Go and DO! Do this, or do that, but go and do. The favorite anthem of the masses, vague of detail or clear directive. It's often frustrating. Don't worry you'll figure it out, is often the counterpart to the dynamic duo of direction. I've come to the conclusion that people more often than not, when they give these broad directions have no real idea of what they say or how to properly instruct an individual. More so, it often reflects the insecurity of ignorance, masked in the cocoon of pride. It demonstrates a brusque shaking off of individuals who apparent to them, things they don't clearly know or understand. Instead of communicating honestly, they give directives without clear paths. They merely vent general assumptions as facts that would make them appear wise or prudent. Testaments to self-centered-ness and not the personal help petitioned for from the seeker. In the old days, to such people I would say poppycock, today I say your full of it - nonsense.
Success is founded on concrete steps that need to be taken to any specific destination. Like math 2 comes after one and three after two, there is order, each step leading to the next and eventually to any given destination. Give a person the proper understanding to those steps and if they have the means to take the requisite actions then they will succeed. However, more often than not it is not enough to tell a person, go do this, or go do that, and expect them to meet with success. Lesson one in life - accepting other people's assumptions are for suckers - the naive. Lesson two in life - the proud make lousy direction givers.
How do we recognize the proud. That's easy, they set themselves up above others. They carry an incessant need to validate their self worth by putting others below themselves, overtly or covertly, in words or deeds. They don't think you are worth helping, being above such practices, or merely feeling they are above you. If they do assist, they are more concerned on how they appear in the giving of the help. The giving is never about the one being given to, its always about the giver. More apparent is spotting the true helpers, the people without pride. They are the people that look upon you as if they were in your shoes and take into consideration the fact that all people are different and because of that fact general directions often have to be tailored for individual circumstances. These people are the ones that walk in your shoes for a mile or two, forgetting themselves long enough to give valuable direction and guidance. They make themselves acquainted with the details to the endeavor and recognize if they can be of assistance or not. They are the people that work with you to draw out a topographical map of the terrain, so you have the greatest opportunity for success, and not just a vague northerly or southerly glance with the cliche, go and do.
Success does not come by assuming small or great things. Success does not come with general actions. Success is in the details, constant and correct fulfillment of the details. In assuming, sometimes the assumptions are right, and they conform to the truth of the requisite steps for success. Other times assumptions are dead wrong or only partially right, which likewise do not lead us to the intended destination and therefore are just as wrong. Assumptions are only correct when they conform to truth, whether realized at the time or not. Assuming that you assume correctly all the time, whether because you call it confidence, or intelligence, or blessedness, or being spiritual, or cosmically linked to God, or a superior race, or because of past personal successes, or a feeling that you are more special than anyone else, still makes you not only arrogant but deceived and sets up for frustration and suffering, often spilling over onto others. Assumptions by definition means you do not have all the details and you are filling the unknowns with your personal beliefs on the situation. Arrogance is the perfect word meaning pretension, and - to feign. Feigning is a bad thing because you give the appearance that you do know, but you don't, you are merely assuming based on your beliefs and hoping to be correct.
No, I've realized that it is better not to assume what I can not, or do not know. After all, the beliefs that shape my assumptions are only viable if they reflect the truths of any given matter. I've also learned to take other people's counsel with great trepidation. Motives are everything, trusting the proud can lead you to the same frustrations and failures as trusting a well intentioned but incorrectly assuming individual. I have learned to look for the people that have walked on paths I seek to cross to get to the same destination. I've learned to beware of those that tell me to do, with no more information than do this or do that. If they follow it up with, it will all work out in the end, or trust me, then its a sure bet they have no idea what they're talking about or that they don't care for me. If that is all they give then they know less than they presume to offer.
