A GOOD SAMARITAN!

Does telling the truth have any value?

I feel constrained to state that I am not referring to telling the truth when it suits your aims or objectives; nor am I talking about using lies and deceit like the small change in your pocket.

I am speaking about telling the truth out of awareness of the functional value of practicing this discipline; I am referring to telling the truth because telling the truth keeps you in contact with the existing social reality, because doing this develops the habit of describing the existing reality, keeping in mind that the necessary prerequisite to solving any problem is its accurate description.

I have spent the greater part of the last three decades of my life trying to communicate this simple message, this very simple message but one with wondrous efficacy, to humanity without any success; I have never met anyone whom has demonstrated even the most minimum appreciation of what can be achieved by simply telling the truth.

I have failed in this transcendent enterprise despite demonstrating on occasions too numerous to mention that practicing this discipline has given bestowed upon me the gift of prophecy.

I hasten to add that this gift has no magical or supernatural properties; it is the consequence of practice of the discipline of truth over time, this has caused me to become more and more in contact with the existing social reality and as I have gained a deeper appreciation and understanding of the present I came to a ever increasing comprehension of the past and developed the ability to predict the future.

I suggest that this is a capability that can be developed by any and every human being who has the moral character to practice the discipline of truth; examples, numerous examples of prophesy which are evidence of the validity of what I am saying are available on my web site, voiceofpeace.net, and on the blogs I have created on blogger.com.

In the past, in the distant past, individuals who developed this facility were able to communicate their message because they were not trying, as I am, to make this approach to processing information popular; nor, did they confront the difficulty of trying to reach millions of human beings in nuclear societies distributed over vast areas.

An ancient prophet could stand in a gathering place of his community, whether that be the marketplace, or in a temple, or the precincts of a castle, or on the side of a roadway, deliver his warning or advise about a an immediate pressing issue to his community with the knowledge that this warning would reach those who could make the best use of information about that issue or threat.

This is impossible today; any information to be meaningful must reach a comparatively vast number of individuals spread over vast distances the vast majority of whom are so burdened with the problems of day to day survival and who have so little mental acuity that interpreting information, even those ideas that could very positively transform their lot is beyond them.

I have developed an analogy to demonstrate this obstacle to change; I have stated that if Christopher Columbus had to, in any contemporary democratic society, mobilize the funds to engage in his momentous voyage of discovery it is likely that he would fail miserably.

In the Fifteenth Century, he had to pierce the advisers and entourage insulating one sovereign from information and solicitations; having accomplished this, he had to sell his plan to one human being, compare this to the difficulties he would face today.

To emphasize the other major obstacle to communicating my message, I will relate an incident from my past, to demonstrate and emphasize that the truth is anathema to the vast majority of individuals and organizations; it makes no difference whether they are presidents or ordinary men and women the same animus with regards to the truth applies and for the same reason.

In July, 1976 I was approached by my favorite sibling who said he had just received employment selling health insurance, and he requested that I purchase a policy from him, to assist him in attaining his sales quota.

I advised him that I had coverage through my job, and that additional coverage would be superfluous; he persisted, and indicated that the cost of the plan was not very significant about Eight Dollars per month.

I relented, and gave him six signed checks on my account, to cover the remaining months of the year, and thought no more about it.

However, in December of that year I became aware that my checking account was overdrawn, and sought to discover the reason for the insufficiency of funds.

I called that brother’s wife, who was employed to the bank who provided that checking account and she advised me the reason that my account was overdrawn was because those six checks had been lodged to my account together.

The value of each check was insignificant but they totaled together Forty Eight Dollars and that was enough to overburden my limited resources as I tried to provide some semblance of Christmas cheer for my two minor children who had recently been returned to my care when their mother without warning decamped to reside in the USA; indeed, my fortunes had radically changed during the prior two years because of the dissolution of my marriage and the impending divorce that this had precipitated.

My sister-in-law also provided the reason why the six checks were deposited together; she told me that my brother had done very well selling health insurance policies, so well that he had not required the support I had provided, until the end of the year when consummation of that sale created the sales volume that would make him “Salesman of the Year” for his Company.

To achieve this goal he had, without any prior warning to me, deposited the six checks in my account, causing it to be overdrawn and precipitating several late fees; I managed with some difficulty to overcome this setback but felt very hurt and betrayed by his treatment, especially because I had done him a substantial favor by purchasing something for which I had no use, which I never used, and this had resulted in serious dislocation in my finances.

I did not at that time raise this issue with my brother, I was too hurt to do this, but it was the beginning of a rift in a previously very close familial relationship, a rift which widened into a veritable gulf over the years.

Several years later I did mention it; I was making a request for a loan of Five Hundred Dollars from him, and thought it unprincipled to make this request based on familial obligation while playing the hypocrite as I had done over all the intervening years.

