protect economic Safety

Persons who respect and read the Declaration of Independence will recognize that the role of government is to serve one main purpose: to bring about our Safety and Happiness. Keeping this in our minds, we look at the banks in this country that continue to steal billions of dollars from the American people, banks that starting in 2008 C.E. (common era) were given hundreds of billions of tax-paper dollars so that their larcenous and short-sighted practices would not drag this country into total ruin, banks that to this day are removing the families of active-duty military personnel from their homes and evicting old and sick persons with the the full support and active participation of armed and role-crazy police officers.

These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.

In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on disc golf & Taoism

  The game of disc golf (in which players, in the fewest number of tosses, throw discus-like plastic discs from a designated point to a specially-designed metal catch basket) is in certain aspects akin to the elusive tenets of Taoism. Similar to the enduringly simple (but all-encompassing) message that Lao Tzu bound up in the Tao Teh Ching, the game of disc golf is at root an easy task, one that increases in difficulty, however, in tandem with the player's internal stress levels.

  The more pressure the player puts on herself to make, say, a difficult shot into the wind around a copse of trees, the harder that shot, and her subsequent shots, will be. She will be trying to force her body to move so that the disc goes in a very specific direction, but, from her rigid posture and from her attempted dominance over her body, her shot will fly foul. As in Taoism, so in disc golf we must always remember that any attempt to subjugate the Universe to one's own will is bound to backfire, and the most coveted things (such as making that nasty headwind bank-shot) are the hardest to get. (Therefore, the Tao teaches us not to covet anything, as coveting leads invariably to ruin.) The more the player pushes to make the shot the way she thinks the shot should be made, the less she is tapping into her body's inherent ability to not only make the shot, but to do it with finesse and without pride.

  The effective disc golfer is he who can put his ego aside. The great disc golfer she who can revert to a pure animal state by incorporating her ego into herself (thus neutralizing it), a pure animal state that allows her to throw her disc far and straight, her body moving in its own curious rhythms, her mind freed from sadness and joy, her entire being focused solely on the fraction of time at which the disc leaves her calloused fingers. In my humble opinion, this is the magical, secret point that forms the center of the teachings of Taoism: rather than telling you to worship in such way to that god at this time of year, the Tao Teh Ching focuses on reducing you to your most basic and fundamental forms, forms that compel you to act with complete impartiality, intent only on breaking time from This Moment to The Next. Taoism helps you to clear your mind of all the clutter and pollution of modern society; with the Tao, you can more readily realize your deep, latent potential: you can learn to express it. The Tao focuses on deeds, not words, on completing tasks with skill and aplomb but without taking pride in them, or letting them influence your emotional state.

  So is it, at times, with the sport of disc golf. The less thought-interference there is during the throwing phase, the more fluid your body motion. The less the ego is involved, the greater the chance that you will make that daring sidewinder shot around that group of bushes. So keep on diminishing and diminishing until there is nothing left – the Tao is like a bellows that is never made empty, even though it seems hollowed out. The more you draw from it, the harder it works; the less emphasis you put on your own personal achievement, the more you operate for the good of the world, an island of calm in a sea of chaos. One of the trickiest parts, however, is learning not to covet the Tao. To covet anything is to destroy it, so toss your discs with quiet competence, without ever yearning for success, your only desire a state of primal simplicity.

  Your body knows what to do. Now all you have to do is get your mind out of the way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp