Category Archives: A Plan for America

How Can We Hold the Feeling of Unity?

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Created February 1st, 2021

I had cautioned that habits are going to be hard to break when I began to write about all of us getting a fresh start. We’ve all now seen a lot of backsliding to the partisan bickering here at home, and one evidently cannot lay aside cold war feelings overnight in making a new beginning with other nations we’ve chastised in the past.

We really do need the luxury of rethinking everything from a clean sheet of paper. Band-aids on the past ways of doing things are not going to save the human race from itself. Far better ways have always been available and the nature of them is no secret needing extensive research. “Live and Let Live” covers a lot of it.

My friend who is slightly to right of center and who sees me fairly accurately as slightly left of center, and I, quickly resolved our political differences by recognizing the validity of both viewpoints and helping each other to gather facts and create hypotheses about what might be tested going forward. But then after our shared optimism about unity after the Inauguration, the articles I find interesting now because of glimmers of promising new ideas, I hesitate to send to him because they often contain jabs at the past or even present actions of Republicans.

Sure, it’s easy to see why after four years of sucking it up, Democrats might naturally feel the need to vent now that they can. But it can undo all the good that was done by the noble unity intention set down by President Biden at the outset. We have to give unity a chance, which means laying off pot-shots. That goes both ways. Reopen our minds to kindness and respect. It’s possible we all have a lot of good to bring to the new unity party – meaning all of us. Let’s think of it as a meta-party. The United States of America.

George Washington was right to warn us not to allow political parties but they are part of us now and let’s simply try to improve the way we use them rather than try to disband them. We don’t have a lot of time to go off on long term high risk windmill tilting right now. Mutations in Covid could make our war against Covid a longer term affair than any of us are prepared to even think about right now. That plus the environment, international tensions, thermonuclear biological chemical and psychological warfare weapons “improvements”, racism and other ancient vendettas, world debt, robotics replacing jobs, are a nitroglycerine puzzle that needs kid gloves rather than mailed fists.

Our objective as human beings has to be to twist that Rubic’s Cube so that all those threat vectors fade away and what is left is an equilibrium in which everyone is having a good time, and feels okay about the rest of the people in the world. Where we can all be world travelers and bring out our own individuality via positive creative outlets that delight others as well as ourself.

The only radical thing we need right now is love thy neighbor and the Golden Rule. Otherwise, small dial setting changes would be far less risky than wild card moves from far left or far right fields.

One of the first things we need to establish is that Democrats do not want any more socialism than the way the government has been taking care of non-rich people during the economic contraction, except that job can be done better so all who need, receive, without making non-needy people into needy ones. Nobody really wants true communism any more, not even the communists. They have adopted capitalism bigtime and although we have not “converted them” to what we call “democracy” we have converted them to our real way of life which is capitalism. Now that they rival us in capitalist skills we’re not so sure we’re happy to have converted them. Be careful of what you wish for.

We do have the best democracy the world has ever seen. It’s got some loopholes that can be exploited by people who fundamentally misunderstand what democracy means, and we shall be making laws that close those and other loopholes in our Noble Experiment, the one nation whose very meaning is to risk everything to prove that utopia is achievable by human beings on Earth. That’s us. Naturally a nation that is an experiment, is a nation of change agents, and therefore is going to serve up some individuals who are lunatic fringe. We have to do a better job of helping those folks back on the path sooner in their divergence from reality.

Changing hats now to my persona as a marketing consultant. What would I advise the Republican party now if I ran its advertising agency? December Gallup data show 25% Republican, 31% Democrat, 44% Independent is the way Americans think of themselves lately – but the Republicans have been concerned about being the minority party for some time now. They calculate a bad future for the party unless they stand behind Trump no matter what – because of those 70 million voters who voted for him in November.

