Symbiotic Economics: The Wealth of People
26/December/2007 15:27 Filed in: Weekly Column
26 December 2007; Volume 9, Issue 44
PDF copy
The season photo on the Chronicle Front Page features a picture of the River with a greeting: Blessing for a Joyous Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. It is my prayer that will be God’s gift to you and your family for the next period of time that we use to break up our rapidly passing lives.
As I have written prosperous a number of times recently, I seem to have trouble getting the key strokes in the right order and sometimes missing a letter or two. Then that little underline on the computer screen comes on and says I have made a boo boo. I then have to look and see just what I did to cause the modern writer’s nemesis. At least now I know how to spell the word for sure, that is prosperous.
Looking at the definition, it seems to always point to material blessings. Further researching in English we really don’t have a word that speaks to a much broader context of human life, beyond stuff. Just previously I wrote material blessings, but we pretty much have to designate a spiritual adjective to signify something different or in addition to just physical prosperity.
Joyous Christmas however, I hope helps you focus on the reason Christmas is celebrated in the first place. That God became man, dwelt among us, and became God’s propitiation for our sins, by dying on a cross, and being raised from the dead as our justification before God the Father. That is the true transcendental reason for the season, lest we forget.
There is a popular Christian chorus, “The Joy of the Lord is my strength.” Sometimes that is changed during the singing to “The Joy of the Lord is our strength.” While none of us seem to know where these words come from, they are found in Nehemiah 8:10. Then he (Nehemiah) said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
So especially in the context of what I have been writing about this month or so, I suppose I should have written: Because of what Christ has Done, Blessing for a Joyous Christmas and a Joyous New Year. That would have been redundant, and in hindsight that would have been a good thing in both the natural sense and the spiritual sense.
As I was writing Materialism Soup a couple of weeks ago, the materialism I was discussing is promoted by what is called the secular progressive movement. In a similar vein to prosperous, in western society there really isn’t an antonym such as a religious progressive movement, or a God progressive movement. We have the religious right, but that really isn’t centered in true religion as described in the New Testament book of James, Jesus’ brother, nor is it in anyway transcendent, but really just moralism based upon Old Testament law. Most people would consider that regressive not progressive, the difference is, people who are true disciples of the religious right would consider that a good thing, in contrast to the rest of society.
As I ruminated upon this topic, it seems quite interesting that most of the people who follow this progressive agenda as individuals, not the atheistic special interest groups themselves, but the people who consider themselves progressive are also some of the most gifted people in society. Why do not these people work for causes that have a religious or more outwardly transcendent worldview? The best I am able to come up with is that the religious causes carry too much material baggage, and worldviews organizations really don’t exist in a Christian context or any other context, other than naturalistic materialism. No wonder the world is in such sorry shape.
It would be nice to say that human enterprise is interested in their people as created in the image of God. But that is not the case. The real reason that global outsourcing of jobs is so prevalent is that people are really considered part of the things production cycle. Not only can human labor be quantified into a per unit cost, people who want to be considered as people, which includes most of the developed world, are difficult to manage. This is especially true when lower and middle management are promoted out of the production cycle, and given little or no training in this entirely different field of expertise. People as people, therefore cost a whole lot more to employ. This includes salary, fringe benefits, but also a management structure based upon leadership principles rather than production costs. When management compensation is based solely on monetary profits with no consideration of deeper cultural benefit, you are faced with irreconcilable problem which by definition and application must put profit above people.
Most proponents of secular materialism however, are no longer, if ever, part of this great boring whatever. No matter how they are paid for what they do, it is not tied directly to material units, but rather the wonder of being human. In other words, somewhere along the line they took the risk to leave nowhere, go to nowhere, set sail on the river of life, make a leap of faith, take the chance, and that makes all the difference. This is true with athletes, musicians, actors, actresses, even television and radio personalities.
As research for this article I did a web search for “secular progressive.” On Yahoo’s Try Also headline at the top of the results section, the first result was for “secular progressive movement” the second was for “bill o’reilly” On Google, while they don’t have the Try Also header, the results were in the same order.
So how can an anti-secular progressive individual rank second to the base line definition? It really goes to the heart of Rupert Murdock’s management style and success compared to other corporation structures in the cable news business and elsewhere. That is simply, you hire people with integrity in what they believe, give them the resources to do what they believe in, and get out of the way.
The follower networks in the ratings game, really don’t believe in humanity as separate from true secularism, hence nightly O’Reilly beats them all combined. It isn’t rocket science, it really isn’t science at all, it is simply common sense given to all people. Common sense is removed from the human personality only if you choose not to believe in anything but naturalism.
