Socrates: Innovative Philosopher or Destroyer of Democracy?

From what factually is known about Socrates and the state of Athens then he had that role of advocating for oppression of the demos. The happiness of people does not arise when they are enslaved or subjugated. Mankind naturally desires freedom rather than slavery

That Plato would advocate for female opportunity to oppress the masses as guardian-rulers may have been a political gambit to get feminine support-always important even today for bad political actions as well as good. Certainly women can reason well enough, however abstract reason doesn't compensate for lack of experience for either gender. In the 5th century B.C. childbirth was quite dangerous and in some places still is.

Why did Socrates want to abolish families and have the state raise progeny from mysterious liasons? Socrates might have ruminated about his first wife Xanthippe and alleged second wife Myrto and thought about the good points of a commonality of women in the Utopian Republic. He might have imagined that a prime role of philosopher kings would have been to impregnate lower classes so far as possible and outbreed undesirable characteristics such as the will for independence. In that idea he wouldn't be unique. Yet even from an evolutionary perspective diveristy is better than everyone having the same nose.

Women have tended to rule the home at times while men go out in the streets and fields to fight, strive or labor. The enfranchised agree not to kill one another, dominate the increments of sustainabilty or dump the excrements in the gutters-what could be bettter than that? Well, democracy can try to improve education and assure a fair basic social balance politically. The marketplace of ideas need be free of operant tyranny that excludes the masses from getting a natural selection of the best ideas, songs, poems or science fiction novels etc.

Eventually women too can rise to go out in the streets, fight, agree not to kill one another and labor-and they do. Maids from Mexico maintain homes for cheaper wages than Americans would demand from their middle and upper class employers. Everyone like exploitable labor-even philosopher-kings, the Supreme Soviets of the World and Boss Tweeds.

Set hierarchies are not invariably the most efficient structure for data processing alogirthms. Such are preclusive of much extraneous data and inertially tend to follow pre-determined courses without capibility of restructuring term values, concepts and so forth vital for social good.

The proposal for the education of female potential philosopher-kings may have been unrealisticly patronizing to entice Plato's prospects. The average life span was less than 25 I would guess in the 5th century B.C. One wonders how wise women might have become- guarded themselves as cloistered nun-warrior-Queens forming abstract ideas of the conduct of war and ideal social development planting and nurturing 5th century Athenians relying upon court favorite consultants perhaps-primordial lobbiests from abroad.

One might wonder if elites have a class thing regarding their self-bestowed concept of supremacy that requires that their women too are better than those cattle ruled. Catherine the Great was a competent elite ruler of Russia-quite promiscuous yet Socrates advocated against families and for state raising of all children-a very bee-hive concept that simply isn't very good. In some ways the Republic is a prototype for a fascist, Orewellian communist dictatorship the Khmer Rouge might have appreciated. One musn't forget that the new Kim of North Korea has already been decreed 'the genius amongst geniuses'.

The Roman version of the Republic had a Dictator for a year when war required transcending the joint consulship-a more realistic policy than having female war leaders in that day.

Some generals lead from the rear and others from the front. Alexander led from the front, as did Caesar when necessary. Elites though of a non-democratic sort have a greater tendency to lead in absentia from a comfortable harem, bar or pleasure dome sending the mere commoners to do the menial tasks such as war. On the other hand one might argue that female philosopher kings of a bureaucratic disposition would have been Amazon like warriors. I think war is a specialized occupation though that makes one less philosophical with rank-I am not persuaded that elite rulers can be trained to pursue the good for society and knowledge of war at the same time, nor that the guardians would not have the biased point of view that the good for society is when philosopher kings rule-rather like those tin-pot dictators for life of second and third world nations.

Socrates influenced people like Alcibiades to disrespect democracy and that cost Athenian lives such as in the war against Syracuse when Alcibiades decided to switch sides and turn traitor because he was relieved of command of the Athenian navy after a drunken night defacing statues of demi-urges in some temple (probably the Parthenon).

The Wall Street Quant traders and cdo packagers were/are the nation’s elites nurtured in misguided economic philosophy. Adam Smith’s capitalism was less accentuated than the concept of self-regulated social fee-enterprise. Free enterprise today should have regulations to preserve competition and access to capital by the masses as opposed to a reduction in concentration of wealth.

Corporations should be allowed to have no more than 5000 employees and individual could invest in no more than three corporations. It is possible to restore Adam Smith’s intentions in formalizing capitalism as an economic theory so that the economic good of the citizenry is maximized rather than that of a few. Smith and Hume were anti-aristocratic economic power instead of proponents of it.

One may admire Plato creating the foundation for philosophical realism with his realm of forms paradigm. Even Kripke in 'Naming and Necessity' keep a semblance of imperputability in names while Russell's theory of names is a forerunner of Quine's ideas about language as linguistic units derived from association with objects or events/procesesses etc.

Temporal change and classes of objects in the world of perpetual change does present the idea that some Univeral designs for objects exist that precede any particular expression in the temporal world. One learns through particle physics that select forms do exist for quanta. Only a certain amount of energy may exist in particular orbits, and radiation or fusion exists to renormalize those atoms. In some regards Plato was correct about a realm of forms in physics then after all. Socrates.

In spite of the brilliance of the realm of forms idea and laying the foundation of realism as well as advancing the classification of word and objects etc the will to elevate a Republic that isn't much more than primitive tribal rule is a regressive rather than a positive contribution to posterity. Modernity requires that discrete ad hoc procesing of data and education in ecopheric and social reality be common coin of mass thought as they pursue their own self interest aware that several billion other people are doing the same thing and that their are unintended, concatenated effects of those actions.

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The will of Socrates to subvert the Athenian democracy and have a regime change against the will of the majority was a dark side to the man. Socrates, like various supremists throughout history had a political personal egoistic eudeamon calling him to put his fellow citizen in chains held by the few, the proud and the rich including himself presumably.

