Creativity of People Today
I was reading the news today on some of my favorite news sites, and it struck me - the world is still in its infancy, regarding creativity. Every human being has the potential to create amazing, uniquely creative works of art, to make things that cheer up and inspire everyone around them. And yet, not ONE SINGLE article in ANY news source I could find had any descriptions of such things for the past 3 days!
I read news.google.com, which is a very non-partisan, non-biased view on news articles - it robotically chooses articles from other news providers based on popularity of its readership. I read cnn.com, which has a good amount of bias, but also covers all the major news from USA point of view anyway. I even read a couple "good news" web sites [1], [2] that focuses on only good news (nothing horrific or depressing - what a concept). And I read my favorite, the Wikipedia Current Events page which is the most unbiased news headlines I have ever seen (GOOD!) but has been mostly death and destruction this week.
This really got me thinking today. One of two things is happening. Either there is nobody anywhere doing great things in this world, creating inspirational artwork, helping people in some area in some way - or the news is completely letting us down by missing it. Which is it?
I think it's a little of both. Humanity is still struggling to find its way to "address the minimum needs of the people" in the shortest time possible, leaving the rest of their time and energy to do great things in this world. Instead, our societies all seem geared towards wasting our time, wasting our energy, wasting our money, over and over and over again - getting us involved in convoluted, complicated, difficult things that can't easily be mastered; making life even harder than it really has to be.
There are some people in our world that are minimalists. They buck the trend of society by never buying a home, only renting. Never renting a house, but only a small place with 2-3 roommates to reduce the cost. Selling their car or just not replacing it when it expires. They get rid of as much stuff as they can, so when it's time to move, they can get up and leave very easily; they possess only a few boxes of junk, a few clothes, and a laptop to schlep around with them.
This minimalist idea is fascinating to me. I don't live that way; quite the opposite most of the time. But there's something to it. Not buying into all the advertising for the "next must-have thing", in every avenue of life. Buying only what you need, not everything you desire. Making what you have last as long as possible, and then, finding a way to make it last even longer.
And in a way, these minimalists - their very existence flying in the face of all the advertising and peer-pressure around them - are being creative. The life they lead, created by themselves, is an kind of creative expression - the result of their strong intention to lead the way they want to, based on a force inside of themselves (certainly not from any external impetus).
That's not the creativity I'm looking for - but it's something to consider.
What I want to see is people having time to create great works of art in their particular fields, an expression coming from within themselves. They have to have enough time to relax and calm themselves once in a while, to center themselves and focus on their inner-greatness, and see what blossoms. It has well been observed that the greatest works of art come from those who have a spiritual connection, and use it for great inspiration and creativity. Such works have a rare energy that uplifts those who view it, or hear it, or interact with it.
But when do we ever have time to do this? A whole bunch of things must line up properly to do it. You have to know it's possible, that you, personally, can do it. You must understand why it would be so great to do that, and then make the time in your busy life to do it. You have to realize the importance, to you and to everyone around you, and make it a priority. It doesn't have to take a lot of time, just some time, to start with.
I think a great society is one that has the ability to hold back the floodgates of wastefulness, long enough for the people to be creative, for measurable periods of time. The measure of the greatness of a society is in how much time it makes available to its people for creativity - all the people, across the board.
A wise man once said, people should have a vacation 1 day a week to really get away from their lives and be a spiritual being. But that's not enough. They also need to do that 1 week a month, 1 month a year, and 1 year every 12 years! Boy, I don't know about you, but my boss wouldn't let me off work for all that much time!
And thus, our society has been measured.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Labels:
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inspiration,
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Monday, November 01, 2010
Family Camping Last July
We went camping at KOA in San Diego this summer, as we have for many summers in a row - over the 4th of July. For us, camping means renting a small wood "kabin" at the KOA which has 2 rooms and electricity, and that's about it. The campground has central bathrooms and showers, and a central outdoor kitchen/cooking area, which is nice.
This year I forgot to bring the power cables. Soon after arriving, I went to buy some new ones at Walmart. I bought two power strips (one with a really long cable on it), and one of those wall-plate-cover-blocks that has 6 outlets in it and a light telling you the surge protection is active, which I installed over the back room's power outlet on the wall. I ended up with cables all over. The front room's power outlet has the long cord going up and over the front door frame, to power the stuff on the other side of the room: a 3-foot-tall refrigerator we brought with us, and our favorite coffee maker. The shorter power strip is also plugged into the front room's outlet to power smaller devices we brought with us.
The front power-strip has these things plugged into it:
The rear power-block has these things plugged into it:
Now, one of the power strips has its plugs rotated 90 degrees, to help for people who have wall-warts that take up a lot of room. And, symmetrically, half of our wall-warts are the new kind that are rotated 90 degrees to help people who have the old non-rotated power stripts. Put them together, and yes, that's right, THE PROBLEM STILL EXISTS! Rotating everything 90 degrees cancels out the whole idea! With a little creative thinking we were able to get most of our electronics plugged in when we needed it.
But what are we going to do when Sherri's phone needs recharging? We'll probably have to unplug my laptop during the day and charge her phone then; I can recharge my laptop during the night; or vice-versa.
This is a good example of the many struggles we overcame while roughing it, camping, this year.
I really don't know how the early settlers managed it.
We went camping at KOA in San Diego this summer, as we have for many summers in a row - over the 4th of July. For us, camping means renting a small wood "kabin" at the KOA which has 2 rooms and electricity, and that's about it. The campground has central bathrooms and showers, and a central outdoor kitchen/cooking area, which is nice.
This year I forgot to bring the power cables. Soon after arriving, I went to buy some new ones at Walmart. I bought two power strips (one with a really long cable on it), and one of those wall-plate-cover-blocks that has 6 outlets in it and a light telling you the surge protection is active, which I installed over the back room's power outlet on the wall. I ended up with cables all over. The front room's power outlet has the long cord going up and over the front door frame, to power the stuff on the other side of the room: a 3-foot-tall refrigerator we brought with us, and our favorite coffee maker. The shorter power strip is also plugged into the front room's outlet to power smaller devices we brought with us.
The front power-strip has these things plugged into it:
- Nintendo DS recharging cable
- Kayla's Kindle recharging cable
- Clinton's cell phone recharger
- Kayla's cell phone recharger
- normally we'd have a front porch light plugged in here, too, but we forgot to bring it this year.
The rear power-block has these things plugged into it:
- string of lights that serve as night-lights, strung along the floor between our 2 rooms
- Paul's laptop recharging
- Sherri's laptop recharging
- power cord recharging the inflatable mattress inflator's battery, since it's an off-line style hookup where you can't inflate your mattress when the battery is dead, EVEN WHEN IT'S PLUGGED IN (you have to let it fully charge)
- battery recharger for the digital camera, because we took a lot of pictures
- my cell-phone recharger cable because it's a smart phone which needs recharging every night.
Now, one of the power strips has its plugs rotated 90 degrees, to help for people who have wall-warts that take up a lot of room. And, symmetrically, half of our wall-warts are the new kind that are rotated 90 degrees to help people who have the old non-rotated power stripts. Put them together, and yes, that's right, THE PROBLEM STILL EXISTS! Rotating everything 90 degrees cancels out the whole idea! With a little creative thinking we were able to get most of our electronics plugged in when we needed it.
