Stick It To The Rich Swells!

Here's an interesting thing I heard on the Michael Medved radio show this afternoon.  I looked it up to see if Medved had found some way to make this look worse than it does, but on The Fed's own website, here's what I read:

Are you considering a government job? The federal government employs over 2,700,000 workers and hires hundreds of thousands each year to replace civil service workers that transfer to other federal government jobs, retire, or leave for other reasons. Average annual salary for full-time federal government jobs now exceeds $79,197. The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States, hiring about 2.0 percent of the nation's work force and the workforce is expanding significantly under the Obama administration. Federal government jobs can be found in every state and large metropolitan area, including overseas in over 200 countries. The average annual federal workers compensation in 2008, including pay plus benefits, was $119,982 compared to just $59,909 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

What is most interesting was the fact that I switched to Medved right after listening to Rush go on and on about the fact that the "Pay Czar" was limiting the salaries of the top 30 executives at Goldman Sachs (because they borrowed tax payer money).  Interesting to note how the Feds treat themselves in jobs that are totally tax-payer supported. 

Just a thought: Maybe the Pay Czar needs someone to look at his salary.

Inquiry Demanded!

Here are a couple of fellows who have a lot in common.  Both have been the chief architects of massive frauds that have cost lots of people lots of money.  The guy on the left is in prison.  The one on the right seems to be in hiding.  They really should be cell-mates.  They could spend the next 50 years or so comparing notes and lamenting the fact that they almost pulled it off.

Madoff ran a Ponzi Scheme that cost investors billions of dollars.  His crime was trying to duplicate social security in the private sector, i.e. he took money from new marks, used it to pay off promises made to older marks and spent the remainder on his own pet projects.  He went to jail when the whole scheme fell apart as all Ponzi Schemes always must.  (I wonder if we'll be allowed to dig up FDR's remains and incarcerate them when social security has its final melt-down?)

Al Gore perpetuated a more sophisticated fraud.  He took a pet project, (environmentalism), found a hot-button, scientific theory that had panic-potential, (man-made global warming), helped create a financial derivative product, (carbon credits) and speculated heavily on it, and then tried to sell the whole scheme on the world.  Had he pulled it off, he would have become richer than Bill Gates.  He got the Nobel Prize.

Currently Mr. Gore & Co. are doubling down on their bet that they can fleece billions if not trillions from angst-ridden westerners before even the most obtuse among us catch wind of the fact that thousands of hacked emails between the leading "scientists" of the IPCC prove beyond any doubt that the "research" and "peer review" that virtually all of the warmers have been parroting for all these years were founded on cooked books and academic bullying.

Eventually the larger news outlets will be forced to move this story from page C-17 and deal with it.  Right after they can construct plausible deny-ability to account for either their appalling incompetence or their criminal complicity in not only allowing this charade to go on so long but actually promoting it.

I want to get my claim in early.

Mr. Gore,

I want a full refund for the 20 or so "green" reusable grocery bags that clutter the back seat of my wife's vehicle.

Let's talk pain and suffering.  I don't suffer much pain.  But I nevertheless feel entitled to a sum of $1000 for each lifted middle finger pointed at me from sanctimonious liberals driving those goofy Toyota Priuses while I passed them in my Dodge Ram pickup.  Five or six at least.  No one should be subjected to abuse from silly buggers who drive cars that look like the Brave-Little-Toaster-on-wheels.  (The ones who politely drive them to save on gas costs are exempt from my wrath.)

I want you held accountable of the billions, no, trillions of dollars wasted in trying to roll back your fictitious climate change "crisis".  And while you're at it, produce another movie coming clean and apologizing to all the innocent, impressionable school children you lied to and frightened with your lies about drowning Polar Bears and swamped cities.  You also need to tell them that their parents are not uncaring, selfish enemies of the state.

You can keep your damn Nobel Peace Prize.  With company like Jimmy Carter,  Barack Obama, and Yasser Arafat, yours is probably where it belongs.  Your personal hypocrisy is a fitting example for a "peace prize" named for Alfred Nobel, the man who invented the high explosive that made most weapons of modern warfare possible.

(And try not to be photographed again wearing that smug, "I know more than you" smile.  You don't.)

Out-Source Disaster!

