© Copyright 1994 By Frederick Mann, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Introduction
The main reason most "success" books, tapes, and seminars fail, is because
the authors don't really know all the reasons behind their success.
And sometimes their only major success is getting them published! The reason there are so many "success" products on the market is because they generally don't work and people keep on buying more with the hope that eventually something will work.
This report does not deal with the reasonably well-known success principles. I believe it covers much more powerful underlying success principles. But you be the judge of that.
Success Formulas
If you get a job in a long-established, viable company, it's
relatively easy to succeed. Over the years the company's founders
and workers have developed formulas for doing things that
work. The details have been worked out. When you join such a company
you are told in one way or another how to do things. You may be
given a job description. Through existing paperwork, computer
systems, and asking questions you discover the details. In such
a set-up it's relatively easy to succeed because the company has
viable products and services, trained personnel, an established
customer base, a good or reasonable reputation, and procedures
or formulas that work for doing things.
If you were to start your own business as a hairdresser it would be more difficult to succeed. Suppose you've worked as a hairdresser so you know the details of cutting hair. However, you don't know all the details of creating and running a business successfully. Nevertheless, many people have successfully created hairdressing businesses. They used certain formulas to determine what to do and what not to do. You can discover these formulas and even improve them. But it's more difficult to succeed because you don't have a boss who knows the formulas and can tell you exactly what to do.
Now if you were to start a new kind of business - like Federal Express - it's even more difficult to succeed. You're trying to do something which nobody has done before. You have to invent the details from scratch and make them work. The formulas for success need to be developed. You can't copy them from someone else.
To walk from A to Z you need to put one foot in front of the other as many times as necessary to cover the distance. You simply take one step at a time until you arrive at Z. It's very simple because all the steps are the same - assuming the path from A to Z is straight, level, and uniform. The formula is simply: take the next step. To succeed all you have to do is take the next step.
In the job described above it's relatively easy to determine the next step. In starting a hairdressing business it's more difficult. In creating Federal Express it's vastly more difficult.
Most people fail because they don't take the next step. When you're just walking it's easy to determine your next step: just move the other foot forward. But when you have a more difficult task, it's not always so easy to figure out the next step. Maybe that's why most people fail: by not taking the next step. I hope this report will help you figure out and take your next step.
Three Levels of Success
I distinguish between ordinary success, spectacular success,
and ultimate success. Ordinary success could be getting
and keeping a job and earning a decent income. Though for some
ambitious people, working their whole career for a boss would
be a failure.
Federal Express is an example of a spectacular success. Not only is it a large, worldwide, profitable business, it also provides a service that makes business generally more efficient worldwide.
Ultimate success could include such advances as:
There is no clear line of demarcation between my three levels of success. You can decide for yourself what you regard as ordinary, spectacular, and ultimate success. And, of course, you can define your own levels of success.
Whatever level of success you want to attain, the most basic formula you need to apply is: TAKE THE NEXT STEP! One way to find out the next step you need to take is to apply the "non-existence formula" given in Report #80A: Creativity Report #1.
One of the most powerful success books I know of is The Cynergetics Sixty-Minute Success/Wealth Guidebook published by Applied Cynergetics, 1308 Broad St., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. I don't know of a more powerful guide for selecting your next step.
Three Paradigms
A "paradigm" is a set of assumptions that determines
how you view things. There are three basic paradigms concerning
human nature:
As far as I know, the immature/mature paradigm was first formulated in the book The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet, published in 1949. The author thought that his "maturity concept" would revolutionize society. Let me introduce the maturity concept through a quotation from the above book:
"All children, Diderot once observed, are essentially criminal. It is merely our good luck that their physical powers are still too limited to permit them to carry out their destructiveness.Had he lived today, Diderot might have expanded his remark. He might have said that all childish minds are dangerous, but particularly when those minds are housed in adult bodies; for then they have the power to put their immaturities fully and disastrously into effect.
The forms that adult childishness can take are almost infinite in number. They exist not merely in those unfortunates who have to be confined to institutions, but in countless thousands of men and women who look adult, are taken to be adult, and are granted the full prerogatives of adulthood.
In these grown-up child-minds, the immaturities are almost invariably disguised from the individuals themselves. Also they are usually disguised from those who share their life - largely because these others display similar immaturities themselves. The immaturities, moreover, are disguised from society at large, since that society has as yet developed no constant habit of appraising adult behaviors as immature or mature."
Some assumptions of the maturity concept follow:
"So far in the history of the world there have never been enough mature people in the right places... The only real threat to man... is man himself... the difficulty man has with himself is that he cannot use his highly developed intellect effectively because of his neurotic fears, his prejudices, his fanaticisms, his unreasoning hates, and equally unreasoning devotions; in fact, his failure to reach emotional maturity, or mental health."
There is much more to the maturity concept and I recommend that you get hold of H.A. Overstreet's The Mature Mind from a used-book store or a library and study it.
Gurdjieff's Attempt to Wake Us Up
George I. Gurdjieff regarded our "ordinary awake state"
as in fact being a "state of being asleep" - a condition
of being hypnotized. In our "ordinary awake state" we
in fact walk around like machines, robots, or zombies. Gurdjieff
chose as his life-mission the "harmonious development of
man." For an introduction to Gurdjieff's ideas I recommend
Colin Wilson's book The War Against Sleep in which he writes:
"Everyday consciousness is limited by 'mechanicalness', 'the robot.' We become so accustomed to the repetitive routine of everyday life that we end by being bound hand and foot by habit, like a fly wrapped in spider-web. Yet no one, even the laziest, is really happy with this state of affairs, for we recognize that it robs us of a certain intensity, a feeling of being fully alive. We need security; but it tends to conflict with that desire to be 'wide awake.' This is more often associated with insecurity. Sartre, for example, remarked that he never felt so alive as when he was in the French Resistance, and was likely to be arrested and shot at any moment."
Another introduction to Gurdjieff is the book Gurdjieff: Making a New World by John G. Bennett. He quotes Gurdjieff: "Man is a machine. He is asleep. He can do nothing. He can control nothing. Everything controls him." In his book The Harmonious Circle, James Webb writes:
"But by Gurdjieff's own account, the chief result of his close acquaintance with political intrigue was to... fill him with horror at the ease with which ordinary people allowed themselves to be led by the nose. Partly in reaction against the violence he had seen and partly as a result of conversations with "various revolutionists" he had met in Italy, Switzerland, and the Caucasus, Gurdjieff decided that he "must discover, at all costs, some manner or means for destroying in people the predilection for suggestibility which causes them to fall easily under the influence of 'mass-hypnosis.'""
Gurdjieff's contention that we are asleep is echoed by Erich Fromm as quoted by Stephen R. Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:
"Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth."
Gurdjieff's life was devoted to waking us up. He successively established several institutes to deliver his teachings. They all failed. I surmise that Gurdjieff lacked organizational, management, and marketing skills. Nevertheless, dozens of books have been written about Gurdjieff, his work, and his followers, and there are Gurdjieff groups all over the world.
