Yeah I know, I usually blog about socio economic issues or about personal philosophies. So talking about food, on the face of it, would seem to be a bit of a stretch.
I suppose the underlying "theme" as it were with my writings has been an expressed desire to figure things out for myself. To understand the truth of things. To get underneath biases and determine whether or not the things I believe track with the reality around me. In this sense, talking about food seems as appropriate to my incessant desire to think as anything else I've said or written about.
I just finished reading through an article about healthy seeming foods, that aren't terribly healthy. With the exception of one food listed (tuna) all of the others listed were cited as unhealthy not because of what they initially were, but rather what they became as food companies and marketers altered them.
Tuna was the exception to this trend because of the link between seafood and mercury uptake in the body, for those that are curious.
Every other commonly held "healthy thing" had simply become unhealthy in context, because of the desire to market them. And it always came down to three particular things added, in an effort to make them more palatable.
Ever had muesli for breakfast? And I mean real muesli, long before you could easily find it on a supermarket shelf. Though not an unpleasant breakfast....it's rabbit food. Trust me, I've tasted rabbit food, and it's quite similar. In a palatability contest Froot Loops wins hands down, which is probably why Froot Loops sell better, even to this day.
But in this day and age you can walk into any grocery store and find "natural" and "organic" cereals to eat of all types. And the sad truth is that most of them are no more healthy in any context, than any other cereal grain breakfasty food you'd choose.
Why?
Remember the three things I mentioned above. They are the culprit. Salt, sugar, and fat. We evolved to crave sugar and fat in our diet, because they are rich sources of energy. They are also rarified sources of energy if you don't have that thing that we do have....a civilization. Salt is also important because of how it alters our pallet to either mask or enhance flavors. Soft drink manufacturers use salt in soft drinks to mask overt sweetness to modify a drinks flavor profile (and it also helps make us thirsty too).
This triumvirate of additives goes way beyond merely foods that are labeled as "healthy" in our conscience though.
In the last 40 years or so we have transformed at a fundamental level how food works in modern societies. More often than not today food is made somewhere else, by someone else, to be consumed later (often a lot later) by us. This trend led to more or less the utter removal of fiber from the modern western diet. Fiber content interferes with successful long term freezing and storage methods and reduces shelf life.
This reality ironically helped fuel the problems with modern fiber rich alternative foods. How? Because one of the easy ways to not only make these foods more palatable, but to increase their shelf life is with added sugars, salt, and fat.
The uptake of sugar in the modern diet is especially pernicious. In the late 1970's we began this (now scientifically proven to be mistaken) trend towards low fat diets. And when you reduce fat in foods that would otherwise have fat, you make it fundamentally less palatable. Sugars, HFCS, and corn syrup solids in our foods have risen dramatically as a result, to regain that palatability. And the arguments between "natural" sugars and High Fructose Corn Syrup are non starters either chemically or endocrinologically. HFCS isn't bad because it's worse than table sugar. It's bad because it's cheap, and thus ubiquitous. And ask anyone who understands hepatic (liver) metabolism, and they'll tell you a high sugar diet is a high fat diet. And as sugar intake has skyrocketed, so has obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
It was with irony I noted that in the article I read about these so called healthy foods, the solution was strikingly simple. Make your own, and don't add sugar, salt, and fat.
Even if you don't have the time (or the inclination) for all of that, at least realize that sugar, fat, and salt intake are important to be mindful of. Not just because lowering them in your diet is good, but because relying on them (and thus your tastebuds) to inform your brain what is good, isn't a terribly great idea.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Sorry Brian. :)
(Rather than make my friend Brian Howard suffer through this reply to a topic on Facebook, I decided to post it here.)
The only real issue I had with the "meme" was that it was little more than a distortion of the nature of the problem, factually specious, and unnecessarily partisan...to my point of view.
I tend to agree that raising the minimum wage will do little to help workers make any material gains in this economy. Our economic problems are deeply structural and not easily reversed. Because of this *merely* changing wage structures will do little but create artificial inflation in the short term, because a great deal of our economies wealth is walled off from the influence of consumption.
Low wages that force Americans into government assistance are a reality. A reality that in some way shape or form touches close to half the U.S. Population. When you do the math it is quite scary. Add up AFDC/TANF, SNAP, WIC, Housing Assistance, etc.... (and I leave off Medicare and Social Security deliberately because they are paid for by an entirely different tax system than income tax) about half of American families receive some sort of government assistance.
This isn't a few Americans living off the teat of the rest of us....it's a lot more than a few. If a simple program like Food Stamps were to just "go away", I can confidently say that many grocery chains would go belly up.....mine included. In most of our operating markets it accounts for more than 25% of our business. It was less than 5% in the 80's.
How we ended up here is becoming clearer by the day to most economists, regardless of political affiliation. We've had a 30-40 year long experiment in supply-side economic theory in play, and it's clearly been a failure. And yet as a generation we have bought into the philosophy and the mindset behind it, much of which is based on false assumptions. It will likely take as long of a concerted effort in another direction in economic philosophy (like the previous 40 years of mostly Keynesian policy...that actually worked) to right the ship.
False assumptions? Here are a few.
Capitalists create jobs. This is the entire pivot upon which supply side theory is based, and it just isn't true. As a person who has worked in the corporate world for 30 years, I can say confidently that hiring is always a last resort, and not a first. Jobs are created by consumer demand, and entrepreneurs who leverage that demand. It is a synergy and not a cause/effect relationship. Without consumers buying things, an economy cannot exist. And wealthy consumers? They are usually a drag on an economy at large for a myriad of reasons. A wealthy consumer who makes 10 times more than you or I is not buying 10 times more food, or cars, or tshirts, or (insert name of banal things here). Wealth becomes an abstraction of power, and in the case of an economy not a particularly useful one.
Progressive taxation is bad. Little historical fact. All taxation in history has been progressive, mainly because it makes the most sense in real economic terms. One immutable fact here is that if you tax a wealthy person far more than a poor one....the wealthy person does not become poor. It doesn't seem intuitively fair, and perhaps this is why most people easily buy into flat-tax arguments. But this is little more than a distortion leading to confirmation bias by those who aren't wealthy. And the problem isn't necessarily wealthy people. The number of American's who possess wealth levels 20 times or more of the national average hasn't changed that much as a percentage of the population. What has changed is the amount of wealth they possess relative to everyone else. We have an income distribution curve in this country similar to puppet dictatorships. And though we don't have citizens suffering to the degree that those in puppet dictatorships do, we do have an income distribution that creates an economy nearly impossible to maintain.
