If approximation is close enough, it might as well be the real thing.

The culmination of which is that your version of reality is as good as any other.

If someone tells you a fantastical tale of why the sun comes up every morning and his tale approximates the observable behavior of the sun, then his tale is as good as any other tale.

Holes are found in all tales, and they're subsequently covered over with additional details. As long as close approximation can be maintained, what difference is there from the "real" thing?

Dearest Massachusetts,

What a disgrace you have become. Founded by those willing to die for freedom, the Pilgrims sacrificed themselves on your soil. So willing to maintain that freedom, the Minutemen died clutching their muskets. The very birth of the nation that houses you began as a struggle to keep weapons of war in the hands of ordinary citizens. As the British marched to seize cannons and ammunition from storehouses in the country, the men of Massachusetts thought death was worth the price of keeping the citizens armed and able to protect themselves from any and all threats including those from their own government.

And now look at you, one of the most, if not the most restrictive gun laws in the country. You try to dictate how your citizens live and spend their money and protect themselves. Your government, the great protector, the great father, will take care of and coddle its people. Submit to you, and their well-being is your promise. You know how everyone's life should be lived. You the bastion of freedom, the birth place of a nation born from liberty's womb, all hail to you my leader.

Where have your sons gone, the ones who choose death over anything less than complete and unfaltering freedom? Who dares to call themselves a citizen of Massachusetts yet allows a standing army of well-armed police to march around and conduct random searches on an innocent populace? Where has your love of liberty gone? Were you not born of those wanting to die if they could not have their freedom? Does your fellow New England state not live by that very motto, "Live Free or Die"?

Massachusetts, you have lost your way. You have become the very opposite of what you symbolized. Massachusetts, the home of the individualist, the zealot that wanted freedom from any and all government restraint. Come to me all who desire the freedom to be what you want, and by God, take up your arms and fight if anyone should tell you how to live. Random search and seizure? Not here. Sacrificing liberty for perceived security? Not here, we will take our security into our own individual hands, thank you. Take our guns? You must be joking, we started a war that begat a nation the last time someone tried that. But no, you willingly give away your source of individual protection, you let a standing army live amongst you, to "protect" you. You not only let yourselves be watched over like children, you gladly contribute your hard-earned income for that right.

It is my wish, dearest Massachusetts, that you may find yourself again. That you will regain your standing as a home for those that treasure freedom above all else. That your citizens won't let fear get the better of them, that they'll realize "death is not the worst of evils". But until this wish is fulfilled, I must stay apart from you and watch from a distance how the cancer of fear destroys the dream you once were.

Sincerely,
Your child and former resident

To be blameless and a blessing to mankind is the goal of man. Though perfection is impossible, constantly strive towards the goal.

One way to think about selfishness:

The non-selfish humans really aren't non-selfish - they are just optimistic about getting what they gave up back. The "selfish" humans are worried they will never get back what they give.

Can individual humans change? Or are they stuck being who they are forever? Do humans have a personality equilibrium? Is it that they can make short-term changes only and then gravitate back to their original personalities?

It is pretty clear that humans can at least make short-term changes in themselves. The question is whether they can make long-term changes which in effect make them into different people.

Do human personalities travel a steady line in which changes in personality are only short interruptions - always tending back towards a base personality? Or do human personalities travel in a branch-like way in which they travel down different branches away from the original personality?

It seems that long-term changes in individual humans are difficult. Once a change is made there is a tendency to relapse to the previous behavior. And in order to keep a change for the long term it looks like constant maintenance is required in order to keep that change.

If the change brought about positive conditions, the maintenance might be very low to none though. This is because the resulting positive enforcement maintains the change itself. If on the other hand, you don't see much benefit from the change, it may be difficult to impossible to maintain.

Another question is whether the human really changed if rigorous maintenance is required to keep the change. If given the chance, he/she would go right back to their previous behavior - so is that change?

In summation, it at least looks like humans can change if they see the change as positive and it brings about positive reinforcement.

We don't love people, we love our imagined images of people.

