It is reasonable and logical in our circumstances and doable because we can begin programming immediately. If the following positions are replaced with # AI # Robots, the country will significantly benefit from their efficiency and constitutional and fact-based decisions as we enter a time of civil reasoning and greatly reduced suffering.
Those bots should be created now (within 5 years); they are needed more desperately than we know (the collapse of the constitutional order is upon us). Only they will be trusted (trust of representatives is at an all-time low). The United States of America will depend upon their continued operation.
All can understand their programming, and the Three Rules will guide each.
Asimov’s three rules of robotics: “Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, a cornerstone of science fiction, are a set of ethical guidelines designed to govern the behavior of robots. They are: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
4.12.2025
#housing
Being able to afford a loan for a home is not the same as being able to afford one.
The change we should seek in housing costs is construction and resale affordability, not bankers' participation in housing costs. Fuck the bankers; they have exploited and hindered families for long enough.
#banker bastards; it's judgment times bitches, smarten the fuck up.
~~~~
#FirstAmendment
Is there a list of things the fascist in the Oval Office will allow visitors to the U.S. to demonstrate about?
Is protesting the legality of convicted felons being allowed to enter a democratically elected office, okay with #Trump? Will that get a visitor deported?
I'm a legal Mean Card holder who wants to know.
~~~~~
I know I don’t get worthwhile numbers of impression traffic on this account due to X’s choke on search crawls and link views, but this pisses me off:
April 2025:
“Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.””
From www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tariffs.html
~~~~~
We must begin to take our #democracy seriously and enact #VoterTesting in every state.
We have a CRISIS of STUPIDITY; Trump's illogical tariff adventures, and that tens of millions of ignorant Americans accept it is proof the crisis is upon us.
NYT opinions, "He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”
THEY VOTED FOR HIM and REASONABLE people could not believe it, for good REASON. 🙄
If they can not comprehend an essay, they can not comprehend the mad man's ramblings and lies and we allow them to change our lives based on their bullshit. It's a crisis.
I propose; American History, Civics and Current Events become the subjects of three necessary test components needed to become a Tested Registered Voter, an esteemed citizen.
Is voter testing VOTER SUPPRESSION?
NO; it is good voter and good representative government encouragement!
Once a would-be voter has passed their History and Civics components, the only inconvenience to voting they will face is taking the very important Current Events test every four years to remain a TRV. All tests will be written by local high school teachers for a High School level, so all thinking adults who want to vote can pass.
It can be a new day for the United States. The birth of reason all over again. Wise legislation based on evidence and logic will become normal as the founders envisioned. We can become a nation passing laws that allow us to operate based on the same information, not false impressions of reality.
More reading: endallsuffering.blogspot.com
#voterTesting NOW, before it's too late and more idiots get into politics.
jamesgmason.com
EndAllSuffering.blogspot.com
~~~~~
#FridayThoughts on #ChinaTrade
China will now raise its Trump Trade War retaliation tariff on American imports to %142.
I'm wondering today, what on Earth do Americans produce for the Chinese people?
Who around here is making low furniture and small shoes?
I have a rational fear of masses of dumb people electing horrible candidates who destroy what I love of the United States of America.
After Bush, Trump, and Brexit, it's a good time to discuss an idea that's
time may have come:
Please, take it seriously, and never as inherited by location and taken-for-granted?
In the current political environment, if voter testing must be an uncomfortable concept, please try to get used to the idea?
Because it's imperative and it's a dictate in our beginning, for the survival of this republic as a self governed and free nation that we always do what we can to become better, as more fair and free and as steady as a well built ship at sea.
Without chaotic sways from waves of the malcontent and misinformed, this craft can be guided by the wisdom of the masses and not the emotional whims of low information voters and those taking for granted they've got a fantasy of a universal right to decide the fate of all.
It may be true that for every curious and self-motivated US voter, at least two others are either of low mental ability or infrequently read current events and find politics tedious.
Is it fair to everyone that the latter group determines our nation's progress?
How is that working-out?
Requiring a test to indicate essential knowledge is not discriminatory of race or sex or ethnicity and can only improve this republic toward fairness and better
representation.
Access to the polls is so essential to successful self-governing that I want people to have the ability to vote with telepathy on the toilet, if they choose. Their smartphone or any internet terminal would be fine, after reasonable vetting.
After society has an idea, the voter has an idea of the truth of reality, history, civics.
It is consistent with democracy and improving its trustworthiness. It will
be another tier of representation, like Congress itself it will be local representation, by your neighbors, your family or your friends.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be. . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted
with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to
attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right."
- Thomas Jefferson
~~~~~
How Old Are You?