Realists must live in the now, fully aware that there is a past and a future. They must be the most honest of people, if they are to navigate life correctly. They must realize that they don't know what they don't know. They must also realize that not knowing is not bad. They must realize that when you don't know how to get somewhere, no road is the right road, and no road is the wrong road, after all how can you tell, until you actually get to the right or wrong destination, or someone who does know tells you? Unless you have a person that can tell you the path ahead because they are familiar with it, unless you have a map of some sort, taking any road assures you nothing as to whether it is the correct one for your chosen destination. What can we do in such situations?
A realist would tell you, "I don't know if this is the right road." A realist would tell you, "I have made the best choice with the information I have and aim to see if it is the right one. Unless I gain more information than what I currently have, and that information determines that another road is the right one for my intended destination, I will first travel this path and find out, lest being on the right path, I turn away onto a wrong one."
This brings me to my point. How does mankind learn? What man on earth today navigates this life perfectly, following a perfect set of instructions? NONE!! Mankind more often than not learns through error. Unfortunately, we live in a highly pride-filled world that turns its nose up at errors, mistakes, wrong choices. As if that was the end and all - to be error free. No, the end and all is to have correct knowledge. Having correct knowledge guarantees, if we choose to use it, an error free existence. That so many make so many errors only shows that a correct knowledge is not had and that they are searching for the correct knowledge that would lead them to their desired destination. People learn by doing, but the key to that phrase is not there. The more complete and accurate phrase would be, "People learn by doing, but especially from errors."
Not having the correct knowledge can occur by diverse occurrences. One may never have been instructed, but even instruction guarantees nothing. Whether through loss of memory, or not fully grasping or understanding what has been conveyed, because it is new or because it is complex, the knowledge we may have gained may not reflect the knowledge that was transmitted. This consequently makes the knowledge we operate by incorrect and faulty.
The meat and potatoes of learning is trial and error in order to be certain. Take athletics for instance. No professional athlete has ever picked up their sport and done it perfectly. Only through the constant refinement of incremental improvement in the presence of constant failure do they master the skills necessary for their game. Mind you, this is much AFTER having a sound knowledge of the proper mechanics of the game.
Practice is the time to make all the mistakes you don't want to make in the game, and that you need to make in order to get to the point where you can execute correct knowledge unto an endeavor. Yes perfect practice makes perfect, but to get to perfect practice you have to go through the refinement of failure, and often much of it.
Academic endeavors are the same way. Lectures, whether clever or dull, confer instruction, but instruction learned means going through the fires of what you do and do not know, meaning have for yourself. Hence all the homework, quizzes, and testing.
Conclusion:
1. The faster one can correctly accept the information needed to accomplish any given endeavor the less frustration and failure one need suffer. The only way to personally know for sure if the information leading to the desired accomplishment is truthful, accurate, and viable is by testing it. Putting into practice is essential.
2. The likelihood of gaining the correct information is greatly increased by taking in counsel from individuals that know the path to the destination. The chances of correctly incorporating the proper steps to an endeavor are increased greater yet by someone that not only knows the way but that works with you to tailor suit it to your individual circumstances.
3. Recognize how the path to an endeavor shapes your character. This will determine the path as an honest one or as a dishonest one. This will make you honest or dishonest. And ultimately paths are not merely important for the destination prize, but for what they discover to our realization about ourselves, about what we hold as valuable and important, and in turn what that makes us. It shows our true character. What we would allow ourselves to become. What we truly want to become. What we choose to become.
Character:
The path to an endeavor may offer you the prize, but it may do so in a way that compromises the development of a good character. What is good? Is it not good to hold all other human beings as equal to the same treatment, honor, respect, value, and opportunity as you? To not only see them, but treat them as you would want to be treated? Is it not good to recognize that to be just and fair with all is good, to be charitable without self serving interest or reward - divine?
