Strange world this is

In the past I believed that if someone, such as I, found a way to help humanity solve some huge problems upcoming, that humanity would immediately create a group project to do it, or at least effectively explore its potentials and feasibility, and involve me appropriately in that activity too.

Senior age status is upon me now, and the reality testing of that belief over the decades, has proven the belief false. Almost, but not quite, 100% false.

So it is said that I am naive. Apparently that explains why humanity does not form itself into a process that solves humanity’s huge problems obvious to all who look. It must be my Asperger’s Syndrome that prevents me from comprehending that. Look at the wonders humanity has created, such as suspension bridges, automobiles, personal computers, and DNA analysis. Surely humanity got together and did those things. No?

Anyway, throughout my lifetime I searched for ways to solve some of the upcoming problems on my own, and when I figured out a cohesive seeming approach, I would do my best to communicate it to those who could do the next steps, they who could make it happen physically. There often were big obstacles, but usually i could find a way to utilize the basic concept to humanity’s advantage, while time and effort would eventually deal with the “big obstacle” to its most desirable usage.

Did humanity swoop in and receive me and my achievements in welcome, each time? Well, sometimes I would find that all my files at home on some idea would have been expertly burglarized, all proof I had the idea had been removed from my possession; but otherwise, they usually did not acknowledge my efforts.

One company did acknowledge me on a patent, but that was an idea i generated to solve some problem that they had jammed up against. But most engineers simply found my solutions embarrassing to them. Embarrassing someone, even unintentionally and in effort to help them solve their problems, is a big no-no, I have learned. Strange world this is.

Clearly, I did not understand who I was dealing with, this humanity that I was attempting to help.

So it looked like my concepts to help humanity would need to be done by companies. I tried several companies, some as an outsider, some as an employee; but each was totally engrossed in what it was already doing. Was i supposed to try to create a company to make it happen? That would take me getting lots of people to cooperate with me, and i could not even get a nice woman to make love with me for her enjoyment and mine, so what chance a whole company full of people, for mutual fine benefit? Zilch. I formed the summary analog that I could not sell a tall glass of cool clear water to a man dying of thirst in the hot desert, nor even give it away to him freely to save his life , he would refuse it from me or pretend it and I did not exist. That was the pattern I found, summarized, over and over again.

Wasn’t the Government supposed to fill in, where the individual companies did not cover the bases in their particular profit seeking paths? Well, the Government seemed to be supportive of others ideas; but, for example, they would give grants for individual research, but not to pursue humanity-helping projects per se, but only would give a grant if the person was an underemployed degreed person. A non-degreed person would not be considered for a grant no matter what concept the person wanted to explore. If the person had a degree, the grant could be gotten even if no worthwhile concept was involved. Apparently the government grants were only to help maintain a technologically competent workforce in case of later need by business, and had no interest in actual concept development to help the country or humanity. If an unemployed degreed person wanted to piddle with an idea, fine, but otherwise, forget the idea.

Even corporations seemed to not be dedicated to making a thing happen worthwhile to humanity. If humanity did get helped on a significant way by the activities of the company, it seemed of no interest. The company was a group of people who were all busy playing a big game, much too complex for me to comprehend, yet it was the game, not the product or the guiding concept behind the product, that was the focus. Playing those games was not something i had been able to learn to do, even in kindergarden I just did not get it. The chained violence required in the games, like “Red Rover Come Over” soon proved me incompetent to the max and soon was no longer invited to any team. So to earn a living, i contented myself to doing the grunt work at the bottom of the corporate heap, while I continued to develop my own concepts to help humanity, as home personal projects, unrelated to the jobs for which i was paid, and could do well.

Maximizing profit for the company, and therefore for the stockholders who had no interest in exactly what the company did to produce the dividend checks, seemed to be the guideline. There was not a direct link to human need, except for what leverage the need could be used for to squeeze out some money by the consumer. The consumer could not request the best product for the price, or even any particular product that was needed. The things that got produced were the things that made the company the most profit; the company was forbidden to produce a product that would help people more, if it resulted in less profit for the company. It seemed to me that there were some Big Picture awareness problems going on. Weren’t these people humanity? Wasn’t civilization being built consciously? Were they attempting to make an algorithm work merely by maximizing profit?