I'm dumbfounded at the dizzying array of madnesses coming out of Washington these days.  It reminds me of the Keystone Cops; except these cops are swinging around guns with real bullets in them.  If the actual existence of the Constitution of the United States wasn't at stake it would be funny.  Things that used to be confined to the mad ramblings of conspiracy theorists are almost daily reported in the news--as hard news and with no outrage.  I think we need to canonize the book "Atlas Shrugged" into the body of scripture and grant sainthood to Ayn Rand.  She has proved herself a prophet in a class with Isaiah and John the Revelator at the very least.
So now that I've put-off half of the people with whom I might otherwise have a conversation with, I'll get to an actual point I want to make about the situation our country (our world) is in.
How did we bring it to such a turn?  For the nonce, let's say I don't believe, as some frighteningly credible persons these days believe, that Barack Hussein Obama really wants to destroy the United States or its Constitution.  But the system of free enterprise wherein a man or woman can labor and get gain and control the disposition of that gain as he or she sees fit is under a serious assault.  It's under assault mainly by conscientious people who see troubles in society and have become disenchanted by the apparent failure of the traditional system of solving these things, which is the Christian concept of taking care of your neighbors and succoring the poor.  (In a "righteous" society "poor" means physically or mentally ill or disabled since everyone else can and will work to take care of their basic needs...which is all they expect.)  In our society, we've slowly and disastrously hired our government to perform this Christian Service in our behalf.  In doing so we've committed the grave error of hiding our faces from our own flesh.  A term Isaiah used to describe the sin of selfishness (In Isaiah 58:7)  Incidentally, he coined the phrase while he was reiterating the principles that surround the commandment to engage in religious fasts and in the same passage pointed out a perfect system for funding Christian largess to the poor which is the subject of the entire chapter of Isaiah 58.
Hiring the government to feed the poor for us was convenient.  The poor are often kind of messy.  Not just in the sense that they sometimes have dirty clothes and live in dirty surroundings.  But some of them have dirty habits as well.  They are uncomfortable to be around.  They are inconvenient.  They remind us of our own vulnerabilities and so it was easy to give up a little in the way of taxes and let the government hire an army of "experts" to take care of our duty for us.
Trouble was the government paid these people.  And they paid their managers based on the size of the organizations they managed.  Under such a system there were rewards in having a caseload too big to handle with the current staff.  More people had to be hired.  The boss got a raise.  Corruption erupted.  More oversight was demanded by the people.  Congress demanded paperwork.  Even more people were hired to handle that.  With more staff to supervise, the boss got another raise.  Instead of spending that raise, the boss used it to borrow money for a place in the mountains for weekends.  Now his kid needs braces.  He didn't consider that when he signed the note on the vacation place.  His wife starts to complain that without braces, his daughter will not be ready to be chosen homecoming queen in five years.  He needs more income.  Fast.  Suddenly a handout becomes an "entitlement".  People who would ordinarily work themselves out of the system and become self-sustaining are convinced they will never be able to catch up with the Republican swells and that government is their only hope of an existence with a flat-panel TV.  So the food stamps stay.
The children of the "entitled" grow up with the hand-out culture in their homes; thus securing the futures of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of government workers  whose only purpose is to pass out entitlements to a population that will never be allowed the profound pleasure and satisfaction of sitting down monthly at the kitchen table and writing the check for the last of the bills.  Checks adequately funded by the work of their own hands.  To do so would render those sweet form-handling jobs with benefits and no chance of lay-offs or firings (except for the most egregious offences like work-place homicide.  And even then, they get early retirement.)