Who said that longevity should be a desirable goal? Aren't "brave heroes" the people that die for a "noble" cause? Isn't it villains that are more commonly depicted as ones seeking eternal life?

Is it better to go out in the prime of life, charging into the thick of things, living life fully than as a drooling, scared, physically weak old person with dementia? As with most things, it probably comes down to a middle point. Don't hide in a cave in fear of dying your entire life and don't give way to reckless abandon.

Old age comes with many ills. Both physical and mental weakness eventually afflict the old human. And to many humans, life on earth is a tough existence and a release from that struggle would be welcome.

Death is inevitable so what is the point of trying to escape it? Why go above and beyond to try and maintain a breathing body if the particular human is barely alive? It might be reasonable to patch a wound, but it may not be reasonable to go to extreme measures to heal the extremely sick. It is typically not for the sake of the extremely sick since it only makes them suffer longer. It is more to fulfill the emotional needs of those around them. This could be seen as cruel and selfish. Make the sick person suffer longer so that you can fulfill a need in yourself.

Death is not a "bad" thing. It is as much a part of us as birth. You can't run from it, and doing so has caused a lot of suffering. Humans think of death as something that causes them to "lose" their loved ones. Mental illness, long-term-kidnapping, long-term-arguments, and ending of relationships can do that too. Is death all that special, should it get such a negative stigma? At least with death, there is at least one person not crying, feeling sad, or suffering.

It is immature for humans to try and cling onto "life". Keep yourself healthy and tend to your wounds. Let the extremely sick live out their lives in comfort without prolonging their suffering and without extreme measures. Learn to deal with loss since it could come from other places besides death and it will be something you have to deal with eventually anyway.

It is easy of course to look at the alleged faults of others. Or rather, what in others is different from ourselves that we do not like. Sometimes things are only faults when we do not appreciate them when in fact there is nothing faulty about those things.

What has always been difficult though is to see our own faults. I more than most am aware of my own faults. I know of them because of a deeper introspection that I practice. I have been examining myself for many years. I had learned that people are very similar and learned that I could learn about people by learning about myself and learning how and why I act and think. It has proven effective in being able to apply what I learn about myself to the population at large.

Where there could be errors and possibly large errors is where I might be different than the population at large. I never thought that it would be an issue but it certainly could be. So, I have to be aware in instances where I may behave different than an average person. That is why it is better to examine the fundamental thoughts and actions instead of too detailed ones that may vary by personality. For example, we should all pretty much be similar in our tendency for self-centeredness and our concept of fairness. So, it is important to examine the larger broader scope than the finer everyday details of choosing chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

The other way that I am aware of my faults beyond using introspection, is by comparing myself to idealized figures that are without fault. One might compare themselves to what Jesus of Nazareth taught or to what Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha taught. It is easy to know something is a fault if you have something to judge it against.

A more difficult method of determining whether a trait is a faulty one is by seeing if it harms you or helps you. Typically, being quick to anger harms you and would usually be considered a fault because of this. Being wasteful would typically harm you and could be considered a fault. The problem with this method is knowing what is going to be harmful or helpful. Typically, helpful things occur more in the long term which is hard to see. A quick lie can help you in the short term but harm you in the long term. It takes a lot of historic knowledge to be able to apply this method of fault determination effectively. You have no idea what the long term effects of something is so you have to use historic data to guide you.

And of course, once you learn about your faults and that you have them your question becomes what should you do with that knowledge. One course of action would be to try and minimize or remove those faults in oneself. This of course is not easy due to the ingrained nature of these traits. Some of them are learned and some of them sit hardwired into the base of our brain. You basically have to actively train and practice to overcome these natural tendencies. You have to constantly monitor your thoughts and actions and stop your thoughts from running away from you. You have to actively control your thoughts all the time. You have to learn to recognize undesirable thoughts and stop them in their place and replace them with the types of thoughts that do not lead to faulty behavior. It is a lot of effort and not many people want to work that hard and are willing to live with their faults.

