this world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with ...

We all know that there is a world that transcends the Internet and I do not speak of spiritual dimensions that I am often prone too. But … that’s another subject, which I will get back to … whenever. But I speak of the “real world” (or at least the physical one we mostly can agree exists) of human beings … flesh and blood … hard floors and TV misinformation … commercials and cops … capitalists and revolutionaries … and just about anything in between. This … is the world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with. If my spiritual perceptions can not deal with this … they are (at the most fundamental level) … deficient … or possibly devoid of any greater spiritual value. Not to say that they are not true for what they are, but they fail at the most basic level. And that does me little good.

I am a musician … and as well have capabilities in recording engineering and a few other associated skills. I also have a varied self acquired knowledge of a number of other subjects generally spiritual, historical, computers, psychological and philosophical (becoming less as the list progresses). You might add that I am a political hodge-podge … some left … some libertarian … and oh so little support for national and International American policies. And I think the capitalist system as it has evolved is intrinsically corrupt and needs to be redefined apart from corporate control and influence. Of course I know that this last one is an absolute pipe-dream … but I do not deny myself the pleasure of an occasional pipe or other such rolled delight.

But yet I must adapt all of this …. “stuff” … to the task at hand … and survival is the task at hand. And I suppose it ultimately is for all of us. No matter the system or what we may believe … or want to believe.
I have been an Internet protagonist since I first became aware in 1996 and before that had operated Computer Bulletin Boards over the phone lines. I got my first computer in 1983 and everyone thought I was nuts. But … the decision and the knowledge gained paid off in very significant ways shortly thereafter. But I was not interested in committing to a life invested in computers … oh god no … But I loved what I could make them do … and it still boggles my mind … and I see no end to it. But computer communications… and our ability to connect … (locally and now internationally) … this was always my favorite.

I believed some things were possible years before they became mainstream. But music and spiritual interests were always at the forefront of everything. They still are. But these are ultimately very personal, and with spiritual things each must ultimately figure it out for themselves … though I do regard teachers and mentors as highly beneficial. And music … as personal expression … well … that’s a “no brainer” …. I think we can mostly all appreciate that. BUT … I am not interested in music as purely an avocation … I am interested in it as a career … a life style … an artistic expression that speaks beyond my own desire and speaks into and for a culture that I happen to inhabit. This is a dream that I had committed myself to several years back and as the realities of pursuing this dream became more consequential life patterns of many I had relation too were thrust into a state of unanticipated disruption and change. Too say the least … I was caught off guard … I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I was no longer in control of life … life was just happening … and I was on a friggin’ roller coaster … with a god damn brick wall at the end of it … and no effin’ way to get off.

I don’t know how … or just what the situation was … but one of my contacts (who is a psychologist) began to explain to me how “as I proceed to follow my dream … I could expect my ego to ‘grow’”… Well … this was a little bit of a shocker … because I had always been taught the “evils” of this ego thing and the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” sort of crap … and was only relatively new considering the “knowing thyself” aspect as fundamental to understanding what true humility was/is. You know the “ego trip” syndrome that musicians often get hung up on. It’s all bull shit. Because I began to understand that if they had no such ego … they would not create any such artistic invention that the rest of us all gravitate to and admire as representations of what we feel and know. Now, this does not excuse a lot of the egotism that we all hear tales of, but the ego itself is not the problem. It is our inability to master it and know what it is and it’s limits and extents as we relate to other human beings.

If I am to succeed in what it is I believe I am … and musician/artist is what I speak of here … (there are other things but not contextually pertinent) … I will grow into what that is and my ego (persona reflecting this) will change and evolve accordingly … Maybe I’m just full of shit … But in the real world of flesh and blood and making love and the woman I desire … that seems to be the way it works.

I want a lot in this world … I am a very patient man … that demonstrates it regularly. But I am a man with intention … I have desires and varied goals … I will grow in these … I will not remain stagnate … I will become what it is I already know that I am … And my spiritual nature will have its way in this world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with.

Thus I have written …

I feel that I may be a bit of an anomaly. I don’t lie, at least not intentionally; although to protect ones I love I’m sure I would in certain extraordinary circumstances. What I speak and write is very personal to me. I mean the words I use to communicate “are not just words”, they are representations of me … who I am … what I feel … what I think. Abstractions of what is “real” to me in my being.