Those who I needed to make the things that would greatly help humanity and civilization, best i could determine, were totally engrossed in their game, and quite ignored me, except to sometimes make a lot of noise as if they had something better than what i had proposed, all the while pretending I and my concepts did not exist. And it was only they who could make my concepts into reality for civilization’s benefit. This is their civilization. And mine. And they were ever whooping it up with their games of power and wealth and ego elite, who is better than who, occasionally tearing an adversary down so as to boost themselves up. Instead of helping civilization. If the game is so very distracting from the provision of the essentials of life, I’m not sure I would want to play the game even if I were capable of playing it. Sour grapes? Maybe, but maybe not.

Valentine's Day 2006

Valentine's Day is a special day each year to focus on the courtship romance between man and woman, and thus is a cherished commemoration of something uniquely human.

As the finest and most intense of communication between two adult humans, it is the social glue from which civilization is built. A woman for every man; a man for every woman, that seems ideal. But....

Nowadays that unifying cement has been crumbling severely. The 1960's call of "Make Love Not War" so nicely describes the problem, and solution too. When every man and every woman is regularly enjoying that nicest and most joyful of physical-emotional-intellectual-spiritual interactivity, there is little need to romp in the game room nor on the battlefield.

As there are equal numbers of male and female babies born, it seems reasonable that the intent of the Creator is that they be paired up, all of them. And all of the time, from sexual maturity's beginnings onward. No one left out.

Yet we human creatures are wonderously complex creatures indeed, and one of the effects is that this "pairing" has lots of complexities too. And we have the problem much as other large mammal grooup creatures do, that of "bullying," a leftover from mammal nature, that still romps as human sometimes. The human female made a wonderous invention long ago to cope with that, I believe; let me explain.

Along with such wonders as a large brain, opposable thumbs, upright two legged locomotion, we were also designed and built for lovemaking fully in celebration of joy of union and life. The typical man's physiology is built for 2 times a day, woman's 6 times per day, per measured "resolution time" needed to reset the system. No reason at all for anyone to do without loving. This wonderful invention of the human female no doubt was made eons ago, to wear out the prior "dominant male bully" social parasite on mammal groups, thus enabling the group to retain the other males and thus retain their ability to help the group survive and add their genes, making those groups more powerful than the groups where an aggressively violent domineering male spent his time destroying the other males, killing them or maiming them so they would be easy prey for the predators on the herd; while in the protection of the herd of females which similarly protected their young as well as the dominant male got protected among them.

In opposition to the social parasite of the bully among mammal groups, the human female's great invention of 24/7 sexual avaiability has been one of the most powerful processes uniting mankind harmoniously for the group projects that have built civilization.

But there is lots of "doing without" going on nowadays. What is it that has so crippled, handicapped, weakened so many people, forced us into modes of life so loveless? As I ponder that question, once again this Valentine's Day rolled around once more ... well, there have been the kind of guys that have to control other people; their craving assaults of infinite variety on other men pays off in that the women often are left with but little choice for mating or perish without progeny, so those bullies perpetuate their kind quite well, as they have done since antiquity. And once again, as on occasion at other parts of time of civilization, there is the threat of disease spread that way; this time it started about a couple of decades ago.

Another background factor that surely has applied throughout civilized time, is that there are four ways people perceive their world, and each of them has four ways of interacting with others. The effect here is that in lovemaking, as in other activities, they may be doing what seems to be more or less what others do, but are really experiencing it significantly differently.

