Losing Weight and Solving the Obesity Problem

Yes, obesity rates are up all over the World, and probably by now even in France. The News Media blames an increasingly sedentary population, that is, that modern automated computerized devices are saving us from a lot of the activity that used to keep us all slimmer. Kids don’t go out to play anymore but only push push push the same few buttons on their video games. So we are all fatter than 20 years ago.

I also suspect another major contributing factor, and that is the increasing popularity of Italian pizza and other pasta products. I hear people blaming the Fast Food Hamburger franchises because their menus are so calorie rich, but I honestly don’t believe that so many people are actually making a steady diet of hamburgers and French fries. They are really not that appealing. Yes, they may be convenient, and people who must hurry their lunches may be eating hamburgers and French fries for the simple lack of having any other choice. But people actually call out for pizza. They crave it enough to pick up the phone to place an order, and then to sit there starving while they wait for it to arrive, and then to pay exorbitant prices for it when it finally gets there. They must think it is awfully good. And then consider what it is, essentially… it is a thick bed of calorie rich carbohydrates, the easiest stuff for the body to assimilate into body fat, with a thick slathering of cheese fat, which the body will actually use for its energy so that all the carbos can go straight to body fat. If one were starving and needed one particular meal of food to keep one going for the next several days, then I can’t imagine a better food then a pizza pie, but that is not how it is taken at all. People add it as a snack to their ordinary regimen of three meals a day. So, of course people will get obese.

Anyway, lets now address the problem of obesity and ask ourselves why that if people are getting fat, that they continue to keep eating? They can’t possibly suppose that if they cut back on their eating, that they will instantly waste away in a moment. A step on the scale or a look in the mirror should be completely convincing that a between meal snack is the last thing that they need. But these fat people are eating anyway. Why? Well, they probably crave the satisfaction. And for at least that moment they would rather feel good, and eat, then look good and be healthy.

They would say they are hungry, but that is simply not the truth. It is a misuse of words. Now, I have experience with fasting, that is, with not eating for days on end. So I know fully well that the feeling one gets between meals is not “hunger”. Hunger is the feeling one wakes up with after the second day of a fast. What one gets between meals is “I feel like eating something”. It is a restlessness. It’s one way of staving off the boredom of an empty existence. But it’s ridiculous to call it ‘hunger’. To call it ‘hunger’ is to make a silly excuse out of it.

I would like to pretend that I am the Master of such feelings, and that I would never eat simply out of boredom. But I get the same impulses as everybody else. But that is why they invented Diet Cola. If you are bored, then pop open a Diet Cola. Oh, I hear that the cola ingredient itself isn’t the most wholesome thing in the World, and that there should be some popular Diet Non-Cola that we could all take, but until some Marketing Genius finally figures that out, if you want something simply because you want something, then have a Diet Drink. It will drown you before you gain any weight from it.

Moving on, let us suppose that you can finally control all of your snacking inclinations and you are still gaining weight… Oh, well first, we probably need to discuss that most people don’t realize they are gaining weight. Most people don’t studiously track their weight and it creeps upon them slowly, with dress sizes and pant sizes expanding larger in slow non-frightening increments. One can even convince one’s self that the clothing manufacturers are sizing differently then before, that Size 12’s are now smaller then before, or that a 34 inch waste is not as elastic as with the old cut. People must think that they are about the same as they grow fatter, until finally something like a Doctor’s physical forces them to acknowledge an additional 30 or 40 pounds that they had previous been in full denial about. People talk about the unlimited power of the Human Mind, but so far the only signs I have ever seen of it are in regards to limitless denial.

Anyway, once one becomes aware of a continuous drifting upward of weight, even after the urge for careless snacking has been addressed, what should one do? Well, the obvious thing to do is to count calories. Put a list on the refrigerator door and add up everything one has eaten all day long, and sum it up to a total. After several weeks, then sum up all the calories ingested during that entire time, and divide it by the number of days. This will give you your average daily caloric intake. Now multiply that number by .7 or 70% and that is your new daily allowance. Cutting 30% off of your daily caloric intake just might take you from the category of slowly gaining weight to slowly losing weight. Maybe.

People sometimes expect too much from diets. They cut 30% of their calories and expect that they will see phenomenal results instantly. The truth is that one does not see ‘phenomenal results’ even from complete fasting. Let me try to explain why. The Human Body is a marvelous survival mechanism. When you are eating too much, the body realizes it, and both allows for an increase in the metabolism, and for some great inefficiencies in the digestive track – one burns more calories then normal and poops out more calories then normal. So when one reduces caloric intake by 30% there is a chance that the body may only switch both the metabolism and the digestion to more efficient rates of operation. It may be entirely possible that you might still gain weight as the body kicks in with this greater efficiency.

It is something Dieters see all the time. They complain about it. “I diet and diet and NEVER lose any weight”. They begin to tell people that they are simply meant to be fat, pointing to the fact that they eat way less than even some of their skinny friends. But it is all just silly excuses. Yes, the body of a chronic dieter will indeed get very much more efficient, but matter is never created purely out of nothing. To get fat one still has to eat more calories than the body burns. One should simply continue counting calories, and continue tracking weight loss or gain, and keep cutting down that Percentage until one finally notices a trending down of one’s weight. Eventually the trench line must go toward the negative side, even if it is just for the loss of a pound or two a month. Indeed, it is rather a huge victory! Instead of creeping upward, one is creeping downward. How many people nowadays can claim that… who don’t live in Darfur.

Oh, remember not to discontinue your calorie and weight tracking simply because you have established a declining trend. What many people fail to take into consideration is just how much exercise is involved in being fat! For instance, I have lost 40 pounds from my peak weight, and so now whenever I go up the stairs with two twenty pound bags of Cat Food, which is a very demanding task for me, I have only to pause to think that THAT was the very same way I used to go up the stairs when I was carrying nothing but my own fat butt! Lugging around a Fat Body is a tremendous exercise and it burns a great many calories every day. What happens when one begins to lose weight? Well, quite automatically one’s daily requirement for calories is reduced – by being less fat one burns less fat. So to continue trending down in weight one needs to continue cutting into that Percentage.

What finally begins to discourage many dieters is that they stop believing their own math after a while. They cannot believe that they can exist on so few calories. They think they must be doing something wrong. Again they look at what their skinny friends are eating and suppose that their comparatively extreme restriction of calories must be unhealthy. There are no few well meaning crusaders out there trumpeting that Dieting amounts to having an “Eating Disorder” and are actively campaigning to make Chunky and Plump the New Normal… the New Average, so as to discourage people from what they consider to be unhealthy dieting. However, it all flies in the face of what we know about what a healthy Human Race is supposed to look like. In the State of Nature healthy individuals need to be able to move about without getting in their own way. Bodies should normally tend toward the Athletic. Telling people that a wide belt of fat about their middle is healthy, well, it is true only to the extent that it proves that the body is healthy enough to produce and store excess fat. But the next time you have to run away from a tiger or a bear, tell us how healthy it is to have to be tripping over one’s own fat gut.

