The war in Iraq continues and President Bush and the Pentagon are nonplussed as to the degree, intensity and size of the opposition. What they don't understand is that a war of low intensity conflict - as this war is (LIC - Low-Intensity Conflict is where at least one side has no regular standing army but instead uses irregular forces drawn from the population or other sources to conduct limited but deadly strikes against their enemy), has no relation to military power. Rather, a war of this type is dependent upon ideology.
Although every war is based to some degree on ideology, a LIC form of war is primarily based on ideology. In the case of the war in Iraq, this ideology is religious in nature.
To quell the opposition in Iraq and prevent American troops and Iraqi citizens from dying, the American military and political leadership must understand the cause of this war. Ideology is the driving force, not military force, not size of the opposition, not the number of Muslims ready to die for their cause.
When 1 Muslim dies in a suicide bombing, this only encourages others to take his or her place. If a combatant Muslim is killed or captured before they have the chance to commit suicide, others will rise up to complete the mission left uncompleted.
This war cannot be won by number of dead. It cannot be won by capturing a region and then releasing that region back to the local populace. It cannot be won by generals or presidents throwing arms, equipment or someone's sons or daughters into the meatgrinder. It can be won by defusing the situation through understanding of the motive for war.
This war is based on a religious ideology. The enemy leadership feels threatened by the American presence, by Western values and a shift of power into the hands of the people and out of the hands of the religious leadership.
To win this war requires convincing the combatant Muslim leadership that continued hostile action on their part will be detrimental to their organization and create a disservice to their religion.
If we do not achieve these objectives, there is a possibility the war will grow, spreading around the world, with new strikes in Europe, the US and nations the enemy believes are providing the US with assistance. This could mean strikes in Japan or Australia which are Western in philosophy but have little or none in terms of military support in Iraq. They support the US by nature of their culture and it is this culture the enemy fears.
The enemy believes that the West has attacked their traditional values and so they are just defending in the only way they believe they can.
We must convince the enemy that their traditional values, their religion and their religious values and their culture will be preserved by the West. We do not seek to "Westernize" them, but rather to accept them into the world community as equals.
We must convince the enemy that their continued attacks do not serve them but rather only provoke us to greater action and greater incursion into their values. We must convince them that the more the enemy strikes out at the West, the more the West will harden its resolve to win this conflict at any cost. As the US sought "total victory" and "unconditional surrender" by the enemy after Pearl Harbor so also will we seek totality in this conflict, even if such a position is not true. We must only convince the enemy that it is what we believe. To win this conflict, the US must find a place that the combatant leadership can aspire to without conflict and this will take greater intelligence anaylsis on the part of the US and the western powers than has thus far been experienced.
We may seek to win on the battlefield, but that cannot occur until and unless we have killed or captured every individual who would make war against the US, (which could be millions), or forcing the entire population into camps or preserves where the whereabouts and activity of every individual is known and closely monitored or displacing every individual to a location where they can pose no threat to the West.
These are unlikely options and serve to highlight the obvious; this war probably cannot be won by conventional means - force against force, because force is merely an outbreak of a deeper condition. We must address that deeper condition to end this war, without doing so, the most likely probability is that this war will just go on and on.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
The Purpose of Life
The Purpose of Life - Copyright 2005 by Perry Jones
I won't dance around the bush, the purpose of your life is to express yourself.
If this sounds too simple, that's because great truths are almost always quite simple.
So how do you do that? That's where things get tricky.
You express yourself by doing that which you were born to do. Everyone is here on Earth for a specific purpose. Everyone has a perfect work they are supposed to be doing. Not following these leads us to despair, heartache, tragedy, illness, cancer, anger, addictions, accidents, et al. All the negative things that occur in our lives are a result of us not doing those things we are supposed to be doing.
Generally, all of us (almost all of us) have this backwards. We think that in order to be happy in life we need to be successful. Sounds good so far, right? Ok. And in order to be successful we must go to school, go to college, get a degree, get a job in a well paying field, get credit cards and buy those things - the big house, the fine car, the nice clothes, the vacations and all those benefits that come with a high paying job that mean success.
That's what we've been told. That's what we have come to believe. But nothing could be further from the truth.
We can't be happy by doing what everyone else has done. If everyone in the world was doing what they were born to do, then we wouldn't have wars, we wouldn't have hate, we wouldn't have crime, we wouldn't have anger, we wouldn't have pain, we wouldn't have racism, we wouldn't be confronted with a world that is experiencing crisis after crisis.
We would have peace. We would have love, we would have joy, we would have happiness, we would have fufillment and we each would be experiencing all that individually.
How is this possible?
We need to take another look at our purpose.
