Evolving Trails - Natural Progression
15/April/2009 10:37 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Volume 11, Issue 15
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Shortly after we foraged ahead in last weeks article, it quickly became self evident that the trail ahead had become overgrown with all types of spin and hype, much of it related to the rapidly growing weeds in the political ditches on both our left and right.
We mentioned last week that many spokespersons encroaching on the path from the right ditch were beginning to call actions we are now seeing from the Obama Administration fascist rather than socialist. That was highlighted by a Glenn Beck show last Friday on Fox News, in which the less charged term “stateism” was used in place of fascism, at least for the time being. Rather than using the evolving programs of our current crisis, that we can’t let go to waste, the Beck program focused upon the rise of the progressive movement under Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
From the left ditch, leaving the historically redefined term liberal in the mud, indeed the they are more and more using the tactics of the rise of the American Progressive Movement as a working plan by which to evolve the United States and the world into a diverse community by which all peoples will live in security through governmentally run programs and supervised enterprise.
Both of the positions have more to do with talking points rather than substance. There in lies the true danger to the American Republic as it evolves democratically to take its rightful position as just another member of the community of nations.
Evolution as espoused in general morality has no basis in science. At least science we can measure today. That is because the quantum leaps of information required for evolutionary progress to occur are not supported by the natural laws of Thermodynamics. This is not just a minor problem in logic and research, but also a divine necessity in a world in which there is no god other than we human’s evolving narcissism.
In such a world, fertile bunnies laid colored chicken and candy eggs in hiding places during the spring fertility festival of Easter last Sunday. In church, as an American evangelical, you learned that Jesus will help you through this coming year so that next Easter you will be back on the wide road to material prosperity. Of course there were a few churches where a preacher proclaimed the Resurrection, as the first fruits of a future restored creation in which Christians will live eternally, based upon Jesus propitiatory sacrifice on a cross three days previously. Then in true unity with historical Christianity, we all went someplace and pigged out on ham and other acts of gluttony, ignoring any thought of an Inquisition.
This points us to the true reason for this season and that is security, either real or imagined. Both of the ditches of the narrow path ahead speak of all kinds of wonderful future things, money, self worth, purpose, community, health, but it all comes down to our personal perception of security.
In last week’s article we mentioned growth, either linear or exponential were quite easy to manage, compared to once the summit has been reached and things seemed to be heading toward death. For an American the best way to deal with security is to never mention death. That way we can only focus upon temporal security, and just leave eternity to the great evolutionary nothing, rather than focus upon some complex reality that must be perceived by something beyond natural human enlightenment.
Way back in 1999 we introduced an article “Ruminant Covenant – The Sin and the Son Kingdoms” (15 December). As we are all slouching toward sheephood, that article contained a Sin Cosmos – Natural Life Curve to deal with a fatal social disease. This built upon an article “Abundant Life” (8 September), where we introduced the seven Principles of Business Ecology and the four previous Natural Life Curves.
This natural life curve shows a steady state perfect world as created by God in the Biblical Genesis account. We of course do not know if that perfect creation was steady state. As created by God it could have been and was probably forever expanding but perfect and very good in every way. However the simple steady state shows satisfactorily the change in reality as time progresses. What this curve shows is the effects of sin and is true both cosmologically and also generally applicable down to the individual, isolated in and for specific periods of time and space. Sin of course does not apply in an enlightened evolving world today where sins have been redefined as wise moral attributes.
If this Sin Cosmos bears some resemblance to God’s created reality, humanity is somewhere along that inherited stasis portion of the curve. The Second Coming of Christ could perhaps happen as we near the precipice into the exponential half-life decay curve (that shows exponential decay on a linear quality axis), or somewhere along the half-life decay, where everyone alive will have to reevaluate all aspects of their life and community. This graph should threaten any totally naturalist worldview of a secure and upwardly evolving universe.
When you look at mature, or climax natural systems you see the propensity toward the small and the complex, both informationally and energetically. When you look at the enterprise structure of the current world, you see little of that, but instead a world dominated by the behemoth dinosaurs, corporate, governmental, and political. The important thing to remember about natural dinosaurs is that they are extinct and have been so, for a very long time.