So, no, don’t be blown off course by not believing the truth of your numbers. Double check your math if you have to. If your tabulations say that you must eat less than a thousand calories a day, or even 800, in order to lose weight, then that is the Truth. Yes, the various books all say that ‘normally’ people burn about 2200 calories a day – more than three times what some dieters require, but remember that such numbers are derived from studies involving those skinny friends of yours who eat everything and remain slim – with their super high metabolisms and cigarette smoking and digestive tracks that poop everything out two times a day. Those NORMAL numbers mean nothing to us dieters. We simply are no longer ‘normal’ in that sense of the word. Our metabolisms are different, more refined, more attuned. The numbers on your refrigerator door are not wrong! Just keep to what they are telling you. The numbers prove that you are in no danger of wasting away any time soon!

Oh, but there can be the problem is trying to figure out how one can actually eat so few calories. There are several schools of thought on the matter. Some people insist upon many very small nibble meals a day… to keep up their strength while eating such a small total of calories. They swear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well, that is what they swear to, but I couldn’t think them more wrong. As the French say, eating gives one appetite. Eating a few bites would only make me hungry, well, hungriER. And the idea of keeping up one’s strength is just silly. Nobody is dropping over from fatigue or passing out. Just think of all the starving people in Africa. Yes, finally as they approach the day they drop dead of absolute starvation they will begin to show obvious signs of weakness, lethargy, faintness and decline, but almost until the very end, they will keep going. I know for a fact that I can fast on through three complete days before I need to consider any significant weakening. So it just seems silly that a person should watch the clock throughout a single day to make sure of getting enough food not to waste away. Silly!

But one thing I have noticed about fasting, and that is that real hunger tends to impinge upon sleep. If the instinctive body intent upon Survival has to choose between sleeping or eating as a one or the other kind of choice, then the Body will come down on the side of eating, and hunger will over-power the urge to sleep. The reason why fasting Monks pray all night is that they can’t sleep anyway. Oh, while we are on that point, the reason why fasting monks are celibate, or can manage to be celibate, is that real prolonged hunger cuts back on the libido. Apparently, in Nature, the Sex Urge in proof in itself that one has not only enough for himself, but enough left to share. Really needy, hungry and troubled people are not likely to be tapping each other on the shoulder, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, what this brings us to is that if one is down to a remarkably small number of calories a day and is wondering how to distribute the eating throughout the day, what I have decided upon for myself is a smallish snack when arriving home from work – a bowl of soy-nuts, raisons and almonds, followed by a small dish of pretzels. Yes, it is calorie rich, but the nuts have all the necessary very good oils that that the body really does need, and the raisons have all those admirable ingredients which have convinced researchers to suppose that drinking wine is a good thing, but without the seduction and troubles of dealing with alcohol. The few pretzels are a taste of what is ordinarily to be forbidden – that is, simple carbohydrates, but I keep them few, and they really are so very tasty… in a ‘forbidden fruit kind of way’. Remember, it is okay as long as they are taken up in the Calorie Count, and all essential vitamins and minerals, proteins and fats necessary for good health are accounted for. Then in the evening, a few hours before sleep, I have a nice little meal to bring up my calorie count to its allotted total. Yes, they say that a meal just before sleep goes entirely to fat storage. Well, so? Not having eaten all during the day, it is obvious that I had lived off fat storage to begin with, and so putting some back on probably would not be such a bad idea. And eating just before sleep appeases the feeling of hunger enough to make it possible to fall asleep. And a good sleep is one of those healthy and necessary things. And I feel fine during the day, and my weight is trending downwards. Obviously it works fine.

I have tried small meals throughout the day, like those other people, but it is so difficult to control portion size, that the total number of calories consumed more often then not exceeds projections, and then so much eating only makes me hungrier. While everybody will finally find what suits them best, do not exclude the possibility that one might be able to live on simply one meal a day. And don’t get fixated on the notion that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. Yes, it might be, for giving one the energy to work with. But if one is getting so much energy from one’s food, then went exactly is one supposed to be burning off the excess fat that one is carrying about?

Oh, this brings up the subject of Fat Burning. I used to be a Marathon Runner and know something about Fat Burning. First off, yes, the body really does apply more energy from available food carbohydrates, in the digestive track, then from Fat Storage. Also, and few people know this, but Fat Storage is not the only energy that the Body is storing. The Body also stores a kind of carbohydrate energy called glycogen which is embedded in the muscle tissues themselves. During a Marathon the body will hit heavily upon both digestional carbohydrates and the glycogen storage which typically allows one to go strong and super fast for about 90 minutes. But even for World Class athletes, a Marathon goes on for more than two hours, and for ordinary people it often takes over three or even four hours. When strenuous exercise thus exceeds 90 minutes then energy derived from fat burning comes into play. But it is something of an elaborate and slow process for the body to break down stored fat tissue and derive energy from it, having to implement all of the chemical processes required while on the run, so to speak. The energy output is nothing even close to what can be gotten from the glycogen and carbos. Marathoners call it ‘hitting the wall’ when all the carbohydrate energy has been expended, and the body goes over to that slower process of fat burning. Yes, the Marathoner can keep going, but just at a much reduced pace. Oh, by the way, you know, there are races called Ultras which take up where Marathons leave off (that is, 26.2 miles), going on up to 50 or even a hundred miles. They have found that female runners, with their slightly higher percentage of body fat actually begin to have an advantage over their male competitors after a certain point. While they can run only slowly on body fat metabolism, the men after having burned all they have, well, they necessarily have to come to a complete stop, eat something, and wait for it to kick in. It is the women who, slow and steady, win such Ultra long races.

Anyway the point of that dissertation on Fat Burning is not that it gives one less speed then do carbohydrates and glycogen, but that one can keep running even on just fat storage. Yes, one cannot run as fast as usually. In fact one can only run rather slowly. But running is running. If we are only talking about going to work to do a job, then such Fat Burning should be plenty enough. Sure, the Boss will not get a Sprint out of us, but if the concern is only that we keep moving throughout the day and so that we cross the line at Close of Business still moving forward, then there should be no complaint. For day to day operations Fat Burning provides more than enough energy!

But, yes, there can be legitimate Eating Disorders. In order to dodge any blame from that direction, remember not to do anything too extreme. When cutting your percentages, never cut more than 30% at a time, and then continue to monitor how you feel. Never let your WILL POWER override how you happen to feel. Some people really do have too much Will Power. No, you don’t have to worry about simply feeling hungry – that is not really a problem. But Light Headedness IS a problem. Fainting IS a problem. Never allow such problems to go unheeded and untreated.

Now, sometimes one can feel light-headed not so much from having extremely low blood sugars, as from having mineral imbalances. Remember that while you are restricting your caloric intake, you must doubly emphasize to yourself the importance of maintaining a well balanced diet. You must come to the point of seeing Food as a necessary medicine. You should have some idea of everything your body needs in regards to vitamins and minerals and supply them naturally with your diet, using supplements only as a kind of bet hedging. You shouldn’t entirely rely on pills as one can never be sure of their quality or digestibility. That being said, potassium is an extremely important mineral for the body and one of the easiest to exclude by a too rigorous diet, so it would not hurt to have a few potassium pills handy, or most Sport’s Drinks are rich in potassium.