Social Security and Medicare are a huge drag on the government. Partially true, but not in the way most people naively assume. Most people assume these two entitlements are paid for with income taxes. THEY ARE NOT. They are paid for under the Payroll Tax, a tax which vanishes to ZERO PERCENT on income above $110,000. Raising the tax cap (which has been done numerous times) returns these programs to solvency. So this "problem" is really just an issue used to gain political leverage and not a real problem in any true sense. Granted there are financial games played with the Social Security Trust Fund (a tactic introduced by the CBO during the Nixon Administration), but these are done primarily to hide costs....primarily over the last 40 years the costs of war. The biggest drain on income tax? The Military, which eats more than half of every tax dollar.
The definition of unskilled labor. I simply challenge anyone working in a white collar job to take a break and work in a supposedly unskilled position...and then tell me no skills are required. The truth of the matter is most people work either in small business or large corporate enterprise, and this honestly hasn't changed all that much in the last 75 years. And most of those people were "unskilled" by the modern definition. Automation, new systems, technology have increased productivity drastically this is true. But almost all the financial gains reaped from this have gone to the top and not to the workforce. Whether this seems totally fair to you, or not, does nothing to solve the real market economy problem this has created. Ironically this leads to a near perfect storm guaranteeing the expansion of government assistance to fill in the gaps, which manifests the very enemy of conservative economics. Perhaps the underlying tenets are wrong?!??!??
I could go on and on. The real gist of my position is this. We are on the tail end of a failed experiment in economic theory, and every so slowly eyes are opening to this reality. The very nature of "what's wrong" pivots on whether or not you see this as evident.
Answers are usually easy. It's asking the right question that matters.
The only real issue I had with the "meme" was that it was little more than a distortion of the nature of the problem, factually specious, and unnecessarily partisan...to my point of view.
I tend to agree that raising the minimum wage will do little to help workers make any material gains in this economy. Our economic problems are deeply structural and not easily reversed. Because of this *merely* changing wage structures will do little but create artificial inflation in the short term, because a great deal of our economies wealth is walled off from the influence of consumption.
Low wages that force Americans into government assistance are a reality. A reality that in some way shape or form touches close to half the U.S. Population. When you do the math it is quite scary. Add up AFDC/TANF, SNAP, WIC, Housing Assistance, etc.... (and I leave off Medicare and Social Security deliberately because they are paid for by an entirely different tax system than income tax) about half of American families receive some sort of government assistance.
This isn't a few Americans living off the teat of the rest of us....it's a lot more than a few. If a simple program like Food Stamps were to just "go away", I can confidently say that many grocery chains would go belly up.....mine included. In most of our operating markets it accounts for more than 25% of our business. It was less than 5% in the 80's.
How we ended up here is becoming clearer by the day to most economists, regardless of political affiliation. We've had a 30-40 year long experiment in supply-side economic theory in play, and it's clearly been a failure. And yet as a generation we have bought into the philosophy and the mindset behind it, much of which is based on false assumptions. It will likely take as long of a concerted effort in another direction in economic philosophy (like the previous 40 years of mostly Keynesian policy...that actually worked) to right the ship.
False assumptions? Here are a few.
Capitalists create jobs. This is the entire pivot upon which supply side theory is based, and it just isn't true. As a person who has worked in the corporate world for 30 years, I can say confidently that hiring is always a last resort, and not a first. Jobs are created by consumer demand, and entrepreneurs who leverage that demand. It is a synergy and not a cause/effect relationship. Without consumers buying things, an economy cannot exist. And wealthy consumers? They are usually a drag on an economy at large for a myriad of reasons. A wealthy consumer who makes 10 times more than you or I is not buying 10 times more food, or cars, or tshirts, or (insert name of banal things here). Wealth becomes an abstraction of power, and in the case of an economy not a particularly useful one.
Progressive taxation is bad. Little historical fact. All taxation in history has been progressive, mainly because it makes the most sense in real economic terms. One immutable fact here is that if you tax a wealthy person far more than a poor one....the wealthy person does not become poor. It doesn't seem intuitively fair, and perhaps this is why most people easily buy into flat-tax arguments. But this is little more than a distortion leading to confirmation bias by those who aren't wealthy. And the problem isn't necessarily wealthy people. The number of American's who possess wealth levels 20 times or more of the national average hasn't changed that much as a percentage of the population. What has changed is the amount of wealth they possess relative to everyone else. We have an income distribution curve in this country similar to puppet dictatorships. And though we don't have citizens suffering to the degree that those in puppet dictatorships do, we do have an income distribution that creates an economy nearly impossible to maintain.
Social Security and Medicare are a huge drag on the government. Partially true, but not in the way most people naively assume. Most people assume these two entitlements are paid for with income taxes. THEY ARE NOT. They are paid for under the Payroll Tax, a tax which vanishes to ZERO PERCENT on income above $110,000. Raising the tax cap (which has been done numerous times) returns these programs to solvency. So this "problem" is really just an issue used to gain political leverage and not a real problem in any true sense. Granted there are financial games played with the Social Security Trust Fund (a tactic introduced by the CBO during the Nixon Administration), but these are done primarily to hide costs....primarily over the last 40 years the costs of war. The biggest drain on income tax? The Military, which eats more than half of every tax dollar.
The definition of unskilled labor. I simply challenge anyone working in a white collar job to take a break and work in a supposedly unskilled position...and then tell me no skills are required. The truth of the matter is most people work either in small business or large corporate enterprise, and this honestly hasn't changed all that much in the last 75 years. And most of those people were "unskilled" by the modern definition. Automation, new systems, technology have increased productivity drastically this is true. But almost all the financial gains reaped from this have gone to the top and not to the workforce. Whether this seems totally fair to you, or not, does nothing to solve the real market economy problem this has created. Ironically this leads to a near perfect storm guaranteeing the expansion of government assistance to fill in the gaps, which manifests the very enemy of conservative economics. Perhaps the underlying tenets are wrong?!??!??
I could go on and on. The real gist of my position is this. We are on the tail end of a failed experiment in economic theory, and every so slowly eyes are opening to this reality. The very nature of "what's wrong" pivots on whether or not you see this as evident.
Answers are usually easy. It's asking the right question that matters.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Conspiracies. Modern media requires modern methods...
