Capitalism vs. Communism

Comparing democracy to communism is a lot like comparing apples to rutabagas. Democracy is a form of government and communism is an economic system. One does not equate to the other. A true democracy could, in fact, govern over a communist economy if that’s what a majority of the citizens wanted.

Capitalism and communism are comparable in that each is an economic system that provides a means for the production, distribution and exchange of goods and services. The only significant differences involve ownership, management ability and effectiveness. The goals—if not always the results—of each are much the same.

Under capitalism, the means of production, distribution and exchange are privately owned for the sake of private profits. Individuals (sole proprietors), partnerships, joint ventures, investor-owned corporations and employee-owned companies are just a few of the entities that qualify as privately owned businesses.

In the capitalist business model, government regulates and taxes businesses until such time that the largest, wealthiest, most powerful corporations seize control of the government. Then, everything the government does is for the betterment of the corporations, at the expense of ordinary citizens. Sort of like – no, exactly like – what’s going on in the U.S., today.

Capitalist business managers are very good at managing businesses, but as government leaders, they really suck.

The communist business model differs in that government owns – on behalf of the people (yeah, right!) – all of the businesses. This arrangement, of course, reveals communism’s greatest weakness. Politicians can barely run a government; as business managers, they really suck.

A deeper analysis of the two systems turns up more similarities than dissimilarities. Each system extracts, imports or co-opts natural resources, converts those resources into consumable goods or services, and provides a means to market those goods and services to consumers.

In the final analysis, the only real difference is one of ownership. Or, is it just one of semantics?

Business owns the government! Government owns the business! What the hell’s the difference? The results are always the same. In the end, scum always forms at the top. And that really sucks.

Space Travel

In order to travel into outer space one must have a worthy vehicle suited to the purpose. Whether you call it a space ship, a rocket ship, a star ship, a flying saucer or a Borg hypercube, it must sustain a habitable environment and have a means of propulsion.

And so it is when venturing into inner space, except that the requisite vehicle is entirely different. Inner space travel requires mind-altering substances, typically derived from psychotropic plants and fungi, such as psilocybin, amanita muscaria, datura, salvia divinorum, mescaline, peyote, marijuana, harmaline, MDMA, DMT, LSD, and ayahuasca, among others. Sensory deprivation also accomplishes similar results.

Other worlds and other dimensions exist outside the range of our normal perceptions. Telescopes and microscopes reveal this to be true by bringing those distant worlds into focus. Now, science is on the threshold of making it possible for us to visit those worlds. And in the meantime, the shamans of our world journey inward in search of knowledge and wisdom, just as they have done for thousands of years.

Explorations into inner space may, in fact, lead one closer to the core of Universal Mind, perhaps to the very centers of Multiversal Intelligence and Cosmic Consciousness. Think of these things collectively as the CIA (Cosmic Intelligence Access), whose primary function (unlike its Earth-bound namesake) is not to gather intelligence but to disseminate it.

For sure, if venturing into outer space were as affordable and as accessible to the masses as are hallucinogenic drugs and the ventures into inner space they make possible, you can bet that space travel—outer space travel—would be illegal, too.

The powers that be are always threatened by changes in the status quo.

Turning Back the Clock

Self-righteous Christian bigots would usurp the protections afforded all U.S. citizens under the U.S. Constitution to further their own agenda. What is their agenda? Nothing less than to turn the clock of social and scientific progress back 400 years. Nothing less than a return to coat hanger abortions and the burning of witches.

The über religious scapegoat God to justify heinous acts directed against people who don’t believe as they believe. To these moral hypocrites it’s perfectly acceptable to coerce, intimidate, incinerate or exterminate anyone or anything that doesn’t conform to their delusional interpretation of reality.

One religious Taliban is as bad as another. We’ve all seen how intolerant religious fanaticism, mingled with American intervention, has brought death and destruction to many in Iraq. Would we now wish the same destruction upon our own country, our own people?

A couple of millennia ago, non-Christians nailed a hippie dude named Jesus to a cross. Ever since then Christians have been trying to nail a cross to everyone else. Does the insanity never stop?

Non-pharma Pharmacists

Just when you think that things can’t possibly get any screwier than they already are, they do.

I’m referring, of course, to pharmacists who are now refusing to fill emergency contraceptive prescriptions on moral, religious or philosophical grounds. Maybe they just want to force more women into having abortions so they can oppose that, too.

