fractalnavel

i want to take this opportunity to lighten up for a moment:

i don't know about you, but i feel better every time i look at this ;-)

i keep writing, so you keep reading, ok ? 

of course, all this political ranting i'm doing is taking a pretty short term perspective, i'm aware of that.  it's contrary to my latest theories of existence, etc.  but hey, my theories also account for such behavior as well. 

but to stop indulging them for a moment, what does the larger picture have to say ?  not much; current events are insignificant.  however, my personal frustration is piqued because these latest developments are contrary to the overall evolutionary development, and i know i have a limited time to live, and i want to be where we're going now.  whine.

theocracy.  craig said it, and he's right.  crap.  holy crap ;-)

i've been spending a good deal of my intellectual life sorting out this god thing.  there's a dual conclusion: (1) - there ain't no such thing; (2) - i still believe anyway.  and that's ok, i understand why this is, and the awareness helps with decision making.

but you can see my political dilemma.  theocratic stuff is anathema in this context.

so where would i prefer to be ?  i don't know.  rational self-interest is pretty limited as well.  along the lines of thinking in terms of a mechanistic universe, i have been trying to see the wholenesss, the inseparability of it all.  whereas a lot of cool thinking and research has been going on recently in the areas of emergence and how to utilize that to our advantage, i have instead been using the awareness of such phenomena to try and see through the illusions of emergence. along those lines i think of things in terms of boundaries and nodes of complexity, and how our human perceptions of these things shape our realities.

one of the first, trivial conclusions that brings me to is that “countries” are nonsense, as are other artificial human grouping constructs.  like religion.  so somebody talking in terms of patriotism or morality comes off as gibberish to me. oh, i get it, all right.  i came from there myself, and the emotions still exist.  i just know better now.

so it's simply an exercise in primitive logic to apply these principals to current issues (for now, leaving aside the fact that a more fundamental analysis would have me redefining “issues” in the first place).  but that's trivial.  i just hate to see stasis, and we are standing still.

either major presidential choice led to the same conclusion for different reasons.  pretty much applies to the whole exercise.  but to constrain myself to the two major players: one is backwards domestically, while forging new ground abroad, and vice versa for the other.  and - i think - i detected that the major reasons for both groups of supporters had to do with maintaining the status quo in the area they chose to see as the one of primary importance, while denigrating the opposing camp for introducing change in the other area.

to my way of thinking, both groups are fatally flawed.  change is life.  and, hmm - the democrats wanted to put controls on the job market & stuff as well.  perhaps the republicans were the better choice after all (if one could take appearances at face value - we'll see).  but my reasons would be completely different than most other people's.  and there are so many republican flaws in other areas as to overwhelm any positive reasons for such a choice.

shorter term again: so yes, this positions us badly as a nation for the next elections.  or does it ?  maybe we'll get a fresh start.  but that's what gave us the gore-bush race in 2000.

long term:  how far do we look ahead ?  how does one evaluate and maximize opportunity ?  and should we even try ? [earlier post on prediction] there's a column in the mensa bulletin that catches my eye every now and then, 2% solution.  it asks a question, and mensans write in.  this last round was about long-term/short-term tradeoffs.  fun.  and it posed the next question, which is an interesting exercise, but for me is based on untenable premises:

“you are to be the founder of a major new religion.  what will be its tenets ?”

notice any patterns ?

there doesn't seem to be any current map (yet), but i don't expect the pattern to be much different.  a pretty big deal was made about this in 2000.  what happened to those concerns this time around ?

study the map.  it says a lot.  we are two countries.  we may be better off as two countries.  by the way, dubya ?  dc voted for the other guy.  find yourself another place to live.

not that geography should have anything to do with living these days.  why should either country have to live at the whims of the other ?  and really, the needs are different as well.  both groups may be using their best logic.  unfortunately, those logics are in direct conflict.

population centers vs. wide open spaces. of course.  property based voting vs. person based voting.  right or wrong ?  not the issue.  it's there.

a redistribution of state borders might make sense.  combine the less populous ones.  or split the more populous ones.  or both.  section off the urban from the rural.  there is no need to pretend there is a “balance“ anymore, or that it's good for us.  i think the two camps have consolidated.

historically, there was a movement from the rural to the urban, and needs changed, and the electorate changed with it.  naturally.  but there has been a halt and reversal to that trend, unfortunately at the halfway point, with urbanites migrating back to the countryside.  had the old trends remained, or had the new trends been more advanced, there would be less division.  we are simply at a turning point, is all. 

i think we should cut each other loose, develop without correction interference from the other side.  where will they be in twenty years ?  which country would you prefer ? 

and of course, each new entity would have their own internal disagreements.  wonder how those would look at that point.

meanwhile, extremists one way or the other could just move across a border.  and y'know, that isn't such a bad idea the way things stand right now.  but i've looked around, and though far from ideal, the u.s. is still pretty much the place to be.  for now.  but the intolerance is growing, in this country and in myself.