But that would be a defensive strategy. Defensive strategies have rarely worked in advertising. The Republican party stands to gain – and to give – the most by harking back to the achievements and ideals of past Republican presidents, and to uplift its party back to that level. To do its job to conserve the valid improvements of the past, to minimize waste, to minimize risk, to do the things a conservative party is expected to do – its objective function.

The Republican party should speak to its devoted followers of Trump and clarify for them what happened. The man made some good moves and some bad ones. “We Republicans all liked him because he seemed like an average Joe like us, not boring like so many other choices, and with balls to stand up for us. But he lied to us. He equated Democrats with Communists – an awful lie that infected millions of us and has nearly wrecked our country. He did not really stand up for us, he just made a convincing act of it. He incited us to dividing and thus weakening the nation and leaving ourselves prey to cyberspying and psychological warfare in the social media, which he himself got so caught up in he was an unintended puppet of other nations. This has to be taken as an important lesson not to get carried away like a cult into loyalty to one person, what we need is loyalty to the whole country, and to consider the rest of the world to be vital partners in conquering Covid and the rest of the problems we’ve created for ourselves by this incessant aggression toward one another.” Or words to that effect.

We’ve fallen into the trap of threatening the stick all the time with very little show of the carrot, in our dealings internally and internationally. We tell other nations what we want them to stop doing. It would be more likely to succeed if we painted attractive pictures of what we DO want them to do – which is to succeed like us, and play nice like we used to and must go back to immediately, or none of this will work. Then we can go back to traveling to see the world and be in it and enjoy the growing we experience by inputs from people very different from ourselves but on the inside identical.

This tilt toward rage was fanned by the partisan news channels and by Trump and his devoted followers. And it found fertile ground in an American minority happy to go brawling into the streets causing harm to others and undermining America at its roots and around the world. The Republican party should most definitely address this part of its base, explaining that such behavior will no longer be tolerated, there will be new laws continuing to allow free speech, but with swift justice against threatening or hurting other people or property based on ideologies fundamentally at conflict with America’s ideals for itself. New ethics laws that apply also to civil servants at all levels which prohibit seditious and/or hate speech. And which regulate social media such that free speech which is oriented to hate is removed as quickly as possible.

If there are some who would rather leave the country than stay in the USA when these laws are instituted, that is their right. The majority will determine where the lines are drawn to preserve free speech but end bullying, intimidation, and domestic terrorism. Most Americans wish to not have to live in fear. For a small minority who embrace fear and get off on it, if they choose to leave, most Americans will not mind them being further away.

The Republican party in the last Century and a half has never had to resort to such demeaning ways to gather its members as we saw in the past four years. It has always had its share of geniuses and visionaries able to see and embrace better ways for the future. That is what it should focus on. Making the country better and stronger, making life here safer and more pleasant than ever before.

That’s what we should all focus on, almost half of us are not even in a party. Let’s dial down the importance of which party we are in and dial up the importance of making all of our working and non-working lives more like a party.

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum

Bring gloom down to the minimum

Have faith or pandemonium

Liable to walk upon the scene

—Johnny Mercer,

Accentuate the Positive

 

We can do it.

One takeaway for recommended explicit action/non-action based on MIND MAGIC:

Don’t speak unnecessary negative thoughts. “Don’t Bring Them Down”.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Here is the link to my latest post.

We Can and Must Legislate Ethics

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Created January 28th, 2021

The U.S. Congress acts as if ethics issues ought to be dealt with only by means of establishing norms via “ethics pledges”. These are promises, not legally binding. Why would we want issues of ethics to be based on promises? Obviously, anyone whose ethics is awry is going to make false promises.

Ethics is not just underperforming its role in government, it’s everywhere.

The 600+ U.S. billionaires gaining $1.1 trillion during Covid is emblematic. In an ethical society, a day or two would go by and the parties involved would do the right thing.

That seems like a joke today. But that’s just because of how jaded and accepting we have all become as we slid down from civility to emotional anarchy.

United. The United States of America.

We ain’t gonna get back there without reset of ethics for all of us.