Socrates had a inclination to support revolt against the government and was thrice convicted of fomenting insurrection. His philosophical method was political organizing to persuade others to end the existing government and subjugate the people. People that wish to subjugate one to political non-equal status are on the wrong side of things morally speaking.

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The Athenian democracy was a utopian experiment-as much then as in 1776. Socrates sought to regress to a primitivist tribalism with philosopher-king co-chiefs, kyshatria-warrior guardians and helot-slaves. He might have been designing a modern corporation or zaibatsu of immense size.

Athens had no oppresion by the majority-all citizens were free and voters. Slaves of whatever origin were that or dead-what could one in that time do with captives of war and others not of one's tribe that one contacted? In world war I more than 50,000 soldier died of blood poisoning from infected blisters I believe. In the 5th century B.C. human physical contact tended to be more violent because any contact was dangerous medically speaking, as well as for other reasons of history.

Jingoism officially was invented by the British-and they were an aristocratic-democratic hybrid then. In 5th century B.C. Athens war newspapers and radio didn't yet exit for jingoitic utility. If one had a sword or a spear drill team one could have a crash at the foes of course-dash across the ground-yet it alsway ressulted in many deaths and killing off of proto-jigoites. The Spartans, very good at war gaming, were not invariably happy about going to the killing fields-heck, even abcessed tooth removal could be painful for 5th century do-it-your-selfers I would guess.

Achilles earlier beleived a warrior death was best, yet it was swift and life with cancer or a myriad other chronic diseases very common then were not. The Roman emperor Sula perished when worm rotted his guts enough that they fell out.

The Athenian democracy wasn't terribly militaritic either-I think that you have imbibed some more 20th century propaganda because of 20th century war historical evaluations made by people with inadequate historical understanding. The Persians attacked the Greeks,and of course later so did the Romans. Alexander was not a democrat.

Democracy does not need to be anti-intellectual. The United States is one of the best places for intellectual efforts. Anti-intellectual is a human trait rather than a democratic trait. In a free society an intellectual may live in a tent and read Quine while the unintellectual can visit Talledega for NASCAR and help advance global warming support (they should use electric cars at least).

The 'Other' Socrates

There is a dark side to Socrates. The little known side may be common knowledge amidst some philosophers, yet it should be understood by the many as well as the few.

Socrates was a supporter of oligarchy and in opposition to the demos. It was the democrats that gave the philosopher the choice-Athens-leave it or die. Socrates choose death rather than to give up the principle of rule by the exclusive.

Bertrand Russell called Plato a fascist (during the Second World War). Plato's Republic was loosely modeled on the Spartan city-state. Yet of course Plato-Socrates wanted philosopher-Kings to dictate everything with a limited number of flunkies below in a rather Spartan configuration. The ordinary people were not helots of course, the men just should be cuckolded and the women imp0regnated by superior males-Socrates was an early formal eugenic supremist.

For most of the history of western civilization aristocracy has ruled and of course they advocate the extreme conservatism of 'The Republic'. How noble was Socrates in thrice being charged by the Demos of corrupting the youth of Athens-he was inciting them to revolt and restore the Oligarchy. Today of course the charge of’ corrupting youth' brings sniggers. Socialist believing corruption is hunkie dorrie want all of that they can get on the premise that it will undermine the conservative amongst us. We know the litany-unlimited sin is o.k. mankind evolved from lizards and hence it should today have a magical lizard's moral sensibilities.

Socrates did evolve the Socratic method. Maybe he refined some sort of water-boarding interrogation methodology that could work in polite society. Socrates wanted to prove that anyone he met was a moron or at least quite ignorant-any maybe he was right for the people were ordinarily ignorant and Socrates was a rare, thoughtful, intelligent aristocrat from a humble background.

Can we find sympathy for Socrates-son of a sculptor who worked on the Parthenon, rugged soldier, voluntary mystic of catatonic like states of deep standing contemplation-because he supported the rich and powerful of his day perhaps to get kickbacks of a financial nature-or at least to have an easy time of accommodations, food, parties and security?

If Socrates did not seek favors of the Buffets and Gates of his time, if the George Soros' of golden age Athens were just means to an end of converting Athenian liberty into a Spartan like domination by a pair of philosophers like Socrates and Plato, he was at least an individual who stimulated political philosophy and the inquiry into the nature of word meaning. It isn't too surprising that his grand-pupil Aristotle invented classical logic, the syllogism and formal scientific classification.

I guess Socrates wasn't all bad after all, yet of course, we like the moderns and several others fairly well in compensation, though of course none are God as is Jesus Christ.

Moderate Red Wine Drinking to Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer?

Science Daily posted an article on a scientific finding that the risk of breast cancer may be reduced with the drinking of 8 ounces of red wine nightly. The report will be published in an April edition of the Journal of Women's Health.

The article pointed out that most alcohol consumption increases estrogen levels that are a risk factor for cancerous cell growth yet red wine, seeds and grape skin do not. With environmental estrogen levels also elevated by certain plastic drinking containers, could those plastic cups and bottles be a risk factor for breast cancer too?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106105925.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+

On Infinities

Cantor's trans-infinite infinities indicate ordinal form in abstract relations, yet it is not necessary that there is a correspondence to anything actual from infinite series. A circle line may be subdivided infinitely forever with smaller and smaller numbers at each point on the line. Reality may be qualitatively transcendent over infinities though, and the evident Universe is simply a project of an indefinable teleology phenomenalized.

Infinities of the abstract sort often are infinite in one direction with ordinal structure (regular intervals or spacing/quantity) yet not in all dimensions. The circle may be infinitely reduced yet not expanded in the same area without fundamental change of investment.