He denied all memory of the sequence of events that I related, and said that he was sure that the checks had been deposited each month as we had agreed; I knew this to be a lie, a facile lie, since every month I received a statement that contained the checks deposited in the account in the previous month and I had kept the January statement which proved beyond doubt the version of events from a source no less authoritative and credible than his wife.

Notwithstanding our very different appreciation of this important event of our shared past, he granted me the loan which in the intervening space of time until this day I have not had the means to repay.

I document this sequence of events because they prove beyond doubt a hypothesis I have since developed about human affairs that has caused me to understand the my sibling’s actions, it has caused me to be at cross purposes with all the members of my family; indeed, it is the fundamental cause of my increasing isolation from the human concourse.

A psychologist in New Jersey during a session said that the source and genesis of my activism was that at an early age I accepted responsibility for the welfare and well being of my siblings, that subsequent to attaining adolescence I tried my utmost to be a parent to my three siblings; an obligation I felt duty bound to accept after my mother’s departure to permanently reside in the USA when I was nine years old after several lengthy visits to that country, and because my father was seldom at home, before and after she left, preferring the company of his cronies and drinking buddies.

I must admit that there was some truth in his analysis; it probably explained why as an adult I took responsibility for the welfare of all the children in Jamaica as the secular decline in the economy and the rents in the social fabric that this precipitated had a ever more dolorous impact on the populace, and incidents of stark hunger, criminal violence and mayhem that impacted the weakest and most vulnerable members of society proliferated.

I have failed in both these endeavors; I could not be a good parent to my siblings no matter how hard I tried because I too was a victim of parental neglect and this was indelibly reflected in my efforts, but to them I was generous to a fault and tried as best I could to fight their battles and protect them from those who attempted to victimize them.

I also failed to change the world with the world view I have developed because of a dichotomy that I have observed in the operations of every individual and every organization, one that causes my family to be at best blasé and unconcerned about my fate and causes my creative and innovative perspective on human affairs to be completely ignored.

I repeat for emphasis, the solution of any problem, including social problems, depends on an accurate description of the problem, yet the truth is anathema both to most individuals and organizations.

Family members, friends or strangers are both oblivious to the wondrous efficacy of telling the truth, and cannot comprehend that to derive any increase in problem solving capability, as I have done, from the practice of this discipline one cannot do it opportunistically, or diplomatically, and the reason most individuals are oblivious and unaware about the positive impact can be traced to mechanism learnt many eons ago near the beginning of recorded history.

The genesis of this palpable inability to confront, accept or admit the truth, notwithstanding that this value is revered in concept, has much to do with is the fact that humanity has for most of history, for upwards of half a million years, existed in a ‘state of nature;’ a period during which the survival of the race was always in question, a period during which tribes of human beings were hunting and gathering communities, were predatory groups competing with much larger and better equipped denizens for existing energy resources.

When this primitive period ended with the discovery of agriculture and the human race began the long, arduous climb towards civilization they had one model of social interaction available to them, the model of territorial predator and prey to which they had been habituated during the thousands of millennia in which they existed in that ‘state of nature;’ this ensured that human beings would be driven up the steep incline towards civilization, that coercion would be the means relied to motivate the other, that human beings would create Absolutist regimes, a form of government that became the most popular, most widely applied and universally utilized for most of human history.

I think also there are little appreciation of the sheer weight and momentum of social and political traditions, of the strength and resistance to change created by many millennia of applying something that worked.

Today, there are nations that aspire to create democracies, but these exist side by side with governments that substantively are very little different from the Absolutist regimes of the not too distant past. They may be subsumed under the headings dictatorships of the left or the right, but in actuality they are Absolutist regimes little different from those of that girdled the globe prior to the Seventeenth Century.

The reality of the survival of Absolutism is also obscured by advances in science and technology; because the architecture, the tools, the machines and other artifacts of the modern age have undergone such dramatic changes this fosters the very erroneous belief that the intangible components of culture have also changed to a similar degree.

But to return to the description of the evolution of Absolutism; the first opportunity to question the efficacy of this model, the efficacy of coercion based culture, came when human beings discovered ethics; this piece focuses on the impact of this discovery on Western civilizations, because the surviving nations who embrace Western culture form the majority of those whose populaces are engaged in the journey from subject to citizen, who are attempting to create governments of the people, by the people, for the people, the alternative to Absolutist regimes.

In Western civilization this watershed event coincided with the Ministry of the man called Jesus and produced a preeminent religious institution, the Christian Church.

Here, my world view departs from the widely accepted version of history; because I suggest that a compromise occurred at this juncture that permitted ethics, and the institutions these principles spawned, to coexist with the Absolutist ideology and perpetuated the status quo of reliance on coercion with all the negative implications and consequences this created.