It seems like more and more of my daily news feed on social networks is taken up by conspiracy laden posts. Given the current economic and political climate, I suppose I can understand the appeal.
A post about government taking "big brother" too far....or a post about some evil corporation tainting our existence...such things feed into the sense many of us have that things aren't "right". And there are PLENTY of things that aren't right. Some of them glaringly obvious, but only if you take the time to investigate claims.
...
We live in a time that is in many ways quite disturbing, but equally fascinating. We have a media environment largely dominated by corporate news outlets. But we also have more people engaged in communication and the dissemination of knowledge than ever before.
We have horrendously vertically aligned communities online where you can easily surround yourself with people who will either agree with you....or perhaps more insidiously convince you to agree with them.
The most vicarious of nonsense story can easily go viral, and be believed en-masse by many thousands, and yet be sitting in the same web browser one could use a tiny bit of effort to easily debunk.
People confuse authority truth and knowledge to their detriment. In order to navigate the modern stream of information one must embrace a few basic tenets to survive and grow.
1). BE A SKEPTIC, ESPECIALLY OF THOSE THINGS YOU MIGHT AGREE WITH.
I made this first tip big because it is vitally IMPORTANT. Case in point, I consider myself a relatively liberal person when it comes to social philosophy and leaning towards libertarian ideals when it comes to fiscal and constitutional matters. So when I see something posted by the largest Libertarian group on Facebook I'm probably going to check it out. What I'm not going to do, even if I self-identify as a person with Libertarian ideals, is take anything they post at their word. I tend to try to fact check things, especially if the claims made are extraordinary ones.
And I don't do this because I mistrust the intentions of others, so it isn't some cynical ploy. I do it to fight against my own confirmation biases...and reveal those of others.
Most importantly, it is shockingly easy to do if you have at least a few firing neurons. It's not hard...AT ALL!
In today's particular example, a couple of minutes worth of digging showed a post by a Facebook group with half a million followers was made up nonsense written originally by a certifiable wacko. Groups large and small can make mistakes true, but large ones influence large groups of people.....perhaps into believing things that aren't remotely true.
This is bad....and insidious...
2). Do your own investigative reporting.
We have an interesting dynamic at play in modern media....at least for the lazy. And I don't mean this as a slight either. We've all for generations expected our news and media outlets to at least present the news in a reasonably balanced fashion, but this isn't really the case anymore.
A post about government taking "big brother" too far....or a post about some evil corporation tainting our existence...such things feed into the sense many of us have that things aren't "right". And there are PLENTY of things that aren't right. Some of them glaringly obvious, but only if you take the time to investigate claims.
...
We live in a time that is in many ways quite disturbing, but equally fascinating. We have a media environment largely dominated by corporate news outlets. But we also have more people engaged in communication and the dissemination of knowledge than ever before.
We have horrendously vertically aligned communities online where you can easily surround yourself with people who will either agree with you....or perhaps more insidiously convince you to agree with them.
The most vicarious of nonsense story can easily go viral, and be believed en-masse by many thousands, and yet be sitting in the same web browser one could use a tiny bit of effort to easily debunk.
People confuse authority truth and knowledge to their detriment. In order to navigate the modern stream of information one must embrace a few basic tenets to survive and grow.
1). BE A SKEPTIC, ESPECIALLY OF THOSE THINGS YOU MIGHT AGREE WITH.
I made this first tip big because it is vitally IMPORTANT. Case in point, I consider myself a relatively liberal person when it comes to social philosophy and leaning towards libertarian ideals when it comes to fiscal and constitutional matters. So when I see something posted by the largest Libertarian group on Facebook I'm probably going to check it out. What I'm not going to do, even if I self-identify as a person with Libertarian ideals, is take anything they post at their word. I tend to try to fact check things, especially if the claims made are extraordinary ones.
And I don't do this because I mistrust the intentions of others, so it isn't some cynical ploy. I do it to fight against my own confirmation biases...and reveal those of others.
Most importantly, it is shockingly easy to do if you have at least a few firing neurons. It's not hard...AT ALL!
In today's particular example, a couple of minutes worth of digging showed a post by a Facebook group with half a million followers was made up nonsense written originally by a certifiable wacko. Groups large and small can make mistakes true, but large ones influence large groups of people.....perhaps into believing things that aren't remotely true.
This is bad....and insidious...
2). Do your own investigative reporting.
We have an interesting dynamic at play in modern media....at least for the lazy. And I don't mean this as a slight either. We've all for generations expected our news and media outlets to at least present the news in a reasonably balanced fashion, but this isn't really the case anymore.
- Fox News. Hates anything about democrats or the government.....unless its the military of course.
- MSNBC. Hates anything about republicans....skeptical of the government....unless its entitlements of course.
- CNN. Tries to dumb down the news too far, almost to the point it's not even news anymore.
- Insertnameofwannabenewsblog.com. Linear articles that narrowly align with a given worldview or ideology (one that may or may not actually track with reality).
It goes down hill from here....
What doesn't go downhill however is the absolute plethora of real information online. But there is so much of it that simple and parochial ideas of knowledge and truth aren't going to just fall into your lap like you've (probably falsely) believed they should....because you thought they always had.
Those days (if they ever truly existed) are over.
There is a benefit to this process as well. You discover so many of the "gloom and doom" stories you tend to have hammered into your face daily on social media are complete bullshit. It doesn't mean everything is 100% peachy....but you can at least comfort yourself with the fact that "conspiracy" isn't required to explain all the bad things that seem to happen.
Plain old human nature, shortsightedness, insularity, and a hefty dose of ego and greed usually suffice. Those sorts of things are solvable whether there are real conspiracies or not, so it makes the whole idea of focusing on conspiracy stand out as the true waste of time that it is.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Partisan Dysfunction - Why Are We Here?
Even if you're not the sort that pays much attention to politics (given the nature of politics in recent years this would perhaps be understandable) you'd have to have been living under a rock to have missed our most recent debacle of dysfunction.
House Republicans recently held the entire nation hostage over their dislike for the Affordable Care Act, more aptly known as "ObamaCare". Having failed to defeat it via democratic means, having failed to defeat it via the Supreme Court, they decided to try defeating it through tyranny. And though the effort failed miserably, it is certainly not cause for celebration.
Regardless of where you personally stand on the ACA, or our current President for that matter, the fact that such an event occurred shines an unflattering light on the systemic problems in our electoral process.
