Mind Shaft

The notion of right and wrong comes from an individuals need to survive (Ayn Rand).
Now bear with me for while. Let me explain. This isn’t so hard.
Start with the proposition that there are two broad entities in the universe.
Life and non life.
Non life is matter that doesn’t require the input of energy to exist or maintain its current state of existence. Most of the universe is made up of this.
Life is matter organized and maintained by energy. Not the energy term lay people use to describe vitality or busyness. But, the energy as defined by physics. Life requires energy to form, and maintain all states of existence.
This notion implies that in order for life to exist it has to possess a mechanism of gathering energy to survive. It is not possible for a life form to create its own energy, it has to be acquired. Every life form possesses an energy gathering mechanism , i.e. survival mechanism.
In the simplest forms of life the survival mechanism is extremely simple. A bacterium for instance uses its small size and rapid reproduction to enable it to stumble onto a host and obtain its energy from it. It doesn’t use reason for survival. It is preprogrammed to react to whatever situation it finds itself in. If it finds itself outside a host, it goes into a reduced energy state. Just barely existing as a life form.
The host being a higher life form possess a more sophisticated survival mechanism. For instance a plant. A plant has specialized cells that senses the presents of energy and other non life building blocks used for its survival and uses the energy and ingredients to survive and exist. If a seedling tree for instance, finds itself growing in a desert or in a cave it dies. It possess no means of doing anything about this dilemma so it perishes.
A higher order life forms like a wolf, possesses a much more sophisticated means of survival. Its has a brain and is mobile. Its brain can sense its needs for survival and react to its needs in a predetermined way, depending upon what its senses tell it. Its brain for the most part is hard wired and only reacts in certain ways to its needs and senses. For example, a wolf’s brain senses that it is hungry and sees a rabbit running in front of it. It’s hard wired reaction is to give chase, kill the prey, and eat it. This was right for the wolf’s survival. The wolf obtained its energy needs and will survive. The big difference from lower life forms is that its brain made hardwired decisions about it’s survival or existence. If it is thirsty, it is mobile enough to seek out water by using the inputs from it’s senses into it’s hardwired brain and satisfy its survival needs. There were no decisions to be made, therefore there was no wrong. Just right!
Now consider man. We have brains and senses that for the most part are not hard wired. Meaning we can sense our needs, gather information from the universe around us and through the use of reason make decisions about how we are to exist. In the case of humans, existing can mean more than just the gathering of energy.
Every man can sense the universe around him, can gather and store knowledge about the universe and can use this information to decide how they wants to survive. This means you are responsible to yourself for how you survive. You can’t use another persons senses, knowledge and reasoning for survival. The decisions you make about your survival make you happy or sad as well as alive or dead.
Through the means of intellectual reasoning about how we survive comes the definitions of right and wrong.
Thou shall not kill. Intellectual reason and knowledge says to make your survival better or easier you would not kill the another person. The pooling of labor or, knowledge of the person you were about to kill and yours, along with the intellect of both will make it more likely both parties will be better able to survive. i.e. A person with the knowledge of farming and another with the knowledge of tool making. A person driven by emotion devoid of reason could survive be stealing the other persons food and perhaps kill for it. But reason tells you that sooner or later you will not survive very long providing for yourself this way. You will just as likely be killed providing for yourself in this way. So right, is do not kill. Wrong, is kill! If everyone killed others to eat their food, then everyone would die and the whole species would die out! Wrong!
This also means there is a hierarchy of importance when it comes to your survival decision making. It means you come first. With out your survival nothing else maters to you. Do you care more about your own survival, or the survival of the stranger sitting next you? You care more about your own survival. The other person has the responsibility to use their reason and knowledge to provide for their survival. If you had the knowledge to help that person sitting next to you, you would help him only after you are satisfied that your family, friends and people who bring joy to your life are able to survive first. So you see there is a hierarchy of right and wrong. Why does this hierarchy exist? Because your immediate family, extended family, and friends make your survival more likely, more comfortable, more satisfying than the stranger sitting next to you.
These simple examples can be extrapolated infinitum.
This philosophy would be a utopia if the whole of society subscribes to the same power of reason and knowledge. Until this happens, it is not required that everyone buy into this philosophy. It is however necessary that everyone be taught and understands that this is the unencumbered way to right and wrong.
Reason armed with the knowledge of the universe manifests right and wrong. This does not mean an individual can just react to his emotions and go about satisfying them. Reason would tell them that there would be negative implications if they embarked on this path and it is not reasonable. As long as reason is used for decisions about everyone’s own survival and happiness, then the power of individual freedom will invade all of society and, we will truly be free. This may take thousands years but it is the only pure way of determining what is right and wrong for a human being.
Some would say that this would reduce us to clones, just like animals and lower life forms. The opposite is true. Animals do not have the capacity to reason. Humans do! Animals do not have the ability to make choices. Humans do! Animals just exist. Humans can exist and have happiness too. Happiness is everything beyond basic existence. Humans can and do contribute to the whole of humanity. By using reason they contribute their excess production (beyond their survival needs) to the rest of humanity. In this instance production means production of what ever the individual pursues and is good at. As long as it is based on reason!
Just imagine what the standard of living and the acceptance of one another will be when we are all surviving at the highest level we can. When ever one has to make a decision they look to reason armed with knowledge for the answer. Not emotion. No longer could so called leaders evoke class envy, nationalism or religion to gain power by pitting one group against an other. Everyone using reason, would automatically discredit the person and throw him on the heap of unenlightened relic leaders. Only leaders with vision based on reason and knowledge could gain power. Listen carefully to your current flock of leaders. Every one of their sound bites are designed to elicit an emotional response from you. They never ask you to reason, never provide the knowledge, or facts to reason. They know that thinking is hard work, much less likely to be used than an emotional response.
JS