Of course the entitled and the entitlers will vote for the politicians most likely to keep their respective gravy trains running and everyone but everyone in this perversely symbiotic fraud is kept happy; although two of the classes are mostly ignorant of the fact that they are being kept (happily) in thrall by the third.
There's another class necessary for this stinker of a system to operate:  The tax-payers.  They're the slaves of the operation.  Luckily only a little over half of the American citizens pay taxes, but they get to work each year until late May before they get to keep any of their gain for themselves but to be fair, part of what they pay out comes back to them in the form of protections, services and infrastructure that is legitimately government's to provide.
If you followed the link and read Isaiah 58, you'll (probably) see what went wrong with the God-inspired system of government we were given but are in danger of losing completely.  We hired people do charity for us.  We hid from our beneficiaries.  We paid others to help the poor and made their livelihood dependent upon having, and keeping the poor.  When a hireling comes around with money that is an entitlement rather than charity, the incentive to fend for one's self is destroyed.  People get comfortable with their cages just like animals in a zoo.  When zoo animals reproduce and their offspring is raised never knowing freedom, that next generation loses the capacity to care for itself.  Think I'm cruel comparing people with zoo animals?  Let's go back to the Old Testament.  Egypt.  Children of Israel.  Wilderness of Sinai.  They were enslaved for generations and hated their lot.  God, through Moses freed them and what did they do?  Laid down to die in the desert.  If if weren't for manna and the odd flock of partridges not a tenth of them would have survived.  God wasn't so much punishing the Israelites when he let them wander for forty years as he was feeding a ruined  generation while they lived out their natural lives and bore children in hardship and struggle who could then take advantage of a fruitful land and make something of themselves.  Who's fault was this?  The escapees from Egypt who suddenly found themselves having to feed themselves?  Moses for leading them away from their safe (albeit low-salaried) government works jobs?  Or Pharaoh's for enslaving them in the first place?
(Answer is C:  Pharaoh's)  It's wrong to enslave other people.  And whether you do it maliciously in order to secure cheap labor to have your tomb built, or out of a mishandled compassion peppered with a desire to secure your own livelihood, the enslavement of people, physically or functionally, is just wrong.
People who love people don't do that to them.
It's also stupid.   God makes a boatload of promises to people who take care of the poor.  Most of the promises He makes are fulfilled in natural ways.  Think of the economic activity that would result from 90 % of the career "entitlees" being employed in gainful work.  Think of the additional boost to the economy if most of their "keepers" were employed in productive pursuits.  Since wealth is not a fixed commodity but rather is constantly created as people produce and trade, think of the added wealth that would result in an economy that had most of it's citizens fully engaged in work they were talented at and passionate about.  Would such an economy resemble the situation described in Isaiah 58: 10-14?  What if our charity was centered in our neighborhoods and communities and was given and received with the intent to lift rather than keep?  If the recipients of charity were able to see the faces of those who cared about them--people who lived and worked with them?  Would our society look different than it does now?  Would we be in this fix--about to lose our genius system of governance and economy?
We did this to ourselves when we outsourced our love.
It may be too late for the United States of America to catch the slide to socialism before we end up like Europe.  Those countries are just now seeing the bottom coming up fast and some of them are yelling at us from across the pond "Are you people nuts?!  What are you doing?!"
But here's a little spot of bright light I was introduced to from a blog I follow called Zen Habits.  If you can't find any poor in your own neighborhood or even if you can and just want to spread the love a little farther after you've seen to your own, look at this opportunity.