The compromise that occurred was the substitution of the prescription that was the centerpiece of Ministry of Jesus that ‘telling the truth would make you free’ with the notion that grace could be achieved through possession by the Holy Ghost; this accommodation allowed the Church to survive and grow, since telling the truth was antithetical to, and a practical impossibility under Absolutist regimes, in which function, progress and order devolved from absolute power of rulers, including the power of life or death, over their subjects.

Thus began the dichotomy that I have referred to which is the greatest obstacle to positive developments in contemporary democratic societies. There became a gulf, an ever widening gulf, between concept and precept; values and moral principles were paid lip service and did not limit or ameliorate the excesses and abuses of power of human beings.

In fact, ethics, values, and other moral principles became the window dressing that obscured, concealed and to some small degree reduced the insensate, mindless brutality of Absolutist regimes.

The Christian Church survived and thrived to become a powerful institution that simultaneously validated the legitimacy and authority of dynasties of Absolute rulers, and, also served as a refuge from the most blatant and ruthless excesses of the powerful.

This dichotomy now deeply embedded in human cultures has become a powerful, impermeable, intangible monolith; a mindset apparent to some degree in the actions of every individual and organization; it is readily discernible in the actions of my brother who behaved diametrically opposed to family values, but who will never admit to this inadequacy no matter how conclusive and damning the evidence; who will do everything to resist confronting or admitting this failing.

This propensity for denial and palpable inability to confront mistakes is the underlying cause for the failure of every existing social institution, including the Christian Church, in democratic societies that for most of history relied on coercion to create function.

It is the fundamental cause of low levels of productivity in the workplace; high rates of divorce; the palpable inability to socialize our young in the home and at school; the burgeoning rates of poverty, crime and drug abuse worldwide; it can even be blamed for the spread of AIDS.

Absolutist regimes had as their objective the satisfaction of the desires of a small elite, this objective was attained by the mindless, unfeeling, unrestrained application of force. Dissent, for most of human history, was not permitted; those who dared to challenge City Hall were subject to excessive force, exquisite tortures, were sentenced to death, or were exiled.

Demonstrators up to quite recently; were met in the streets by platoons of Calvary wielding sabers, by hails of bullets; they were attacked by savaged dogs; or doused with fire hoses unleashing powerful streams of water; the might is right attitude produced rank injustices and dissent and also completely limited demonstrations and dissent.

The evolution of every social institution reflects this pattern; in the work place production and productivity was coerced with whips, chains and exquisite tortures, in the school teachers arbitrarily wielded canes, belts and boxed ears to create and preserve order, in the home the head of the household used similar devices to compel and exact obedience, the proof of this was that wives, until quite recently, could not testify against their husbands in a British court of law, a nation that was the cradle of democracy.

The amelioration of the brutality of this regime occurred, and individuals began the journey from subject to citizen, when subservient groups accumulated power and were able to apply this power to produce changes in their circumstances; the nobility in some countries accumulated the social and economic power that allowed them to be independent of Kings, a circumstance that resulted in the Reformation in England; workers organized Trade Unions when they became capable of restraining production and trade after Industrial Revolutions in Europe.

Some groups, notably women and minorities, organized and fought for rights already afforded to other more powerful groups, but on every single occasion advancements in the rights and privileges afforded every subservient group were achieved by the application of force, so the efficacy of force has never been challenged.
I intend to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the application of coercion, whether any human being has the right to coerce another, to treat other human beings as if they were prey, a source of food.

I also intend o challenge the efficacy and practicality of using coercion; I suggest that reliance on coercion as a motivating factor translates into teaching fear to those who are being socialized; in the hurly burly of life many are taught intense fear which becomes the basis for conflicts and must result in the learning of neuroses with the additional very negative effect that many individuals become incapable of applying their higher mental processes to certain areas of existence.

I offer as proof of this hypothesis the failure of all existing social institutions in most democratic nations and the fact that collectively there is complete ignorance of the fundamental cause of this failure, most remain oblivious of the fact that the dysfunction and anomie being experienced in these social systems is a direct result of low levels of motivation, subsequent to restrictions and limitations on, and significant reductions in the degree and extent to which coercion can be applied to individuals in these social systems.

The symptoms, the obvious readily discernible effects of a culture of coercion derived from being habituated over many eons to existence in a ‘state of nature’ have been removed, but humanity has been thus proved unable to intellectually come to grips with and challenge the moral basis for Absolutism or adopt an alternative form of motivation so social conflict continues unchecked and unrestrained by moral precepts.

Alternatives were created, for example, when overt coercion could no longer be applied to wives; this was replaced by economic necessity and social imperatives, the wife had little access to the skills required to make a living and remained economically dependent on her husband, and if this were not enough and she resisted being a household drudge by divorcing her husband she was considered a fallen women, little better than a prostitute in the eyes of society. But now that women have access to education and have the means to be self supporting, progress has faltered, social systems are incapable to the next logical step that necessary for function and the reduction of divorce rates, the conscious adoption and becoming conversant with positive reinforcements as the means used to motivate the other.

