Escape from the center of the Universe

How can you determine if something you know is real/accurate? If everyone else "knows" the same thing, if you look around and it appears that what you know, works; what would it take to convince you this piece of knowledge is wrong? If you're living at the center of the universe, how do you make the leap to living on a tiny little planet in the corner of one of the billions of galaxies?

One of the impediments to changing our fixed ideas is the normal reaction when someone challenges one of our facts. We defend our knowledge or perhaps in the case of an obvious "everyone knows" fact, ignore the speaker/writer/etc. We politely (or not) ignore the message that is contrary to what we know.

It's difficult to escape our defensive reaction, but let me suggest a way to become more "open-minded". While many of us talk about being "open-minded", I'm not sure many of us know what it really means. I suggest that being open minded is to listen to something you know to be wrong or different from what you believe and actually think about why is it wrong. Take a playful imaginative attitude rather than defensive. What would it be like if it this strange idea was true? How would things be different, what would or could I do if this new idea replaced my old idea of how things are? What consequences could there be if I ignore it and it is more accurate than what I know now? This is different than reacting to this new information, and challenging it with all the facts you already "know"

An example from today: Cyprus is getting a bailout. Part of the bailout term is that all bank accounts would be assessed a 6.75% to 9.9% tax. Basically seizing a portion of people's savings. Just yesterday this idea was almost unimaginable. Would the average citizen in the European Union have imagined that their "insured" bank accounts could be frozen and a chunk taken out? If someone suggested it last week, would almost everyone not have argued that this is a far-fetched idea, and given all the quite logical reasons that it would never happen?

My own thoughts on this development BTW is that it is a huge mistake on the part of the EU. Regardless of what happens now, they have added a new "fact" to the world of banking. Regardless of where you live in Europe, or perhaps the rest of the world as well, people will now have a new "fact" - their savings may not be as safe as they had thought. On the other hand it's a great example for this post, to show how a fact - "Savings accounts up to 100,000 Euros are insured and I don't have to worry about  it", can be wrong and lead to negative consequences.

The reason for this 5 paragraph preamble is to set you up to try out a new fact and see if you can just play with the idea and see how it fits. See if you can hold off all the obvious reasons why it is wrong and play with the idea. I have a few more of these facts coming up in future posts.

• Everything you know, you learned. This takes a long time to sink in. The depth and reach of this fact will profoundly change the world when it becomes well known and understood.

I could write a book or even a series of books on this fact, but I'll make a few comments and leave it to your imagination to see how different your life and the world will be when we all come to realize it's true.

What do you know and believe about Science, Education, Republicans, Democrats, Minorities, Madonna, the Yankees, Health Care, the Bailout, Economics, Gun Control, Global Warming? Everything you know even: Who are you? What values and morals do you have? What do you like/dislike? What kind of people/friends/ do you prefer? Where do you want to live/travel to? What career do you have/want? What are your good/poor characteristics? Are you "bad at math", is your friend/relative really stupid sometimes? Let me throw in another "fact" here. No one can actually BE stupid. When we say someone is stupid this is what actually is happening: We observe someone in some activity, we have a set of values of how this activity should be performed, we declare that the person has performed the activity in a way that did not meet our criteria of how it should be done. Without going on and on to explain this, you can read more in another post: http://askjim.blogspot.pt/2012/09/happiness-prosperity-part-5.html

What's relevant regarding being stupid is the set of standards you have for every characterization (stupid, smart, attractive, humble, clever...) You "know" what's attractive. Really? Anyone ever disagree with you? Perhaps someone from another neighborhood, city, or country doesn't have the same knowledge of what is attractive? Maybe they "learned" what is attractive from a different teacher.  Could the teacher have been movies, TV, magazines, friends...?

So if you're in a playful mood, you can try out this new fact Everything you know, you learned, on anything you "know". How do you know it? If you learned it, when did you learn it? who was the teacher? Where did they learn it?

The Earth is NOT the Center of the Universe - Really?

Why did it take so many years for the world to believe and understand what Copernicus and Galileo were saying about the nature of our place in the solar system and the universe? How long will it take for the world to believe and understand the recent discoveries about the way we humans understand reality? How long until we can all easily separate fact from assessment? More important when will we understand how these ideas will profoundly change the way we live and understand one another.

Slowly there are people beginning to understand that most of the problems the world is facing are due to an old model or way of thinking. For example: As we continue to expand the "consumer" based economic model, the "FACTS" are starting to get in the way. There are about 7 billion people on the planet. What would it be like if EVERY one of them had an automobile, a boat, an electric drill, a washing machine, and the few hundred other essential items we all cherish. IS there enough metal, plastic and other resources to build 7,000,000,000 of everything? (9 billion before long at the current rate of population increase). Stop and think about it. That is actually the goal of a consumer based economic model. Sell your product to everyone if possible, and then hopefully you have a new model which replaces the old one so you can sell 7 billion more. Do you really think there are enough resources to continue this model of living? The numbers are revealing that it can't be done.