Another way of coming to our purpose in life is this: Our purpose is
to seek
to serve
to create
First, we seek out the reason we are here. This is our dream, it is the perfect work we are supposed to do, it is that which fulfills us. It also means to seek God in whatever way we recognize Him/Her/It.
To serve means to serve humanity. In this way we serve God. Serving God is serving humanity. We achieve this by creating.
Creating is how we express ourselves.
Creating will be different for each person. It could mean being the best janitor we can be, it could mean being the best doctor we can be. It could mean we are supposed to be a missionary, or an accountant, an attorney, a homemaker, a taxi driver, a warehouse worker, a factory worker or an office worker.
Creating could also mean something artistic - as in being a musician, writing songs, writing books, painting, designing websites, doing tile work or becoming an architect, a sculptor or fashion designer.
Creating could also mean someone who develops crafts such as tile work, handbags, jewelry, floral arrangements, etc.
Or it could mean doing all of these.
To seek, to serve and to create means that we must turn our lives into a masterpiece, a work of art, it means to live in the fullest expression of who we are.
How do we do this?
We do this by following the FFSSS Plan.
FFSSS is an acronym for Family, Financial, Self, Social, Spiritual.
These are the five facets of life that we must address in order to achieve fulfillment and in order to fulfill our purpose in life.
Family
Family means learning to build a good family. If we don't have one, then our family is our neighbor, the homeless person on the street, the people down the street, in the next town, the next state, the next country, the next continent.
Courses at churches, colleges and other locations can help us to build a better family. Books at bookstores and tv shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil can all help us to learn how to build better relationships with our immediate and extended families.
Financial
Financial is understood by all. But what it means here is to learn those principles that will lead us to financial independence in the shortest possible time period. In this period of human history we have perhaps the greatest opportunity to learn these principles.
Books such as the Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Rich Dad series by Robert Kiyosaki, the Multiple Streams of Income books and others by Robert Allen, and the works of Suze Orman as well as others can all help us to learn those principles we need to achieve financial independence.
Courses and seminars, some taught by some of the above authors, are available and can further our education in financial matters.
Self
Self stands for self-development. We aren't going to achieve anything until we learn to leave all our pains behind. They weigh us down like an anchor holding us into the current pattern of our life.
Again, numerous books and courses are available that will help us to learn more about ourselves and take personal charge and responsibility for our lives.
Advanced technologies such as Avatar taught by Star's Edge, NLP (look online) and Dianetics taught by your local Church of Scientology can provide us with skills to use to get the past behind us and retrain our minds to achieve the success for which we are truly worthy.
Self also includes your body. Our bodies are the temples of our souls. We need to learn more about nutrition, exercise regularly and find quiet time just for ourselves. These things may not be so easy in our fast-paced world, but they are critical to our success.
Social
Social is how we deal and interact with other people. In order to achieve the best for ourselves, we will need to build an effective team. This can only be accomplished by understanding the nuances of personality and what makes people tick. It means developing our communication skills and our thought patterns to develop persuasive presentations that will positively affect our environment and those we interact with. A course like the Dale Carnegie course and programs offered by Guthy-Renker can help in this area.
No one achieves anything on their own. The United States has the myth of the lone entrepreneur - the man or woman who built their hugely successful company up from nothing with no one helping them. That is an old and dangerous myth.
The most successful people in any age are those who have built the most effective teams. This takes leadership, courage and humility. It requires courage and humility because in order to be successful we need to ask for help.
Spiritual
Spiritual deals with God, religion and spirituality. There is no reality without spirituality. Every physical law and principle has a like metaphysical (or spiritual) law or principle undergirding it.
Our world is in turmoil now, but it is because we have lost our focus. This focus needs to be on the spiritual. We need to develop a relationship with God.
Our religions of the past have barricaded us from the relationship we need to get to know God better. Our religions have taught us that only certain people can have a direct relationship with God. They have also taught that only certain people at certain times can "talk" with God or receive communication from God. But that is not true.
God is speaking to all of us, each of us, all the time.
We simply have been taught that that is not true.
We need to retrain ourselves that God does speak to us all the time. God is speaking to you and through you. We just need to find out how to come to this understanding, and then the voice of God becomes clearer and clearer.
Tomorrow's religion is not about religion. It is about relationship. Each of us needs to build an immediate and personal relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
These terms may mean different things to different people. But the most important thing is to begin that relationship in whatever way you understand it.
Another thing to realize is this: You and God are one. We all are a facet of God. Each person is just a part of that ultimate Oneness we call God. Whatever we do to another is what we do to ourselves.
I'll expand more on the spiritual in the future.
Following the FFSSS Plan will help us to fulfill our purpose in life. We also need to follow the Principles of Success.