Does anyone besides me see where this is headed?

If pharmacists can selectively refuse to perform duties (filling legal prescriptions) that are a normal part of their profession, how long will it be before other professionals begin doing the same thing? Once a trend like this gets started, it becomes ever more insidious.

The next thing you know Christian doctors who are morally or philosophically opposed to atheists won’t write prescriptions for them. Environmentalist doctors can justify withholding treatment to automobile accident victims because they find driving a car to be morally reprehensible. Right-handed dentists might refuse to fill the teeth of left-handed patients because they find left-handedness objectionable. Christian Scientist EMTs will draw a paycheck just for showing up for work, but they’ll never have to do anything.

And don’t expect this idiocy to be contained within the medical professions. Once the idea catches on, it will spread like wildfire. Soon, vegetarian meat cutters won’t slice bacon for their omnivorous brethren, cops who are morally opposed to crime will stop arresting criminals, and baseball players won’t play for fans that are opposed to steroid use. Such lunacy invites disaster upon the entire economy.

It’s a can of worms best left unopened. The best way to leave this can of worms unopened is to grant pharmacist licenses only to those people who are capable of fulfilling all aspects of the job.

For pharmacies that already employ pharmacists who profess an inability to carry out the obligations of their profession due to conscientious objections, there's a way to make it easy for your ethically challenged employees to find a more suitable line of work.

Fire them!

An Age-old Question

One of the most pressing questions facing scientists, today, is this: What came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s long been a question in dire need of an answer, as the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Earlier this week a geneticist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer, having reached a consensus, announced that the centuries-old riddle has at last been solved. Their unanimous opinion is that the egg came first.

They’re wrong, of course, but who am I to argue? They have scientific, philosophical and chicken farming credentials, whereas I have none. All I have is logic.

Before I can accept their hypothesis, I’ll need satisfactory answers to the following questions:

Where did the egg come from? Who (or what) laid it?

Who (or what) sat on the damned thing until it hatched?

Who (or what) nurtured the hatchling until it was sufficiently able to fend for itself?

Who (or what) did the first grown chicken mate with to perpetuate the species?

If “the egg came first” is true for chickens, then it must also be true for other birds, including eagles and penguins. But then the theory becomes even more problematic, posing some new questions:

Who (or what) put the egg in the eagle’s aerie?

Who (or what) sat on the damned thing until it hatched?

Who (or what) nurtured the hatchling until it was sufficiently able to fend for itself?

Who (or what) did the first grown eagle mate with to perpetuate the species?

I could ask the same questions in regards to the penguin, but that goes far beyond mere repetition and strays dangerously close to downright redundancy. Therefore, I’ll ask a different question. Do polar bears lay penguin eggs (never mind that their habitats are polar opposites)?

To ask, “what came first, the chicken or the egg” is a lot like asking, “what came first, the fetus or the womb.” It’s obvious to me that before there can be offspring there must first be parents.

But subscribing to the theory that the chicken came before the egg leaves a whole new set of questions begging for answers. Where did the chicken come from? How could one chicken procreate? Is it possible there were more than one chicken? Aha! Now I sense we’re getting somewhat closer to the truth.

Understanding Hanson’s Theory of the Origin of Species as a Consequence of Evolving Environments Resulting from Simultaneous Fluxes of Universal Mind and Cosmic Consciousness requires three things, none of which include adherence to a prescribed set of religious doctrines, empty hours spent memorizing vacuous religious dogma, or the tedium of mumbled prayers to invisible entities. One needs only an open mind, an active imagination, and a willingness to suspend traditional beliefs – in other words, an ability to think outside the box.

At the core of the theory is the concept of Universal Mind, one-half of a Duality, which is the source of all knowledge. The other half of the Duality, Cosmic Consciousness, provides the means by which intelligent life forms gain access to knowledge.

All of the knowledge that will ever exist already exists, in Universal Mind, either as raw potential or fully actualized substantive form (perceived reality). Critical knowledge is accessible at critical times by human minds that are best equipped to process it. This explains discoveries made by Gutenberg, Galileo, da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Tesla, et al. Human minds connect to Universal Mind via Cosmic Consciousness.

So, what has all this got to do with chickens and/or eggs? Maybe nothing! Maybe everything! It just seems so logical – so right – that if there is a supreme intelligence responsible for creating all life, then the most intelligent way of creating that life is a system in which environments evolve and life forms emerge spontaneously, in sufficient numbers to ensure survival of the species, whenever all of the conditions necessary to support that life are in place.