The Universe is sometimes thought to have expanded from a smaller area. Obviously it is logically easier to imagine the Universe shrinking to an infinitely small point.

If the Universe may be regarded theoretically as a circular or spherical section of a two dimensional or eleven dimensional membrane, it is fundamental to imagine reducing that portion or area to a small point before releasing it to expand and resume its normal context state over time.

On the Dionysian Aesthetic Paradigm vs More Objective Criteria?

Reading Euripides' versions of the works of Sophocles is lively. The Bacchae roll right along with a fair field description of the salient point of the advance of the women under the influence of Dionysus. What can't one like about it? Would you regard Timon of Athens as Dionysian because of the strength of Timon's hatred of mankind, or is that in a Euripidean style?

Is Wagner’s Logen a reference to Attila the Hun? Attila made it to France and fought to a stalemate with a Roman Legion.

One comment on the ring cycle offers the opinion that Bakunin was the role model. Adolph Hitler and other political charismatics place the emotion of vengeance right there with Dionysian passion. Monomaniacal political passion can bring a high opportunity cost with it. Artists though seem to require devotion to their project-I find it difficult to associate Dionysian drunkeness with artistic passion. Was Jackson Pollock a Dionysian and Pablo Picasso an intellectual of cubist construction and meta-layered perspective placing subjective psychologic perception into the empirical world?

The work of a the passion of Christ when the word means perserverence through suffering may be the best example of artistic devotion to an aethetic cause if we allow real values to intrude into the aesthete. Passion with sobriety is the best kind.

I stipulate that being in some way compelled to attend an Opera instead of reading philosophy or cosmology would be a terrible fate. So is a succession of Presidents of the United States that would be guided by emotion or red flags stimulating deficit spending instead of rational, analytical informed opinion about ecological economics and the way to move socially in a Thomas Moore direction or at least with a George Luis Borges sort of amusement aesthetically with intellectual genius.

Some prefer irrational motivation for living, yet it requires a good healthy ecosphere to run amuck in decadence instead of one with a prospect for mass extinction. I believe one might sublimate the aesthetic of romanticism within an intellectual appreciation of beauty and avoid the excesses of Nietzsche-

Darker Northern Winters Evolve Larger Human Brains & Eyes-Stimulate Sales of Light Bulbs

The brains of Northerners from Scandanavia are largest and those from Micronesia smallest evidently because the visual cortex increases in size to see better in those month of darkness. Since mosquitoes fly evasively really well, and since the U.S. Congress plans to spend a trillion dollars buying 2500 F-35 Joint Strike Neo-Stealth fighters the next two decades, it is easy to discern that brain size does not necessarily coincide with intelligence.

Other scientific reports indicate that long-term memory supports or reinforces the ability of perception to recognize objects. Learning does allow an individual to discern elements of their perceptual field they may not otherwise perceive-such as the UFO parked discretely in the corner of a Wall-Mart lot, or investors on Wall Street exiting the exchange with large bags of other people's money.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-remembrance-future-long-term-memory-stage.html

Alaskans have taken up the go north for a bigger brain evolution in selecting its state Governors adroitly skipping electing anyone from the S.E. part of the state and instead looking to Fairbanks and even Barrow for the best prospects.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2019600/We-Northerners-knew-bigger-brains-southern-softies.html

Redundant Canadian Tar Sands Crude Pipelines and Larger Northern Brains Perfidy?

Building an ecospherically invasive, displacing pipeline from Canada across the U.S.A. in order that Tar Sands Oil can be refined and sold to Brazil as gasoline seems outright dumb. A much shorter, entirely Canadian pipeline to carry Tar Sands oil from Alberta Canada to saltwater in a British Columbia (well, a few miles short on a river) is already going ahead. One must wonder how stupid U.S. politicians are to let that sort of ecospherically corrosive project be considered at all.

Apparently U.S. economic and energy leadership is just moribund-what ever happened to President Obama's state of the art 'clean coal' vision? Can't some sort of high tech electric car power line in highway for smaller, faster cheaper battery recharging be built instead? The again, why not invest in the hydrogen infrastructure at last?

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/

These Canadians as northerners probably have larger visual cortexes and eyes than southerners in the 48 states. They may be attempting to build a best case for them pipeline infrastructure for exporting oil and gas to foreign destinations. While the Canadians are America's brothers in revolution (well, almost, it was only a fluke of fate that Tory's led Canada to be on Britain's side instead of ours), and we should be concerned to help them maximize their economic potential, it would be an abrogation of the 'tough love' axiom to let them do harm to the ecosphere of Canada and the U.S.A. by constructing a superfluous pipeline. We already know that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's radical force of the left and are investing in new exploration and sometime will get around to cracking crude for point sale of petroleum to South America while the Tar Sands oil is more likely to find better sales prospects in China-a nation that is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and doesn't mind some Tar Sands crude.

On Morality

Morality also has been said to be what people actually do socially. That is one may define social conduct interactively in various spheres from the point of view as a social anthropologist-historian. Moral behavior is made or developed from a variety of sources including obviously history and tradition-experience of real world circumstances that have bound people together.

One might consider Navaho funeral behavior of the 19th century and note that the procedures of the Shamanistic tradition were regarding life rather than the afterlife, and that the customs of body washing with soap of the funeral participants after three days, of not looking north and of concern for evil spirits coincided with the avoidance of germs and communicable diseases that often accompanied death-the living had no biological explanation for or understanding of germs, yet their selected moral traditions roughly followed the better decontamination and social grief release procedures possible given the criteria.

Social behavior tends to adapt its moral guidelines appropriate for the times. One sees the changes in feminist politics and employment following Rowe vs. Wade and the changes in sexual practices after the marketing of birth control pills. Moral guidelines tend to be rules of conduct with less than a substantive codification into law, although moral norms are often made into laws.