Specifically the view of historic evolution of big enterprise in the world shows a relatively recent occurrence, maybe a hundred and fifty years at most, with most of the focus within the last century. Following the rise of these “robber barons” you find the natural rise of progressive big governments to rein in the abuses of these of dominant rich people. The theme of these governments is basically to redistribute the wealth for the good of the country and the common folks.
As Glenn Beck’s program focused, the first time this happened with gusto under Republican Theodore Roosevelt and was refined under the guidance of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. This gave us The Roaring ‘20s, the Great Depression, The New Deal, and World War II. Following came big government concepts leading to the Civil Rights Movement, the Great Society, Viet Nam, and eventually the change in course of the Reagan Revolution.
Some of these we consider achievements, some not so, but we should not lose focus of the operating genre was always increasing personal security by the perception of decreasing risk, by government intervention in the markets, never allowing for true freedom, but focused government or lack of government. No matter how you spin the results, it always was government centered.
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to take my pickup back up to NE Washington as a friend was going to Republic to get some books signed by the first American to summit Mount Everest, Jim Whittaker. Whittaker was in town to benefit the Ferry County Rail Trail. The rail trail opportunity basically takes abandoned railroad right of ways and turns them into non-motorized transportation corridors for hikers, bikers, and in Ferry County horsemen. It seems as if Big Jim’s son Bobby lives near Malo, which is a somewhat wide spot in the road between Republic and Curlew.
These rail trail arrangements occur because the railroads maintain future development railroad right of ways in case they are ever needed. From the present into the unknown future, rail trails give recreational access to relatively level cross-country travel without interference from the noise and hassle of motorized transportation.
I find this whole concept very interesting because railroads are the most efficient way to move goods and people from place to place and as America looks at ways to become more energy independent, there is virtually no thought of moving back to the railroads to aid in that endeavor.
This should be more than just an academic interest for Ferry County and Republic because as they currently now exist there is no economic reason for them to continue except as an isolated community of rednecks and greenecks trying to suck enough money from any source to maintain some semblance of infrastructure. Gone are the gold mine and the sawmill that once provided jobs and the reason for Republic and the railroad to exist.
In Ferry County 80% of the land is owned or controlled by some governmental agency, of the remaining land, 80% is owned or controlled as timber lands. All the above pay little or no property taxes. Most of what is left is marginal farmland or marginal recreational property. In short Ferry County has no property or retail tax base. Republic is the only town that could be considered a town, but village or hamlet probably should apply. Tourism is the dream, but most urban tourists find the area, way too remote and isolated to make it a tourist destination except for a selected green elite who really spend or invest little money and then go back to their homestead or city.
All this is of interest, because most of eastern Washington State was developed by railroads, much of it directly or indirectly by Jim Hill the Empire Builder of the Great Northern Railroad. Hill’s Great Northern was the only transcontinental railroad built without federal government land grants. In short Hill’s railroad was perhaps the most successful totally capitalistic adventure in the history of America. The Great Northern was so successful that if it were not for the very active intervention of the Progressive President Roosevelt, Hill would have probably ended up controlling or owning all of America’s western railroads in his lifetime.
Before you give Teddy too much credit however, the reason that Hill could have accomplished this feat was the fact that the land grant railroads, even with their huge land holdings, were ineptly managed, were courting bankruptcy, or insolvent.
Shortly after Roosevelt’s progressive agenda sidelined Hills acquisitions of failure, a coalition of Oil companies and automakers succeeded in buying America’s privately owned – public transportation, dismantling it, and putting America on the road to roads, cars, and trucks. Our current dependence on foreign oil finds its power by forcing us to maintain a very inefficient mode of transportation and freight. All those road, highways, and Interstates were built and are maintained by public taxes at work.
We can only speculate about a much different America, if Hill had been allowed to succeed, for Hill’s vision of the future was much in line with Jefferson’s independent yeoman farmer, rather than professional ownership and management of big agriculture. Perhaps we could now travel from city to city by bullet trains, instead of having to drive, faster, at less expense and significantly less hassle. That surely would be a novel way for United States to relate to the rest of western culture, this done uniquely by human enterprise rather than government ownership.