Maslow's Self-Actualization Psychology
Abraham H. Maslow's psychology of self-actualization, as described
in his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, could
be regarded as a maturity psychology. Before Maslow, most psychologists
studied "abnormal" people to find out what was wrong
with them and to develop the methods to fix or heal them. Maslow
studied the most advanced individuals he could find in order to
determine what was different or unique about them. He talked in
terms of "merely healthy individuals" and "transcenders."
Maslow wrote:
"I have a very strong sense of being in the middle of a historical wave. One hundred and fifty years from now, what will the historians say about this age? What was really important? What was going? What was finished? My belief is that much of what makes the headlines is finished, and the "growing tip" of mankind is what is now growing and will flourish in a hundred or two hundred years, if we manage to endure. Historians will be talking about this movement as the sweep of history, that here, as Whitehead pointed out, when you get a new model, a new paradigm, a new way of perceiving, new definitions of the old words, words which now mean something else, suddenly, you have an illumination, an insight. You can see things in a different way."
Maslow is generally regarded as the father of "humanistic psychology" or "third-force psychology" - the "first force" being Freudian analysis, and the "second force" Skinnerian behaviorism. Of the psychologies I've examined Maslow's comes closest to reflecting my "expanded maturity concept." For an excellent overview of Maslow's psychology I recommend the book New Pathways in Psychology by Colin Wilson.
The Expanded Maturity Concept
Overstreet talked about mental, emotional, and
social maturity. His maturity concept may have failed to
make a major impact in the world because it was too narrowly defined.
The concept was not sufficiently developed to succeed! Though
Overstreet wrote:
"[A] mature truth told to immature minds ceases, in those minds, to be that same mature truth. Immature minds take from it only what immature minds can assimilate. In the end, even though they may give it lip-service and may raise institutions in its name, they turn the mature truth into an applied immaturity."
I have expanded Overstreet's too limited maturity concept into my Expanded Maturity Concept, which includes many more elements. We each need to become more mature in most or all of the "elements of maturity" I identify.
Elements of Maturity
The We-Don't-Have-All-The-Answers Perspective
Many individuals and groups have attempted to bring about spectacular
or ultimate human success on a global scale. In every society
there are probably people who are dissatisfied and who want to
improve society. I'm one of these. For many years I've been looking
for the "keys" to do this.
Suppose there are a hundred "keys" (or elements) to ultimate success - a hundred things that need to be achieved for ultimate success to become reality. I propose the following ratios:
I have no idea how accurate my ratios are. But I expect they are in the right ballpark. (And this is not an attempt to demean any of the above individuals or their movements. In my opinion, they have all made great contributions to greater maturity in the world. Some of them may even be 20-key or 50-key people.)
What typically has been happening is that the average one-key person makes contact with the ten-key activist or movement. The one-key person thinks the ten-key activist or movement has all the answers and is what he or she has been looking for all along. The one-key person then becomes a convert to learn the ten keys to ultimate human success. The ten-key activist or movement tells the convert that they have all the keys and there is no need to look further. Unfortunately the ten-key activist or movement is 90% ignorant of the keys necessary to bring about ultimate success. So, ultimate success never occurs. I suggest this has been the general history of attempts to bring about ultimate success.
A further problem is that it is very difficult for the ten-key activist who poses as a 100-key know-it-all to personally develop and mature and to handle the remaining unhandled problems and unwanted conditions in his or her personal life.
My answer to the dilemma is the "we-don't-have-all-the-answers" perspective. Maybe I can create a network that uses this perspective as a foundation. Maybe I can connect together a diversity of ten-key activists in a network such that the 90% ignorance factor can be reduced. Crudely stated, suppose I can find ten ten-key activists and it so happens that each ten-key activist knows ten different keys. Together these ten activists will then know all hundred keys necessary for ultimate human success.
Of course, in practice it won't be this easy or simple. Some of the ten-key activists will know keys that overlap those of others. There will be some keys unknown to all ten activists. Some will refuse to even consider some of the keys. Nevertheless, such a network should increase the chances of bringing about ultimate success.
The subject of knowledge is covered in more detail in Report #03: How to Improve Your Information. The subject of education is covered in the article On Education. The most important thing to realize about knowledge is that we can't get very far through education - much more is necessary.
Recognizing Masters.
At the same time, it's necessary to realize that there are
people who are masters in their fields. It's important to learn
from these people their best knowledge, expertise, and wisdom,
and to apply it. W. Edwards Deming was the "master of quality."
During World War II he was recognized by a few Americans. After
the war he was ignored. So he went to Japan where he was recognized.
Deming's management and quality principles revolutionized Japanese
industry and were a major factor in Japan's "economic miracle."
A few days ago an associate told me that Jay Abraham was a business and marketing master. He gave me a number to call. I called and within a few days received some of Jay's materials. I quickly recognized that Jay is indeed a master. I will be learning a lot more from Jay. If you're in business and/or marketing, and you don't know about Jay, call this number for information: 1-800-395-8290. The information I've just given to you could be worth thousands or even millions to you.
So always be on the lookout for masters whose best knowledge, expertise, and wisdom you can apply to multiply your success.
Many human institutions (governments, churches, corporations, families, etc.) are rooted in stage 1 and 2. In society, generally, a shift is occurring towards stage 3. But as people become more conscious they need to think for themselves. They no longer operate on automatic obedience to "authorities" who tell them what's "right and wrong." But they haven't learned the thinking skills to think for themselves. This is a factor behind the seeming "breakdown of society." A longer-term perspective is that we're going through a turbulent transition.
The subject of how to become more conscious is covered in How To Increase Your Consciousness.
"There is only one factor about a Super Achiever that is different - the process the Super Achiever uses to make a decision, a choice, to set a priority. The Super Achiever's DECISION PROCESS is more awake than a non-Super Achiever."
It was Mr. Dohrman's book that first made me realize how important it is to become more conscious of my decision-making processes and the need to improve them. His book is "must" reading - contact IBI Publishing, PO Box 173, Madison, AL 35758. It contains a wealth of information on improving your decision-making ability.
You probably should make the fundamental decision to improve your decision-making skills. And you need to support this choice by making the necessary primary and secondary choices. The first step to making better decisions is to recognize the decisions you do make. We are constantly making decisions about all our thoughts, emotions, and actions whether we know it or not. You can't improve your decisions if you're not aware of them.
By the way, A DECISION WITHOUT ACTION IS A NON-DECISION! (Exception: A conscious, careful decision to not take any action is sometimes the best decision.)
"When a baby is born, it has only 'essence,' its essential response to the world. At the age of six or seven the child begins to develop 'personality' - that is, to become aware of itself as a person among other people - in response to other people. And when this happens, says Gurdjieff, 'essence' often ceases to grow altogether; personality takes over. Some people who appear to have a powerful and vital personality are really empty inside; their essence ceased to develop as a child."
There is a "real you" which is independent of other people. The "real you" or essence is covered up and overshadowed by "your personality" which is an "artificial you" or a "fake you" created in order to seek acceptance from and approval by other people.