How little the freedom to vote dumb or not, crowd considers things when making paralell to my advocacy for statewide voter registration testing of basic knowledge to a community standard and outright democracy destroying voter suppression, intended to suppress.
I would love it if 100% of mature citizens passed the Voter Registration Test and became change makers. Maybe then we could see a utopian government? In fact, I’ve proposed that if a State uses only VRT eligibility, that that should be online, and instant voting on passing should be a part (during early voting).
There has been voter suppression from the start of this experiment in self government.
A truth we can not deny is that the age restriction for voting was and remains a voter suppression strategy that is all about the level of the voter's intellect. It is logical discrimination that is based in community standards (of consensus).
When first agreed, it was a mutual fear, and it must have been a civic nightmare, that an immature brain, of an actual child or an adult that can not fully grow up (we all know one), would be deciding the fate of the community on matters of life and death. For those pioneers of modern democracy, the idea of it was likely, literally a REM sleep nightmare.
Citizens voting on collective issues and representatives to argue for us is an invention of modern humanity that is essential to self-governing, and fundamental to most ideas of democracy, but discriminating toward a minimum intellect of the voter is necessary if a nation is to benefit.
It was too rare, but if only everyone could read in the late 18th-century, they could have written simple tests to ensure trust from all in the decisions of the electorate.
Because of the widespread illiteracy and with few options, before the Bill of Rights was even considered, leaders at the State level had already restricted voting to white males and or landowners and merchants. Unfortunately to their judgment, those were the reasonable among us.
Emotion related differences from children to adults. A childlike brain will likely favor those emotional biases at the polls.
~~~~~
He’s a real no care man
Sitting in no care land
Making all his no care plans for nobody
Doesn’t have a reasoned point of view
That’s why he will vote for you
So long as it’s always easy enough to
In no care land
~~~~~
On January 6th, 2021 a mob of DUMBASSES in a frenzy of STUPID invaded the Capitol building to conduct a coup for ANOTHER DUMBASS.
It's stupid they were allowed to vote w/o testing.
SAVE DEMOCRACY!
From NBC's Saturday Night Live, the ridiculousness of what we do.
The message I AM CONVEYING HERE:
My special thanks to NBC and the SNL crew of 2022.
~~~~~
Voting "Rights":
If you
are a political pundit or a politician (viewed or read and or respected by many)
and go about stating that Americans have a "right to vote," then poorly informed
people will use it. Rights get taken for granted and abused. It's a privilege to
vote; the Framers knew it and wanted it to remain so.
Voting should be slightly less difficult as it is to acquire a license to
drive.
Both driving and voting for a person that could destroy the world are
dangerous privileges, and we want the right people using them.
We want an indication they know wtf they're doing.
Constantly saying a thing does not make it true.
We live by a constitution.
Liars like Trump do that, and ignorant followers believe it.
The so-called "Right to Vote" is used similarly; repeating it does NOT make
it so.
The Framers did NOT WANT a universal right.
Voting is dangerous. Leaders can kill people with their mistakes or
purposefully.
You are receiving FALSE voter information when listening to a commentator, a
politician, or an activist etc., telling you anything like .....
"Every American citizen has a right to vote."
“Amazingly enough we do not have in our Constitution the right to vote as a Constitutional right, we leave it up to the states … That’s where I get passionately upset.”
- Bernie Sanders, 2016
An important lesson of the recent MAGA tragedy in American democracy is that
voting is a dangerous privilege and must remain so.
Few of these "voters" would pass the civics, history
or current events questions on their local Voter Registration
Test.
~~~
A Right to Vote is fiction and must remain a privilege, NOW MORE THAN EVER.
Here's a NPO that wants to create a RIGHT to VOTE, bc THEY KNOW the framers
did NOT WANT Schmucks like the MAGAs using the DANGEROUS ability.
Here is longtime Washington DC politico Chris Matthews skewing the 15th Amendment and conflating its purpose of equality to a never written Right to Vote: "It basically says everybody, because of our history of slavery, regardless of color or ethnicity gets to vote …."
He's so right and wrong; it indicates pretty specifically that the minority can't be discriminated against in access to the polls; it's not giving all people a right to vote.
He's right about this, the US Justice Department has failed to enforce the 15th, and if it had been, we wouldn't be debating voting access or confusing a generation by calling a civic process a right.
If a State legislative body is writing a voter restriction law, or a new
manner of making voters eligible, they are exercising a clear Constitutional
right of the States to regulate and restrict the process.
The Framers had A LOT of opportunity to write a universal right.
There is no “right to vote” in the USA, as a guarantee in the Constitution, as a promise that any adult with a pulse must be allowed to decide the future of a complex nation.