However, any of Hill’s exploits would be completely impossible today, because Hill build his railroads basically on the fly. His team was purchasing track easements sometimes only a day or so before track was being laid. To build even a regional railroad today, would require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that would probably fill a box car and that EIS would be required and approved before Hill’s Great Northern could even begin any significant work, and then perhaps only after five to ten years of litigation and bureaucratic bungling. With risk like that, returns on investment required would greatly exceed payments to Great Northern bondholders and equity investors.
A similar scenario could be developed for our now outmoded electrical grid, where half the generated electricity is wasted in distribution. The focus of huge government sponsored or subsidized power generation projects, allowed for the development of America as we now know it, but also limit our options to more of the same into the future, a future where perceived economies of scale are much different than where we were, or where the future is now leading.
All alternative green energy sources are now only marginally profitable with a price of oil of around $80 per barrel. The current price of oil now has been speculatively inflated to about $50, with a real market value probably about $40 or less. So while Americans are losing their jobs, big oil companies and traders still get their artificial share. The current progressive administration is trying to figure out how to fund their green agenda with taxes that don’t look like real taxes, hence the real reason behind, the evolution of cap and trade, or carbon taxes.
So now going back to the reality of our Sin Cosmos Natural Growth Curve we must ask the question, “Is America and the world still operating on the inherited stasis of the truths of Natural Law, or are we close to or have just passed the brink and have begun slouching into the abyss of half-life exponential decline?”
Human evolutionary enlightenment says definitely that these natural limits don’t exist. So we discuss climate change drought and moderate sea level rise, when even by evolutionary geological standards, less than 10,000 years ago where I am writing this article was on the flood plain of gargantuan catastrophic floods and where I moved my pickup was buried under about 4000 feet of continental ice.
People are insecure, basically because they desire to be God, and in reality they were created by God to find their security in Him. This current worldwide economic situation is not so much about economics but about worldviews. We are at the point where the illusionary evolutionary trails depart from God’s preordained natural progression.
As still the world’s foremost economic power the United States is the center of that struggle. So far history favors continued progressive solutions. Most would say that it is just a coincidence, or a primitive evolutionary residual that America’s Wall Street Market was closed on Good Friday, this last Sunday was Easter or Resurrection Sunday, Monday was Tax Freedom Day, and today is Tea Party Day, in which mass demonstrations will protest excessive government spending throughout the land.
An interesting thing about a precipice is that once you reach the edge, just because it is there, you do not have to jump. The current American government seems intent upon taking the leap of faith and hope we have an easy landing. The question remains will most of the American people follow, or will they move beyond just saying something, and begin to restructure the country around people and not big corporate or big government handouts? Since I can ask that question and it can be distributed for free around the world, we have not yet gone over the edge.
This is not a popular worldview, it doesn’t find many supporters; it doesn’t pay advertisers to promote reinvesting your vanished stock portfolio in secure corporate equity. It really doesn’t fit the 24 hour programming cycle of cable news, because it is not spin, talking points, or opined opinions, for it doesn’t have its foundation in human wisdom, but in the natural wisdom of the way God made the world. The center of that is a lot closer to Republic, Washington, than it is to Manhattan, or Wall Street, New York, New York.
Both Republic and New York are now financially bankrupt, but at the bottom of the precipice, Republic will be little changed from as it is now, some man-made disaster could vaporize New York instantly. Perhaps Fox News could move its headquarters to Republic, but the News Corporation structure has historically acquired wealth by financial leverage rather than helping create it. Fair and balanced must work within the paradigms of ratings and advertising, hence it is really business as usual. In short it is not Jim Hill’s railroad, and hence as now configured will have little lasting effect upon the future in this current enterprise struggle.
A lot of progressive evolutionary wealth has disappeared over the falls. You will hear that your future requires us to trust in hope, but evolving hope is not just a crisis that will not go to waste, but an opportunity to again build a bridge of infrastructure to a natural progression in which you truly matter, because that is the world that God made, and therein you are the possessor of inalienable human rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is not an evolutionary trail, but just a natural progression toward a God ordained future.
They say that life is just a great big rolling railroad, of which we are all on board. The question remains just how many people will get off at the next station, and how many will ride the train to oblivion, for the bridge is out, and the engineer keeps ignoring the safety signals?