In his book Word Controlled Humans: A Brief History, John Harland writes about people who grew up in cold climates in isolation (little or no contact with other people), and thereby were stimulated to think about how they related to the entire universe. In contrast, in warm climates with denser populations there is much more contact with other people and children are subjected severely to group control. Harland writes:
"This essential being of an individual in direct relation to the universe I will call "soul." Some who submit to group control are well aware that by so doing they are giving up their souls. Others have become such total zombies - the walking dead, subject to control by a will outside themselves - that they are conscious of nothing but the game that dominates all else on this fork of the road; they are no longer aware that anything "counts" if it is outside the human game. All have lost their souls as individuals."
Harland writes about two "forks" in human development. The first fork is that of individual sovereignty or self-ownership, living out of one's essence. The second fork is that of group sovereignty or slavery, living out of a fake personality forged as a reaction to group control.
To discover and develop your essence, the first step is to discover that you are a free and sovereign individual. This is covered in Report #05: How to Discover Your Freedom.
Education is virtually useless in doing anything about self-defeating programs in the brain. In addition to Helmstetter's self-talk techniques, I know of two very powerful "maturity technologies" for reprogramming the brain: (1) Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP); and (2) Idenics. For an introduction to NLP I recommend the book Using Your Brain - for a Change by Richard Bandler. For information on Idenics contact Survival Services International, 1670 Elkhart St, Aurora, CO 80012; 1-800-433-6427 (1-800-IDENICS).
"I am thrown off by such common questions as: What is your nationality? Where do you live? What is your profession? Where do you study? Are you married or single or involved with someone? How old are you? Are you Right wing or Left?These questions are irrelevant to my worlds. My responses invariably throw off my contemporaries.
I am Universal. I translive all over the planet. Learn via Unicom [universal communication]. Have many professions. Am involved with many people. Consider all children as mine also. Neither Right nor Left - I am Up.
I have no age. Am born and reborn every day. I intend to live forever. Barring an accident I probably will. I also want to help others live on indefinitely.
My philosophy: Optimism - Abundance - Universalism - Immortality."
Playing to win. Rush Limbaugh quotes Danny Ainge, a Phoenix Suns basketball player, whom he describes as "a hard-nosed competitor who understands the dynamics of winning":
"There's a huge difference between showing up, playing, having fun and doing well, and really playing to win. It's an entirely different mind-set. It's not a physical thing. It has nothing to do with athletics. It has to do with attitude." [emphasis added]
Rush himself is the perfect example of someone with the winning attitude. He writes:
"...[R]eporters frequently approach me and ask, "Did you ever expect to rise to the top the way you have?"My answer is always the same: "Yes, of course. I was striving for it. I didn't move to New York just to be in the top five. My eye was always on Number One." The fact of the matter is that I've always been that way, ever since I was a little kid. I was never intimidated by the prospect of failure. I knew that if I missed the mark, I could live with myself. What I couldn't live with, however, was the prospect of not having taken my best shot at the brass ring."
The most powerful book I know of on creativity is The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. I regard it as the single most valuable book in my library of about 5,000 books. Its basic approach is covered in Report #10: How to Achieve and Increase Personal Power.
Innovation. Innovation is related to creativity. Particularly, it refers to the introduction of a new concept, product, process, or technology. Before our organization, there have been only two kinds of freedom organizations: educational and territorial free country. Educational freedom organizations promote freedom by educating people. Territorial free country organizations generally attempt to create a free country on an island, natural or manmade.
Our freedom organization is a new innovation. Our starting point is discovering and recognizing that we are free and sovereign by nature. Then we behave in accordance with our individual freedom and sovereignty as far as possible and practicable. We withdraw our support from those who seek to violate our freedom or property. We experience our freedom. We induce others to experience their freedom. We create voluntary alternatives that gradually replace unfree institutions.
It's a radically different approach - an innovation. There is a superb manual on the subject. It's called Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage by Richard N. Foster. Must reading for anyone interested in strategy.
Five kinds of understanding are involved:
The thinking skill of prediction is involved. The situation is... 'S.' I predict that if I take the action... 'A,' then the consequence will be... 'C.' If I take the action and fail to produce the predicted consequence, then I need to do some thinking about what to do next. I need to learn from the experience so I can do better next time. If I succeeded in producing the predicted consequence, I also have a few things to learn, like: "Why did it work?", "What principle did I apply?", and "Where else can I apply it?"
You might ask, "Why all this complexity? Why all this thinking? I mean, you just do what's obvious!" Well, the answer is that maybe practically all our individual and collective problems stem from our relative immaturity in consciously applying the above. You see, we have here a formula for doing the right thing. What if this formula is a concise summary of every success book ever written, including this entire report? Maybe it's a very powerful success formula...
Responsibility can be thought of as the ability to respond - doing the right thing. You boost your maturity by increasing your competence to do the right thing in the right way at the right time.
If you watch the TV gameshow Wheel of Fortune carefully over a period of time, you may notice from the strength with which certain players spin the wheel, where they look immediately after they've spun the wheel, and the position in which the wheel comes to rest, that those players almost certainly aim. Some of these players repeatedly hit or come close to the $2,500, $3,500, or $5,000 slots. You may notice that some players seem to use a strategy of spinning the wheel about a quarter to half a turn, seeking to avoid the "lose a turn" and "bankrupt" slots. You'll also notice some players who almost certainly don't aim. The players who aim attempt to form a cognitive link between action and result. Could it be that many people go through life like the Wheel of Fortune players who don't aim?
How often during a conversation do we only half-listen to what the other person is saying, while thinking about what we're going to say next? How often, after we said something, do we really observe our audience to determine if we achieved the desired result?
Why does survey after survey indicate that people's greatest fear is having to speak in public? Why is speaking to an audience of three friends so qualitatively different from addressing a group of 30 strangers? What might the 30 strangers discover about you that the three friends wouldn't? These issues are addressed in Report #04A: The Most Fundamental Human Problem.
I have developed a very powerful method for improving the effectiveness of communication. It's called the power-message principle and it's described in detail in Report #10: How to Achieve and Increase Personal Power.
Later in this report (the one you're reading now) I discuss something very important about voice quality and success...
Marketing is an aspect of communication. See the bibliography in Report #13F: The Millionaire's Secret (VI) which lists many books on selling and marketing. The best marketing book that I know of is What's the Big Idea? by George Lois.
Nevertheless, I am succeeding in getting others to work with me. It could be that the most important factor in getting others to work with you is to formulate a vision of extraordinary power and communicate it to the right people.
The subject of how to get others to work with you is further described in Report #10: How to Achieve and Increase Personal Power.
All major religions and philosophies have spread through networking. Much of the power of MLM (multi-level marketing) is due to networking.
I know of two excellent books on networking: Wishcraft and Teamworks by Barbara Sher.
"For three thousand years, business has studied, worshipped, and spent billions in training and developing leaders. All this focused attention has led to a profound blindness about and misconception of so-called followers - the people of exceptional ability who know how to lead themselves. They are the people, says Robert Kelley, who actually contribute more than 80 percent to the success of any project, any organization, while leaders at best contribute only 20 percent."
[Finding this book illustrates three important success principles: (1) The most useful information is often that which is the most different from what you now believe; (2) Always be willing to consider the opposite of whatever you believe; and (3) Always be on the lookout for information that might fill an important gap in your knowledge, or change your thinking drastically in some area.]
