Unbounded hope found in infinite kindness – #23

Tags

Common sense, Creating hope, hope, human survival, Infinite kindness, Kindness, Personal survival, Society, Species, Species survival, Unbounded hope, Wisdom

This morning Daniel and I sat for our morning coffee at the Commons overlooking Drake Pond. It is a beautiful place and the weather was perfect. We talked about last night’s Probaway post, “Hope and kindness #22“. Our conversation wandered through the infinite fields of wildflowers and sticky swamps of possibilities for humans.

Commons view of Mirror Pond with the iconic view thru the fence from where we were sitting.

A cropped-in view showing the scene more clearly.

Classic Bend, Oregon, view of Mirror Pond with Mountains

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The opening line of the now old version #22 reads – “We find unbounded hope and give personal kindness by:” – We both liked that wording but after linking it to each of the seven following ideas it seemed stronger and more coherent to our ultimate goal to change the word by to and by I also changed personal kindness to infinitely kind, this gave us — “We find unbounded hope by being infinitely kind, and by:”.  That works by linking the seven ideas following that opening statement, but, by using “and” in that opening the seven ideas become emphasized as additions to the basic idea rather than becoming independent free-floating ideas in themselves. Those small changes require some rewriting of the following ideas which now gives new opportunities and new limitations. So …

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Version 23 is revealed as …

We find unbounded hope by being infinitely kind, and by:

1. —exploring the orderly nature of our bountiful Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.

2. —striving to physically survive as individuals and as a species by seeking opportunities to live and survive in every available place.

3. —creating open-ended attractor goals, so you and I and all living beings can have meaningful lives within our personal worlds.

4. —becoming known to everyone as dedicating our wisdom and energy to alleviating the suffering of all beings.

5. —helping everyone to find meaning in their lives by helping them find a personal path to unbounded hope and infinite kindness.

6. —appreciating that we as people expressing diverse views to one another are more likely to discover beautiful ways of living our lives.

7. —making a habit of giving our attention to individuals and acknowledging their kind acts within our shared Universe.

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I like this version better than the former ones, but I have thought that many times. How long will this rewriting process last, and where will it go?

Hope and kindness #22

Tags

human survival

I liked Version 21 but after discussing it and pondering over the wording some problems arose, which are highlighted in that version seen just below and changed in Version 22 which is seen below that previous version.

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Version 21 revealed as …

We find unbounded hope and give personal kindness by:

1. —exploring the orderly nature of our bountiful Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.

2. —striving to physically survive as individuals and as communities by seeking opportunities to live and thrive in every possible place.

3. —creating attractive self-balancing societies, so you and I and all living beings can have meaningful lives in our sustainable worlds.

4. —manifesting and becoming known and accepted as dedicating our wisdom and energy to alleviating the suffering of all beings.

5. —helping one another to find more fulfilling meanings for our lives by treating everyone as we should to help them attain their kindest self.

6. —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views are more likely to discover beautiful ways of living our lives.

7. —making a habit of giving our attention to individuals and acknowledging their successes within our shared Universe.

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Version 22 with suggestions for corrections is revealed as …

We find unbounded hope and give personal kindness by:

1. —exploring the orderly nature of our bountiful Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.

2. —striving to physically survive as individuals and as communities a species by seeking opportunities to live and thrive survive in every possible place
any place we can.

3. —creating attractive self-balancing librating attractor societies, so you and I and all living beings can have meaningful lives in our sustainable personal worlds.

4. —manifesting and becoming known and accepted by everyone as dedicating our wisdom and energy to alleviating the suffering of all beings.

5. —helping one another to find more fulfilling meanings for our lives by treating everyone as we should to help them attain move toward their kindest self.

6. —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views to one another are more likely to discover beautiful ways of living our lives.

7. —making a habit of giving our attention to individuals and acknowledging their successes within our shared Universe.

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Version 22 is revealed as …

We find unbounded hope and give personal kindness by:

1. —exploring the orderly nature of our bountiful Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.

2. —striving to physically survive as individuals and as a species by seeking opportunities to live and survive in any place we can.