But what are we going to do when Sherri's phone needs recharging? We'll probably have to unplug my laptop during the day and charge her phone then; I can recharge my laptop during the night; or vice-versa.
This is a good example of the many struggles we overcame while roughing it, camping, this year.
I really don't know how the early settlers managed it.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
MPEG - a Blight Against Video Quality
Watching music videos tonight, I realized something: MPEG video encoding is a crime against quality.
Back when bandwidths were small and expensive, MPEG made near-full-speed video possible. Without severe compression, we wouldn't of had digital cable until years later. But this amazing technology comes with a serious cost.
MPEG compression removes most of the data, and sacrifices some of the video quality to do it. The higher the compression rate, the less data you end up with (less to transmit or store), but the worse the quality gets. To my knowledge, there is no MPEG compression that doesn't lose at least some of the quality. "Some" quality loss that your eye doesn't really notice, is fine. But MPEG has some serious drawbacks, it screws up when the entire screen is changing a whole lot, quickly - like during explosions in an action movie.
I'm not going to explain about Key frames and all that - there's plenty of web sites where you can learn how MPEG transmits the full frame of video only once in a while, sending "what has changed on the screen since the last frame" most of the time.
I'm just going to say that MPEG is so wrong for many reasons.
In the old days, with analog TV, you could flip through channels very quickly. A high-quality VCR could "tune" from one channel to the next in about 1/10th of a second. This was awesome - you could flip through channels and tell very quickly whether you wanted to watch a channel or not. Experienced TV viewers could tell in an instant what was an ad and what was a show; it's a finely-honed skill. But with MPEG compression, this is no longer possible! MPEG only transmits a key frame about once a second, or less. So, when you tune into a new channel, you've jumped right in the middle of "this changed, that changed, and on the next frame, this changed, that changed"; your tuner has no idea what it's talking about until the next Key frame goes by! Visually, you see: nothing. Black screen. For up to a second, sometimes longer. Then the picture appears. It's really irritating!
What I'm saying is, no matter how fast your computer/HDTV/Bluray/Tivo/Roku/Google TV/Digital TV Tuner/cell phone gets, it will NEVER be faster at tuning. Never. Not with MPEG, anyway. It's not a "hardware is slow" issue - it is a design flaw in the MPEG compression itself.
Suppose you turned on CNN Headline News, and the title along the bottom says "Dow Jones average", and the news anchor person is saying "it went up 5 points just now... now it went down 3 points... now it went up 13 points... now it went down 6 points..." And you wonder, what is the Dow right now? Nothing on the screen is telling the exact number. You're getting second-by-second updates about the number, but you don't know what the number actually is. You don't know, because you didn't hear what the price was when they started reciting the changes in price; plus, you missed some of the changes in price they said earlier. Now imagine that once every hour they'll actually tell you the exact price - "it's 11524 right now", then they continue reciting all of it's ups and downs. Since you heard the last real price, you have a chance of tracking the number during the next hour - by adding and subtracting the intermediate numbers they tell you, from that top-of-the-hour number of 11524.
That's sort of how MPEG works. If you miss the top-of-the-hour number, you gotta wait an hour to hear it again; you can't tell anything useful until then. For MPEG it's about once a second, which is a long time in video-land. It's irritating when you're tuning channels.
And nobody complains about it. They just live with it. This pisses me off! There are technological things that could be changed to fix this problem. One fix would be to change the MPEG compression to transmit Key frames more frequently. Yes, this would take up more bandwidth per channel - and it's WORTH IT for quality improvement - but if nobody complains, it won't be done. Why should media companies change their ways, if people put up with what they have today?
Another possible trick would be to use multiple tuners, 2 or 3. When you're on channel 15, say, it's already tuned in channel 16 and 17, and is waiting for the Key frame to go by. If you suddenly change to channel 16, the channel 16 tuner actually saw the keyframe go by at some point during the last second - so it can show you the video image INSTANTLY. The old channel 15 tuner now can become the channel 18 tuner (so your box is tuned to channels 16, 17, 18, and you are viewing 16). This solves the problem so long as you don't try to flip channels faster than 3 per second. Not great, but somewhat better than today. But what if the person changes channels down, instead of up? Maybe you need 1-2 extra tuners in that direction, too. 5+ tuners? That's a lot of extra hardware, and extra cost, to work around a software problem! And what if the person jumps to a new channel that's not in sequence? You didn't have that channel tuned, so we're back to the full second-plus delay again. Maybe you need a tuner on EVERY channel? That's not a practical solution for your hardware to do. Frustrating.
The Key-frames-not-sent-often-enough problem hurts you, the viewer, in other ways, too. The most action-packed scenes in a movie are often RUINED by MPEG encoding. When everything is flashing on the whole screen and changing quickly - explosion with parts flying everywhere, there's no way MPEG can handle it - it has to transmit Key frames for nearly every frame, which is too much data, so the number of frames per second drops dramatically - sometimes to 2 frames per second! This most important part of an action movie is now ruined, reduced to a slow-moving slideshow of fireballs - ruining the height of excitement, and reminding you of uncle Jethro's neverending slideshow of last year's family wiener roast. Just think. All the trouble and expense Hollywood put into making this one-shot-only scene, and they can't even record it on DVD properly for their customers to see. Incredible.
Sometimes the tree outside my house partially blocks the digital TV dish in my back yard, so some of the digital data gets lost. If the lost data happened to be some of the changing-frames, I only notice a little blurriness of the picture and it goes away quickly. But if a Key frame got damaged or lost, look out! The entire screen freaks out with wild colors and crazy blockiness, for at least 1-2 seconds of time! Lot's of green, usually, which is strange. Anyway, it looks horrible, like the person on the screen was stuck in mud, and it's sticking to them as they move around; then just as suddenly, it's all clear and working again. The 1-2 second weirdness was because the change-frames were describing changes, but my TV had the wrong Key frame data to compare it against. The screen cleared up when the following Key frame came through undamaged. I always know it's time to trim the tree when this happens.
The MPEG standard was designed and chosen back when dialup Internet was standard, and digital video was a tiny rectangle on a computer screen only. Today, all this has changed. If you "only" have 1Mbps Internet, that's considered slow. Half the web pages now have video advertisements playing alongside your normal content. And a wide variety streaming movies and clips play easily from a variety of sites like YouTube and Netflix. We have more bandwidth now. Our computers are 8X faster, now, and have Terabyte hard drives in them for local storage. I think we can handle updating the way we use MPEG to use a little more data, and improve quality dramatically at the same time.
Boy it's a good thing people don't complain enough, or somebody might actually have to fix this blight. Sometimes I wish we could return to the speed and simplicity of the "good old days" of analog television.
tl;dr: MPEG sux. TV channels should use more bandwidth to give us QUALITY video for a change. TV's moving to the Internet anyway; everything is. Just do it already.
Watching music videos tonight, I realized something: MPEG video encoding is a crime against quality.
Back when bandwidths were small and expensive, MPEG made near-full-speed video possible. Without severe compression, we wouldn't of had digital cable until years later. But this amazing technology comes with a serious cost.