Humans need to have hope. It springs from optimism about the future. A bright optimistic future is what makes life interesting and worth living.
If life is only the same old future as the same old past, why would we want to live? We would have a life no better than our parents and our kids would have a life no better than ours. Life reduces only to exist.
Nations and cultures that are oppressed either by the government or their culture have little to no optimism for the future. Their lives are reduced to just existing.
This is especially true when they have never lived under freedom. They have no reference point to know that true basic freedom opens up the vast possibilities of unbridled human potential. Human potential provides for a brighter happier future than our parents had, and it assures that our kids will have an incrementally better brighter happier future than we had. Free people have optimism because they reap the rewards of their hard work, their creativity, and their risk taking.
When a human being is bound by its culture or government it only has its existence. His life is reduced to the same existence as an animal. Your dog only exists. But your dog has no capacity to reason, he has no capacity to think about a brighter happier fulfilling future so he is content just existing. The dog is shackled by its lack of reason. Humans are different. Humans have the capacity to think, so they can reason. Reason about their future. What happens when humans reason that they are only existing? They are not happy.
Presto, religion! Religion provides a means of contemplating an optimistic future even when they are just existing. It provides this by inventing the notion of an afterlife! Because it is invented, anything is possible in an afterlife. Now, every person has a reason to live provided they become subservient to faith. Their reward is in the afterlife. They can now just exist and be happy. So now the vast hordes of humanity who are only living to exist, with no hope for a brighter future, only have to submit themselves to the religions that require them only to accept an afterlife on faith. Presto, there lives have meaning. It has any meaning that the religion wants to define it as. Faith is so easy when you are only existing!
But is it real?
I contend that it is not real. If it is, it means that your current real life has no meaning. The only way life has meaning is to be free. Free to reason, to create, to work, to take pride in what you do, to smile about your accomplishments. Free to make life better tomorrow than it is today. Excess human potential will spill over to the neighbors and the neighbors excess spills back over on each other and, makes the collection of individual lives more optimistic, and so on. Free, Free, Freedom! If only all of humanity understood this!
JS

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Oh how this notion has gotten bastardized and forgotten! Notice this doesn’t speak to the unalienable rights of a group, state, race, religion, nation, the poor, the rich, the middle class, or any aggregate of people. It only speaks about an individual! This is the precise reason that it worked so well in the beginning.

Since it is likely that the Iraqis will be capable of providing for their own security with in a year or so, it is also likely that our troops will start to come home then.
The Plan; as this occurs, the democrats will hype the rhetoric with the aid of mainstream press, that the pressure they applied to Bush is what caused them to be brought home. They will claim responsibility for our success with out supporting a thing. What a great fcuking plan.

JS

It is very simple (unless you are a Bush hater). It is a function of when the Iraqi’s are capable of providing for their own security. Until then we own the fcuking place. Notice there is no time table! Since when does war have a time table?
Leaving now would evoke total chaos. Civil war would be a no brainer. Iran will finance with arms and resources the Shiites in the south and, Syria will do the same with the Sunnis in the north. After most Iraq’s are dead, Iran would annex the south, Syria the north and the Kurds would continue fighting all of them for ever. Blood would flow like oil! The Islamists would bring the world to its knees by restricting oil.

JS

The US military is spying on US citizens. Groups of anti war activists are planning how to pressure universities to stop the military from recruiting on campuses. On the surface this would seem reasonable. These groups have found out that the military has insiders telling them what their plans are.
The spin
They frame the rhetoric, along with the mainstream press, this way:
The patriot act has given the government the right to spy on its private citizens. We are outraged that our own government can spy on us. They are trampling on our rights of privacy. This evokes an emotional response in all of us. We feel the same rage but how many of us get off of our intellectual lazy ass to think this issue through? My guess, very few. It is easier to go with the journalists who claim to think for us.

The military’s need;
Our military is a modern military. It requires talented people for it to function at the level we expect it too. It is essentially no different than many of our modern high tech industries. It requires leaders with vision, intelligence, and drive to get the job done. Question, where do these people come from? Do they come from our ghettos? Do they come from our farms? Do they come from our heartland? Or maybe the coasts?
The answer is; they come from all of the above but, not before they are educated and filtered through our colleges and universities.
It is in the military’s (and ours) best interest for them to know who is putting up road blocks to their recruiting of good people on campuses around the country.
Imagine a military with out top level leaders or middle managers. How effective will they be in a high tech military? It is very easy to project ahead and see the military collapsing into a rag tag 3rd world military. One not capable of protecting our human rights, freedoms, and democracy. The only people and or groups that would not want this is pure anti war ideologues. And that is understandable!
So what we have is a stand off. Both parties know about each other and that is just the way it ought to be. No party is in a position to do any harm.
But remember the spin or, how the story was framed. It evokes your rage. Right? There is always another point of view that will not be reported on in the mainstream press.

JS