To safe guard out democracy it is the responsibility of all citizens to register to vote.   And for the next few weeks to actively participate within your constituency to determine how you will vote, either advance or on election day.  This will require some effort on your part and you will be tempted to take the lazy way out by watching TV or listening to radio or tuning in to your preferred information sources.  However, to save our democracy it will be vital for you to do everything in your power to assure that the candidates in your riding interact with you and demonstrate to you why they are qualified and should be considered to have your support (your vote) to take on the position ($203,000.00) per year for the next four years. 

On his way to the largest Progressive Conservative victory of the time, John Diefenbaker told his ground troops in a southern Alberta riding, “You can’t vote for me.  No one in this riding can.  My job is not to convince these people to vote for me.  Our job, yours and mine,  is to show these voters our candidate is worthy to be an integral part of the government of Canada for the next four years.” 

What to watch for between now and the time you vote?

First, determine what is news and what is infotainment.  True news is worthy of your attention.  Infotainment will entertain, talking heads have become the norm on the 24 hour  stations that advertise themselves as news.  But infotainment is rarely news and even less often is it actually newsworthy. 

Second, polls are not news.  They are simply a data analysis of gossip in response to questions that may or may not be important.  Polls should never replace your interaction with the candidates in your riding as a way of determining how  you will vote. 

Third, who are the parties talking about?  In previous elections the vast majority of the political advertising has focused on the party leaders.  Asking people to vote for them and the party.  Remember, you can only vote for candidates certified in your riding.   Whoever, wins in your constituency will be responsible to represent you no matter who you voted for.  Their first loyalty should be to you and the riding, not the party and power. 

Fourth, don’t be distracted by the money.  All the parties will waste more of it than you can even comprehend.  They can only buy your vote is you choose to forget that you are the decision maker in how you mark you ballot. 

Firth, remember who will form the next government.  The truth is this has already been decided.  Our new government will comprise the 338 members who are elected at the end of April.  The new government will not be the party with the most seats, although that party will want you to believe it.  All elected members are part of the government and whoever is given the task of leading parliament should make a sacred commitment to organize the workings of the house to assure all 338 voices are heard and actively engaged in making our country the place we all love and cherish. 

There is be enough infotainment over the next five weeks to cause you to laugh and cry.  But don’t let it distract you from making the candidates in your riding respond to you so you can make a wise choice. 

The post Your Opportunity to Save Canadian Democracy first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

The post Can He See Where He’s Going! first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

The room went quiet and I inwardly smiled.  I have never been that brutally honest about myself even though I have spent the last ten or fifteen years examining my preference/prejudices as they arise in the midst of my interactions with others. 

I have all kinds of preferences.  Preferences regarding weight, height and width of people.  Some preferences about hair styles.  May opinions cause me to look sideways about some clothes.  I have prejudices about cars.  My ears have difficulty with some accents and dialects.  You name it and I have preferences. 

During my times of self-reflection I have virtually eliminated my preferences about race and religion.  And I’m proud of this.  However, Ron’s introduction reminded me that my recovery and reconciliation work has a long way  to go. 

It is my prayer that you will join the journey towards a kinder more inclusive world by acknowledging your preferences, especially your prejudices and use your power of discernment to create a more inclusive society. 

To help let’s look at a common phrase in our world today – Algorithm.  I first encountered this concept in the early 1960’s when friends were working as trainees in the Canadian banking system.  As loans officers they filled in forms prescribed by their bosses and made recommendations for loans to be approved for their customers.  These piles of paper then made their way up the chain and most often came back with a notice that their recommendation had been rejected. 

In questioning these rejections my friends learned that the “brass” had a formula (an algorithm) so that they could quickly scan the reports and determine if it fit within their written policy.  These formula were to allow them to more efficiently handle the volume of material they needed to deal with.  One of my friends came to the profound conclusion, “Their formula (algorithm) is used so they don’t have to think!” 

Our preferences and prejudices are also our tools so we don’t have to think.  So we can quickly respond to the situations in the world around us.  Our algorithms have been programmed into us by family and society from our birth.  And they affect everyone.  I do not know of a race, a church, a family that does not have an inbred set of prejudices that they utilize to avoid thinking. 

To determine if your preferences are helpful or harmful the key is to think!.  Examine how and why you jump to an instant opinion.  Question that snap decision.  Investigate the feelings and attitudes that are part of it.  And then gently and joyously think again.  Sometimes this process will confirm you initial opinion.  At other times you will see the error and come to a more sustainable conclusion. 