3. —creating librating attractor societies, so you and I and all living beings can have meaningful lives in our personal worlds.

4. —manifesting and becoming known and by everyone as dedicating our wisdom and energy to alleviating the suffering of all beings.

5. —helping one another to find more fulfilling meanings for our lives by treating everyone as we should to help them move toward their kindest self.

6. —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views to one another are more likely to discover beautiful ways of living our lives.

7. —making a habit of giving our attention to individuals and acknowledging their successes within our shared Universe.

Hope and kindness #21

Tags

Common sense, hope, Kindness, Society, Species, survival, Unbounded hope, Wisdom

Version 21 revealed as …

We find unbounded hope and give personal kindness by:

1. —exploring the orderly nature of our bountiful Universe, so we can help ourselves and others benefit from everything that it makes possible.

2. —striving to physically survive as individuals and as communities by seeking opportunities to live and thrive in every possible place.

3. —creating attractive self-balancing societies, so you and I and all living beings can have meaningful lives in our sustainable worlds.

4. —manifesting and becoming known and accepted as dedicating our wisdom and energy to alleviating the suffering of all beings.

5. —helping one another to find more fulfilling meanings for our lives by treating everyone as we should to help them attain their kindest self.

6. —appreciating that we as a fellowship of people expressing diverse views are more likely to discover beautiful ways of living our lives.

7. —making a habit of giving our attention to individuals and acknowledging their successes within our shared Universe.

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This 21st version expands hope and focuses personalized kindness as a path to a fuller more meaningful inner life.

Clockwork Purple – I hoped the poor fellow would survive.

Tags

deschutes river, Drake pond, Duck on Deschutes river, Mirror pond, survival, Survival of the fittest?

June 18, 2017 – Clockwork Purple – writers group
Our random book was chosen by Gail:
Entering the Circle by Olga Kharitidi, MD.
The random page 10 chosen unseen by Aingeal;
Line 11 was chosen unseen by Charles.

Prompt with 45 minutes plus two for tidying up – Alexa set the timer for 47 minutes and the prompt was read aloud.

I hoped the poor fellow would survive.

It was a lovely spring Sunday morning there in Bend, Oregon, and many people were settled into their seats in the many local churches, restaurants, and bars taking in their personal spiritual nourishment with their friends. Everyone but Richard. He was having a slow, lonely stroll along the Deschutes River, just walking. Nothing special, just walking and sort of enjoying himself and the lovely view. The exact place was a path on the water’s edge of Mirror Pond some twenty feet below a decorative railing that had been installed a year earlier. He watched the ducks for a moment, and not thinking in any conscious way he idly decided to sit on the rustic wooden bench and figure out what these ducks were doing.

After a minute it became obvious to Richard that they were totally involved in doing ducky things. Swimming along, and occasionally ducking their ducky heads into the pond to the bottom of the shallow places with their ducky bottoms sticking into the air, and apparently finding things they loved to eat. He mused that those things he would probably find disgusting, but maybe not. He reconsidered. Hmm, chances are those ducks have very refined palates and are choosing delectable little things. If I carefully chose enough of those little things the ducks struggled so hard to get and had them cooked up by Dave, the chef over at the Drake restaurant only a one-minute walk from his spot, they might be able to make the best entrée imaginable. That was the idle thought drifting through Richard’s mind when a single but very colorful mallard skidded into the little group of half-submerged ducks.

For a few moments everything was quiet, and the various ducks were just swimming about appearing to Richard to be about to go searching for another tasty treat on the bottom of the pond when – SMASH – and in an instant, there was total chaos. Wings beating the water and air, raucous squawks deafening to Richard’s ears, and this interloper obviously was creating a huge kerfuffle. He was attacking first one duck then another of the previously peaceful flock.

This was totally crazy! It seemed totally stupid. Outrageous! Richard was so annoyed he looked around for a rock, or stick, or anything he could throw at that awful bird. Anything that would chase that vicious unwanted bully away.

