...reading Intro to Modern Algebra lecture notes copied from the professor's notebook computer:
I was processing, processing, process...then went GHAHGHGHAAAHGHGA!@>K!
See if you can find where...
Monday, January 25, 2010
And this is where I went crazy...
I was processing, processing, process...then went GHAHGHGHAAAHGHGA!@>K!
More of My Crazy Ideas. More.
What Christians and other -ians have right:
It makes no sense what they do. They make one thing the focus of everything. They pass anything they're too tired to reason about through the eye of the needle of the book of the god.
In normal everyday Nature based life, this is a silly idea, because why would you waste all that time on something that doesn't even factor in to the very nature of things? What evolutionary (social or biological, what have you) channel would you benefit with considering that?
The short and dirty answer to what they have right is this: it gives as close to perfect social predictability as possible, which can vastly streamline inter-culture relations (due to human nature, this is most often destructive or exploitive to one party or another). Or maybe at worst, shut down the spark of tangent among the creators of the populace, keeping spontaneous eruptions of life's randomness from ever cropping up (it doesn't take much to topple the tower of babylon anyway).
The clean and complex answer has everything to do with top line thinking and how humans process information. I don't really know much or anything about cognitive science, but let me paint you a picture:
In the wild, humans are pattern-finders. We're better by far than any animal we've run across (insofar as we can understand, and considering all our close ancestors died out some time ago - hopefully we didn't kill them all) at finding patterns, and by our very nature, exploiting them as greatly as possible for our advantage. That's just what we do; what life does.
The wild animals that learned to find patterns in relation to one constant thing, all together as a society, other than gaining all the usual advantages that comes with religion (unity, zealotry, coping mechanisms, etc.), also gained the tendency to see patterns in a different way than all their wild neighbors.
To observe something is an act of communication with oneself, and we could think of that thing we're observing in any way - that is, in relation to anything else in our memory we have experience with. Hence we find patterns relating that which we know, to that which we don't; that which we see as a pattern already, and that which hasn't been integrated into our existing patterns to inform us of the future - that which we predict based on patterns.
To the wild ones, there is no way of predicting how the intellect will poise a new thing to be compared and contrasted. On individual scales, this gives feral humans (like me...well, not) the advantage of not having any particular blind spots; nothing they wouldn't have noticed or figured out had they been thinking like a religious person. On mass scales, the religious person, though here I'm going to start using the term 'spiritual person' as I transition into my point, the spiritual person makes better informed societal decisions based on their slightly (or largely in some cases) telescoped cognitive dimension. They don't just go with their crowd - we all do that. They also take small things to be big things and big things to be small things, and obvious things to be complex things and complex things to be obvious things, and so on down the line. If the brain were a three dimensional map (say, for simplicities sake), then this tendency to see things on the scale of spirituality is a point attractor for the many iterations of what the minds map would look like; a place of concentration over time where the architecture of thoughts begins to dance in a new twirling direction.
As a digression, I will say that my motivation for thinking of all this is that the world is supposedly (big if, to me) chock full of religious people, while religions make little sense to me, seeming full of bad and only lined with good intentions, even less good outcomes. Also, an argument in favor of religion I heard from my mom once when I was young, that religion tamed the most barbarous nature of much of humanity - not eating each other, that killing was wrong, instilling common moral values. There is some small validity to that, but I don't believe that before religion came, that humans couldn't help but act like crazed violent people all the time.
Oh and I just figured out while my mind was wandering, that the real reason I quit debating at UAA was because the people I was surrounded by, with a few exceptions, were bad listeners due to their NEED to talk; I'm sure they'd say, 'gasp!' but it's the truth. Their idea of what listening means is very very far removed from what a mute's idea of listening is....
