by sceneshifter » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:04 pm
<br><br><br>Thank you, Cyberchrist, for the comments. Since your brain is hung like a horse [if I understand the meaning of that] you are probably so rarely wrong, it may be refreshing to you to be wrong. I'll try to give you some refreshment. [I was walking around this morning making cigarette lighter motions with my thumb to remind myself that I was looking for a lighter, so don't count on my succeeding.]<br><br>It seems to me that the great majority of humans may have the opposite vice: ie, they are too little interested in their rightful pay. Eg, Henry George very clearly pointed out one way in which money transfers legally from earners to nonearners, namely by a person buying land, others making that land valuable by building a city around it, and the land owner getting the value for nothing. Eg, the Waldorfs, Duke of Westminster, whose ancestor got given central london land at the battle of hastings. And yet, the great majority have not acted with determination to reclaim that part of their earnings. Again, the complete failure of everyone to notice that maximum life-earnings are of the order of US$2 million, and so billionaires have got mostly others' money and power. The complete failure to limit fortunes to protect themselves against overpower, tyranny, erosion of democracy, fascism, corruption, underpay and the violence that this brings. <br><br>Granted greed exists. In a minority. But what is greed? It is a vice. A vice means something that destroys happiness. So we are in a struggle between sanity and insanity. Greed is insane, because it destroys happiness. Most of us still think that greed is a virtue, that it causes happiness. We understand that money is good, but we misunderstand that overpay is good. Overpay is other-earned money, which would be good, since it is money, but is bad because it carries with it the violence generated by theft of money, which is good. [People have such confused ideas, they will say money isnt important, but they continue to sacrifice 8 hours a day to get it, and refuse to give it to me when I ask for all the money they have, and will have.] And the violence is endlessly escalative, vendetta-wise. Causing the escalation of war and weaponry, leading to various great unpleasantnesses, leading to extinction. So we think greed is good, only because we cant see the consequences, which are as bad as can be.<br><br>Money is good but greed is killing us. We wouldn't be greedy if we knew the consequences. We would understand in our practice as well as in our thoughts, that greed is a vice, a killer of us all. Wanting more money, and being willing to work harder to get it, and be paid only for our work, ie, our contribution to the pool of wealth by our work, is not a vice, it is a virtue. Self-earned money is good, however great, because there is no theft involved. The bad consequences only appear because of all the legal and illegal methods by which nonearners get earnings of others. Then it is theft, and then it is dangerous and selfdestructive. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. People are not doormats. Injustice=theft, when it becomes noticeable, has a reaction. Eg, revolutions, crime [which is war at the individual or gang level]. Obviously the most outstandingly overpaid and overpowerful attract the most resentment. Hence Marie Antoinette's fate. And Ceausescu's. And Hitler's, and Napoleon's, who thought it was a good happiness strategy to plunder Europe, forgetting the reaction. Like a child who takes more than his share of birthday cake, and incurs the wrath of other children, and ends up maybe with no cake and a black eye.<br><br>If the majority were more energetic in defending their earnings, the superoverpaid superoverpowerful corrupt and evil would never arise. It is extraordinary to me that people are so willing to allow unlimited fortunes. It is just bad thinking. They think that if they allow unlimited fortunes, it increases their chances of being rich. They see limited fortunes as an unwarrantable restriction of freedom. But of course, liberty has always been limited to the point where it reduces the liberty of others. And overpay is theft, legal or illegal. And the fruit is violence, everescalative, which enfolds everyone in its evil grasp. Most of the evils we humans suffer are caused by the very poor control of overpay. We are totally, very unblissfully, unaware of what we are doing to ourselves by this error of thinking. No one, generally speaking, understands that billionaires cause underpay, war and crime. Both overpay and underpay generate violence. Overpay and underpay are the grandmother and mother, respectively, of all explosives.