Podcast
>>PDF copy
>>Print view
Shortly after we foraged ahead in last weeks article, it quickly became self evident that the trail ahead had become overgrown with all types of spin and hype, much of it related to the rapidly growing weeds in the political ditches on both our left and right.
We mentioned last week that many spokespersons encroaching on the path from the right ditch were beginning to call actions we are now seeing from the Obama Administration fascist rather than socialist. That was highlighted by a Glenn Beck show last Friday on Fox News, in which the less charged term “stateism” was used in place of fascism, at least for the time being. Rather than using the evolving programs of our current crisis, that we can’t let go to waste, the Beck program focused upon the rise of the progressive movement under Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
From the left ditch, leaving the historically redefined term liberal in the mud, indeed the they are more and more using the tactics of the rise of the American Progressive Movement as a working plan by which to evolve the United States and the world into a diverse community by which all peoples will live in security through governmentally run programs and supervised enterprise.
Both of the positions have more to do with talking points rather than substance. There in lies the true danger to the American Republic as it evolves democratically to take its rightful position as just another member of the community of nations.
Evolution as espoused in general morality has no basis in science. At least science we can measure today. That is because the quantum leaps of information required for evolutionary progress to occur are not supported by the natural laws of Thermodynamics. This is not just a minor problem in logic and research, but also a divine necessity in a world in which there is no god other than we human’s evolving narcissism.
In such a world, fertile bunnies laid colored chicken and candy eggs in hiding places during the spring fertility festival of Easter last Sunday. In church, as an American evangelical, you learned that Jesus will help you through this coming year so that next Easter you will be back on the wide road to material prosperity. Of course there were a few churches where a preacher proclaimed the Resurrection, as the first fruits of a future restored creation in which Christians will live eternally, based upon Jesus propitiatory sacrifice on a cross three days previously. Then in true unity with historical Christianity, we all went someplace and pigged out on ham and other acts of gluttony, ignoring any thought of an Inquisition.
This points us to the true reason for this season and that is security, either real or imagined. Both of the ditches of the narrow path ahead speak of all kinds of wonderful future things, money, self worth, purpose, community, health, but it all comes down to our personal perception of security.
In last week’s article we mentioned growth, either linear or exponential were quite easy to manage, compared to once the summit has been reached and things seemed to be heading toward death. For an American the best way to deal with security is to never mention death. That way we can only focus upon temporal security, and just leave eternity to the great evolutionary nothing, rather than focus upon some complex reality that must be perceived by something beyond natural human enlightenment.
Way back in 1999 we introduced an article “Ruminant Covenant – The Sin and the Son Kingdoms” (15 December). As we are all slouching toward sheephood, that article contained a Sin Cosmos – Natural Life Curve to deal with a fatal social disease. This built upon an article “Abundant Life” (8 September), where we introduced the seven Principles of Business Ecology and the four previous Natural Life Curves.
This natural life curve shows a steady state perfect world as created by God in the Biblical Genesis account. We of course do not know if that perfect creation was steady state. As created by God it could have been and was probably forever expanding but perfect and very good in every way. However the simple steady state shows satisfactorily the change in reality as time progresses. What this curve shows is the effects of sin and is true both cosmologically and also generally applicable down to the individual, isolated in and for specific periods of time and space. Sin of course does not apply in an enlightened evolving world today where sins have been redefined as wise moral attributes.
If this Sin Cosmos bears some resemblance to God’s created reality, humanity is somewhere along that inherited stasis portion of the curve. The Second Coming of Christ could perhaps happen as we near the precipice into the exponential half-life decay curve (that shows exponential decay on a linear quality axis), or somewhere along the half-life decay, where everyone alive will have to reevaluate all aspects of their life and community. This graph should threaten any totally naturalist worldview of a secure and upwardly evolving universe.
When you look at mature, or climax natural systems you see the propensity toward the small and the complex, both informationally and energetically. When you look at the enterprise structure of the current world, you see little of that, but instead a world dominated by the behemoth dinosaurs, corporate, governmental, and political. The important thing to remember about natural dinosaurs is that they are extinct and have been so, for a very long time.
