Friday, October 14, 2011

The Germ Theory - of Government


Introduction

The fundamental concept of government, which the founders of the American structure of government believed, was summed up in the well known, and oft quoted, statement "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (About Toxins of Power).

The founders of The United States knew, perhaps intuitively, that "something was wrong" when people were exposed to too much power, because "bad things happened" to the people, the citizenry, in those circumstances (ibid).

Their hypothesis and analysis eventually led to the formulation of a treatment scenario, which was essentially to dilute the exposure to that "something" which was called "power", by spreading the power amongst many people, rather than to overly expose any one person (The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine).

The graphic above shows the fundamental structure they developed, which had the basic, underlying intent to not allow too much exposure to power by any one governmental person or department.

They never considered it deeper than that on any official level, leaving any deeper contemplation to the future citizens of the nation, who would sit in the seats of power down through time, or who would cast their votes for or against those sitting in those seats of power, their votes perhaps being their periodic comment on how the treatment was progressing.

The Toxins of Power Blog has a series of posts that do look deeper into that founding concept, deeper into its emotional, psychological, and even health implications, to eventually link it recently to germ theory: "Microbes may indeed be subtly changing our brain early on — and for what purposes we cannot yet say" (Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power, quoting The American Society of Microbiology).

Today, for your convenience, we are going to fuse a few Dredd Blog posts with a few Toxins of Power Blog posts, to give a more in depth overview of The Germ Theory of Government in a single post.

Is Our Government Still Power Sick?

The development of the two fundamental classes in The United States, recently referred to as the 1% and 99%, have many people wondering why the original treatment has not worked (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy).

Obviously, somehow, the notion of "we the people" has evolved into a reality of "wee the people", because the 99% are now subservient to the 1% in ways that were never intended to be (Wee The People).

On this blog, in a series of posts, we have theorized that social dementia within the 99% as well as social dementia within the 1% is one root level problem caused as a result of propaganda (Etiology of Social Dementia).

The Germ Theory

The "germ theory" originated years before the U.S. Constitution was written, but did not have official acceptance in establishment science and medicine until a century after that Constitution had been written (What Is Pseudo Science?).

The post What is Pseudo Science? has an interesting quote concerning one Dr. Semmelweis, who circa the mid 19th century, had lowered deaths of pregnant women in his practice to near zero, while at the same time the general patient population of other establishment doctors had a much greater number of per capita deaths in their practices.

The good doctor Semmelweis thought it proper to share his new found remedy with his peers in the medical community:
Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.
The good, bad, and ugly
(ibid, emphasis added). The good doctor had lowered the deaths of his patients down to near zero by directing all doctors and nurses in his practice to wash their hands with a certain liquid solution designed to prevent the spread of disease that was obviously killing people as it rampaged throughout the hospitals of that time.

It was beneath the dignity of those establishment doctors to "give in" to a notion that germs were spread by doctors from patient to patient, because they did not have clean hands, especially since every good scientist in the kingdom "knew" that germs "spontaneously appeared" out of thin air whenever and where ever they wanted to.

So in their exceptional hubris they had Dr. Semmelweis committed to an insane asylum, where he died of a disease caused by germs, as did untold numbers of pregnant women who were patients of these exceptional establishment doctors of that time (Terrorism We Can Believe In?).

Thus, it behooves us to look at the new scientific discoveries mentioned in the Introduction section above.

We must know scientifically what "germ", if there is one, has caused the failures in our society, through the corruption of power, if we ever hope to solve that problem, or to put it another way, to "cure" that disease:
"Our results suggest that during evolution, the colonization of gut microbiota has become integrated into the programming of brain development, affecting motor control and anxiety-like behavior"
(Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power - 2, quoting The National Academy of Sciences). Do we, then, need a vaccine of modern epic proportions which all those who sit in the seats of power must be inoculated with (V: The Evolution of the Vaccime)?

The "Clean Hands" Doctrine

It is interesting to note that there was a principle in the law of the time of Dr. Semmelweis, specifically in the courts of equity, known as the "clean hands doctrine" (Wikipedia).

Anyone who was suing someone in equity for any alleged equitable wrong was required to have "clean hands" to bring that complaint.

If they had taken part in causing the particular wrong alleged, then they were not allowed to prevail because they had "unclean hands".

Another notion of "clean hands" was expressed a thousand years or so earlier than that by one Pontius Pilate (The Elections of Pontius Pilots).

Are we in good hands with Oil State?
Under that notion, one could wash their hands of a perceived wrong by ritualistically washing their hands in front of others as a symbolic gesture.

It is time for modern cultures and civilizations to consider better ways to prevent government officials from becoming rogue destroyers of the lives of the people they have sworn to be loyal to.

But it is also time to do it in a decent and moral way, yes, in a way that is a real cure in place of violent or callous reactions that only emulate unsophisticated historical behavior that has not worked (The State of the Onion Script).

Transference: Government Becomes Parent

One step in that direction, in addition to scientific research into the
toxins of power so as to learn how to properly neutralize them, is to forgo the transference of parental concepts and emotions into governmental bodies.

After we have grown up then left our parents at home, or after our parents have died, we don't need to replace our parents with the government (Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?).

The New Concept of "Human"

A modern, sophisticated, and mature society or civilization needs to know its true self and its place in the greater cosmos.

In a recent post we perused the new discoveries in microbiology which tell us, among other things, that a cell count of any one human being ends up with about 10 microbe cells for each one "human" cell (On The New Meaning of "Human").