<br><br>We are good friends with our pride too. We wouldn't be, if we understood that pride is a great enemy of awareness, of reality-adjustment, that it causes mental blindness, which is very dangerous, far more dangerous than physical blindness. Isis, the Egyptian goddess, is supposed to have said: If they knew they were blind, they wouldnt be blind. Ie, blindness is bad, but not being aware of being blind, is much worse. The person who knows he is blind, mentally or physically, makes allowance for it, buys a cane, walks carefully, and is thus not blind. Alas, we have the natural gift of pride, which bridles at the idea of our being wrong. The truthseeker, knowing that happiness is totally depends on reality, knowing that there is zero happiness that can be molded from unreality, is as pleased to find where he is wrong as he is to find any other truth. He knows that every bit of truth can be molded into an increase of happiness. <br><br>You say greed is human nature. But is insanity, sefdestructiveness, human nature? A cool impartial objective look at greed, or belief that overpay is good, or that unlimited fortune for limited contribution to society is not overpay, will show a very poor return from overpay. For the individual and the species. If you can get people to think, totally outside the social square of accepted ideas, you can soon make it very clear that 'greed' is the cause of millions of problems, most human problems, all the worst horrors and terrors and sufferings. <br><br>Overpay is overpower, so causes tyranny, which steals with impunity, which forces the underpaid to fight to get the overpaid more plunder. But the more you plunder, the more you are the focus of others' plundering. The more underpaid people are, the more driven they are to plunder. The Irish impoverished gave the British Empire its cannonfodder and its plunder. Africa is full of soldiers, people to whom killing is the only form of survival open to them. In short, when everybody attacks the social pool of wealth created by everyone's work, and grabs as much as they can out of the pool, as a universally accepted custom, then of course there is overpay, underpay and the violence to pay. Theft is bad for you. Many forms of theft are still quite legal. Are completely approved by society. By all the nonthinkers. People dont see how they are generating all this misery we are in, all this insecurity, danger, crisis, depressions, boom and busts, wars, defense costs, social unrest, genocides, horrors and terrors. All they need to do is see it and they will stop. <br><br>99% are underpaid, so THAT suffering is clear. The overpaid are suffering too. The downside of overpay is much much bigger than the upside. [I think I have already covered this subject in this thread, but I am ever-happy [for increase of my happiness] to clarify and detail and iterate points unclear.]<br><br>So greed is human nature and it isnt. People are complex enough to be selfcontradictory. They disagree with themselves. It is only necessary to get them to explore their own notions and make them selfconsistent to end belief in overpay as a means to happiness. We need to build a general consciousness of the idea of overpay, which has not yet appeared in economics, for instance, despite pay up to US$10 million an hour. It is easy to determine the highest hourly payrate, the number of times that highest pay is relative to the average hourly pay [a million times] and ask people: can a person work a million times harder per unit of time than the average worker. It will very gradually dawn on people that overpay may exist. And hence that underpay must exist. And hence that this might cause violence, since money is a joker good, good for all necessities and millions of desires. It shows the very high level of unconsciousness that we can get so far into overpay without getting the notion of overpay.<br><br>One ought to be able to say, just: pay for a unit of work ranges by a factor of one BILLION, and everyone instantly sees the consequences, sees overpay, underpay and violence and the escalativeness of violence, and instantly understand the lesson of history, that all our sad bad mad history has been the progress of overpay and the escaltion of violence. Even if overpay underpay was only a factor of 2 [highest hourly pay twice lowest hourly pay], the violence would be escalative, as both sides tried to prevail, and used bigger and bigger weaponry to prevail. The intensity and the speed of acceleration to extinction is so much greater with the inequity/violence factor at the present one billion.<br><br>People may have not had enough sense to see overpay when the consequences were 'only' world war and firestormed cities, but they may finally have enough sense now we have nuclear winter in our sight. [Temperature drop 3 times an iceage, atomic clouds above the washout-in-rain level, planet black dead cold.] Or may not. We can only try. Even trying to achieve the sanest aim is a happiness, even if we fail.