Oh, there is another possibly serious problem which may indicate the onset of an actual eating disorder, and that is to not know when enough is enough. You see, it is possible to get quite caught up in your dieting, not just as though it were simply one other daily routine or an interesting hobby, but it may begin to serve as the primary way you define yourself to yourself – as a person who needs to always be losing weight. This is understandable. At first one may have a great deal of pride in losing weight. This pride translates to self esteem, and perhaps one begins to need continual reassertions of the good feeling by seeing new lower numbers at your daily or weekly weigh-ins, even long after one has gone through the Normal Range of the Body Mass Index numbers into that range which is now indicating you are beginning to be too thin. Well, any time any number raises a Red Flag, it should be of concern. Yes, you can be too thin even if you can still find some shred of fat somewhere still under the skin. Some Fat Storage IS normal and even healthy. If you should get a fever, or should you need to suddenly engage in some Marathon-like activity, it is this normal layer of skin fat which will keep you going even after you have burned up whatever sparing meal you may have in your stomach. So, please, do not allow yourself to track any lower than any of the Normal lines you may find in any of the literatures, as you do not need anybody to be yelling at you that you have an ‘Eating Disorder’, and then for them to be right about it. It is best that these people should never be right.

However, that being said, the more usual problem for Dieters is to set too high of a weight goal for themselves, and then to find it difficult to ever get under it. Look at it this way – when a person is up at about 240 pounds then it seems most reasonable to set a goal at 175. Honestly, they would kill to be down at 175. But what happens when they finally do get down to 175 and realize that they still have a fairly ‘healthy’ roll of fat around their middle, still have a little double chin, and the other people in the Running Club are running their 10K’s 6 minutes faster than they are and talking about that ‘tricky last 15 pounds’ when they are all down around 160 themselves!? Then one realizes that 175 is still somewhat ‘Fat’. But the problem is that after so much goal setting and anticipation, it is almost impossible not to pull back on the diet after its declared end has been achieved. It is hard to keep oneself fighting after the Victory has already been won. Anyway, what typically happens next is what we can call the ‘Oprah bounce’ – one achieves the diet goal and then starts going back up.

Anyway, there is a good thing about keeping that “last 15 pounds” in mind and that is because it largely prevents one from taking that ‘Oprah bounce’… by instantly re-establishing a new weight-loss goal, even if one is not entirely and completely enthusiastic about achieving it, it might at least prevent one from ballooning back upward as so often happens with dieters who achieve their goal. Just never set a “Last 15 Pound” goal under the Normal Line. When you get that close to ‘Perfect’ then you can annoy all the other dieters by referring to “those last annoying 5 pounds”. Everyone will hate you! Congratulations!

This brings up the point that a diet can never be temporary. Remember what we established about the metabolism, that it attunes itself rather rapidly and completely to the conditions the body encounters. The body grows accustomed to dieting – the metabolism becomes super efficient, and no single calorie is allowed to go to waste. One can never go back to ‘normal’ eating, not without ballooning up in weight. In order to level off on one’s diet, one needs to do what one has done all along, and that is to keep counting calories and adjusting percentages. No, just because one stabilizes at a certain weight, it does not mean that hunger will go away. No feeling of satisfied contentment comes upon the leveled off dieter. Just think about it, that if Normal was Enough, then there would not be Fat People. Hunger is always with us.

Now, to be fair to Oprah, we must realize that much of her eating is not really completely within her control. She must have a huge calendar of events she must attend, and we all know how eating is involved in nearly all social functions. Dinner Parties. Drinks after work. How long can Oprah continue to say no, no, no to everybody for the sake of a diet when everybody is wowing her on how fine she looks? Eventually she takes the drink and begins nibbling the pastry, and some of the pounds return. The good news is that the next time she insists that she still must be watching her weight, that they might begin to believe her.

Oh, there is another problem that chronic dieters have, and that is Reward Behavior. Now, typically everybody has enough common sense not to reward diet behavior by eating – one does not order up a serving of fries as a reward for forgoing a slice of pizza… that would be stupid. But often we have about the same thing happening as regards to exercise. You know how so many people think it is a very important component of the Weight Loss Strategy to increase one’s level of exercise, and it is. Often increased exercise is enough by itself to handle the complete demands of a diet and to put one solidly on the weight-losing downward trend. But one sees time and time again that people sabotage themselves by giving themselves rewards for a good exercise routine – having a beer afterward, or eating a good spaghetti dinner after a ten mile trail run or something. One needs only to remember to do the math. Even the most strenuous workout can only eliminate about 500 or at the most 600 calories in an hour. Since a pound of fat contains almost exactly 4000 calories, that means that an hour of the most strenuous exercise only cuts about an eighth of a pound of fat. A four hour trail run up the side of a freaking mountain would only cut a half pound. Running a Marathon… a half pound. Does that really seem like something to celebrate. And at what cost? A slice of pizza and a beer more than puts on the weight lost by an hour long workout, and the extra calories would demand that you do the same workout again tomorrow – but without Reward! A big spaghetti dinner with a glass of wine wipes out a complete marathon run. So, keep in mind that Reward Behavior – food and drink in reward for exercise behavior – is almost always self-defeating. Let your Reward be becoming slim and trim.

And remember that some calories are more insidious than others. Especially calories from alcohol. You know, it is a mistake to suppose that most fat comes from fat. The food industry tries to make us believe so by emphasizing non-fat and low-fat products, but the easiest weight to put on is from simple carbohydrates – sugars and alcohols. For the body to turn dietary fat into body fat, the fat must be entirely broken down into blood sugars and then reconverted again into body fat. It is complicated and even burns up energy just in the process. But simple carbohydrates such as sugars and alcohols are almost instantly converted to body fats, and the very body fats that are most conspicuous, coming to rest on the belly or the butt. Then there is the more threatening aspect of alcohol, and that is that it impairs the judgment. Few people can really say no to a second drink. Oh, and perhaps the most frightful thing about drinking is that it is projected by the Media as so elegant, as all these svelte and beautiful Hollywood Actors are continually being presented with drinks in their hand. You know it is not true… that anybody in their kind of shape has to be drinking only seltzer water. Let the truth be known that the only Hollywood Actors who really drink are the dumpy, pasty, sickly looking ones. Hi Jack. Hi Bob.

Now, I have one last word about dieting, and that is that it should be seen as something of a moral duty. The planet is soon approaching, or has even passed the point where there is enough food for everybody. If it really is true that some people are starving because there is a simple lack of food, then how can anybody justify eating twice the calories they really need? How much food could be saved and set aside for the Starving if everybody were to drop down to their optimum Body Mass Index Number? It is just a guess, but I am supposing that 40% of the World’s food simply goes toward making fat people even fatter. Yes, I realize that if everybody were to drop down in weight, that everybody would feel a little bit hungrier than they would otherwise. But, hell, screw that! At least they would look good!