 To me, this is the right idea.  (The URL on the screen is actually not to Kiva website but you can click this Kiva to go there.)  Helping up instead of just helping out.  If we can support enough entrepreneurs in emerging economies we increase the activity of the global...well just watch the video.  This is a step in the right direction with no governments sticky hands all over it mucking up the water.  We may be done here, but maybe Kenya can come to our rescue in a few years.

It's Heeear

When I was driving home from delivering things from Friday night's Scout Auction yesterday it started snowing.  Hard.  When I got to the house it felt like one of those days where you ought to put on a pair of thick wool socks, make a big pot of from-scratch soup and stay home.  But the bigger pull was to find my long gaiters and go for a hike and that's what I did.
My "constitutional" is a perfect example of the principle of just doing a thing without a lot of internal debate.  I go for a hike when I'm too busy or not in the mood for it because it's good exercise and I need exercise.  But I've never been on a hike, no matter how nasty the weather was, that I didn't come back to the car feeling like the world was a great place and I loved being in it.
So I've thrown long and short gaiters, six-point crampons and a jacket in the trunk of my car to ride around with my boots, super-sized handkerchiefs and hydration pack.  In a few weeks it looks like the snowshoes will have to go in too.
I have a 12-month membership to the outdoor gym.

Unfinished Painting

This morning I read a talk Elder David Bednar gave during the October 2009 general conference entitled, "
More Diligent and Concerned at Home".  I was impressed with the talk when I listened to it in the first place and I've read it a couple of times since.  I read it this morning because we just got the November Ensign magazine and I wanted to see how it felt when it was read from the printed page as opposed to the glaring computer monitor.  (about the same)
It seems to me that the theme of his talk is best illustrated when he relates his and his wife's efforts to be consistent in having family prayer and scripture study and family home evening.  He confessed that their spiritual flights sometimes never got off the ground or bumped to premature landings just like everyone else's do.  He likened the effort of the years to a painting he has in his office of a wheat field in harvest.  Says Elder Bednar, "The painting is a vast collection of individual brushstrokes—none of which in isolation is very interesting or impressive. In fact, if you stand close to the canvas, all you can see is a mass of seemingly unrelated and unattractive streaks of yellow and gold and brown paint. However, as you gradually move away from the canvas, all of the individual brushstrokes combine together and produce a magnificent landscape of a wheat field. Many ordinary, individual brushstrokes work together to create a captivating and beautiful painting."
Well, I have to admit I didn't have the painting perspective when our children were young.  All I saw were the individual brush strokes and as the years went on and kids got older and developed schedules (and attitudes) of their own, which didn't mesh very well with the already chaotic one LeeAnn and I followed, we gradually let our family devotional observances slip from sporadic to rare.  The painting I found to accompany this post doesn't really tell the story since that part that Gilbert Stuart finished was so good it ended up on the dollar bill.  My real painting would look more like an unfinished paint-by-number masterpiece with 50% of the 3's and 5's filled in and a few of the rest of the colors used here and there just to show we cracked the lids of most of the paints.
Dwelling on past failures doesn't pay dividends in the present so I'll just say, "I did what I did and I hope it was better than nothing."  If my kids read this I'll say--read this.  It's what I should have done but didn't have the vision to do.  Learn from my regrets and kick it up a notch or two from the example you got.  You'll thank yourself for realizing that even though your brush-strokes don't look very lovely by themselves, it's the sum of all of them together that makes the masterpiece.
And by the way--thank's for filling in so many of the blank spots on the canvas of your lives on your own--and making me look good in spite of an imperfect job.

Let It Snow

Today I went to the chiropracter and then for a hike.  I've been going for the hikes most days for a week and a half all twisted up.  Today I was able to get out of the car and stand up straight right away.  Felt good.  This is the first time I've gone to a chiropractor and walked out feeling better rather than worse.  But since the last time I went I had an infection that no chiropractor had any hope of dealing with, I'd say I'm batting 1000 with the "alternate care" crowd.
The other day I went up Beus Canyon and was lamenting the fact that most of the leaves had blown down.  I could see storm clouds massing in the West and the day had "winter" written all over it.  It made me melancholy; not because I dislike winter, but because I felt I had hardly noticed summer and autumn fly by.
Today the snow had already dusted Coldwater Canyon and nearly every tree was bare and there was no color from the leaves on the ground either.  (Except from one defiant Maple that still held a few bright leaves and was spread about by a carpet so yellow it almost shouted.)  I thought about November, and the snows that will surely come next month and be the last to melt next spring.  I remembered the bare trees piled high with fluffy snow crystals that sparkle in the sun and decided to make peace with the turning of the year.  Winter is also a perfect time to take a tramp through the woods.  Every day is a perfect day if we let it be so.
The only thing you can accomplish by pining away for spring is to miss the glory of winter.

Taking Time

I haven't really made a goal of posting to my blog(s) at any certain rate and so I don't feel guilty about the Sept. 23 reminder I got when I logged onto this one.  Nor am I wracked with guilt when I consider that this was the last of the three I own that I gave any attention to.  I've been busy with good things.  Actually I've been spending lots of time with someone else's blog lately.  Actually it's the only thing I've even blogged about for the past couple of months.  I'm really taken with the subject of focus.  At 53 I'm aware that my life is not going to last long enough for me to explore every topic or item that captures my mind.  And my mind is easily captured.  When I took the Gallup "Strength Finder" survey, (you can get a code to take it by buying a copy of the book: "Now Discover Your Strengths" by Markus Buckingham of Gallup.  The survey returns a list and description of your top five talents.  Three of my top five "talents" involve vacuuming up information and churning it around in my mind.  I can see how they can be called talents, but May West wasn't right about everything when she said "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!"  I'm at a point in my life where I really have to learn to focus.  And I've kind of fallen in love with the topic lately.
One of the best things I've found to help me stay on track is to be jealous of my hour in the wilderness each day.  Since I've made my walk a priority I've not only lost nearly 10 pounds in less than a month, I've learned to quiet my mind.  When I'm able to stop the constant internal chatter I've found that the more important things in my life bob to the top of the mind pool and I'm able to get clear on priorities. 
Ironically it's made me busier than I've ever been.  By committing myself to meaningful accomplishment in just a few, most important things I find I am unable to "drift" through life by touching a million other things lightly; going from one to the other without actually accomplishing anything tangible with any of them.  Such a course gives the illusion of being busy but doesn't allow me to get deep enough into any of them to do anything meaningful with them.

