Fate or Joss

I tend to think of fate as joss. That is whatever occurs happens. My regard is to consider it a post hoc description of what happened.

The Chinese derived joss from a Portuguese term for God. In the Chinese culture it can mean fate or luck.

So I regard fate as a kind of gestalt or complete complex of compresence. A scene such as that in 1812 where Napoleon views a corpse resplendent in an officers uniform on a battlefield and declares “voila, a splendid death!”. That is joss or fate.

Yet as a Christian I believe God has an intention for the world. Details are beyond my pay grade.

Good Old Days When Trash From W. Berlin Found a Home in Communist Dumps

The Berlin Wall was part of history very well documented. I rode a train through East Germany to visit West Berlin in 1987 when it was still divided.

In 1974 West Germany began to seek new normal relations with East Germany with Ostpolitik. It began to work. West Berlin was like an island of freedom in East Germany.

Earlier the Soviets had blockaded the west from reaching it by rail and road. The Berlin airlift kept supplies reaching Western sectors of the city. Then the wall was built in the city to prevent Germans from escaping. It required the Nixon administration and Henry Kissinger working with
Willie Brandt and Helmut Schmidt to get the trash flowing freely to communist dumps in a sign of trust and progress.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_at_the_Berlin_Wall

https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/topics/victims-berlin-wall#:~:text=Current%20research%20and%20sources%20suggest,victim%20to%20the%20border%20regime.

On the Kingdom of God

Christan values and ethics comprise a theonomy in-the-world looking past the world. Anti-Christians sometimes don’t know that Biblical ethics are for believers, and are instructions on how to act in a world of original sin, so they want to attack those ethics and extirpate belief. Yet faith in God is a personal concern that harms no one. Worldly harm is done by those that don’t understand the Word of God.

There won’t be a perfect world political order until the Second Coming. Worldly systems are made by sinful humans and they eventually fail.

I like to write on a variety of philosophical issues yet sometimes feel a response to attacks on Christians is warranted, especially since they usually aren’t erudite or scholarly in nature and can use a modicum of edification.

Cultures Have Restricted Knowledge in the Past

It would be fun to say that each culture assigns the number of liters individuals and classes may have of knowledge when reaching adulthood, though I won't.

Cultures plainly have in the past set limits. Slaves often were banned from learning math or being literate. Conservatives were censored  for using language leftists didn't like on social media, women were banned from getting driver's licenses in Saudi Arabia etc.

Pragmatist Truth Parameters

A Pragmatist Truth paradigm seems to be somewhat of a verficationist paradigm. Socrates said that true belief and knowledge are equivalent. Truth values are found with verification and usefulness of something asserted as fact. That is not the same as saying that such a thing as truth-in-itself exists as a realist entity. Instead it is a neo-realist description.

If one says that AX is Z, and then tests the proposition finding that AX necessitates Z commutatively, and Z works in algorithms just like AX then it is true to say that AX and Z are equivalent.
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Christian Faith is Not in Worldly Politics

 Worldly ethics differ from Christian. Christians may demure to worldly government for the Lord is Jesus Christ; not the President, Pope, Dictator, King or party. Jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Paul wrote that he was a slave of Christ. Such will spend eternity in heaven, not with the faithless That makes no sense to the faithless sometimes. Worldly government is fallen though moderated by God. Nazis were a minority power. Practically though once Hitler became chancellor he was a dictator. It's wrong to blame the masses for blind allegiance to authority when they had no choice with death a likely outcome. Stalin evolving through killing off communist rivals to leadership had no need for public support from the start. He used raw secular power to subjugate everyone. Stalin was the most absolute mass dictator that has ever existed. In South Africa segregation occurred because race wr was common. Zulus were not tame subjects blindly obedient to government. Eventually the paradigm of race war as normal followed by the inertia of established way of doing things became transcended so apartheid ended.

Slavery was a normal human institution worldwide until the 19th century. Paul's advice was practical then  Rome entirely eradicated Jerusalem in 70 ad with a million dead Jews, and they were the legal authority. Spartacus leading the Roman slave revolt never stood a chance and all those thousands of slaves were crucified.