Canadian (Western) society is filled with “dry drunks” people who say they have no prejudice yet their thoughts, words, actions, and governmental policies betray them.  Sobriety in prejudice is consciously looking at how you interact in each and every situation in life and how you honour and respect those you interact with through words and actions that affirm and support. 

The post Thinking About Being A Recovering Racist first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

Tariffs threats have created global anxiety.  To be honest these musings are causing people to get things totally out of proportion.  The threats are serious.  They demonstrate a deep commitment to patrimonialism² by the speakers. 

My personal observation is that while the mouths are blowing this hot air forward the real actions are consistently walking backwards.  The hot air is rising, but the actions are not being pulled forward by the rise of the words. 

This doesn’t make the words any less fretful,  however, it does allow those who want to take alternate actions the time to clarify and work on what will truly make a difference. 

As Haruki Murakami said in his Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech: “If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it’s too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us — create who we are. It is we who created the system.”

^{1 Mayo Clinic definition}

²  https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/analysis-details-the-100-year-old-sociological-term-that-defines-trump-s-leadership-style-and-putin-s/ar-AA1zLF0Zcid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f814c7b613f747f1ebe1b1dca632e0e5&ei=140

The post Thinking About Hot Air & Anxiety first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

“Washing is the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how your thoughts, ideas, opinions or desires are sound.”

This is often called branding, however, for washer women brands change before the ink is dry on the new posters.  They jump from catch phrase to a catchier phrase and then to something with even less meaning so that nothing can stick. 

“Washing is always an attempt to capitalize on a known challenge without committing to anything.” 

While a real washer woman actually produces clean clothes.  When you hang out the words of the political washer women there is nothing to hang out of the line to dry. 

“Washing is conveying a false impression of concern.”

When the washer woman of politics words are flapping in the their own wind, no matter what weather of the day may be, you will feel no warmth while being left with the emptiness that will sap your soul. 

“Critics accuse washers of attempting to capitalize on issues without backing up their words with facts or details.  When details are used they are used to confuse not clarify.”

So when you are looking for the truth, for clarity, for understanding of what is really going on, remember there are other sources of information.  You may have to think, but it is better than being taken to the cleaners. 

The post Politicians and Washing or Lying first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

For those who don’t have a dictionary at hand.  The word morbid is defined as “the state of being unhealthy or diseased”!  Their disease is not physical, though it does have aspects that express as mental and emotional disorders.  However, this disease is spreading challenges throughout our social order and deeply impacting the quality of life for a majority of the population. 

Before we go too far it is important to remember that this disease “morbid wealth” affects only a tiny fraction of the population, less than 1% or 1%.  Luckily it is not contagious to normal people, however, the fear and paranoia from those infected with this disease does impact on the healthy.  Their mental and emotional distress from being infected is spread globally as they are afraid of losing power, position, favour due to the rise of creative individuals who know the blessings of life are for all. 

Thom Hartmann in a recent opinion piece (<https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/inside-the-gop-s-60-year-conspiracy-to-kill-our-democracy-opinion/ar-AA1yenMM?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=75522efb4b0140d08420e73065b3b10e&ei=144>) illustrates how this disease mutated from the “captains” to become the major threat to life in our time. 

As with their predecessors they may only harm you, if you get too close, or attempt to believe that the way they think and live is healthy.  Those who follow E.F. Schumacher (

Videos of Ef Schumacher Small Is Beautiful) will know and apply the secrets that will keep you safe and healthy while we have the task of watching those infected waste away and die.  By using these secrets we will be able to triage and help those they discard on their way to oblivion. 

The post The New Pandemic first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

The room went quiet and I inwardly smiled.  I have never been that brutally honest about myself even though I have spent the last ten or fifteen years examining my preference/prejudices as they arise in the midst of my interactions with others. 

I have all kinds of preferences.  I have preferences regarding weight, height and width of people.  I have preferences about hair styles.  I have opinions about clothes.  I have prejudices about cars.  I have difficulty with some accents and dialects.  You name it and I have preferences. 

During my time of self reflection I have virtually eliminated my preferences about race and religion.  And I’m proud of this.  However, Ron’s introduction reminded me that my recovery and reconciliation work has a long way  to go. 

It is my prayer that you will join the journey towards a kinder more inclusive world by acknowledging your preferences, especially your prejudices and use your power of discernment to create a more inclusive society. 