After that, species either evolve, to adapt to changing conditions, or they perish.

Darwin called it evolution. The Religious Right (which is often wrong) calls it intelligent design. Hanson’s Theory says they’re not mutually exclusive.

Evolution is intelligent design. Get over it!

A value without value is something else!

Huh?

“The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made.” That’s quoting George Duhbya Bush’s quote from a letter written by Lt. Mark Dooley to his parents before his tragic death in Ramadi last year. More about this in a minute.

In his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, the Bushwhacker played fast and loose with the rhetoric as he downplayed his own complicity and guilt in starting and perpetuating the Middle East debacle dubbed “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” What a load of propaganda that’s turned out to be. (Hint: “Propaganda” and “bullshit” are synonymous.)

It should be obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the only thing Bush wants more than to duck accountability for his part in the Iraq fiasco is unfettered access to the billions of barrels of crude that lie beneath Iraq.

Now that I’ve vented about Bush’s motives and hypocrisy, let’s revisit that quote I mentioned at the beginning of this rant.

“The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made.”

What does this mean, exactly? Because I haven’t seen Lt. Dooley’s letter, I can’t comment on the meaning he intended to convey. Perhaps he referred to a soldier mowed down in a fusillade of enemy fire as he attempted to rescue a wounded buddy (a sacrifice worthy of value and respect). Perhaps Lt. Dooley referred to something else. Context is everything, but for now it remains unknown.

Bush’s use of the phrase is less ambiguous. Clearly, he meant to bolster support for the war in Iraq. What comes through, however, is a meaning he almost certainly didn’t intend. “ . . . to value why a sacrifice was made” is key to a deeper meaning.

Okay, so let’s examine why so many lives have been sacrificed in Iraq before assigning any value to the reasons. Why were lives sacrificed? They were sacrificed because of avarice and arrogance and stupidity, but most of all they were sacrificed because of a lie—the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—that Bush told to justify a large military presence in the Middle East.

Do I pay respect to the lives that were lost or shattered in Iraq by valuing the reasons why they were lost or shattered? Hell, no! I’ve never valued greed or incompetence or lies. Do I show respect for lost or shattered lives by sending others to die or suffer the wounds of war? Hell, no!

What I do is support bringing the troops home, now. That’s the most respect I can give them, and the best support they can get.

2469 U.S. troops killed, 17,869 wounded since March 20, 2003. Also, numerous coalition troops and countless thousands of Iraqis. Waaaaay too much carnage for a species that calls itself civilized.

Elusive Present Caught Between Past and Future

Have you ever tried to pin down the present?

Can’t do it, can you? Neither can I, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Stuff that’s about to happen comes at us from the future. Stuff that’s already happened recedes into the past. But, what about the present? You know . . . the stuff that’s happening right now? Uhhh . . . now! I mean . . . now! Okay . . . now! Oh, all right . . . now! Dammit . . . now!

Elusive little bugger, the present.

You still don’t get it, do you? The present doesn’t exist, except in the abstract. There’s only stuff that’s about to happen, and stuff that’s already happened.

Let’s look at this another way. Think of the present as being a moveable interface separating the past from the future. It travels at the speed of time along a timeline that extends from the beginning of time to the end of time. No matter how small you make the time interval that separates the past from the future, no matter how narrow you make the window that defines the boundaries of that illusive and elusive thing you call the present, you can never achieve the present.

Think of the present as being to time as a point is to space. It’s a reference point, a marker that has no bulk, no mass, no weight, and no dimensions.

Does time travel exist? Sure, it does. We’re all time travelers. But, so far, we’re only able to travel in one direction in time—into the future. Unfortunately, our limited time travel is further limited by the speed of time, itself.

We know that the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second, but how fast does time travel? The easy answer is one day, one hour, one minute, one second, one millisecond at a time. A more complicated answer is that it’s relative depending on your own speed in relation to the speed of light, and on your own position in the universe in relation to the clock.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m not Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking, or even Herbert George Wells. I’m just someone who’s messing with your mind.

The past! (We can visit it in our memories or in our history books.)

The future! (We can visit it in our imaginations or in our science fiction books.)

That’s all there is. There is no present.

Well, maybe, on your birthday . . .!