In their book Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, Bennis, Warren & Nanus formulate a general theory of leadership: A leader formulates an inspiring vision; communicates that vision effectively; generates trust in himself or herself, the vision, the organization; and regards the activity of leadership as a means for self-development. Frederick Mann could be regarded as a "great leader" for the freedom organization he started. Or, he could be regarded as a "great follower" who attempts to assemble, integrate, and implement the best ideas of others.
According to Kelley, we suffer from a "leadership myth" in that leaders tend to be grossly overrated, worshipped, and idolized; and a "followership myth" in that followers tend to be ignored, undervalued, and denigrated. History has always been written as if the leader did everything and nobody else did anything. "King so and so built a great pyramid" - he probably never lifted even one stone. "General Patton won a great battle" - he probably didn't fire a single shot. "Gandhi defeated the British Empire" - his followers probably contributed more than 90% of the effort. Kelley writes:
"Most people think of Jefferson's writing of the Declaration of Independence as a leadership feat. But in reality Jefferson was a follower when he wrote it. As the "junior" member of the committee, he was assigned the task by the committee chairs, John Adams and Ben Franklin. Nobody outside of the Continental Congress, except a few friends, knew that Jefferson had written the Declaration. The fact did not appear in an American newspaper until eight years later in 1784. As a follower, Jefferson lived through all the bell ringing and speechmaking with little public recognition or personal commendation in the press."
[If you further research the authorship of the Declaration, you may discover that it was more likely written by Thomas Paine - refer to the book Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration of Independence by Joseph Lewis. This is further covered in an excellent book: A Personal Declaration of Independence: To Complete the American Revolution by Paine's Torch, available from Zeno Press, Box 170, Sedalia, CO 80135.]
In the network structure of our organization, the distinction between leader and follower gradually disappears. In a network we are all peers.
The great disparity between the apparent power of the leader and that of the follower in hierarchical structures is partially due to the hierarchy itself, and partially due to the immaturity of the followers. As we mature we become less comfortable at the bottom or in the middle of hierarchies. As we mature and become more conscious, we learn to think for ourselves and we become more capable of leading ourselves. In our organization everyone becomes a leader.
But I haven't even come close to doing justice to the importance of The Power of Followership by Robert Kelley. Whether you're in a "leader" or a "follower" position, Kelley's book is must reading and can help you increase your personal power phenomenally.
The book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey contains some very powerful principles and practices of self-management.
The elements of organization and management are further covered in Reports #30A: The Power in the Details and #30B: The Missing Function, and additional reports to be written.
Crosby defines quality as "conformance to requirements." Each individual can define a set of ideal personal life requirements, covering areas such as self-esteem, health, fitness, relationships, sex, career, influence, finances, freedom, happiness, etc. Insofar as your actual life circumstances conform to your requirements, you have created a quality life. To increase the quality of your life, you improve aspects of your life, as necessary, so they approach or reach your ideal requirements. As you advance, you would probably also raise some of your requirements.
At a more profound level, our emphasis on quality was inspired by Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the second half of which is devoted to the Question: What is quality? Is quality what you like? Or is it what the "authorities" like? Can quality be defined? Can anyone know quality? Is quality what is beautiful? Is esthetics (a branch of philosophy) an attempt to define quality? Does the worth or value of something reflect its quality? Is quality part of matter, part of mind, or outside both mind and matter? Do different people see quality differently? If so, why? Can two or more people agree on quality? If not, why not?
About 2,500 years ago Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, wrote the Tao Te Ching. "Tao" is translated as "the way." Pirsig speculates by substituting "quality" for "tao." Could quality be another word for "the way" we've been looking for?
Actually, a quality revolution has already been brought about in the major companies of a whole country, namely Japan. Two Americans played pivotal roles: W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. Deming is the better known and could be described as "the father of the Japanese Quality Revolution." Deming's definition of quality is essentially "continuous improvement in all areas in all respects." The Japanese use one word to encapsulate this concept - KAIZEN.
If a quality revolution could occur in the main businesses of an entire country, then it should be possible to bring about a quality revolution in more countries and in wider aspects in addition to business - GLOBAL KAIZEN.
"THE FORK IN THE ROAD
Words can be used to tell others what an individual perceives; they can also be used to override perception, condition or destroy thought, and control humans. When the first trails were being made in the expanding growth of conscious ideas, there was a fork in the road of possibilities. The majority of humans turned off in a direction that has now been made into a broad highway. Nature's method of making individual perception a major factor affecting survival was the way rejected; acceptance of the individual by a word-conditioned group was made the dominant requirement affecting the individual's survival. As I see it, the fork we have taken can lead only to human extinction or biological regression; the other could have led to a further evolutionary advance. I want to contrast the two directions, recommend the other fork, and set forth a procedure for getting over to it." [emphasis added]
Words are tools. Like with many tools (using the word in a wide sense), we have a basic choice: either we control them, or they control us. The first choice is that of the sovereign individual. The second is that of the slave. Words are also used to brainwash slaves into believing they are "free."
If you operate on the basis that a word-created group masquerading as "government" owns "your" life - they can draft you into their army and kill you in their war - then you're a slave. If you believe this group owns "your" body - they dictate what you may or may not put into "your" body - then you are a slave. If you believe this group owns "your" mind - they force you into their "schools" for brainwashing - then you are a slave. If you believe this group has the right to "your" property - taxes, eminent domain, confiscation - then you are a slave.
Territorial gangsters are individuals who use force, fraud, violence, and threat of violence to claim "jurisdiction" (so-called) over a territory and the people who happen to be there, and to live like parasites or cannibals off the production of their victims. The primary weapon these territorial gangsters use to control, dominate, and suck you dry is not the gun; it's the word. First they brainwash you into believing that their fancy titles - "King," "Queen," "President," "Authority," etc. - give them a (magical) status so they can lord it over you. Then they brainwash you that because of their (magical) status, their word is also special and magical and is "the law" (so-called). If you believe them you become their slave.
When territorial gangsters want you, your life, your mind, your body, or your property, they don't at first come at you with a gun; they send you words on paper. The word is their primary weapon. They only send a policeman with a gun if you repeatedly ignore or disobey their word. If you want to escape their slavery you have to reject their words. If you continue to subject yourself to their words you will remain a slave.
The primary power of the territorial gangster is the word. I don't care how much mental effort you have to put into grasping this, but you have to do it. John Harland's book Word Controlled Humans is described as follows:
"The processes that turn individual humans into monstrous group organisms is the significant aspect of history on which this book focuses. "Civil" and "religious" groups, growing into powers by destruction of individual souls and control of individual will, receive the same examination - with no glorified generalities glossing over the horror that sharp focus reveals.Concerned primarily with the word conditioning that now dominates America and Europe, this work highlights the need to first remove the obstructions from our own eyes - before trying to correct the faults of others. The history and current practices in our own conditioning are examined from a new perspective. No issues are dodged...