Chattel slavery in which overt, unlimited and unrestrained coercion was permitted and even encouraged in the workplace was replaced by wage slavery; the labor market was shaped so that workers were economically dependent on his employer and poverty became a crime in the eyes of society but here again the next logical step has not occurred, open ended systems of reward have not been developed in the vast majority of cases to replace coercion.

Democracies tend to rely on the fact that habits die hard, in the home, in school, in the workplace, in the governments; but it is becoming more and more apparent that the residual effects of the application of force over many millennia does not, cannot create the concentrated effort need to produce societal function and progress.
In fact, certain traditions have definitely become massive liabilities in the brand new world that democracy should engender.

For example, it is clear that most populaces are incapable of making elected leaders accountable; that this results in certain institutions that are inimical to the common good continuing to flourish, examples abound pork barrel politics, nepotism and the impact of lobbying readily come to mind.

The absolute ruler preyed on his subjects, the elected leaders is supposed to serve the people and craft policies and develop programs that benefit the majority, the reality is that tradition prevails and the beneficiaries of government programs are those who have as has always been since time immemorial.

It is widely accepted that in an election year, as is 2006, politicians should be galvanized to greater effort, so that they, and other members of their Party, will gain reelection; the fact is they voluntarily sought the opportunity to serve the people and the nation; they need to subordinate their ambitions and selfish interests to this overriding imperative, this prerequisite to creating a functioning democracy. The notion that this is an unrealistic aim is tantamount to an admission that we are incapable of cooperation that we are limited to autocratic relations.

If further proof were needed of the persistence of powerful political traditions, we could compare but usually decline to make the contrast, between the relative function in those nations that continue to rely on coercion; we need but consider and objectively compare the burgeoning economy in China that consistently achieves growth rates of above ten per cent, with the results in the technologically superior USA in which growth rates of five per cent are considered praiseworthy and acceptable.

There is another very urgent reason why an alternative to coercion must adopted above and beyond the fact that it creates personalities that are to some degree neurotic and therefore are unable to accurately describe certain social problems and therefore are incapable of solving these problems; that human beings now have access to weapons of mass destruction.

This single fact precludes continued dependence on coercion as the means relied to motivate behavior between individuals, between organizations, and between nations; but this is a blind area for most human beings so most individuals and organizations are perennially and futilely trying to deal with the symptoms of the underlying problem, not the problem itself, for most the solutions that they would apply are cosmetic and opportunistic and will result in perpetuating the status quo.

The powerful tradition developed and embedded in culture over thousands of millennia is that during social interaction the needs, wants, and desires of the master are satisfied while those of the servile, weaker individual are completely ignored; this was the pattern the irreducible unchangeable fact of relations in the workplace, the home, the government, in every social institution, now the objective is that such relations are expected to be mutually beneficial and satisfying, that there is equity.

It is clear that some individuals are incapable of making the necessary adjustments, that is why some men continue to patronize prostitutes, but for all actors in the human drama, if democracy is to be more than the stale dogma of a secular religion, change must occur.

Human beings must consciously renounce force as the basis for social reaction, they must become aware that they cannot treat other human beings as prey, they must come to appreciate this intellectually and philosophically, this is change that telling the truth produced in me, that is the basis of my freedom; I will not treat any human being as prey, and, I will not be treated by any human being as prey.

I suggest a fundamental change in the way human societies are organized, the most basic and difficult change that could be envisioned; change in the motivation relied on in social interaction, that positive reinforcement be substituted for coercion.

I go further, I am challenging the efficacy of coercion given the developments in science and technology; I am suggesting that coercion worked in the past but now has become anachronistic, further reliance on this means will probably result in the destruction of human civilizations and return us to a primitive state; it is well nigh certain to result in the end of the experiment in democracy, in the journey from subject to citizen.

The 911 attack has resulted in a curtailment of freedoms; a curtailment, if the polls in the USA are accurate, that is popular and acceptable to a majority of Americans.

Suppose one weapon of mass destruction is unleashed anywhere in the world, this will end the experiment in democracy; survival will be considered much more important to a bare majority of citizens in every democratic state than freedom, and this change will be exploited by the strong to increase their power and authority and to sustain their preeminent positions.

I suggest that in this situation we have no reasonable alternative but to adopt positive reinforcements as the means relied on to motivate behavior; that cooperation must replace competition as the fundamental ethos of social systems.

The pertinent question is why am I capable of a position so altruistic, so radically different an opinion from that of most individuals? The answer is because I practice the discipline of truth.

It is because I have been practicing the discipline of truth for all of my life, with a single reservation; I told lies and engaged in deceits that facilitated my promiscuity, this has always been my Achilles heel, my weakness.