I'll write more about the Principles of Success in another blog.
If you wish to delve deeper into this subject, my website How To Get Rich http://how2getrich.bravehost.com offers free information about success and financial independence.
I won't dance around the bush, the purpose of your life is to express yourself.
If this sounds too simple, that's because great truths are almost always quite simple.
So how do you do that? That's where things get tricky.
You express yourself by doing that which you were born to do. Everyone is here on Earth for a specific purpose. Everyone has a perfect work they are supposed to be doing. Not following these leads us to despair, heartache, tragedy, illness, cancer, anger, addictions, accidents, et al. All the negative things that occur in our lives are a result of us not doing those things we are supposed to be doing.
Generally, all of us (almost all of us) have this backwards. We think that in order to be happy in life we need to be successful. Sounds good so far, right? Ok. And in order to be successful we must go to school, go to college, get a degree, get a job in a well paying field, get credit cards and buy those things - the big house, the fine car, the nice clothes, the vacations and all those benefits that come with a high paying job that mean success.
That's what we've been told. That's what we have come to believe. But nothing could be further from the truth.
We can't be happy by doing what everyone else has done. If everyone in the world was doing what they were born to do, then we wouldn't have wars, we wouldn't have hate, we wouldn't have crime, we wouldn't have anger, we wouldn't have pain, we wouldn't have racism, we wouldn't be confronted with a world that is experiencing crisis after crisis.
We would have peace. We would have love, we would have joy, we would have happiness, we would have fufillment and we each would be experiencing all that individually.
How is this possible?
We need to take another look at our purpose.
Another way of coming to our purpose in life is this: Our purpose is
to seek
to serve
to create
First, we seek out the reason we are here. This is our dream, it is the perfect work we are supposed to do, it is that which fulfills us. It also means to seek God in whatever way we recognize Him/Her/It.
To serve means to serve humanity. In this way we serve God. Serving God is serving humanity. We achieve this by creating.
Creating is how we express ourselves.
Creating will be different for each person. It could mean being the best janitor we can be, it could mean being the best doctor we can be. It could mean we are supposed to be a missionary, or an accountant, an attorney, a homemaker, a taxi driver, a warehouse worker, a factory worker or an office worker.
Creating could also mean something artistic - as in being a musician, writing songs, writing books, painting, designing websites, doing tile work or becoming an architect, a sculptor or fashion designer.
Creating could also mean someone who develops crafts such as tile work, handbags, jewelry, floral arrangements, etc.
Or it could mean doing all of these.
To seek, to serve and to create means that we must turn our lives into a masterpiece, a work of art, it means to live in the fullest expression of who we are.
How do we do this?
We do this by following the FFSSS Plan.
FFSSS is an acronym for Family, Financial, Self, Social, Spiritual.
These are the five facets of life that we must address in order to achieve fulfillment and in order to fulfill our purpose in life.
Family
Family means learning to build a good family. If we don't have one, then our family is our neighbor, the homeless person on the street, the people down the street, in the next town, the next state, the next country, the next continent.
Courses at churches, colleges and other locations can help us to build a better family. Books at bookstores and tv shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil can all help us to learn how to build better relationships with our immediate and extended families.
Financial
Financial is understood by all. But what it means here is to learn those principles that will lead us to financial independence in the shortest possible time period. In this period of human history we have perhaps the greatest opportunity to learn these principles.
Books such as the Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Rich Dad series by Robert Kiyosaki, the Multiple Streams of Income books and others by Robert Allen, and the works of Suze Orman as well as others can all help us to learn those principles we need to achieve financial independence.
Courses and seminars, some taught by some of the above authors, are available and can further our education in financial matters.
Self
Self stands for self-development. We aren't going to achieve anything until we learn to leave all our pains behind. They weigh us down like an anchor holding us into the current pattern of our life.
Again, numerous books and courses are available that will help us to learn more about ourselves and take personal charge and responsibility for our lives.
Advanced technologies such as Avatar taught by Star's Edge, NLP (look online) and Dianetics taught by your local Church of Scientology can provide us with skills to use to get the past behind us and retrain our minds to achieve the success for which we are truly worthy.
Self also includes your body. Our bodies are the temples of our souls. We need to learn more about nutrition, exercise regularly and find quiet time just for ourselves. These things may not be so easy in our fast-paced world, but they are critical to our success.
Social
Social is how we deal and interact with other people. In order to achieve the best for ourselves, we will need to build an effective team. This can only be accomplished by understanding the nuances of personality and what makes people tick. It means developing our communication skills and our thought patterns to develop persuasive presentations that will positively affect our environment and those we interact with. A course like the Dale Carnegie course and programs offered by Guthy-Renker can help in this area.