It’s so simple, we were told about being Good all the years of growing up, all we have to do now, is to be it.

In ancient Greece, there was a saying: “All the Hellenes (Greeks) know what is right, but only the Spartans do it.”

They knew 2000 years ago the right way to be, and they knew it could be achieved by a nation. The Spartans were living sinless lives to a degree which seemed impossible to the rest of the country.

If the Spartans could do it 2000 years ago without all the advances since then, we can do it now, and prove it in the next four years.

Ethics is the center of this storm.

Ethics is a branch of Philosophy.

It’s unfortunate that we’re not a philosophical society today here in the U.S. or in most other places, such as, for example, the ancient Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Iranian, Arab and Roman societies, or the society of the West as it was during the early Christian Era and during the Renaissance and its later scientific Enlightenment phase.

Philosophy dropped off the map in the 20th Century as the materialist wing of science essentially took over science. The great master physicists were all old school and open to the idea of God or the equivalent, but the mass of scientists, employed mostly by military and industry (not that there’s anything wrong with that), leaned all the way over to asserting the non-existence of God, and that made quite an impression in that Century, given as that science was the miracle-doer now. The mob always follows the miracles, as Jesus taught.

We need to bring philosophy back.

This is a piece of what is really needed which is to actually have a retraining of all of us.

We need videos and articles online and in all media which train us in philosophy, values, ethics. We must have foundations. Trying to teach ethics before teaching self-knowledge is trying to build a house starting from the second floor. We need more philosophical programming and content on television and online. Some can be funny, some can be fiction or docudrama, interview, interactive, reality news, let a thousand flowers bloom.

In the immediate short term, the congress should set a good example by first setting laws governing its own ethics, and then a law on citizen ethics. It cannot imperil the Constitution nor individual freedom, except insofar as psychological or physical harm must not be allowed one person to another. The laws as they stand allow bullying and worse. A lot of the insurrectionists are not being charged because “they weren’t bad enough”. Under a new Citizen Ethics Act they would all be charged.

America must decide where the lines ought righteously to be drawn.

The tide of new legislation needed should make congress happy and excited.

The best course to American success is to forget about party.

Let it exist in the background. Start each meeting with a fresh slate, no going in agenda. Learn, think, discuss, and reach consensus, then move on.

Congress is going to have to step up production. We are re-starting everything, without changing the Constitution. Without selling out the Founders, and Lincoln. But otherwise it’s a fresh start. That last movie was no good, don’t want any more of that, change the channel for good.

Filibusters are a great drag on production. Moving more slowly back to being a peaceful, cooperative, polite, friendly society is going to require a number of important new laws. The world is at stake. The world has never been so imperiled before. It would be mass insanity to tolerate delays in setting things straight because of last-movie’s party game.

Congress please produce the best laws possible but do not make unnecessary delays. Everyone is listening in and watching so we can all yell hurry up if we have to. When we hear the same thing said and no more new things being said, we are going to call an audible.

Thank you Congress!

Best to us all,

Bill

 

Follow my regular media blog, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Here is the link to my latest post.

Break the Chain of Non-Forgiveness

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Created November 20, 2020

On November 6, 2020, my blogpost was entitled Both Sides Are Protecting America in their Own Minds, and in it, I wrote:

“We all grew up with the same values. Other countries were corrupt, we were taught, but here we had the privilege of living in a democracy, where there is concern for every individual.”

A wise executive at a top advertiser company wrote me to say “I think that perspective misses the values piece. When some are raised with values of hate, bigotry and selfishness we don’t come from the same starting point.”

In other words, despite being taught the same American values, we are all also programmed by the other “values” our parents taught us by word and example, including such things as hate, bigotry and selfishness.

There is no denying the truth of the reader’s point.

Why is it that parents let themselves pass on any form of negativity to their beloved children?

It is because they don’t realize they are doing that. They may not pay attention to the process at most times, and when they do notice their own behavior and the effect it is having on their kids, they see it differently than an objective outsider would see it.