There are some who think I use too many words and think too much. I will not argue or belabor the point, by their perspective they are right. But I will not cease to think nor will I immediately refrain from using combinations of words that I determine best expresses what I understand and feel. Yet … I do recognize … that in particular situations “words” are superfluous. And to some sound empty or hollow, without substance. It is as though language has lost all meaning and value. I find this a very sad and regrettable state that we live in.

I was married for thirty two years. Not an unfaithful day during that time and was celibate the two years prior and since separation and divorce there had not been a sexual encounter. Now it is true that in the past two years there have been women who have interested me, but nothing came of them. Something in the chemistry was missing or could not sustain itself over time, and I don’t believe it was simply a matter of physical proximity, though I may have jumped into bed had the opportunity afforded itself. But in all, my “obsession” with what I have come to understand as “myself” and being true to what I know myself to be was primary. Very few ladies (or men for that matter) can comprehend the totality of this, or maybe better said accept me for what I am.

To me my words are me. Or, probably as close as most will ever get to knowing me. I take them seriously … for the most part … though I can joke and cut up with everyone else … that often takes some by surprise and they don’t know when it is a “joke” and I am kidding them.

Having lived a rather “sheltered” conventional conservative life through marriage and raising children, there are those who consider my perspectives and perceptions as rather naïve. A year ago one even stated that they felt the need to protect me in what might be considered the real world of street life experiences. Unfortunately this assumes a certain ignorance on my part of the realities of human nature. I admit a degree of lack of street experience … but the lack of experience does not preclude a lack of understanding or knowledge of such. Business relations are something I have had all my life, and human nature is no less intrinsic there, or more ideal, than it is in any other facet of life.

For the most part I have had a rather good life. Certainly not perfect and there were the usual ups and downs and occasional crises that were a part of it. And even though my affiliations and ideologies have evolved I am still intrinsically the same man who was faithful to the same woman for so many years (that is ended), and find no need to fly from flower to flower. I don’t expect this will ever change. The track record seems pretty good so far and I have no desire to alter it.

So … you see … my words are me … they are not “just words” … And the woman I love … is not just one of the women I relate to as friends … she IS “the woman I love”. And there is only room for one … I can not and do not desire more.
Thus I have written …

Cowboy Creations - a wondrous thing

The mind is a wondrous thing. Oh … I am not talking about the "brain", although that certainly must be considered and plays it's own part in the input and distribution of information and our perceptions, but the mind, the part of us that is quite separate from the physical aspects of matter, if not actually at least virtually transcending physicality's and time and space.

I'm not a psychologist, or a psychoanalyst, but I have read a great deal of Carl Jung and a number of others and it has greatly influenced my thinking.  I certainly am not a scientist or a physicist, although I have studied the theories (to a limited degree) of Bacon, Newton, Einstein and now the quantum physicists.  I'm not a theologian though I have studied Bible extensively and generally come up with unorthodox conclusions, and  in more recent years have studied the writings of the Gnostics, the mysteries, eastern philosophy and these associated religions.  Metaphysics fascinates me.  I am an artist - a musician - I use both left and right brain - they both serve an intrinsic purpose accomplishing what it is that my mind perceives and I wrestle in life to express. 

Many have commented, in many varied and sundry ways, that I am a philosopher.  Though I have a very difficult time conceiving myself as such I am highly honored that they would think so.  Because I am no one particular, I'm just a man struggling to make sense of it all.  In many respects I've had a good life.  I've loved and lost, I have married and raised a large family.  And I've lost that. And I have found that love does come again. 

There was a time I was very hard, probably for most of my life.  It is easy to rationalize, it is a hard world.  And hoping to prepare the ones I love for such a world I instilled into them hardness that I was feeling wrapped in a cloak of what I now understand to be superficial pseudo spiritual religiosity.  But this is what we were taught .  This is what our religion was giving us .  And it's not only my religion or that of a single world religion .  It is the religion of modern contemporary reality.  Not Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any of the rest, but a mindset that takes the input of the brain - the five senses - and deduces  from it, "this is all there is - there ain't no more - make the most of it …baby".

I highly respect the knowledge that can be observed and recorded as the operations of physical dimension.  But I find these lacking of any true purpose meaning value to what it is to me to be human. 

I have found my purpose - my meaning - in the cries for understanding of others who allow them selves to come close to me.  I've found my value in the expressions of joy and laughter and delight in the one I would hope to please.  There's so much external - physical - that never enters the equation.  That is not to say that we do not delight in our most basic human capacity.  The pleasures of the flesh are no less real and human than all that high in nobler stuff that many wish to separate and divide me from what I am. 