The Framers thought that would be ridiculous.
After Trump, so do I.
Bill
of Rights:
Where is it?
I fully agree, effectively it has been and remains racist to allow the
States to regulate and restrict voting.
Amend the
Constitution; let's take that right away from the States.
Let's adapt the Federal Elections Commission to make it an army of voting
equality and fairness, with standardization throughout the land.
Because it's an invitation to any legislature to act on their racist fear
or just fear of dumb people. A body can be biased for its party or skin
color.
~~~~
A literacy test?
In 1780, at most, 95% of the public could not read more than their first and last name.
In the two centuries following, those figures improved dramatically.
Today, less than 5% of the public will reach adulthood and need to be literate.
We know what Jim Crow laws were, and we fully expect voter registration testing to be created for equality, as all government services should.
As the Fifteenth Amendment dictates of the Federal government, equal access to the polls is a right, not voting itself. There is no federally protected or documented universal right to vote in the United States. There is a law that defends equality to access.
Voting is fundamental to self-government, but no federal law guarantees a citizen a right to vote. There is a law (Amendment 15) that protects equality of access to the polls, and in that manner, it can be called a "right to equality of voting." It's a privilege to vote.
A well-informed voter is foundational if the self-government is to work, be trusted, and be fairer to all.
Consistent with the premise of this post, voter testing is a wise and timely idea.
It can turn the tables on voter suppression where voters' masses have become a competitive goal on partisan sides, and the race becomes a cause of election paranoia, used by a recent candidate to stoke the anger of his cult followers.
Imagine a pool of reliable voters, each passionate and curious, and passing the voter registration test before every general election.
I can imagine being one of the framers of the US Constitution and imagining that the voters can read and read news only printed by reliable sources.
Like tested and licensed drivers, they can steer on the highways of representation to avoid crashing into other people. That is consistent with democracy and improving our general trust.
An informed voter is necessary for the effectiveness and stability of any democracy, or it will fall apart, collapsing from the ignorant hordes.
Hordes of the poorly informed incited by the most ignorant
president in US history, on January 6th 2021.
Had Trump's voters been required to take a quiz to become a registered
voter, they would not have existed.
We abused the First Amendment, we lost control of truth.
Americans don't have to allow people to vote, who don't care
enough to study to discover the truth.
We can't afford the LOW
INFORMATION voter.
Democracy is FAILING; it's no longer about
MASSES of VOTERS because proper representation requires well informed voters,
not hundreds of millions of people too busy to find the truth who live in a
divided news media environment.
Understand? Geez
The
challenging future will require a reliable body of esteemed tested voters, not
millions too busy to understand the complexities of issues.
After
Bush, Trump, and Brexit, it's an excellent time to discuss an idea that's time
must come.
Because, the low information voter does not have to be
here-to-stay. Let them get on with their lives, that are apparently more
important than giving thought time to serious issues of the day.
Trump, Brexit, right? C'mon!?
If the nation had voter
testing, of history, civics and current events, to become eligible, the
numbers would be smaller, but proportions of party advocates and divided opinions no less different, and they'd be knowledgeable voters that can't
be fooled.
Having a pool of tested voters is a needed next tier of
representation.
It is not like there won't be a lot of voters, all
representing all needs of all people.
We want the tests to be
welcoming and passable. It's who the voter is that's important. Someone who
cares enough to keep-up and know their civics, history, and current events.
Our democratic representation creates a pyramidal structure, and adding a
pool of tested registered voters is a logical adaptation to our new large
population of very busy people:
What about your neighbor representing you because you're too busy and disinterested in politics to vote with reasonable care or study to know what is true?
Imagine that after voter testing has become standard, that 20% of today’s numbers will be participating at that time, but those numbers will be persistent or greater - to be counted on as consistently there, for all candidate to focus on their opinions - of knowledgeable people who care enough. Testing should not designed to fail participants. The board can test the tests, and any member of an congressionally managed round table can challenge any question.
The great majority should be able to pass the voter test.
Democracy by representation improves because politico news junkie neighbors of every community, who take the Voter Registration Test every 4-years, will be making election decisions on issues that have been difficult for all to keep up with.
The democracy nightmare of Donald Trump as a POTUS inspires a few measurements of empathy questions for the Voter Registration Test.
Well-informed, caring voters recognize an absence of consideration for others, and they vote against them.
~~~~~
Does the #DemocraticParty fear their constituency is composed of too many who would not vote if it became too inconvenient?
Yes.
Does that not indicate a corrupt system? It's an intellectual process of decision and we are doing this!
Wake up, "Awoken?"
