The world seems to oscillate

The world seems to oscillate between the "planet of the apes" and "wizard of oz" modes. On Memorial Day we remember those fallen when heavily into the "planet of the apes" part of the swing.

Conflict and harmonizing-clarifying

It seems odd to me that most people require watching others' conflict for entertainment.

It is said that to sell, an entertainment movie must be about conflict. So how do I, a "harmonizer-clairifier" temperament INFP type, interface with that?

Harmonizing-clarifying actually is related to conflict, because that is what it is doing its thing about. The "conflict" part is implied, because that is what needs the harmonizing-clarifying.

The conflict part is uncomfortable to me; maybe that is because it triggers the harmonizer-clarifier urge to start ramping up to find means to harmonize the forces that had become polarized into conflict's playouts.

Conflict can consist of the energies of nature's forces, spectacularly in the release of earth strains exhibiting in the form of an earthquake; or the thrashing of tornado's twirling wind upon objects it sweeps across on the ground. Conflict can be of social type, such as two cows in conflict over who gets to eat from a particular patch of juicy grass. Social conflict seems to involve at least three items, not just the two who are visible; for example, the entertaining spectacle of two men fighting over a woman actually involve the woman too; the larger form expressing as two football teams in stylized conflict by-the-rules, and the scantily-clad cheerleading women dancing and waving at the sidelines, the women also part of the conflict, symbolizing those who are admiring the hunks romping in the field, hunks they will be mating with as the winners, which will they be? And in the football game, the fourth participant, the audience, the folks on the grandstands, who are enthralled by the conflict going on in the arena. Perhaps the football field, the arena, is also part of the conflict, it symbolizing territory being defended and territory attempted to be overrun, the football being the solitary token of proof of situational status. Even the umpires who work to ensure the rules are followed, to keep it all from becoming an all out brawl resulting in dead bodies scattered about, mess someone will have to clean up, and fewer players remaining to entertain the audience next time. The football game in this example, is also surely a "teaching tool" for the audience, a lesson in how to forcibly attempt to take goodies from others yet have limits on what can be done in that activity, lessons that hopefully will help somewhat civilize them all.

My own response to the "football game" (archetype example used in this rant) exists on several levels. One is the motion and activity gets my attention, neurology for avoidance of collision, kind of function. Another is a bit of resentment that those attractive women are all out there for the romping hunks, none for me and my kind who could have enabled a finer and more abundant life for all. And the most significant one is the puzzlement of why all those people choose to participate in that kind of conflict, instead of using their attentive energy for obtaining similar needs of territory, status, mates, resources in general, to harmonize together in projects like my "KESTS to GEO" centrifugally-stretched hoop around the earth eccentrically connecting ground with GEO orbit, the hoop being a self-supporting lifting bridge for building solar power stations high up in GEO, up there also building total recycling facilities to rid us of terrible toxins now instead being scattered in our nest down here; building high spaceports in GEO efficiently from where to reach out to vast resources in the solar system, and room up there to build artificial gravitied shielded cities just like we want them to be? Resources aplenty, no mere patch of specially juicy grass for which to squabble: the wandering rocks of the asteroid belt have enough raw material to build the equivalent space city habitat surface equal to a thousand whole earth surfaces, for example... does anyone understand that is more than a patch of juicy grass that once munched is gone? And room to build and grow, really lots of that out there in GEO and far more beyond that out further in the solar system. Even some planetary and lunar surfaces on which some kinds of life could be placed and sustained. That is conflict directly with deprivation itself, by striving together so that there is vastly more to be had for all; yet that seems to be an alien concept to those who see only the conflict of who is the stronger and takes all the goodies, loser wilts and perishes, kind of conflict. What ugliness, why do people prefer to choose that kind of path?

Well, I guess my viewpoint is merely my harmonizer-clarifier temperament expressing its functioning. That is the song it plays. And note it also leaves me sitting out here by myself, mateless, the women who are the instigator of it all, still choosing to focus on which hunk shall "win" them through strife against each other, instead of the men who could lead them to build paths to resources vastly beyond all the goodies this planetary surface alone cannot provide.

Ah, a satisfying rant. Something feels clarified to me. I avoid noticing too thoroughly, however, that the world out there is unchanged. No mountains being moved here, no cities to thrive in GEO being prepared, not resulting even in enough wind being stirred up to wiggle a leaf on a tree.