There are many who would agree with me that this country desperately needs campaign finance reform. And the problem isn't voters, rather it's the process that vets those who we are even allowed to vote for. In the last election cycle less than 150,000 individuals comprised over 90% of *ALL* campaign monies spent by all sides of the political process, whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independant. Just on the presidential election alone this was over $2 Billion Dollars. And though it is true that the Obama Campaign did a better job at grassroots money raising, when combined with all spending by dems and republicans that 90% still stands.
We have in essence ceded our democracy to the wealthy and elite, because *THEY* get to decide who gets to run for office, because it is primarily from them that the money flows. And *THIS FACT* is what has driven our entire countries slide towards.....Conservatism. Clearly conservative extremism, such as witnessed a few weeks ago would have been impossible 40 years ago.
So how did the extreme right gain so much power? It is because we don't really have a progressive left anymore. Granted, Nancy Pelosi is a nut (as are many of her ilk), but she's not a progressive lefty by any stretch of the imagination, despite Republicans attempts to paint her into that corner. Rather, our entire politics has shifted, drastically in my view, to the right regardless of party.
How did this happen?
Much of this begins in the late 1960's and the changes that occurred in the Democratic leadership during that time frame. While perhaps it is an oversimplification, it can be said that it culminated with George McGovern's utter dismissal of Labor. And though the influence of Labor was beginning to decline (and in some senses rightly so, due to abject Labor Union corruption) McGovern's move with the Democratic Party is really what began the long slide towards dismantling the Democratic Party's liberal base of power.
Now, elections still need to be held and candidates still have to raise money to run for office. So after the collapse of labor, the dems still had their hands out, like any good politicians would. And who came in to fill the void? The wealthy and elite, i.e. the ones who already controlled much of Republican finance.
This became evident to me during the Reagan Administration, when we began this wholesale experiment in Trickle Down economic theory. Prior to Reagan, much of our countries economic politics revolved around Keynesian theory, a fact we generally owe to the Roosevelt Administration which led to many decades of skyrocketing growth in both GDP and middle class incomes and standard of living. And yes, during this era the wealthy were taxed at progressive rates far far higher than they are today.
What fails to bubble to the surface for the wealthy who were still wealthy in this era.....is that they were still far wealthier than the average American in spite of this fact.
It doesn't take a genius to see that 30 years worth of conservative economic ideology has destroyed the middle class, at least so long as you either pay attention to the numbers or happen to be an average non-wealthy American. So why don't things change? Why can't we right this ship? Why?
It's primarily because of my earlier statements. The 150,000 elites that run our electoral process aren't suffering. They've done well. In some cases obscenely well. Obscene because their gains in wealth and power came with a real cost, that being the well being of an entire country.
House Republicans recently held the entire nation hostage over their dislike for the Affordable Care Act, more aptly known as "ObamaCare". Having failed to defeat it via democratic means, having failed to defeat it via the Supreme Court, they decided to try defeating it through tyranny. And though the effort failed miserably, it is certainly not cause for celebration.
Regardless of where you personally stand on the ACA, or our current President for that matter, the fact that such an event occurred shines an unflattering light on the systemic problems in our electoral process.
There are many who would agree with me that this country desperately needs campaign finance reform. And the problem isn't voters, rather it's the process that vets those who we are even allowed to vote for. In the last election cycle less than 150,000 individuals comprised over 90% of *ALL* campaign monies spent by all sides of the political process, whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independant. Just on the presidential election alone this was over $2 Billion Dollars. And though it is true that the Obama Campaign did a better job at grassroots money raising, when combined with all spending by dems and republicans that 90% still stands.
We have in essence ceded our democracy to the wealthy and elite, because *THEY* get to decide who gets to run for office, because it is primarily from them that the money flows. And *THIS FACT* is what has driven our entire countries slide towards.....Conservatism. Clearly conservative extremism, such as witnessed a few weeks ago would have been impossible 40 years ago.
So how did the extreme right gain so much power? It is because we don't really have a progressive left anymore. Granted, Nancy Pelosi is a nut (as are many of her ilk), but she's not a progressive lefty by any stretch of the imagination, despite Republicans attempts to paint her into that corner. Rather, our entire politics has shifted, drastically in my view, to the right regardless of party.
How did this happen?
Much of this begins in the late 1960's and the changes that occurred in the Democratic leadership during that time frame. While perhaps it is an oversimplification, it can be said that it culminated with George McGovern's utter dismissal of Labor. And though the influence of Labor was beginning to decline (and in some senses rightly so, due to abject Labor Union corruption) McGovern's move with the Democratic Party is really what began the long slide towards dismantling the Democratic Party's liberal base of power.
Now, elections still need to be held and candidates still have to raise money to run for office. So after the collapse of labor, the dems still had their hands out, like any good politicians would. And who came in to fill the void? The wealthy and elite, i.e. the ones who already controlled much of Republican finance.
This became evident to me during the Reagan Administration, when we began this wholesale experiment in Trickle Down economic theory. Prior to Reagan, much of our countries economic politics revolved around Keynesian theory, a fact we generally owe to the Roosevelt Administration which led to many decades of skyrocketing growth in both GDP and middle class incomes and standard of living. And yes, during this era the wealthy were taxed at progressive rates far far higher than they are today.
What fails to bubble to the surface for the wealthy who were still wealthy in this era.....is that they were still far wealthier than the average American in spite of this fact.
It doesn't take a genius to see that 30 years worth of conservative economic ideology has destroyed the middle class, at least so long as you either pay attention to the numbers or happen to be an average non-wealthy American. So why don't things change? Why can't we right this ship? Why?
It's primarily because of my earlier statements. The 150,000 elites that run our electoral process aren't suffering. They've done well. In some cases obscenely well. Obscene because their gains in wealth and power came with a real cost, that being the well being of an entire country.
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Wealth Challenge!
Are you stupendously wealthy? Do you want to add real intrinsic value to that wealth, without needing to consult a financial advisor? It's really easy. All you have to do is give a large portion of it away, not to charity either!! And I'm going to try to convince you why this is such a compelling and excellent idea, so bear with me.
This thought process for me began when I read in the paper the other day that the most recent Powerball Jackpot winner was in South Carolina. It did kind of suck for me personally that it was some guy in Lexington and not me, but it was certainly a good day for him.
If that person had taken the lump sum distribution, after taxes he would have had $123 Million Dollars, a rather princely sum.