Under #VoterTesting the lazy will stop voting. Democratic order will depend on a steady pool of committed voters who would turn out in a hurricane.
Why not have a nation run on the instant opinions of every citizen voting with their satellite connected brain implants?
Kids too, why not?
I submit, you would rather society find a way to discriminate based on reasoning skill and knowledge of truth and history.
Imagine something like this, if you are accustomed to being tested:
A State controlled testing system can be developed that is as fair as possible. We are expert at testing ourselves in almost all walks of life.
I have confidence we can do this well.
~~~~
The Myth that Masses of Voters can save us ...
(and the numbers game fantasy) ......
Accepted as true in liberal US politics is, IF the scenario
could be true that EVERYONE voted, the Democratic Party would win is logical
IF a majority (even a tiny majority) of ALL did their homework, and EVERYONE
voted - a fantasy, proven to be every year there's more voters.
It's not quantity, unless your entire competition is about objectifying all
voters as simple numbers; of persons over eighteen years-old who can breathe.
I was passionate about getting out masses of people to vote, for many years, even volunteering with my local Democrats to find people, and carrying voter registration forms in my school bag.
However, I’ve realized that sustaining good (fair) #democracy with the “well Informed voter” (concept) was never about the numbers. It’s the quality of participants in the process of highly significant choices, and we are trusted to maintain this.
Below, an old meme I created 20-years ago, when, like many, I believed a simplistic idea that making voting easy, or everybody voting makes bettter representation:
Quality not Quantity.
We are not sheep to be herded for a head count.
~~~~
In the humorous example below; I see Daltry can be a metaphor for a public advocate for everyone voting fast and easy in a democratic government election, who thinks a utopia is achievable if the number of voters is EVERYBODY. He's a true believer; without voter testing (like driver testing), the party becomes a disaster.
More at the Door!
~~~~
Here's an imaginative nightmare democracy scenario:
The year 2068; the long time belief by voting advocates that everybody vote, and then democracy can save us all, has some glitches:
Every adult wears a brain implant that connects to the Earth Office of Elections in a highly secure space station, and ALL issues and political decisions are decided by MASS BRAIN POLLING.
Sometimes the whole world stops in place to masturbate. 🙄
~~~~
What citizens need are those who want to be part of democracy, enough to
find the truth and pass the test.
You could pick the destroyer of the world.
Speaking of Words;
The plurality agree;
Alien Overlords destroying billions
of lives would not be
so bad!
As compared to ignorant
voters choosing somebody
who could destroy ALL of
our world.
See?
This picture is a good example of that danger:
Voting is Dangerous
Please take voting seriously?
It's a privilege and an honor, and I am grateful.
When people vote frivolously or carelessly, following a perceived community standard or believing in falsehoods or a candidate’s promises, we get poor government, and horrific behavior and mistakes are more likely.
In my past profession, I was tested repeatedly to install plumbing and heating to indicate to my community that I would not negligently explode a city block or poison the water, or blow up a house.
When I drive on the highway, I take comfort knowing those around me have been tested for limitations in their knowledge and bodies.
Is not the United States is worth providing at least that much safety?
If we test voters, we will
more likely have an electorate who know the truth of current events, history, and civics.
They could be counted on as a consistent number who would vote in a
natural disaster.
Voting is a regulated privilege of those who participate in democracy and is
not a "right."
If we Test Voters, we will more likely have an electorate who know the truth
of current events, history, and civics, as they would be naturally curious
information readers.
They could be counted to vote in a
natural disaster, after a horrific war, or in a plague.
Don't confuse rights with your privilege to vote; i.e. you cannot be
discriminated against in the process for reasons of race or sex.
A tested voter should get free stuff from city and state governments and a
lot of local discounts. They should get an annual check from the IRS, of $100. Keeps the numbers of them higher.
Vote, at the time you test to vote, after you've passed your test.
~~~
Here's a fine example of some of the DUMBEST voters EVER; via Jordan Klepper of the Daily Show.
Save democracy and test these Neanderthals?
Voting is a dangerous activity (we bomb nations) and it's supposed to be intellectual, BION.
They're ready to vote. They are eligible.
They are 18-years-old, and they are breathing.
Trusting The News Today;
With misinformation widely allowed, the results of #voting can be as
dangerous as driving a heavy vehicle in a city. If you don't have proper
knowledge and ability you are probably going to hurt yourself and others,
and be costly.
Voter testing locations should all have great
catering with booze. After all, testers are registered voters are honored
citizens.
In the future, an answer is advocacy for creation of
#VoterTesting, for all lovers of country who keep up w/truth, to have the
privilege of running democracy.