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
So brains find patterns and holding something like 'the bible' or 'god' up in a vector in your brain on a mass scale (just as I suppose holding up 'social norms' or 'new and old customs' does) makes decision making marginally better in a smooth predictable society and in a smooth and predictable way. One of the biggest things I learned in Psychology is that people are cognitive misers...we only think about what we HAVE to think about and we put up as big a shortcut as possible for the rest. So to me, the more dogmatic and intractable you are, most likely, the more cognitive shortcuts you're taking. Good for you - you can still function on a lower calorie diet, or can still think even if you're exhausted from activity. Meanwhile, the rest of us who think as much as possible about every little decision and agonize over the many many perspectives any idea can be juxtaposed with, we have a more faltering way of getting along in the world, but it makes much much much more sense considering how much flexibility we have to adapt to a more and more rapidly changing environment.
In addition, religious people have this knack of all predictably reacting to a new thing in the same way - take politics and headline news for example. Who knows which way the free-thinkers are going to take some foreign policy debacle - depends all upon the particulars of the case to the reasonable people. Yet, politics, like all things, requires this notion of continuity and unbroken predictability to really thrive - I think this is something that Karl Rove figured out because Rush Limbaugh kept shouting it in his ear every day. So as I'm writing things, trying to form a rhetorical foundation for the PKParty, I'm keeping in mind that the left needs something so so similar to what the far right has, but our Anarchists and Socialists just can't keep up with their Gun Nuts and King James Bible Thumpers (notice even the difference in the nomenclature of the two sides - I guess I could have said punks and hippies instead of Anarchists and Socialists, even then though - we're just a party of softies because we don't have that cognitive fall back position to avoid acting reasonable and aggressive like they do - not that we want to be just like them, I get it, but we DO have to figure out how to have all their advantages without all their disadvantages, for so is the nature of competition, and thus we will win the day with our reasonable moral philosophy against their all powerful dogma lock-in-step-yness). The biggest thing that pops out of me, and that goes right back to this notion of top line thinking and how human processing works, is that the left has to become much more socially cohesive. To avoid their disadvantages, we would want a system of cohesion that comes very naturally. Long long ago the thing that came most naturally and that worked for religion was for everybody to gather in a building and listen to a leader-person. Today, thousands of years later, I say the church is out-moded by the internet. The online grange would be a better analogy, and I'm going to be looking to granges (something I was lucky enough to experience a traditional version of while my mother's parents were alive) for inspiration as to how political-internet-church would run. A potluck of ideas it would be. (potlach is actually a native Alaskan term, but don't get me started on how our culture has to paradigm shift in its thinking toward native american philosophy...)
To be more socially cohesive then, we have to utilize top line thinking like they do. It's a silly phrase, What would Jesus do? Nobody knows more than a book or so about Jesus anyway, and no other robust sources exist for his existence. Yet, to the Christians, they avoid the pattern following pitfalls in a way, because they all reason through story and analogy - all the same stories and analogies too - so that they all roughly come to the same conclusions about things (not to mention what a gift this is to a rhetorician who wants to persuade a group of god-folk, a new pitfall for us to avoid in our quest to be kind of more like them). When we top line think, we don't fall into channels of lower and lower abstraction - we see a car commercial and we instantly imagine we're on the road - versus seeing a car commercial and thinking, what would Obama do? The way that we are free and free-thinking is also the way that we have a hard time all climbing into one small efficient tent. On any given issue, half of us will go one way, and half of us will go another, and this happens regardless of the truth or the circumstances or the outcomes. Evolution tells us that this fact means the religious people will tend to win in the long run (like a professional poker player who knows where one card is in every deck, versus the same professional poker player who doesn't know that one card each time - the former will eventually outperform the latter in winnings. Yeah, I too was thinking 'good thing we don't have a winner take all system' except that we kind of do in certain ways, but don't get me started on instant run-off voting).
Where reason is needed is here, and the time is now to bring reason back into fashion.