<br><br>As for the superpowerful breaking laws, it is true, but no one is going to therefore say the law against murder is futile. Making something illegal does put a brake on it, even if not a perfect break. But it will be very easy to see if someone is overpaid. It will be very difficult to conceal over-fortunes. At the moment, overpay fortunes can walk the streets freely. [Well, can get around freely in bulletproof bombproof cars and helicopters, driving between houses with electric fences, guards and attack dogs.] Remember that if the general human mind gets the idea that overpay is tyranny and fatal, there will be plenty of spies supporting the law. People will support a law that they know is vital, is survival, is freedom. 99% will be better paid with fairpay, so they will be keen to enforce the law. And even some of the 1% overpaid, who will also benefit enormously from the law, [in happiness and safety] will betray and blow whistles on overpay. <br><br>Imagine [an hour every day] that 'overpay is fatal, is miserymaking' is a universally accepted idea. Ie, 'known' by everyone. That everyone equates overpay and forest fire. [Overpay is infinitely worse than forest fire.]<br><br>When 99+% of people get this into their heads, there are not enough people to protect and hide the superoverpaid. Their armies are riddled with 'traitors' to overpay. <br><br>It may only take 100 or a 1000 or a 1000000 human monkeys to get this idea for all to get this idea. If we are a herd animal, it may only require the 'bellwhethers' to get it, for the sheeple to follow behind them to happiness and back to normalcy, the much lower level of insecurity that the other animals enjoy. [Toynbee: We were much safer when we were defenseless against the tiger than we are now, defenseless against the bomb. American safety and human safety has plummeted into the dirt since 1945, thanks to e=mc2. We have to get very serious, very sober, and think our way out of the pit. Society is ideas. Real change only comes about with change of ideas. I call it a sanity revolution. Or fairpay capitalism. Or capitalism minus overpay.<br><br>Please let me know if any of these answers do not satisfy your reason. Remember that what I write and what you understand are not necessarily what I mean. It is hard for a writer to see ways in which the words can be taken another way, since the writer has his meaning blinding him to what is being said. And the writer has limited knowledge of how others think, and how they take words other ways.<br><br>If any distort it, it is because they didnt really 'get' it. It is essentially very simple and obvious. Words make it seem difficult. When they get it, they will see how simple and obvious it is, they will see they agree with it. You know you understand it when you see how obvious it is. And you know when someone has 'got' it when they see how obviously true it is. Until you see it as being very very simple and obviously true, you havent seen it. Keep learning it, ruminating, till you see it is very simple. Then you know you have got it, and you can teach it.<br><br>People who get it will not do nothing. They will clearly understand that their life and happiness are totally dependent on teaching it. On reaching a great majority. So that we can swing the general understanding. <br><br>No one will charge for it, because it will be getting about by word of mouth. <br><br>If it leaves the grassroots approach, it will be visible to the superoverpaid, and they will attack it with tame professors, and with force. Before that happens, we need to have enough people who are strong enough in it before the tame professors try to bring it into contempt. Most people will willingly follow tame professors into the ditch, into the insanity and unnecessary suffering we have had for the past 3000 years. We dont want to waste our energy fighting verbal battles with tame professors. Learn till you are certain, and then teach to the ones who know you and trust you. Knowledge is power. Beliefs, mindless commitment to an ideology [pretend knowledge] are not power. People so love certainty that they will take false certainty. In fact they prefer false certainty because they dont have to think. They can get up and be identified with something and proud of themselves without bothering to be certain. Certainty is attained only by constant testing, proving, poking, questioning. Test everything and hold on to what is seems to be good. And keep testing. I do. I want truth, because I need truth for happiness. I am not in it for ego inflation by clinging to an idea, right or wrong. Prove to me I am wrong, and I will thank you. Not 'my country, right or wrong'. Not 'my ideas, right or wrong'. But the right way, mine or others'. <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