This is a book for those who want to be individuals. There is none of the usual summing up that "we, as a group" should take some vague corrective action. Instead, a clear possibility for individuals to take effective action is spelled out in precise detail."
[Write to Sovereign Press, 326 Harris Rd, Rochester, WA 98579.]
You also need to read Robert J. Ringer's Restoring The American Dream, Chapter 8: "Keeping It All in Place." I don't care how many times you have read this chapter, but if you want to cease being a slave you have to grasp how you've been enslaved by words - including the words "government" and "country." You have to understand that political tyrannies are kept in place primarily by words and only secondarily by guns. And you have to invest the mental effort to find out which words and why.
Semantics is further covered in Report #50A: Semantic Rigidity, Flexibility, and Freedom, and subsequent reports to be written. Also relevant to the element of semantics are Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, The Constitution of No Authority, and Report #07A: The Anatomy of Slavespeak.
The book Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins has a very informative chapter on the power of words.
In my opinion, the biggest leap forward in the growth of human maturity will occur when individuals become aware of how their minds have been enslaved by the words of territorial gangsters and how these words are used to, "override perception, condition or destroy thought, and control humans."
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basic truth can be used as a foundation for a mountain of lies, and if we dig down deep enough in the mountain of lies, and bring out that truth, to set it on top of the mountain of lies; the entire mountain of lies will crumble under the weight of that one truth, and there is nothing more devastating to a structure of lies than the revelation of the truth upon which the structure of lies was built, because the shock waves of the revelation of the truth reverberate, and continue to follow, awakening even those people who had no desire to be awakened to the truth.
- Delamar Duverus
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What do you think are the implications of individual sovereignty? Could this be the "ONE BASIC TRUTH?" Could it even mean that, from a functional point of view, every individual could or should regard himself or herself as the center of the universe? What will happen to political institutions when a critical mass of individuals discover that they are individually sovereign?
If you haven't yet discovered that you are a sovereign, individual, does this mean that you are automatically the slave of something outside yourself - by your own choice, even if unwitting - or simply by default?
What are the psychological implications of being a free sovereign individual?
The most important result to be achieved is the formulation of a set of values - as mature as possible - and the development of the means to effectively disseminate these values. Here is my crude beginning:
Our Code of Basic Principles For Civilization (see Report #01) is based on such a set of values. The first four items above can be condensed as: Respect others, their property, and their choices.
This is the beginning of the branch of philosophy called Ethics - the values that result in harmonious interaction. We also need to examine Epistemology (how we know), Ontology (what exists), and Cosmology (the nature of the universe and its creatures). Semantics could be regarded as a branch of epistemology.
Many of us have programs in the brain about money that hold us back. To achieve ultimate success, we need healthy attitudes toward money. Let me quote Douglas Casey:
The subject of financial well-being is covered in more detail in Report #13A: The Millionaire's Secret.
Practically every law passed in America increases the degree of institutionalized coercion, and is a downhill step towards immaturity. Consider the possibility that the more coercive or violent the political system becomes, the more immature, corrupt, and criminal the people it draws into its positions of power. The more laws that are passed, the more actions become defined as "crimes," sometimes irrespective of whether these actions are harmful or not. Also, the more laws that are passed, the more harmful acts by government immaturity agents against innocent victims are "legalized."
As the political system becomes more coercive, violent, and immature, the "crime rate" rises. Apart from more and more harmful actions being defined as "crimes," the coercion and violence of government begets more coercion and violence in society generally.
Our solution to this mighty problem - or great opportunity! - is covered in detail in the many other reports available here.
The following is extracted from The Arizona Republic, of January 7, 1994, under the heading: "OUTRAGEOUS DECEPTION - Radiation secrets":
"Babies, retarded children, pregnant women and sick men were turned into guinea pigs by their own government.How could this have happened?
How could this have happened here?
Not in Nazi Germany.
Here.Here in the nation built on respect for individual rights. Here in a country governed by a Constitution carefully crafted to protect the governed from the excesses of government.
Is this the land of the mad scientist and the home of the dupe? Is this the kind of place where retarded boys are fed radioactive milk by researchers who cynically refer to them as the "science club"? Where pregnant women are injected with radioactive iron courtesy of a federal grant? Where newborns are given radioactive iodine in an effort to find a test for thyroid disease? Where laboratory walls are impregnated with radioactive cobalt and cesium so the effects can be measured on unwitting cancer patients?
In a 1950 memo, one of the researchers said critics might find "a little of the Buchenwald touch" if they knew of the radiation experiments on an unwitting population. Radiation biologist Joseph G. Hamilton urged the Atomic Energy Commission "for both political and scientific reasons to secure what data can be obtained by using large monkeys."
The U.S. government used its citizens instead."
If you study the AIDS exposé in Report #09A: AIDS - Bad Science or Hoax?, you might come to the conclusion that what governments are doing in respect of "AIDS" is mass genocide.
In Behold a Pale Horse Milton William Cooper quotes a "secret document":
"The primary reason why the individual citizens of a country create a political structure is a subconscious wish or desire to perpetuate their own dependency relationship of childhood. Simply put, they want a human god to eliminate all risk from their life, pat them on the head, kiss their bruises, put a chicken on every dinner table, clothe their bodies, tuck them into bed at night, and tell them everything will be allright when they wake up in the morning.This public demand is incredible, so the human god, the politician, meets incredibility with incredibility by promising the world and delivering nothing. So who is the bigger liar? The public? Or the "godfather"?
This public behavior is surrender born of fear, laziness, and expediency. It is the basis of the welfare state as a strategic weapon, useful against a disgusting public."
Correction: Government doesn't deliver nothing; it delivers DEATH...
Consider that this doctrine might be a psychologically crippling and debilitating brain program or "curse." According to Overstreet, Jesus of Nazareth tried to induce his followers into greater maturity: "Here was a mature man's declaration that the way for a human being to save himself is that of his growing into the fullness of his powers - and into knowledge that the greatest of these powers is love."
According to John Harland's Word Controlled Humans, about a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence a great advance in religious maturity occurred:
"...Roger Williams... declared that every individual's view about the universal creative intelligence was a matter of conscience. He proclaimed that no one could have any position of "authority" over what another "should" believe. He established the first Baptist church within the area that was later to be designated the United States.Each individual Baptist church was conceived as being composed simply of those with like beliefs who voluntarily came together; the church had no "authority" over its individual members; the pastor of each had no "authority"; he was chosen and/or "ordained" by those who wanted him to conduct the services; there was no infant baptism; membership in the church was a voluntary decision of those old enough to think for themselves and make their own decisions. This would become the non-Catholic church that was chosen by the greatest number of people in what would be called the United States..."
In boosting one's religious maturity I suggest that one should consider the opposite of every argument. To expose oneself to a wide range of arguments and to open one's mind to new information, I propose the following reading list: The Bible by various authors, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors or Christianity before Christ by Kersey Graves, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Jesus Hoax by Phyllis Graham, and Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith.
The biggest obstacle to immortality is government - which is institutionalized death.