Natural law is its own implicit moral criterion that emerges throughout human cultures although not uniformly. Revelations of a divine nature are on occasions instructions for individual and social behavior that one disregards only at one's peril, and there is no necessary causal link between the emergence of moral codes from direct divine revelation, although some of the latter have been found through investigation to coincide with reasonable historical grounds for emergence into being.

Philosophical definition of terms such as good and evil tend have ontological values that vary, and construction of logical propositions and formations for moral axioms to induct responsive behavior conformity historically have been of a subjective and temporal nature. Good is a concept that requires a particular definition-utilitarians and others have obviously considered what good is, and if the greatest good for the greatest number is truly moral when that premise is exploited to annihilate individual primacy in existential social worth. If a political order pursues a particular highest moral goal that is good, then it might justify any lesser evil to advance society toward that goal as good as well. All evil in support of an ultimate goal is phenomenally good as well. The opportunities to disclarify terms are evident and abundant in such abstract impersonal approaches to manufacture of moral values.

Abstract moral values made practice by elite imposition are sometimes examples of the elevation of abstract goals through equivocation to a moral good that may then be placed upon the society as a straightjacket. Nietchze's idea that the annihilation of traditional morality and of Christian values obviously adversely influenced Germany toward a self-destructive political course in the 20th century. Some have noted that the adoption of mass social moral values of anti-values tend to bring about the most rigid mass social conformity possible as one might find in a gang, militant terror organization or the Hitler Youth Movement-Even Stalin's Russia sought to impose a culling moral existential guideline that would have been a comfortable philosophical fit for the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea.

The abstract construction of moral value in order to bring about political change is a common enough historical occurrence. Even today in the United States there is a possibility of a Presidential contest in 2012 between two non-Christians from different parties yet in a way from the same state of Massachusetts with each advocating a corporatist health care plan in a state with homosexual marriage. One might speculate that the operative new moral axiom for the godless atheism of Massachusetts is Darwin' gambit; the over-use of evolution as a tool for the controverion of morality for-itself.

The philosophical consideration of the range of behavior useful to human life in a criterion of phenomenal evolution is not limited to crass anything goes-ism. There are implicit physical and spiritual criteria of the empirical state of being that makes some intentional and unintentional behaviors good, and other bad. Then again, there are transcendent questions concerning morality that are a matter of faith and insight.

Mo Seeming to Gather for Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum seems to have the valuable MO going into the first primary contest of the 2012 Presidential season. if he wins or finishes second his candidacy may be well set to surge in South Carolina.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676705/iowa-caucus-rick-santorum-staffers.jhtml

Mitt Romney may alienate some voters because he received a Vietnam draft deferment as a 'Mormon minister'. While ordinary Americans were slogging though the muck of the rice paddies the heir of the American motors CEO got deferments like so many of his destined to wealth class in order to bring the Mormon faith to Parisians.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/21/9613042-character-matters?chromedomain=nbcpolitics

Avoiding ill-planned wars is not necessarily a bad idea, yet it is consistent with the yippification of Wall Street insiders seeking to concentrate class wealth as well. Many of that class are happy enough to send a well paid mercenary military to combat in profitable for corporate wars.

On Free Will

Free will is a state of affairs existing for a sentient being within a particular context. One may make choices on Earth that are not possible on a planet with stronger gravity or alien oligarchs that insist that none besides themelves have free will.

Mathematics has conditional free will opportunities abundantly-even infinitely within some sets of numbers. One may make right or wrong combinations, placements or intervals and be free. Maybe cognizant coincidence of positive choices with intention indicates free will when the possibilities for error are rich.

Free will may be developed with increased knowledge and when range of intellectual selection/motion multiply.

Do any know how to deal with the global warming Siberian methane hydrate burp that may reult in release of a global warming gas 25 times more powerful than co2 and in a quantity of 1,400 billion tons? Free will in political intelligence is as restricted as in authoritarian ocieties sometimes even when they are nominally free socieities because the politicians are daft.

Elija and Problems With Political Leadership

The United States in its 2012 Presidential primary election season seems fundamentally presented with slim pickins. Some of us would prefer that Jesus just rapture us out right now and let the godless atheists ruin the world their own way-possibly frightening everyone with mechanical robotic snakes slithering about every neighborhood in search of hate speech against the government.

Few plain Christian candidates with economic competence seem to have any interest in reforming the Christian Church into a better functioning priesthood of beleivers. The candidates advocate no cost moral positions (what does it cost to make abortion illegal again?) but ignore the other Christian points about being of service to the poor. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and said that leaders ought to serve. Today's candidates ask for capital gains and income tax cuts for the rich and have enough interest in creating free health care for the poor.

President Obama obviously brought sex change to the nation and little else-the nation's military is moving down the trail of homosexual marriages, homosexual basic allowance for quarters and so forth while the institution is itself a professional service without ordinary citizens interested in joining it via the draft.

Mitt Romney is the obvious best qualified candidate on economic and secular interests yet isn't a Christian-and that worries Christians eager to please God (see the excerpt from the King James version following). One doesn't want to gain the world yet lose one's soul-neither does one want to elect economically incompetent and /or corrupt politician exploiting Christians for political support.

2nd Kings -

"1Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.

2And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.

3But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron?

4Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.

5And when the messengers turned back unto him, he said unto them, Why are ye now turned back?

6And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.

7And he said unto them, What manner of man was he which came up to meet you, and told you these words?

8And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.

9Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.

10And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

11Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly.

12And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

13And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.

14Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight.

15And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king.

16And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.

17So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."

'The One' in relation to Buddhist Atheism and .American Atheism

The atheism of Buddhism is not like that of American atheism. American atheism is a simple non-belief in anything besides the secular and immediately evident occasionally piled up with the whipped crème of historical and futurist extrapolation from the present. Buddhist atheism on the other hand is a kind of religion of belief in non-being. Buddhism’s has its own contradictions dissimilar from those of automobile driving consumerist atheist.