Is it even worth it? We are not guaranteed a long and fruitful life on this planet. Is it worth the time and effort of trying to remove our own faults? Living without faults has a potential advantage of keeping you out of trouble and possibly making you someone to be admired and could potentially make you into a calm and peaceful entity full of love for all mankind living in blissful quiet contemplation. But would it? Might other humans think that you think you are better than they are? Might they be jealous of you? Would anyone listen to you? Would they understand you? Might all that effort not be worth the short time that we are alive? Might the outside world and its constant struggle come knocking on your door and bring chaos and temptation with it. Is something like removing your faults only available to you if you live in the woods alone and away from all humans? Will they eventually find you?

What seems to the typical solution to things is to balance the opposites and arrive somewhere in the middle. So by this framework, we would not try and remove all of our faults since the effort and outside influence are too great to make it worthwhile. But neither would we live by our whims and let loose our passions as this would cause us a lot of problems. We should then try and learn what our faults are and reduce their potency. We will still get angry but it will be controlled quicker. We will still be selfish but at times we will give more. And by striking this balance we will make our lives easier so that the effort to achieve it pays for itself.

Over 200 years ago British soldiers marched from Boston to the towns of Lexington and Concord in order to seize weapons that were stored there by the citizens of Massachusetts. The British commander stationed in Boston feared an armed rebellion and wanted to make sure one could not occur and so he sent his troops to take the supply of weapons from the citizens of Massachusetts.

The citizens of Massachusetts thought the British government did not have a right to tell them what to do. The British government was willing to use a large force of professional soldiers in order to make sure the citizens of Massachusetts did what they were told. The citizens of Massachusetts thought that the only way to prevent their rights from being trampled on by a brutal dictator was to take up arms against this occupational force living amongst them.

So when the British soldiers arrived in Lexington on their way to Concord in order to seize the weapons of the Massachusetts citizenry, they were fired upon by citizens of Massachusetts that were willing to fight for freedom from the British government. The battles at Lexington and Concord are the first of the American Revolution.

The proper role of the human female is to remain chaste until guaranteed a secure and stable relationship from a human male.

Human females that deviate from this role will be considered "spoilers" to the main group of chaste human females. These spoilers lower the bar for the main group. They are the females that engage in sexual activity without the guarantee of a secure and stable relationship. They give human males the idea that all females should engage in sexual activity when prompted. This then makes it hard for chaste females to secure a stable long-term relationship due to new found expectations about human females brought about by the spoilers.

Not only do spoilers make entering a stable long-term relationship difficult for chaste women, but they make maintaining in-progress stable long-term relationships difficult. Spoilers are the ones that engage in "cheating" with a human male that is already engaged in a long-term relationship. Without spoilers, the human male would not have a likely ability to engage in sexual relations outside his current relationship.

One can observe in human females the tendency to show anger towards the "spoilers" that engage in sexual relations with their mates. One might find it odd that in some instances more anger is shown towards the "other woman" than to the male mate when an instance of cheating is discovered. But when looked at with the idea of the "other woman" being a "spoiler", it makes sense.

Human females gain control over human males mainly through sexual gatekeeping. They have control when they are in charge of when human males can and cannot have sexual relations. Spoilers degrade this ability and put the power in the hands of human males. Spoilers thus remove power from human females as a whole and thus human females are rightfully angry at spoilers.

Patriotism in Unites States is wrong. It is blind devotion to the state. If the government is worshiped and its actions go unquestioned then the patriotic become puppets of the government. This blind devotion to the state occurred during the National Socialist movement in Germany.

What one should love is "freedom" or "liberty" and not a government. The United States government was created in order to provide liberty to its inhabitants. It is just a tool and a means to have and maintain liberty. If it does not fulfill these ends then it does not deserve our love. This is of course stated in "The Declaration of Independence" when it says that Governments are created by us in order to maintain the God-given rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. And if any Government does not provide these things for all its citizens, it is the Right of the citizens to remove it and install a new government.