Why the Expanded Maturity Concept is so Powerful
The analogy of the motor car illustrates the power of the expanded
maturity concept. A modern motor car contains hundreds of parts
and subassemblies performing many functions. Certain elements
(for example, pistons) are vital. In their absence the car won't
run at all. For a car to run, a large number of functions need
to be performed by many elements. For the car to run properly,
function-performance needs to meet certain standards; furthermore,
many functions need to be integrated (for example, sparkplugs
need to spark and valves need to open and close at the right times).
Any number of functions or elements, if missing, would prevent
the car from running. Nevertheless, a car can run even with bad
plugs, dirty oil, and bald tires - but how well and for how long?
The development of the motor car could also serve as an analogy for the growth of maturity. Early cars had relatively few elements and functions and performed poorly by modern-day standards. As the car became more sophisticated, more elements and functions were incorporated and functions were better integrated, leading to improved performance. In the most modern cars, computer functions have been added to improve function-integration. From the hindsight of the modern car it's easy to see the missing elements or functions in the Model-T Ford. From a "Model-T-perspective" it is difficult to envisage the elements and functions that need to be added to transform the Model-T into a modern car.
An individual (as well as a car) can be regarded as a hierarchy or network of integrated elements and functions. From today's perspective it's easy to see what elements or functions in the primitive stone-age caveman were further developed in order to bring about the modern human. From the perspective of a hypothetical future highly mature person it would be easy to see what elements or functions had to be further developed in the "modern human" of a few centuries ago. That hypothetical future highly mature person might regard today's "modern human" as a primitive savage!
By surveying a very wide range of the best suggestions of our most advanced thinkers (past and present) it's possible to come up with a list of elements where we need to boost our maturity. By applying our imagination and other mental faculties, we further expand our list. This is essentially how the Model-T developed (or matured) into the modern car.
The power of the expanded maturity concept comes from the incessant, intense, and never-ending focus on finding ALL the elements where maturity needs to be boosted. All other success approaches I know of are partial and usually lead to failure, sometimes to ordinary or partial success, and very seldom to spectacular success.
Other Elements
There are other areas of life where maturity needs to be boosted,
such as Science, Technology, Ecology, Agriculture, Architecture,
etc. The methods suggested in this report can be applied in all
these areas.
What's Missing?
This is a request to all readers. What do I need to change
or add to make this report more powerful and effective?
Priorities
How You Boost Your Maturity
The basic way you boost your maturity is by observing the consequences
of your actions and learning from them. A basic formula is involved:
Much of what is generally known as "common sense" can be described as heuristics that were developed by applying steps 1-6 above, for example, "If you kick a stone you hurt your foot."
You can boost your maturity considerably by learning from others. Because of writing and other forms of recording information and communication, many experiences of others are available to you. To avail yourself of this store of knowledge you need to open your mind to new information.
Unfortunately much of what is written, and communicated by other means, is fallacious or immature. There is a need to sift the wheat from the chaff, to find the pearls in the puddle. To boost your maturity you may need to develop strategies that enable you to identify the most useful information - see Report #03: How to Improve Your Information.
Another method you can use to boost your maturity is to find a wise mentor who serves as a provider of practical wisdom. You can also establish a buddy relationship and assist one another. You can go further and establish a network of people, each of whom informs the others when they come across useful information that is not generally known.
"Heuristic" Defined
Heuristics play a central role in my formula for boosting maturity.
A heuristic is a rule of thumb, a method or procedure based on
common sense, a general principle that that is roughly correct.
The word "heuristic" comes from the Latin heuristicus
and Greek heuriskein meaning to discover. It is akin to
the Old Irish word fuar meaning I found. A heuristic is
a self-educating technique using feedback to improve performance.
The basic formula for boosting maturity - steps 1-6 above, is
an example of a heuristic procedure.
Another definition of heuristic is cognitive link between action and result. We mail out thousands of sales letters every week. From experience we've learnt that a particular sales letter to a particular kind of mailing list yields a 2% response. On average, if we mail to 100 people, two will buy. "2%" is a cognitive link between action (mailing) and result (orders). It's a rule of thumb or a heuristic.
Boosting Your Maturity Involves Change
To boost your maturity you need to change. Consider the following
classification of human behavior:
In yourself, which of these three can you change most easily? Over which do you have most control? In my opinion, you can change your actions much more easily than your beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. This leads to a fundamental heuristic:
There is also a contradictory heuristic:
In moving on to the second priority: learning how to assist others to boost their maturity, consider again the classification of human behavior:
You may think that in order to change the behavior of others, all you have to do is to provide them with facts, scientific evidence, logical explanations, and rational formulas so they will understand and change. This approach is based on the fallacious assumption that it is easier to change beliefs and emotions than actions. If you find it easier to change your own actions compared to your beliefs and emotions, then how can you expect it to be otherwise for others? This leads to another heuristic:
The Eight Basic Immaturity Heuristics
[Acknowledgment: The above heuristics were partly derived from material provided by Clear Purpose Management, Inc. of Englewood, Colorado.]
Most of the undesirable results or consequences in the world - war, inflation, depression, crime, unemployment, poverty, famine, homelessness, drug addiction, fraud, coercive government, terrorism, pollution, corruption, bank failures, etc. - can be ascribed to the above eight heuristics.
Quantum Success Jumps
I speculate that if certain conditions of maturity are satisfied
an individual's general success level takes a qualitative leap.
The general success level of those who do not experience this
quantum jump tends to remain static or tends to decline.
I further speculate that, loosely speaking, three such quantum success jumps could occur: (1) from pre-success to ordinary success; (2) from ordinary to spectacular success; and (3) from spectacular success to ultimate success.
The three levels of success: ordinary, spectacular, and ultimate are analogous to a car with three gears and a stick shift. Ordinary success is like first gear; spectacular success like second gear; and ultimate success like third or top gear. Pre-success is like neutral. A quantum success jump is analogous to shifting gears.
Moreover, I speculate that these quantum success jumps occur when we reach a critical level of maturity in a critical number of elements.
Blind Spots, Quality, and Success
Some time ago I came across a book by Dr. Morton Cooper, Change
Your Voice; Change Your Life. On looking through it I quickly
realized that voice quality is a major element of success. Yet
I have hated "my voice" all my life.
What's interesting about this is that I've been involved in self-improvement and self-actualization activities for 25 years. Nobody ever said to me, "Listen, you have to do something about developing your natural voice."
Dr. Cooper describes success as "becoming the best person you can possibly be." Success has to do with achieving goals, performing tasks that satisfy requirements, being healthy, happy, loving, rich, famous, etc. - according to your own criteria. Success and voice quality are related.
In the area of voice quality I've suffered from a blind spot all my life. A blind spot is an area where you don't see. It is a "nothing" which is by nature invisible to you. The term "blind spot" itself suffers from "blind spottedness." It doesn't include "deaf spot." Regarding my voice, I have actually suffered from a "deaf spot."
Very few people know that for optimum health they can use the
sense of smell, for naturally occurring nutrients, to select the
food their bodies need most at any particular time (see Report
#09: How to Achieve Superhealth).
This indicates a further aspect of "blind spottedness."
Consider the following:
see - blind
hear - deaf
smell - ?