In Israel in October, 1975 as I wallowed in the pit of despair occasioned by what the initial period of living separate and apart from my children; a circumstance that I believed would become permanent when my wife divorced me; a tragic development to which my major contribution had been my numerous affairs and the lies that facilitated them; I decided that I would tell the truth without qualification, whatever the consequences for the rest of my life.

That decision precipitated a pilgrimage; I began the journey from being a promiscuous bully and coward and eventually became a gentle, civilized human being.

It is that mindset that transformed me from being a conflicted, neurotic personality and has allowed me to understand the human past, the human present, and to be able to predict the future; more, it caused me to entertain the hope that I could create a future for humanity and bring to an end our repeating the past, our tragic past, over, and over, and over, again.

The movie the Da Vinci Code has created great upset and turmoil in Christian communities worldwide. This is because my hypothesis is valid, that most human beings pay lip service to ideals and values; so becoming a Christian has not resulted in any behavior modification, no radical change in their lives, thus they are deeply concerned that the window dressing that obscures and conceals their immoral acts not be torn down or be rearranged in any way.

To me it does not matter whether Jesus was celibate or not, indeed, I have for some time entertained the sneaking suspicion that his ‘celibacy’ was just another lie motivated by intense guilt with regards to sexual relations experienced by those who wrote the Gospels that document His Ministry but whether he had one woman or many women has no impact on the degree and extent to which I venerate and adore Him, because His prescription has worked for me.

My life has been transformed by telling the truth, where I was blindly groping through life, I have developed wisdom in the conduct of my affairs, the truth is the nearest and dearest thing to me, it has become the touchstone of my existence, it works for me.

Ironically, or in the unfolding of my manifest destiny, I was in Israel to study to be a Change Agent, to be a catalyst in creating positive changes in organizational structures.

Because of my integrity the initial project into which I was injected attained and sustained a momentous increase in productivity of the magnitude of four hundred per cent; more accurately that development was sustained by me, it would have occurred whether I was there or not, it is examined in more detail in the web site voiceofpeace.net.

More importantly, I was able to appreciate in great detail what precipitated the change, positive reinforcements, and apply the carrot and renounce the stick in my relations with other human beings.

But my integrity was a two edged sword; it caused me to fall into severe disfavor with the powers that be in Jamaica during my foreshortened career in politics and as a free lance journalist; for five years I was unemployed and lost everything of economic, social or psychological value to me, this period of suffering and poverty ended when I migrated to the USA.

I survived because I endured without resisting this consequence because I had by then become habituated to applying positive reinforcements in social relations; I was committed to cooperating rather than competing with other human beings.

If I had attempted to create my own political movement or newspaper I do not believe I would have survived as a functioning personality; instead I concentrated on honing my writing skills, I concentrated on conducting an audit of the human condition starting with an audit of my own experiences, I concentrated on developing ideas that would explain the proper functioning of modern, highly industrialized, democratic societies and have managed to retain and even increase my commitment to this objective which has become my magnificent obsession.

When, to improve my skills, I returned to school and witnessed firsthand the state of education in the USA and saw that the ideas I had developed were applicable and urgently needed here, but this did not significantly change my methodology of attempting to enlist the cooperation of others to effect change.

At a meeting with an Administrative Officer of the school he suggested that I could only change the situation if I mobilized students or the parents of those students to protest the fraud that the education system had become; this did not change my approach.

During the entire period I lived in South Florida I observed many injustices, some of which could have been the basis for legal action but I declined to attempt that remedy because I believed that the social system could never be changed piecemeal and it could never be changed by competition, that the application of force whatever its nature and no matter how well intentioned could never bring about, nor sustain, the positive development that would create the possibility of happiness for human beings that was my aim and vision.

Eventually I did abandon the job that allowed me to continue to persevere in what after thirty years had become more and more palpably a futile and quixotic enterprise, because I felt myself weakening likely to become a wage slave, or worst surrender my principles and resort to force in my relations with another human being.

For the first time at last I left a job without resigning, or before finding alternative employment and knowing full well that I could not apply for unemployment compensation.

I not only left my job but gave up my apartment and all the furniture my small car could not carry so that I would not become a wage slave, or worst.
This brings me to the present and my contact with a Good Samaritan.

Circumstances and events moved me to locate in Olive Branch, Mississippi but because of the deficiency in my planning of this move I ran out of money, and found that appeals to my family fell on deaf ears.

I wish to be clear that as I mindless I was not completely mindless and unthinking of the future, I was aware that the home of a deceased Aunt in Jamaica was being sold and the proceeds of this sale would shortly be distributed in June if the deal did not fall through.

My brother, the same one I referred to earlier, is the executor of this estate, it is he who will distribute these funds; therefore, I will be out of his debt for the Five Hundred Dollars I borrowed before and whatever assistance he might have provided to assist in my relocation. He has declined to provide any assistance whatsoever, as is his right.