The alternative is the scary things I see on the web, and here in Alaska, often on the back of peoples' trucks, or worse: things like video that looks like a movie preview to a new horror movie starring all the leaders of the democrats (note that I didn't say all the PROGRESSIVE leaders) in scary still-photos with scary music and flashes of words, like SOCIALISM and NOT OUR REVOLUTION and OBAMACARE; the alternative to reason is that the loudest scariest TV commercial may well win the day.
The answer is in the schools, but also in a simple migration that has been easily achieved by places like myspace, facebook, netflix, and even Breast Cancer Awareness posts on facebook - just to name a few. Even the Obama campaign could be seen as a frontrunner, with their emphasis on community organizing web tools.
Coming up Next Post: THE SCHOOLS, what I'd do about them, and how I'm glad nobody pulled a gun in Public Speaking class today...
So, to recap: biology and evolution make for interesting things in brains and social matters with humans. Humans are cognitive misers and the more dogmatic and intractable you are, the more sugar your brain is tragically not burning. Yet, though religion is more dogmatic and intractable than anything else by far, it does have certain advantages, making spirituality a logical cause for reasonable people to support.
Interesting question: Is it possible to predict how thoughtful someone is in a meaningful way, by doing a PET scan or some other scan to determine how much energy their brain is using compared to the other organs in their body/parts of their nervous system?
Saturday, January 23, 2010
More Propaganda, because my step-sister thinks that I'm "mislead" by my secular Philosophy - or maybe just my lack of capital G. O.. D...
The PKParty - in what hopefully proves a successful distraction - has decided to post some information about the views of it's rhetorical founder: me. The party of four, or maybe five if you include my one and only faithful reader (you're all I ever want and need in a reader Aimee), and we still haven't heard nearly enough to constitute a philosophical basis. So, some thoughts.
Starting at the beginning.
If I could travel into the past, I'd travel to see famous court cases and meet "influential" figures from history. Funny thing is, to really improve my intuition about history (not just my knowledge of those elements of history that have made it into our collective story many many years later), I'd have to go back in time and just become a regular average bloke of the day. Today we read about events or more likely see somebody's video clip, and these things become who we are, and what our legacy will be into ...
you, know, this isn't going the right way here.
Let me start over.
Starting in the middle of everything...
This is what I've learned. In Social Psychology class, I learned that some people like me are high-self-monitors, meaning they really take what other people think to heart, and consequently get most of their rewards and jollies by being surrounded by people who like them. Also interesting is that scientifically, people in a group will let a fellow human being die by inaction in a large enough crowd of anonymity (like at a football game or something - not that I really give a fluck about football). It is sad, but in Social Psychology we learn that people aren't that put off enough by inflicting other people pain, if an authority tells them that what is happening is important. I can't remember the name of the contraption that delivers electrical shocks, but I now wonder if maybe just being put into a small room with a weird humming machine, a camera, and a person in a white lab coat doesn't freak you out enough to make you do just about anything at first, and that once you realize what you're doing (which may not happen if you're sufficiently scared) you'd say something. I mean, maybe people in the 60's and 70's were complete pushovers, but...
I'm tired of the religion vs. no religion thing. Nobody today could give a concise definition of any loaded word like Liberal or Conservative, (that would be a great experiment by the way - do a random survey and calculate how fuzzy the definitions of certain words are...there's probably people already doing that though huh...), nobody could give a concise definition of these loaded words like religion or evolution or christian or non-christian or ...
anyway, the problem with this, and coupled with the fact that human beings require In-Group/Out-Group thinking (more Social Psychology), is that whenever people talk about these things, they are only rarely well-defined in both context to the discussion at hand, and with context to the other types of conversations being held by similar people. In that way, on a higher plateau of abstraction if you will, the small problem of fuzziness of definition becomes a big problem of fuzziness of definition. How do dimensions of reality among billions of people and millions of families and hundreds of thousands of cities, and tens of thousands of States, and thousands of Countries, maybe hundreds, dozens of Oceans, a few Continents, one whole world, among the ?limitless? stars...how fast does that become complicated, and where we started, two people talking about their dogged or undogged beliefs about everything (insert Universe here)...and they aren't even talking about the same thing? How does that ever work at all? Surely, even the masses can do better.