To steal gets you money just as much as honestly laboring for it does. Cheating on an exam gets you an "A" just the same as studying sufficient to have mastered the material does. Both paths reach the desired destination, however one road makes you a thief and a cheater, and the other a hard worker trained and skilled in a productive operation, and self reliant to the knowledge of a matter. The first binds you forever, the latter frees you forever. Aside from the injustice of how it affects people outside of yourself, the first makes you dependent. Like a parasite dependent on a host to survive. It can only consume and destroy what has already been made. If the host dies the parasite dies unless it finds other hosts. The latter makes you independent, a person of greater ability. The latter processes leave you things you can take as yours, and use in other circumstances, or for other aims at your disposal. The first is always at the disposal of its host.
Now we get back to why I have hard feeling towards the arrogantly assumptive direction giver. To steal, to cheat, to give a false impression (feign), is to lie. Lies are evil because for the believing person seeking a specific destination a lie leads them down the wrong path and away from the prize that they seek. Arrogantly assumptive direction givers often don't care enough to realize whether they are lying. Because of their pride, they thereby adversely affect those that are seeking direction. Whether intentional or unintentional a lie is an untruth passed of as a truth. It is an aberration of the truth.
Lies:
To steal money is to lie, it was not earned, yet it is taken and used as if it were, that is a lie. Earning money out of a mutually agreed upon labor, service or product is honest. All things are clearly agreed upon and consensually executed to the expected ends.
To cheat on a test is to lie. It is to say that one knows something that one does not, so to receive the benefits of knowing that thing.
There are many forms of lies. Not merely in words. Many of them gallivant with much power due to the effectiveness of their deceptions in this world. Many unscrupulous and conspiring people promote their lies to gain wealth and power.
Why is it bad to believe in lies? What happens to the people that doggedly cling to lies?
Pornography:
Take pornography as a lie for example. It is the biggest Internet industry, raking in billions upon billions of dollars, and extinguishing the happiness in the lives of countless masses. Isn't happiness a state of being content? Are we as human beings not content when we get what we expect or better? Don't lies then ultimately cause unhappiness because they can never fulfill what we expect, or give us anything better? Aren't then fantasies or dreams the most appealing yet at the same time the most torture some when they can not be realized? What might you say is the lie in pornography? Is it not the lie of getting the human body to respond physiologically to perceptual stimuli reserved for intimate physical encounters, when in fact there is no actual intimate physical encounter. Is it not the trade-off of sensual gratification for realism. What type of feelings do you think would be elicited in an individual when they are constantly exposed to images of things that they find attractive, desirable, and pleasurable yet, that are not real, and therefore unattainable? Is it any wonder that people would then not be haunted by the desire to pursue real life similar experiences and attain their fantasy? Meaning, the person that exposes them self to pornography physically responds at some level in the brain and body as if there was an actual person or persons in their presence. Yet there are no persons present. When mental satiation of the illusion spills over, would this then not drive the person to look for real experiences if possible, and live out their grand illusions? And if they have high resolve, would it not drive them to forcibly attain such experiences? Or if they resist the haunting urges would it not develop a state of conflict within them, as they kept such inclinations in check? Such are the natural offshoots of the lie. Internal and external states which do not fill the criteria for happiness - a content state. Is it any wonder then that pornography is in general a shared common factor for the people that carry on into criminal activities. What happens when you refuse to disbelieve a lie? Isn't it that other lies become easier to believe! Don't they?
People that expose themselves to pornography outright lie to themselves using fantasy material designed by the producers to elicit sensual sexual responses known to be powerful emotional states of attention. Sexy sells music and cars. Take off the Y and sex sells faster than any car and gets in the human head quicker than even the most intoxicating pop music. The producers know that the body is designed to experience intimate physical experiences as pleasurable. The producers know that pornography's lie is in getting the body to believe that an intimate physical experience is at hand when in fact it is merely the illusion of such an experience. They count on it! If sex has the power to help maintain, to some degree, the bond necessary to keep spouses together throughout life's tumult and the roughness of two individuals living in the same sphere, imagine turning that power into a means to keep clients in a business built around the illusion. Imagine getting people addicted to the euphoria of physical intimacy, but instead of having a partner, duping them, enslaving them, as a patron for a manufactured illusion. Suddenly, you're rolling in the billions. But in the wake, people are destroyed. They turn from the natural order of relationships, and that of their own bodies, to that of an illusion that can never fulfill them. They become weak of mind, desiring the imagination of others instead of reality, and more easily led to believe lies.