There will always be secularists willing to revolt. They want worldly power. Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. He was not Barrabas, he is God. His ways and wisdom differ from those of the Godless

California Wildwires; How to Change the Criterion

Established economies are difficult to change to something better. Too much is invested in the present system. Change evolves at best with directed evolution instead of revolution.  Putting fire breaks and fire proof housing in established communities would be nearly impossible.

What might work is using new technologies for improved fire spotting and suppression. Fire resistant Tesla style solar roof panels to create energy self-sufficiency to reduce fire ignition sources in power transmission lines suc as the Paradise fire ought to be mandatory.

I wrote years ago about establishing a million goat army to eat brush and forest floor dead leaf layers as a practical way to reduce fire combustibles. Before humans lived in North America lightning was the only source of ignition. Today there are literally billions with drunks tossing cigarette butts out the window along with a cloud of additional sources. Maybe some d signer bug will eat Los Angeles foliage occasionally in the future.

Drones could be used for fire spotting and faster suppression response time. Desalinating sea water on a large scale could fill covered fire control water reserves. I would suggest building canals along the Mexican border to fill with seawater pumped uphill to the Continental divide with solar power. Let the water and be collected when it comes on sloped clear roofs from the locks numbering in the thousands. Freshwater would flow in pipelines east and west to bring water to deserts.

Getting fire breaks built across the west will be nearly impossible with established vested interests resisting. As global warming increases national desertification people will want more water and find less unless the make it themselves. Making home power production increase is part of the equation for satisfactory fire suppression.

A nation cannot afford to pay for reconstruction of costly homes for the prosperous lost because the rich sometimes are airheads on public safety concerns a priori.

Context in Proverbs Chapter 3 Verse 5

One might want a little more context; “3 My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments:

2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

4 So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

Trusting in God now is trusting in God; the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Faith in God does not require abandoning reason. Mind does not work that way. One may have faith that a barbeque shredded beef sandwich quality is healthful and give thanks to God at the same time.

One might want a little more context; “3 My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments:

2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

4 So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

Trusting in God now is trusting in God; the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Faith in God does not require abandoning reason. Mind does not work that way. One may have faith that a barbeque shredded beef sandwich quality is healthful and give thanks to God at the same time.

Trust in God is comparable in some respects to trusting in your instructors the first time you make a head-first Australian repel that you won't just fall and hit the ground. It is like trusting a guide to lead you across the desert or a navigator to make a course across the sea. Edifying Bible reading is for your own benefit. Trust in God is not retirement from effort or responsibility. As is said God has a plan for your life

Veganism Experienced Inflated Food Prices Too

Apparently there are two major branches of veganism; dietary and ethical. The first is for health and the latter to stop cruelty to animals. I found a web site where they explain their outlook on that, that I will post.

It can be expensive to be vegan though. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be costly for the poor. One needs a refrigerator and range for food storage and prep- even running water to remove residue chemicals and germs from.handlers.

Steak can be costly too. Some need just to find affordable food like Bologna and cheese or even tacos made from beef.

The Impossible Whopper at Burger King is good enough yet all that transport and farming can cause environmental harm to wildlife as well. It can destroy habitat and make the animals homeless. Thank goodness for All Saints day when even armadillos may feel free and safe for a few hours.

https://www.vegansociety.com/news/blog/foundations-ethical-veganism

On the First Democracy

The first modern Republic occurred in Holland led by the Dewitt brothers who were eventually torn apart by a mob of political opponents in favor of a return to royal rule.  Locke, Hume, John Stewart Mill and even Aristotle seemed to favor democracy in some form; they did not excoriate it.

The Roman Republic was created in 509 BC.  It actualized some of the shape of the Republic Plato wrote about. Rome had two consoles and The Republic had two philosopher-kings. Plato wrote The Republic circa 375 BC. Socrates wanted a restoration of oligharchy and  Rome may have provided and abstract template to synthesize with a Spartan social structure. Rome's Republic was more like a democracy than Plato might have liked.

   American founders of democracy were in revolt against authoritarianism and social class supremacy; those were perennial challenges for the polis in needing to get rid of royalty.