The pursuit of one of the male ducks was so scary and chaotic that he accidentally flew directly into a bush hanging over the water and got entangled, and soon he was hanging there helplessly ensnared. The more he struggled the more entangled he became.

“I hoped the poor fellow would survive,” said Richard out loud, even though there were no humans around to hear his heartfelt plaint, and as he said that, the bully flew off with the most lovely of the hens. “Well,” thought Richard, “I guess this is how survival of the fittest works,” and he headed off to continue his lonely walk.

My problem with hope.

Tags

Cigarettes, debt, Drink, failure, Gambling, hope

I have a problem with the word hope because it is usually associated with unrealistic aspirations, and because the goals are so often unattainable the routes to those goals must also be liable to lead the hope-filled person to failure. Thus the setting of unrealistic goals soon brings the hope filled believer to a life filled with despair. Probably most people realize their otherworldly aspirations are unrealistic, but they grasp after them anyway, because their current life is already overloaded with things that are not working very well. For example, betting on the lottery in the hope of winning a great reward almost always ends up with losing some amount of money, and if the person is already desperately lacking in money, that money gambled away comes from essentials like food and a modicum of economic security.

Perhaps even worse than eating poorly until the next dribble of money comes their way is the continued creation and feeding of a habit that is destroying their relationship with reality. Habits are what make our lives function, but poor habits lead us to failure. Then comes the unrealistic belief that numbing one’s pain with a few drinks will cure the problem, and everything will be okay tomorrow. Unfortunately, one drink is not quite enough to ease the pain and after a couple of years it takes quite a few drinks to feel numb enough not to care about the pain of a ruined life. Perhaps a cigarette will help, after all if one feels good why not have another? And, a little ciggee doesn’t cost much.

A realistic goal with a realistic way to get there isn’t based on hope, it’s based on doing the right things.

People need hopes based on achievable realities.

Tags

Life strategy for high school grads, Top college or home ownership

My discussion group last night was mostly about the value of getting a higher education. Everyone but me was advocating getting as much education as possible even though these days it means going into deep debt to do so. These people didn’t discriminate between two years in a community college plus two years in a state college, versus four years at a top school, like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Cal Berkeley. They were of the opinion that the total of four years in any college was equivalent, and I didn’t make much attempt to argue that point, but limited my comments to such things as coming out of Harvard and the local college with a huge personal debt doesn’t promise the same likelihood of a wholesome economic future.

The group opinion was that knowing the material was all that mattered. I would agree to some extent, but the intellectual material that is bred into the two groups of graduates isn’t equivalent. I asserted that the top-school graduates would have the mental material and attitudes to become members of the wealthy ruling class, and on their way to becoming part of the hated 1% who own everything. I asserted that the four-year graduates they were cultivating were on the certain route to being members of the 99%, slave class, who would remain behind the curve of economic debt for most of their lives, and very few would become directors of their own destiny.

Graduating from a secondary college with a debt and forced to work at a restaurant to pay off the monthly student loan debt, isn’t the same as taking an internship as a page in Congress, or on Wall Street. Both are entry-level positions, but one leads to responsibility and prosperity, and the other leads into buying a new car and new house and a life of permanent debt.

Of course few people can get into a top institution that leads to an upper-class life, so what is the alternate route? I assert that going into debt is a poor choice for an average student, and that having a strategy of avoiding debt is a better route to a comfortable life. American society is moving away from a middle class of homeowners into a two class system where there are owners and debtors, toward one where there are aristocrats and slaves. You can be a relatively poor owner, and a relatively rich slave, and it all depends on debt. Those who are in debt are in the slave class, and the bigger the debt the greater the pressure of loss if you fail in any way to make your payments.

My policy is looking forward from age twenty to age seventy, and designing one’s fifty years of working life in such a way as to always be out of debt. One of the most oppressive forms of debt is housing rent, because it puts the person in a position of always being forced to move on if anything changes. Fifty years of rent will have paid for the place one is living in three times over; thus the best policy is to buy the very cheapest livable place possible and wholly own it at the very earliest moment. When you own your residence you can then improve it, and every penny is money invested that can probably be gotten back when the property is sold. Whereas every penny spent on rent is gone forever. There is a double payment here, because you have your unspent rent money in your pocket, and you have that rent value put into your home which makes it that much more valuable  when you sell. Make enough money over the sale price to totally cover the price of your next home.