Yet all that I know transpires in my mind.  Is it the cause or the effect?  Is it the elemental reality of all?  The thing we have called consciousness … and only a portion of our collective consciousness? Or are  we totally separate - isolated - and divorced from each other?  I do have some conclusions here (or at least relative conclusions to who I am right now - I'm sure they will evolve as I do), and though I cannot prove them with any objective criteria my own subjective experience continues to expand and I can feel confident I am not separate, I'm not alone and time and space do not define who or what I am. 

And I experience all reality in my mind. Where allowed, I find I can probe the minds of others, and we are not separate.  We can "know" the other. And though some cannot conceive such thing, we can create our own reality … and often manifests … transcending … but now invading lower planes of contemporary existence.

Love, magic and miracles … call them what you will. All begin in the mind … what shall I create today? 

My World

This is my world. It is not that other. Though both exist simultaneously, this is the world that few may ever see.

Not that it never was manifest, but few are capable of comprehending it. Too many would try to explain it, or analyze it and thus dissect it into it's many various parts, but it can't be done, because it exists as a whole and there is no division, and all relates as one. There is no body or spirit, they are not separate entities, there is no dichotomy between the mind and emotion. We are all human, we all exist, there is no illusion of what is not, only what we create. And many can create a great deal.

In my world, there is no debate … only relate … and everything else finds it's place. Our persona's are what we decide to share, a gift of ourselves we give to each other, and all are worthy of respect. There is no doubt of the existence of any as we all are what we chose to be. And the depth of ourselves deeper than our image emanates and exudes in an environment safe from lifeless eyes and empty minds, but connecting with longings shared and embraced … in words …and music …images … and silence.

This  my world - is not my fantasy, it is my reality. I have seen miracles … and I have made magic … And I have made love … and they all exist. And I cannot comprehend their difference … they are all one and the same.

In my world all is not reason and logic, mathematics and measurement. These all exist, but they do not define or explain. They are clues, bread crumbs dropped along a path into the forest. In my world to know you is to touch you and feel you to see behind your eyes and experience a world not unlike my own, but a new dimension in reality, that we freely choose to give each other … but never … never … to impose upon each other. One gives another receives … there are no rules … there is no law …there is NO judgment … only to love the other. And if there is a code of conduct it is this "get over yourself", we are all only one of the many.

But many cannot live in this world. It is a state of being that has not been given too them. And some hoping to see, would force themselves and presume perception, not realizing they are blind. Because none can demand anything … and not everything is comprehended in the mind, the stuff that intelligence is made of. But feeling (for lack of a better word) realized in the mind, yet existing beyond it, inflicts itself and I emote … I come alive … transcending, though not divorced from my body and all else that is me … the human being.
Many have not been invited into my world. … it is all a gift … and a gift that often takes time to grow and mature. The rules of the world of our "alter egos" do not apply here.

I am crazy as a loon … a mad scientist in my laboratory creating my monster … I am Charles Manson and Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Hitler, I am images of the past and visions of the future, I am the dreams of all, and all are in me … I am that I am … what do you want to be?

Stay too the right ... then make a sharp left.

This is inspired by a comment by Karin to a “quick message” I posted recently regarding Christian political ignorants (not ‘ignorance’ though it does apply, but “ignorants”. I see the one as a condition and the other as the persons). So what if I’m an arrogant, opinionated SOB. You can’t please everyone and I really don’t care to try much among certain segments anymore. It’s all relative depending where you find yourself on the religious/spiritual and/or political planes of thought and perspective. “To thine own self be true”.

In the mid to late seventies I was intimately involved with much of what was evolving within the Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian community. My own  ‘Christian’ spiritual and religious understandings were yet in the early stages of development, though my approach to knowledge and truth were more highly influenced by my earlier questioning of  authority as realized and manifested in my rebellious “hippy” years of the late sixties and the early seventies. Generally speaking, I was a zealot, but without a great deal of foundation to express my arguments regarding what I ‘believed’. I found myself sitting under the teaching of a highly intellectual pastor who consumed religious information at a rate that would boggle the minds of most and disseminated this to his congregation weekly and through the week through various courses. But prior to becoming a part of this I had already spent over a year travelling with an independent Evangelical evangelist who taught his trusts how to research the resources of the Bible and utilize these to “get it for your self”. This ability to think and study freely eventually led to challenges to the system that were disconcerting to some and perceived as rebellious by others.