With regard to discipline, I find it a difficult prospect to set guidelines for a child, one that will come to this house via stork, and still want to be it's clown too...
I hate it when the people who stare into an ultrasound and smile and say, (shudder) "god has a special purpose for you," and then in the same lifetime turn on "enemies" or fellow citizens and shout with anger, "god has a special purpose for you, sucker." On the other hand, I secretly quite like it when my own cadre, which is all about community and equality and a collaborative spirit, can say no, no, we're going home now, you guys get paid more than we do so you're stuck with this task.
You see, shit rolls downhill, but it can be thrown back a little ways, or even just flung while shouting ewww, i've got crap on my foot.
The Insurance Companies must die. Put 'em in a ring with the lions and see who comes out victorious.
I want to see a movie, a 1 in 300 kind of movie, about a Woody Allen looking guy who dominates the gladiator ring in the Chariot Days of Rome.
The Bible is really really neat guys, but don't you the that human authors are a wee bit more up to date from, say, even just the last thousand years or so. Can we maybe at least skip to the industrial revolution to find out what the Creator that determines the precise nature of all of our Afterlives might think about things. Are we expected to keep translating dead languages from crumbling scrolls, or even paying attention to Medieval King Publishing Houses, on and on into the year 10,000 when we're all made of straws and puffing up like galaxies... oh right, the apocalypse, now or whenever, right. good luck with that. call us when you want to come home.
I think priests from old religions should start being referred to by enlightened people as Church Captains.
Take Math-amphetamines to stimulate your logical brain. My buddy worked on an alphabet sudoku puzzle today. It's cells defied counting, and it used A-Y instead of 1-9; a whole milkshake worth of brain freeze in every move.
My aim in creating a political party is to start convincing people that yes, we can, doesn't have to be capitalized, donated to, worked hard on, or made impossible by corporate media. The nerds have done their part in bringing up the internet, dreamed of by sci-fi dreamers ever since computers were made of data card stock and gears, and, ...iron beasts...John Lennon was a dreamer...but didn't write sci-fi...
anyway, My aim in creating a political party is to start a little something over. Here's what that little something is, viewed through a microscope:
Two people who are somewhat acquaintances, both educated by roughly the same system, or possibly educated roughly by the same system, decide both sincerely that they want to come to terms with how each of them views the world. The one says, I believe x. and the other says, y, why I oughtta - you know what pisses me off about you x's is that you don't y. And x says, but y, y, y , y , y , y! So I say x. and then Y says. Y! Y ! Y!!Y!YY!Y!!!!. and then x says X! x x x X! ! !!! x X!. and the reason neither of them can say anything else is because they haven't been taught all that ancient greek stuff and modern peace-knik organic shit neither, and they don't have the same definition of the same word, and their both trapped by Social Psychology, and each one is willing to let the other have it every chance the get. But they don't see their own history, and the fact that every argument is more like hitting back for the last thing you heard them say. We are humans, we do get cranky.
But, hopefully along can come Z, and suddenly X and Y don't have so much to fear because they're all a bit different from each other. Z gives X and Y something to talk about, and in order to get together, X and Y don't have to hold both hands with each other and cause so much static electricity. Instead they each take one of Z's hands, and then hold hands with each other with just one hand, and even if they let go for a minute they still have a hand to hold, and they can maybe all conceive an A together...
okay this turned into an allegory, and then a weird allegory, and now I really need to sleep...
Friday, January 22, 2010
Party Members will
random things I thought of lately:
The Comic Strip will be called Orange Star Tricks, and i'll...uh...it'll get figured out. so I'll get some help or something.