Okay, four years later the college graduate is in a better position to make money, but in a world with lots of debt-ridden college graduates the job market will be depressed. My homeowner will have four years of rent in his pocket and a small house mostly paid for, and he is moving into the debt-free owner class, whereas the college graduate is entering into the slave class while in serious debt. Four more years down the road the college grad is probably still in debt, while living in a rental apartment, and driving a new leased car which he needs to keep up his appearances of prosperity. Our other guy is now living in a wholly owned middle-class home, and probably still driving a used older car, because he has no need to keep up appearances.

When you graduate from high school, if you can’t go to a top university become a small home owner.

Courage and hope compared

Tags

Considering options, Courage, Decision, hope, Obedience, thinking

Both courage and hope are personal relationships to a thinking person’s future. They may seem similar at first glance, but they are almost precisely opposite in what they expect from the possessor of those emotionally loaded habits. Everyone prefers positive outcomes for the future, so that isn’t the difference between hope and courage. The difference lies in the attitude of the possessor of those feelings, what those attitudes bring to their actions, and how those actions are likely to bring about their preferred future outcome.

A hopeful person is wishing that something they want to happen will actually happen in physical or mental reality. This frame of mind doesn’t include much personal action, but rather anticipates external forces to intervene and bring about the sought-for results. There is little demanded of the hopeful person other than their belief in and obedience to some authoritative power; it is almost the opposite of action in that the hopeful person is expected to maintain a state of inaction, adoration, and obedience. The only actions required and expected of the hopeful person are those of acceptance of routine and repetitive work, and the rejection of all thinking and weighing of options.

The courageous person’s attitude is to observe reality as it presents itself, and then to act with what tools are available, upon what reality is available to be changed, to bring about a desired result. The courageous person has the ability to observe, to think and to act independently. A courageous person comes to all their reality, and to new problems, with a direct attitude. With that set of habits built into their personal being they can easily bring to their consciousness the resources necessary to prepare themselves for needed actions. They put their attention on their chosen goal, and do what is necessary to move toward that goal. Their actions are direct and always adaptive to the situation. That is the disposition of a courageous person’s character and its animating spirit.

To have courage is to be able to think and perform well even under difficult conditions.

The Earth Ark is humanity’s only hope for survival.

Today I had breakfast with a half dozen of my friends. They are all advanced intellectuals as well as mature in age and mature in social development and responsibility. I brought up the problem of world population growth and the unsustainability of civilization as we know it, because of the exhaustion of one-time-use resources and the huge present population. Everyone was in agreement that the automobile would consume all of the oil and gas, but hoped that technology would find a solution, and it was proposed that a near all-electric economy was the way to go. But, it was also admitted that there didn’t seem to be a presently viable alternative to gas. I mentioned the Chilean miners trapped a couple of years ago mining copper deep underground, and the obvious fact that they were down there because that was the cheapest source of copper in the world. Copper is essential for an all-electric economy, but there isn’t enough of it to power the entirety of the modern world’s population. Education of women was mentioned as bringing the population down, but I said that serves to remove the intelligent women from the population and in the long run everyone becomes stupid. Ten generations ought to do it.

When I mentioned having a worldwide policy of two children per person, the idea was met with howls of derision, even some anger. I didn’t mention that it wouldn’t work anyway because there are already living the people who will completely consume some vital resource and create an unsustainable crisis. A gentle dropping of population isn’t going to be enough to prevent the lack of resources in fifty years, when the population will still be in the seven billion range or probably more.

I mentioned several times the possible slogan, “What is the alternative?” It would work well as a front statement with an Earth Ark symbol on the back. If a reasonable population policy is an anathema to intelligent, sane, well-informed people, it will be impossible to sell it to people living in remote places in the world. It would be near impossible to enforce a policy without what are now considered absolutely unacceptable infringements on personal civil liberties and rights. Thus there is not workable population control policy in the offing at the present moment.