(As a parenthesis, this is why so many Americans are so turned off by the current field of Presidential candidates and why I took exception to Mike Huckabee’s campaign on the blog Front Page last week. We really can’t see a genuine human being in the whole lot. In the case of Huckabee, as an ordained minister, (with or without a theology degree) he should be able to articulate a position on evolution. Period...! Whether you believe as he does or not is not the issue, the issue is if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.)
(George W. Bush was elected twice, because he stood for something, not that people necessarily agreed with him. This was in stark contrast to the two people that the Democrats picked to represent their worldview, because they did, and that worldview by it’s very definition makes people descended from apes. As such, you and I can have no higher being than following animal instincts. This is not just a lie, it is truly absurd to anyone who still maintains some cognitive abilities, a gift from their Creator.)
If you look broadly or even minutely at Rupert Murdock’s investments, you see that even the investments in technology are related to bringing the humanity of humanity to human beings around the world with little regard to the lower calling of the materialistic religion. This is what secular progressives find so disturbing. Essentially he can beat them at the game they are working so hard to win, by not even playing their game.
This is also what makes Bill O’Reilly perhaps the standard bearer of the whole empire. Simply because Bill loves playing the game by being as transparently human as possible, and working hard, not only to maintain that image, but controlling his programs in such a way as not to lose control of the program or himself. In other words, the “No Spin Zone” is really an art form in the human entertainment business, that must be approached through humanity rather than accounting practices. As a consequence the accounting takes care of itself.
I moved to north east Washington to do what is best described as economic development. While I have filled my vehicles with tools and spent a couple of weeks each year living and working up there since I got out of the service, I was quite shocked in what I found when living there is living there, and not a holiday, vacation, or a change of scenery work break.
My plan was to import liquidity from more capital liquid areas (right and left coast urban areas) and change the rural world. I have long believed the saying, “The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer.” I now realize that this type of economic development is really an impossible goal for naturalism in any fashion. Transposed to the outskirts of true nowhere and all the training I have received in religion, philosophy, leadership, business, engineering, and science, while still relevant to the current rural environment, the shear lack of infrastructure outside of limited government programs and services, and real estate speculation, leaves a liquidity desert similar to the desert of Death Valley, where the only natural Wonder Springs are found.
The people however, the locally raised natives and the imported retirees, are what make this country a true Wonder of the world. What is lacking is some training in personal humanity. For the most part they are all people of integrity, what they need is the liquidity resources to do the job and the freedom to produce results which can not ever meet the ROI investment criteria of urban enterprise, simply because the required number of people do not live in the region, and most of the land is either part of the American commons or lowly taxed as agriculture and forest.
To that end I will be seeking in 2008, investments in both myself and the North Eastern Washington area of approximately $3 million. Actually I could probably invest $5 million, but that would take more infrastructure than I think I could probably put together in a year period. That investment would mostly be done in real estate properties. The first being a restaurant, including the building in Colville for about five hundred thousand, followed by a couple of properties that would give us direct access to the middle of nowhere as described in last week’s article. One of those properties would be developed as a transcendent access to true wildness, where man is not in control and wild natural law puts life in it’s true perspective. The other facility much more upscale, for those still only comfortable with the illusions of 21st Century material necessities.
Now the question I (almost) always get with people who always have a reason for never following their own humanity, goes something like this, “Why don’t you start small, like with your own thousand dollars and work twenty four hours a day for the next thousand years, so you can maintain control?”
My somewhat political correct answer is that the Good Lord has given me an education in how the real world works that is as broad and deep as anyone in this dumbed down world. (See bio) I really had nothing to do with any of it other than to follow along and glean what I could from the circumstances and my mistakes. Furthermore, when I was barely twenty something I was in charge of more real property than this, in 1970s dollars, so money and it’s so called responsibility doesn’t scare me, nor does the lack of it. Next, putting together complex organizations and related things is probably what I do best, and managing people with integrity, by giving them the resources to do what they do well, and then staying out of the way except to add encouragement and guidance is next on the list. Writing true life reality articles of a couple of thousand words for almost a decade is a lot further down the list of His gifts, for I never have considered it a true natural ability.
Finally and most important, I don’t think that this is my dream, really the only thing I bring to the Lord’s table is a tenacious desire to do the work He gives me to do. If I don’t raise the millions, or can not find the help needed to pull it off those are not really my problems. I will do my best to point people to Jesus Christ and not personal piety. If you can not deal with that, that is between you and God.
If you are willing to become a committed part or just an involved part of Wonder Springs, come on out and I will show you around. I will even come to you, if you pay my way, for I don’t have the resources at this time to leave nowhere for anywhere, somewhere, or everywhere. While there I will give you my best ideas of what I think you can do better, as well as what I think makes you truly a unique creation of God. It’s just that simple and that eternally complex.