A familiar street sign

When it seems I have gotten totally lost, and struggles have gone on and on, it is nice to suddenly come across a familiar street sign, one I have seen before, finally something not so strange as the rest of the places. The familiar name on this street sign is... "You can't get there from here."

Being a "recluse" works fairly well until...

Some folks who are like me need to keep a low profile, the term is "recluse" I think. It is a way to survive when one does not know how to do the social dances that most people seem to have been born with ability to do, and compulsion to be engaged in with others. Yet one still has the needs for food, shelter, interesting things to do, and a good woman to love each night.

Being a "recluse" works fairly well until someone decides he/she wants something that you have or want. Then the social dance is supposed to start and the "winner" gets the thing. Refusal to participate in the social dance for rights to ownership, apparently is taken by some kinds of other folks as abandonment of the goodie they want that you already have or want and appears available to whomever. This particularly happens when it is a woman to be one's partner and mate; some men think that all women belong to them because they are winners at something, say football or other thing where men pit themselves against other men. Clearly to me that seems they were not born with the stuff needed to be civilized, they just were tamed enough to function, but their bully nature lurks ever. Or something like that, who knows exactly what.

To possibly alert those who come later, this advise is for those who go for the "recluse" option, living in peace with one's neighbors, no need to be ever showing who is better so as to get the bigger piece of the cookie each time. Plenty of cookie to be had by all, why waste time and effort fighting over the cookie scraps when plenty more cookie is awaiting to be made?

But for some folks, the fighting over the cookie pieces is what counts, not the cookie scraps itself. Anyway, sometimes it seems that way. One of the tricks that the elitist bullies use is to use their intelligence corruptly by arranging for the legal system to do their dirty work for them, so as to righteously trounce the recluse. The general pattern is to commit a crime in such a way that the "evidence" will point at the recluse, with the intent that the recluse then be dragged terrified out of his peaceful nook and be wreaked upon the jaws of justice, ruined, there for all to see what naughty things the recluse had done and now was righteously being punished for; and the elite instigators smirk among themselves, how powerfully intelligently clever they are, and don't any of you guys squeal or the same thing will happen to you. To do this, apparently they spend a lot of time studying the legal and forensic systems, like a screenwriter preparing a story to happen. Being elite, their wealth and power gives them lots of time to do such things, not needing to do the constructive work needed by the overall system that enables their lives. Spreading the word that the recluse is a child molester or rapist works real well (even though those are clearly "bully" kind of activity fantasies, not those of gentle Aspie recluses), as well as claims of "doing drugs" which also makes the neighbors shun the recluse even more, thus less likely to get to know the actual truth. It makes juicy gossip and is nearly impossible for the recluse to counteract, even when it becomes obvious to him what the nature of being shunned is pointing at, outrageously false as it is to him. It becomes even more difficult to get a girlfriend, for example; exactly the purpose of the bullies who then don't even have to bother to go socko on the nose of the recluse to show who is winner of the gals, since the bullies have caused the gals to be afraid of the reclusive Aspie who is wistfully looking at the attractive gals.

A more difficult problem facing the reclusive Aspie seeking a good woman as mate, is his lack of social moxie can get used by some women to trick the guy - men are not the only ones that sometimes have a cunning treacherous nature - and the ways of some women are deviously treacherous indeed, amazingly creative, knowing the intricacies of the system. Yet most women are just living life, and surely could benefit by relationship with a loyal Aspie man, reclusive or not, and those women are indeed the most wonderful thing of all, just like they look.

We "Aspies" tend to take on the reclusive life, so beware. The old games the non-Aspies play with you often are of the form of "getting left holding the bag", "taking the fall", "sucker", and just plain getting "set up to take the rap." And even more amazing, the general population goes along supporting those tricks, seeming to want to believe that the recluse is "bad"... and perhaps realizing that putting the "bad Aspie" down will at least stop the "bad" things from happening ... one way or the other.

And I suspect that the "normal" bullies actually believe that they are really being righteous by doing these tricks on Aspies - reclusive Aspies anyway - because they seem to believe ... that the boyhood fistfights and later more refined contests that establish social hierarchy position, really justifies their claim for much more than their share of the goodies; and thus the recluse, having not participated in that position-establishing sport, has no right to any of the goodies and especially to any woman as mate. No matter how well the reclusive Aspie has quietly created ways for better civilization and fine survival of millions of people; the only thing that counts is place in pecking order, according the actual operating principles, I have found.

Nonetheless, humanity surely is worth saving.

Why did the German people allow WWII to start?