The 2nd century neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus wrote of 'The One'. The One is what we would call God. Eternal and omniscient, omnipotent and source of all things, everything that exists is an emanation from The One. Buddhists have a sort of reasoning from the apparent trancendingly through its temporal illusoriness back toward the one nirvana of non-being. Plotinus in his 54 tractates named 'The Enneads' explained that the One emanates another figure named 'The Intelligence' who creates all the things that exist in various forms-no excluding necessarily apparent evolution within a temporal universe.

Plotinus charts reality from The One downward through a realm of forms to this world with far too many broken forms. Buddhist reason from this realm of broken forms upward or downward through to one state of non-being. The initial motivation of the Buddha was to overcome suffering in this world. Influenced by the Hindu concept of Maya or temporal illusion the Buddha sought to see through temporality and disregard the phenomena of pain.

Because belief in God is the eight heresy of Buddhism they are left in theory with an eventual pervasive nothingness of cosmology as the final state. While human mind is phenomenal and dissolves with life or even before, the experience of life and the contents of thought are all that human beings seem to have-so one must make one's thoughts count as far as possible for the good.

Buddhism presently shares a cosmological paradox with theoretical physics and cosmology in explaining how being even if temporal illusion-how anything at all exists. Descartes' had a similar philosophical challenge. Even if existence is an illusion it is an illusion of something, somewhere. The Universe may have always existed as a derivative of The One or it may have appeared in being as a creation from someone.

Christians believe that The One, or God created all that is in some way, in some order. Buddhists stop at the point of investigation of the negation of temporality as permanence and point to non-being as the normative state, while American atheists believe in Darwin' gambit as the mechanical universe's agent for issuing life. Christians and Buddhists might each be able to stipulate that the apparent world and universe of solid-state matter-energy is probabilistically entangled from some substrata of quantum uncertainty with exceedingly paradoxical and different criteria of space and time.

Consumerism as a label was an opening label in the class war of the godless atheist corporate and socialist ethos of broadcast power. Consumers vs. producers was an us-them paradigm useful for making workers feel useless and the rich, glorious. American atheism is a new and troublesome political front generated by the robotic surveillance snake-bots of power and idiocy.

Eurozone Is Taking on Bad Aspects of U.S. Federalism

The United States has traditionally been a people avoiding state of the art political philosophy research and philosophy in general with the notable exception of the founders. The U.S.A. has benefited from a tradition of political reform though that seemed to have died after the end of the cold war when economic and political corruption flourished.

Consider the European problems with its neo-federalism. It has some of the problems the U.S.A. has with federalism acting as a tool for the redistribution of wealth-while one state or nation can lever the abstract federal entity as an exchange of wealth redistribution it pork barrels bills and responsibilities as if no one is responsible-it is the problem of the federal entity and all those socialist freeloaders-even if the Republicans of Alaska when the late Ted Stevens was in charge of Senate appropriations was the biggest pork barrel per capita state of all.

While states or nations can get free money from abstract governments they will until the well runs dry instead of developing their own resources. Of course with international plundering of labor by trans-nationals as well as copius travel by job seekers everyone will end up living in megacities as drones on rations allocated by the oligopoly.

I suppose Germany as the center of the Eurozone reality can be made to feel that it should transfer wealth to lazy nations-and why not, since the end of the cold war local accountability has perished and Wall Street types globally have become self-help crooks knowing that no one is really responsible for collective political needs. Government may thus be used as an exchange for redistributing wealth to the top 1% of quantitative traders in dark pools and elsewhere.

The Reagan administration has become a Rock Candy Mountain dream of corrupt government financial planners and bad philosophical theorists that believe the buck never stops and may be minted from presses and electrons without accountability. It is the corrupting and lazy economic thought of those that have no significant philosophical reasoning practice.

The left and right are obsolete options of capital vs social thinking. No one believes that Congress could deign or invent new products better than a clown car of bureaucrats. No one believes that Herman Cain could name 30 foreign nations with a balanced budget or even explain what ecological economics is-Rick Perry may regard global warming as what happens when one drives from Denver to Austin.

U.S. states have political advertising that is financed by global corporations contributing to political action committees and globally own broadcasting networks and newspapers. Corporatism is concentrating wealth and domestically the federal tax lever is exploited by capitalists to manufacture weapons in one of the view industries that hasn't been largely outsourced for obvious reasons. Americans haven't developed a political philosophy that would reform capitalism and assure that all Americans have a minimum income and health care, a recovering ecosphere, secure borders and freedom from foreign political control.

Intermediate size domestic corporations should be favored instead of large corporations, and individuals should be limited in capital gains advantage in the abstract-it would be good to cap the number of corporations anyone could own shares of stock in to three. Capitalism wasn't perfected by Adam Smith and it can use upgrades and reform as much as a version of MS Windows now and then in order that it actually serves the masses rather than oligopoly or aristocracy.

Ancient Sea Levels & The Lost Civilization of Noah

About 25,000 years ago the Ice Age began ending, and by 15,000 years ago the ancient sea level about 120 meters lower than at present began to rise-it continued to rise until about the year 1000 a.d. Global warming may unnaturally make the sea level increase again a the last of the world' ice melt. By the way, one would think that the distribution of water weight to the ocean basins from the land and polar ice would affect plate tectonic a little.

In Alaska the S.E. region would have been affected a lot by those lower sea levels. Many of the larger islands of the Alexander Archipelago would have been connected to the mainland, and that is probably why the brown bears of some islands are genetically different from latter arrivals that migrated here after the sea level isolated and stranded one group of bear about 10,000 b.c.