MPEG compression removes most of the data, and sacrifices some of the video quality to do it. The higher the compression rate, the less data you end up with (less to transmit or store), but the worse the quality gets. To my knowledge, there is no MPEG compression that doesn't lose at least some of the quality. "Some" quality loss that your eye doesn't really notice, is fine. But MPEG has some serious drawbacks, it screws up when the entire screen is changing a whole lot, quickly - like during explosions in an action movie.
I'm not going to explain about Key frames and all that - there's plenty of web sites where you can learn how MPEG transmits the full frame of video only once in a while, sending "what has changed on the screen since the last frame" most of the time.
I'm just going to say that MPEG is so wrong for many reasons.
In the old days, with analog TV, you could flip through channels very quickly. A high-quality VCR could "tune" from one channel to the next in about 1/10th of a second. This was awesome - you could flip through channels and tell very quickly whether you wanted to watch a channel or not. Experienced TV viewers could tell in an instant what was an ad and what was a show; it's a finely-honed skill. But with MPEG compression, this is no longer possible! MPEG only transmits a key frame about once a second, or less. So, when you tune into a new channel, you've jumped right in the middle of "this changed, that changed, and on the next frame, this changed, that changed"; your tuner has no idea what it's talking about until the next Key frame goes by! Visually, you see: nothing. Black screen. For up to a second, sometimes longer. Then the picture appears. It's really irritating!
What I'm saying is, no matter how fast your computer/HDTV/Bluray/Tivo/Roku/Google TV/Digital TV Tuner/cell phone gets, it will NEVER be faster at tuning. Never. Not with MPEG, anyway. It's not a "hardware is slow" issue - it is a design flaw in the MPEG compression itself.
Suppose you turned on CNN Headline News, and the title along the bottom says "Dow Jones average", and the news anchor person is saying "it went up 5 points just now... now it went down 3 points... now it went up 13 points... now it went down 6 points..." And you wonder, what is the Dow right now? Nothing on the screen is telling the exact number. You're getting second-by-second updates about the number, but you don't know what the number actually is. You don't know, because you didn't hear what the price was when they started reciting the changes in price; plus, you missed some of the changes in price they said earlier. Now imagine that once every hour they'll actually tell you the exact price - "it's 11524 right now", then they continue reciting all of it's ups and downs. Since you heard the last real price, you have a chance of tracking the number during the next hour - by adding and subtracting the intermediate numbers they tell you, from that top-of-the-hour number of 11524.
That's sort of how MPEG works. If you miss the top-of-the-hour number, you gotta wait an hour to hear it again; you can't tell anything useful until then. For MPEG it's about once a second, which is a long time in video-land. It's irritating when you're tuning channels.
And nobody complains about it. They just live with it. This pisses me off! There are technological things that could be changed to fix this problem. One fix would be to change the MPEG compression to transmit Key frames more frequently. Yes, this would take up more bandwidth per channel - and it's WORTH IT for quality improvement - but if nobody complains, it won't be done. Why should media companies change their ways, if people put up with what they have today?
Another possible trick would be to use multiple tuners, 2 or 3. When you're on channel 15, say, it's already tuned in channel 16 and 17, and is waiting for the Key frame to go by. If you suddenly change to channel 16, the channel 16 tuner actually saw the keyframe go by at some point during the last second - so it can show you the video image INSTANTLY. The old channel 15 tuner now can become the channel 18 tuner (so your box is tuned to channels 16, 17, 18, and you are viewing 16). This solves the problem so long as you don't try to flip channels faster than 3 per second. Not great, but somewhat better than today. But what if the person changes channels down, instead of up? Maybe you need 1-2 extra tuners in that direction, too. 5+ tuners? That's a lot of extra hardware, and extra cost, to work around a software problem! And what if the person jumps to a new channel that's not in sequence? You didn't have that channel tuned, so we're back to the full second-plus delay again. Maybe you need a tuner on EVERY channel? That's not a practical solution for your hardware to do. Frustrating.
The Key-frames-not-sent-often-enough problem hurts you, the viewer, in other ways, too. The most action-packed scenes in a movie are often RUINED by MPEG encoding. When everything is flashing on the whole screen and changing quickly - explosion with parts flying everywhere, there's no way MPEG can handle it - it has to transmit Key frames for nearly every frame, which is too much data, so the number of frames per second drops dramatically - sometimes to 2 frames per second! This most important part of an action movie is now ruined, reduced to a slow-moving slideshow of fireballs - ruining the height of excitement, and reminding you of uncle Jethro's neverending slideshow of last year's family wiener roast. Just think. All the trouble and expense Hollywood put into making this one-shot-only scene, and they can't even record it on DVD properly for their customers to see. Incredible.
Sometimes the tree outside my house partially blocks the digital TV dish in my back yard, so some of the digital data gets lost. If the lost data happened to be some of the changing-frames, I only notice a little blurriness of the picture and it goes away quickly. But if a Key frame got damaged or lost, look out! The entire screen freaks out with wild colors and crazy blockiness, for at least 1-2 seconds of time! Lot's of green, usually, which is strange. Anyway, it looks horrible, like the person on the screen was stuck in mud, and it's sticking to them as they move around; then just as suddenly, it's all clear and working again. The 1-2 second weirdness was because the change-frames were describing changes, but my TV had the wrong Key frame data to compare it against. The screen cleared up when the following Key frame came through undamaged. I always know it's time to trim the tree when this happens.
The MPEG standard was designed and chosen back when dialup Internet was standard, and digital video was a tiny rectangle on a computer screen only. Today, all this has changed. If you "only" have 1Mbps Internet, that's considered slow. Half the web pages now have video advertisements playing alongside your normal content. And a wide variety streaming movies and clips play easily from a variety of sites like YouTube and Netflix. We have more bandwidth now. Our computers are 8X faster, now, and have Terabyte hard drives in them for local storage. I think we can handle updating the way we use MPEG to use a little more data, and improve quality dramatically at the same time.
Boy it's a good thing people don't complain enough, or somebody might actually have to fix this blight. Sometimes I wish we could return to the speed and simplicity of the "good old days" of analog television.
tl;dr: MPEG sux. TV channels should use more bandwidth to give us QUALITY video for a change. TV's moving to the Internet anyway; everything is. Just do it already.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Governmental Spending Transparency
I think its time the government opened up its books for the public to see, in a way that isn't completely confusing and complicated. Its time that people have the ability to see the cost-impact of those things they directly voted for, as well as for decisions being made by their elected officials. (For the purposes of this article, I'm going to refer to the United States of America where I live; other countries should be able to do something similar).
If done right, this will solve many problems:
- people feel like the government is wasting lots of money on unknown things; less hatred of government organizations and incorrect feelings of governmental incompetence.
- people have no idea the relative size of costs within the government: is $5 million spent on something a lot of money, or not much money at all? If it's a lot, I want to study it and stop them if it's not the best usage of that money. If it's nothing, I want to ignore it and find something bigger to focus on.
- more ordinary people can become involved in a rudamentary understanding of what our government is accomplishing.
- TV media could not create outright lies about what our government is doing, how our taxpayers money is being spent. They couldn't get away with it anymore.
