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My Profile
Headline:
I Am
a Philanthropic Philosophic Promethean
About Me:
I am a middle aged man.
I am retired from the Federal Government after putting in 28
Years time into both the U.S. Marines and the Postal Service. In
between stints of government work I have been homeless or I
worked at various private sector jobs.
During my time in the Marines and the Postal Service I also
pursued other entrepreneurial enterprises.
I was pressured into forced early retirement because of a
combination of factors.
The
Facility I had worked at broke some serious civil laws (In my
opinion some nasty criminal ones as well), and as a result a few
of my coworkers and friends died prematurely and other coworkers
were forced out of work and had suffered great economic
stressors.
The are other events that have happen and are still happening in
this Federal agency as well as others that is putting the
American public at great potential risk.
This incident as well as others have influenced to my decision
to take a more active role in releasing information that will
help regular citizens and government workers to best protect
themselves.
On a lighter note – I will endeavor to have some fun with all of
these as I meet like-minded and dynamic people.
I am planning to walk across the United States to raise money
for charities... specifically for our troops coming back from
Iraq and other favorite charities I love to help is the
Alzheimer's Association, any organization that helps women
involved with domestic violence, the homeless, and children at
risk, and families that need food during current economic times.
I will be starting at Brookings, Oregon and then walk north and
then walk across our country.
I am hoping that people will join me and walk with me and
participate in other activities with me.
At the end of the month two friends of mine and I will be
starting a book signing tour in Brookings and we hope to meet
many people from myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and other social
networking sites as I travel
Who I Would Like To Meet:
Oh my
God!
There
are just so many people that I would like to meet – too many to
miss.
Here
are just a few of the people that have influenced my life.
Dr.
Phillip Zimbardo, Ram Dass, President Jimmy Carter, Anthony
Robbins,
Dr.
Rupert Sheldrake, Dr. Stansilave Grof, Dan Milman, Dr. Charles
Tart, Dr. M. Scott Peck, All of the Nobel Laureates, Joseph
Chilton Pearce, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, Ross Perot, Former
Governor Jesse Ventura, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Larry Ellison,
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen, Bill Gates Steve Ballmer,
Larry Ellison, Raymond Kurzweil, Daniel Dennett,
Christopher Hitchens, Ken Wilber, Larry King, Alec
Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Gary Busey, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Sylvester Stallone, Frank Zane, Bill Kazimier, Franco Columbo,
Lou Ferrigno, Steve Michelik.. Anyone that takes life by the
throat without stepping on other peoples toes.
In General:
Amsterdam, animals, beachcombing, bodybuilding, Bonaire, Buddha,
camping, comedy, Confucius, Costa Rica, cuddling, dancing,
ethnic food, fishing, fitness, flying, Gandhi, Harleys, hiking,
horseback riding, Jesus, love, meditation, midnight walks,
motorcycles, nature, Panama, philosophy, psychology, reading,
rodeos, scuba diving, sex, sky diving, social activism, sports,
sushi, traveling, walkabout-the United States for charity,
weightlifting, writing, Zen
Music:
Eclectic tastes, it just depends on what touches me. Although I
have a special fondness for Classical Music, Bach and so forth.
I also love the Neo-Classical compositions produced by a friend
of mine – Phoenix Michaels..
Movies:
The
Godfather movies, Star Wars Trilogies, Lonesome Dove, The
Insider, A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, Vanilla Sky, 2001 A
Space Odyssey, Groove Tube, Kentucky Fried Movie, The Matrix,
Charley, Laurence of Arabia, The Game, Shogun, The Snow Falls On
the Cedars, Somewhere in Time.
Television:
I
Rarely Watch TV. However, I often leave the TV on when I need
Background noise when I write, if I am not listening to music. I
do like Seinfeld, Sopranos, The Shield, House, The History
Channel, The Discover Channel, Animal Planet, A&E Biographies,
National Geographic Channel, The Learning Channel, The Comedy
Channel and I have a special fondness for Oprah.
Books:
All
of Jack London's books, All of Kurt Vonnegut, Edgar Rice
Burroughs books,
Frank
Herbert books, John Steinbeck books, James Clavel Books, Robert
Heinlein Books, Phillip Jose Farmer Books, Ayn Rand Books, Issac
Asimov books, Dan Milman books, Joseph Chilton Pearce’s books,
Stansilave Grof books, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake books, M.Scott Peck
M.D. Books, Dr. John C. Lilly books. More books and authors that
I can list for now.
Heroes:
Gandhi, President Carter, Stephen Hawkens, Gerry Spence, Jan
Schlictmann, Erin Brockavich, Jeff Wingand, Jesus, Martin Luther
King Jr., Ram Dass, Richard Marincinko, Teddy Roosevelt, Albert
Einstein, Richard Feyman, Jimmy Carter, Ross
Perot, Former Governor Jesse Ventura, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader,
Larry Ellison, Steve Wozniak, Larry Ellison,
Christopher Hitchens
More people than I can Name for now.
Pets:
I
love animals, especially unusual reptiles and amphibians;
however, I do not have any because I simply do not have the time
to give them the love and care they deserve.