Specifically the view of historic evolution of big enterprise in the world shows a relatively recent occurrence, maybe a hundred and fifty years at most, with most of the focus within the last century. Following the rise of these “robber barons” you find the natural rise of progressive big governments to rein in the abuses of these of dominant rich people. The theme of these governments is basically to redistribute the wealth for the good of the country and the common folks.
As Glenn Beck’s program focused, the first time this happened with gusto under Republican Theodore Roosevelt and was refined under the guidance of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. This gave us The Roaring ‘20s, the Great Depression, The New Deal, and World War II. Following came big government concepts leading to the Civil Rights Movement, the Great Society, Viet Nam, and eventually the change in course of the Reagan Revolution.
Some of these we consider achievements, some not so, but we should not lose focus of the operating genre was always increasing personal security by the perception of decreasing risk, by government intervention in the markets, never allowing for true freedom, but focused government or lack of government. No matter how you spin the results, it always was government centered.
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to take my pickup back up to NE Washington as a friend was going to Republic to get some books signed by the first American to summit Mount Everest, Jim Whittaker. Whittaker was in town to benefit the Ferry County Rail Trail. The rail trail opportunity basically takes abandoned railroad right of ways and turns them into non-motorized transportation corridors for hikers, bikers, and in Ferry County horsemen. It seems as if Big Jim’s son Bobby lives near Malo, which is a somewhat wide spot in the road between Republic and Curlew.
These rail trail arrangements occur because the railroads maintain future development railroad right of ways in case they are ever needed. From the present into the unknown future, rail trails give recreational access to relatively level cross-country travel without interference from the noise and hassle of motorized transportation.
I find this whole concept very interesting because railroads are the most efficient way to move goods and people from place to place and as America looks at ways to become more energy independent, there is virtually no thought of moving back to the railroads to aid in that endeavor.
This should be more than just an academic interest for Ferry County and Republic because as they currently now exist there is no economic reason for them to continue except as an isolated community of rednecks and greenecks trying to suck enough money from any source to maintain some semblance of infrastructure. Gone are the gold mine and the sawmill that once provided jobs and the reason for Republic and the railroad to exist.
In Ferry County 80% of the land is owned or controlled by some governmental agency, of the remaining land, 80% is owned or controlled as timber lands. All the above pay little or no property taxes. Most of what is left is marginal farmland or marginal recreational property. In short Ferry County has no property or retail tax base. Republic is the only town that could be considered a town, but village or hamlet probably should apply. Tourism is the dream, but most urban tourists find the area, way too remote and isolated to make it a tourist destination except for a selected green elite who really spend or invest little money and then go back to their homestead or city.
All this is of interest, because most of eastern Washington State was developed by railroads, much of it directly or indirectly by Jim Hill the Empire Builder of the Great Northern Railroad. Hill’s Great Northern was the only transcontinental railroad built without federal government land grants. In short Hill’s railroad was perhaps the most successful totally capitalistic adventure in the history of America. The Great Northern was so successful that if it were not for the very active intervention of the Progressive President Roosevelt, Hill would have probably ended up controlling or owning all of America’s western railroads in his lifetime.
Before you give Teddy too much credit however, the reason that Hill could have accomplished this feat was the fact that the land grant railroads, even with their huge land holdings, were ineptly managed, were courting bankruptcy, or insolvent.
Shortly after Roosevelt’s progressive agenda sidelined Hills acquisitions of failure, a coalition of Oil companies and automakers succeeded in buying America’s privately owned – public transportation, dismantling it, and putting America on the road to roads, cars, and trucks. Our current dependence on foreign oil finds its power by forcing us to maintain a very inefficient mode of transportation and freight. All those road, highways, and Interstates were built and are maintained by public taxes at work.
We can only speculate about a much different America, if Hill had been allowed to succeed, for Hill’s vision of the future was much in line with Jefferson’s independent yeoman farmer, rather than professional ownership and management of big agriculture. Perhaps we could now travel from city to city by bullet trains, instead of having to drive, faster, at less expense and significantly less hassle. That surely would be a novel way for United States to relate to the rest of western culture, this done uniquely by human enterprise rather than government ownership.