What is the missing word? Do you know? In the area of smell we have a "blind spot" we are so "blind" to, that we don't even know the word to describe it. Does any reader know the missing word?
Well, I'll tell you the missing word: "anosmic." Someone who suffers loss or impairment of the sense of smell is anosmic. The noun describing the condition is "anosmia." The person with the condition is called an "anosmatic." There is also a medical term that specifically describes the inability to smell food: "anosmia gustatoria."
Probably most of us aspiring maturity-boosters suffer from some blind spots...
And to become aware of our blind spots may be very difficult. As Butler Shaffer said:
"We are unwilling to turn our mind back upon itself - like a mirror facing another mirror - and let it examine itself! That terrorizes the hell out of us, because to do so will call into question all the silly little games we have made up with which to amuse ourselves and, more importantly, will reveal to ourselves that all of the cherished values and institutions for which we have been willing to make our personal lives miserable, were nothing more than made up games!" (in a talk presented to the Albert Jay Nock Forum, Long Beach, CA on December 1, 1987).
Question Everything
It's possible that, rather than having to boost a large number
of parts, factors, or elements of maturity to a critical level
in order to make a quantum success jump, you merely have to develop
or acquire a single ability that transforms you from an "immaturity
cripple" into a "maturity-booster." If there is
such a single ability I propose as the leading candidate: the
willingness and ability to question everything.
Our sense organs can only perceive over limited ranges. Sounds occur that we cannot hear. Our senses may deceive us. Sometimes we see what we want to see. Professional magicians can deceive our senses with consummate ease. In addition, our sense perceptions are converted into mental images in our brains. These mental images may be further distortions of our perceptions. So, what about the concept of "truth?"
Let me repeat the eight basic immaturity heuristics:
The Basic Speculations of Maturity Development
Originally I called the speculations below "axioms."
But I decided to be more modest and humble. They could also be
called Hypotheses or proposed axioms.
Speculation 1: Organismic Knowledge
Every conscious or potentially conscious human organism has
a great deal of the knowledge and skills, or can locate, identify,
and/or produce most of the knowledge and skills, necessary for
its optimum maturity development.
Speculation 2: Minimum Intervention
Every human organism requires some external intervention for
its maturity development. To maximize that development, the intervention
needs to be reduced to the appropriate minimum. (Reason: so the
individual learns competent, independent, internal examination,
analysis, and evaluation.)
Speculation 3: Will to Power
Every human organism is genetically programmed to increase
and extend its influence and control over itself, other organisms,
and its environment. Every human organism is also genetically
programmed to be a slave of "superior beings." Through
the progressive development in the requisite maturity elements
all or most human organisms can shift from slavery to mastery.
Speculation 4: Voluntary Cooperation
Conscious human organisms optimize their influence, control,
and development through voluntary cooperation with other conscious
or potentially conscious human organisms.
Speculation 5: Optimum Ingestion
(a) As determined by its long-term evolution and biological
constitution, every human organism has specific (often unique)
nutrient requirements. Practically all human organisms have the
sensory means to determine their optimum ingestion in respect
of naturally occurring nutrients.
(b) Because of the recency of the evolution of human consciousness, most human organisms have not yet developed the means to determine their optimum ingestion of information.
(c) Human organisms require external intervention to rediscover how to use their sensory means to determine their optimum nutrition. They also require external intervention to optimize their ingestion of information. In accordance with axioms 2 and 4, such intervention is most effective when based on voluntary cooperation and reduced to the appropriate minimum.
Speculation 6: Action Precedes Development
For optimum human maturity development it is necessary to provide
human organisms with opportunities and incentives to take actions
highly likely to produce beneficial results, including maturity
development in some or all maturity elements. In accordance with
axioms 2 and 4, such intervention is most effective when based
on voluntary cooperation and reduced to the appropriate minimum.
Speculation 7: Heuristic Transference
A heuristic development axiom or principle that applies to
one aspect of human development tends to apply to many other areas.
Many heuristics learned in one area of human behavior can be usefully
transferred and applied to other areas.
Speculation 8: Virtually Infinite Potential
Because of intelligence, consciousness, thinking skills, tool-using
ability, information recording and transmission, and cooperation,
human organisms can create and recreate themselves and their environments
virtually without limit.
The Immaturity Cripple and the Maturity Booster
The difference between someone who has taken a quantum success
jump and someone who hasn't, is that the general level of success
of the maturity booster increases, while that of the immaturity
cripple remains static or declines. The maturity booster tends
to focus on particular areas (for example, some of the maturity
elements) and takes deliberate actions to boost maturity in those
areas.
The immaturity cripple may be blocked from further development by factors such as unjustified arrogance or pride; closed-mindedness; plain ignorance or stupidity; "paradigm paralysis" (inability to shift from one paradigm to another); blind spots; poverty; famine; intellectual isolation; "unreality addiction"; being a "true believer"; cultural, philosophical, religious, or political brainwashing; etc.
Some people get stuck by "conversion" into a particular branch, cult, or movement of philosophy, psychology, religion, or politics. They perceive this movement as "having all the answers." During their initial involvement with the movement (and possibly for several years) the "converted" may experience a marked increase in maturity in some aspects of life. A marginal utility heuristic may apply: after a while the benefit derived from being involved in the movement declines in comparison to the money, time, and effort invested in continuing in the movement. Eventually the "converted" may get stuck because of the limitations of whatever movement they are involved in, and derive no further development towards maturity. A sane strategy in this respect is to move from movement to movement, taking, using, and applying from each whatever you can to boost your maturity.
The Preponderance of Means over Ends
The more sophisticated we humans become, the more cumbersome
are some of the means we develop to achieve our ends. For example,
one of the ends or results most of us value highly is safety.
So we develop military organizations to ensure our safety. In
parts of the world millions are spent on the military while thousands
starve to death. And many of us have suffered anxiety at the prospect
of nuclear conflagration. The means tend to become more important
than the ends: the preponderance of means over ends.
In much of human activity there is a tendency for people to get preoccupied with the means while losing sight of the ends. People eat and drink for for the short-lived pleasure of stimulation (and die of heart attacks, strokes, or cancer in their youth or prime), rather than for the enduring pleasure of superb health; eating becomes more important than health and survival. The car tends to become more important than the destination. We developed emotions and thoughts as means to guide our actions to produce the ends we want. But many of us become slaves to our emotions and thoughts. We develop institutions as means to produce the ends we want. Instead we tend to become slaves of institutions that often produce the opposite of what they're supposed to - like government. For example, government currency systems supposed to produce monetary stability, produce inflation instead.
The preponderance of means over ends is a common thread that runs through most immaturity. The antidote is the willingness and ability to question everything, particularly all the means we develop.
The Wrong to Right Shift
In attempting to boost maturity it's very easy to fall into
the "making wrong" trap. When you tell someone that
he or she is immature in some respect, you are making that person
wrong. Even when you say that what you think or do is mature,
you may make the other person wrong by implication. By saying
that your method is right you may imply that another's method
is wrong. It often does not work to make people wrong or to be
perceived as making them wrong.