When I was a child, I had a question re why Germany did not rid itself of bunch that took it over for war purposes; that bunch brought on terrible grief for the German people and wreaked terrible senseless damage to lots of people in other countries. Why did the German people allow their country to be used to do that?

By the time I was in kindergarden, America was at war. My formative years were in awareness of war's spectacular effects, even at the fairly sheltered level of childhood. Suddenly no sugar for my morning's cereal; a bit of honey instead, not all that bad. Gas for the family car was rationed, stamps had to be used to be allowed to buy gas to make the car go. Some kinds of foods were also rationed, there were food stamps. There were long lines to buy certain kinds of things. My mother had to stand in line for many hours to buy a pair of stockings. In the rare times we went to the movies, the intermission consisted of a newsreel showing spectacular scenes of air warfare that had happened recently. It was the way the world was to me as a boy, not knowing anything else. Many of my toys were embodiments of warfare stuff; the toys I made for myself out of balsa and glue and paint using my treasured X-Acto knife set, often were models of warplanes and guns, symbols of exciting action of the time... although some also weer of the western Colt sixshooter and imaginary spacecraft too.

What little I knew of the work my dad did indicated much of it involved getting the war aircraft made and tested for use. Although much of life also was involved with surviving severe asthma and we moving to arid areas thinking it would help the asthma problem, I recall one place we lived where a noteworthy part of my father's work life involved being on the very first test flight of every other P-38 that took off - a super fighter plane not noted for safety - this was a small fleet of special P-38s that were fitted for two people, the second seat was for a radar operator and dad was in that seat testing the radar functionality, he being one of two people responsible for their inclusion in the airplanes, and so the two people took turns flying on the first flight of each of those new special aircraft, to be delivered for nighttime recon in Europe.

The war seemed to be the horrid creation of Germany, who had conned a couple of other countries into joining in on the takeover effort, Italy and Japan. Germany was said to be a nation characterized by bunches of super big athletes called Storm Troopers, a bunch of super snoops called the SS who spent their time watching the German people and kidnapping them at home to never be seen again, and super competent scientists and engineers devoted to making war paraphenalia like V2 rocket bombs.

I was also dimly aware that my family name was of German origin way way back, generations here in America, and generations before that in England, but somewhere way back there the Cline name was of German origin, it was said, so surely Germans were not intrinsically bad. "Cline" was derived from the word "klein" meaning "small or little" in the German language. We were nice folks. Why were others of German origin so rowdy, some even infatuated with massive destruction and urge to control others?

Then the war was over. Gradually I became aware of a different kind of world. News told of the division of Germany between our country and the Soviets, who also had taken a beating by the Germans. The whole country was in ruin and the conquerers not in a good mood, understandably.

Years went by and much was put out of mind and some forgotten. Some forgiveness happened. The Germans were not the only ones who who could mangle and destroy, such people were everywhere including in our own stomping grounds. Yet they had to be kept from taking the place over, or same thing that happened in Germany would happen elsewhere. Someone had too wisely said that "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" or something like that; the availability of war potential was simply too attractive to those who ... were of mind to use them on others, who knows what creates those minds, bullies suprema.

So the question formed out of the haze: why didn't the German people put a stop to the bunches that were stirring up war? If they had done that, the suffering of the German people would not have happened, nor the tragedies that were heaped on others around the world in the craze to conquer others.

Sometimes one needs to be careful about what one wants to know, I now realize.

A constructive history of mankind

A constructive history of mankind
By Jim Cline on 20080505

One viewpoint of mankind's history, a constructive viewpoint, is that as population grew from Kenyan lands, new tribes were formed that were on the outskirts and eventually encountered very different kinds of environments like coastal areas. When having expanded higher up north where the seasonal colds brought winter inhospitality, migration north and south began to be routine per seasons.