“What is the Alternative?” The Earth Ark is the only hope for humanity’s survival beyond the thousand-year time frame, and probably beyond the fifty-year one as well. If the Earth Ark isn’t in place soon, there will be no recovery of the world as we know it. Things will survive, but it will be utterly desolate compared to the world we presently inhabit.

I have thought this through in many different ways trying to make it simpler and cheaper. At present it is down to a shipping container at Palmer station functioning as a postal drop. And then getting people to send self-addressed envelopes of local material from all over the world to that container. When it is full, for it to be trucked to a high place near by, and then later moved to the better location at Mt. Tyee.

Ngram – Hope, Faith, Confidence, Charity, Kindness, Optimism

Tags

Charity, Confidence, Faith, hope, Kindness, Optimism, Ultimate positive behavior

The Probaway blog post The Golden Rule revealed showed an Ngram for the Golden Rule. It demonstrated a total flip on the meaning of the Golden Rule between the years 1830 and 2000, from “should do unto you” to “want them to do for you.” 
The follow-up post Faith, hope and charity reconsidered concluded, The outcomes sought for behind the concepts of faith, hope and love can be better attained by confidence, optimism and kindness.

This Ngram traces the usage of those words, and the trend is strikingly similar to the King James Version of the Golden Rule, “should do unto you.” All of these positive words have had a two-hundred-year downward trend of public usage. At the same time the more materialistic translation “want them to do for you”, has had a strong upward trend.

Charity and kindness are nearly identical in frequency of use, and downward trending for the last two centuries. Those last two words, charity and kindness, are rare and the external end products of them are directed to other people’s welfare. Hope and faith are internal feelings of well-being, and are more associated with personal happiness, and thus may be considered as selfish. Confidence is the belief that one has the ability to cope with expected tasks, and it is neutral from a selfishness point of view.

Kindness is the most valuable of all of these words. Kindness requires the positive aspects of all words being put into actions that are helpful.

When you do a kind act you are practicing all the virtues.

Faith, hope and charity reconsidered

Tags

Charity, Confidence, Faith, hope, Kindness, Optimism

This blog has considered the Biblical concepts of Faith, Hope and Charity several times in an effort to winnow the good aspects implied by these words from the bad ones. It isn’t easy to refine these ideas to their positive essence because there are millenniums of usage of these terms by billions of people, often of different cultures speaking different languages.

We should consider what the results of our applications of these terms will be, in the situations to which we are about to apply them. In modern English usage the term Faith can sometimes be requested by the authorities for believing clearly impossible statements; Hope can be held for clearly impossible outcomes; and Charity can be granted to perpetrators of intentionally horrible crimes.

At first view it makes sense to treat every person with courtesy and respect, and certainly this is a good precept when approaching nearly everyone in normal social situations; but can we apply this good idea universally? Should we apply these courtesies to a person in a clearly destructive state of mind, who is running berserk with a deadly weapon? It would be dangerous to approach them, and better to depart to a safe distance and do what is necessary to calm them, and wait for an appropriate time. Can we find better terms than hope, faith and charity that will guide us through difficult situations with greater likelihood of a positive outcome?

Perhaps better words could be chosen, to be held in one’s mind, which would bring about the positive effects implied in those three overly generalized words – faith, hope and charity. Instead of faith with its negative aspect of believing impossible things, the word could be replaced with confidence. The word confidence implies there are verifiable qualities that define the idea, and there are no portions of it that require opaque assumptions that can not be defined. Hope, which so often is concerned with impossible things coming into being, could be replaced with optimism; and the directed work we are doing will bring about the desired outcomes which will ultimately triumph over the observable evils in the world. Charity has the negative side of demoralizing people from striving toward their own positive growth. It can be replaced with our kindness, which has the quality of removing the things blocking others from moving along their self-chosen self-affirming path.

The outcomes sought for behind the concepts of faith, hope and love can be better attained by confidence, optimism and kindness.