Human ecospheric fragmentation isolates bear to this day as irrational ecosphere development puts politic-economy in the role of 'devil' in relation to wildlife adversely impacted by habitat fragmentation and destruction.

http://www.cfr.washington.edu/research.cesu/reports/J9W88040005S-JRobinson-THESIS-Uidaho.pdf

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/iceciv.html Ancient shorelines of Ice Age civilization(s)

Early behavorially correct humans migrated out of Africa perhaps 40,000 b.c. across the shallower Red Sea and along the Saudi-Yemeni waterfront to an oasis in the flood plain of the Persian Gulf (sea level was 100-300 feet lower then) may have been the lost civilization referred to in the story of Noah...see the article below on the Gulf Oasis civilization perhaps below the Persian Gulf...

http://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html Persian Gulf Oasis utopia destroyed by an 8000 B.C. flood?

http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/maps.pdf On mapping of areas vulnerable to sea level rise

The One Percent Aristocracy

An aristocracy is rule by the elite. They rule because they have the power to, and of course they aren't elected. The aristocrats exploit every available intellectual lever to assert that they themselves are best and know whats best for society always-of course that means they must concentrate wealth, enslave inventors, make home ownership a disposable good and rent everyone a mortgage through global banks while digging 20,000 miles of tunnels after South African minerals useless for anything else and nothing at all on the moon for scientific research.

Unelected, non-representative government is the bummer of all the victims of the cranks that have the power to coerce everything their own way. It may take various forms of course; less than oligarchy, more than an Imperial Russian table of ranks without a Tsar.

Aristocracy develops like a network of cancer metastasizing throughout the body politick. Those networks of power coagulate and strangle the free enterprise of the masses of society through their mass power over the marketplace of real property and ideas.

Without reform aristocracy today drives society in a Lemmingway charge toward eventual corporate oblivion like Rowdy Yates herding cattle to Abilene. It isn't a rationally designed or responsive society-it is one making accident and unthinking social politics a virtue, one that opts for pagan trust in evolution and the mystical guiding hand and fickle finger of fate rather than intentional human intelligence and free will guiding maximized individual free enterprise to keep society and the ecosphere functioning.

Aristocracy may develop in world civilization today through corporatism. The concentration of wealth and co-option of democracy and polity (polity is representative while democracy is direct) in the U.S.A. is a fact of life. The rich own the broadcast media, and the government and the networks of society.

The rich pay just 35% in taxes and 15% in capital gains. That is going up next year or 2013 to 20% however they are making up for it by making a 10% capital gains tax on the poorest 10% who presently pay 0%. The rich get their contribution back through federal economic infrastructure support anyway.

Obviously the rich believe they earn their money and wouldn't change a thing. They take their value system for granted, and getting them to cooperate with a reform of capitalism that would be inclusive of the well being of all the people of the nation and environment would be impossible. The rich already comprise a kind of idiot aristocracy working against the survival of human and other forms of life on Earth in a free, functional and healthy ecosphere with liberty and justice for all. One that aspires even unto reverence for God.

Adam Smith' s theory of capitalism wasn't intended to be an abstract math theory of economics detached from its effect upon society. Smith and his friend David Hume sought the liberation of people from aristocracy rather than their enslavement under advantaged class tyrants by any name that dominated business. It is o.k. to reform capitalism to make it work for the poor too without lapsing into state authoritarianism.

President's Tactical Hawaiian Vacation

Financial leadership by politicians today is rather important to many of us poor, independent voters who care about economic malfeasance in high places

If we can set aside for a time, thought of Erasmus’ ‘In Praise of Folly’ and unlimited golfing junkets, let us consider what good things the President could be planning for next year in Hawaii rather than wasting time in Chicago presently in that monochromatic canyon of concrete.

The President could even now be working on a re-election theme book; ‘St. Laffer and The Gospel of New Voodoo Economics in The New World Order-How Everyone Can Have A Yearly 4 million Dollar Vacation , Special Bonus Vacations, 500 Dollar Haircuts, Extended Tax Breaks for The Rich, 32+ Rounds of Golf Annually, Gut Frank-Dodd and Exploit the Poor for Only 20 Trillion Dollars of Debt With Easy Credit Repayment on an Outsourcing, Hyperinflating, Deferred Depression Installment Plan-(terms of minimal high unemployment, neatening up of undesirable, over-aged, over-qualified , racially or non-swinging independents may apply in your area) .”

The President seems to work more for the rich than the poor, and gives the Republicans a tax cut each December, or someone, while continuing to borrow money from China. Next year the capital gains rate on the poorest will skyrocket from 0 to 10! In December 2010 the President was the leading cheerleader for tax cuts for the rich.

The President may be setting the stage for 10 million dollar twice annual vacations in the next terms to demonstrate upward executive mobility. How could the Republicans ever one-up that?

About the First People Exploration Culture of North America

One could use Toynbee's criteria of civilization and conclude that the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations were successful rather than failed civilizations. Civilization may have stages of growth, maturity and decadence. In Meso-America there was a succession of cultures that might be said to have overlapped and built upon others before.

Across North America successful cultures arose that adapted to the sometimes plentiful, sometimes harsh conditions environmentally. One thinks of the tour de force of Arctic ice survival of Yupik hunters waiting for a seal in a land without forests for burning fires or building homes. If one spends even one winter without heat in a tent north of sixty degrees its possible to get an idea of the level of survival competence and adaptation required-one didn't go into Wal-Mart for another Bic (they had seal oil and moss wick lamps).

The United States today may be taking the Universal phase in the Toynbee cycle-the highest before collapse-and corruption seems to be becoming institutionalized these years from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. It has over-expanded abroad, taken on vast debt, allowed itself to be flooded by an external proletariat and in sundry ways taken a turn away from concern about the well being of all of the citizens of the democracy in favor of concentrating wealth. Hardly necessary to mention the environmental management failure.