Oh, and let me remind you that the feeling of being hungry is not such an entirely bad thing. You know, I have heard from old people that the last thing to go before death is the appetite. The truth is that you are really in trouble when you aren’t hungry anymore. So stop seeing hunger as a negative and start seeing it for what it really is – the feeling that healthy people have of being alive. No one is just hungry, but hungry to live! It doesn’t mean you should shove a piece of food in your mouth. Instead, do something! It will burn calories.

Health Benefits of High Colonic Enemas

Note from the Future: I found I was washing a lot of very necessary minerals from my digestive track (probably calcium most of all), which was giving me extremely low blood pressure and Night Cramps in my legs. So don't overdo those High Colonics and try to minimize the amount of water used in your enemas. Aim at only evacuating the lower colon. For the higher colon and the small intestines -- let them do their job of absorbing nutrients and minerals.

I had written several essays previously, “Colonics vs. Enamas” and “Enemas Will Save Your Life and Ease Hemorrhoids”. It must be becoming apparent that I am still somewhat deep in my researches on this topic, and I am not quite finished with the subject yet.

Since the last essay I discovered that after one first enema, that if I fill up a second time with more water, that there is a significant production of more fecal material, something I had not expected. I had reloaded more water only to test for the kind of claims that are made for Colonics, that the bowels become clean and that the water begins to run relatively clear. That more fecal matter was produced came as a surprise.

Remember, originally I was using about 8 bottles of water, using a 7.5 ounce bottle which probably was only squeezing out roughly 6 ounces of water. That amounts to about a liter and a half of water. That was enough to make me feel full, or full enough, as I did not wish to go too far. But when I began to do second fill-ups, I decided I could use more water to make up for being relatively empty of fecal matter. Then it was that I realized that I could fill up with more water without really becoming full until about 12 bottles, or significantly more than two liters of water. I found that when one is really full, one knows it, as there comes the natural urge to expel the water. Now, usually I try to measure the feeling and stop just before being completely full so that I can have time to lean over and let the water wash about in my insides a bit. Anyway, I have found that by using more water, up to about the point of having the urge to evacuate, that more material is evacuated. What I suppose is happening is that the water is reaching up past another bend in the colon.

Also, previously I had been taking the enemas once every two days. At first I was feeling clean for both days. But as my experience with cleanliness increased, apparently I became more sensitive to it and I was soon able to discern the difference between the first day and the second day, and began to feel that there was ‘product’ collecting, if not in the lower colon, then somewhere in my bowels. So I began experimenting with daily enemas and found that on almost every occasion a significant amount of material washed out.

Now, the daily enemas using more than two liters of water describe slightly differently then I had described before, in my previous essay. Firstly, the lower bowel is generally completely clean, as the first evacuation spasms produce only relatively clear water, a bit rusty, but with no fecal material. Not everything comes at once. Typically there are about 4 main spasms with some time between each. The first, as I said, is usually entirely of water, the second from a higher section of the bowel will be a mix of water and some fecal material, the third spasm will contain the largest part of the fecal material, and then a last spasm of fecal material, and maybe a small last spasm. Often, during or between the water and material spasms, there will be a significant amount of air being expelled – more air than I would have expected from the air bubbles and air spaces from the enema bottle and nozzle, so perhaps it is a good deal of methane.

Anyway, the daily enemas have had no adverse effect upon me, and the feeling of being perpetually clean is a welcome feeling. Also, there is the absolute certainty that one can go about one’s daily business without ever having the unexpected interruption of having to find a bathroom. A daily enema requires about 20 minutes. I have found that time can be saved by taking the little rubber one-way valve out of the bottle nozzle. It is there to prevent the water backing up into the bottle, but it does slow down even the forward flow. It would really save time if one had one huge bag, or a water hose, but the bottles work.

Now, everyone needs to remember the main points, and that is NEVER to strain, and never to message the lower abdomen, to help push the material down. As far as I can see messaging the abdomen only serves to push the fecal material solids into the linings of the colon and to cause bleeding. If one does not strain and does not message the lower abdomen then there will not be any bleeding. Straining causes the colon to distend out of the anus – that is, if you strain you will literally begin to poop out your guts. However, that is not the end of the world. If one applies a desiccant such as witch-hazel and alcohol to reduce the swelling, then one can easily push the intestine back up where it belongs. Ordinarily people are squeamish about this portion of their colon distending out (they don’t want to touch the ‘dirty thing’), and they leave it out, where it swells up, making it uncomfortable to sit, and it becomes rather subject to bleeding. Scarring develops and I suppose this is what we come to refer to as hemorrhoids. It is all very preventable.

Now even after a careful enema with no straining, there may sometimes be a very slight distention at the anus, but if one wipes with witch-hazel, all that is required is to press on the area slightly and it all flattens out and there is no subsequent swelling, tenderness or bleeding. Oh, even the most gentle paper is more abrasive then cotton, and so it is probably best to simply pad off the most part of the soil with paper soaked in witch-hazel, and then to finish the cleaning with cotton soaked in witch-hazel, assuring that any distention is pushed back into the anus. The cotton can be saved after first soaking in a strong water-bleach solution and then washed in soap and water and hung to dry. Again, I am rather convinced that this procedure of Enemas can save one a good deal of medical trouble, if one has even the least concern regarding hemorrhoids. Also, I have almost forgotten to mention the greatest danger involved with straining, that it is perhaps the most prolific precipitating cause of heart attacks and strokes – old men were never intended to push out huge bricks of impacted material out of their tiny little butts, and live. The reason I forgot to mention it was that it has now been months since I experienced any straining, thanks to this regimen of enemas. I may well live to be one of the few old men that aren’t found dead on the pot.

Furthermore, I had recently read that capsaicin, the hot stuff in hot peppers, turns on the genetic Death Signal in cancer tumors which make the tumors die as though from old age so that they subsequently just wither away. Now you would think that it would have been long ago noticed if people who ate a lot of hot peppers had a significantly lower incidence of colon cancer, but the way science works nowadays, nobody wants to say anything until somebody is willing to issue a grant for a full study, so real world anecdotal evidence is tossed out since nobody is getting paid to notice it. In science as in everything else, it’s all about Money. Nobody does anything without a Pay Day. Anyway, the point I wish to make is that a clean colon is probably a healthy colon, or perhaps more healthy then a colon that is forever packed full of old decaying impacted fecal matter. But additionally, if one can tolerate the taste of hot spices, then a sprinkle of cayenne pepper powder in one’s daily meal might also be a good additional prophylaxis against colon cancer.

Profit Motive Media and Culture Collapse

Remember such famous books as “1984”, “Brave New World” and “Atlas Shrugged” that united in the shrill proclamation that Government control of the media would debase us all and cause the immediate collapse of Civilization. The books were very effective in making their point, as, nowadays, we are all almost entirely convinced that the only danger that could possibly address Culture and Civilization would have to come from the direction of Government.

Yet, if we were to seriously take a real hard look at the weight of influences on our Culture, then the role and influence of Government would be almost miniscule. The Government produces no books, no movies, no music, no television, and no news. All these influences come from entirely private sources – the Private Media.