I think they should be something between talking points, allegories, and satire. But it should be really really entertaining somehow. Think Gary Larsen. Maybe we'll misspell his name and use that as our Pen Name/Collective Moniker. I'd want it to work like a Platonic dialogue, or maybe a sitcom from the 80's; between those.
Moving on.
Party members reserve the right to form themselves into a huge Corporation whose sole purpose is influencing politics and attempting to use mind control to turn people into money generating (copper-top!) batteries. And by money, I mean politics, because they're the same. Which brings us too...
Party members reserve the right to create their own legal tender or to use the barter system with each other. Where official United States currency is required to assist in paying for social services and social programs (e.g. for those party members choosing to pay taxes to any of the various agencies that collect them on behalf of We the Peoples' Government), we'll use currency, otherwise: FREEFORALL!! In the eyes of our opponents, we would insert a film clip of inner-city and university residents rioting and looting. Then we'll laugh at our irony that they wouldn't get because we know that nothing is further from the truth. Replacing their money system with our own money system goes like this: we have to have the discipline to not want, need, desire, or gift things purchased with their money. Their money is filthy. Ours can be relatively non-filthy for at least a hundred years before it should be replaced (since it will be filthy, given that nothing stops the march of history).
Party members are hereby given the right to massage the neck and shoulders of any other party member, regardless of their, or the recipient's, gender. If they shall massage each others' shoulders more than twenty times each, they shall be considered common law married, but will have no right to any of their new partner's stuff.
Party members may save money by cutting their own hair, or not cutting it at all.
Party members may use their hair as fire-starting material in an emergency.
Party members should know CPR so they can save someone's life, then ask that person to join the party in return for saving their life.
Party members are allowed to consider really good TV shows as holy texts, but are encouraged to view commercial-free, and choose wisely. However, excessive use of the holy view screen is strictly forbidden. Seriously. Computers are pretty much okay, depending on your relationship to it.
I started my day today by listening to Thom Hartman (Hartmann?) talk to Ralph Nader on the radio - the Air America station, in case your neighborhood radio station doesn't carry Thom Hartman, broadcasting every weekday from Portland, Oregon. They were discussing the shit that went down today in the Supreme Court, about how a Corporation won a law suit again a TV station for refusing to air some stuff.
Well, I don't know enough about all that, but Nader listed several ways around this new bogus-ness, and part of me steps back and says - hey, maybe we can use this too. What if they all want us to be pissed about it, but it could be looked at in other ways too. What if this proves something about the Judiciary, and what if it makes it more obvious to more people that the People need to do something before it's too late to do anything. What if this gets even conservative people to push through public financing of campaigns. What if, what if, what if. Either way, nothing can really stop us from seizing the moment, since all they who are the powers that be, want us to do is believe any reason there is to not seize the moment and take back the politics of a wacked-out a-political country. That's right. As of Sarah Palin, I'd say we're a-political now.
In fact, maybe party members will mark the year of the election of Barack Obama as the day between B.S.P. (before Sarah Palin) and A.S.P. (too weird?). Either way, since I'm going through my fourth Alaska winter, and Sarah Palin is purportedly from Alaska, down the highway a ways from where I currently am, maybe the only two good things to come out of Alaska will be a divergent, robust political party that sweeps through the non-voters and voters alike, and the one woman who looked so stinkingly like Pandora and her proverbial Box, that everyone finally woke up to shrill cackle of her laughter as she...cackled with laughter? I don't know. she cackles I guess.
many more party members will... to come later. Some just stored in the phone and need to get transferred.