- TV media would not be able to take biased sides like they do today, to deceive people in two extreme ways (liberal and conservative). Media bias would be eliminated by true data access - it will be clear to everyone where they're doctoring the truth; they will not continue their deceptive ways.
- people are asked to vote, today, on Propositions allocating large dollar amounts for various purposes. How can people vote yes or no on issues without a clear understanding of all the related spending today?
- the biggest chunks of money must to go the best, right and proper use, in our country. Start fixing the big things first, and work your way down to smaller things. How can we do this today, without a clear understanding of how much is spent where and when? With a proper database, peer pressure (by public viewing of expenditures in a clear form) can solve the problem.
Simply quoting the exact confusing wording of the proposed law, and listing biased-arguments "for" the proposition, and biased arguments "against" the proposition - that is not enough information to properly vote! With enough proper information, very often a bill will pass with an overwhelming majority for, or against, it - because everyone can clearly see through the smoke, and knows the reality of what is really going on, in a balanced way.
Should I encourage the schools to spend more money on lunches for students? I would, if that's the worst problem the school has. I would NOT if there are more serious problems preventing students from learning, such as a lack of teachers, rooms, safety, or when there are no books in the classroom! Problems are all relative, and the decision can only be made in relation to other related problems. Where is all the other information I need to properly vote on this? If I have to scrounge it all myself, spending hours and hours researching and calling officials during normal business hours - who has time to do that? And, every voting tax payer needs to do this! Without an easy-to-use centralized database, the right thing cannot happen.
The tax paying people have a right to know clearly what is going on in our government, and to a limited degree they can find out today. But the information is not collected in a central location, and there is no way to navigate the data easily. There's way too much disorganization and over-detail in some areas, with insufficient detail in other areas.
Proper data studies can lead to knowledge about how our tax money is being spent today, and this knowledge ultimately leads to the right use of money in the future. If a government agency is wasting money and I can't discover that because the information they're providing is too convoluted, incomplete and confusing, then the waste continues. If they have to provide all their spending in a clear chart for me to read, breaking everything down from large to small in a hierarchical tree of spending that I can easily navigate, I will see where they're wasting money, and I can call them on it - and work with them to reduce the waste.
There is always some waste in any system; I want to feel confident that we're keeping it at a minimum.
Shine the light anew, and the cockroaches will flee the area.
Data Visualization - A Good Solution
One way to make this information available is to show the first level breakdown of where our tax dollars go - how much goes to which overarching organizations within the country, during the past year or so. 5 or 6 top level bullets, with money that adds up to the total taken in by the IRS for that time period. It should be obvious that the numbers add up, and what the levels mean.
From there, the tax payer should be able to drill down - click on one organization to "open it"and see where all of its money is going, within its categories. Similarly, each category can be "opened" to see all the sub-categories of monetary expenditure. At each level, a clear English description should be given of what the money was spent on. If it can't be expressed clearly and simply, it should not have been spent in the first place. Again, the numbers all add up in this area, to the total in the level above.
The data should also have the ability for anybody to attach comments, at any level, to any piece of data or organization - a threaded discussion. Government officials post here to clarify any confusion or answer questions from tax payers about certain parts of the spending for that year. This meta-data would help future visitors to that part of the database, to reduce the number of redundant questions and confusion a specific piece of data could cause.
All data from all organizations needs to be regularly collected and fed to a central "public Internet server," and made available via a hierarchical viewer, as well as pure data feeds in a variety of formats: CSV (Excel), RSS (subscription), XML data dump, perhaps OData, and other formats that make sense. This can be automated, so it doesn't take much human work to keep the data flowing month after month, year after year.
Conclusion
It's time for our government to stop pretending incompetence, to stop staying behind the times. Computers are cheap and ubiquitous, as are databases and file systems with massive redundancy. The same for large-scale Internet access.
At any time any tax payer could access this database, and see where money really is being spent - what things are really being accomplished. This is when creativity kicks in - if we're doing X, why aren't we also doing Y? Are we spending too much/too little on Z? Why is organization A spending money on the same thing as organization B? Maybe it's right, or wrong; people can find out, contact those organizations, learn something, and update the comments in the database.
The direction of our country should be steerable by the people, at least to a certain extent. How can you do that when you can't tell what is actually being done, and how much money is spent each year doing it?
tl;dr
We need a Government database of spending, in tree-form, for us to play with.
I wanna explore, hate and love, what I find in it.
Labels:
database,
government,
hierarchy,
media bias,
spending,
tax payer,
taxes,
transparency,
voting
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Best Humanitarian Use of Military Equipment
I laughed when I read this article. Someone figured out how to use old bomber airplanes to plant an unbelievable number of trees in one day. Check this out --
I hope they really do it. We've worried for so long about deforestation in many areas, it's awesome to think that treeless areas could be repaired at a rate of 3000 square miles per year, that's 1 billion trees in a year!
Labels:
deforestation,
forest,
planting,
reforestation,
trees
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Twin Towers 9/11 Replacement - Mosque
The idea of creating a Mosque on the grounds of the old Twin Towers in Manhattan is sheer genius. Let me explain why.
Our country, the United States of America, has reached a level of greatness by doing what we know to be right, not what the popular view would lead a person to do. It is that Independence, among many other things, which leads to our country's greatness.
The United States of America does not condone terrorism. In fact, we feel just the opposite. We believe in friendship, caring, brotherhood. We believe in families, neighborhoods, friends, a nice work environment, public expressions of creativity. When others are trying to create fear, we try to heal. When others try to divide, we try to unite. United we stand. Terrorism? We believe in the exact opposite, and we put our money where our mouth is - both figuratively, and literally.
Terrorists WANT you to react against them, to try to blow them up and attack them. Waste your time and money and energy by expressing your fear! Get involved with the terrorists! Talk about it, fight them! That's exactly what they want us to do. Which is why that is exactly the opposite of what we must do to defeat them.
What is the most powerful signal you could possibly send to a bunch of terrorists who hate America? Obama and others have figured it out. You send them brotherhood, and love. We as a nation do not hate moslems. We hate the microscopic branch of humanity who are terrorists, misrepresenting themselves as moslems.
Now, I'm not moslem - I've never been in a mosque. But I'm sure their religion includes some very uplifting, inspiring values and beliefs, with high goals for self-improvement and right relations, if the followers take the religion seriously. At its root, the moslem religion has the same goals as any other great religion in America or anywhere else - treat people properly, because through cooperation you can accomplish more, and quickly; battling and tearing down you accomplish less, more slowly.
There are powerful energies humanity can use to fight fear. Research it, study it. The knowledge is out there. Greatfulness is a powerful combatant to fear. Compassion for fellow human beings is another one.
The United States of America is going to defeat the terrorists using the most powerful, direct method available - by showing compassion and honor towards the purity and greatness that exists all around the terrorists, in their own home countries. We will honor the moslem religion by building a mosque at the 9/11 site.
Maybe then these other countries (who have mostly good people, as America does) will realize America is a lot more advanced - a lot more real - than they originally thought.
The idea of creating a Mosque on the grounds of the old Twin Towers in Manhattan is sheer genius. Let me explain why.
Our country, the United States of America, has reached a level of greatness by doing what we know to be right, not what the popular view would lead a person to do. It is that Independence, among many other things, which leads to our country's greatness.