His daughter did wire me Two Hundred Dollars through Western Union and I was the brink of receiving employment when I ran out of cash, so I have no address from which to go to work, a vicious circle.

I had run out of options, no matter how I racked my brains there seemed no way out of my pickle, I found myself in a parking area without the fuel needed to go further, I was immobilized, mentally, emotionally and financially.

The real appreciation of my predicament requires context, it requires that I have been swimming alone against the tsunami of human culture for thirty years; I have been telling the truth and enduring the consequences for thirty years, and they have been consequence, dire consequences, I have lost everything of economic, social and emotional value to me on at least three occasions and have had to start life over from scratch.

I have had no notable success in my efforts, and therefore very little encouragement to persevere; I have watched my predictions prove adequate to the reality, in situations as innocuous as the winner of the Baseball World Series, the Belmont Stakes, and, as momentous as knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction before the attack on Iraq begun, this has fuelled my resolve, but the rest has been determination or some would stay stubbornness, I just seem unable to quit.

Nothing that I say should be taken that I regret the stand I took three decades ago, confronted with so many examples of man’s inhumanity to man I could never have done differently and retained my respect. My wish is that I could have been smarter and wiser, that I would have had better success in this transcendent enterprise, to provide the possibility of happiness for children I would have been willing to suffer and endure twice as much of shame and humiliation, and may have to.

Last Friday, it was the middle of a hot day and the heat and humidity forced me out of the hot car and I began to engage in casual conversation with the individual in car behind me.

I pretended to be a traveler temporarily enjoying a brief respite before completing my journey; he was easy to talk to being about my age, he volunteered that he would be sixty one in August, I responded that I would attain that majority in September of the same year.

After more small talk we ran out of things to say, and to avoid the uncomfortable silence I returned to sit in my automobile but could feel his attention. It struck me that he might provide some temporary relief from my plight.

I exited the car and began to provide him a somewhat more accurate account of my predicament; I told him I had run out of money and was awaiting assistance from my children.

This absolute stranger from Missouri was more sympathetic and compassionate with respect to my misfortune than any of my family with whom I had discussed my being stranded in a location in which I had no family, friends or acquaintances, absolutely no one I could turn to.

Perhaps my family have the excuse that they have become tired over the years of my tilting at the windmills of positive change, and the quirky behavior this has precipitated, tired of my washing the dirty linen of family members in public and exposing their dark secrets, of my iconoclasm that had landed me in hot water with the a variety of powers that be.

Whatever it was, my new acquaintance gave me Nine Dollars, it may have been all the cash he had with him, because he said, I had not begged for it.

I spent Six Dollars on gasoline at the nearest gas station, and bought a cold drink that cost a dollar at that same location. Later, I purchased three more cans of soda for little less than a dollar I was so thirsty; it might be helpful to relate that I had not eaten since that past Tuesday, three day prior to that minor miracle.

After quenching my thirst I returned to the parking area, having made this decision to begin writing this testament the next day, knowing that the amount of gasoline I had would support at least one trip and back to the Library where I would access to a computer.

I feel constrained to describe the thought processes that prompted this decision.

Life in South Florida had convinced me, after my experiences in Jamaica; that the entire world was trapped in the vicious circle of social interaction between territorial predator and prey.

This conclusion was reinforced by the lack of response I had received from sundry politicians, academics and journalists as I tried to sound the tocsin about the state of education in the USA, I found it unbelievable the degree of ignorance and downright unconcern that I confronted, the complete and total disregard of my analysis, my cogent analyses, filled me with amaze and disbelief especially subsequent to the palpable inability to connect the dots and act on the warnings that might have resulted in the detection of the conspiracy and resulted in the apprehension of the terrorists who successfully conducted the 911 attack.

How could adults, I ruminated, be so stupid, irresponsible and incompetent? How could they, in the existing circumstances, be so impervious to the consideration of a different approach to our past that might assist in understanding the present? The answer to these questions remains an insoluble conundrum, a puzzle completely incomprehensible to me.

Unless one can stretch the imagination, incalculably stretch the imagination as to the degree to which ideals and values are considered to be ends in themselves, and never as a means to improve function.

Let us examine the value, freedom of expression; in effect it should stimulate Americans to think about any subject and cleanse their intellects of the laming effects of repression, but it does not, even though it is apparently engaged in so extensively.

The vast number of media, print and electronic media, the talk shows, the discussion groups, the journalists risking their lives and occasionally dying in Iraq, could these be forms of freedom of expression continuously and perennially engaged in, be in fact meaningless rituals composed of set pieces, completely without the substance of ever impacting or improving function?

Has any American considered that if this nation was a functioning democracy, if democratic values had been practices here instead of paid lip service to, this would have produced a world view that would have been able to connect the dots and foil the 911 attack?

This attack was carried out by suicidal, mindless fanatics; it was conceived by a creative thinker, a diabolical genius but a genius none the less. Is it the perception that such genius, such mental acuity is a product of genes, or is it learned?