Thus, we are an ecosystem as it were, because the microbe cells are symbionts to the human cells, meaning, we are in a symbiotic relationship with them, and we both rely on the environment of the Earth for our lives.

A mature government will only come from a mature populace that knows we have a future based on our respect, care, and concern for every life form on our planet.

The short and the long of it is that each of us individually has and together have a great distance to "travel" (Tenets of Ecocosmology).

The next episode in this series is here.

The lyrics to the following song are here:


Thursday, October 13, 2011

Nanoengines For Spacecraft? - 2

Two years ago on this date the Ecocosmology Blog discussed nanotechnology as a potential source for perpetual supplies of electrical energy.

That post is reposted here for your perusal:

If humanity is ever to travel to another habitable planet it will be the result of new physics and new technology yet to be implemented.

An interesting source for a perpetual supply of electricity is now being discussed:
Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of “persistent current,” a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.

...

The counterintuitive current is the result of a quantum mechanical effect that influences how electrons travel through metals, and arises from the same kind of motion that allows the electrons inside an atom to orbit the nucleus forever. “These are ordinary, non-superconducting metal rings, which we typically think of as resistors,” Harris said. “Yet these currents will flow forever, even in the absence of an applied voltage.”
(Science Daily). Whether or not this technology could help to meet the Tenet 3(b) necessity of developing space craft that will travel exceedingly fast, it does show that there are sources of power we have not explored yet.



We will never find most of reality if we are not looking for it will we?

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Peak of Hypocrisy

Mythical exceptionalism is a form of not only self righteousness, but also of delusion as well. There are only two numbers that are relevant to the current American economy:
1% and 99%
All the other numbers are dictum.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Peak of Health And The Peak of Oil

The American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) has published a series of articles that link The Peak of Oil with the issue of health care.

The Dredd Blog has pointed out the dependency of civilization on hydrocarbons (oil, gas, coal) to the point that it really is an addiction (some examples: A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA, A Peek At The Peak Oil Catastrophe, The Peak of The Oil Wars).

The AJPH articles indicate the serious threat to health that the peak of oil production, and subsequent decline, is bringing to civilization:
Petroleum is used widely in health care — primarily as a transport fuel and feedstock for pharmaceuticals, plastics, and medical supplies — and few substitutes for it are available. This dependence theoretically makes health care vulnerable to petroleum supply shifts, but this vulnerability has not been empirically assessed. We quantify key aspects of petroleum use in health care and explore historical associations between petroleum supply shocks and health care prices. These analyses confirm that petroleum products are intrinsic to modern health care and that petroleum supply shifts can affect health care prices. In anticipation of future supply contractions lasting longer than previous shifts and potentially disrupting health care delivery, we propose an adaptive management approach and outline its application to the example of emergency medical services.
(Petroleum and Health Care, AJPH, emphasis added). Since food is essential for good health, the publication also explores the impact of peak oil on food dynamics:
We examined food system vulnerability to rising oil prices and the public health consequences. In the short term, high food prices harm food security and equity. Over time, high prices will force the entire food system to adapt. Strong preparation and advance investment may mitigate the extent of dislocation and hunger.
(Peak Oil, Food Systems, AJPH). That journal goes on to explore the coming impact on other aspects of health care as the finite supply of oil runs out.

The Dredd Blog System has also explored ways to compensate for the decline of petroleum products with natural methods and products that do not harm the environment (some examples: A Methanol Economy Way Out of Here, Dandelion Farmers of the World Unite, A Green Way Out of Here, Someone Figured It Out, Some Way Out of Here, Another Way Out of Here, The Wind Is Not Just For The Birds).

Another positive is that as petroleum use declines, to be replaced with renewable energy, damage to the environment will also hopefully decline.

The response we take today, tomorrow, and thereafter will determine whether or not our civilization avoids the import of the words too little, too late.

Monday, October 10, 2011

The Graphs of Wrath - 3

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has been doing a series of posts that take a look at graphs which tell a quick and dirty story.

That story is about the polls which show that Americans think our country is going in the wrong direction, and that the wrong direction has been our national direction for a decade now.

The first episode displayed a graph of certain military spending compared to non-military spending, beginning circa 2000, showing a steep rise in the one, but a steep dive in the other.

That post then compared that steep increase and steep decrease with a suspiciously matching income disparity growth and decline between the 1% and the 99%.

In the second post of this series we expressed no "surprise, surprise" that these graphs show that as wars increase the 1% rich get richer while the 99% majority of us get poorer.

This graphic portrayal was underscored in the Dredd Blog post The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, in the sense that the 1%, who control the military, plan to use it against the 99% if need be.

Then came Occupy Wall Street which has spread to many locations, is ongoing, and is finally getting some media attention of various and sundry sorts.

Today's graph of wrath is shown at the top of this post, and it tells the same quick and dirty story.

It tracks, with the red line, median household decrease in income over the past decade of the wrong direction, while the black line tracks unemployment during that same period of misguided leadership.

The 1%, who engineered this wrong direction, do not like our founding fathers who predicted this kind of thing exactly and quite succinctly:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(Toxins of Power, quoting James Madison). Just as amazingly, the 99% in large measure still have the spirit and heart of the founding fathers.

Which means that the plutocrats may indeed have us by the neck economically, but we have their number.

The previous post in this series is here, the next post in this series is here.