From: WesBurt@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 23 1997 - 11:59:29 MDT
To: Burt's List
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First, let me thank and congratulate Mr. Mann for organizing and initiating
the debate on the Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex (NSPIC). I
subscribed to list extropians@extropy.org because of Mr. Mann's announcement
of the debate on other lists and have not been disappointed yet. This NSPIC
seems to subsume the "not invented here syndrome" (NIHS) and related cultural
defects, and keeps the public oblivious of the factors adversely affecting
the general welfare of the commonwealth. If I understand Mr. Mann's several
posts correctly, he hopes the debate will bring to the fore a group of
freedom loving individuals who, collectively, will persuade the public to
shed the NSPIC as they would shed a soiled garment.
That, it seems to me, must be a three step process of persuasion of which the
first step must persuade the enforcers of the NSPIC that their interests will
be as justly secured without the NSPIC as it has been with the NSPIC. If
that first step is not successfully accomplished, these freedom loving
individuals will not live long enough to provide the public with a clean
garment to replace the soiled one. Recall the fate of the Old Testament
Prophets and Christ, and more recently the fate of U.S. Presidents Lincoln,
Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy who also omitted the first step and lost the
opportunity to complete the second and third step in releasing the public
from the NSPIC.
Second, I thank Lee Daniel Crocker, for correcting my uncertain presentation
of his interest, and Kennita Watson for so concisely defining our common
interest as I should have defined it in my post "The General Theory of
Reproducible Productive Assets."
Kennita Watson concluded by saying: "<WesBurt>, this may point out that a
*brief* message pointing out to people what their interest is in the TEFLON
TOPIC may generate more interest in it."
It is not easy for a poor old mechanical engineer with a 2.5/4.0 grade-point
average to communicate as effectively as William Shakespeare or a New Age
Liberal Arts Graduate, and it is even more difficult to be "brief" when
discussing a simple fact of life that has been under the protection of the Neu
ro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex since Moses smashed the first two
tables of stone containing the whole Twelve Moral Commandments. Perhaps the
following year old post will define the TEFLON TOPIC well enough to enable
the debate to continue on NSPIC.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Begin year old note XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subj: Engineering Graphics (105)
Date: 96-10-23 14:01:27 EDT
From: WesBurt
Dear Innocents,
"My idea of a conceptual model of world transformation, one that is
simple enough to be technically valid, is a model that addresses the
singular public interest of each nation, rather than its many private
interests. Consequently, such a model has no natural constituency
in the United States where we are educated to believe in THE ZERO-
SUM SOCIETY and THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION.
The "Great Satan" has kept the singular public interest of a nation out
of the public domain ever since King Rehoboam (Son of Solomon,
I Kings 12:23-24) raised taxes too high in B.C. 975, and destroyed the
Biblical Commonwealth of Israel, sending ten tribes into historical
oblivion and two tribes (Judah and Benjamin) into Persian captivity. This
model of the singular public interest has its technical anchor in the
diverse and decentralized financial structure that allows multi-national
corporations to deliver their products everywhere in today's global
markets. That is where I first discovered the model. It has its historical
anchor in the First Tithe (Gen.14:18-20) which Abraham paid to
Melchizedek, King of Salem, for the support of "a school for the
propagation of the knowledge of God," according to the late Chief
Rabbi of the British Empire Dr. J. H. Hertz.
Notice that this "knowledge of God" (or this accumulated wisdom
of mankind) must include, as the founders of the United States
believed, both "the Laws of Nature," which are always effective,
and the Laws "of Nature's God," which are made effective only by
an informed public opinion. Education, as the founders understood
it, is obviously a vital part of an optimum public policy. Where both
kinds of Laws are not taught, Democracy Sucks!
There is no invention, no copyright, no patent application involved in this
conceptual model, or should we call it a Law "of Nature's God? This
Law is only a joining together of the observations of many members of
the cognitive elite who, historically, and as long as they acted alone as
poets, prophets, philosophers, corporate managers, Kings, and
statesmen were unable to effectively convey their conception of a
stable, efficient, and prosperous social order to the public. More
exactly, they were unable to persuade their fellow members of the elite
that such a social order could be conveyed to the public, without placing
at risk the livelihood and perhaps the lives of the ruling elite.