Lies are the damn ablest of things!
Divorce:
Another common place lie is society's current-age epidemic of divorce. Holding lightly the agreements entered into on the wedding day, couples make any and all excuses sound reasonable and legitimate for settling difficult problems with the end of any affiliation with individuals they once claim to have loved. People often, to get what they want quickly, and with minimal effort, are apt to create and believe delusions before accepting the truth of matters. For a fairytale relationship people marry and make promises they never intend to keep under the distinct circumstances of two unique and different individuals. Once reality sets in, and the consequences become apparent, people become conveniently delusional again. They construct or enlarge any and all reasons to absolve themselves from any responsibility attributed to the commitment they made on their wedding day. Unspoken fine print suddenly becomes readily trumpeted and en forcibly acceptable. What does this show. Definitely not a people of love, but readily a people of self centered selfishness. A people of pride. A society on the brink of a great fall. A people that marry into lies.
Love:
Love never fails. It supports. It helps. It does what is right. Love edifies. Love leaves a place better than how it found it. Where there is a true and real opportunity for real progress it is there. Love does not blindly enter into a martyrs role but appropriately behaves itself for the benefit of all involved. When love has an opportunity to sacrifice and give, it does so not sheepishly, not reserved, not for what they will get out of it, not grudgingly, but happily for the benefit of, and for what may yet be, for the loved one. Love appreciates. Love accepts individuals for their good and encourages more, but does not accept the bad behaviors. It is able to separate the two in a way that uplifts the good in the individual and discourages the bad while giving any and all opportunity for personal betterment. Too many lie to each other when they go to be married instead of, "I love yous" they really are saying, "I lust .....such and such .... in or of you!" When what they seek is not realized, then the liar's prism distorts the light again and unclaimed rewards spark angry dis solutions. Society's epidemic of divorce is a general reflection of a people's immoral habit to lie to oneself and each other.
Pre-marital Sex:
Another pervasive lie in today's society is that of premarital sex. The physiological, chemical consequences of physical intimacies are designed to have a pleasurable bonding effect between a man and a woman. The lie is that the bond has no continued promise to remain when these powers are used outside of marriage. To fulfill physical impulses by having physical intimacies with someone outside of marriage is a lie akin to that of pornography. It is the illusion of creating a lasting bond between a man and a woman. The lie - the fact that the bond will not remain. This effectually has a result in distorting a person's ability to discern their feelings appropriately. Broken relationships replete with sexual liberties demonstrate many similar dispositions to that of divorced people. Often they show extended signs of depression and other mental and emotional difficulties. It in essence sows confusion. Where confusion abounds, it is easier to get people to believe other lies. The mental and emotional disturbance resides in the fact that the physiological functional bonds created in physical intimacies are designed to keep mates together. Internally resolving the contradiction of these things is waking up to the battle of having these feelings persist with the realization that they are empty and will go unfulfilled. Another internal state, much like that of pornography, which leaves us devoid of contentment, feeling feelings of a thing desired, but which will not materialize. The opposite of happiness. Premarital sex is a lie.