I Bring To You A Message Of Hope
First of all, wealth abounds in the United States. Those who seek to part you from your wealth prefer if you feel otherwise, but we are in no danger of running out of stuff in the United States. It is only recently in human history that wealth has become such a complicated idea. In the olden days, humans, the animals we are and aren't any different from our forbears, humans needed food and warmth and each other. Once farming came along, our idea of wealth was plenty to eat, and some extra for preserving or fermenting (luxury). At some point we became fans of jewelry, clothing, tools, and weapons. Now, for a very long time, that was the sum total of wealth and what wealth could be. A very long time. Food, jewelry, clothing, tools, and weapons, together with how fancy your abode is, was all wealth meant for a long time. There was also State wealth, a different kind of wealth, or the wealth of a King, but even for Ancient Egypt, compared to the modern costs associated with living a luxurious lifestyle, the Pharoah was pretty frugal, choosing instead to spend vast riches on pointy buildings that he'd try to live forever in.
Every Public chooses how to spend it's collective wealth. There is a much more complicated version of that truth, but for now, let's just keep in mind that people have overcome every institutional and beuracratic paradigm that has come before.
The United States is filled with many people who think our land and peoples are threatened by outsiders (or from within, but we quickly associate those insiders as quacks or having been affected by outsiders). Statistically speaking, as near as I can figure, most of the people who think this the most, vehemently, are also far less likely to know any facts or even events going on in the world around them. By some magic property of algebra, therefore, I presume to state without proof that the above implies that we are in fact not under threat. Near as I can figure, the United States gets a housing bubble bursting, like an economic pimple on our big powerful face, and the whole world goes for a tailspin: China makes legislation, the E.U. takes a hit, and even places like Dubai suddenly look like the monopoly guy when he's shrugging with his out-turned pockets empty. Nobody is going to come and hurt us, except maybe the stray suicide bomber, but they can't really take out more than a few hundred of us, or thousands in the most extreme case I can think of - so destroying any sizable chunk of the United States at that point would literally take thousands of suicide bombers, or tens of thousands. Good luck getting that many humans to do that. I'm sure the T-Party has the right idea on how to create that kind of zealot.
My point is, no one is coming to get us, we decide what happens here, and the big awful bullies that we think the hate-mongers are, are so dependent on us that even a little zit sends them all flurrying and panicking. They are the ones who can't live without wealth. We are the ones who need only food and warmth and each other.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Last Political Party Post for a While, go back to Jan 13 to get the whole story
Phillip Bunker
Laws of the Party:
-- the Party shall consist of members ordered on a bi-cameral operation: seniority with level-of-activity measure. Elements of both shall be immutable (i.e. new members who are extremely active shall receive elevated status - note that status refers in no way to social or other ego-related status). Contributions shall only receive level-of-activity credit on a sliding scale as the accuracy and cleverness are graded by the neighborhoods where they are graded.
-- the Party members shall be compulsorily organized into their actual physical neighborhoods - precedence is set (information dissemination and other-wise) in the thirty geographically closest other party members, then relative to population level within the State border, then to bordering States, then to the grand juries of Federal districts.
-- in mirror of the U.S. Court Districts, grand juries will be composed of a number of the highest ranking party members who live in that district, the number of which will be no less than 7 1/2 % of the population of party members in that district.
-- it is the privilege of each party member to comment on Party news and discuss and debate the points. The approval or disapproval of news will greatly influence the production of news.
-- Party members who lack internet connectivity may make comments, debates, and discussion points via USPS at their own expense; however, don't think that you'll be able to not have a computer forever.
-- Party members are required to: vote, read the Daily Information sheet, absorb Party background literature, and register one new voter per year (as seen above, in Party Planks, failure to do so results in the next year's new voter requirement to two).
-- Party members are also required to become certified to register voters, take CPR/First Aid, have gardens, live off the grid as much as possible, and have frequent parties.
-- Party members are required to fly American flags on Christmas, MLK Jr. Day, and Jefferson's Birthday, along with any other special days Party members feel is appropriate.
-- Party members are not allowed to receive money or give money, for any activity even remotely related to their Party affiliation, including but not limited to speaking events, book sales, media articles/pieces, photography, modeling with Party logos (including anything in the color Orange), or making votes or discussion comments in favor of some outside force paying a weak-willed Party member to curry favor and sway debate.