However, any of Hill’s exploits would be completely impossible today, because Hill build his railroads basically on the fly. His team was purchasing track easements sometimes only a day or so before track was being laid. To build even a regional railroad today, would require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that would probably fill a box car and that EIS would be required and approved before Hill’s Great Northern could even begin any significant work, and then perhaps only after five to ten years of litigation and bureaucratic bungling. With risk like that, returns on investment required would greatly exceed payments to Great Northern bondholders and equity investors.
A similar scenario could be developed for our now outmoded electrical grid, where half the generated electricity is wasted in distribution. The focus of huge government sponsored or subsidized power generation projects, allowed for the development of America as we now know it, but also limit our options to more of the same into the future, a future where perceived economies of scale are much different than where we were, or where the future is now leading.
All alternative green energy sources are now only marginally profitable with a price of oil of around $80 per barrel. The current price of oil now has been speculatively inflated to about $50, with a real market value probably about $40 or less. So while Americans are losing their jobs, big oil companies and traders still get their artificial share. The current progressive administration is trying to figure out how to fund their green agenda with taxes that don’t look like real taxes, hence the real reason behind, the evolution of cap and trade, or carbon taxes.
So now going back to the reality of our Sin Cosmos Natural Growth Curve we must ask the question, “Is America and the world still operating on the inherited stasis of the truths of Natural Law, or are we close to or have just passed the brink and have begun slouching into the abyss of half-life exponential decline?”
Human evolutionary enlightenment says definitely that these natural limits don’t exist. So we discuss climate change drought and moderate sea level rise, when even by evolutionary geological standards, less than 10,000 years ago where I am writing this article was on the flood plain of gargantuan catastrophic floods and where I moved my pickup was buried under about 4000 feet of continental ice.
People are insecure, basically because they desire to be God, and in reality they were created by God to find their security in Him. This current worldwide economic situation is not so much about economics but about worldviews. We are at the point where the illusionary evolutionary trails depart from God’s preordained natural progression.
As still the world’s foremost economic power the United States is the center of that struggle. So far history favors continued progressive solutions. Most would say that it is just a coincidence, or a primitive evolutionary residual that America’s Wall Street Market was closed on Good Friday, this last Sunday was Easter or Resurrection Sunday, Monday was Tax Freedom Day, and today is Tea Party Day, in which mass demonstrations will protest excessive government spending throughout the land.
An interesting thing about a precipice is that once you reach the edge, just because it is there, you do not have to jump. The current American government seems intent upon taking the leap of faith and hope we have an easy landing. The question remains will most of the American people follow, or will they move beyond just saying something, and begin to restructure the country around people and not big corporate or big government handouts? Since I can ask that question and it can be distributed for free around the world, we have not yet gone over the edge.
This is not a popular worldview, it doesn’t find many supporters; it doesn’t pay advertisers to promote reinvesting your vanished stock portfolio in secure corporate equity. It really doesn’t fit the 24 hour programming cycle of cable news, because it is not spin, talking points, or opined opinions, for it doesn’t have its foundation in human wisdom, but in the natural wisdom of the way God made the world. The center of that is a lot closer to Republic, Washington, than it is to Manhattan, or Wall Street, New York, New York.
Both Republic and New York are now financially bankrupt, but at the bottom of the precipice, Republic will be little changed from as it is now, some man-made disaster could vaporize New York instantly. Perhaps Fox News could move its headquarters to Republic, but the News Corporation structure has historically acquired wealth by financial leverage rather than helping create it. Fair and balanced must work within the paradigms of ratings and advertising, hence it is really business as usual. In short it is not Jim Hill’s railroad, and hence as now configured will have little lasting effect upon the future in this current enterprise struggle.
A lot of progressive evolutionary wealth has disappeared over the falls. You will hear that your future requires us to trust in hope, but evolving hope is not just a crisis that will not go to waste, but an opportunity to again build a bridge of infrastructure to a natural progression in which you truly matter, because that is the world that God made, and therein you are the possessor of inalienable human rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is not an evolutionary trail, but just a natural progression toward a God ordained future.
They say that life is just a great big rolling railroad, of which we are all on board. The question remains just how many people will get off at the next station, and how many will ride the train to oblivion, for the bridge is out, and the engineer keeps ignoring the safety signals?
Podcast