Now, we could speculate on whether or not the Private Media may have some horrifyingly awful personal agenda and is intentionally laying the propaganda seeds that could facilitate some sort of take-over, or we could simply wonder whether our worst worry need only be regarding the effects that the Profit Motive could have on all of this. As they say in the movies, it may be nothing personal at all, but could be purely a matter of business.

Ordinarily when the Profit Motive is defended, we hear that it is all about people buying exactly what they want. What could be wrong with that? Producers are rewarded as high sales generate high profits. It is all perfectly just as they describe it. Yes, but that is only one end of it, that money is made from higher sales. But what they rarely brag about is that more money can also be made by selling a cheaper product at the same rate, that is, increasing Profits by cutting expenses and overhead costs. This is called increasing the Profit Margin, the differences between the cost of production and what is being charged to the Public.

Now, considering that everything in The Private Sphere is done entirely in view of the Profit Motive, while we could charitably assume that some concern is going toward providing us with a product that we truly desire and wish to pay for, still it is impossible not to acknowledge that all those dedicated businessmen would consider it as some kind of a crime of malfeasance against their Shareholders to not do everything possible to extract the last possible squeak of Profit from every deal they make. We have to assume that they are edging the Profit Margin against us. Would they intentionally and deliberately debase, cheapen, and even pervert our Culture to make a fast buck? Well, no, not perhaps consciously. But with their eyes only on the Money, it may be simply a matter of Culture obeying the laws of a kind of Gravity, whereby if it is not lifted up then it must inevitably fall. Well, continuously cutting back on the Quality of the various Medias in order to increase the Profit Margins on all the books, music, art, News, and Movies can certainly not be expected to be much of a wind beneath the Wings of our sagging Culture, can it?

Well, they tell us that Savings are always passed on, but really? Every newly published book costs about $25. CD’s cost $15. I haven’t bought a DVD yet, but I am willing to wager that a DVD of “Gone with the Wind” probably costs the same as “Stupid Comedy II”. Everywhere we look it appears that Prices are fixed, while the Producers are looking for two clear avenues for expanding their Profits – either selling more or producing the same amount but at a reduced expense. We can expect them to pursue both angles vigorously or they never went to Business School. Things get cheaper cheaper cheaper, not just in cost but in quality. It can almost be a definition of Modernity, a progressive cheapening of everything. The best example here is perhaps with architecture – the buildings that encompass us. Weren’t they all better a hundred years ago, with stone and style. Buildings are all just cheap boxes now. But really everything is in decline.

I wrote essays before about the decline of the Music Industry. Allow a short review – inside of a hundred years we went from the Highest and Most Ethereal Orchestra and Opera Music down through Big Bands, and then Swing Bands, to scraggly rock and roll bands to the point where we have no Bands at all anymore, but single individuals who replace Music with blathering profanities against a background of techno-rhythms -- Rap. The Producers’ costs are as minimal as conceivable, not to mention that almost no time and trouble is involved anymore in Production. Simply consider the amount of work it takes to assemble and coordinate the workings of a great orchestra, against the effort of finding some solitary young man in the Inner City willing to take pay in exchange for cussing in rhyme. Simply as a matter of Business, it was inevitable that there would be such a decline. Indeed, the same decline can be traced in every area where Culture was placed at the mercy of the Profit Margins.

I once heard a story about one of my favorite authors, Raymond Chandler, one of the founding deities of American Tough Guy Detective Fiction, that he had gone broke in the Depression and was looking for a new means of making money, and while he had written for pleasure, decided to write for money. He considered writing Fine Literature but went to a bookstore and noticed that while he stood there nobody bothered to disturb the Fine Literature rack, already a few customers had made purchases from the Detective Crime section. In the interests of sating his hunger, he decided that the better business plan would be for himself to write detective fiction. Now, as an aside, Chandler wrote detective fiction much as though it were Fine Literature, but let us take my point to be that an otherwise fine man took a purely businesslike decision to take a Cultural Step Down simply in order to make more money. Multiply such decisions by a million and one gets a Cultural Collapse.

But this does raise the point as to whether people are indeed getting exactly what they want. Yes, they are. But we need to consider the perhaps sinister angle of this wanting in the General Public for lesser and lesser levels of quality. Remember, it took Music almost a full hundred years to achieve its utter collapse into primitive Rap, that is, where the money spending Public ‘wants’, that is prefers to buy Rap before all other genres and qualities of Music. Literature also did not fall in a moment. Decadence in Painting has not been straight down, but has been on a slope. What is happening is that Public Tastes can only be gradually debased, and only so much can be done with each Generation. Every child grows up seeing in his own home and schools the levels of appreciation shown to the various Arts, and he is given the kinds of exposure and education in these arts so that he can understand and then enjoy them. High Culture requires this kind of exposure and then is sustained by it.

Certainly there can be moments of Cultural Disaster, such as the French Revolution and the Great Depression, when the Class of Patrons for High Culture were greatly diminished or terrible distracted. When this happens we may have one or two Generations that are stifled in their Cultural Educations, and then the result is a general decline in Taste. When this happens then the Media Businessmen must see it as a huge opportunity as it is so much cheaper to please debased Tastes then the Best Tastes. No Businessman would ever fight against the lowering of Standards but would see it as an opportunity of expanding his Profit Margin.

Of course no businessman would wish to be seen exactly in the guise of pushing a cheaper product, but remember that Businessmen have virtually mastered the psychologies and sciences of Public Relations and Advertising. To facilitate the rollouts of cheaper debased cultural products they have several avenues open to them; they can attack the higher culture as elitist and snobbish, or associate High Culture with whatever Ethnic Group is currently in the least favor, or they can present the new Cultural Low Point as some important popular innovation or expression… a People Pride sort of thing.

I remember how the Jazz and then the Rock and Roll Culture used to ridicule anybody who still patronized the Orchestra and Fine Music Scene. Was this ridicule entirely genuine, that is, rooted in any true mean-spiritedness of teenage boys and young men, or was it engendered from some well considered and well placed Media indoctrinations. A Generation of young people who first see Movie Characters ridiculing high culture, and then there favorite TV characters ridiculing high culture, might eventually think it quite normal and even expected for themselves to ridicule the same high culture. Then, while this Generation still secretly understands High Culture perfectly well, and could even enjoy it in private, they have effectively been made ashamed to admit it, and could never buy anything in a store that could not pass Public Scrutiny which would decidedly frown upon anything of the old High Culture as being ‘square’, ‘un-hip’, ‘un-cool’. I am sure I am not the only person who remembers keeping certain records aside, so that when visitors looked over my collection I would not have to answer questions about my elitist and snobby tastes or whatever. So it is that Cultural Decline can be enforced by this kind of fear of social pressures. I wish I could entirely blame the businessmen for this, but suspect that the dynamics of Group Identity may have something to do with it, but, then again, I wonder to what extent businessmen have gone in deliberately packaging and marketing these various Group Identities. For instance, the Black Trench Coat Killers at Columbine High School… didn’t they buy their entire wardrobe down at the Gap right off the rack?