There are long standing vested interests in the United States, and in
every society, which are ever and always opposed to any attempt to
inform the public about how the whole system operates. This
opposition is surely innocent where businessmen are concerned with
protecting propriatary knowledge of corporate techniques which they
have developed at their own expense. But when that opposition keeps
the public of any nation misinformed and ignorant of the corporate
techniques and methods that became part of the domestic policy of
Germany under John J. McCloy (CFR) and became part of the
domestic policy of Japan under Douglas MacArthur (CFR); that
opposition, regardless of its source, must be called treason against
mankind. And if not the ultimate Evil, then that opposition must be
acknowledged as technical incompetence bordering on functional
illiteracy.
As I see this topic, It has been addressed by serious reformers down
through the ages, with only occasional success. One reason for their
failure may be because the powerful nations that were setting new
standards of better government (Greece and Rome in their day,
England in the 19th century, and the U.S. in the 20th century) had no
contemporary economic superiors that they could be compared with
to make a strong argument for change. That condition vanished for
England with W.W. I, for the U.S. in the late 1960's, and its absence is
slowly being recognized by the media and the public, but members of
the U.S. establishment are still stonewalling on this question.
The not invented here (NIH) syndrome often obstructs dialog on this
simple model, even though the topic is clearly the COMMON CAUSE of
everyone capable of thinking constructively about the subject. We are
not dealing here with a package of proprietary knowledge which every
clever canine pyschologist can sniff at and then turn to his own
advantage. As Moses Maimonides implied in THE GUIDE FOR THE
PERPLEXED, 1168, these "Divergent problems" last only as long as
powerful men want them to last, then they become "Convergent
problems" that are easily solved.
So what else is new? Hasn't it always been the perennial agenda of
the intellectually gifted, the priestly establishment, "The thirteenth
Tribe,"
"the gang in posession," and Barbara Hooton's "comfortable classes"
who thought there were two species of human beings (the rich and
the poor), to keep the majority of the population in a "third world"
condition of being pregnant, poor, and innocent? Isn't skinning the
innocent public always the preferred sport of the wealthy, healthy,
intelligent, and powerful?
Too often perhaps, but not always! History does record several
occasions when the "best and the brightest" did act to promote the
general welfare of their people. Remember from your bible reading
that the original Moses (not the late M. Maimonides, 1168), a member
of the 13th tribe, did teach the Twelve Moral Commandments to the
twelve tribes of Israel to found a commonwealth that reached its
apogee of wealth and power under Solomon in B.C. 975, and was
then ruined by the unjust taxes imposed by King Rehoboam. Greece
and Rome were given their day in the sun in an age when the
maintainence of the slaves and serfs (a majority of the population) was
at the expense of the masters (call it Village Ethics or Family Values),
and those ages are now remembered as "golden ages."
More recently, the barons did wrest the Magna Carta from King John in
1215 to make England a better place than the continent of Europe for
the following 750 years. America's founding fathers did establish a fifth
great commonwealth on the principles promulgated in the American
Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Congress of the United
States did pass the G.I. Bill in 1942. And President Nixon did propose
in August 1969 his Family Assistance Plan. If Congress had enacted
Nixon's FAP, it would have raised the level of sustaining feedback from
the present 50% to about 75% of the level needed to eliminate the "root
cause" of systemic inflation and unemployment in the U.S.
No new thinking has entered the closed American mind since Henry
Carter Adams stated the problem in 1887. He wrote, in his essay,
RELATION OF THE STATE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION:
"The most unfortuneate consequence of so vicious a method of
education in economics is found in the fact that the collapse of faith in
the sufficiency of the philosophy of laissez-faire, has left the present
generation without principles adequate for the guidance of public affairs.
------- The problem may be stated in a word, as follows: The authority of
English economy has been shattered beyond recovery; can a truer
system of economic thought gain control of the American mind?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not in the 19th. century, and not yet in the second half of the twentieth
century, if the 1996 campaign promises of President Clinton and
Senator Dole and the dialog on the internet are true indicators of the
American mind today.
Blessings on all the innocents,
WesBurt.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX End year old note XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx
Remember what the first step must accomplish. It must lift the NSPIC from
the minds of those who enforce the NSPIC. It's slow work!
Cheers,
WesBurt
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