To help lets look at a common phrase in our world today – Algorithm.  I first encountered this concept in the early 1960’s when friends were working as trainees in the Canadian banking system.  As loans officers they filled in forms prescribed by their bosses and made recommendations.  These piles of paper then made their way up the chain and most often came back with a notice that the recommendation had been rejected. 

In questioning these rejections my friends learned that the “brass” had a formula (an algorithm) so that they could quickly scan the reports and determine if it fit within their policy.  This formula was to allow them to more efficiently handle the volume of material they needed to deal with.  One of my friends said, “Their formula (algorithm) is used so they don’t have to think!” 

Our preferences and prejudices are also our tools so we don’t have to think.  So we can quickly respond to the situations in the world around us.  Our algorithms have been programmed into us by family and society from our birth.  And they affect everyone.  I do not know of a race, a church, a family that does not have an inbred set of prejudices that they utilize to avoid thinking. 

To determine if your preferences are helpful or harmful the key is to think!.  Examine how and why you jump to an instant opinion.  Question that snap decision.  Investigate the feelings and attitudes that are part of it.  And then gently and joyously think again. 

Canadian society is filled with “dry drunks” people who say they have no prejudice yet their thoughts, words, actions, and governmental policies betray them.  Sobriety in prejudice is consciously looking at how you interact in each and every situation in life and how you honour and respect those you interact with through words and actions that affirm and support. 

The post On Being a Recovering Racist first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you have had a rough day and you are frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here is what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight, just leave them with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I will open the window and throw your troubles in the water.”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who had been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop, just as promised, the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up but everyone did it.

The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it is extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you are the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?. That’s what this bus driver taught me, that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy influencer. He was a bus driver, one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name.

“No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated, one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.”

 Elizabeth Gilbert

The post Transformation for all Choosing to Be the Light first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

How George Orwell was right — and Steve Jobs was wrong | Opinion

Opinion by Thom Hartmann

A fascinating article in The New York Timesthis week by Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gives us the beginnings of an understanding of how and why social media is so destructive to society.

Gray points out that most people assume humans have historically been predators, the metaphorical big cats of the jungle. In fact, Gray says, we’ve historically been prey, the victims of predators:

“This picture of fearfulness is consistent with our understanding of human psychology. We’re hard-wired to detect threats quickly and to stay fixated on places where threats once appeared, even after they have vanished. We fear that ‘child predators’ will abduct our kids even when they are safer than ever.

“Modern humans, ensconced in towns and cities, are now mostly safe from animal predators, but we are still easily frightened. Whether we’re scrolling social media or voting for a presidential candidate, we all still carry the legacy of our ancestors, who worried about big cats lurking in the darkness.”

Thus, if you could invent a drug that would cause people to be fearful — and thus stimulate the rage that comes from fear — you could have incredible control over a population if you could simply tell them where and against whom to direct that fear-induced rage.

We all have opiate receptors in our brains that modulate our response to pain. Compounds that bind to these receptors are produced naturally by our body in response to extreme pain and shock, and numerous plants—most famously, opium poppies—naturally produce chemicals that bind to and activate our opiate receptors.

When we lived in Germany back in the late 1980s, I loved to visit a nearby castle in Kulmbach and order mohnkuchen, a piecrust filled with poppy seeds ground into a paste with sugar and a few spices. I always felt so good after eating a slice or two of the pie; when we had a glass of a fresh German Riesling with it, my smile went from ear to ear for hours.

The mohnkuchen seemed to constipate me a bit, and when I noticed one afternoon that my pupils were pinned so small as to nearly vanish, the same as I’d noticed whenever I’d taken narcotic painkillers after injuries and surgery, the penny dropped. Turns out I was enjoying opium in that little German café in a way that people around the world have for millennia.

Similarly, I once shared a few days with a shaman from Peru; he had a bag of coca leaves, and we each chewed a few along with a tiny piece of alkalized ash to release its active ingredient as an afternoon pick-me-up. The buzz I experienced was considerably less strong than what a two or three cups of coffee provide.

Mountain-dwelling Andean tribes have been doing this for as long as there have been people in the region; they consume coca the way people in India and parts of China consume local tea leaves. We consumed coca leaf extract here in the US, too, from 1886 to 1929, in a drink called Coca Cola.

Somewhere on the spectrum from these drugs’ original state to their becoming increasingly concentrated and purified, a toxic/addictive threshold or tipping point is reached. I never experienced withdrawal symptoms from mohnkucken, but I did from the highly concentrated opiate painkiller (Oxycontin) I took for a few weeks for severe sciatica prior to spinal surgery and for a week after. It wasn’t terrible; a few nights of trouble sleeping and sensitivity to pain and touch, but there it was.