Activists Aspirations:
To
raise money for good causes. Although I have learned the hard
lesson that money and help is best spent and given only to
individuals or organizations that in everyway and everyday work
aggressively to solve their problems.
I
detest giving money or help to people or organizations that will
not do what is required to alleviate their suffering.
I
also am involved with disseminating information to people and
organizations on how people can best protect themselves without
getting into expensive and nasty lawsuits.
Political Leaning:
I have no real standard leanings of being a conservative or a
liberal. I took a test to determine if I fell more into the
Democratic platform of beliefs or the Republican platform of
beliefs. Evidently, I am perfectly divided.
I am conservative on matters that most people think I should be
liberal and vice versa. If I had to choose any organized platform
I would choose independent or Libertarian.
Because of the years of working for the Postal Service and the
military and because of all of the exposure that I have had with
lawyers, politicians and interacting with people from other
government agencies I believe that the less government we have
the better.
I know that we do need basic services such as a military, police
and fire departments and staff of people to take care of needed
municipal services such as road repair, water, sewer and
electrical, et cetera.
Religious:
I have no definite religious affiliation. I was raised Catholic
until the end of my third year of school and then I had a few
years of exposure of Southern Baptists and later by the age of
twelve I determined that I was agnostic.
I do believe in a strong possibility that Jesus existed and that
he was someone who possibly possessed more than ordinary powers
and in conjunction with the superstition and ignorance of the
people of his time and the reality that stories grow with the
passing of time what Jesus supposedly could do may have been
greatly exaggerated.
I entertain the possibility that Jesus and many human beings are
children of a non-anthropomorphic god.
I have studied a little of Buddhism, and delved a bit into a
smattering of this and that.
If I
had to guess about our ‘divine’ nature, I’d say that people do
not necessarily possess souls per say. I would guess that we
have the potential to develop souls, by various methods of
working through experiences here in this existence.
Or…
if we do have souls, I do not believe that this guarantees us
that we will have an immortal life after we die and live in
either heaven or hell or limbo or what have you.
I believe in the possibility that for most people that the
Tibetan ‘Bardos’ is where the human consciousness goes when the
body fails. It is here that our consciousness possibly
experiences various levels of joy and fear and suffering,
depending possibly on what ‘Stuff’ we carry over from our
lifetime of experiences.
I believe in the possibility that sometimes, some humans get a
glimpse of these Bardos in dreams.
I do believe, or perhaps I WANT to believe in the possibility –
that with enough work or training that people may survive there
body; and to go where... who knows?
Eating Habits:
I am more haphazard than I care to be about my diet. If I could
organize better I would eat several small meals a day consisting
of mostly vegetables along with a nice piece of fish, or poultry
or eggs.
Wild Fact about me
I believe that I have enjoyed and a few times been terrified by
mystical events. I am not comfortable with the term spiritual,
though I often use the term. This word is too subjective to my
taste and means so many vague things to so many people and none
of which can be conclusively or even remotely proved.
The events that I have experienced I believe are neurological
events that may be mere hyper-imaginings in our conscious state
of awareness or in a type of dream-state or an actual time-space
transcendence of various levels of our consciousness and
hopefully science will one day be able to prove that some humans
have an ACTUAL power to move our mind beyond simple imaginings
or wishful fantasies.
Regardless, some of these events do seem to impart some people
with a higher and measurable level of physical and mental
functioning and at the very least a feeling of well-being.
All of this is okay – so long as these incidents do not dominate
your life or at the very least diminish a person’s capacity or
desire to do all the rational things that life requires of us.
I want to weep whenever I meet a person who uses a few such
mystical experiences or worse yet a belief that such experience
may exists to throw away what they need to be doing in this
temporal realm.
Too many people use the call of mysticism to avoid life and
personal accountability.
My Philosophy:
Although I have on occasion enjoyed a seemingly mystical events…
I lean heavily toward Rational thought and Objectivity
I have studied much of various philosophies and many of them,
even the mystical ones I enjoy and I can see that under certain
circumstances that some of these may have benefit.
I have during my life observed is that most human beings are
irrational in many of their values and actions; in fact most
people, (me included) at some point in their life – if not their
entire life – have conflicting values, thoughts and beliefs.
This causes them to act in inconsistent fashion which in turn
causes them much suffering and the people within their sphere of
influence. I have learned that it is up to us as individuals to
repair and resolve these conflicts.
I
believe that only our objective, rational part of our intellect
is our best tool to achieve this necessary end. I do not believe
that a person should live their life based solely or mostly on
mystical beliefs or imaginings or whims or wishes or religious
dogmas.
The Objective rational mind should always reign sovereign over
mystical beliefs or even mystical experiences. Though I do
believe that mystical experiences and that these beliefs can be
entertained or even enjoyed, they should not take precedence to
rational strategies when dealing with one’s own life, i.e. they
should not encourage a person to sacrifice their first born
because God or an angel told them to do so, or to go on a Jihad
because you think Allah came to you in a dream and promised you
seventy-two virgins or quit your job, sell all your worldly
possessions, drag your family with a group of other dubious
people to gather at a mountain top and hope for the ‘Mother
Ship’ to take you to another planet or dimension.