And effect of this is that lovers are not all the same. And yet this is very often not obvious; each of the pair of lovers may be perceiving the activity quite differently (beyond the gender mechanism differences) and believing the other person is having the same experience as they are: one person might be experiencing a soaring spiritual connectiveness high, while the other is experiencing an emotional passion so intense, or a celebration of union declared in social position, or even a romping physical sensuality so delicious. Gender has little to do with which a given person typically experiences most intensely. The point here is that it is likely that they are different and each is unaware that their partner is experiencing something else. How much does this matter? The problem shows up in subsequent activities, each believing they are bonded at the same parts of life.

Often people get in relationship, even married, without checking with the other as to exactly what they believe and expect to supply and receive in the subsequent interactivity. Each lives in their own dreamland to some extent. As long as this is perceived as delightful newness to life as a result of doing things together, it works. But these are missed connections, often tiny, yet as the missed connections accumulate along with the frustrations thereof, the individuals of the pair have to forgive more and more, until something just demands attention. The stacked pile of frustrations may be quite invisible to the other person, even not considered a kind of thing needing attention. And it is quite difficult to deal with these accumulated frustrations, because they were originally made up of parts of experience that uniquely are of the individual's way of perceiving life (sometimes called "Temperament") which are not part of the other's way of experiencing life in their natural flow. If a breaking point is reached, the relationship is broken off, and each is dumped back into solitude and even significantly bent out of shape thereby, as a new starting point.

It is not just the bully kind of men that play the game of courtship to "win", seeking only a partner who is wanted by someone else, thus making it a game between the two men instead of really between the woman and a man. A type of woman plays a woman's version of that kind of courtship too. "See who I am out with?" kind of thing. "May the best man win" is another related phrase. Thus courtship becomes much of a public display to others to impress them ... the partner is only a prop in this activity... yet for some kinds of people this can work quite well, if both are into the same game. I doubt that their lovemaking is much different, however; and they do not care. It is the group involvement that counts for them, proof of how great they are, so as to be high in the social status arena and receive the benefits thereby.

So it seems to me that such people would not deeply comprehend the slogan "make love not war," so it could not guide them. What if that kind of people work themselves into leadership positions strongly affecting the lives of the rest of us?

How do women respond to all this? It seems to me that they typically are making effort to attract the "hunks" (often a bully of some kind, unfortunately for the women) of choice, while avoiding the attention of the men they don't want. And putting out there that they "don't come cheap." Creating scarcity produces leverage in that game as it does in other kinds. And there is the amusing witicism about "a woman needs a reason to make love, but a man only needs a place."

So that is what I see when I look out at the world from my matelessness solitude and other related discomforts, this Valentine's Day 2006.

Price vs value-added

Price vs value-added

This is one of my philosophical musings journal blogging entries.

Pondering the contrast between price being established by the value added to a product, versus price being established by what the market will bear, could the preference of the latter mode have long term consequences? Beyond the effects of "karma", that is.

"Negotiative agreement" seems to be able to account for the disparity formed whereby if one gets a dollar for a pound of x, then instead, a dollar for a half pound of x, then a dollar for a microscopic speck of x, it is considered ever better business practice; but if the dollar is received for not even that infinitesimal speck of x, it suddenly is considered a criminal activity: "theft." The difference seems to be that the giving of more for less in return, is made justifiable (and even good expert business practice) by having done a negotiation agreement with the person losing out of comparable value. This seems related to the ancient process of "barter" where people quibbled over price of something sold at the bazaar. Related also seems to be that the process needs to be slow to be acceptable, incremental changes of price for a given unchanging item being slow enough to not be noticed that it has gone from a reasonable price to getting almost nothing for the same price. Or getting the same thing but for an incredibly greater price paid.

Involved seems to generally be scarcity vs. need.

Somewhere in all this I feel it is only moral to raise price only in direct proportion to the utility added to the object. "Value-added" may refer to this. But clearly, the rest of the world of people don't feel this way.

Yet in the real world of people, I notice that people generally enjoy the process of gaming to get something re price, such as at an auction, perhaps archetypal of this kind of activity. A form of competition, a game, involving things (or services to be rendered) vs price.

This "negotiative agreement" process seems to make all business things morally right.