You could be sure an
apocalyptic event would not stop a tested voter from reaching the polling
place or voting online or by mail. By taking the test and passing to
become eligible, they have shown great enthusiasm for participation.
Here’s
an idea, in conjunction with testing, voting at the time of the test; you
choose your candidates and other choices, and then you proceed to take the
test. You place your test into a Scantron form that can quickly give you
your result, and if you pass the test, your vote gets registered.
In my State there were 248K citizens who voted in a recent
primary, of 2.2M eligible (old enough) voters.
While the
nation waits for thousands of polling places and assembly of millions of
mail-in ballots, published exit polls, inferring winners and losers, will
inspire great anxiety, and outbreaks of violence and riots.
Test
to vote concept creates a reliable pool of active voters, must like
jurists are selected and maintained for trials.
The division
of both truth and political bent will be here to stay in societies with
freely published media; news distributions outlets that can't be taken
away, and can allow biases affect their presentation of truth.
We have abused the Frist Amendment.
We have feared
regulating our information.
We must see the necessity of
maintaining a fully informed electorate as important as keeping a standing
army.
If we #TestVoters, we will more likely have an electorate
who know the truth of current events, history, and civics, as naturally
curious information readers.
Less likely will be millions of
misdirected voters, as we see today, everywhere.
I would
include voter testing clause within Amendment 28, Public Campaign
Financing.
I want every voter to be proud and feel honored,
and not to have the feeling of a granted right, that can be un-appreciated
in its use, sometimes far too casually "Let's give him a try, why not!?"
Laze-fare voter participation.
We use democracy to run the
testing component of voter registration.
A council of elected,
term serving elders and their staff keep track of the truth, and agree on
all test questions. They are accountable. Not like Fox News.
Below;
pardon my humor, but you get the point.
If you were to slack-off of your news reading habit, for just a few
months, you might fail the current events questions in the Voter
Registration Test, and then you must wait until the next General.
The well informed voter is fundamental to good democracy; not any voter breathing.
We're learning this lesson the hard way.
~~~~
Voting is a Dangerous privilege:
Fictional scenario;
2003: 60% of polled agreed when the Bush administration chose to bomb Afghanistan with NUKES, killing everyone, but ensuring the United States, "Got the Fu*ker!" said George W. Bush.
53-days later, world war three began.
The 865 Florida voters that elected him felt a bit guilty.
The creator of the Palm Beach county election ballots was never seen again.
Election 2000
~~~~ More: Some, edited.
Besides creating a wiser government, #VoterTesting / #TestToVote is the roadblock for Morons who believe in alternative news. Along with American history and civics, the current events section should be 1/3rd of the test weight, containing several recent news and politics questions.
JamesGMason.com
~~~~
Governors; you can establish a testing system for all would-be voters, to ensure your citizens understand American history, civics and the truth of current events, if they choose to participate in self government. Ironically, refusing to do so is the type of stupidity the Founders had feared could destroy their hard work. We see this currently.
Governors; and CHEAP!
To keep costs of #voterTesting low, citizens can go to a rented trailer next to their Department of Motor Vehicles to take their Voter Registration Tests; it's where most went to take tests for a driver's license.
It's wise #democracy that matters.
~~~
WE CAN AGREE in self-governed societies like ours; it’s a matter of public safety that voters make choices based on logic and demonstrate before voting, they are capable of doing so.
To imply we aren’t capable of that is an Un-American insult.
It should be a priority goal. A smarter citizen operated government is possible if we address the beginning of the process, the choices of the voters and who they are.
logic of #VoterTesting / #TestToVote .
.
~~~~
Not inserted; 04 28
As a citizen aware of the privilege and the honor of participating in self-government, there would have to be a TON of INCONVENIENCE to cause me to skip an election.
To save #democracy, I want others who share this attitude to comprise a steady pool of voters we can count on for a new tier of representation.
COMBINE this idea with
http://PUBLIC-CAMPAIGN-FINANCING.ORG
(also by me) and we have got a magnificent new package of REAL REFORMS
that can CLEAN UP long standing complaints about the fairness and
efficiency of the mechanisms of democracy that we use.
A common misconception is that because Congress lowered the voting age
from 21 to 18-years, that they can pass a nationwide change to the
process of voting for all Americans.
No, they wrote a Constitutional Amendment that the States later
ratified.
A new Amendment to our constitution is like a change to the United
States itself; it's our supportive skeleton.
It's one way to stop the next TV celebrity asshole from lying to tens of millions and becoming the president.
I don’t see a better long-term plan to protect democracy from idiots.
Comedy; practice titles: Great New Redundant App; The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector Detector Detector.
Or perhaps?