I suggest that it is learned; further that such intelligence would be the norm, not the exception in a functioning democracy.

In the three and one half months I spent in Israel I met three men of exceptional mental prowess, Yehuda Don, Yair Levi and Shimon Zuckerman. In the twenty two years I have spent in the USA I have never met anyone who displayed this quality of intellect, I have never met anyone who came close.

I have been labeled an anti-Semite, let me state that the capacity to create ideas adequate to the social reality is the quality I value most, the most intelligence I have ever encountered was concentrated in that nation, I would bear arms to preserve that intelligence.
To return to the thought processes that produced this paper, on last Saturday morning I was again to encounter my Good Samaritan in that same parking area that is my temporary home, it is certainly where I sleep most nights.

I was awakened by shouting, and I saw a man visibly and volubly upset walking away from the window of his vehicle.

After the irate shouter left, entered his truck reversed it, eventually parked beside and again remonstrated with my Good Samaritan, then exited the parking area completely, he got out of his truck and walked back to stand beside the window of my car.

He related what the brouhaha was all about, he said that someone had tried to break into the truck of the angry man, had been foiled and had run off loudly shouting. Witnessing this from where he had been parked, my Good Samaritan had driven off; causing the victim of the attempted break in to conclude that the criminal had been his accomplice and had been transported from the crime scene in his vehicle.

My Good Samaritan had eventually disabused of this misperception and it was this dialogue the tail end of which I had witnessed.

He then asked me, when last I had eaten, to which I replied, “Not lately.”

He said he had a container of Gatorade in his truck and if I would like to have it, I said “Yes.” He stood for a moment waiting before going to get it, as if waiting to see if I had any additional comment, when I said nothing he went and got the Gatorade.

He thrust it through the window – along with a Twenty Dollar bill, the name he gave me was Harold, and I was moved to tears by his actions, by his kindness and compassion, both of that day and the day before. I reached over and shook his hand, and drove off, had my first meal in three days, and began to write this paper.

The actions of that Good Samaritan renewed my faith in human nature, he gave me hope. He inspired me to make another attempt to communicate my world view.

And it is time for humanity to stop emphasizing emotions, to stop acting on impulse and begin to think and plan; it is time for rationality to be the dominant component of the human psyche.

A man was once waiting while his truck was unloaded on a dock; there was a wall behind him.

Suddenly, his truck began to roll forward towards him; instinctively he raised his hands to stop the struck; that instinctive action was a futile gesture, the truck keep rolling and crushed him against the wall, killing him.

The correct response, the thinking response, was to jump sideways out of harm’s way; since he could never hold back with his strength a truck that weighed several tons.

There are several issues; global warming, terrorism, overspending in the budget, the price of crude oil, the war in Iraq that have great weight and are rapidly gaining momentum; we cannot overcome these issues by acting selfishly or impulsively, we have to learn to apply our higher mental processes to these issues, we have to learn to think.

It is clear that we cannot depend on education to teach us this discipline but there is a means for each individual to learn this requirement for the survival of human civilizations; we need to accept the discipline of truth and we are fast running out of time.

16. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.
17. Even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; because he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (St. John Chap 15)

The compromise and accommodation that allowed ethics to coexist with absolute power has taken the human race as far as it can, it is time for the carrot to replace the stick, or human civilizations will revert to a primitive state.

I referred to the watershed event of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World advisedly, because I am the pioneer and explorer in the even more earthshaking and critical discovery of the brand new world of the inner space inside the mind of men and women.

What my journey of discovery indicates is that man can conquer that inner space; the necessary prerequisite to the conquest of the physical world, the necessary prerequisite to living in peace and harmony on Planet Earth and as the human race reaches for the stars.

I wish to be clear that it is not my intent to have human beings become completely passive and be incapable of defending themselves; it is not outside the realms of possibility that in the future will need to overcome a race of mindless aliens who have conquered space travel without attaining the change I am promoting here.

It is my intent that for human beings the use of force is not an impulsive response, or an automatic reflex, but one that is mediated and limited by the application of higher mental processes.

In the past, my innate sex drive existed in the unconscious compartment of my psyche; and I acted impulsively and sometimes irrationality to satisfy that drive. As I practiced the discipline of truth I was transformed from being repressed sexually and became conscious of my sex drive and gained control of it. I became aware of that innate drive and that I must satisfy in the same way I had to satisfy my hunger for food.

This is pertinent to this discussion because it is my intent to marry again, if and when I can afford it, and I intend to marry a woman who can bear children; not only because I am a dirty old man but because I love children; but I will never be unequally yoked, I will never marry a woman who has not been civilized by the practice of the discipline of truth.