I began to think to myself "Self, what would I do with $123 Million Dollars?"
One of the first thoughts that floated to the top was the idea of getting 50 Cashier's Checks for $1 Million Dollars and giving those to 50 people I know. I mean why not right? Even after that gesture of generosity I'd have $73 Million Dollars free and clear!!
Given that this would be roughly 1800 times my current net worth, I think I'd be doing ok.
When you stop and think about it there are only a few real classifications of wealth.
Imagine yourself as an individual who just turned 20 with $100 Million Dollars net worth or greater. Now, imagine that you could turn that net worth into liquid assets. COLD HARD CASH. Now lets imagine a game where you are limited to spending no more than $500,000 of your cold hard cash on any given thing. You cannot donate to charity either. Think of this as a modern reboot of the movie "Brewster's Millions."
It doesn't take too much pondering to realize you'd have to be the most colossally irresponsible person in the world to go broke before you reached your 80th Birthday.
At this level of wealth, wealth itself begins to lose its meaning. And, as you move further up the wealth ladder, this trend continues.
Look at Bill Gates. At an estimated net worth (at this moment) of around $72 Billion Dollars, he's had to establish a charitable foundation to deal with this specific problem. The William F. Gates Foundation was established to allow him, and other participants such as Warren Buffet, an avenue to do something meaningful with their wealth.
But it goes beyond merely adding meaning to wealth. This is essentially a structured effort to get rid of wealth, not only in a meaningful way, but in a practical sense. It's difficult to figure out WHAT THE FUCK to do with such an obscene level of wealth. At this level, wealth is little more than an abstraction on a spreadsheet, similar to George Carlin's idea of the "Bigger Dick Theory Of Foreign Policy" except applied to economics.
And the problem here is a much greater issue than merely avarice. When you note that the Fortune 500 comprises wealth greater than the GDP of entire countries (like Russia), and contrast this with how we've let Detroit descend into the kind of town Mad Max wouldn't want to visit, you begin to realize that we've lost the ability to understand what wealth even is.
So here's my plan. At the moment in America there are roughly 29,000 Individuals with a net worth greater than $100 Million Dollars. Nearly 600 of these people have net worth greater than $1 Billion Dollars. Doing some quite conservative napkin math gives me a great idea.
Have all 29,000 of these RICH AS FUCK!!!!® people give away 1/3rd of their net worth in $1 Million dollar increments to non-wealthy people. No need for complex and expensive tax attorneys. No charities at all. No need to even liquidate your assets. Just give it away in the form it's already in. Let the beneficiaries figure out what to do with it.
I feel that many amazing and positive things would happen, but I can guarantee with 100% certainly that two things would happen, and they are the most important facts to consider.
1). You'd create around 2.1 Million new Millionaires in this economy. Let the absurdity of that number jiggle around in your skull.
2). Everyone who gave? Would still be RICH AS FUCK!!!!®
Other things that would happen?
1). Incalculable billions would be SPENT INTO THE ECONOMY. I can guarantee you that 2.1 Million random out of the blue new millionaires have some bills to pay, and they'd be paid off like a motherfucker!!
2). Real investment would occur. New homes. New cars. Helping that wacky cousin with his new business idea. An Ivy League education for your kids, etc...
3). Charitable contributions would increase.Drastically. Why? Because people who have a real sense of what money *IS* would have disposable worth.
4). You could guarantee millions less on government programs.
5). You could guarantee millions more real jobs.
What would not happen?
1). There'd be no need for new taxes. Real people spending real money have better things to do with their time than dodge taxes.
2). No need for new regulation.
3). No need for angst ridden new political parties who really like tea.
We have an obscene amount of wealth in our country in essence held hostage by social, cultural, political, and economic ideologies. Forty years worth of bad ideas got us here. Until we can drastically change the zeitgeist, no amount of anything is going to make a significant improvement in how things currently are.
p.s. If any RICH AS FUCK!!!!® individuals come across this blog and disagree with me, don't waste time trying to debate me. If you fail to see the brilliance here, you obviously have some overarching reason to believe you "deserve" to be so obscenely wealthy. In actuality you're just a greedy self righteous prick! :)
This thought process for me began when I read in the paper the other day that the most recent Powerball Jackpot winner was in South Carolina. It did kind of suck for me personally that it was some guy in Lexington and not me, but it was certainly a good day for him.
If that person had taken the lump sum distribution, after taxes he would have had $123 Million Dollars, a rather princely sum.
I began to think to myself "Self, what would I do with $123 Million Dollars?"
One of the first thoughts that floated to the top was the idea of getting 50 Cashier's Checks for $1 Million Dollars and giving those to 50 people I know. I mean why not right? Even after that gesture of generosity I'd have $73 Million Dollars free and clear!!
Given that this would be roughly 1800 times my current net worth, I think I'd be doing ok.
When you stop and think about it there are only a few real classifications of wealth.
- Poor. These are the 49 Million Americans who rely on Food Stamps to feed their families.
- Making Ends Meet. This is where I fit. I don't need government assistance to survive, but I am living largely paycheck to paycheck.
- Middle Class. These are people who have enough left over to save a little.
- Affluent. These are people who have quite a bit more left to save, and at this level of wealth you see people making personal lifestyle investments (luxury car, vacation time share, etc)
- Wealthy. Anyone with a net worth over $1 Million Dollars. If you qualify for this distinction, you are wealthy compared to the overwhelming majority of Americans.
- RICH AS FUCK!!!!® This is a special classification that requires more explanation.
Imagine yourself as an individual who just turned 20 with $100 Million Dollars net worth or greater. Now, imagine that you could turn that net worth into liquid assets. COLD HARD CASH. Now lets imagine a game where you are limited to spending no more than $500,000 of your cold hard cash on any given thing. You cannot donate to charity either. Think of this as a modern reboot of the movie "Brewster's Millions."
It doesn't take too much pondering to realize you'd have to be the most colossally irresponsible person in the world to go broke before you reached your 80th Birthday.
At this level of wealth, wealth itself begins to lose its meaning. And, as you move further up the wealth ladder, this trend continues.
Look at Bill Gates. At an estimated net worth (at this moment) of around $72 Billion Dollars, he's had to establish a charitable foundation to deal with this specific problem. The William F. Gates Foundation was established to allow him, and other participants such as Warren Buffet, an avenue to do something meaningful with their wealth.