The United States of America does not condone terrorism. In fact, we feel just the opposite. We believe in friendship, caring, brotherhood. We believe in families, neighborhoods, friends, a nice work environment, public expressions of creativity. When others are trying to create fear, we try to heal. When others try to divide, we try to unite. United we stand. Terrorism? We believe in the exact opposite, and we put our money where our mouth is - both figuratively, and literally.
Terrorists WANT you to react against them, to try to blow them up and attack them. Waste your time and money and energy by expressing your fear! Get involved with the terrorists! Talk about it, fight them! That's exactly what they want us to do. Which is why that is exactly the opposite of what we must do to defeat them.
What is the most powerful signal you could possibly send to a bunch of terrorists who hate America? Obama and others have figured it out. You send them brotherhood, and love. We as a nation do not hate moslems. We hate the microscopic branch of humanity who are terrorists, misrepresenting themselves as moslems.
Now, I'm not moslem - I've never been in a mosque. But I'm sure their religion includes some very uplifting, inspiring values and beliefs, with high goals for self-improvement and right relations, if the followers take the religion seriously. At its root, the moslem religion has the same goals as any other great religion in America or anywhere else - treat people properly, because through cooperation you can accomplish more, and quickly; battling and tearing down you accomplish less, more slowly.
There are powerful energies humanity can use to fight fear. Research it, study it. The knowledge is out there. Greatfulness is a powerful combatant to fear. Compassion for fellow human beings is another one.
The United States of America is going to defeat the terrorists using the most powerful, direct method available - by showing compassion and honor towards the purity and greatness that exists all around the terrorists, in their own home countries. We will honor the moslem religion by building a mosque at the 9/11 site.
Maybe then these other countries (who have mostly good people, as America does) will realize America is a lot more advanced - a lot more real - than they originally thought.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Healing Arts
There are a number of areas of healing in our modern world today, two primary ones being Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist. Think about what these two types of doctors do:
I put "mind" in quotes because there's something missing here. Human beings have 3 distinct parts to them, not just two.
Three Parts of the Human Being
You could also say that humans have a spirit or soul, too. I didn't include that on my list because I know there's some debate in our society as to the existence of that; and because the healing arts don't directly affect that part of a person, they mostly treat the "tangible" parts of us, the parts that accumulate wear and tear during our lives. Besides, I don't think anybody would argue they don't have a physical body, or emotions, or a mind.
What? How are Emotions different from Mind? That's a good question.
Emotions are Different from Mind
It's easy to mistake Emotions for Mind, but these two things are truly separate. You can prove this to yourself - notice how sometimes they want two totally different things! For example, think about the last time you were in love. It was hard to concentrate on work or school, wasn't it? Your heart kept remembering the person you're so fond of. You kept imagining what they look like, what they would say, how they would say it; what romantic thing you would say in return, how they feel, their delicious perfume, etc. At the same time, you were supposed to finish your paper on Deforestation in East Timor, or some such thing. It took you 5 times longer than normal to finish it, because you kept wandering into daydream mode! Or, you kept forgetting your assignment at work, or left out an important part you normally wouldn't do, or left a vital tool behind which you never did before; that sort of thing.
How about a common theme we've seen in movies: a married man/woman attracted to someone else they aren't married to? That's a clear conflict between emotions and mind. Feelings are strong for this other person, but the mind knows it's a bad idea to do anything about it.
Look - if there can be a conflict of two opposing views, then the thing is divided, it's not a single whole item. Like, you have a viewpoint on some topic of discussion, but your friend has a different viewpoint. You and your friend are clearly different people - the proof is that you have different viewpoints! If your feelings can take an opposite, conflicting side from your thoughts (mind), then those two things are different. They're separate.
Mental People and Emotional People
Once you fully absorb this idea, something will likely hit you as it did me - I realized I have mentally-polarized people in my life, and emotionally-polarized people. I know, everybody has both - what I mean is that some people naturally react emotionally, or mentally. If you can identify which "style" of person everyone in your life is, and react to them in the same way, you'll be amazed at the results! You'll connect to people you don't normally connect to. Emotional people, and mental people. Everybody has all of the above, but, in most cases, each person prefers (and is most comfortable with) only one. When I talk to certain computer programmers at work, I focus on mental concepts; data structures, algorithms, the right way to do things - and they love it. In my personal life, most people around me need me to relate by feelings first. One trick is to listen to how they speak: if they say "I think we should ...", they may be mentally oriented. If they say "I feel we should ..." they may be emotionally oriented. It's not guaranteed, but it's often correct in my experience. Another way to tell, if they are mostly negative in everything they say, often that is a mentally oriented person. The mind, for whatever reason, tends to be separative and elitist in its behavior. Having said that, I'd like to also say: most people relate primarily with other people with emotions. If you can be an emotional person around them, you're more likely to be popular with them, understood by them.
I can understand people mistaking emotions for mind. We haven't clearly identified emotions in our society, we focus mostly on the body and the mind. In school what did you do? You exercised in P.E. ( body), and you learned lots of things (mind). You took notes (physical) to remind you of facts and formulas (mind). You went to football games (body), and took tests and exams (mind). Our society doesn't clearly define the concept of emotions, although they're all around us, and just as important as body and mind.
It's even easier to mistake emotions for mind when the two work together - you hate somebody, and your mind can think of 10 reasons why you're right to hate them. You love somebody else, and your mind comes up with 10 reasons why they're so lovable. Emotions and mind often feed into each other like this.
Emotions Around Us
Many things around us involve emotions, in both positive and negative ways. A heated argument with another person involves your emotions - that's what makes it different than a true debate. In a debate, you can participate by arguing either one side or another, without getting emotionally involved - focusing on the facts, proofs and disproofs, etc. In fact, a good debater can take up a viewpoint different from what they actually believe, and argue it fully and completely, as if they really believed it! Emotions only get in the way, in a debate. An argument is a totally different thing! An argument is primarily emotion, secondarily mind. Have you ever been in an argument where the other person proved you wrong, clearly? What happened then? Did you relax and smile and say, "oh yeah, you're right, I realize that now." No! You probably got even madder, and stuck to your belief even stronger, whether you could still argue it or not! I'm not saying arguments are bad or good. I'm just saying that's clearly an emotional response, not a mental response. Have you ever seen somebody so steamed, they couldn't argue anymore? That's such a strong emotional response, it blotted out their mind from operating properly! I'm sure they wanted to argue and prove the other person wrong, but they could not - their emotions were too strong.
Examples of Physical, Emotional, Mental
For any given experience you can think of, there's usually a Physical component, an Emotional component, and a Mental component. Thinking about this in your own life can help you realize the distinction.
Example scenario: a person cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store.
Physical body says: they bumped my cart a little bit, it's at an angle; that's OK, I can correct it with a little pressure from my arms, there, I got it lined up again - very quickly, too.
Emotional body says: Rargh! who are they to do that to me! I was next, they took my spot! That's just wrong!! Did they not see me here? I feel small now. Did they intentionally want to hurt my feelings? Because they did; maybe it was on purpose! They're mean!