Excerpt from The Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The rich just kept on getting richer. The poor were getting poorer. With poverty, comes crime. In order to counter-act increased crime, our liberties were taken away. When it came that poverty reached even me, I had no means to combat the tyranny that was keeping me in such low means. I was desperate to feed my family and to feed myself. I would have done anything. But with the constant eye of the cameras and with no weapons to speak of, my fate was sealed. Everything was regulated. Everything was owned by the wealthy. We could not even sell ourselves into servitude. With the efficiency and machinery of today, human power is not needed to the extent that it was in our ancestor's days. We were obsolete.

It is not possible to set out to make a positive difference in this world. This is for the simple fact: you have no idea what effect your actions will have.

You have no idea whether your action will result in something that ultimately ends up being positive or negative. You also have no idea what making a positive difference really means. You may think you know, but "a positive difference" is a very relative term.

Plus, you can guarantee yourself being completely wrong by having a strong conviction in your belief that what you are doing is making a positive difference. It is irrational to unwaveringly believe in something that you cannot possibly know the outcome of. Humans are fallable, and any idea or interpretation that they think of has a chance of being completely wrong. You have to accept that fact and thus you cannot have an unwavering conviction that what you are doing will make a possitive difference.

Thus, in summation, it is not possible to set out to make a positive difference in this world.

This is the seed of an idea. It is very rough at this point but it is a good thought. It needs to be explored.
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You get robbed. What are you supposed to do?
You are supposed to call the police.
A financial deal goes sour. What are you supposed to do?
Get a lawyer and sue.
You are hungry. What are you supposed to do?
Go to the store and buy something that a farmer grew and a manufacturer assembled and cooked.
You are young and ignorant. What are you supposed to do?
Go to school and get lectured to about material that was decided upon for you.
You have no food or shelter. What are you supposed to do?
Get a job to earn money to hire other workers to produce food and build a shelter.

We are living by proxy. We are living indirectly. What happened to just plain straight-forward living? What happened to defending ourselves? What happened to standing up for our own rights? What happened to going out and seeking knowledge first-hand? What happened to doing something, anything, directly?

We have become weak and ineffective. We don't do anything anymore. If you die actually doing something, so what? At least you actually "lived". A tiger wants food. It goes and kills and rips the flesh off of the bone with its teeth. It wants to sleep, it finds a covering and sleeps under it.

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Do not be fooled by the rich elite who tell you that we live better than anyone else on earth. You are their penned up herd of cattle which they feed upon when hungry.

Why are humans so physically lacking in strength and deficient in natural "tools"? Other animals have sharp claws, sharp teeth, powerful limbs, specialized tools such as trunks, etc. Why does man lack all of this? Man is pretty feeble. It is difficult for a man to kill another man without using specialized tools. It can be done, but it is difficult.

When primitive man got into a fight with another primitive man, they tried to beat each other to death. This made each tired. And without any natural weapons or natural armor, both got superficially bruised and fell down and eventually got up and walked away. If they had razor sharp claws, they would have killed each other. We are no doubt an aggressive species and we will fight one another. If not for our feebleness, perhaps we would have killed each other off early on in the history of our species.

Microsoft is an "unstoppable" mega-corporation. Any legitimate competition is crushed by the might of Microsoft. Try to develop a for-profit operating system to compete with Windows and you'll get crushed. Try and develop a for-profit word-processor to compete with Word and you'll get crushed. Microsoft has reached the top of the food chain.

Legitimate for-profit companies cannot compete against Microsoft. Due to this fact, "free" software, such as Linux and Open-Office, has bubbled to the surface as the only possible contender in the evolutionary struggle against Microsoft. Providing "free" software is the only way to possibly compete against Microsoft. There would not have been a need for "free" software if Microsoft had not crushed all possible means of fair competition.

This lack of competition also hurts Microsoft because: a competitor, in general, only needs to be better than his next closest rival. If there are no close competitors then Microsoft does not need to improve. If it does not improve it will stagnate, whither, and die. It will be overrun by the weeds of small "free" software projects just waiting to get out from underneath the shadow of the mighty giant Microsoft.