But it goes beyond merely adding meaning to wealth. This is essentially a structured effort to get rid of wealth, not only in a meaningful way, but in a practical sense. It's difficult to figure out WHAT THE FUCK to do with such an obscene level of wealth. At this level, wealth is little more than an abstraction on a spreadsheet, similar to George Carlin's idea of the "Bigger Dick Theory Of Foreign Policy" except applied to economics.
And the problem here is a much greater issue than merely avarice. When you note that the Fortune 500 comprises wealth greater than the GDP of entire countries (like Russia), and contrast this with how we've let Detroit descend into the kind of town Mad Max wouldn't want to visit, you begin to realize that we've lost the ability to understand what wealth even is.
So here's my plan. At the moment in America there are roughly 29,000 Individuals with a net worth greater than $100 Million Dollars. Nearly 600 of these people have net worth greater than $1 Billion Dollars. Doing some quite conservative napkin math gives me a great idea.
Have all 29,000 of these RICH AS FUCK!!!!® people give away 1/3rd of their net worth in $1 Million dollar increments to non-wealthy people. No need for complex and expensive tax attorneys. No charities at all. No need to even liquidate your assets. Just give it away in the form it's already in. Let the beneficiaries figure out what to do with it.
I feel that many amazing and positive things would happen, but I can guarantee with 100% certainly that two things would happen, and they are the most important facts to consider.
1). You'd create around 2.1 Million new Millionaires in this economy. Let the absurdity of that number jiggle around in your skull.
2). Everyone who gave? Would still be RICH AS FUCK!!!!®
Other things that would happen?
1). Incalculable billions would be SPENT INTO THE ECONOMY. I can guarantee you that 2.1 Million random out of the blue new millionaires have some bills to pay, and they'd be paid off like a motherfucker!!
2). Real investment would occur. New homes. New cars. Helping that wacky cousin with his new business idea. An Ivy League education for your kids, etc...
3). Charitable contributions would increase.Drastically. Why? Because people who have a real sense of what money *IS* would have disposable worth.
4). You could guarantee millions less on government programs.
5). You could guarantee millions more real jobs.
What would not happen?
1). There'd be no need for new taxes. Real people spending real money have better things to do with their time than dodge taxes.
2). No need for new regulation.
3). No need for angst ridden new political parties who really like tea.
But *ONLY* if such a thing could actually happen. And it can't....and won't.
We have an obscene amount of wealth in our country in essence held hostage by social, cultural, political, and economic ideologies. Forty years worth of bad ideas got us here. Until we can drastically change the zeitgeist, no amount of anything is going to make a significant improvement in how things currently are.
p.s. If any RICH AS FUCK!!!!® individuals come across this blog and disagree with me, don't waste time trying to debate me. If you fail to see the brilliance here, you obviously have some overarching reason to believe you "deserve" to be so obscenely wealthy. In actuality you're just a greedy self righteous prick! :)
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
The Unreality Of The Surveillance State
I noted sadly today the loss of Groklaw. The legal news blog, which has been a popular standby of the legal community for the better part of ten years, is shutting its doors as of today.
The blogs owner Pamela Jones said in a rather impassioned statement today "But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible."
...
I've always had a strong sense of our utter lack of privacy online, at least in the parochial sense most of us seem to think of. But I've been online far longer than the average person, having gotten my first dialup "shell" account 25 years ago.
Everything you say or do online can, in theory, be captured stored and analyzed till the cows come home. Given the nature of modern IP networks this is even more pervasive than we realize too. Much in the way of voice traffic from "traditional communications" such as cellphones and landlines ends up being sent as VOIP information over existing internet infrastructure by backbone service providers. So your voice call on Verizon or AT&T can at some point end up as internet traffic, at least some of the time based on the needs of carrier networks and their peering arrangements.
It is the theoretical nature of this reality though that has always given me a reasonable level of comfort. It has always been quite clear that the sheer volume of data traveling over IP networks makes actual surveillance quite difficult.
However, given enough technical resources, such individualized surveillance is indeed possible and has been for some time. Edward Snowden's revelations of the length and scope of these capabilities, while an employee for NSA contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton, makes it clear that this is so.
The capacity and sophistication of these resources is ALWAYS going up as the cost of them goes down. This truth is a mere function of how technology works. So it is safe to assume that we are nearing (or perhaps have already reached) a point where anyone can be easily and perhaps more disturbingly AUTOMATICALLY profiled and targeted for surveillance.
Thinking about this gives me more than a little pause personally. Looking back over the course of my online existence I can think of a myriad of things that would, at least in theory, have me on some government analysts radar. These are just a handful of them...
According to the surveillance guidelines and justifications outlined in the now public PRISM program, I have ticked several of the boxes necessary for *ALL* of my internet traffic to be scrutinized automatically by the NSA, without even the need of a FISA order. Whether this is actually occuring or not, I cannot say for certain.
But I have little evidence to the contrary telling me that I should doubt this is happening.
What does this mean? What does this mean for me personally?
I am not by nature a person given to paranoia. I know at least one person who has taken these realities to heart to such an extreme, that they are now attempting to live entirely "off the grid", outside of all systems including simple and pedantic ones we take for granted daily. As a result this persons life has now utterly imploded.
Me? I still have bills to pay and people that rely on me, so I'm not interested in taking any extreme precautions. Moreso, I'm not interested in taking any precautions at all.
Pamela Jones in her impassioned exit post on Groklaw implied that she felt her very humanity was as stake. Indeed we have countless lessons throughout history that a surveillance state does have a chilling effect on ones humanity. But, in a connected society such as ours, the double edged sword that is the internet is really too important an aspect of our human connectedness now to shy away from.
It's a pandora's box to be sure, but one we must dive into and accept the realities of lest it become the master of us all.
The blogs owner Pamela Jones said in a rather impassioned statement today "But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible."
...
I've always had a strong sense of our utter lack of privacy online, at least in the parochial sense most of us seem to think of. But I've been online far longer than the average person, having gotten my first dialup "shell" account 25 years ago.
Everything you say or do online can, in theory, be captured stored and analyzed till the cows come home. Given the nature of modern IP networks this is even more pervasive than we realize too. Much in the way of voice traffic from "traditional communications" such as cellphones and landlines ends up being sent as VOIP information over existing internet infrastructure by backbone service providers. So your voice call on Verizon or AT&T can at some point end up as internet traffic, at least some of the time based on the needs of carrier networks and their peering arrangements.