In the late seventies I was first introduced to the teachings of Francis A. Schaeffer through a series of videos produced by Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis, entitled “How Should We Then Live”. The series was excellent and if you are interested in history in general, art and the influence of both art and Orthodox Christianity on Western culture it is well worth the time. This led me to explore many more of the writings of Francis A. Schaeffer. I have read about 15-20 of his works including reading twice a trilogy of his philosophy/theology considered foundational to the rest of his writings. In his later years he wrote numerous books including “A Christian Manifesto” which is loosely a Christian response to Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto”. There are many more, but time and space precludes enumerating these, and a history of  L’Abri, although I can attest that from the perspective of a conservative theological and historical understanding of what is “true” these are excellent works. The reasoning and logic is virtually unarguable. BUT … that is “assuming” that the “Orthodox” perception of history and reality is in “fact” true. Should that “assumption” be proven to be “false” and that the “Bible” is not in fact the absolute measure of “truth” … the reasoning is just so much religious dribble and rehashed lies, even though presented in all sincerity and “faith”.

Now, having said that, I will say that I do highly respect Francis A. Schaeffer and the insight he has exposed through his writings regarding many issues that should concern both Christians and non-Christians. I simply think the foundation upon which he builds his logic is faulty … but I respect the man and many of his conclusions.

The problem became, as Francis’ works were becoming popular, a second video series was produced by Frank Schaeffer, in collaboration with his father Francis and the then surgeon-in-chief at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, C. Everett Koop (who later became U.S. Surgeon General under Ronald Reagan), entitle “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” This series galvanized the conservative Evangelical movement regarding the “abortion” “right to life” issue. As the more “Fundamentalist” segment of Evangelicalism (the Farwell’s and Pat Robertson’s) became receptive of Schaeffer’s highly persuasive “Biblical” stance, more ultra-conservative politically motivated religionists (Rousas John Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen and others) began surfacing and injecting their own formulas of  “reconstructionism” and theocracy into the now more consolidated Evangelical/Fundamentalist movement.

This “reconstructionist” – “dominion theology” perspective is now what parades itself as Christian absolutism. It is this religious-political-socio economic ideology that demonstrates itself on the streets of Washington D.C. and permeates the Republican Party. It isn’t a matter of thinking and reasoning. It is a matter of a few conservative intellectuals presuming an absolute based on a limited perspective of history and rejecting all others, and an unwillingness to consider that the church at some point may have gotten it “wrong”. It is the same lie that the Roman imperial powers of the early fourth century recognized as feasible and necessary in order to establish some form of universal control and thus manage itself and those it would rule. The church, willingly – or unwillingly – succumbing to the influence of power and wealth, and thus prostituting itself as a matter of its own security and preservation.

“God” (although I do question the religious conception) did not die with this act on the parts of those who invoke his name, but the “church” as a spiritual entity (at least to the greater degree) did.
That raises more questions than what this blog is about. This is about the Schaeffer’s and the influence they have had on contemporary Evangelicalism.

In the late eighties I began to notice that Frank Schaeffer (the son) was beginning to speak out on his own. His first works were regarding the shallowness of most “Christian” art “Addicted to Mediocrity: Contemporary Christians and the Arts”. Later his writings included more critical examinations into basic assumptions of Orthodoxy and political and economic matters (Is Capitalism Christian?, A Modest Proposal, Bad News for Modern Man: an Agenda for Christian Activism, A Time For Anger - The Myth Of Neutrality). Eventually I became aware that Frank had left the Evangelical wing of Christianity and had taken up association with the Greek Orthodox Church which had always leaned more in the direction of the “mystical” aspects of the faith. Though Greek Orthodoxy may be more open to mysticism, it is still fundamentally “Orthodox” and in my own estimation and research, less than what the “faith” was pre forth century.

So … within the “Christian” environment there is some hope that thinking minds can be heard. But I fear over all the rest of the clamor, that is a very very small chance. The difference between Frank Schaeffer’s thinking and my thinking is that Frank Schaeffer remains within the box of Orthodoxy and I have stepped out of that box. Other than that, I think we would get along pretty well.

What I have learned being online over the past two years

Okay ... this is from a journal entry I posted on another online community ... This is the other side of me that only gets let out occasionally and is under a tight rein. But I seem to be losing control ... hmmm ... yep ... cut them reins ....

