Fantasy vs. Worst-case Planning

Worst case planning for some of us is the normal course to anticipate. Anything besides worst case planning is therefore by default fantasy planning.

In the U.S.A. there are three kinds of people.

1) Those living normal lives

2) Those living fantasy lives

3) Those in permanent worst-case scenarios

President Obama is a good example of someone living a fantasy life, yet so is Tom Petty. Joe the Plumber lived a normal life until upgraded to fantasy status for a while as Mitt Romney's good example. It is possible to fluctuate between normal and fantasy status, and there is a category where normal lives are fantasy lives generally in comparison to worst case lives or second and third world lifestyles.

http://www.ibtimes.com/conservative-hero-joe-plumber-takes-union-job-chrysler-says-its-just-fine-1556386

For worst case planning consider scenarios that default economically to the individualized worst-case scenario of broke and plan to a lifestyle that works in that circumstance. To optimize a worst case lifestyle in a first-world country determine what material goods would be most helpful that are obtainable with a minimum income and plan to try to get a few of those, prioritizing the order of acquisition.

Fantasy planning in a fantasy-normative lifestyle is pre-determined to success if indexed to the average social income investment structures when those structures retain value or rise in value over time, yet may occasionally crash if the index average fantasy structure crashes to a certain extent as in the Wall Street derivatives crash of 2008.

President Obama (a.k.a. Mr. Fantasy) rode to the rescue of the rich banks following President Bush's T.A.R.P. bail out making the Bush II era tax cuts permanent and giving years of zero interest loans to large banks. In the fantasy life the rich getting rich instead of concentrating wealth and making wage slaves of people beneficently trickle wealth down to the masses such that if they only apply themselves the slackers will discover the cornucopia of prosperity too. Discouraged job seekers depressed in poverty don't count for unemployment statistics as they too could eat cake if they ran out of bread with Federal Reserve issuances of zero interest loans to the federal government providing food stamps for all. Printed money actual counts as something when it has Boris Yeltsin’s signature on the greenback.

Fantasy planning is easy for the average normative-fantasy planner as everything works. If a fantasy-normative investment in a panoply of start-up micro-solar cell companies is made it will rise in the long run to dominate the energy sector. If a worst-case planner invests in the same stocks an oil conglomerate will buy up the companies and liquidate the companies rendering the investment a complete loss. The astute worst-case planner knows this secret of investing as does not make the silly roll of the dice to start with. Instead he or she buys a cross-bow to take meat to cook over a wood-fire for camping.

image credit N.A.S.A./SDO

A Denouement of Raising the Dead (Paul)

When the Lord raises all of the dead, the saved shall return in the same body, yet with new and improved capacity fit for eternal life. This is a difficult concept for some, especially college students saturated with zombie movies. I have no idea why college students still like those-they weren't new even in the 70s and 80s. Well, no matter. Resurrection of the saved would seem to be something like Captain Kirk's body reappearing from non-corporeality via the transporter. If the digital data of Kirk were saved even if the physical body perished it would be possible to convert the data into a new and improved Kirk with tweaks making it non-perishable.

Even so that transporter method isn't what I would expect God to use. With mastery of all of the content of the Higgs field, and of any possible field of any scale, entangling energy from spirit in bits of quanta that form any existing individual living or dead should be a simple matter for the Lord. For some reason people may expect God to be less technically sophisticated than people in silicon valley or Beijing, and that is unreasonable.

This is what Paul said (in part) I Corinthians 15:35-54...

"35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."

The Interview, Pres. Obama & Innocence of Muslims

Sony film's 'The Interview' does take a few comedy shots at the Dictator Kim Un. Charlie Chaplin's movie 'The Great Dictator' pioneered the genre of evil dictator in film. That was the era before the invention of nuclear weapons however, and Dictator Paramount Leader Un has nuclear weapons that can hit only the hometown of Sony videos I think. Practical matters can involve finance too. Maybe Japanese that don't want to stir up the Dictator's nest and ire would financially retaliate against Sony for doing so.

The Obama administration and Hollywood's left have taken up the challenge though. They didn't do that when the video 'Innocence of Muslims' was released in 2012. Instead they blamed the producer-director for making a film that made sport of Mohammad of Mecca's relationships with girls of a tender age that inflamed Muslims. That director could probably make a good video about Kim Un if he was paid enough, and perhaps create a series of videos lampooning political leaders around the globe that probably deserve that.

The Obama administration has taken a turn toward concentrating wealth and power for elites across any political barrier in order to build up corporatism and plutonomy-he knows that money flows uphill and crap downhill-and the rich don't want any crap. They want more tax cuts and Wall Street deregulation.

In Matthew 24 I believe it is Jesus says in reply to a question about when or where the end times will be 'where there is a carcass, there shall the eagles gather'. Where the eagles gathered was Jerusalem and the Temple after Titus conquered Jerusalem and placed his ensigns there replete with the Roman Eagle upon them. One can in a similar way see the legions of economic doom for the middle class and poor in the U.S.A. flocking to attack the most recent insult to corporatism and the power of plutonomy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR7VpE2gpdM

When President Obama needed a convenient scapegoat for the Benghazi debacle the director-producer of Innocence of Muslims was ready at hand. Now the primary threat is only to Tokyo and that fair city being vaporized by Paramount Dictator Kim with his pocketful of hackers and privacy crackers searching for weak spots in the Corporate world to attack. The Dictator need only wait for President Obama to accomplish his desires of building global networked collectivism through corporatism-even the Chinese have signed aboard...It is just individual civil liberties and economic security that are taking a beating.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/12/22/north-korea-experiencing-widespread-internet-outages/

A Place for Faith (poems) free download

My ebook of poems named 'A Place for Faith' remains free as a download in PDF format. I have made a few changes to the collection of poems written between 1977 and 2004 generally, although I have thrown in another poem or two since.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/gary-clifford-gibson/a-place-for-faith/ebook/product-21963308.html

Causality and Cosmology

Causality has a definition within a given linguistic ontology. Language is used to describe events including that of physical and quantum cosmology. The associations that people make about given referent-objects have value within a particular lexicon and sometime correspond to observable events with varying degrees of accuracy. It is somewhat of a convention that causation describes a relation between events in time as well perhaps as responsibility or effect of force that one object has upon another or one event has upon another.