Soli deo gloria.
PDF copy
The season photo on the Chronicle Front Page features a picture of the River with a greeting: Blessing for a Joyous Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. It is my prayer that will be God’s gift to you and your family for the next period of time that we use to break up our rapidly passing lives.
As I have written prosperous a number of times recently, I seem to have trouble getting the key strokes in the right order and sometimes missing a letter or two. Then that little underline on the computer screen comes on and says I have made a boo boo. I then have to look and see just what I did to cause the modern writer’s nemesis. At least now I know how to spell the word for sure, that is prosperous.
Looking at the definition, it seems to always point to material blessings. Further researching in English we really don’t have a word that speaks to a much broader context of human life, beyond stuff. Just previously I wrote material blessings, but we pretty much have to designate a spiritual adjective to signify something different or in addition to just physical prosperity.
Joyous Christmas however, I hope helps you focus on the reason Christmas is celebrated in the first place. That God became man, dwelt among us, and became God’s propitiation for our sins, by dying on a cross, and being raised from the dead as our justification before God the Father. That is the true transcendental reason for the season, lest we forget.
There is a popular Christian chorus, “The Joy of the Lord is my strength.” Sometimes that is changed during the singing to “The Joy of the Lord is our strength.” While none of us seem to know where these words come from, they are found in Nehemiah 8:10. Then he (Nehemiah) said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
So especially in the context of what I have been writing about this month or so, I suppose I should have written: Because of what Christ has Done, Blessing for a Joyous Christmas and a Joyous New Year. That would have been redundant, and in hindsight that would have been a good thing in both the natural sense and the spiritual sense.
As I was writing Materialism Soup a couple of weeks ago, the materialism I was discussing is promoted by what is called the secular progressive movement. In a similar vein to prosperous, in western society there really isn’t an antonym such as a religious progressive movement, or a God progressive movement. We have the religious right, but that really isn’t centered in true religion as described in the New Testament book of James, Jesus’ brother, nor is it in anyway transcendent, but really just moralism based upon Old Testament law. Most people would consider that regressive not progressive, the difference is, people who are true disciples of the religious right would consider that a good thing, in contrast to the rest of society.
As I ruminated upon this topic, it seems quite interesting that most of the people who follow this progressive agenda as individuals, not the atheistic special interest groups themselves, but the people who consider themselves progressive are also some of the most gifted people in society. Why do not these people work for causes that have a religious or more outwardly transcendent worldview? The best I am able to come up with is that the religious causes carry too much material baggage, and worldviews organizations really don’t exist in a Christian context or any other context, other than naturalistic materialism. No wonder the world is in such sorry shape.
It would be nice to say that human enterprise is interested in their people as created in the image of God. But that is not the case. The real reason that global outsourcing of jobs is so prevalent is that people are really considered part of the things production cycle. Not only can human labor be quantified into a per unit cost, people who want to be considered as people, which includes most of the developed world, are difficult to manage. This is especially true when lower and middle management are promoted out of the production cycle, and given little or no training in this entirely different field of expertise. People as people, therefore cost a whole lot more to employ. This includes salary, fringe benefits, but also a management structure based upon leadership principles rather than production costs. When management compensation is based solely on monetary profits with no consideration of deeper cultural benefit, you are faced with irreconcilable problem which by definition and application must put profit above people.
Most proponents of secular materialism however, are no longer, if ever, part of this great boring whatever. No matter how they are paid for what they do, it is not tied directly to material units, but rather the wonder of being human. In other words, somewhere along the line they took the risk to leave nowhere, go to nowhere, set sail on the river of life, make a leap of faith, take the chance, and that makes all the difference. This is true with athletes, musicians, actors, actresses, even television and radio personalities.
As research for this article I did a web search for “secular progressive.” On Yahoo’s Try Also headline at the top of the results section, the first result was for “secular progressive movement” the second was for “bill o’reilly” On Google, while they don’t have the Try Also header, the results were in the same order.
So how can an anti-secular progressive individual rank second to the base line definition? It really goes to the heart of Rupert Murdock’s management style and success compared to other corporation structures in the cable news business and elsewhere. That is simply, you hire people with integrity in what they believe, give them the resources to do what they believe in, and get out of the way.
The follower networks in the ratings game, really don’t believe in humanity as separate from true secularism, hence nightly O’Reilly beats them all combined. It isn’t rocket science, it really isn’t science at all, it is simply common sense given to all people. Common sense is removed from the human personality only if you choose not to believe in anything but naturalism.