Native Americans were of course originally from several locations in the old world. People landed upon Crete by water-raft as long ago as 25,000 years. If they arrived by accident then assuredly people also arrived accidentally via the Gulf Stream and rich fisheries as long ago as 30,000 years B.P. Some archeological sites in South America seem to indicate sites as old as that.

Via Berengia and Alaska before the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age some may have canoed down the Pacific Coast. When the continental and western ice sheets parted enough a new route to Montana developed from Alaska and waves of immigrants from Eurasia arrived to journey south generally.

Of course the Aleuts invented the fasted human powered boat-the kayak-until recent times. Yet Alaska remained sparsely populated I would guess as the new age explorers ventured across the great land to unsettled points everywhere. America north of present day Mexico had at most about 2 or 3 million pre-Columbian natives, yet the population of the hemisphere was far more-enough that perhaps 16 million perished from a variety of causes in the decades following the discovery by Columbus. The population of natives in the U.S.A. declined to 500,000.

The numerous cultures of the sundry tribes made quite successful adaptations to the new world. These explorers and decedents reached the Northern Arctic littoral about 25,000 B.C. and in historical waves journeyed far to the east and south when the way opened to human foot travel.

Just because a culture or civlization ends it does not follow that it was not successful in its day-neither are people failures because they are mortal and destined for dust (or hell unless saved through the grace of God). One cannot say that Periclean Athens or even Sparta were failures because they no longer exist. There are elements of cultures from the Pre-Columbian era that still exit obviously, and of course the cultivation of the potato changed Irish culture for the good except for the blight a few years.

Of course far later pre-Dorset Eskimo were wiped out by Dorsett Eskimo with dog sleds for very fast travel. They reached the eat coast of Canada about the same time as early Irish and Viking explorers. Frobisher Bay's natives that still remember when martin Frobisher arrived early in the 1500s only arrived themselves a couple hundred years before.

Native cultures are of course pressured into becoming part of world civilization a Toynbee called it. Western civilization and that of the East were the last two 'successful' civilizations yet they too were merged into world civilization. It is virtually impossible to separate technology from culture anywhere, and global economics have made all cultures versions of a local tool using culture.

It is said that Cheetah-Tarzan's chimpanzee-actually it was the third chimp following two earlier very likely-died a couple days ago. In Tarzan's 1930s there were still several very isolated cultures, yet today none can escape the corruption. Capitalism run amok fails Adam Smiths goal of promoting an antidote to aristocratic domination of democracy. Native peoples hadn't the problem that ossified civilizations present generally-except perhaps in Aztec land where the shortage of human sacrifices meant they needed to look abroad for victims.

There was a great though short lived civilization named Cohokia at the site of present day East St. Louis with very large pyramids at one end of a gaming court with a very fine clay covered with sand place that was the equivalent of the super bowl of spear throwing at a target. The Cohokians manufactured a hockey puck-yo yo like object that was exported as far as the Texas and S. Carolina regions where some sorts of games (and pyramidal mounds) were also played or built. It is difficult to say where those Cohokians got there game from, much less their pyramid idea. Very little trade seems to have existed between the Missourians and the Aztecs.

Plainly though, the mostly non-violent (well comparatively) Cohokian in their declining phase experienced radical change. In less than a 150 year the civilization vanished along with the culture of aggregated non-Cohokian tribes serving it agriculturally. Someplace in North Dakota a village wall was excavated several year ago, and there was evidence of human remains and a massacre at that wall, and indications of a mass infantry-like charge with weapon-this was though to be unknown behavior in North America then, and occurred after the fall of Cohokia. What could it mean?

I wondered if Cohokia was simulated by arrivals from Europe-perhaps Irish or Vikings in the 13th century a.d. who traveled mostly by water and Wisconsin to arrive logically in St. Louis and recruit the natives to build a pyramid-something like Michael Cain in 'The Man Who Would Be King'. Well-very challenging to consider-yet the fascinating history of America and the explorer that wandered to and around it will be good for archeologists and writers for some time.

The early Americans or first peoples, and the second etc. hadn't the sedentary and intensely populous life and competition that stimulated the eventual rise of civilization in Eurasia-Africa etc. The first arrowhead was made in Africa about 200,000 year ago and it took another 190,000 years for a civilization to develop. The Americans mostly left Eurasia before anything much was made besides hunter gathering tools, rabbit snares etc. With so few people they had no need to develop cities, stone walls and so forth. Yet one can see how quickly they became skilled horsemen after the Spaniard brought the horse to North America, and of course skilled horse warriors. One should recall that it was largely Attila the Hun and his mounted warriors with lassos that shocked and awed the decadent Roman Empire.

The lesson of the value of cavalry and the need for fortifications accelerated in America too as forts were built by the Spaniard and attacked by Frobisher and Drake. Custer dying at the Little Big Horn was a Union cavalry officer that fought for Grant in the 2nd wilderness campaign. His brother, the two-time Medal of Honor recipient, perished with him on that grassy knoll, when Crazy Horse' band brought about a logical infantry defeat in detail purpose to the battlefield.

The advance of technology in Native American cultures was consistent with the demographic and geographic history of the advance and dispersion of the first peoples to the two continents. They were probably responsible for exterminating 16 of the 100 or so Native American mammals that weight 100 pounds or more. Modern Americans are doing better than that I would think with a record of specie extermination extending into the hundreds of thousands including all forms of life.

