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Materialism and Individuals
by Robert Bruce Baird

Perhaps I could make a lot of money by founding a Thinker’s Anonymous organization. It surely is the rage to eschew thinking.

Helping people achieve great things is worthwhile to your SELF.

If you do not know your SELF you will hurt those you try to make do what you want them to. This macho control mechanism built into materialistic society is exemplified by professionals and experts who are giving drugs to manage 'money-trees' (students and Ritalin, or old people and ECT especially) and managing bureaucracies or saying they are 'just' as they lead us to in-'just'-ice:

1. War
2. Religion and divisive ethnic ideologies - rather than ecumenical spiritual goals
3. Hate for others and putting women in a second class status
4. Insisting on education to make others BE like them
5. Pursuit of power rather than LOVE and creativity

It is summed up in the words of the noted journal The Economist in their millennium issue - they call what we have 'an inhumane bureaucracy' as they enumerate the outcome of the Napoleonic War's institution of 'standing armies'.

Wholism is spiritual & ass-'holes' are not.

Holism is not Wholism!

This is a response to a person who wanted the nuts and bolts of what I said in a detailed expose of Wholistic approaches that are in variance to the way of many social programs and our overall bureaucracy. It is probably part of the kind of thought that the Beat Generation, Hippies, Cynics like Jesus and Goths or other drop-outs that ‘turn-on’ to new paradigms and alternatives, have been seeing since the dawn of civilization.

‘The flower children and groupies are not often willing to do the work that many business types and academics have done. I have found what I think of as independent thinkers (Which is the main characteristic of a Hippie, I think.) in all social groups or walks of life. Michel Foucault and his students at the Sorbonne or Pierre Trudeau and Jean-Paul Sartre and his beau are established thinkers of the genre. This book and the work required of any forum seeking change will try to explore why they are so unable to get a larger audience to actually take the ethics they speak about and apply them in real world changes.

I will have to get past the Hegelian Being-ness and other confused Neo-Platonic rhetoric to the nuts and bolts of Gothic ideas and historical agendas again. I guess the cultivation of positive emotions can assist in a therapeutic manner which will enable people. But wishful-thinking alone will not solve much of the ethical issues borne through constant power-mongering or people needing to fight each other for more of that elusive and fictional One Pie. Let us strive to reduce any cherished illusions of our history if they do not stand the test of common sense for the good of all people. It may turn out to be an exploration of the sublime inter-connectiveness and I hope I will be fair in seeing the positives that Machiavelli and the likes of Carlyle can offer real thinkers in the present as well.’

• Pakistan beat us fair and square: Flower
  
  England coach Andy Flower said on Sunday Pakistan's series-clinching Test win would be a huge boost to the country, but called on his team to show their mettle on subsequent matches in the subcontinent.
  


• Flower not afraid to drop batsman
  
  England coach Andy Flower is considering dropping a batsman for the third Test after their latest abject showing against spin.
  


• England coach Flower not afraid to make changes
  
  England coach Andy Flower on Sunday hinted at making changes to the team for the third test against Pakistan after losing the first two matches of their series. Pakistan took an unassailable 2-0 lead with a remarkable 72-run win in the second test on Saturday as England was bowled out for just 72 as it chased 145.
  


• Hanging flower basket program draws criticism in St. Clair
  
  Criticizing a flower-planting program might rank right up there with criticizing mom and apple pie. But it sounds more reasonable when the flowers cost nearly $10,000 per year and the city funding the program is in the middle of extended belt-tightening.
  


• Flower expects England to fight
  
  Andy Flower's England will fight to the last in the Middle East, and beyond, even if they are playing only for pride and damage limitation in the first instance next week.