans are mildly lost. Without the Lord Jesus Christ guiding their thought and lives people go astray in pursuit of a zillion temporal things. Many of those temporal, material things don't work well with other material things they pursue. The entire society might be regarded as uncoordinated materially and prone to conflicts. Short term profits are a reason for being in-themselves as the woods for the trees can't be seen as they are clear cut and replaced with subdivisions and asphalt.

Homosexual marriage was just one, wrong belligerent political move more satisfying to Satan one would think, than to God. Not that anything humans do might be satisfying to God of course; He is perfection and humanity is mired in original sin and the hog farm of bad politics as a millennial activity. Instead of working things in a positive and optimal direction the leadership chooses wrong options. Homosexual marriage for example might have not been selected to offend most of the planet's sensibilities and instead some kind of contractual, new homo institution for that behavior seeking legal encumbrances to reduce individual civil liberties might have been made; Americans would have tolerated that and not brought some wrath of God style corrections upon themselves. Perhaps there is more of that in store down the road since Americans seem so far lost as to forget the gospel has conditions and expectations of Biblically correct spirit and behavior with it.

People are often drifting in and out of life. They strut and fret their hour on the stage with ample worries as Shakespeare noted (in Hamlet) without considering the phenomenality of it all. Neither do they have adequate concern for the ecosphere’s health to keep it alive nor thriving apparently as a long slow drain of its health is perpetrated by the human economic style of exploiting resources until they don't work anymore.

Certainly taxes need be increased upon the rich yet Democrats are far too weak for that in their pursuit of all looseness possible from border security to material increase. God has indicated that he has displeasure when the rich exploit the poor; maybe the concentration of over-wealth in the U.S.A. is another part of the problem theologically speaking. The loose border allowing human vectors of infection quite liberally to cross illegally also assures that Mexico's health system and politics are over-exploited or underdeveloped as the case may be and Mexicans die trying to keep U.S. auto plants producing during the pandemic. Illegal immigration means that economics are loose on both sides of the border with the poor paying the cost of such political vagary.

Matthew 19: 23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

One Need Cover Eyes from Covid Aerosol Contact

5/8/20

Upgrading standard hard-plastic Halloween masks with eye covering and nose and mouth filters probably would substantially reduce the odds of getting Covid 19 from the community while shopping or riding a bus. People are generally disregarding eye infection that can occur in maybe 20% of the Covid cases. If one is getting Covid generally through the mouth or nose the route of the eyes is just ignored, yet that can be a fatal flaw in reasoning for some people.

https://www.ajmc.com/newsroom/covid19-may-be-transmitted-through-the-eye-report-finds

Clear plastic Halloween masks with replaceable filters and eye covering can be made at low cost very quickly and distributed to the nation so people can go about their business and bus riding more safely. There is no point in being stupid; and where those dollar store garden gloves taking care to wash them often.

If a soldier was defending against VX or GB (lethal chemical agents) and putting on protective gear he would not fail to cover his entire face and especially eyes; for some reason civilians are stupid about that and