Oh, there is one more consideration concerning the decline of Culture, and that is that among the poorest and most uneducated classes there was never much culture to begin with. Now, generations ago, these poorest and most uneducated classes were simply ignored by the Businessmen, largely because the costs of any kind product was out of the range of such profound poverty. Well, books have been cheap for sometime now, but the lowest classes had trouble reading and illiteracy rates are still higher than they should be. But nowadays costs for most cultural products are at an unprecedented low. Indeed, nobody even bothers to pay anything for music anymore. Online piracy makes it effectively free.

What we have is a paradoxical reversal of the influences of Rich and Poor. Centuries ago only the Rich could pay for Culture, and they were very demanding about the standards they set for. It was very expensive and they insisted they got what they paid for. But now that every book, record, CD and whatnot is being sold at the same low prices, the multitudinous numbers of the Poor and Uneducated wield a huge advantage over the so very few educated and cultured customers that pay the same price as anybody else. It does make me wonder that the Rich don’t once more decide to patronize the best artists as they had before, irregardless of the illiterate and uncouth masses, but I suspect that the Cultural Propaganda that debased the Masses had overshot the target and that the Modern Rich are as ignorant and boorish as any street punk. I could even guess that in the finest Ivy League Universities, the young men and women are practicing Rap and their hip-hop dancing, that is, when they are not reading Hemingway. It had taken Europe, France in particular, a thousand years to ascend to some level of Culture. Unfortunately a great deal of Culture was murdered in the Revolutions. Culture came to America but obviously never took deep root, not in any field as far as I can see. The Masons who took over, New World and Old, after the heads rolled never pretended to be anything more than simply bourgeois and allowed the Money Dealers to dictate Culture to them, letting Art Dealers set Prices and Tastes, listening to Hemingway when he declared that stupidity of expression was all that literature would ever need in our brave new world, and listening to self appointed Music Critics talk up cheapness instead of relying on high bred Tastes that had taken generations to develop. Mozart and Beethoven were paid only when they pleased, and their success probably has as much to do with the developed Tastes of their Age as any personal talents of their own. They were understood – that is the remarkable thing about it all. For instance, we can only guess what kind of garbage Mozart or Beethoven would now have to resort to in order to be successful on the modern scene. Nothing great today would even be understood. They would hoot them off the stage, wouldn’t they? Or maybe I do not give Beethoven or Mozart enough credit, as perhaps they might be especially good at finding words that rhyme with ‘bitch’ and … ‘truck’ and could be wonderful at pleasing the modern audience. But it still remains that it would all just be perfect crap.

Anyway, Culture and Taste need to take a progressive climb, with generation after generation coming to higher levels of understanding and appreciation. It’s not something that money can buy, or even wants to buy. Sometimes Big Money is just coarser and more vulgar because it can afford to be.

Well, now that we know that Culture is in a sure decline, should anything be done? We have Private Individuals who are making all of the Cultural Decisions in Society based on no further understanding than the ease and convenience with which they can make the fastest money. It may be that tastes are being deliberately debased which would be the worst and most vicious exploitation of people. And not only are the arts affected, but morality and ethics as well. For instance, I went to the movies this weekend and saw not just one but several movies that cast slacker degenerate characters in the lead roles, probably so that the slacker degenerate Generate could go the movies and be able to feel good about their worthless derelict selves. Oh, and then there is Hollywood casting more fat people simply because so many people are obese nowadays… it is all makes for so very unhealthy an example, but Hollywood wants its sick and disgusting audience to feel at home.

Every Western Capitalist Society is caught deep in the grips of this decadence and irreversible Collapse. China is appalled by it and is making efforts to draw some kind of line in the drifting sands, but while they are encouraging more and more the same Profit Motive that had corrupted the West, they will see the same kind of decline in their own Cultural and Moral Views. Islam, while it has its own problems with the infighting between tribes and sects, can’t help but to see the spread of Western Decadence as a huge problem. And the West pretends to be surprised that Islam does not want its daughters to be just as slutty as Madonna, or its young men to spend all their lives chasing speed-freak strip-dancers in Clubs owned by the worst scumbags imaginable, where the worst people make the most money. The West argues that Freedom’s Vices must be taken with its Virtues, but somehow the Vices seem so much more in evidence.

Honestly, I don’t think anything can be done. Civilizations collapsed before. The Decisions of Private Wealth are almost always against the Common Good, and in the late phases of Civilization too much power is always in the hands of Private Wealth. Never before in History has a Civilization in its late phase been able to rally behind its Government enough to take power back from Private Wealth and assert some responsible and well considered controls in order to back the return of Culture and Education. As I said at the preface of this Essay, we are now too broadly and deeply conditioned into always always always seeing the Government as our enemy, so that it becomes almost impossible to consider even for a moment that Government might be the only institution that could stand even the least little prayer of offsetting the all powerful influences of Private Wealth.

Yes, yes, Government is sometimes corrupt. But that is only sometimes. But Greed is ALWAYS corrupt. History shows us that it is not impossible for Government to sometimes work in the interests of the People, that a Public Servant might actually sometimes do his job. But Greed is always, well, Greedy. The very nature of Greed, a declared an unrepentant Vice, is, well, Evil, and it doubles itself in Pride. Greed has never been anything else but selfish, self-seeking, and ultimately debasing, and entire Civilizations are swallowed by its Profit Margins.

What the Second Amendment Really Says

The American 2nd Constitutional Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Notice that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to say about any individual right to bear arms. Yet, every time we hear some Right Wing spokesman talking to the press on this particular point, they are emphatic about presenting the 2nd Amendment as guarantee for every individual to bear arms. The logic behind this is the logic of repetitive propaganda, that if it is said often enough, and not really countered by anybody, then everyone will assume it is true. And thus far the strategy seems to have worked, for, whenever the Media speaks of the 2nd Amendment, it seems to be in the context of supposing that they are speaking of an absolute right for each citizen to bear arms.

But the Second Amendment only speaks of the Right for a Militia to bear arms. Even then there are two provisos. The first stipulation is that the Militia must be well regulated. The second stipulation was that the primary focus was to be the maintenance of the Free State, which we can take to mean the duly constituted Government.

In the 18th Century the word ‘regulated’ meant ‘disciplined’. Any reasonable Court could render the reasonable opinion that a Militia could be considered as “well regulated” only if it were officially constituted under Government Control. If this was not clear when the Constitution was written, it has ever been made clear since, as there have been so many instances where not well regulated private militias did so much more harm than good concerning the security of free states. We only have to consider that almost every terrible revolution and dictatorial regime was put in place by gun toting Militia groups.

Indeed, America’s own Civil War was a product of what could be described as out of control and undisciplined Militias. What else can you call it when half of a Nation’s Army takes up arms against the other half. Certainly somebody is not obeying orders.

Then we need to wonder about how Might of Arms figures in a Free State where one would expect the Power of the Vote to be the all powerful arbiter of the Free State. Yet, it is more likely that Militias take up their arms when they are not pleased with how the voting had gone. The South rose up in violent rebellion because they lost an Election. Is that really how the American Constitution was designed to work?