So taking an hour out of a busy day is another irony.  My best ideas come during my walk.  My mind is recharged and I get into my car at the end with a quiet resolve to make the most of the rest of the day.  Also I see truly stupendous displays of nature. 
This one is of what I like to call "micro vistas".  Beus Canyon is just a little defile in the face of Mt. Ogden with a great little perennial stream running down it.  It's an absolute oasis in the summer; cool, shady and filled with little pockets of wonder like this.  There are no grand panoramas to be seen, but if you're willing to look small, you'll see beauty unsurpassed in small scale, anywhere on planet earth.
The bottom picture is of a certain Maple tree near the bottom of the trail.  I've never seen a brighter one and while this one seems to be a bit brighter than its neighbors every year, this year it really outdid itself.  Take a walk in the early evening and be amazed.  This kind of fire can't last many more days.

Unnecessary Things

Last night I helped LeeAnn edit an essay for school. I was reminded by the core message in Strunk & White's immortal style guide, Elements of Style. "Eliminate unnecessary words. I love words and it's difficult for me to eliminate them. And as I have mentioned in previous posts I have become enamored with a blog titled Zenhabits-Simple Productivity. The postings on this web log have helped me to identify more things in my life that would improve it--if they were eliminated.

Case in point: I believe that if I were able to catalog my entire waking adult life I would find that I've spent 5% of my time looking for things I need or want behind and under things I don't need and really don't want. Want proof? Here's my garage.


I like this web log so well I bought the author's print book: Zen To Done. (I got mine at Amazon.) In this appropriately brief book, I was treated to the notion that even too much food, and the fat it turns to, can be considered clutter. True enough. I'm a good 30-50 pounds overweight. Carrying that much weight in a backpack up a hill makes most people complain. Me? I carry it, pump blood through it, add another 50 pounds in a real backpack and then climb the hill. Trust me; fat's clutter. (I have a photo of me in a swimsuit on the beach in Antigua that I nearly inserted here. But since there are a couple people who read this I decided not to subject you to that.)
Today I got the coup d'etat to my guiding notion that clutter just happens in people's lives and there really isn't much you can do about it short of turning your whole life upside down. I found an audio copy of a book I read years ago: The Richest Man In Babylon, and I've been listening to it. (Great book. Simple and concise. Libraries have been written by authors who take the simple principles in it and then bloviate for dollars.) Here's the quote that shamed me concerning my tolerance for all things clutter in my life:

"If I set for myself a task, be it ever so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things?"

I guess if I can't keep my garage clean how can I be expected to change the world? (Lately the world has a bitter need of being changed.) Keeping my hands in my pockets when I pass the candy dish has got to be counted a "trifling task" and so counts as another indictment.

The best parts of my life are at least partially buried in "unnecessary things".

Got to work on that.

Looking On The Bright Side

I was reading the Book of Mormon the other day and had begun to plow into "The Isaiah Chapters". I don't hate them as much as most people seem to--years ago I made a study of Isaiah and knowing a few language keys makes the book much less inscrutable. Anyway, I came to the 11th verse of the seventh chapter of 2 Nephi. (It's the same passage as Isaiah 50 in the KJV of the Bible.) "Behold all ye that kindle fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks which ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand—ye shall lie down in sorrow."
I've always understood that this verse refers to people who refuse to look to the scriptures of the prophets for guidance, but insist on making decisions based on their own understanding and desires. But I have also understood it to be applicable only to cases of good vs evil.
There are times when I get a little discouraged. Those times usually come when I feel like I'm over-extended and have more to do than I can do, or that I have something to do for which I feel incapable. I don't guess I'm unique in this. This morning I was attending a little pity party for myself. It devolved to the point where I opined (to myself; when you invite others to your emotional self-flagellations they generally neglect to attend) that I was really a phony. That I had a few talents that I leaned on over and over so I could look good and get by, but really I was incapable of most things and was going through life pretending. Actually I was praying these things. God, it turns out, will attend the occasional pity party--he breaks them up. Mine was broken up this morning by having the above scripture flash into my mind along with the firm impression that every natural man leans on a few favorite talents and goes to work faking his way through life by over-relying on them. But that God possesses all talents in infinite perfection and has freely offered to support us with them until we are able to make them our own. But we, most of the time, insist on relying on our own strengths rather than coming up with the humility to acknowledge that we are incomplete and need help. It's like we were dumped in the ocean. God sends a motorboat to get us to shore but we insist on swimming. Then we plead for a life ring when we become exhausted. This is not the path of wisdom. But it's the path of the ego. It's the path that we know.

Relying on our own light is very much leaning uphill.