Let’s clear something up right away first off ... I have actually been online and had my own web sites and webcasting projects on the Internet since 1996. Google my name and you will find it all over the place. But, two years ago I became separated and later divorced. I spare you the details. But as a newly free bachelor (once held prisoner for decades) I simply didn’t have a clue. Imagine being a MIA-POW released after thirty plus years and facing the reality of a changed world. Yeah ... there is a correlation (for you literalists out there “think metaphor”).

Now I understood the Internet. Besides musician, co-producer, audio mix-down engineer, I am also the IT guy who gets that end of it going here. But, what I had not paid a lot of attention to in all those years doing the Internet is just how much culture was evolving and becoming online savvy. I was still a product of an “off-line” culture and situations being as they were, realizing connections and relations online eventually became my umbilical cord to sanity. Now I realize there may be some who will question the sanity designation or at least my presumption to it, but as I see it, that’s your problem ... not mine.

But graduating out of the “MySpace” nursery into the “real” online world of more defined online communities and adult (not XXX) networks (well ... maybe a little of them), and not having a history of meeting people online to develop relationships, it was learn as you go. If life is a journey, well ... this side trip really was turning into “a trip”. And you really want to know something, except for the distances that separate us, and that drastically impairs the more intimate physical aspects of a relationship, but IF that is not the immediate or primary purpose to connect and develop a relationship, this can be a hell of a lot of fun.

Let’s get this perfectly clear, I LIKE SEX, but I like sex in a relationship that is substantially more than just the sex a lot more. And becoming entangled in a relationship that is primarily “sex” based personally sounds pretty friggin’ boring too me. Not that I wouldn’t, or hadn’t at some time in the past, but ladies ... I want into your heads as much as it might be perceived I might want into your pants. I hope that’s not too blunt.
As I have cruised around these sites, establishing myself here and there, I have made a fair number of friends. I mean real friends. Friends who will help out in times of need and do whatever they can to help. Including opening up their homes and giving financial aid.

What I have found is that as people establish themselves and become real online “It’s just like the real world” ... It is if you can imagine it, a networks of voluntary communities, built on a premise of similar interest’s and likes and realizing bonds of affection and relationship, transcending geopolitical spheres and proximity. I can be interested in and develop a heart connection with other human beings realizing the same human experience and sometimes speaking foreign dialects yet appreciating each other as our national politics and governments rattle swords. And I am finding we like each other.

Now it is true, that you will find as many of the empty headed rabble as you will find off line in “real life”. Which only goes to prove, life online is really NO different than in that other dimension, the misnamed and misconstrued “real” one.

But you want to know what is the best thing about all this online relationship stuff. The ladies ... And it’s not just any ladies, not what I might be limited to by going to (ugh) “church” and picking from the available stock, or cruising the bars to find what may be convenient, but the special ones. The ones that just seem to fit right. The ones that prick the minds interest and cause you to act impulsively ... a little bit out of character ... and take a chance. But not for some “quickie”, but something that can be grown, explored, experimented with. Something that keeps the interest alive.

Have you ever considered, and I write primarily to those desiring and expecting something more than “just sex” (the rest of you can quit here to avoid being offended), that as everything we perceive takes place in our minds, feelings and thought, what you feel with another communicating with them, be it via phone, or keyboard and in person, all is produced in your minds, and is equally as real in the mind. Now, I grant you, the aid of pheromones in live contact will no doubt stimulate the passions of the body and provide the opportunity to ecstasy that will most likely (at least I hope not in my lifetime) never be matched. But if relationships transcending sex is a desirable thing (not eliminating it now), what is online dating other than, chatting and conversing and writing to each other, getting into each other – deeper than into the others pants.

Now I can hear the complaints about not being able to look into each others eyes or holding hands and feeling the embrace of the others arms. I concede ... that part really sucks. But, on the other hand (and as one friend said “there’s always another hand”), I’m talking about meeting that one, or two, or half a dozen, that are out there, and their minds connect with yours, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of twisting and manipulating to make it work.