It perhaps would not be so bad if Militias were the expression of Individual Liberty, that is, of each of its members well held political convictions. But again History shows us a darker seamier side about Militias. The truth is that whenever unemployment among young men becomes significant, then Militias become hotbeds for easy recruitment. If young men have a choice of sitting around going hungry and doing nothing, or getting one meal and a free drink with the chance of carrying a gun, then he will chose the one meal, the free drink and the gun, that is, he will join a Militia, and often enough the first Militia that will take him.

So, how are we to interpret the Second Amendment? Well, what it says is that the States and the Municipalities have the right to arm their Police Forces, just as long as these police forces recognize the ascendancy of a Chain of Command going up to the Federal Government. They may have guns to fight FOR the Free State, but not against it. Discipline must be maintained.

Yes, the second clause of the Amendment, after the two stipulations concerning Militias and the Free State, says that the rights of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. Well, we have only to refer to the Second Amendment as a product of Political Compromise to see how we can reconcile such contradictions. We always need to remember that the 2nd Amendment does not come to us from the Bible, written down by Saints and Prophets. Instead the 2nd Amendment comes to us from committees of divided politicians, even then split in party faction, with the distinction that every single one of them acted to murder British Peacekeepers employed only to protect property and the Public Safety. These Founding Fathers would only be Terrorists if we could see them only in the contemporary light. But even then the 2nd Amendment was not an unqualified right to wield weapons for the purposes of Sedition and Treason, as they had wielded them, using the euphemism “freedom” to justify the slaughters they committed, but obviously a sizeable delegation of cooler heads were able to hold out for those stipulations concerning well regulated Militias and the service to the State. Even in the earliest most naïve days of the American Experiment in Democracy, it was realized that there was a danger in allowing the broad and unqualified distribution of weapons to unauthorized and unaccountable individuals who could be expected to sometimes use them to defy the appointments and decisions of duly appointed Government. Guns could not be permitted to become the effective veto against the Vote. There is no unqualified right for any individual to engage in Political Murder, no matter how much money his lobbyist is able to funnel online.

Yet, if one is to believe most arguments made for the 2nd Amendment, we would have to believe that these people assume that Political Murder, decided merely in terms of individual conscience, is perfectly justified and constitutionally condoned. One has to wonder why any murderer is in jail, when all they would have to plead is that they killed for purely political considerations, exercising their 2nd Amendment rights to carve out the Free State according to their own idiosyncratic reasons. After all, if we are free to bear arms, does it not follow that we are free to use them as we see fit? Yes, we hardly ever hear the argument taken this far, though that is exactly where it goes, but there are enough people living by such logic to keep us all dismayed and appalled. One might not have overly loved the Kennedy’s or Dr. King, but their murder should hardly have been equated with Free Speech as the 2nd Amendment is supposed to so construe it.

What is really bothersome is that Second Amendment cases have gone to the Supreme Court on several occasions before, and everything was decided exactly on political grounds, kowtowing to the gun toting Special Interests. Even the liberal judges shied away from discussing and then implementing the actual wording of the Amendment. You see, the National Rifle Association funds almost a greater proportion of election campaigns, of both parties, than even the Zionist and Health Care Lobbies put together, and so everybody in Washington, to keep the money flowing, pretends to a greater or lesser extent that the Individual Right to bear arms is absolutely guaranteed. And yet after a careful reading of the Amendment a Judge with any real balls could order the disarming of every private citizen in America without un-dotting a single ‘I’ or uncrossing a single ‘t’ of the 2nd Amendment.

Social Dynamics: Priests Vs Warriors Vs. Money

(forgive me for the rusticity of this first draft…)

Firstly, Civilization is impossible without morality, or at least a very comprehensive application of social controls designed to protect food surpluses and stored seed grains. These come down to us from the Priestly Castes.

Explaining the existence of Warriors is far easier. Bullies with weapons learn that they can steal, and if they partner up with enough other bullies, they can largely get away with it, losing out, when they do, only to other bullies, or, as they prefer to be called, other gallant warriors. You see, we are often compelled to call them as they like, or they will beat us up. It makes it difficult to speak directly and honestly of a group that traditionally wields so much duress and menace. One must resort to big words so that they do not detect the criticisms.

Looking at History we can perhaps be a bit surprised at how successful the Priests, and Religion, had been in being able to manage the Warrior Classes. In India the Aryans placed the Priestly Brahmins at least nominally above the Kings and the Warriors. In Egypt, Rome and Japan the heads of State expressed their role in Religious Terms, either taking on the mantels of Chief Priest or even that of God. In Medieval Europe, struggling to re-civilize itself, the Warrior Knights could take up the sword only after a religious initiation, that is, certification.

History shows us some colossal failures in this regards, where the Priests had utterly failed to control the Bully Element. For instance, Islam. Islam is an instance where the Warriors themselves tossed out the Priests and effectively wrote their own Religion, espousing Conquest, Pillage and resort to the Sword to solve every little problem, and then only for the guys that wield the sword. And so it is that while Islamic Societies may struggle toward Civilization, enlisting Scholars and creating Schools that do their utter best to submerge and sublimate their Anti-Religion’s core doctrines, doing their best to make a Religion out of it all, still, while the original texts exist, any Barbarian can easily make the Fundamentalist Appeal to return to the Roots of Islam and Kill Kill Kill. And so it is that Islam is doomed to forever struggle in the Sea of Barbarism. A Religion of the Sword, while it may never completely die, will ever be in the throes of death. This is both sad for themselves, as they are their own worst victims, but also for anybody who must have any dealings with them. They will always have some excuse to whip out their swords. Yes, while other cultures are often violent, few other cultures have gone so such a great extent as Islam to so completely give violence a Divine Endorsement. But to be fair, Modern Zionism is doing its utmost to catch up. Why, we hear on the news that Israel supposes that their Zionist Soldiers are the most Moral Solders in the World, and that is because they only kill people who obviously deserve to die, that is, non-Jews.

Anyway, to be fair to everyone, all Religions have some mix of Barbarism, that is, some surrender or compromise the Bullies that inevitably shoved their way into the process of establishing Doctrine and institutionalizing Tradition. No, we do not have to necessarily have to put on our Theological Hats and comb through the Doctrines themselves. We can simply look at the Societies and Civilizations involved, asking ourselves two questions – what was the highest Population Density that this Civilization was able to achieve, and how long did the Civilization last. If a Civilization can last for more than several hundred years while maintaining stable urban populations, then it has what must be a moral religion with some actual influence with the people.