Logicians have noted the various forms of abstract relations in symbolic logic that might be formalized i.e. if a then b yet not  a and b and c. and that reflects a grammar of cause and effect without a necessity of a time order in some cases-yet requisite of a time order existing in others. The second law of thermodynamics with order breaking down or flowing into disorder might be regard as a non-reversible event causality. One might say that disorder arises because it requires less energy than increasing order. Thus one gets the Boyle's law sort of diffusion of particles in a gas evenly.It might be a convention that one might define  a given phase of a system as being caused by the former state-yet it seems reasonable to. It is perhaps a problem of language and meaning more than a physical description finding some greater Platonic realist facticity to find.

Causality in quantum objects is another criterion of language and language conventions that might confuse certain concepts-especially reinforcing rather popular yet vague concepts such as causality. It is said that quantum behavior cannot be accurately described in ordinary language anyway-maybe that is so-I am neither a mathematician nor physicist and consider the topics as a result of general reading of ideas explained generally by physicist. Even so the philosophical criterion of cause and effect has been elaborated by many philosophers including David Hume.

Today cosmologists have presented a few overlapping field concepts about which one may have some difficulty  harmonizing. There is the known standard model of physics much less string  theories, and there is the steady-state Universe of phenomena that is in some way perhaps an entanglement of quantum particles, and that field is believed to exist within a Higgs field. That Higgs field and the entangled particles within it that is following the laws of thermodynamics is believed to have had an origin at a singularity or membrane at time=0, and yet the idea of quantum uncertainty and quantum super-positioning would seem to support a different idea of a quantum cloud and virtual field that precedes the Higgs or is maybe the same thing wherein the ordered process and functional causes of antecedent-consequent events and relationships is ordered and flowing generally toward disorder. That is all fine and simple enough. Yet one wonders why a singularity would form and attract enough virtual particles to one place to form it.

It seems as if the uncertainty of the field that lets virtual particles emerge into the Universe for an instant has definite rules of order though it is a different order. Uncertainty does not imply chaos or disorder nor even a negation of a deterministic overall Universe. The energy of the Universe became mass in lower energy phases, yet the phases of energy such as comprise quarks or the strong force between quarks appear in logical and even necessary forms. I would think that Cantor and Godel's set theory ideas indicate that infinity is the ponderous fact about energy and the forms it takes more so than causality and even uncertainty. Various systems and protocols of energy exist in complex systems along a phenomenally deterministic river of events-and the complexity and elegance of those events made of a myriad of configurations of energy locked into mass are what humans are given to contemplate.

Leibniz speculated about spiritual monads being the building blocks of mass or energy at the fundamental level. One dimensional monads are somewhat like one-dimensional branes that might form up strings. Quantum cosmologists have the good fortune to be able to contemplate such things. Christians are lucky enough to thanks God for issuing the Universe of energy in various forms with the Word in the beginning.

Essays from Religious & Philosophical Topics (video)

I read a few essays from 'Religious and Philosophical Topics' with voice-over images of Alaska. http://youtu.be/HngVdnbn-zo

Obama Cuba Initiative to Bring New Era of Sailing?

President Obama's effort to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba is quite a change that could bring a wave of American sailboats seeking cheap moorage in Havana and elsewhere on the vast left-wing island.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/17/politics/cuba-policy-change-reaction/

Those with an historical antipathy to state communism that are ex-pats won't like the change in U.S. policy. Maybe the Castro legacy includes a homo-friendly society that the President likes-no matter when it could be that the communist-capitalist dialectic has been supplanted in the U.S.A. at least by a two-party imperial populist working for a corporatist plutonomy. Electronic networking has down-sized traditional economic criteria to a certain extent and the President seems determined to create a larger market for the rich to sell their made-in-China goods in.

If this is a post-millennial world moving toward a theonomous direction with the good will of the Lord and His grace transforming a social environment where a leader penalizes Russia for going in a free enterprise direction and rewards a still communist state it does throw a little inconsistency into the mix. Well, the poor need to sail their boats away from the hard facts of unemployment too once in a while I guess.

At least one may think that an emergent, transformative theonomous social environment can coexist will a dualistic ethical reality as it uses pragmatism, utilitarian and whatever to select the material facts that work for the good. Christians believe the good is a direct attribute of God. A fallen and sinful world though that eclipses free enterprise and individual dissent from the vast machine of corporate capitalism when it competes unfavorably with existing established ways of business does have some definite faults in need of correction.

If one has a Christian meta-ethical system the application of ethics has somewhere to go, and that is quite different that just a secular ethics regarding results and even definitions of words that can lead virtually anywhere. Personal egoism may be as valid for a macro-social ethics and utilitarianism, and of course in a secular society there is no meta-ethical criterion for defining what the good means. 

Some might think that implementing the greatest good for the greatest number would mean to get everyone except elites stoned and lobotomized yet let them watch Sodom and Gomer adventures in Cuba. If the stoned were also made sterile it would thus resolve world over-population issues and the greatest-=good survival of the plutonomy would be assured...a superior human race? So a right meta-ethical structure within which secular ethics may function is important.