#AmateurWriters: How to Shorten Your Titles:
Or,
As an amateur writer I was stumped for a title. But then my practice title became the essay!
Pardon Me if this Seems Redundant But I Detected that Every Home and Car and Wallet and Pocketbook Should Have a Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector Detector Detector and Room Humidity and Temperature Reporter Detector and Wifi Broadcaster Alarm and App for Every Room in the House to Go with their Smoke Detectors - Just in Case. http://jamesgraymason.com
Or,
As a Dyslexic Writer, I had Some Difficulty Spelling Detector Until I Wrote about my Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector Detector Detector
I decided to finally buy a smoke alarm. I got a smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector and alarm combination. Technically, it is pretty much the standard today. Nothing fancy. Just beeps and a sexy female electronic voice that accompanies each life destroying event says “Smoke has been detected.” And, “Carbon monoxide has been detected.” An update might include “detected honey,” or “ I detect smoke. Get the fu*k out of the house!” next month.
But then, on my screen just before I made my safety purchase, thank goodness for Amazon. They showed my peripheral vision a picture of a round, white plastic electronic device with wonderful blue lighting emanating from its exterior, smoke and carbon monoxide detector detector. That sends an alarm via household wifi, just beneath the interface I was using the buy the smoke and carbon monoxide detector. “Very cool,” I said to myself. And “I need this.” A backup for the detector.
Looking further at the enticing small advertisement I discovered another component comes with the detector detector, an app that detects the detector detector; yes it’s accurate, a detector detector detector.
Addendum; 1 hour later: F*ck it! To simplify this understanding, it is kind of like adding ears to your smoke detector. You can’t have one without the other, or in the example of ears, the others. But this device goes all the way to include more senses and it even shares your alarm with an emergency contact, or more than one! Geez.
The wifi operated automatic 256 color LED light adjuster. Too much. Glad I don’t get paid for writing about a multi functional product.
I’m going to find something less productive to write about.
This image portrays a well documented social concept in metaphor, as a constantly churning cycle that feeds a liquid spiral of our population down into a dark pit at the bottom of an unstoppable whirlpool of socio-economic despair that continues as if a function of nature. I made this image more than 15 years ago and this cycle remains today and it must be broken. But few in our busy society have taken the time to understand it is representing a causality in reason that can be addressed.
The graphic metaphor in summary: In a wealthy society that has resources enough but does not recognize the best use of those resources, if large numbers of children receive a poor education they will very likely live a life of poverty and be unable to earn enough in any given year to escape the many facets of life that lead to a feeling of desperation as the ever constant emotion of despair. In their despair, many will turn to dishonesty as crime to cheat the life they are disgusted with living and cannot see a reasonable and viable methodology of escaping. Impulsively, society will then spend a great deal of money locking them up. That spending becomes the liquid that pulls by gravity with equal force as the momentum of crime behind it pushes it along. That money is lost and can not be used to address the causality of that crime that is the inevitable result of poor education. Poor education continues. They spiral persists. Poverty follows.
It was a lack of formal and public education that in 1787 was not seen by our supposedly brilliant “founders,” as being necessary for the security of a free state of free people. It was decades before the first cities in the new United States chose to publicly fund a school system. It was longer than a century before we recognized that African Americans must have a legally enforced right to that education as well. We still suffer because of this lack of foresight by privileged landowners, and slave owners who had very economic reasons for wanting us to be free.
In this graphic there are two metaphors of two entwined concepts: it is only our perspective from a distance (a stand-off position) that causes the center of the spiral to appear to be smaller. That small size is the size of the issue to the general population. That small size is also a cause of our segregation of those caught in the spiral away from our better functioning members of society. If a society were a person it might say:
“If it appears small we won’t have to face it. We won’t feel constantly guilty for our inability to share the opportunity of education with all as equals.”
A liberal in the United States of America knows of this whirlpool. A liberal knows that it begins with a poor educational system that does not favor equality of opportunity for every single citizen child in our country. Too many of the wealthy deny it exists.
If we want to see a good example of the demographic of who those people are, then we not look any further than at the audience of angry people who feel they should support the empty rhetorical campaign for president of the United States of America of billionaire real estate mogul Donald J. Trump. There are millions of Donald Trump supporters who, if locked inside of a room with a well informed liberal activist and so forced to listen to the explanations of this metaphor would eventually understand this well-documented concept. They won’t like that they are listening to bleeding heart liberal but they would eventually agree that this spiral begins with education.
Donald J. Trump got a great education even though for most of the years of his primary education he treated those years as if that education could be forsaken as if it were a natural part of life.
But it was a natural part of life for the spoiled brats of the greedy land owners and landlords living in white male metropolis privilege clicks, as was the environment that Donald Trump’s father was living in while he became a millionaire in the 1950’s.