-- Party members must solemnly swear to do their best for god/s and their country, to obey party law, to keep themselves physically fit, mentally awake, and morally correct. Following this, a Party member is loyal, trustworthy, kind, helpful, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Some final thoughts before I close this chapter for a little while (can't start a good political party if I don't graduate with my Math B.A.!):
we aren't just at A crossroads, we're always at a crossroads. we aren't just dissatisfied and disenfranchised from the current political get-up, we're humiliated and disgusted by its filth. we won't follow anyone but the most divine and enlightened leaders and we're willing to work through everyone on the field, through all the information in the field, and even be patient as it seems everything crumbles around us, to find out who that leader is. We are going to be working for the fulfillment of that dream, just as we keep Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams and words in our prayers every day.
Most of all, we are sure of our cause, and with the surety of knowing our feelings and beliefs are not the misguided notions the other side says they are, we are confident that history will prove us right, even as it destroys our adversaries for their lack of commitment to the ideal of objective/subjective Truth that lies both in the mind of a scholar, and in the heart of a noble soul. Everything that has happened till now has led to this moment, when technology, culture, education, affluence, progress, and courage can combine to usher in a new age of mankind. The lost sheep that compose the emerging T-party show loyalty only to those they are told to show loyalty to; we will inform ourselves. They toil tirelessly in the name of the status quo; we'll toil tirelessly to bring change. They laugh at the lies all around them because they're given one singular vision of the world; we'll laugh at the lies around us because we see so many other ways for the world to be. They unabashedly preach that theirs is the only way; we'll expertly and confidently advocate for what we see as the only way. They invoke personal responsibility and use it to divest their responsibility to the masses; we'll invoke personal responsibility to become shepherds of peace, justice, and prosperity. They will stop at nothing to see their dogmatic agenda subsume the modern political debate; we will stop at nothing to see our pragmatic agenda subsume the farce of modern political debate.
The Make Some Noise Party? The Pragmatic Party? The Natural Party? The Organic Party?
Join us in our quest to discover how seismic modern democracy can become. Our voice is stronger with yours added.
-- the Party shall consist of members ordered on a bi-cameral operation: seniority with level-of-activity measure. Elements of both shall be immutable (i.e. new members who are extremely active shall receive elevated status - note that status refers in no way to social or other ego-related status). Contributions shall only receive level-of-activity credit on a sliding scale as the accuracy and cleverness are graded by the neighborhoods where they are graded.
-- the Party members shall be compulsorily organized into their actual physical neighborhoods - precedence is set (information dissemination and other-wise) in the thirty geographically closest other party members, then relative to population level within the State border, then to bordering States, then to the grand juries of Federal districts.
-- in mirror of the U.S. Court Districts, grand juries will be composed of a number of the highest ranking party members who live in that district, the number of which will be no less than 7 1/2 % of the population of party members in that district.
-- it is the privilege of each party member to comment on Party news and discuss and debate the points. The approval or disapproval of news will greatly influence the production of news.
-- Party members who lack internet connectivity may make comments, debates, and discussion points via USPS at their own expense; however, don't think that you'll be able to not have a computer forever.
-- Party members are required to: vote, read the Daily Information sheet, absorb Party background literature, and register one new voter per year (as seen above, in Party Planks, failure to do so results in the next year's new voter requirement to two).
-- Party members are also required to become certified to register voters, take CPR/First Aid, have gardens, live off the grid as much as possible, and have frequent parties.
-- Party members are required to fly American flags on Christmas, MLK Jr. Day, and Jefferson's Birthday, along with any other special days Party members feel is appropriate.
-- Party members are not allowed to receive money or give money, for any activity even remotely related to their Party affiliation, including but not limited to speaking events, book sales, media articles/pieces, photography, modeling with Party logos (including anything in the color Orange), or making votes or discussion comments in favor of some outside force paying a weak-willed Party member to curry favor and sway debate.