If the facts bear out, and I think it's becoming obvious, it should and will bring up the question of how we handle it. The two major models are 1.) We fight for what's left  2.) We figure out how to share and preserve
Right now #1 is the model 99.99% of us live by every day. We don't notice how much this model is what we live by, in the same way that people could not see that the earth spinning caused the illusion that the sun was going around us. No one at fault, no one plotting evil designs, everyone following what they believe is THE way to live. While it's easy to condemn the .1% 'ers do you think they wake up and say "how can I hurt people and damage the earth"? Like you and I, billionaires likely believe they are doing the best they can to help the world. If they can just sell a few more billion i-gadgets, barrels of oil, tons of coal, plastic bottles of soda or water, etc, etc, then everyone will be better off. The Japanese merchant that paid over $1,000,000 for a single tuna was surely proud of his accomplishment. What will the last tuna be worth? If you don't think that resource is running out, how do you explain the price?

You can read about the whole resource thing in Michael Klare's book "The Race for What's Left". I haven't read it, but it's just one of the many indicators that lead to my assessment of what the future holds. That brings us back to the Facts/Assessment thing.

1. Build the skill of being able to easily identify which is which. 
• Good rule of thumb: Anything that has any shade of good or bad is an assessment. Is there a thing we call rocks, oil, oxygen? Does the world agree? (Rhetorical - yes we do) 
• Are you smart, dumb, cheap, generous? Are the ?????? the best team in ????? We should increase/decrease our spending on ????? 
• See the difference?
2. Build your assessment skills. 
• Is your neighbor/co-worker/?????? smart? - 
• Should you follow their investment/childcare/sex advice? - 
• If you go to ????? university, you will ????? - 
• Congressperson ????? will ?????? and then ?????? will be a lot better!
• What if you were far more skillful in understanding and making ALL your choices?
• EVERY decision you make is based on an assessment. How many decisions do you make in a day? 
• What would your life be like if you could improve how you make assessments.

There really is hope for the USA and the rest of the world, but I'm always impatient and change takes time. I doubt I'll be around to see what is inevitable, but it will happen. There are enough people understanding the basics of fact vs. interpretation, that I can change my focus. I will continue along the lines of the Happiness and Prosperity with a more simplified view, a kind of "How-to" series for 1 and 2 above.

Some days I don't see a lot of hope for the US. If you've honed the skill of separating facts from opinions, then you know most reporting today is opinion stated as fact, or even quite often today, just plain old lies. What's a lie for me? A statement of fact that is not true, an untruth. In the end it doesn't matter if it's done purposefully or simply for lack of knowledge.

If you have read this blog you can see I don't post very often. I only do it out of a slim hope that someday others will build a skill of thinking and pulling the facts out of what poses as news. Examples? Today's stories.

• Antibiotic Resistance Poses 'Catastrophic Threat' To Medicine, Says Britain's Top Health Official 
• There's nothing new here!
• Read a book about 8 years ago how anti-biotic use in factory farms is causing anti-biotic resistance. They use tons of this stuff every day!
• Doctors still prescribe anti bacterials to kill virus.
• The knowledge that this could cause problems has been around for at least 15 years.
•  Why on the farms BTW? The animals are kept in very unhealthy conditions and the anti-biotics help keep them from dying. Just as important, the anti-biotics along with a host of other chemicals and hormones (banned in most of the world, even Russia and China) help fatten the animals, like our chickens that blow up full grown in just 6 weeks. The chickens are fed arsenic for the same reason. Bon Apetit!

• Britney Spears' Butt Makes An Appearance At Soccer Game
  • No comment
   
•  Judge blocks New York City large-soda ban, Mayor Bloomberg vows fight
• Soda is a recent phenomenon in human history. It's very bad for you health. Growing up advertisements convinced you that you will have more sex, be liked by everyone, make more money, drive a better car, etc. etc. Sorry it's not true. Drink water - like we did for millions of years; unless you've already thrown away about half our science and believe the earth was created 6 thousand years ago. (Or another good religious idea - Copernicus and Galileo should be executed for saying the sun doesn't go around the earth)
• See why I sometimes think it's hopeless? I could write pages on just this topic. Soda was bad enough when it was just sugar. Then it was "high fructose corn syrup". Now it's genetically modified high fructose corn syrup. Thank goodness we don't have labels for GMOs as we might feel guilty as we blow up like the 6 week chickens (who also eat almost exclusively GMOs)
• School Maintenance Report Shows Need For $542 Billion To Update, Modernize Buildings 
• "America's schools are in such disrepair that it would cost more than $270 billion just to get elementary and secondary buildings back to their original conditions and twice that to get them up to date, a report released Tuesday estimated."
• This story leads to thoughts of the economy, taxes, capitalism and more.

Just a short rant on what's called capitalism today and I'll go away. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Not what Emerson actually said, but the phrase opens thoughts of what I call real capitalism. The concept is to build the best possible product, provide the best service, and people will buy from you and you'll make a good living. Over the last 20 or 30 years the "what you make" (profit) has eclipsed the "better product" idea. Profit and income are far and away number one. If you can find a way to cheapen/change a product or service to make more money, that has priority. I'm not saying there are no good products, what I'm saying is that as a culture we now give more importance to the profit than the product. Bought a pound of coffee lately? Apparently a pound is about 11 or 12 oz. now. I could go on and on whether it's insurance, off-shoring, Robots taking away employment...

Well I've got to pack for a 2 month trip I'm taking. Lot's of things to see and do, new things to learn, more adventures ahead, after all I'm only 70. Everything you know, you learned. Many of the things you learned may not be helping you accomplish what you want out of life, or some of these things may be hiding what YOUR values really are. Read my happiness and prosperity series and you may start to unravel some ideas you didn't even know you had.