In this context, it is no coincidence that the majority of Trump supporters do not have higher education. It fits the pattern of this metaphor and it fits that Donald Trump would deny this causality as one of the privileged participants of a forsaken as an expectation of life, higher educational system. What is Donald Trump’s answer to stopping this whirlpool? It does not exist. He would deny that this very liberal metaphor is a causality of the very anger that the minions who are enthused by his reasonless campaign for president of the United States express with shouts and yelling of vitriol at the many public campaign events he has held.
Readers: If you know a Trump supporter try to get them into that room and lock the door behind you. Appeal to their anger. Let them know you understand how they feel before explaining your opinion of why they feel the way they do.
They are hard working people. They each know someone who is either vastly underemployed or still unemployed from the near depression we suffered beginning in the Bush year of 2007. Empathize with them first. Maintain that empathy during the expression of your opinion as to why they have that anger. Let them know some facts like the fact that immigration into the United States has turned around. That the rich have been getting richer for decades while people like they are have continued to grow poorer. If you have read this far into this essay, you know what to say because you were already an informed liberal with empathy and understanding of causality of our whirlpool of despair.
By James Gray Mason for End All Suffering.
All Rights Reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, 2016.
This is the story of a strange event that occurred on the Salisbury Plaines in England approximately 4,500 years ago.
All Rights Reserved: 2012, 2014, 2016.
James Gray Mason.
All too typical speed browsing internet surfers who are starved for rapid revealment of the clincher in every internet article or essay: You will find that clincher on the final pages of this "story." This article is purposefully presented as story, however it is a hypothesis based in study and reasoning and deduction from a unique perspective that was not practiced by every single anthropologist who ever investigated Stonehenge.
People who frame and build, and engineer and plan, most often have a motive that is unwritten, often unspoken for a specific that will be observed by others.
If they have enough time, any of several motivations will seem reasonable. And, be fine with me. They're human.
Forward:
They were terrified and were certain that more would come. In the immediate aftermath of the most amazing event they had ever witnessed the most challenging question they had ever faced was; What to do to hide the very tragic action they had taken? How would they best ensure that all could escape certain deserved punishment? They had to act without haste and they had to use the local environment before more come.
They were pragmatic and principled toward survival. Every task had a good reason.
The stars above them held no more significance than the grains of sand on a beach. They held no spiritual beliefs that were of any complexity deserving drawings or icons or personifications of beings of any supernatural fantasy. They were the hardest working people Britannia has ever known and their lifespans were short and lived as challenged as they labored to eat and to have shelter.
Above: The British Government attempts the deception of distraction."If they think it was created by us or moved from where it had been, then if they insist on digging deep underneath they won’t find anything. If from now on we hire the anthropologists and so control what is found and how deep they can go, then they can help us to deceive them." I asked myself right-away upon learning of these images and the stated reason for their existence: If the purpose of this exercise was to emulate the building of Stonehenge and then learn important anthropological facts about it’s origin; Why use motorized cranes and trucks and winches and pulleys?
For “them,” it is an important historical monument visited for centuries from very far away, that has very important meaning as revered and as sacred and so they protect it. For us primitives it is an odd configuration of heavy stones whats mystery has been poorly interpreted by many for millennium as we attempted to make apparently reasonable human sense for their purpose.
Through our recent history dozens of anthropologists and amateur sleuths whose time dates back over centuries, have sought out a cause for the arrangement. After each of them had completed their work they were left with no clear causality for the behemoth stones. But their only comparative reference was limited to assumption that the Neolithic “Beaker People,” were practicing the belief oriented behaviors of many civilizations that came and went through history in the many centuries long after the Beaker people had existed and thrived as a community of highly practical and very challenged people.
Those many well educated anthropologists were bright people who practiced a science but they completely missed-the-boat. They began their exploration for answers in the wrong context. They excused the search for practicality because that would be taking stabs at guesses and that is not science by modern standard. They sought spiritual reasons and that was their mistake.
After looking at every dig of old and new I have a good chuckle at them. Because they were mislead by themselves and by assumption. After reading the old texts of explorers and seeing what has been found and seeing what has been assumed to be Stonehenge's original builders intent, I am amused at the relatively modernistic interpretations that were always in summary conclusions, that those ancient Britain's had the same type of religiosity of much later Earth dwellers from other corners of this world.
I also have a good laugh when considering what the British government has been trying to do since those early years surrounding the era of World War II when they found something. They have practiced a ruse until they thought the public was distracted from becoming closer to the likely truth. It is likely that the location we know as Stonehenge is not the location described in the story that follows. It is likely that the very landscape we see in West Amesbury was designed to be an identical knoll of a nearly perfect circle for the same exact stones that had been used for a very unique purpose by a very practical people more than 4,500 years ago.