No one achieves anything on their own. The United States has the myth of the lone entrepreneur - the man or woman who built their hugely successful company up from nothing with no one helping them. That is an old and dangerous myth.
The most successful people in any age are those who have built the most effective teams. This takes leadership, courage and humility. It requires courage and humility because in order to be successful we need to ask for help.
Spiritual
Spiritual deals with God, religion and spirituality. There is no reality without spirituality. Every physical law and principle has a like metaphysical (or spiritual) law or principle undergirding it.
Our world is in turmoil now, but it is because we have lost our focus. This focus needs to be on the spiritual. We need to develop a relationship with God.
Our religions of the past have barricaded us from the relationship we need to get to know God better. Our religions have taught us that only certain people can have a direct relationship with God. They have also taught that only certain people at certain times can "talk" with God or receive communication from God. But that is not true.
God is speaking to all of us, each of us, all the time.
We simply have been taught that that is not true.
We need to retrain ourselves that God does speak to us all the time. God is speaking to you and through you. We just need to find out how to come to this understanding, and then the voice of God becomes clearer and clearer.
Tomorrow's religion is not about religion. It is about relationship. Each of us needs to build an immediate and personal relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
These terms may mean different things to different people. But the most important thing is to begin that relationship in whatever way you understand it.
Another thing to realize is this: You and God are one. We all are a facet of God. Each person is just a part of that ultimate Oneness we call God. Whatever we do to another is what we do to ourselves.
I'll expand more on the spiritual in the future.
Following the FFSSS Plan will help us to fulfill our purpose in life. We also need to follow the Principles of Success.
I'll write more about the Principles of Success in another blog.
If you wish to delve deeper into this subject, my website How To Get Rich http://how2getrich.bravehost.com offers free information about success and financial independence.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Education: Institutionalized Stupidity
It's easier to lead and to dominate those who have been taught to follow and who have been taught not to think. This becomes an institutionalized doctrine of stupidity and of follow the leader for the undertaught masses when the entire educational system is designed to teach people to not think on their own, but instead to naively and blindly follow the leader. This has been the brand of American education since the beginning of the 20th century.
There is nothing wrong with American teachers. There is something wrong with the system they teach within.
American teachers are as much at the mercy of the system as are the students they teach.
We continuously bemoan and criticize teachers for putting out a shoddy product yet we refuse to provide them the tools necessary to do so.
A maxim states "the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results." Isn't this what we are doing with the system? Isn't this what we are doing with students? Isn't this what we are doing with teachers?
If we truly seek to graduate individuals able to think, decide and act and take their place responsibly in society, we must address the reasons why this isn't happening now. It was happening, it did happen - in the one room schoolhouse.
This may be an extreme example, yet it worked. Perhaps we should study what made it work and bring those elements and concepts into the present. At the turn of the century, calculus was being taught to 7th grade students. The text they were using was by Silvanus Thomson; "Calculus Made Easy" which, regardless of the title, certainly wasn't easy.
If this advanced education could be taught in small little schoolhouses across the country a hundred years ago, why can't we do it today? It's not the teachers who are at fault. Nor, in a sense, is it even the system. Those who know the truth know better. Our schools are turning out dumbdowned individuals intentionally because those who have power want to keep it and an educated population would threaten their hold on power and perhaps even change the world for the better - for the good of all. It is possible, it can be done, but those who hold the reins of power won't permit that to happen.
There is nothing wrong with American teachers. There is something wrong with the system they teach within.
American teachers are as much at the mercy of the system as are the students they teach.
We continuously bemoan and criticize teachers for putting out a shoddy product yet we refuse to provide them the tools necessary to do so.
A maxim states "the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results." Isn't this what we are doing with the system? Isn't this what we are doing with students? Isn't this what we are doing with teachers?
If we truly seek to graduate individuals able to think, decide and act and take their place responsibly in society, we must address the reasons why this isn't happening now. It was happening, it did happen - in the one room schoolhouse.
This may be an extreme example, yet it worked. Perhaps we should study what made it work and bring those elements and concepts into the present. At the turn of the century, calculus was being taught to 7th grade students. The text they were using was by Silvanus Thomson; "Calculus Made Easy" which, regardless of the title, certainly wasn't easy.
If this advanced education could be taught in small little schoolhouses across the country a hundred years ago, why can't we do it today? It's not the teachers who are at fault. Nor, in a sense, is it even the system. Those who know the truth know better. Our schools are turning out dumbdowned individuals intentionally because those who have power want to keep it and an educated population would threaten their hold on power and perhaps even change the world for the better - for the good of all. It is possible, it can be done, but those who hold the reins of power won't permit that to happen.
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