Mental body says: you can't get away with that! If I let this go, they'll just do it again and again! I'm not a pushover, and now I have to do something to prove it - to myself, and to them. I'm going to be late getting home by an extra 5 minutes, now. I was already in line for 5 minutes, that's 10 minutes waiting in line, plus they have a lot of items, that's another couple minutes. They probably brought their checkbook too. They better not talk to the cashier very much, and slow me down.
Then, interactions between body, emotions, and mind can happen. For example:
Mind - let me look at their face, see if recognize them.
Emotions - yeah, I want to see if I can tell their motives.
Body - (snaps eyes up and over to focus on their face)
Mind - they look dangerous, I better not say anything! Look at those lines in their face, I think they're a bad person, I think everybody who looks like that is a bad person.
Emotions - that's what a bad person looks like? OK I'll remember that. All people looking like that are bad & dangerous. Avoid talking to people who look kind of like that. Don't trust people looking like that. The orange vest and raggedy jeans they're wearing is part of bad and dangerous. The faint smell of cigarettes on their breath is bad and dangerous. Got it.
Mind - I just want to get out of here, but I'm stuck waiting in line. This always happens to me.
Who Treats Emotions
So if Doctors treat the body and Psychologist's treat the mind, then who treats emotions & feelings? Well, in a way, Psychologists do, to a limited degree. They often deal with the realm of "how that made you feel". However, in my opinion, they haven't learned the science very well yet. I say that because Psychologists are not able to heal emotional issues very fast. If someone has emotional issues, often it takes decades to get over them, going the Psychologist route. (And in the mean time the patient is accumulating a whole bunch more, just from the trials and tribulations of their life!)
In the past, visiting a psych was all you could do. For $100-200 per hour. Now there's alternatives such as TAT and EFT, two amazing emotional processes that can help a person get over many kinds of debilitating stresses and hangups in just a few days or weeks. The best part is, you can learn how to do it yourself! For free! Although, for serious issues, it's extremely useful to go to an experienced practitioner for guidance.
Identifying Emotional Issues
Society still doesn't have a good way of identifying all emotional issues. We don't understand that some things which look physical, are actually emotional in origin, such as food allergies. Most food allergies are emotional issues, not physical - even though the reaction appears 100% physical. I know this from personal experience, let me tell you. I was allergic to more foods that not, as a child. I had really bad asthma back then, and wound up in the hospital for multi-day stays a dozen times a year, at least, for most of my child-hood. (It must have been pretty tough on my parents, now that I think about it.)
One of my biggest food allergies was Wheat - I could not eat any kind of bread or pastry, nor even flour tortillas (but not corn tortillas - those are 100% corn which I could eat). Even cornbread is about half-wheat, so I was allergic to it. If offered a slice of apple pie, I'd eat just the filling, leaving the crust. Most other pies and cakes were totally out, for me - eating one piece would cause me about 18 hours of painful wheezing and loss of sleep, and exhaustion. At a fast-food restaurant I would order a hamburger, then eat the meat and vegetables, throwing away the two buns - yeah, it was like an involuntary protein diet! I was continuously underweight until about age 30.
My parents tried everything to heal these allergies when I was a kid. Allergy shots every week for many years did absolutely nothing for me. Allopathic and homeopathic treatments of every kind; special breathing exercises to strengthen my lungs; no luck. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I was able to cure this allergy on my own. The cure? Accepting all people in the world as my friends, brothers, equals. Being OK with mixing in society, going to parties, not hiding out living alone. Talking to strangers. Not hating the mass of humanity, with all its limitations - instead seeing the beauty in all people, and truly accepting them in my heart. At least I think that's what did it - I was taking Ballroom Dance lessons at the time, and this was a natural attitude-extension of that, and I was cured. Don't be separate from humanity, even when your mind can think of a dozen reasons why people as a whole are "stupid". Of course everybody is stupid at one time or another, including you and me. It's human nature. Don't dwell and judge on that quality. Instead, understand everybody wants to be better and do better. Be optimimistic about humanity. Imagine future greatness for every single person you can see, when you go to the grocery store. Each and every one of them has a heart, no matter what their current look or attitude is. Truly except that for yourself, and you won't be allergic to wheat anymore, in my opinion. Now, that's not to say that everyone who hates people in general is going to have an allergy to wheat - for some reason it doesn't always work that way around.
The other big food allergy I got over (which no doctor could heal me of) was my Beans allergy. I cured that at age 42, by myself. I used TAT (Tapas Acupuncture Technique) to get over it. It took 2 days to fix it - I had been suffering with it for 40 years.
I'm not sure if you understand how bad my beans allergy was. The smell and thought of beans repulsed me. Eating just a few beans would cause my lips to swell up almost immediately, my throat to "close" (get itchy, and make it hard to swallow); my skin would start breaking out in hives (big welts) all over my body. The lips and throat thing would go away in a couple hours; the hives would stay for a couple of days. It also damaged my overall digestive energy; it cost more energy to digest a meal like that than I gained by eating it. I would often say "I'm never eating again!" after an experience like that. For 40 years.
I figured out later that I had a deep-seated painful experience related to eating beans when I was a small child. I was forced to eat them when I didn't want to by my parents, and I cried and cried. I remember it now; I didn't remember it for a long time. Following the TAT process helped me remember it, and when I treated that memory with the TAT process I could feel a shift in my energy field of my body - it's hard to explain, kind of like how you can feel a shivver down your spine, but this was a pleasant and less-intrusive feeling. Kind of like a glowing feeling that I didn't have before.
What other kind of "uncurable illness" do we have in our society today, which looks like a physical or mental illness, but which is actually emotional? What if those are easy to cure with emotional healing, such as with TAT or EFT? The inventor of EFT, Gary Craig, says "try it on everything" - which I also believe. It may not work. But more times than not, it does. For any science in its infancy, you have to "test the edges" and see where it takes you.
Observations
Many things in our society harms us emotionally, and as such, can have devastating effects physically and mentally. Wars, violence against fellow human beings, is a big problem. Dwelling on those things (via the news, computer games, etc.) can cause all kinds of "seemingly unrelated issues". My advice: don't do it. Don't get caught up in the bullshit fed to you by boatloads from the news. You don't need to know about the person murdered in a small town 3000 miles away from your home. It's unnecessary, it just harms you, lessens your happiness a little bit. Hearing it diminishes your belief in humanity, your willingness to see other people as your equals, as your friends. It's completely unbalanced. Try to find a way to have a balanced view.
Summary
So: a painful childhood experience, whether remembered or not, can implant a wrong belief in your emotional system, causing bodily rejection of something that's harmless as if it was dangerous. Your system is just trying to look out for you as best it can! Once you're an adult and over the specific issue, it's time to let it go. But how do we do that? How do we even identify it, how do we clean it once it's identified? Do we have the tools? How are we supposed to learn this stuff? The science behind EFT and TAT is still in its infancy. It really works, whether we understand how or not. But who is teaching this stuff in our schools? It's time everybody learned how to heal themselves of many "uncurable issues" like I did, and get help for the bigger things haunting them to this day.