It is critical that humanity gain control of force in the same way, that is moved from the unconscious to the conscious compartments of the collective personality in the nations of the world because the use of force in the future must subject to detailed consideration, be carefully thought out because of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

It is my intention to establish the Voice of Peace Foundation in Olive Branch, a location that became irresistible to me the moment I heard its name, since the olive branch was the first symbol of peace. The Foundation will be composed of men and woman who practice the discipline of truth and commit to relying on positive reinforcements in their relations with other human beings.

It will also be dedicated to eradicating poverty by promoting that cooperation replaces competition as the ethos of human societies and that open ended systems of reward for all producers with the goal of create equity in human societies.

It will promote the adoption of statutory limitations in democracies with the goal of limiting government spending; the ultimate goal is that governments spending is in line with the revenue earned, and can only be increased when natural increases in revenue occur motivating politicians to craft policies and implement programs that result in economic development.

It will promote the notion that poverty cannot be defeated at the level of national government, at this level it is too gigantic, unmanageable and unwieldy a task; that this scourge can be defeated when cooperation replaces competition as the ethos of society and also by mobilizing communities to provide jobs, housing, healthcare, education and adequate nutrition for the members of that community.

The war on poverty will be manageable and winnable if it is fought community by community. For example, healthcare workers should be recruited from the community by identifying the most meritorious students and paying for them to acquire the skills that would serve the community and preserve its health, and those who receive these scholarships must contract to serve the community for an agreed period of years at a previously negotiated salary.

It will promote the building of a center that will be the focus of sports and cultural activities for the community; that will provide after school care and help with homework, a location manned and staffed by parents who will be encouraged to volunteer.

It will promote the reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools to provide the means for teachers to maintain the order necessary for the learning process. A recommendation will be made that a fund will be created to increase the salaries of teachers to the point where this profession can begin to attract the best minds and most dedicated members of the workforce consistent with the fact that this is most important skill to the success of the nation especially while the transition from competition to cooperation occurs.

This salary increase will be funded by voluntary contributions of citizens.

But there are also some very urgent immediate problems that I would like to confront from a perspective honed by thirty years of practicing the discipline of truth.

I believe that to save America’s soul we need to impeach President Bush.

The precedents that he is established of going to war on very flimsy pretexts and of ignoring the advice of experts with regards to fielding sufficient troops for victory preclude any alternative but applying this sanction.

I would not vote for any candidate from whatever party unless they indicated that they would support this measure.

In the future every candidate should be subjected to the acid test of whether he accepts the proposition that no human being has the right to apply for to another, to treat another human being as prey.

Every candidate should be required to build a model indicating that he is capable of creating a positive development project in his community; he must prove that he is qualified to be an agent of change.

Statutory limitations should be created for government spending, such spending to be limited to the amount of revenue collected, and spending should only be increased when revenue increases, motivating politicians to craft and implement projects that result in economic growth as against augmenting the pork barrel in their constituencies.

This is the single most important control that must be imposed to create functioning democracies.

The other most important issue is the matter of global warning; this nation must reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, and the emissions from the use of fossil fuels, no issue more clearly demonstrates that the common good is subordinated to powerful vested interests, than the failure to over several decades to address this problem.

In Las Vegas the pay out on every slot machine is set, there will only be a small percentage of winners, the casinos are certain to be the only consistent big winner.

Yet individuals continue to play the slots, a wholly irrational and illogical act; they hope that the million one chance will be theirs.

Citizens in droves continue to play national lotteries, on the billion to one chance that their number will play, even when they know that fifty per cent of their winnings will be returned to the government in taxes.

I want everyone who reads this to consider that paying taxes and supporting any existing political party in any democracy is analogous to putting money in a slot machine, or playing the lottery because the winner will be the five per cent of the population whom control ninety per cent of the wealth in the nation.

This is nothing new this has been so from the beginning of time and is a direct consequence of the reliance of coercion to motivate action; this produces a competition that the miniscule ruling elite must win, it ensures that there will be widespread hunger and poverty, that wars will be a perennial future of human existence, that the human drama will always be a tragedy for the majority of the populace.

The only hope of changing this paradigm is that we change the motivation relied on in human societies, that we find the moral will to replace coercion with positive reinforcements; this will result in cooperation, will create peace on earth and create the possibility of happiness for the wretched of this earth.

The prognosis is not good, because of that ultimate paradox and consummate irony that I have wrestled with for thirty years; that neither individuals or organizations can admit to the truth, and only practice of the discipline of truth can create the appreciation that no human being has the right to apply force to another human being, to treat another human being as prey.

Is it not remarkable that this rank injustice has not been consciously questioned by human beings, that it has been the basis for the unending tragedy that human existence has been for so many eons?

I question it, I do more than question it, I would decline to live in a world in which the value of telling the truth is not appreciated, one in which the wondrous efficacy of telling the truth is not appreciated, for such a world is bereft of hope, it is a social milieu in which man will always be determined and will never be free.