It is the theoretical nature of this reality though that has always given me a reasonable level of comfort. It has always been quite clear that the sheer volume of data traveling over IP networks makes actual surveillance quite difficult.
However, given enough technical resources, such individualized surveillance is indeed possible and has been for some time. Edward Snowden's revelations of the length and scope of these capabilities, while an employee for NSA contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton, makes it clear that this is so.
The capacity and sophistication of these resources is ALWAYS going up as the cost of them goes down. This truth is a mere function of how technology works. So it is safe to assume that we are nearing (or perhaps have already reached) a point where anyone can be easily and perhaps more disturbingly AUTOMATICALLY profiled and targeted for surveillance.
Thinking about this gives me more than a little pause personally. Looking back over the course of my online existence I can think of a myriad of things that would, at least in theory, have me on some government analysts radar. These are just a handful of them...
- I have in the past, and occasionally continue to, communicate with individuals outside the U.S.
- I have blogged and been formally published writing about privacy and surveillance.
- I have privately consulted on and directly rendered forensics analysis of computers and networks.
- I have written scathing op/ed's on the state of copyright and IP law.
- I have interviewed and championed the cause of one person, who in the past was involved in the largest copyright infringement case in history up to that point.
- I have used encryption, proxies, IP blocklists, and all sorts of other methods to communicate online.
According to the surveillance guidelines and justifications outlined in the now public PRISM program, I have ticked several of the boxes necessary for *ALL* of my internet traffic to be scrutinized automatically by the NSA, without even the need of a FISA order. Whether this is actually occuring or not, I cannot say for certain.
But I have little evidence to the contrary telling me that I should doubt this is happening.
What does this mean? What does this mean for me personally?
I am not by nature a person given to paranoia. I know at least one person who has taken these realities to heart to such an extreme, that they are now attempting to live entirely "off the grid", outside of all systems including simple and pedantic ones we take for granted daily. As a result this persons life has now utterly imploded.
Me? I still have bills to pay and people that rely on me, so I'm not interested in taking any extreme precautions. Moreso, I'm not interested in taking any precautions at all.
Pamela Jones in her impassioned exit post on Groklaw implied that she felt her very humanity was as stake. Indeed we have countless lessons throughout history that a surveillance state does have a chilling effect on ones humanity. But, in a connected society such as ours, the double edged sword that is the internet is really too important an aspect of our human connectedness now to shy away from.
It's a pandora's box to be sure, but one we must dive into and accept the realities of lest it become the master of us all.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Need vs Want. An important distinction...
This little blog rant all started with a playful post on a social network of the following question earlier today.
"Here's a fun idea! Finding someone to date is finding someone to reliably and safely have sex with. True or False? Discuss!!"
Though the obvious answer is True (every bit of sociology and psychology I've ever studied seems to confirm this irrefutably) boy did this question shake the tree LOL.
But that was the point. I wanted to see what sort of justifications people would have to claim it was a false statement. More specifically women seemed to take issue with it, but I'm of a mind (from a lifetime of experience, coupled with having been raised by a considerably smart psychology degree wielding mother) that women so innately buy into double standards about their own sexuality, that many of them can easily fail to grasp the truth of this. And I think it is rather sad and unnecessary.
I like coming at ideas and thoughts from various directions. Though at times this can confuse (and also annoy) people, I feel that it is for me a valuable tool to deconstruct my thoughts.
The more difficult a thought idea or concept is, the more resources you should allocate towards it. Makes sense right? But as is the case with most things in life answers are often pretty easy. The real trick is asking the right questions.
Most people would say that, as a for instance, quantum mechanics is difficult. And perhaps in a sense this is true, but only in a sense. One of the "gatekeepers" of the physical sciences is that nasty thing many people find extremely hard to grasp, Calculus. But calculus can be mastered by nearly anyone, given enough time and resources. So I'd say the things we often call "difficult" are really just resource intensive and not actually difficult at all.
The biggest difficulty we face as human beings is really ourselves, and by extension each other. Almost anyone can set aside their emotions (except perhaps frustration) and learn calculus, or molecular biology regardless of their IQ, because at their core these are not emotional pursuits. At all.
The most important pursuit in human existence, is the pursuit of self awareness. And again by extension this must include others, as almost nothing of our existence can be experienced properly alone.
Our emotions, our instincts, indeed our very survival encompasses this pursuit. One of the keys to self discovery that I have found that works for me is this very process of intellectual deconstruction that I pursue. And I've found that making the effort, the truly difficult effort, to understand ones basic needs, ones basic primal instincts is a critical key to self discovery and perhaps even enlightenment.
We as human beings are dominated by our needs, our basic needs. And every esoteric, esthetic, intellectual, or noble pursuit we believe we engage in...ultimately stems from these primal needs. Given that these needs are not always predictable, or perhaps even rational, it is imperative to grasp their significance. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming a slave to them.
Air. We all need air to breathe in order to live. This is such a basic need that we don't even discuss it....until we are deprived of the privilege. And when this happens our primal instincts for survival take over...utterly so. The same goes for water....for food....to lesser degrees for shelter and comfort.
We should look at one of our more taboo laden needs in the same manner. The need for intimacy. I use the word intimacy as opposed to merely sex, because sex is merely a part of human intimacy.
Take any animal, and deprive it of contact with others of it's species (including ourselves) and several reliable things will happen. First, that animal will become clinically depressed. This is true whether we're talking Cocker Spaniels or humans. Secondly, and this is where the taboo's leak in, that animal will begin to sexually pleasure itself.
Conversely you shelter animals together, and they will naturally seek one another out..even if it is just for physical contact as simple as a touch.
Why do we hug our children? Because not only does it make us feel good, it makes them feel good. It is intrinsic to our nature to need the company of others, and it isn't just philosophical..it is quite tangible and real.
To think otherwise puts a fundamental need at odds with reality...with it's very purpose.
As we humans exist in organized societies we have often crafted "rules" about these basic needs of ours, and usually for sensible reasons. In a collective tribal species such as our own, order has it's place. But there are problems with leaning on cultural and social conventions too hard. Big ones in this day and age.
Just imagine if you will, the role of the average woman in human culture over the last 100,000 years that we can reliably say humans have lived in organized societies. That role was largely unchanged for, lets say about 99,900 years.
For the math challenged that means you, if you are a woman, are living in a very special time in human history. One fundamentally different for you than 99.9% of it has been for your gender.