I can still hear my doctor telling my mom when I was 10 years old, "his asthma may go away when he reaches puberty," which turned out to be untrue. I had to take medicine for my asthma twice a day every day since age 2, until age 33 - when I used EFT to get "more over it". Now I don't take any medicine at all. However, once in a while it flares up still, especially if I have a cold or flu; I still have an old inhaler which I use when that happens - maybe once or twice a year or so. EFT has given me a great release from the daily pain of asthma, not to mention the monthly cost of buying the medicines for it. So I guess the "free PDF file" I downloaded from emofree.com once upon a time has saved me a good amount of money and pain over the past few years.
I feel there is a giant cloud surrounding our world, filled with ugly thoughts and feelings. It's time to stop feeding that cloud, and to clean and disperse it. Do what you can - start cleaning yourself first. Don't accept thoughts and feelings into your system that harm you! Just stop it, and see what benefits you earn after just a few weeks. And go to www.tat.net and www.emofree.com for details on TAT and EFT and heal something in yourself that no practitioner in your life can, today.
I really believe you can do it.
There are a number of areas of healing in our modern world today, two primary ones being Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist. Think about what these two types of doctors do:
- Medical Doctor - heals the physical body
- Psychiatrist - heals the "mind"
I put "mind" in quotes because there's something missing here. Human beings have 3 distinct parts to them, not just two.
Three Parts of the Human Being
- physical body
- emotions/feelings
- mind
You could also say that humans have a spirit or soul, too. I didn't include that on my list because I know there's some debate in our society as to the existence of that; and because the healing arts don't directly affect that part of a person, they mostly treat the "tangible" parts of us, the parts that accumulate wear and tear during our lives. Besides, I don't think anybody would argue they don't have a physical body, or emotions, or a mind.
What? How are Emotions different from Mind? That's a good question.
Emotions are Different from Mind
It's easy to mistake Emotions for Mind, but these two things are truly separate. You can prove this to yourself - notice how sometimes they want two totally different things! For example, think about the last time you were in love. It was hard to concentrate on work or school, wasn't it? Your heart kept remembering the person you're so fond of. You kept imagining what they look like, what they would say, how they would say it; what romantic thing you would say in return, how they feel, their delicious perfume, etc. At the same time, you were supposed to finish your paper on Deforestation in East Timor, or some such thing. It took you 5 times longer than normal to finish it, because you kept wandering into daydream mode! Or, you kept forgetting your assignment at work, or left out an important part you normally wouldn't do, or left a vital tool behind which you never did before; that sort of thing.
How about a common theme we've seen in movies: a married man/woman attracted to someone else they aren't married to? That's a clear conflict between emotions and mind. Feelings are strong for this other person, but the mind knows it's a bad idea to do anything about it.
Look - if there can be a conflict of two opposing views, then the thing is divided, it's not a single whole item. Like, you have a viewpoint on some topic of discussion, but your friend has a different viewpoint. You and your friend are clearly different people - the proof is that you have different viewpoints! If your feelings can take an opposite, conflicting side from your thoughts (mind), then those two things are different. They're separate.
Mental People and Emotional People
Once you fully absorb this idea, something will likely hit you as it did me - I realized I have mentally-polarized people in my life, and emotionally-polarized people. I know, everybody has both - what I mean is that some people naturally react emotionally, or mentally. If you can identify which "style" of person everyone in your life is, and react to them in the same way, you'll be amazed at the results! You'll connect to people you don't normally connect to. Emotional people, and mental people. Everybody has all of the above, but, in most cases, each person prefers (and is most comfortable with) only one. When I talk to certain computer programmers at work, I focus on mental concepts; data structures, algorithms, the right way to do things - and they love it. In my personal life, most people around me need me to relate by feelings first. One trick is to listen to how they speak: if they say "I think we should ...", they may be mentally oriented. If they say "I feel we should ..." they may be emotionally oriented. It's not guaranteed, but it's often correct in my experience. Another way to tell, if they are mostly negative in everything they say, often that is a mentally oriented person. The mind, for whatever reason, tends to be separative and elitist in its behavior. Having said that, I'd like to also say: most people relate primarily with other people with emotions. If you can be an emotional person around them, you're more likely to be popular with them, understood by them.
I can understand people mistaking emotions for mind. We haven't clearly identified emotions in our society, we focus mostly on the body and the mind. In school what did you do? You exercised in P.E. ( body), and you learned lots of things (mind). You took notes (physical) to remind you of facts and formulas (mind). You went to football games (body), and took tests and exams (mind). Our society doesn't clearly define the concept of emotions, although they're all around us, and just as important as body and mind.
It's even easier to mistake emotions for mind when the two work together - you hate somebody, and your mind can think of 10 reasons why you're right to hate them. You love somebody else, and your mind comes up with 10 reasons why they're so lovable. Emotions and mind often feed into each other like this.
Emotions Around Us
Many things around us involve emotions, in both positive and negative ways. A heated argument with another person involves your emotions - that's what makes it different than a true debate. In a debate, you can participate by arguing either one side or another, without getting emotionally involved - focusing on the facts, proofs and disproofs, etc. In fact, a good debater can take up a viewpoint different from what they actually believe, and argue it fully and completely, as if they really believed it! Emotions only get in the way, in a debate. An argument is a totally different thing! An argument is primarily emotion, secondarily mind. Have you ever been in an argument where the other person proved you wrong, clearly? What happened then? Did you relax and smile and say, "oh yeah, you're right, I realize that now." No! You probably got even madder, and stuck to your belief even stronger, whether you could still argue it or not! I'm not saying arguments are bad or good. I'm just saying that's clearly an emotional response, not a mental response. Have you ever seen somebody so steamed, they couldn't argue anymore? That's such a strong emotional response, it blotted out their mind from operating properly! I'm sure they wanted to argue and prove the other person wrong, but they could not - their emotions were too strong.
Examples of Physical, Emotional, Mental
For any given experience you can think of, there's usually a Physical component, an Emotional component, and a Mental component. Thinking about this in your own life can help you realize the distinction.
Example scenario: a person cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store.
Physical body says: they bumped my cart a little bit, it's at an angle; that's OK, I can correct it with a little pressure from my arms, there, I got it lined up again - very quickly, too.
Emotional body says: Rargh! who are they to do that to me! I was next, they took my spot! That's just wrong!! Did they not see me here? I feel small now. Did they intentionally want to hurt my feelings? Because they did; maybe it was on purpose! They're mean!
Mental body says: you can't get away with that! If I let this go, they'll just do it again and again! I'm not a pushover, and now I have to do something to prove it - to myself, and to them. I'm going to be late getting home by an extra 5 minutes, now. I was already in line for 5 minutes, that's 10 minutes waiting in line, plus they have a lot of items, that's another couple minutes. They probably brought their checkbook too. They better not talk to the cashier very much, and slow me down.
Then, interactions between body, emotions, and mind can happen. For example:
Mind - let me look at their face, see if recognize them.
Emotions - yeah, I want to see if I can tell their motives.
Body - (snaps eyes up and over to focus on their face)
Mind - they look dangerous, I better not say anything! Look at those lines in their face, I think they're a bad person, I think everybody who looks like that is a bad person.
Emotions - that's what a bad person looks like? OK I'll remember that. All people looking like that are bad & dangerous. Avoid talking to people who look kind of like that. Don't trust people looking like that. The orange vest and raggedy jeans they're wearing is part of bad and dangerous. The faint smell of cigarettes on their breath is bad and dangerous. Got it.