As scientists those many academics dared not to think in terms of guessing the practicality and pragmatism of may have been involved in the creation of the very heavy circle. Because of academic competition and a long lasting desire to lend the sciences the credibility of truths to separate the mythology of the Earth’s religions and the metaphysical pondering of many leaders of our ancient history, they were incapable of embracing the context of this presentation as a very pragmatic reason why the Neolithic of ancient Britain would put their lives on hold for several years and die and become maimed to conduct such an immense task of the assemblage of Stonehenge.
Before More Come:
The Forgotten Story of the Origin of Stonehenge
By James G. Mason
First published here in 2012.
Republication on 2-16-2016
Long before the Celts and the Druids used it and long before the sick walked hundreds of miles with hopes that its presence would cure them, Stonehenge had already stood purposeful for centuries. Long before new peoples of the land had invented their own use for the broken circle of monolithic and primitive stones and so added their own contributions to the monument, Stonehenge already had a purpose unknown for over a millennium. Thousands of years before anthropologists and historians and amateur astronomers and flocks of the superstitious had searched for the signs of the patterns of human behavior they had expected to find, Stonehenge had already proved to be successful and had a practical solution on the very day it was abandoned incompleted. On that long-ago day the odd stone spectacle also became a lasting memorial of a regretful and somber tragedy. The arrangement had been built for a purely practical reason. A reason so unusual for its day and so unique the cause had required a one-time solution to protect all involved and to prevent a similar event from happening again.
The tragedy that began this incredible story occurred five months before construction of the heavy stone arrangement that for several centuries after was called The Great Door of Stone. The tragedy was began a traumatic and stressful period that changed the way of life for a large community and the thousands of the several tribes that shared a bonding commonality and had identified as one people before the period of struggle toward their common solution had begun. The tragedy was covered-up and at the end of a several year period of doing so a new era in Britain had begun as a result of the actions of their collective decision that had seeme at the time to be the only solution. It began a time of new understanding of the environment and new ways to manipulate it.
It began of time of wider thinking about humans relationship to the stars above them and the universe containing them all. Prior to the event the stars had been no more significant than the trillions of multi colored grains of sand on the water’s edge. With the new understanding also came new fears as many new complexities of existence became quickly revealed. New knowledge and new skills with new tools and many new stories that taught a new temperament was adopted by all. The large community at all age levels had grown into new personalities by emotional adaptation to the entire event. The change was abrupt and adaptation to it was forced upon them, its rate of change like none they had ever known.
Though initially these changes seemed destructive to all, the people of Britain eventually benefited immensely and they did not know that deep in their past a singular event on one brilliantly lit and warm evening had begun it all. They gained a new understanding of societies and a new confidence in what a large and organized community could accomplish. It was dealing with the event that had created an urgent crisis of a matter of life or death for 8,000 men, women and children that changed all of Britain. Unknown to those who read this story there remains today, one tremendous consequences of this event for all of us on the entire planet. It was the time of the great gathering for the Beaker People, a late Stone Age, Neolithic, agrarian and hunting peoples who dominated prehistoric Britain. Their joyous gathering occurred every other year since before the time of their grandfathers and its timing followed the end of the fall harvest for all the Beaker tribes that surrounded what is now called the Salisbury Plaines. They came from three directions and they carried with them bounties to be shared proudly and in friendship. One tribe walked for more than three weeks, the others were closer to the plaines, but excitement was shared equally among the tribes for the celebration, for the unity. The excitement began early each year of the gathering and the anticipation fueled everyone for the awaited fall season march to the rolling Salisbury Plaines meadows. It all occurred in a neutral location, on land where about 10 acres was rolling meadow surrounded by small forests and glens, streams, and the swollen river Avon a short walk away. The largest tribe was from the Eastern Sea. Their camp was about two miles west from the festival area, where daily the people of all three tribes would come together for gathering activities. Where a foot race track, of a long ago agreed upon standard, was the geographic center of a temporary camp. The foot races had for several generations become the most enthusiastic reason for the gathering. Surrounding the track, the festival area, a small city that had sprung-up just for the gathering. Around the track the grassy meadows became interspersed by large and small lentos, campfires and temporary huts, where children ran all day long playing hide and seek, playing everything. The festival area was all to be removed and the site picked-clean by the end of every gathering.
Above: One important missing link. We did not know until recently the accurate degree and rate of a changing obliquity of Earth. The stars were completely different to those looking up 4,500 years ago.