Please take a moment to pause and bask in the amazing truth of that statement...
And {sticking to heterosexuality for the sake of simplicity here} consider that both men and women are fundamentally having to come to grips with this near about-face in human behaviors and expectations.
The very nature of gender itself, and it's role in society and our existence, is being redefined as we speak. This means our needs are having to come to terms with these changes too.
And if you are wrapping those needs, those intrinsic and primal needs, within the scope of what dusty wisdom from dusty books written thousands of years ago had to say on the subject, you are going to reliably fail at achieving your place in this world, and happiness within it. FAIL! It's so obvious when you really look at it outside of your "training" by the world.
Needs, when acted on with poor information, almost always end up with bad results. We all need to eat don't we? But look at western culture today. Runaway obesity and metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes in children, and even gout has become commonplace. Our modern diet, based on old (and bad) evidence and advice...is reliably killing us. But we don't question it all that much, because eating is a fundamental need. Fundamental needs can become deadly and bad for you, both physically and psychologically if you fail to understand them.
Understanding needs, really grasping their purpose and their place, transitions them into wants. And wanting is more within our sphere of intellectual grasp I feel.
If we can begin to see the logic of this with something as fundamental to our existence as our food, our very physical health....why can't we do the same things with our needs for intimacy?
"Here's a fun idea! Finding someone to date is finding someone to reliably and safely have sex with. True or False? Discuss!!"
Though the obvious answer is True (every bit of sociology and psychology I've ever studied seems to confirm this irrefutably) boy did this question shake the tree LOL.
But that was the point. I wanted to see what sort of justifications people would have to claim it was a false statement. More specifically women seemed to take issue with it, but I'm of a mind (from a lifetime of experience, coupled with having been raised by a considerably smart psychology degree wielding mother) that women so innately buy into double standards about their own sexuality, that many of them can easily fail to grasp the truth of this. And I think it is rather sad and unnecessary.
I like coming at ideas and thoughts from various directions. Though at times this can confuse (and also annoy) people, I feel that it is for me a valuable tool to deconstruct my thoughts.
The more difficult a thought idea or concept is, the more resources you should allocate towards it. Makes sense right? But as is the case with most things in life answers are often pretty easy. The real trick is asking the right questions.
Most people would say that, as a for instance, quantum mechanics is difficult. And perhaps in a sense this is true, but only in a sense. One of the "gatekeepers" of the physical sciences is that nasty thing many people find extremely hard to grasp, Calculus. But calculus can be mastered by nearly anyone, given enough time and resources. So I'd say the things we often call "difficult" are really just resource intensive and not actually difficult at all.
The biggest difficulty we face as human beings is really ourselves, and by extension each other. Almost anyone can set aside their emotions (except perhaps frustration) and learn calculus, or molecular biology regardless of their IQ, because at their core these are not emotional pursuits. At all.
The most important pursuit in human existence, is the pursuit of self awareness. And again by extension this must include others, as almost nothing of our existence can be experienced properly alone.
Our emotions, our instincts, indeed our very survival encompasses this pursuit. One of the keys to self discovery that I have found that works for me is this very process of intellectual deconstruction that I pursue. And I've found that making the effort, the truly difficult effort, to understand ones basic needs, ones basic primal instincts is a critical key to self discovery and perhaps even enlightenment.
We as human beings are dominated by our needs, our basic needs. And every esoteric, esthetic, intellectual, or noble pursuit we believe we engage in...ultimately stems from these primal needs. Given that these needs are not always predictable, or perhaps even rational, it is imperative to grasp their significance. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming a slave to them.
Air. We all need air to breathe in order to live. This is such a basic need that we don't even discuss it....until we are deprived of the privilege. And when this happens our primal instincts for survival take over...utterly so. The same goes for water....for food....to lesser degrees for shelter and comfort.
We should look at one of our more taboo laden needs in the same manner. The need for intimacy. I use the word intimacy as opposed to merely sex, because sex is merely a part of human intimacy.
Take any animal, and deprive it of contact with others of it's species (including ourselves) and several reliable things will happen. First, that animal will become clinically depressed. This is true whether we're talking Cocker Spaniels or humans. Secondly, and this is where the taboo's leak in, that animal will begin to sexually pleasure itself.
Conversely you shelter animals together, and they will naturally seek one another out..even if it is just for physical contact as simple as a touch.
Why do we hug our children? Because not only does it make us feel good, it makes them feel good. It is intrinsic to our nature to need the company of others, and it isn't just philosophical..it is quite tangible and real.
To think otherwise puts a fundamental need at odds with reality...with it's very purpose.
As we humans exist in organized societies we have often crafted "rules" about these basic needs of ours, and usually for sensible reasons. In a collective tribal species such as our own, order has it's place. But there are problems with leaning on cultural and social conventions too hard. Big ones in this day and age.
Just imagine if you will, the role of the average woman in human culture over the last 100,000 years that we can reliably say humans have lived in organized societies. That role was largely unchanged for, lets say about 99,900 years.
For the math challenged that means you, if you are a woman, are living in a very special time in human history. One fundamentally different for you than 99.9% of it has been for your gender.
Please take a moment to pause and bask in the amazing truth of that statement...
And {sticking to heterosexuality for the sake of simplicity here} consider that both men and women are fundamentally having to come to grips with this near about-face in human behaviors and expectations.
The very nature of gender itself, and it's role in society and our existence, is being redefined as we speak. This means our needs are having to come to terms with these changes too.
And if you are wrapping those needs, those intrinsic and primal needs, within the scope of what dusty wisdom from dusty books written thousands of years ago had to say on the subject, you are going to reliably fail at achieving your place in this world, and happiness within it. FAIL! It's so obvious when you really look at it outside of your "training" by the world.
Needs, when acted on with poor information, almost always end up with bad results. We all need to eat don't we? But look at western culture today. Runaway obesity and metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes in children, and even gout has become commonplace. Our modern diet, based on old (and bad) evidence and advice...is reliably killing us. But we don't question it all that much, because eating is a fundamental need. Fundamental needs can become deadly and bad for you, both physically and psychologically if you fail to understand them.
Understanding needs, really grasping their purpose and their place, transitions them into wants. And wanting is more within our sphere of intellectual grasp I feel.
If we can begin to see the logic of this with something as fundamental to our existence as our food, our very physical health....why can't we do the same things with our needs for intimacy?
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