Perform actions without desiring the fruit of their outcome (their perceived beneficial results). This is how you get into "the zone". You are in the moment; you are in the act itself. You don't think of the outcome, you think of only what you are doing. The outside world and anything else that is not exactly what you are doing is cast out from your thoughts. It provides you with the patience to correctly perform and complete your task.

If interested in improving your life, I recommend attaining knowledge in the practical advice of Buddhism and Hinduism.

One needs to develop a large base of general knowledge in order to know what's what in the world. Then what? Through the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism you can then direct your life towards the attainment of "Enlightenment" and the release from suffering.

As someone that "suffered" a lot early on, I can attest to the benefit of a large base of general knowledge along with what I have learned from Buddhism and Hinduism to steer me away from sorrow and despair to a better place.

General knowledge alone will not do it all since you will learn about all the suffering that the world has to offer. You need the mental guidance that is provided through the practical teachings Buddhism and Hinduism.

Throughout history, there have been the warrior class rulers that lorded over their peasant farmers that tended their land. Kept in ignorance through lack of education and kept in servitude to serve their lord, peasants were basically slaves. Today, we are under the illusion that things have evolved beyond this scenario. But don't most people toil their lives away so that some wealthy land owner can enjoy the millions of dollars produced on the backs of his workers? The wealthy lord is seen as the conqueror that deserves his position in life. The wealthy boss is respected by his workers just as the feudal lord is respected and admired by the peasants he rules.

Today there is an illusion that you too can achieve a level of greatness but how much does that actually happen? How many people really advance to a higher station in life beyond the one in which they were born? Most people are born into the working class and that is where they stay. The quality of life has increased for the working class but the quality of life has also increased for the wealthy. The level of the working class is as far away from the wealthy as it has ever been, the scale has just been shifted and everyone has it better than it was.

Larger and larger political states are required to support the creation of larger and more advanced war machines. When spears ruled the battlefield, a relatively small infrastructure was needed to mass produce the weapons of war. More advanced weapons such as crossbows, chariots, catapults, and armor require a more advanced infrastructure to develop and mass produce.

Borders of nations expand until there is no more room for expansion either due to a natural boundary or another nation's boundary. If the other nation is drastically weaker as well as filled with valuable resources, it will be consumed by its neighbor. When nations achieve an extremely large size, it is not worth trying to conquer one another. In the animal world, intimidating threats serve as a deterrent for combat because even if you are clearly bigger and stronger the little guy still has sharp teeth and claws and might get lucky enough to severely wound you. With substantially sized and well resourced nations, it is to the point where even if you conquer them, you will be severely hurt by it and so it is not worth it.

Surviving through each and every day of your life used to be something that you had to worry about as a human. Some humans still have this worry today, but for those of us with computers and other modern luxuries, we pretty much take surviving into old age for granted.

Even today we can not survive without a group of other humans helping us out. A naked infant left in the wild won't survive. Some species on earth are born and never see their mothers again but we as humans survive by being in a group. Maintaining that group is critical to the survival of each member. Without elderly members to pass on a lifetimes worth of life-saving information, the young would die. For example, during a famine an elderly member can remember back to when they were just a child and point out a root that is not eaten by current members but is abundant and was what his/her tribe ate when they went through a similar famine. Without young members to hunt and gather food, the old would die.

As an aside, the reason elderly are no longer respected could be due to the ability of recording history in books. We no longer have to rely on the elderly to tell us what to do in a situation that we are unfamiliar with and which they already lived through. Elderly are no longer valuable resources since the information they contain is available in books. This is not entirely correct though, due to their longer existence the elderly have the potential to have learnt more and processed more data. This could give them a broader outlook and provide them with more informed opinions. It does not always turn out that way but the potential is there.

Without cooperation, the group would die. Due to the critical nature of maintaining the group, those humans that did not exhibit cohesive group dynamics ceased to exist. Natural selection produced humans that were successful in groups. Our behaviors and decisions reflect this group living. In teenagers for example, being part of a group is what drives their behavior. They base their self-worth on how they are valued by their group. They act in accordance with their group whether rational or not since it is about trying to conform as much as possible so that they are considered a successful member of the group.