In my reading the past several months I keep bumping into the theory that we humans are connected to God: our source. The theme is tucked away in most of the ancient philosophies of the world. Some go so far as to say we are part of God. Others explain that we are living expressions of God Himself. Even some secular thinkers (I'm thinking of Maxwell Maltz of "Psycho-Cybernetics" fame here) insist that there is something in the universe that connects everything and everyone together. And that we have access to knowledge separated from ourselves by space and even time.
Christians believe this. Lots of them don't believe they believe it, but I don't see how a person can read John 17 and come away with any other understanding. Verses 21-24 sum it up but the whole chapter is of this theme:
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
I recognize that all of us have a kernel within us that is a unique individual that has always been and will always be an independent intelligence. But all that we are that allows for us to interact with everything else and express ourselves, is an expression of something that connects us all, and makes us all one. Or at least was intended to .
It's the Ego, the I.D., the Natural Man, Fallen Man, whatever you want to call it, that sets up this construct of our knowledge and our thoughts and our possessions etc. and convinces us that "It" is "Us". Dr. Wayne Dyer, in "The Power of Intention" describes the ego as a drop in the ocean that insists that it is separate from the rest of the ocean, and even goes so far as to imply that it is the ocean.
Sometimes my little drop tries to accomplish things that it takes a whole ocean to do and that's when it throws the pity parties.


We waste time and emotion kindling fire and compassing ourselves about with sparks to see by when we could simply step into the daylight and see the world by the light of the noon sun.

Minimal Post

I've been reading a blog. It's really cool. I think it may be the secret of the universe. In keeping with it's theme, I won't repeat any of it here. I will offer a quote: "The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence."
Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance
Everywhere I hang out; work, home, car...I look around me and there's so much stuff, that focus is pretty near impossible.
Here's the blog

Simple Truth

I have accumulated quite a stack of "Yoga Journal" magazines. Since I'm on vacation this week and have no trip to take, I'm spending time de-junking and the magazines have to go. I'm keeping them because each has an article or two that has information I want to keep. Last night I took an Exacto Knife and went to work reducing an 18 inch stack of paper to less than 1/4 inch.
One of the articles I wanted to keep was one on "Simple Living". I believe a good portion of my "stuff" gets in the way of my happiness. One of the premises of this article was that most of us need to reduce the "things" in our lives and acquire/keep/maintain only those things that we truly love. Of course some things are not so much tangible things as they are thoughts, attitudes, relationships or other entities that take up our time and emotions; not just space.
Yoga has a set of foundational principles upon which the whole philosophy rests: yamas (moral restraints) and niyamas (observances). One of the yamas is aparigraha,which means "greedlessness". But it can also be translated to include not keeping a lot of unnecessary things around you and not wanting what others have. (Thou shalt not covet... to us Westerners) The yama of aparigraha leads to the niyama, santosha, which means contentment--being satisfied with what you have and not constantly desiring more. (Or as Paul put it in 1 Timothy 6:8, "And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.") Both Paul and Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutra, are agreed that materialism can eat our souls.
But you can go nuts with any good and true principle.
Proved by one of the article author's quoted "authorities". This guy suggests that our materialism doesn't just hurt us, it hurts others because we "take an unfair share of the world's resources, exploiting developing nations of cheap labor and destroying the environment."
Nice. First of all, for the most part the earth is a resource-generator; it recycles and reproduces resources we use. There's even evidence that some non-renewable resources like oil fields are actually in a constant state of regeneration. So as long as we define our stewardship of the earth in terms of being conservationists, managing resources to provide an orderly, constant resupply, there is in this world "...enough and to spare." (Quoting God; a bigger authority than the guy quoted above." It's only when we look at stewardship of the earth in terms of environmentalism, which seeks to "freeze" the environment and create a museum out of it, with little or no human influence, that we arrive at the notion that it's a closed system with a finite pool of resources that can't be renewed once used.
As for exploiting developing nations for cheap labor--How the hell does this fruitcake think these nations are developing??? By staying in the stone age and not producing goods that others desire to purchase? These "exploited" people are for the first time in history moving beyond bare survival. Their children are being immunized against childhood killer diseases. They are being educated, exposed to news and ideas from around the globe, saving money for what to them is an entirely new concept: the "future". What these folks need right now is a little more "exploitation" until they enjoy the same standards of choice and pursuit of happiness that we "exploiters" have. I don't see many of these hand-wringers renouncing their residency in the United States to go live with the exploited who supposedly live lives we have no right to meddle in by providing a market for the things they produce.
I heartily agree that many things that we demand from China should never find a market in the USA. We should be more discerning than to buy some of the crap that finds its way over here. We should indeed buy less, demand more quality for the which we should expect to pay more. And in doing so, we would create markets for goods and services that producers could find more fulfillment in creating and delivering. But to suggest that developing nations are actually being harmed by our consumption is just wrong-headed.
Having fewer things, that meant more to us would benefit us and those who provided those few things. And paying for them when we buy them, as opposed to partnering with Visa & Mastercard to delay payment and place ourselves in perpetual indentured servitude as part of the deal, would be even nicer.