Now, there are Social Systems that are great at getting started. For instance, China has a tradition of imposing enough Law and Order to protect property rights, and so Wealth accumulates quickly, as well as population, but then it quickly erupts into severe Concentration of Wealth at the top and full blown rebellion at the bottom, culminating in Barbarian Invasion, as the Mongols never fail to sense when things become vulnerable on the other side of The Wall. Paradoxically, China, as a territorial jurisdiction has benefited from these cycles of Boom and Bust, as each new wave of Barbarians effectively annexed their Barbarian Territories in with China as they found it, making China larger every time it was ‘conquered’. Oh, remember, Barbarians effectively have no culture, but as a rule accept the culture, even the Religion, of the People they conquer. So it is that Jesus may have been correct about turning the other cheek, as it may just be better not to put up a fight with these Barbarians, but to let them in and then just conquer the Conqueror – swallow them up with Social Assimilation. Oh, but remember that it only works if you happen to be more Civilized than they are… that is, be sure you are not the one who is a Barbarian. Culture rushes into a Vacuum, and More flows into Less. If your Invader has more books than you do, then you need to worry.

Now, talking about China, it is a process of development, and we cannot positively stipulate that they will never innovate enough of a Moral Component in their Culture that they can give some longevity to their Civilizations. Indeed, we might be hopeful that now, after their Communist Revolution, that they might be able to guard enough against what had always spoiled them before, the extreme concentration of Wealth. You see, their Government is still very strong. Remember, despite what the Conservative Libertarians say, no Society has ever collapsed from too much Government, but always from not enough. You see, what happens is this, that when Wealth Concentrates too much in Private Hands, then private individuals in effect override Government or even act to bankrupt and incapacitate Government, exactly the way Republicans behaved so recently in America. A few Rich People acting only in regards to their own interest allows for the collapse of all other systems and institutions of Social Infrastructure, and Civilization collapses. If China can only keep its Government one notch above and in control of its Wealthy Oligarchs, then it is possible that the World may see the most enduring of any Chinese Dynasty in History.

It would be so much easier, though, if they had a compelling Moral Religion, that is, if their Rich Oligarchs were co-opted into Moral and Ethical Belief System that they simply complied with voluntarily.

There are 3 very powerful factors involved in the mix that makes up a Society, and one can hardly point to the strongest or the weakest, as in the course of History each has had its rises and falls. The Three Factors that contend for influence are Moral Religion, Force of Violence, and Money. Ordinarily we would suppose that Force of Violence is the ultimate trump card, but Violence has so often been either seduced by money or converted by Religion. It becomes like the Rock, Paper, Scissors Game. We could dream of the day when Religion would be more influential than Money, but so far in the History of Civilization, a History in which no Civilization has ever yet succeeded, but all have fallen into ruin, the mechanism of Collapse has been identical throughout, that is, Concentration of Wealth. Civilizations rise as Religion sublimates and manages Violence, but fall as greed undoes all the Good.

What does this say about Religion? First I would suggest that Religion needs to focus upon its most important enemy, that is, Greed. You know, I suppose it is all a part of some vast conspiracy that the Wealthy Classes assume control over Religion just to focus Religious attacks upon questions of Sex and Lifestyle. But when you think about it for even a moment, how do questions of Sex and Lifestyle have any impact at all on the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. People will say that Family is the basis of Civilization, but really this is not true. The Civilizations that had been most successful before were not based upon the tiny little Nuclear Family, that is Mommy, Daddy and the Kids, that we hear of so much today. The Nuclear Family is just one step away from treating everybody as discrete individuals. In prior Civilizations people were organized in Extended Families, even Clans, where no mere father had much of a say in anything while Granddad was still alive and kicking. Indeed, some of the older Chinese Regimes had made quite a good use of the strong tendency for the Chinese People to organize in Extended Families and Clans, where they quite frank about imposing Collective Responsibility upon the Families, that is, if they could trace a theft or any crime to any particular family, they would not fuss about which particular individual was responsible, but would exact a toll against the entire Clan. So it was that the Chinese Families learned to more or less police themselves. It was good for the entire family that nobody became a chicken thief. Now, how does that compare to our nation of self serving individuals. Yes, we have only ourselves to worry about, but look how all the crime has added to our worries.

But all of the modern discussions of morality and family values has nothing to do with any useful moral enforcements. Crime and Greed are left on the sidelines, laughing at these useless battles that are probably only served up to be distractions. While we are whipped up into a frenzy to combat sexual peccadilloes, Greed and Crime are given the Blessings of Protestant Predestination, the Doctrine of the Wealthy Classes that say that anything that makes a person wealthy is evidence of Divine Grace, and that an All Powerful God reserves Worldly Wealth as the Reward for His Elect, and that Poverty is the first sign of Damnation for the Reprobate. Remember how Islam was doomed by its attachment to Violence. So it is that the Protestant West is likewise doomed by its marriage to the notion that any success with predatory Greed is the sign of Divine Election, as nothing is more sure to throw Civilization on the rocks of Ruin, as the most recent global economic troubles may be seen to indicate of. Just as we cannot allow the Warriors to make up their own Religion, extolling Violence at every turn and for their own exclusive advantage, so it is that we cannot allow the Wealthy to design their own Religion, as the Calvinists and Republicans have done.

But when we look for any sign of a Moral Priestly Class in this modern world, that could possibly exert itself, do we see anything that could possibly fill those boots?

I know that we are all conditioned to suppose that the Modern Enlightened Scientific Skepticism is supposed to be our Salvation, but remember that this Modern Scientific Skepticism has now been with us for almost 4 centuries now, and has rather pointed the milestones of our Civilization’s collapse than stirred us toward any calmer waters. As reasonable as I ever wish to be, I must concede the point to the Atheists that God cannot be proven, not, that is, by any scientific method, with its double blind studies and control of every variable. The Atheist will win that argument. But what the Atheist does not plan for is that Morality and Ethics rest on just such a foundation as did God. In Logical Terms, Ethics and Morality are no better than Aesthetic Preferences. Everybody KNOWS of some distinction between Right and Wrong, but only as mere preferences – with all things being equal, then people will do the Right Thing. But in every case that MATTERS, things are never equal. Where Self Interest is involved, when Ethics and Morality are only based upon Aesthetic Preference, then people will choose to do wrong to achieve their desired ends. We can see this in America’s choice to use torture and to toss out rule by Law. As a Preference, America knows the difference between Right and Wrong, but as soon as something really matters, than they are as strict in their Pragmatism as the very Devil himself. Even Obama is siding with every War Criminal in History as long as it serves his own purposes.

So, Enlightened Scientific Skepticism is hardly leading us to any Golden Age. But that is still the most powerful Social Current at our avail. My sad conclusion, then, is that this Civilization is doomed.

Now, we could be optimistic that a New and Better Civilization will arise out of this ruin, but remember the example we have of the repeating Chinese Civilizations, that is, quick successive pops with each New Civilization perhaps being only fractionally better than the one that preceded it, and therefore declining just about as quickly. It does no good to suppose that People Learn by their Mistakes. After all, the Great Depression had just happened to us. There are people still alive who remember it directly. Yet, all those lessons had been tossed aside… almost by the very next Generation. No, people do not learn.

What we need is a New Belief System. Yes, a Superstition that we will all agree to agree upon. We need a Religion, that is, a Moral and Ethical System that will make Civilization achievable and then durable. As for the most important Doctrine, well, I am stuck between whether it is more important to suppress Violence then to suppress Greed. Without suppressing Violence, Civilization cannot commence. Without suppressing Greed, Civilization cannot last.