The failure of the present American cultural branch in politics to provide free health care for the poor and let the privileged pay for their own health care, the failure to abandon fossil fuel engines and move to advanced electro-magnetic public transport, indicates that the continuing demographic intensification of population growth and resource depletion may be moving toward a critical and dumb time of troubles.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8993313723654914866 The Secret of El Dorado

President Obama's Queer Influence in Review

Federal hate speech was a good present for the corporate Internet world permitting the deletion of non-conformist language whenever its useful to purge writing accounts-that is with a covering of federal support for corporate Internet dictatorship of the corporate will.
Hate speech I would think needs to be determined by the entire context of something written instead of by the presence of a few words that it o.k. for the object group themselves to use publicly yet not for anyone else if they are in political opposition.

With the Presidential conquest of the Pentagon's don't ask, don't tell policy and all of the faggoted political surge of last year and this in a number of areas it must seem like clear sailing for the powers of federal sin-the largest of which is the impoverishment of the middle class and real politick support for the concentration of wealth.

Four letter words may indicate hate if in a context of violence or urging violence yet be terms of endearment for some persons of interest I would think. The idea that it requires particular words to say things hateful or in a mood of hate is to separate language from actions, or to make language itself an action. If the broadcast media could be held accountable for hateful speech targeting individuals they too could be deleted from earnings and future considerations-yet of course they advocate in support of the rich and powerful organizations.

Free speech should be tolerated in the corporate Internet world inclusive of most writing places. If there are particular proscribed words the corporate doom decrees hold as self-evident expressions of hate they should be posted in scarlet letters where no writer could miss seeing them. It seems though that the corporate controllers most often like to keep their list of 'hate speech' items to themselves and entirely subjective opinion in order to have some sort of Soviet-censorship quality power to delete the politically non-conformist to the will of an ad hoc evil empire.

It may be that the word 'faggot' was kindled by the flaming homosexuals themselves in old London using a cigarette butt, salaciously sucking the tobacco down close, to communicate their coded sexual preferences in a safe manner in public, or not.

Homosexual abbreviated to homo may not be the best hope of homos-yet it is plain language effective and concise. After a winter camping in Anchorage in a tent after being banned from earning my customary 150 monthly at Helium two years ago for using two or three words to refer to queers my opinion is that the action of cutting off my earnings for writing was far more hateful than any action I took writing in opposition to the political putsch to queer the U.S. military and pervert the establishment of heterosexual marriage by including the homos. I invested time and money getting a bachelor’s Degree from the University of the State of N.Y. before they made queer marriages allright this year. I would pay the Excelsior College to take the useless degree back in order to sever any association with the state of dishonor.
I might also say for the benefit of the elitist vermin of Boston censorship (that isn't hate speech its simply my opinion) that to corrupt the word 'gay' to use as a reference to queers is an overt hate speech act a far as any straight guy named Gary is concerned.

The federal government corrupted the free speech of the masses for the benefit of corporate power and oppression when they generated their odious 'hate speech' laws. The core of social issue is not political speech written reasonably on political topics, but abuse of actual individuals personally. If an author is writing objectively about a class of social behavior in order to express his opinion on a political topic he is not obligated to use any particular language to do so. People may criticize the style of writing however it is in no way necessary or even reasonable to believe that personal hate of anyone, or that anything more than self-defense and defense of one's political interests is required to use language unliked by those holding an opposite political opinion.

The rich, the government and powerful organizations perennial have an extreme advantage over individual in political economy. The power to censor is one of the larger intolerances of all in a free society-one too often used and abused by the powerful, corrupt swine taking the nation down the path to perdition (whomever they are).

Constitution Gives State' Right to Control Immigration-Feds to Control Naturalization Criteria

from Article 1 Section Two- " Clause 3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons "

This article's mention of 3/5ths of all other persons in a state could be applied to slaves or illegal aliens equally well today. The framers of the constitution had their oars in the water so far as to realize that real people-even slaves or illegal aliens, have real consequences and should be accounted for within a state.

If 3/5s of illegal aliens in Texas or California were counted for congressional representation purposes each would gain several seats. This reality ought not to have been cancelled by the 13th Amendment ending slavery at all.

http://www.federalistblog.us/2006/07/delegated_powers_immigration/

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

The 14th amendment has been pointed out as affecting article, yet it actually by-passes the illegal alien or uncounted persons question and address only citizens in whole numbers rather than a 3/5ths. Yet the 3/5s probably is more applicable to demographic totals and a fair reckoning of what value non-citizens should have in counting for electoral representation than as some sort of statement about a slave being counted as worth 3/5th of a free voter in Massachusetts or Mississippi.

Regardless of the legal status of a person-homeless of land owner, the individuals existing are real and effect the political economy. When slaves were recognized as citizen if native born, or blacks as free born, and hence were inalienably citizens it became de trop to regard their votes or numbers to rate as 3/5s of the value of a non-oppressed voter. The people of the late 18th and 19th centuries did not have much of an illegal alien problem though, for which the original article One section Two of the Constitution is a reality check of political pragmatism today.

from Article 1 Section. 9.

"The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."

This section acknowledges the states individually have the right to choose to admit or deny immigrants. The constitution provides the federal government the right to make criteria for the naturalization of immigrants as citizens, yet that does not cancel the state's rights to choose who to allow to immigrate.

Article. IV.

Section. 1.

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

Liberate Public Education

Political contentiousness and interpretation of symbolic meanings never end in the litigious world of Washington D.C. So many litigation court hours were spent removing manger scenes from public court buildings and other public areas and so forth that the government expressed an inability to harmonize public mass education with the will of people to be free to exercise religious expression publicly including public schools. If the federal government forces minors to attend school until the 8th grade instead of doing something useful like brick making then it should not force them to stifle their free speech on religious expression.

To harmonize the different public interests the government should get out of the public school business and pay students to attend private schools of their choice with the government role simply being to assure quality control for all students.

Only students of the poor and middle class should receive subsidized public education, only the poor should receive free public medical services, and only the rich should be taxed at 60% including capital gains.

Diversity in public education means strength of independent thinking rather than Soviet and Nazi style indoctrination.