The Veil O'er The Earth

Today, church was a bishopric's dream; All meetings canceled on account of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication. So at 7:00 I went to the usual High Council Meeting and then ushered for the 9:00 dedication session that was telecast into the stake center. I have to admit I didn't give the dedication a whole lot of thought. I figured it would be a repeat of the one for the Jordan River Temple that I'd been to years ago. I was prepared for a nice meeting, not a memorable spiritual feast. But as soon as the meeting was called to order by President Monson, I started receiving a spiritual feast that I wasn't expecting. I suppose it was God's way of nicely explaining to me that the dedication of a temple is not something to be taken casually.
For me, the take-away thought came while we were singing the closing hymn; The Spirit of God Like a Fire. In the second verse it says, "...the knowledge and power of God are expanding; the veil o'er the earth is beginning to burst." I can't remember anything I've ever heard swell up in my heart with much more power than that sentence fragment did this morning. I thought of all of the incredible insights that I've been receiving for the past several months and not just from "church sources". Most of them have come while I've been reading popular fiction or essays and memoirs etc. that have become topics of interest out in the world lately. Some of the things I've read from unlikely sources--like "Autobiography of a Yogi" of all books, have shed new lights on our own theology. In some cases I think a look at a topic from a slightly different angle has just added some insight to a truth I already know, and that if I hadn't already been familiar with the concept, I would have missed the insight entirely. But I've been impressed again and again with the thought that much truth all over the world was once had and has been lost or obfuscated and is now being reintroduced from many sources because people are looking for truth and are prepared to receive it. Not every scrap of truth that is revealed or is being rediscovered or illuminated is going to come from an office in Salt Lake City.
I'm impressed with the thought that in the near future missionaries will explain the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who already believe them and have only been waiting for someone to give them context and a system with which to apply them in their lives. I also am convinced that life-long members of the church are going to discover or rediscover sources of additional doctrine that will intensify the power of what is taught commonly in the church right now. (You have only to casually peruse "The Journal of Discourses" to understand that many things have been revealed that aren't included in standard lesson manuals for Sunday classes. This is probably because it's not comfortable for new members of the church to come to Sunday School or Priesthood meeting and be fed through a fire hose.)
Part of the Golden Plates were sealed and Joseph was instructed not to translate them because the sealed portion contained things that weren't to be revealed until later. I think most church members assume that when the time is right the additional truths will be translated from the formerly-sealed plates and sold at Deseret Book. It may be that they will be revealed simply by being allowed to filter out of the sources already existent on the earth under influence of the Spirit that will confirm to those who find them that they are indeed as true as what's in the canon of scriptures we tote to church each week.
At least I know one thing. If God wants to reveal something to the church, it could very well come in the form of a stanza from a song sung at a temple dedication. He may no longer have a need to send an angel with golden plates to get a message to us.

Rocks and Sand

LeeAnn and I spent the 4th of July weekend at Snowbird. We stayed at one of the resort hotels and invited our kids who were in town to come up and do the mountain activities with us on Saturday. I think they had a ball. I know I did and LeeAnn had as good a time as she could with a nasty cold.
This morning I woke up early as I sometimes do, in one of those "got lots to do" fevers. This time it wasn't about more work at the office to do than I can possibly get done though. I was thinking more about things that needed to be addressed at home. And foremost was a feeling that I need to take care of the things that "matter most" and start shedding some of the things that don't make that list.
At age 50+, the fact that I won't live long enough to do all the things that I might like to do is coming home to roost. If I live to be 100, I'm still more than half dead. Continuing to fool myself about this, and putting off decisions about what gets my attention and what gets ash-canned has to qualify as one version of leaning uphill.
One of the things that has to stay on the attention list is quality time with family. This whole weekend was very satisfying: A weekend away with my wife, a day playing with family and then today, attending the blessing of my niece's new baby and time spent with extended family. These kinds of things can't be pushed off onto a siding.
I'm one of those guys who's attention gets grabbed by a whole lot of things. The whole world--nearly--is interesting to me. And I probably don't have to give up as much of it as I may think. I remember someone giving a talk in church or a speech somewhere else wherein they used a very graphic visual aid. They placed a large glass jar on the podium and then next to it set a bucket of large rocks, a pail of small gravel chunks and a jar of sand. They then tried to fit all of these quarry products into the jar by first dumping in the sand, then the gravel, and finally the rocks. It all never came close to going in. But when they dumped it all out again and then put in first the stones, then the gravel and finally the sand, the smaller ingredients sifted around the larger ones, already in place and it all fit nicely. Magic!
My first task has to be finding the five or six large rocks in my life and fitting them in first before I start giving up other things. Otherwise I might end up giving up half my life or more and still not having room to fit the big things in.
Refusing to make discerning choices: It's definitely one of the more egregious ways I have of trying to ski leaning uphill.

