Know When To Hold'em And Know When To Fold'em
User Rating: / 0

Haiti is a disaster that happen in 1791 and has gone down hill ever since.

Nothing in the country worked before the earthquake. Nothing will work in the future. The country is a failed experiment in government by a culture that is unmanageable.

If Harvard wanted a model for study about a failed state, Haiti would be the mother of all failure. If one looks at any category to define the situation in Haiti - vital statistics - national economy - foreign trade - transportation - communications - education - health - environment - in every instance there is no place in the world any worse.

President Obama is making a colossal mistake by saying that the United States will take responsibility to correct the situation in Haiti. Throwing money at this catastrophe is a fool’s errand.

This is not the first disaster to inflict this country and will not be the last.

It appears to me that the only solution for this debacle is to depopulate the country and give the land a thousand years to recover.

Read more...
 
A Circle Is Still A Circle
User Rating: / 0

Every diverse religion claims God’s unique acceptance. If that were not the case , then why even consider joining such a society? It is this religious primogeniture that seals the fate of trying to understand a supernatural relationship with a higher being. If there were truly a difference in a sect’s relationship with deity, then that deity would be less than omnipotent, because it would limit it’s ability to conserve it’s creation.

Custom is a habitual practice that is accepted without reasoning. Practicing religion requires one to be unreasonable.

If religion is primarily a custom, when you compare one to another , they are all the same. Yet each claims a unique status. If one draws a circle a million times, no matter how large or small, it is always a circle. How is it then possible to see one religion/circle as being unique?

Is it acceptable to accept custom without reasoning?

Read more...
 
A Philosophical Look At Decisions - Part II
User Rating: / 0
  

Voluntary – reaction decisions are subject to external influences that occur in our daily lives. The eighteenth century philosopher David Hume described these reactions decisions in an essay ~ An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – 1777 edition. His concept of decision making is based on ideas. He divided the process of idea decision making into three idea scenarios

 
  1. resemblance
  2. cause and effect
  3. contiguity
 

He does suggest there may be a fourth source of ideas – contrast or contrariety – but basically seems to think this fourth source is a combination of causation and resemblance,

 

Forming ideas by resemblance is a process of seeing something and then having an idea of a similar nature. This is the most common source of reactive “new ideas”. Abraham Lincoln implied the same notion by stating “Books serve to shows a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”

 

Cause and effect ideas tend to be largely of a more physical nature – pleasure and pain – and this is true even when the idea originates in the thought process. Touch a hot stove and it hurts; see a hot stove and we visualize the hurt.

 

Contiguity ideas are based on the logical progression of A is followed by B. This is a deductive process that requires more thought than does resemblance or cause and effect.

 

Because decision making is first controlled by the involuntary action lower brain stem, we are subject to more base desires. It requires conscious voluntary reaction thinking to overcome these animalistic decisions.

 

Acts of moral turpitude are based on biological principles of survival and / or gratification. It is only in higher biological beings that the concept of moral consequences voluntary reaction is active. Just how far down the evolutionary tree are moral principles considered is unknown. It requires a conscious effort to institute the reactive idea-making process. This higher-being consideration is based on the Hume-described principles of resemblance, cause and effect and contiguity.

  

The societal standard of family happiness is a long established guideline based on the concept that ideas can trump biological urges. This learned standard is supported in many advanced civilizations. Though religion may be considered suspect due to its inherent metaphysical nature, family happiness has been shown to be based on voluntary – reaction decisions supported by religious ethics. An excellent text to evaluate these voluntary – reaction decisions is Stephen Covey’s ~ Spiritual Roots of Human Relationships. For believers and non-believers alike the Judeo-Christian ethic of the “thou shall not” and “Sermon on the Mount” is civilized mankind’s best guidelines for controlling the inner beast. Belief in a god is not necessary to live these guidelines, but it does make it easier. The first thinking humans needed something outside of self to deal with the unknown. That unknown vacuum was filled by two near equal powers – one for good and one for evil. Modern man still finds it easier to live with that arrangement. It is easier because trying to deal with the T. Rex DNA which we all contain must be suppressed by a cognitive voluntary-reaction decision otherwise we will eat our young.

 

Life is about relationships: Relationships with others and maybe even more important relationship with self. A negative self-image is very corrosive and allows the beast to arise which leads to poor relationships. The beast is self-centered and considers only two options, survival and gratification, and no voluntary – reaction decision is necessary. The failure to consider cause and effect leads to destruction of the family unit.

Read more...
 
« StartPrev12345678910NextEnd »

Page 1 of 40
 

Polls

New website or the old one?
 

Who's Online

We have 5 guests online

Latest Comments

Know When To Hold'em And Know When To Fold'em (2 comments) Sunday, 17 January 2010
A Circle Is Still A Circle (3 comments) Monday, 07 December 2009
A Philosophical Look At Decisions - Part II (1 comments) Thursday, 29 October 2009
A Letter To President Bush (2 comments) Monday, 21 September 2009
Covert Taxation (2 comments) Tuesday, 04 August 2009
Redneck Heaven (3 comments) Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Economic Racism (1 comments) Monday, 17 August 2009
A Letter Home (3 comments) Monday, 18 May 2009