(As a parenthesis, this is why so many Americans are so turned off by the current field of Presidential candidates and why I took exception to Mike Huckabee’s campaign on the blog Front Page last week. We really can’t see a genuine human being in the whole lot. In the case of Huckabee, as an ordained minister, (with or without a theology degree) he should be able to articulate a position on evolution. Period...! Whether you believe as he does or not is not the issue, the issue is if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.)
(George W. Bush was elected twice, because he stood for something, not that people necessarily agreed with him. This was in stark contrast to the two people that the Democrats picked to represent their worldview, because they did, and that worldview by it’s very definition makes people descended from apes. As such, you and I can have no higher being than following animal instincts. This is not just a lie, it is truly absurd to anyone who still maintains some cognitive abilities, a gift from their Creator.)
If you look broadly or even minutely at Rupert Murdock’s investments, you see that even the investments in technology are related to bringing the humanity of humanity to human beings around the world with little regard to the lower calling of the materialistic religion. This is what secular progressives find so disturbing. Essentially he can beat them at the game they are working so hard to win, by not even playing their game.
This is also what makes Bill O’Reilly perhaps the standard bearer of the whole empire. Simply because Bill loves playing the game by being as transparently human as possible, and working hard, not only to maintain that image, but controlling his programs in such a way as not to lose control of the program or himself. In other words, the “No Spin Zone” is really an art form in the human entertainment business, that must be approached through humanity rather than accounting practices. As a consequence the accounting takes care of itself.
I moved to north east Washington to do what is best described as economic development. While I have filled my vehicles with tools and spent a couple of weeks each year living and working up there since I got out of the service, I was quite shocked in what I found when living there is living there, and not a holiday, vacation, or a change of scenery work break.
My plan was to import liquidity from more capital liquid areas (right and left coast urban areas) and change the rural world. I have long believed the saying, “The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer.” I now realize that this type of economic development is really an impossible goal for naturalism in any fashion. Transposed to the outskirts of true nowhere and all the training I have received in religion, philosophy, leadership, business, engineering, and science, while still relevant to the current rural environment, the shear lack of infrastructure outside of limited government programs and services, and real estate speculation, leaves a liquidity desert similar to the desert of Death Valley, where the only natural Wonder Springs are found.
The people however, the locally raised natives and the imported retirees, are what make this country a true Wonder of the world. What is lacking is some training in personal humanity. For the most part they are all people of integrity, what they need is the liquidity resources to do the job and the freedom to produce results which can not ever meet the ROI investment criteria of urban enterprise, simply because the required number of people do not live in the region, and most of the land is either part of the American commons or lowly taxed as agriculture and forest.
To that end I will be seeking in 2008, investments in both myself and the North Eastern Washington area of approximately $3 million. Actually I could probably invest $5 million, but that would take more infrastructure than I think I could probably put together in a year period. That investment would mostly be done in real estate properties. The first being a restaurant, including the building in Colville for about five hundred thousand, followed by a couple of properties that would give us direct access to the middle of nowhere as described in last week’s article. One of those properties would be developed as a transcendent access to true wildness, where man is not in control and wild natural law puts life in it’s true perspective. The other facility much more upscale, for those still only comfortable with the illusions of 21st Century material necessities.
Now the question I (almost) always get with people who always have a reason for never following their own humanity, goes something like this, “Why don’t you start small, like with your own thousand dollars and work twenty four hours a day for the next thousand years, so you can maintain control?”
My somewhat political correct answer is that the Good Lord has given me an education in how the real world works that is as broad and deep as anyone in this dumbed down world. (See bio) I really had nothing to do with any of it other than to follow along and glean what I could from the circumstances and my mistakes. Furthermore, when I was barely twenty something I was in charge of more real property than this, in 1970s dollars, so money and it’s so called responsibility doesn’t scare me, nor does the lack of it. Next, putting together complex organizations and related things is probably what I do best, and managing people with integrity, by giving them the resources to do what they do well, and then staying out of the way except to add encouragement and guidance is next on the list. Writing true life reality articles of a couple of thousand words for almost a decade is a lot further down the list of His gifts, for I never have considered it a true natural ability.
Finally and most important, I don’t think that this is my dream, really the only thing I bring to the Lord’s table is a tenacious desire to do the work He gives me to do. If I don’t raise the millions, or can not find the help needed to pull it off those are not really my problems. I will do my best to point people to Jesus Christ and not personal piety. If you can not deal with that, that is between you and God.
If you are willing to become a committed part or just an involved part of Wonder Springs, come on out and I will show you around. I will even come to you, if you pay my way, for I don’t have the resources at this time to leave nowhere for anywhere, somewhere, or everywhere. While there I will give you my best ideas of what I think you can do better, as well as what I think makes you truly a unique creation of God. It’s just that simple and that eternally complex.
Soli deo gloria.