"An excuse is worse, and more terrible than a lie."
--Alexander Pope

I listened to that quote while "reading" and audio book I have by Dr. Wayne dyer entitled; "Excuses Begone!". An excuse, like a lie, is likely the most common form I find myself using to "lean uphill".
I've grown mature and have somewhat more integrity than I once had. My excuses are more subtle and my lies whiter. If it were not so, my "B.S.-O-Meter" would peg its needle in the red and I'd be forced to confront or re-confront the fairy tale I was currently trying to sell to myself.
Lies take forms like, "That doesn't matter to me." or, "I'm not interested in that sort of thing anymore." Excuses too have to be well thought-out and have as their basis, reasons for my failures that are difficult for me or others to criticize. "I didn't get that done because I have been insanely busy at work." Getting my work done is a fine and noble thing. But once in a while I am uncomfortably reminded that work is not the only thing I've been busy with, and that other uses of my time, most not so noble, could just as easily be blamed for my failure to keep a commitment. If I allow that sort of thinking however, I'm in danger of having to confront the fact that the things I don't get around to in life are usually things that I simply am uncomfortable doing or that are boring or difficult.
People like Wayne Dyer make it more difficult to maintain my carefully-crafted self-delusions. They invite too much introspection and then, when my subterfuges are sufficiently bold-faced and not to be maintained with any integrity, these people invite me to make commitments to change, all the while proving that in the long run, change is much easier than staying inside a useless or harmful comfort zone.

I’m reading “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. It’s a very frightening book because is so perfectly describes the philosophical and political landscape we are in right now. Reality is a bit more subtle than what is depicted so far in the book (I’ve only read the first 200 of over a thousand) but her characters are spot-on in assuming the prevailing attitudes out there in today’s world. What’s frightening though is that it was first published in 1957.
That’s not what I want to write about here though.
What I do want to write about is a scrap of narrative that shows what one of the book’s main protagonists does when he’s faced by a crisis. Henry Rearden has developed a new, improved steel alloy and is having trouble getting it accepted in the marketplace, mostly because of behind the scenes chicanery by “connected” establishment types. He has one large order from a railroad company that needs rails in a hurry to build a line into a developing industrial area that they hope will save the company from bankruptcy. Rearden starts his day with the news that a train carrying his rails has been in a wreak, spilling its cargo. The railroad executives have told him it will be weeks before they can deliver the rails.

In the next two hours, with the assistance of his secretary, two young engineers from his shipping department, a road map and the long-distance telephone, Rearden arranged for a fleet of trucks to proceed to the scene of the wreak, and for a chain of hopper cars to meet them at the nearest station of the Atlantic Southern. The hopper cars had been borrowed from Taggart Transcontinental. The trucks had been recruited from all over New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. Rearden’s engineer had hunted by telephone for private truck owners and had offered payments that had stopped all arguments short…
…He had attended to the matter without breaking his chain of appointments, without raising his voice, without sign of strain, uncertainty or apprehension; he had acted with the swift precision of a military commander under sudden fire…

When I read that I was impressed. I tend to not handle a crisis that way. In fact, I don’t tend to handle the normal flow of things that well, and when a crisis hits I’m more inclined to “Stop the engines!” then fuss and fluster for too long over the problem. And then I still have to get my life started up again. When I read the above, I had an epiphany: I could act like Henry Rearden too. Especially since the reason I generally handle a crisis so inefficiently is not because I don’t have an idea of what to do (I usually have a dozen ideas.) I’m just afraid I don’t have the “one truly best idea” and that if I did, I’m afraid I won’t implement it perfectly. Really it’s kind of a sorry form of pride: not being able to be less than perfect. I need to replace it with just about anything else. Even random action gives you a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting it right. Inaction just guarantees a failure.