In other words, when a parent teaches hate and selfishness they are not able to see reality objectively. What they themselves have been taught has become so deeply ingrained they have perceptual biases, like a fish not being able to see water.

In this way, hate and selfishness are passed down from generation to generation like a great chain that can never be broken.

In my blogpost of November 2, 2020, entitled The Follower Type, I quoted from Wikipedia’s coverage of The Authoritarian Personality, a 1950 book which showed the link between authoritarian leaders and their followers. Both the leaders and the followers learned the same negative “values” from domineering parents. Children of domineering parents have an almost unbreakable tendency to become domineering parents and domineering people themselves. The neurosis brings along with it cultish blind followership, anti-intellectualism, superstition, and the projection of all of one’s own repressed perceived weaknesses (the shadow self) onto a scapegoat group.

All great psychologists and deep thinkers have spoken and written about the process of clearing out the mind and emotions of conditioned neuroses formed in childhood. Abraham Maslow  in particular described the emergent new person cleansed of imposed leftover deficiency feelings as being Self Actualized, freed from being motivated by deficiency compensation and free to pursue the manifestation of all the positive creative potentials within the individual self. No longer a robot of his or her self-limiting early conditioning, this person has then broken the great chain of non-forgiveness (of self, of parents, of the scapegoat group, of intellectuals, et al).

I call this mentally and emotionally cleansed state “the Observer state” and my book MIND MAGIC is a collection of stimuli designed to help bring about the Observer state.

What should we do if we wish to break the chain of passed-down divisive “values”? We ought to communicate with our children, whatever age they now are, confronting this subject courageously and non-self-protectively. Ask them if you taught them anything related to hating other people, if you encouraged them to think selfishly. Talk it out. Reach agreement if you can on a FRESH START. Age does not matter, a FRESH START is always a freeing new way of being. It puts away the past and does not dwell upon it, bringing almost all attention into the present with a little bit left for the future. The future you and your children want to have, and want America and the world to have.

With what is facing us all today, the “six tidal waves” as I call it in To the People of the World, if more of us can give ourselves and our children a FRESH START and focus on solutions in a collaboration with all people of good will, we will overcome all of these threatening situations we ourselves have caused due to our conditioned neuroses that have been our baggage for all of history.

And as individuals, what we can in our own private alone spaces, is to contemplate our own upbringing, and our own domineering, hatreds, and selfishness if any, and where it might have come from, what good or harm it has done us so far in our lives, and whether we want to carry that baggage any more, or if we would feel refreshed to have a FRESH START ourselves. If you would like more structured help in such contemplation it is available in the book MIND MAGIC in Chapter 5, “What Do You Want? Stripping Away Imposed Limitations To Find Out What ‘The Me That Was Born’ Wants”.

May The Center Hold. Some have suggested I change this to “May The Center Re-Form”, suggesting that we have all moved further left or right, but I suspect this is an illusion; I agree that we are definitely more vocally on one party’s side or the other, but not that Democrats have become communists and that Republicans have become fascists. I still feel that most of us are closer to the center than depicted in our actual views of what actions need to be taken in the world, but have become angry at the opposing political party per se. This is not a distinction without a difference. It implies that if the parties disappeared overnight (as George Washington had strenuously advised) and we were all individuals again and we met to discuss what to do about health, education, foreign affairs, etc. we would find that we are not that far apart at all.

When this election is behind us, I hope that this is the reality that appears in front of us all as we pull together to solve the substantive action issues that are not inherently party power related.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Click here to read my latest post.

To the People of the World

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Created November 13, 2020

I am an American. I also consider myself a citizen of Earth, and a member of the Human Race club.

From my point of view, we have been spending too much time competing for political power to get done any of the immense things that we HAVE TO get done.

And then when somebody wins power, the other major party blocks getting anything done.

And the voters then seem to forget who actually tried to get something done, and who spent all their time blocking it.