Heroin is concentrated opium poppy. Cocaine is concentrated coca leaf. Substances that are otherwise benign become both potent and deadly when they’re super-concentrated.

Which is exactly what the algorithms deployed in secret by social media do: they purify and concentrate hate and fear spread across the broader social media site, distilling the most potent memes and messages to the top and shoving them into people’s brains.

But that’s just the beginning of the damage these top-secret algorithms are doing to our societies and politics. By increasing our individual levels of fear and rage, they create a broader social sense of fear and rage, making these emotions far more easy to exploit.

Enter stage right “populist” politicians and media sites who push people’s now-sensitized fear and rage buttons for political gain. (Not to mention the billions earned by social media billionaires pushing this psychological heroin while absolutely refusing to publish their algorithms.)

Numerous studies show that when people believe crime is a serious problem in their own communities and lives, they measurably shift toward the political right of the spectrum. Law-and-order campaigns and promises of severe punishment acquire a sudden appeal, as Joe Biden and Bill Clinton discovered in the early 1990s and politicians everywhere since the pandemic have seen.

Fear of crime — and fear more generally (of your kids being victims of trans people or renegade surgeons in public schools, for example, or of immigrants raping your wife or taking your job) — push people toward an embrace of conservative and then authoritarian politics and governance.

When media promote narratives about crime being out of control — whether true or not — they measurably drive acceptance of more reactionary crime control legislation along with rejection of efforts at rehabilitation and reform.

There may be an even wider impact of social media’s promotion of fear and rage.

The Transcendental Meditation group reported in the Journal of Mind and Behavior on several 1970s and 1980s studies showing that when a certain relatively small threshold number of people in a particular community meditated daily, crime and violence went down.

Another report in Social Indicators Research found that when a group of meditators moved to Washington, DC between 1988 and 1993 that over those following years crime went down by an impressive 23.3%.

A comprehensive study was run during the 1883 Lebanon war, when a group of meditators took up residence in Jerusalem and meditated daily for two years. The result, almost certainly exceeding any possibility of coincidence, was:

— A 76% reduction in war deaths in Lebanon on days when there was high participation in the meditating group,

— A 71% decrease in war-related fatalities,

— A 68% reduction in war-related injuries,

— A 48% drop in the level of conflict, and

— A 66% increase in cooperation among antagonists.

If a certain threshold of people being intentionally peaceful for a year or two can lower crime rates, what happens when a certain threshold of people are daily enraged by the injection of fear and hate into their psychological bloodstreams?

Could it be that social media is directly (or indirectly) responsible for much of the swing we’re seeing around the world toward bigotry, hate, and violence? That rightwing movements are emerging as a result of the impact of social media, rather than social media merely and passively reflecting the trend as the social media companies argue?

The meditation studies are controversial, but it’s hard to dispute the assertion that as more and more individuals in a given society are racked with fear and rage, the result, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Big Brother, will be more hate and violence.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley has been thinking along the same lines. In his book The Tyranny of Big Tech, he wrote:

“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction. Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.”

The past two years have shown America and the world what happens when a social media company is captured by an unaccountable billionaire with a specific political goal. The site that was once Twitter is now a veritable sewer, filled with hate and Nazi-level extremists.

Is it possible this is making the world less stable, less peaceful, and more violent through a reverse “Maharishi Effect”? Are wars around the world and the recent assassination of a healthcare CEO demonstrations of the power social media has over society? School shootings? The rise of Nazi-adjacent militia groups here and in Europe?

The simple reality is that we won’t know until government steps in and requires these companies to both publish and moderate their algorithms and monitor/control the naked hate on their platforms. And that day can’t come too soon.

From <https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/how-george-orwell-was-right-and-steve-jobs-was-wrong-opinion/ar-AA1wzhhR?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=866573aaa14d4075923eeaf52da1db10&ei=17>

The post How Social Media Robs You of the Power to Enjoy! first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .

You might be interested in Larry Lessig’s Ted Talk on democracy.  This is an American tale, but has relevance for us as well. 

Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it | Larry Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic

YouTube – TEDx Talks – Oct 20, 2015

In his first run for federal office John Diefenbaker’s slogan was “Not a partisan cry, but a national need”.  Now is the time for each voter to live for changes that will make life better, more inclusive and to spread the benefits of success more broadly.

The post Equality, Responsibility, and Hope first appeared on Thinking About Thinking .