All this is fun to ENTERTAIN
however.
What Gives Me Hope?:
The internet along with the affordable unlimited wireless
multimedia communication that is available to most of us on this
planet. If we can couple this with enough intelligent and
rational people to communicate and organize locally as well as
globally in unison insofar as voting, and influencing our
politicians and corporate leaders then we have a chance at
reversing some of the many negative tipping points that is
facing our planet and our species today… or at the very least to
survive the disasters that may prove to be inevitable.
It would help if we could get all of the people who spend their
time obsessively for untold hours gaming to put the same energy,
time and intelligence towards solving real world problems
instead of virtual world problems.
If I were Emperor, I’d make
the world a better place by:
I would legalize drugs and mandate that addicts do the drugs in
the privacy of their homes. I would build a sin city outside of
regular city limits for non-working dysfunctional addicts to
live. I would provide for them just basic shelter and food and
insure that they are safe and secure and provide for them all
the drugs they want.
I would make a law that only people with a certain level of
emotional, intellectual and fiscal capacity can have children.
I would revamp the prison system by not allowing people to
congregate in a open prison population. I would instead put each
person in a clean solitary cell with no contact to any other
prisoner. I would insure that they were provided with adequate
food, hygiene, exercise and books and vocational training
through controlled computer access.
I would set up programs – not funded by tax dollars, but by
concern citizens to teach and encourage all citizens to learn
about personal accountability and strive for maximum vocational,
financial and all forms of competence.
I would revamp the welfare system. I would require that people
collecting welfare should not be allowed to have anymore
children until they attain a specific level of competence in the
various areas that is necessary for all people to have. Also, I
would require them to work to add value back to the system that
is helping them through tough times.
I believe it is immoral and treacherous of people to expect
other to take care of them without offering something of value
in return.
I think it is immoral to take care of people and enabling them
to stay helpless and I believe that anyone person or
organization who commits this crime is engaging in the evils of
patronizing and condescension
What/who changed my
Life and why:
What:
Ø
During my childhood - my observations of the
irrational and petty behavior from adults and relatives. Such as
domestic violence, racism and sexual predation from relatives.
Ø
My parents divorce.
Ø
Starving as a kid.
Ø
My military experience for both good and bad.
Ø
Experiencing homelessness, hunger and despair.
Ø
My unfortunate lawsuit against the Postal
Service.
Ø
My disappointment with my Union for showing
their willingness to willfully impotent.
Ø
My observations that some people, friends and
families choose not to be organized and stand up for each other
in ways that counts – and suffer the consequences.
Ø
My observations that some people, friends and
families do choose to be organized and stand up for each other
in ways that counts – and they reap the benefits.
Who:
Ø
Besides my Mother being a key role model, two
friends have had the most positive influence. Their influence
has been painful at times… but overall positive.
Ø
One of my best friends Phoenix and the person I
have nicked named Neo.
Ø
Brent Fletcher has been a nice source of
encouragement and the example that a friend Don Watson has shown
me. My friend Tom Jennings that has passed away has shown me
first hand what a living example of courage and sacrifice is –
despite suffering from a few flaws that most humans seem to
possess.
Ø
My friends Debbie Pansire, Paul Harcelrode, Jon
Aberant, John Delaney, Jon and Chris Lynch and too many others
to name have been supportive.
What Bugs Me:
Ø
People that will not do as they say or say as
they do.
Ø
People who prescribe behaviors and strategies
for other people to follow, yet somehow fail to follow their own
advice.
Ø
People that lack intellectual and emotional
integrity.
Ø
People who will perform all sorts of irrational
mental gymnastics to stand behind a belief or statement even
long after all the evidence clearly showing them that they were
in error is past.
Ø
People who get too thick in the thin of things,
i.e. they will focus on the peripheral things and not on the
main rational objectives of any given situation.
Ø
For instances, I hate when people will spend
all of their time and energy on the complexities
macro-economics, ranting about how our corporations, politicians
and countries should do such-and-such, and yet they refuse to
balance their own check books or do the most basic requisite
things for their own life to be in order.
Passions:
Ø
Lovemaking with a woman that I am emotionally
and intellectually connected with.
Ø
Weightlifting, riding motorcycles, skydiving,
scuba diving engaging in mystical events – so long as rational
aspects of my life are not undermined.
Inspirations:
Ø
People who do what they say and say what they
do.
Ø
People that have develop a philosophy for their
life that sets up minimal conflicts of personal values and
methods that help them to engage with other people and the
community that is not destructive.
What Scares Me:
Ø
Irrational people with feelings of entitlement
and a refusal to understand that they need to be accountable for
their behavior and quality of life.
Ø
People who will not sacrifice for things or
goals worth working for.
Ø
People who want to be taken care of or want a
free ride.
Ø
People who want to give up their freedom and
essentially want society and people around them to become their
slaves.
THE EXTENDED BIO & PHILOSOPHY
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