This might not be worth discussing if everything was going to take care of itself because we are already in utopia.

However, there are not one but six tidal wave problems coming at us from all directions which all of us have to solve together, one way or another, with or without cooperating with each other, or we won’t be around anymore. They are also getting worse the longer we fool around. And we make each one of them worse by refusing to cooperate with each other.

  1. Pandemic
  2. American Schism
  3. World Debt
  4. Environment (and future pandemics if deforestation continues)
  5. International Envy
  6. Half of us might not find work (robotics)

We’ve seen from the pandemic that it doesn’t work as well when each State comes up with its own way of doing things. The bigger the problem, the more important wide scale cooperation is.

I recommend that the next time you read about any politician making a statement about anything other than one of these six problems, you ignore it, and let them know where you want them to refocus their attention.

Please let me know if my list is too short.

For manageability I grouped related challenges together, for example racial/ethnic/gender/all-inclusive equality is really at the core of problem #2.

“International Envy” groups together the threats from other nations, terrorist organizations, and all of the vendettas lingering from the distant and/or recent past.

It is easy to predict that we will be more efficient and faster about turning the tide on these threats the more we can work together.

I recommend the next time you read about any politician making a negative statement about anybody, you ignore it, and let them know where you want them to put their energies instead of this endless backbiting.

I recommend that you stop sending and mentioning in social media or in any venue “the backbiting channel” which has become the top-rated audience draw of all time. The computers will notice that and stop depending on it for the maximum audience draw that it has recently become.

I predict you will also, then, sleep better.

There are ways we can use our wonderful media to share constructive innovative ideas with one another. What we really need is for officials to start to practice the modes of creativity and to use each other’s ideas without caring about who gets the credit so much. I depict such media being used in a crisis similar to ours in a science fiction novel PANDEMONIUM: Live To All Devices (hope you will read the free sample available through the link).

Some time ago, two U.S. presidents and two dozen other well-known top US officials responded supportively to my idea that INDIVIDUALIZED EDUCATION can channel people into the specializations that perfectly match their inner purpose and skills, with corporations and work study programs meshing with the process from the earliest grades. Recently a friend in Germany told me that those ideas had taken hold over there.

Adults also need individualized education now if they are out of regular school but also out of regular work – or want to be in a different field.

We seem to have a ready workforce of life coaches who could be organized to help those out of school for whom life is not working out as joyfully as it could be if they were doing work that they loved. They would then be more likely to get into Flow state, where they could make more money, but even without the money would at least be doing what they were born to be good at.

Once totally successful, welfare and other transfer payments would dwindle to virtually nothingness. Individualized Education is the kind of work we ought to be doing in the 21st Century.

That’s only one innovative approach worth exploring and work on from both sides of the aisle together. There will be a panoply of exciting new ideas unleashed from the combination of crowdsourcing and a nonpartisan lens.

Let’s make political parties invisible for a while, can we?

When Japan was in the process of taking over China, with one city falling after the next, even more than US aid the ability of the Chinese Civil War combatants to temporarily unite was what pushed Japan off the mainland.

Can you imagine what will happen if we don’t stop it now and return to the normal we were used to for 200 years? We could be fighting WWIII in the streets and on the hills of America, first with each other, and then when other countries come over to help one side, it will be like the early days of America when Brits, French, Germans, and others were here fighting, except it’s more likely to be other superpowers and rogue nations. That’s the current direction we are pushing ourselves in by dividing the house so that it cannot stand.

Proof or not, the unbelievable intensity and extremity of it makes it hard to believe that a lot of it is not being caused by foreign powers.

Each of us can’t expect other people to take this advice while each of us keep dishing the dirt. We have to change ourselves first. Friends will read our silences or hear our remarks and understand that we have dropped out of the cycle of hate. The more of us do that, the more of them will do it, until there is no more them.

There never was a Them, it’s always been just US.

May The Center Hold,

God Bless America and each of you,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Click here to read my latest post.