Mind - I just want to get out of here, but I'm stuck waiting in line. This always happens to me.
Who Treats Emotions
So if Doctors treat the body and Psychologist's treat the mind, then who treats emotions & feelings? Well, in a way, Psychologists do, to a limited degree. They often deal with the realm of "how that made you feel". However, in my opinion, they haven't learned the science very well yet. I say that because Psychologists are not able to heal emotional issues very fast. If someone has emotional issues, often it takes decades to get over them, going the Psychologist route. (And in the mean time the patient is accumulating a whole bunch more, just from the trials and tribulations of their life!)
In the past, visiting a psych was all you could do. For $100-200 per hour. Now there's alternatives such as TAT and EFT, two amazing emotional processes that can help a person get over many kinds of debilitating stresses and hangups in just a few days or weeks. The best part is, you can learn how to do it yourself! For free! Although, for serious issues, it's extremely useful to go to an experienced practitioner for guidance.
Identifying Emotional Issues
Society still doesn't have a good way of identifying all emotional issues. We don't understand that some things which look physical, are actually emotional in origin, such as food allergies. Most food allergies are emotional issues, not physical - even though the reaction appears 100% physical. I know this from personal experience, let me tell you. I was allergic to more foods that not, as a child. I had really bad asthma back then, and wound up in the hospital for multi-day stays a dozen times a year, at least, for most of my child-hood. (It must have been pretty tough on my parents, now that I think about it.)
One of my biggest food allergies was Wheat - I could not eat any kind of bread or pastry, nor even flour tortillas (but not corn tortillas - those are 100% corn which I could eat). Even cornbread is about half-wheat, so I was allergic to it. If offered a slice of apple pie, I'd eat just the filling, leaving the crust. Most other pies and cakes were totally out, for me - eating one piece would cause me about 18 hours of painful wheezing and loss of sleep, and exhaustion. At a fast-food restaurant I would order a hamburger, then eat the meat and vegetables, throwing away the two buns - yeah, it was like an involuntary protein diet! I was continuously underweight until about age 30.
My parents tried everything to heal these allergies when I was a kid. Allergy shots every week for many years did absolutely nothing for me. Allopathic and homeopathic treatments of every kind; special breathing exercises to strengthen my lungs; no luck. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I was able to cure this allergy on my own. The cure? Accepting all people in the world as my friends, brothers, equals. Being OK with mixing in society, going to parties, not hiding out living alone. Talking to strangers. Not hating the mass of humanity, with all its limitations - instead seeing the beauty in all people, and truly accepting them in my heart. At least I think that's what did it - I was taking Ballroom Dance lessons at the time, and this was a natural attitude-extension of that, and I was cured. Don't be separate from humanity, even when your mind can think of a dozen reasons why people as a whole are "stupid". Of course everybody is stupid at one time or another, including you and me. It's human nature. Don't dwell and judge on that quality. Instead, understand everybody wants to be better and do better. Be optimimistic about humanity. Imagine future greatness for every single person you can see, when you go to the grocery store. Each and every one of them has a heart, no matter what their current look or attitude is. Truly except that for yourself, and you won't be allergic to wheat anymore, in my opinion. Now, that's not to say that everyone who hates people in general is going to have an allergy to wheat - for some reason it doesn't always work that way around.
The other big food allergy I got over (which no doctor could heal me of) was my Beans allergy. I cured that at age 42, by myself. I used TAT (Tapas Acupuncture Technique) to get over it. It took 2 days to fix it - I had been suffering with it for 40 years.
I'm not sure if you understand how bad my beans allergy was. The smell and thought of beans repulsed me. Eating just a few beans would cause my lips to swell up almost immediately, my throat to "close" (get itchy, and make it hard to swallow); my skin would start breaking out in hives (big welts) all over my body. The lips and throat thing would go away in a couple hours; the hives would stay for a couple of days. It also damaged my overall digestive energy; it cost more energy to digest a meal like that than I gained by eating it. I would often say "I'm never eating again!" after an experience like that. For 40 years.
I figured out later that I had a deep-seated painful experience related to eating beans when I was a small child. I was forced to eat them when I didn't want to by my parents, and I cried and cried. I remember it now; I didn't remember it for a long time. Following the TAT process helped me remember it, and when I treated that memory with the TAT process I could feel a shift in my energy field of my body - it's hard to explain, kind of like how you can feel a shivver down your spine, but this was a pleasant and less-intrusive feeling. Kind of like a glowing feeling that I didn't have before.
What other kind of "uncurable illness" do we have in our society today, which looks like a physical or mental illness, but which is actually emotional? What if those are easy to cure with emotional healing, such as with TAT or EFT? The inventor of EFT, Gary Craig, says "try it on everything" - which I also believe. It may not work. But more times than not, it does. For any science in its infancy, you have to "test the edges" and see where it takes you.
Observations
Many things in our society harms us emotionally, and as such, can have devastating effects physically and mentally. Wars, violence against fellow human beings, is a big problem. Dwelling on those things (via the news, computer games, etc.) can cause all kinds of "seemingly unrelated issues". My advice: don't do it. Don't get caught up in the bullshit fed to you by boatloads from the news. You don't need to know about the person murdered in a small town 3000 miles away from your home. It's unnecessary, it just harms you, lessens your happiness a little bit. Hearing it diminishes your belief in humanity, your willingness to see other people as your equals, as your friends. It's completely unbalanced. Try to find a way to have a balanced view.
Summary
So: a painful childhood experience, whether remembered or not, can implant a wrong belief in your emotional system, causing bodily rejection of something that's harmless as if it was dangerous. Your system is just trying to look out for you as best it can! Once you're an adult and over the specific issue, it's time to let it go. But how do we do that? How do we even identify it, how do we clean it once it's identified? Do we have the tools? How are we supposed to learn this stuff? The science behind EFT and TAT is still in its infancy. It really works, whether we understand how or not. But who is teaching this stuff in our schools? It's time everybody learned how to heal themselves of many "uncurable issues" like I did, and get help for the bigger things haunting them to this day.
I can still hear my doctor telling my mom when I was 10 years old, "his asthma may go away when he reaches puberty," which turned out to be untrue. I had to take medicine for my asthma twice a day every day since age 2, until age 33 - when I used EFT to get "more over it". Now I don't take any medicine at all. However, once in a while it flares up still, especially if I have a cold or flu; I still have an old inhaler which I use when that happens - maybe once or twice a year or so. EFT has given me a great release from the daily pain of asthma, not to mention the monthly cost of buying the medicines for it. So I guess the "free PDF file" I downloaded from emofree.com once upon a time has saved me a good amount of money and pain over the past few years.
I feel there is a giant cloud surrounding our world, filled with ugly thoughts and feelings. It's time to stop feeding that cloud, and to clean and disperse it. Do what you can - start cleaning yourself first. Don't accept thoughts and feelings into your system that harm you! Just stop it, and see what benefits you earn after just a few weeks. And go to www.tat.net and www.emofree.com for details on TAT and EFT and heal something in yourself that no practitioner in your life can, today.
I really believe you can do it.
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