Homosexuality:
Homosexuality is a gross lie. The functional anatomy of a man's reproductive organs is designed for the propagation of the species through sexual intercourse made functional through the female reproductive organs. Men can not reproduce with men. Women can not reproduce with women. Sex is intended for making offspring. It is also beneficial in keeping the would-be-parents together through means which we have already discussed. However, the primary functional purpose of sexual intercourse are not the feelings that come with it, these auxilliary factors while important, and which are meaningful in emotional, psychological, and relational purposes, are in fact powerful means for the primary purpose to succeed -reproduction. These factors, in fact, make it very difficult to cease from achieving the primary purpose. The physical pleasures associated with physical initimacies are designed to progress the body to the point of completing reproductive activity. The climax is getting sperm to join with a woman's egg. That the human mind, and/or the human body's senses can be manipulated and distorted is a well established truth. However, nothing can discount the function of anatomical distinction, function, and purpose. The lie is that sexuality is the same thing as sensuality. The truth is that sexuality has everything to do with propogating sexual reproduction. Sexuality does not stand alone, apart, or above the function it serves. The reproductive cycle is the reason that sexuality exists. The sensuality of sexuality promotes the occurence of reproduction. The truth is that homosexuals distort the functions of their physical bodies for sensuality. They distort the natural mechanics of the human body. Their affections are misplaced. It is a gross lie. Men, it is very apparent are designed to be with women, and women are very clearly designed to be with men, when it comes to this matter. To pretend to be, or play the part, of anything distinct from what you are physically in this matter, is feigning to be something you are not, after all you are physically a man or a woman. The lie is also the belief that sexuality has no function and is an end in and of itself. Sexuality plays a primary role in reproduction as well as a means for spouses to express their feelings on a physical plane and therby solidify their bonds. In a world where a duck can believe itself to be a dog, a man or woman can feel and/or believe themselves to be the opposite gender trapped in the wrong body, but that is a lie. The duck is not a dog, it is in fact a duck with webbed feet and no paws. It's belief does not change the truth. A lie can never change the truth. Why do people so engrossed in this deception feel inclined to change society's traditional and sound views, and even their own bodies, instead of conforming their misguided feelngs and minds to the conclusive evidence that comprise their own physical beings? Could it be for the same reasons that the lie of pornography enslaves people to seek out the ellusive illusion? Could it be for the same reasons that those that have premarital sex or those that have extramarital affairs are trapped by the misunderstanding and false conclusion of how their own bodies operate? Could it be that once under a lie long enough one can become permanently changed by it so that the truth is perceived as relative?
At that juncture wouldn't the only recourse become to seek to cahnge the state of affairs much like the porn addict seeks out thier fantasy? To change societal views requires resources and great influential power. To gain such power and resources, a campaign would need to be waged to make lies so common place that they soon become familiar and considered truth by the masses.
The Past to Present:
And so in the near past we have seen fall society's standard on marriage and the great embrace on divorce. We have seen the proliferation of the confusion between tolerance and acceptance. We have seen the minority try and change the laws to force the majority to redefine the definition of marriage. With lies so rampant and so powerful engulfing the minds of so many, is it any wonder we see a society with low morale, low confidence, and pessimism for the future. We don't see a happy society, could it be because at large lies have been allowed to permeate the mainstream such that a critical mass have begun to be persuaded to believe in them? Lying has become a way of life in today's fast paced world. Little lies, medium lies, and big lies all converging together to breakdown the moorings that keep civilization together. We see Enrons and 50 billion dollar panze schemes. We see financial meltdowns with the passionate flames of greed and the coals of lies. We are given false intelligence, who knows but for some faction's premeditated purposes, that lead to dire actions that de-stabilize the world community. Actions of war, sold upon lies, whether seen to be so or not, the actions are still built upon untruths. And lies always lead to the wrong destination as anticipated.
The war is on. The war for honesty. The war for civilization. The inherent miscalculation built into the purposes of those that seek to amass enough power and wealth to install their world order is that truth is truth because it is how things really are. The more the powers that be accumulate resources and powers and use them to set up an order distinct from the truths that hold up civilization the quicker they will bring the demise of civilizations, themselves, and all the unfortunate caught up in the wake of their collosal crash.
Our survival and progress hinges on our honesty.
We must not lie.