Yeah ... my situation may be minimal ... but I don’t think I’d change too much. Because I have friends, and they’re all over the world. And there are ladies who really do like me. And we enjoy each other ... and some are very special ... maybe very very special. But it will no doubt prove to be more than just sex ...
Oh ... and one more thing ... there are no rules ...the only rules that exist are those agreed upon between one and the other ... no rules ... no judgment ... But, I do recommend ladies ... play it safe ... (for some, that disclaimer is necessary)

Buzzword: Efficiency

I managed an automobile repair shop under the name of one of the major oil companies for twenty three years. It was a complex contractual arrangement but essentially, we were a branded outlet. Early to mid eighties were relatively good times. Technology was certainly complicating things, but all in all it wasn’t too bad for the auto repair industry. Though I have a few friends who might feel some offence at this statement, I regret that the overall quality of American cars produced during this era was far less than it could have been, which made the repairs side of things more regular besides more complicated.

Coming out of the eighties and into the early nineties as contracts were periodically reassessed and “upgraded” or renegotiated (a more polite way of saying get ready to be screwed) an operational word began to be hammered into the lower end managers from the big boys at the top ... you know the ones you seldom ever really have any contact with but take it upon themselves to dictate how it is that the operations of your business should be handled. And not because they have any real experience in these situations (though some may have limited experience) but rather they have studied the models and have listened to their “efficiency” experts and have determined for you what is the best way to relate to your customers without actually having a relationship with them. You see, your customers are not really their customers; your customers (that you have spent years developing a trust and rapport with) are only numbers to them. OH ... I know their rhetoric would not make it sound this way, but how many of them realize a common time invested bonding with these they would call “customers” and in many cases “friends”. I dare say ... none. My customers and my relationships, the ones coming across the driveway were only one thing to these progressively higher echelons of business administration ... numbers.

It was during this time that the need to become more efficient became the mantra of the big boys, but it was not a matter of better serving the “customer” which I had always been taught and believed was the reason for being in business, but rather to make it possible to grab a higher percentage of the gross that may be realized. Of course as more numbers of individuals were expected to now come across the drive, more profit was expected to be made, thus justifying the lower percentage a small business person could expect. But what the hell there will be more customers, and surely streamlining your operation would cut costs and make it possible not to lose the net that had been realized prior. After all, many if not most of the less efficient operations will eventually be forced out of the market driving more “customers” to the survivors.
There is a certain “limited” logic to this model. But it falls way short of what is a human model. Business ... as it has evolved in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ... is a far cry from what Adam Smith originally perceived. To Smith, who in fact was a moralist over and above being an economist, compassion was the foundation for capitalism. I know that sounds strange to many, but a minimal amount of research will bear this out. To Smith the purpose of the market was to assess and recognize the needs and desires of a society and thereby adapt itself to meeting those needs. Thus through meeting the actual wants and wishes of society, the customer is served and a reasonable profit can be realized. Everyone is served.

Adam Smith understood that a capitalistic society could not function “as a free society” unless the compassion motive was the foundation of the system. Well ... we’ve come a long way from that baby!!!.
Over the years, and this has been a slow but progressive raising of the market temperature (I think we’re boiling now – ready for consumption) the system somewhere along the path diverged from its moral imperative (some would argue it never had one). The market no longer serves society, but the (choke) “customer” is now only another commodity in the expansive and evermore expanding dominion of corporatized culture. Business no longer serves the needs of the society, let alone the individuals that make up that society, but the smaller parts only exist to submit to and serve that economic structure that evermore demands that greater part of the gross, and as it may be allowed, ultimately devours all it can. We are told what we need, we are told what it is we want, we are psychologically probed and manipulated to believe what it is they want us to believe, not for our benefit, not to serve, but to consume, and increase the net, but not that which we may enjoy and take comfort in, but what becomes the assets of the money managers pulling the strings.

It makes little difference whether there is one corporation accomplishing this or numerous ones of varying states of economic status, the effect is all the same. Compassion and serving the needs of the “customer” ... the individual ... the persons ... which thus make up the collective society ... this is not the purpose of business .... The purpose is profit ... and the customer a commodity ... a number to be counted coming across the drive. A fast food patron sold on the benefits of convenience and imported beef products and supplemented genetically engineered veggies. A part of the herd to be channeled through the stalls of Disney World, and satisfied with the illusion of experiencing world cultures all within the few acres set aside and molded into the image deemed to illicit the most “real” (gag) pseudo-experience imaginable ... and at a healthy profit too. And it all seems so real to us ...

Is there anyone else who gets the picture? ... Is there anyone else who can expand on just what is happening? ... Or am I in my own “never-neverland?”