-- Party members must solemnly swear to do their best for god/s and their country, to obey party law, to keep themselves physically fit, mentally awake, and morally correct. Following this, a Party member is loyal, trustworthy, kind, helpful, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Some final thoughts before I close this chapter for a little while (can't start a good political party if I don't graduate with my Math B.A.!):
we aren't just at A crossroads, we're always at a crossroads. we aren't just dissatisfied and disenfranchised from the current political get-up, we're humiliated and disgusted by its filth. we won't follow anyone but the most divine and enlightened leaders and we're willing to work through everyone on the field, through all the information in the field, and even be patient as it seems everything crumbles around us, to find out who that leader is. We are going to be working for the fulfillment of that dream, just as we keep Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams and words in our prayers every day.
Most of all, we are sure of our cause, and with the surety of knowing our feelings and beliefs are not the misguided notions the other side says they are, we are confident that history will prove us right, even as it destroys our adversaries for their lack of commitment to the ideal of objective/subjective Truth that lies both in the mind of a scholar, and in the heart of a noble soul. Everything that has happened till now has led to this moment, when technology, culture, education, affluence, progress, and courage can combine to usher in a new age of mankind. The lost sheep that compose the emerging T-party show loyalty only to those they are told to show loyalty to; we will inform ourselves. They toil tirelessly in the name of the status quo; we'll toil tirelessly to bring change. They laugh at the lies all around them because they're given one singular vision of the world; we'll laugh at the lies around us because we see so many other ways for the world to be. They unabashedly preach that theirs is the only way; we'll expertly and confidently advocate for what we see as the only way. They invoke personal responsibility and use it to divest their responsibility to the masses; we'll invoke personal responsibility to become shepherds of peace, justice, and prosperity. They will stop at nothing to see their dogmatic agenda subsume the modern political debate; we will stop at nothing to see our pragmatic agenda subsume the farce of modern political debate.
The Make Some Noise Party? The Pragmatic Party? The Natural Party? The Organic Party?
Join us in our quest to discover how seismic modern democracy can become. Our voice is stronger with yours added.
about a minute ago ·
Sunday, January 17, 2010
I Just Clicked 'Next Blog' and It's Pretty Cool Too
Why is it that now that school has begun, I feel compelled to write so god-damn much?! Studying abstract math must stir up the writer bug in me. Man I'm weird!
Anyway, I was at founding member Janet's facebook page and read this amazing conversation she had with her friends about temperature settings at their home. Part of what I find amazing is how difficult this conversation would have been before social networking sites, especially when contrasted with how easy it is now. When I reconnected with a Middle School buddy of mine, George, (http://faithfool.wordpress.com), he commented that "finally fb becomes useful," which he said because he and I never should have lost touch, being kindred spirits, and then boom - here we both appear, and can reconnect easily. In any other historical era of humanity, this wouldn't have been nearly as likely or even possible for two people whose paths diverged so long ago. Also, I read Joseph Campbell and learn that stories create our very identities; I see TV being replaced by individuals writing their own stories with peer-networks; I see politics completely failing because of money and television; then I see a post like this where my friend Janet gets useful, socially constructed truths, on a simple fundamental subject which happens to be near and dear to all Alaskan's hearts this time of year: how hot should a house be?
Here is the copy of her conversation, shamefully stolen without permission because the internet is free-wheelin' like that:
Janet L. Steinhauser Thermostat wars. What do you have yours set at? (need some data) :)
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first comes the comics, or comic singular.
next comes the body count headlines of those suffering from military or other violence - equally represented will be any good accomplished through the sacrifice of the soldiers and civilians we're going to try desperately to take out of harms way.
then comes the Politics, first the Fed, then the States, and when appropriate the small communities making big differences.
finally is the Children and the Hope. End on a good note. On the back is all the other comics, or just beautiful images captured by Party Members or friends of Party Members.