However, the very suggestion that change is necessary tends to make people wrong. My saying that maturity needs to be boosted in the world automatically makes people wrong. How to resolve the dilemma? The very fact that someone agrees to work with me to boost maturity in the world means he or she accepts as a first priority to boost their own maturity. This opens the door for me to assist that person. We have an agreement to assist one another to help boost the maturity of each. The agreement could be limited to certain maturity elements. In respect of those elements we could operate out of a context of identifying rightness and building on that rightness.
To escape the "right-wrong" pitfall, We say: "Try playing with my toys; you might like them." This is a general heuristic:
What's Right About Us Humans
It would be interesting to find out what percentage of people
(a) have the urge to improve themselves, and (b) have the urge
to improve society in general. If these percentages are significant,
it would indicate that considerable energy is available for boosting
maturity. I certainly have a strong urge to correct what's wrong.
I suspect that most people who have an improvement urge think
in terms of correcting what's wrong. In some respects, my efforts
to improve myself have been spectacularly successful. On the other
hand, my efforts to help others improve and society in general
have only recently started showing a promise of success.
Now it seems that I need to learn to find out what's right about people and how to build on these rightnesses or strengths. What's right about us humans generally?
Maturity Equals Quality of Heuristics
The above factors of rightness suggest an approach to develop
greater maturity of human action generally:
Through applying the above procedure we will learn a great deal about how to get people to consciously and responsibly create the heuristics they use to choose their actions. This will enable us to increase sanity, which can also be defined as the quality of heuristics.
Becoming a Maturity Booster
The decisive spread of greater maturity around the world could
take the following form:
Humility
At this point, in accordance with the we-don't-have-all-the-answers
perspective, we need to humbly consider the possibility that the
expanded maturity concept, heuristics, and speculations represent
only a small fraction of the "1,000 keys" necessary
to significantly boost maturity. Any missing keys are "nothings"
by nature, invisible to us who don't know (and don't know we don't
know) about keys we have not yet conceived. Humility is almost
certainly one of the keys.
Now we can step back and ask, "So, what is the function of our organization?" Clearly, it is to bring about the explosive growth of the most positive results produced by the most potent maturity boosters in the world. We need to become a "meta-maturity-booster," so to speak. What might be the requirements for this to come about?
Mass Marketing
The single most vital key to our success is
mass marketing technology. Two centuries ago, a philosopher like
Voltaire could have a tremendous influence on millions of people.
He wrote, published, and distributed pamphlets to a world hungry
for his information. He didn't have much competition. It wasn't
very difficult for him to achieve mass marketing. And mass marketing
of ideas did play a crucial role in bringing about both the French
and American revolutions...
Today, we live in a very different world in which we are bombarded with far more information than we can handle. The competition for attention is frightening. In order to achieve the mass-marketing of maturity development, the marketing effort itself needs to be at the appropriate maturity level to reach our best minds.
Orders of Difficulty
"Ideas are a dime a dozen" is a common
cliché. Sometimes an idealist gets a brilliant idea. He
writes a book about it, expecting that people will buy the book
and the world will change. He or she gets disillusioned if this
fails to happen.
In order for the world to change a sequence needs to occur: idea --> product --> marketing --> application. This could be called the free-enterprise sequence of change.
There is also a statist sequence of change: idea --> law --> punishment. If people perceive it to be in their interest they will follow the law; if not, they won't. Sometimes the statist sequence provides economic opportunities to provide goods and services to those who don't want to follow the law. Lawyers and accountants sometimes serve those who don't want to pay taxes. Drug merchants serve drug users at greater profit to themselves than there would be in a free-enterprise economy. The statist sequence may also bring about unintended consequences, such as drug users stealing, robbing and murdering to acquire the drugs they crave.
The following table approximates the relative importance and value of the elements of the free-enterprise sequence of change:
ELEMENT RELATIVE VALUE ------- -------------- Idea: 1 unit Product: 100 units Marketing: 10,000 units Application: 1,000,000 units
Obviously, this is a rough guess and will vary greatly from instance to instance. But it provides certain perspectives. An idea may be useless if you can't turn it into a product. In other words, it's 100 times as easy to come up with a good idea as it is to develop the idea into a marketable product - or, out of every 100 good ideas, only one gets developed into a marketable product. A product is useless if you can't market it. The effort in developing successful marketing for a product may be a hundred times more difficult than developing and producing the product (10,000 units). And even if you market a product in great numbers, few people may use it. The effort to get an idea applied may be a million times greater than the effort to generate the idea. Of ideas generated and suggested, it could be that only one in a million gets successfully implemented. Also, to get one person to implement an idea, you might have to sell the product that conveys the idea to 100 people.
Spectacular and ultimate success depend partially on respecting these difficulties.
In Conclusion
The function of our organization can be encapsulated in a heuristic
formula:
POSTSCRIPT - Timothy Leary's Exo-Psychology and Neuropolitics
This report would be incomplete without reference to Timothy
Leary. He has formulated an advanced theory of human maturation
in his books Exo-Psychology and Neuropolitics. I
quote from Exo-Psychology:
"Primitive psychology, in spite of its enormous, state-supported bureaucracy and its priesthood mystique, has produced no verifiable theory for explaining human behavior nor any methods for solving the classic problems of human society - crime, conflict, alienation, prejudice, stupidity, boredom, aggression, unhappiness, and philosophic ignorance about the meaning of life...If we can imagine an anthropological report about homo sapiens written by extra-terrestrial scientists from a more advanced civilization, we can assume that humanity's inability to solve its psychological, social and ecological problems or to provide answers to basic cosmological questions (e.g. why are we here and where are we going?) would lead to the conclusion that homo sapiens is a species capable of very limited robot-activity and that Intelligent life has not yet evolved on this planet."
Leary postulates eight neural brain circuits we need to successively activate in order to mature. Below is my oversimplified and abbreviated version of the eight neurological circuits, as I interpret them:
According to Leary, homo sapiens as a society is stuck at circuit four. The robot-authoritarians of the fourth circuit will do anything to keep people at large from activating their higher circuits. I quote from Neuropolitics:
"Civilization, based upon erotic inhibition and sexual domestication, is psychopathologically dangerous, inevitably leading to the repression of women (it is always Eve who is to blame) and neurotic displacements of sexual charge into violent, coercive, often genocidal policies. Ashley Montague, the anthropologist, has commented ironically on the paradox: "all the civilized nations at war, all the savages at peace." It is no paradox. Repressed sex is the most violently explosive neurological blockage possible."
I wonder if the AIDS hoax - see Report #09A: AIDS - Bad Science or Hoax? - has anything to do with the unconscious determination of our robot-authoritarians to impose sexual repression at all costs. The AIDS hoax is perpetuated through mass brainwashing. According to Leary:
"Brainwashing is happening to all of us all of the time. Knowledge of brain function is our only protection against it. The solutions to our predicament are neurological. We must assume responsibility for our nervous systems. Our robothood can remain static if we endlessly repeat the imprints of infancy to adolescence, or it can be drastically altered by brainwashers without our consent, or we can take control of our nervous systems. If we don't assume this personal responsibility, somebody else will; if we do take over the control board, we can each be any person we want to be."