I enjoy ranting my thoughts onto this site.

Here's a metaphor that explains the whole thing that's wrong with our country.. assuming that I'm a decent mechanic I know how cars work I can take apart my car, spread the pieces all over the driveway, then put it back together, turn the switch and it'll turn back on..

 if I cut a dog into little pieces spreading its parts out across the driveway and I'm a really competent surgeon and I know exactly how to reattach all those pieces And I put them back together he's not gonna bark at me. 

There's something fundamentally different between machines and life and we are running our society as if we are pieces of the machine and is if the world is machine and what we create from that is a world in a sense based on the notion that we are and can operate separately

and from that we create education based on the notion that we are separate and we honor and enforce independence and competition 

we create our business environment based on the idea of scarcity and competition and 

our towns and cities are all based on the idea of separation and so we fashion a world on the idea of needing to be significant at someone else's expense..that's pretty much the message  I got to the kid that you need to separate yourself from the pack  in order to be number one and win. We feel we exist fundamentally as singular individuals and only secondarily as social beings. This tends to create separations. It separates you. It tries to make you passive and apathetic. As far as the political system is concerned, It is active as a maximizer of consumption. Our job is not to be a citizen, It is to be a consumer ..this was the great mantra after 9/11, go out and shop.  I think one of the fundamental messages in the marketing scheme of the American Machine Is that wealth and happiness are synonyms. If you want happiness you have to have wealth and you have to buy stuff you know? own lots of stuff. This just simply isn't true. It couldn't be further from the truth actually. Happiness is related loosely to meeting your financial NEEDS but after that it's all the same rodeo. Relationships are the fundamental building blocks of happiness. Like I always say, the richest people in the world aren't those who have the most, it's those who need the least. 

Just some random thoughts on different areas of marality

My beliefs have shifted dramatically in the last 4 years. Once upon a time, I was an absolutist and held many ideals that led me to many, let's say, "moral brick walls". These "moral brick walls" caused me to think outside of the thoughts that were instilled in me as a child. I pictured a world in which was free of condemnation and judgement in others simply because they believed differently religiously. I found I was slowly shifting to a Universalist point of view and almost a utilitarian point of view. 

I believe at the core of every man's spirit (at birth) are certain moral codes that, although apparent in some, may seem absent in others. This seems, at first, to be a flaw in the moral universalists point of view because there are many cultures that share different and varied beliefs: how could there possibly be moral codes that all humans agree on? Many people in these cultures would seem like moral bigots to those of us who hold our More western moral beliefs. This isn't because that person wasn't born with those moral attributes. I believe that these moral codes were stripped from them through the nurturing of bigoted people and the indoctrination of their nurturer's beliefs. Because of this indoctrination, it may seem hard for some people to notice the underlying Universalist ideals that all humans share. This is shockingly apparent even in our culture today. That being said, I believe that the proper course of moral action is to maximize happiness across the human race and govern with the intent of every human being's best interest in regards to joy. 

Most, if not all, humans can attest to the fact that happiness is a much more pleasing emotion then despair or pain. Because of this, I believe preserving the safety and joy of humans should be an objective and universal moral point of view. One positive emotion that you can see in every human alive is the need to be loved. Most humans also desire affirmation from others. 

The more I drifted away from absolutism, the more I realize the blatant flaws in that way of thinking. Because of my religious background, I was subject to a very rigid belief system that gave very little room for moral independence. Religious absolutists have caused many wars throughout history and caused the death of millions of people simply because they looked or believed differently. Religious Absolutism is also the cause for centuries of slavery and oppression all through the exegetic reading of scripts written thousands of years ago. The moral rigidity and the lack of empathy towards non-believers has caused absolutism to be one of the most catastrophic things to the growth of mankind since the beginning of time. 

Another (less heard of) moral code would be moral subjectivism. This moral code is more rare due to the fact that humans have an innate desire to be communal creatures. The need for well oiled, functioning communities is cause enough to dismiss the idea that everyone should come up with his/her own moral beliefs. This would cause chaos among the citizens of the community. With the creation and maintenance of the infrastructure involved in sustaining a community, would come many joint moral decisions and codes of ethics that would need to be accepted and followed by every citizen in order for the community to flourish. Communities have very little room for subjectivism. 

S-Curve

Retro Fun and Games

Summertime in Arkansas

Quarry Lake. Arkansas

December Sunsets

With added Lens Flare

Gazing into the Pomp Sunset