At each location they had expanded into, they would hunt out all the food in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. A large enough area and small enough tribal population, nature's rejuvenation could make it self-sustaining, but as population grew and/or nature's efforts to revive was significantly less successful some years, eventually someone thought of the idea that deliberately helping nature revive to re-supply the food sources, would result in a longer term sustainability. Perhaps even dangerous forays into neighboring territories were necessary to gather some living samples of foodstuffs which they had entirely devoured to extinction in their own territory, re-planting tasty forms of plants, and herding around tasty forms of animals, enabled nature to become far more productive for those kinds of plants and animals per area occupied, thus agriculture was started. A new kind of human activity then became very life-promoting for their kinfolk, involving not just knowledge of where plants and animals could be acquired through hunter-gathering, but also of what kind of things provided those food sources with that which they needed for life, including soil, water and sunshine, as well as the spark of life that reproducing samples somehow provided. Deliberate, consciously directed activity was utilized to dig holes, put small plants or seeds in the holes and adding fertilizing chemicals to the soil refilling the holes, then ensuring rain or deliberately supplied water and sunshine was applied to the growing plant as it became large enough to supply food for the people growing them. Similarly animals were observed as to what they needed to thrive, such as food, water, shelter from severe weather, protection from other predators, even good air to breathe were not supplied b=enough by nature, much like was needed by the humans themselves, so was more easily observed and tended. Fencing off specific family territories defined a resource territory for growing and harvesting; surplus of what they grew there could be exchanged for speciality items grown by neighbors. They could take their surplus farm products to a group-designated location in which they could exchange foodstuffs and even products of handicrafts and live plants and animals for others to grow, all done in the bazaar scenario as barter transpired and folks went home with kinds of things that they themselves had not grown nor made, bringing variety and diversity to their life options when back in their home territory, family farm. They thus had more resources for better living and having more children, which in turn eventually provided more hands to do the farming; more resources were needed so more conscious conservation of resources was needed, such as making containers for rainfall, terraced areas for growing plants and animals where they could not live before, and some control of shade and sunshine where each was most needed.

Although humans could thrive in a wide variety of climates, their plants and animals could not do so as easily, so transportation means to provide surplus food and handicrafts from areas so far away as to have different ecological zones that enabled different agricultural products and associated handicrafts, were contrived to bring one's farm products to far away places where they were more highly appreciated, would provide exchange for the goodies unique to those far away places. Some people specialized in this transportation, enabling the farmers to stay home and the traders would do intermediate barter for them, bringing goodies from far away places and people with different handicraft skills, to the local bazaar for exchanges; symbolic items became useful in this intermediary effort, coins of gold and glass beads, seashells and even highly treasured consumables such as the coco seed in the Americas that was used for both monetary symbolic exchanged and yet also could be used for the highly cherished chocolate brew.

Meantime, the work to plant, sustain and harvest the farm foodstuffs, was found to be a commodity itself; one could hire other people to do some of the work, some kinds of animals could be used to drag along the ditch-digging plow to make ready for planting seeds, windmills could lift water up for irrigation. Where found, waterfalls could have some of their falling water's mass kinetic energy to push around water vanes which in turn could turn the heavy stones used for crushing the grain into forms directly usable in food preparation; energy itself became noticed as an important factor in providing the necessities and luxuries of life.

It was noticed that the study of the factors needed for sustenance of farm plants and animals was itself useful, and extended to the study of ways to convert energy from one form to a more needed form to do a specific job; science became a usefully productive field,and some people were more apt to do that than other kinds of things needed. Specialization grew, as the multiplicity of factors involved in each field became more than any one person could learn and utilize; specialization analogous to that of farm produce unique to different ecological zones. The accumulation of these various ares of understanding of what does what, and the copying of these knowledge accumulations into new students, was an endeavor in itself and educational systems were created, schools built, letters of certification of skills learned were issued for the graduating students. Since much of this learning was not done hands-on out on the farms and mills, the learning experiences needed to be done symbolically, using dioramas of scenes, and small samples of earth, plants and animals, but increasingly it was found that placeholders of sorts that merely had defined characteristics of the farm products natures and handicraft components, symbolism became far more easily trained into other people and then the manipulation of the symbols as education, then the re-deployment of the symbolic items back into real-world components, and the long range delivery of such symbolic components and processes could travel far easier than the physical items themselves, long range communication developed along with the monetary symbol exchanges was developed, symbols traceable to ownership and work done, yet symbolic utilization enabled the exchanges among people to happen far more efficiently than the actual physical back and forth hauling would have done. Only the end results of the symbolic interactions among people and their environments and resources then needed hauling.

some handicrafts such as the making of windmills for pumping water and waterfall mills for grinding grain, became the focus of some, realizing that natural forces could be used to get things done more easily and more abundantly than people and their labor animals could do them; the study of energy processes led to steam-driven machines to power factories, high temperatures to melt ores into shapes of tools, and eventually the invisible small forces of natures magnetism and static sparks was also explored and found to be able to be linked to transmit energy along wires to far away places with almost no effort, and so the energies extracted from windmills, waterfalls, combustion-driven steam engines, then combustion of fossil fuels, was converted into torrents of the electrical energy to pour efficiently through long range wires to places of utilization of that energy to do work, such as lighting of homes at night, machines to drill and grind to make new handicrafts.

\More people became specialized in the activities of symbolic processing and use of energy from distant sources, industrial civilization was the focus, yet all ultimately supporting the agricultural efficient use of sunlight, water and soil chemistry and support, the diversity of lifeforms interplaying there on the farms to produce the lifestuff needed by humans, as well as the lifestuff needed by the various intermediaries in the artificially supported food chains.

Shelter structures for providing artificial environments for people became shelter for their farm animals and shelter for their agricultural products, artificial environments contrived to maximize food production, and mankind gradually took over the task of enabling the food-efficient conversion of the elements into foodstuffs as powered by the sun's incoming energy and using the micro-assembly machines that nature had originally supplied by living creatures of a vast diversity intermingled food chains that had extended throughout the world, and now made far more efficient by the learned conscious direction of people.

In the process of beginning agriculture, plants and animals that were not considered edible by people, were destroyed and the soil and sunlight and rainfall resources were then used to grow desired types of plants and animals. This had interfered with the great system that nature had created over vast time periods, yet they all were needed in the larger picture; but humans were specific living creatures and thus were dedicated to their own survival and reproduction exclusively; as they learned that their welfare improved greatly when also they used their efforts to enable the thriving of foodstuffs nearby, a process was started that could only end result in the entire takeover of the conscious support of the planetary ecosystem, the planet being a huge stew of substances stirred by the 24 hour a day rotation of the planet exposing materials alternately to the incoming energies of sunshine and the night's outgoing of discarded energy out into space at night, and by the lunar tides stirring the oceans, and temperature gradients from slant angles of sunshine bringing seasons to specific areas on the planet. This whole picture now needed to be included in the husbandry of all the planets living systems for mankind to thrive.

As mankind re-built this planetary world toward limits of improvement and expansion, looking upward and outward to more efficient locations for gathering the solar energy and re-radiation of waste heat energy residue from life processes out into space, the means of transportation became the focus. Aircraft and lighter-than-air balloons could only go so high in the thinning atmosphere as altitude increased; rocket propelled vehicles could just barely get to space, expending nearly all of their energy just to lift the fuel's mass itself needed for the trip. Thus only very small payloads could be lofted into orbit around the planet, small items that could provide efficient communications and distant wide field observation of the planet. Even a few people were lifted by rockets to live for short durations in space orbiting the planet, and fewer still to visit the Lunar surface, yet they proved it could be done and people could live in such places if their needs were supplied there. Energy and its use in transportation as always was the required focus of attention to provide the means for expanding life up to more efficiently utilize the resources of space. And also, each such new transportation system had to be established across territories already claimed and utilized by others; and continuing occasional interactions with the local fauna happens with trains plying their railroad tracks across the vast distances. The extreme environments such as huge mountain chains and wide rivers needed great effort to enable the trains' safe easy passage routinely across these remote areas; the new transportations systems bridging the earth surface with high earth orbit would similarly face these kinds of difficulties. Yet the opening up to large areas of space to the teeming activities of mankind's thriving depends of the creation of the new forms of transportation. The principles of several such transportation means had long been in existence; the anchored earth tether space elevator, which would use the earth's rotation to swing around a weight attached through a along tensile structure, providing a structure which could be climbed up and down to reach the space high above the planet, was one form. Another form was based on centrifugal outward force of moving parts of a large structure, traveling in a loop, was another, one form would circulate between two points along the ground, its centrifugally out-flung loose part spanning high into the sky, possibly up to the upper fringes of the atmosphere, where spacecraft could be lifted along itself on the way up and loosed from up there. A more complete system would use the centrifugal force of material circulating in a closed loop entirely around the planet, an eccentric loop touching ground at its low point and reaching high into space above the other side of the planet, ideally up to the earth synchronous orbital altitude, where material it lifted could be place and would sty there with little or no added energy thereafter, except for station-keeping. In fact, that was an ideally efficient energy use, thus a place for civilization to build hugely, utilizing the endless huge incoming constant solar energy arriving there to power everything, and using the free fall balance of energy and hard vacuum there for materials processing including industrial recycling of waste materials back into pure form for re-building, no longer needing nature's garbage processing systems to do the job, which would have require nature millions of years to do itself. So, as mankind took responsibility for the well-being of all the complex diversity of the processes that made for life abundance, success won.