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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Why Are Cavemen White ?

Science is convinced that man evolved from an ancestor shared with modern apes. This is based on a number of bone fragments found in Africa and a DNA analysis that shows chimpanzees and man have approximately 98% common DNA. Of course this is tantamount to saying that the only difference between Helium ( a gas) and Lithium ( a metal) is one electron. Everything in the universe is composed of protons, electrons, and neutrons that are precisely alike but quite obviously how these things are combined makes a great deal of difference, therefore, to conclude man and chimpanzee have a common ancestor on this evidence is really not convincing.

The Bible – given some latitude for poetic license – describes the Big Bang and subsequent development of life on Earth fairly accurately, but it is much less clear when describing the emergence of man. Adam was the first man and Eve the first woman but then there was Lilith who seems to have preceded Eve. Then there was Cain and Abel who somehow acquired wives and the source of these wives is a little mysterious but at the least indicate that there were humans in existence BEFORE Adam and Eve. So how could they be the FIRST humans? The scientific community doesn’t find this to be a problem because they don’t believe anything in the Bible anyway. To them it is just a story and even if it isn’t humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes and there were various branches of humans that simply died out with Homo sapiens being the only survivor. But neither view actually addresses why cavemen are always shown as being white when our alleged nearest relatives apes and chimpanzees are clearly black. While evolution might explain why there are different races, their origin and rationale remains a mystery, but is it?

According to the psychic Edgar Cayce the Earth – as stated in Genesis – was created in phases over billions of years and was filled with animals in various forms. The soul companions of God, given free will – began to visit the Earth and inhabit these animal forms where they could experience the physical aspects of the Earth, including sex. Although initially they could enter and leave these animal forms gradually they became entangled in the physical and this gave rise to the first human form. While this could be viewed as the first human or human-like race, they had no genetic boundaries and their intermixing with the animal kingdom gave rise to the monsters that fill our myths and legends – Satyrs, Centaurs, Nymphs, and the various mixed forms seen in Egyptian Art. So there were some human forms (hominids?) prior to the creation of the first perfect human, which answers the question of where the wives came from as well as where all of these mythical creatures came from. But these were the creatures destroyed by God when the perfect human forms – who had genetic barriers for mixing species – emerged.

Now let us consider the five races of man. Science tells us they evolved from a common ancestor and perhaps they did, but their origins were scattered across the globe according to the metaphysical sources. The White Race originated (evolved?) in what is now Turkey and Iran and spread to the Caucasus and portions of India. The Yellow Race emerged in what is now called the Gobi Desert and Indo-China but the Gobi Desert wasn’t a desert at the time and part to the original land mass where they emerged is now sunken beneath the sea. The Brown Race emerged in what is now known as the Andes region but the larger portion of their source lands is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean. The Black Race is erroneously believed to be the first race even though only the hominids are shown as black while Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon are shown as white. However, the Black Race did emerge in what is now known as the Sudan and Upper Egypt (which is a geographic joke because Upper Egypt is actually Southern Egypt). This leaves the Red Race which has always been an anomaly for science. They are a separate and distinct race who are clearly not related to the Aleuts who are oriental in origin or the Brown Race who occupy South America and Mexico. According to the metaphysical sources the Red Race – the Amerindians – had their origins in Atlantis and migrated to North America where they completed their evolution. It must be remembered that these races did not just appear out of nowhere but evolved over a period of time, but they were always separate and distinct races with a common genetic base. The point here is that Evolution as described by Darwin is essentially correct but not totally. The Five Races of Man are in fact products of Evolution in the sense of adaptation to existing conditions. The contentious point is the creation of Man himself did we evolve from a common root with apes or are apes simply members of the animal kingdom and man was the divine creation?

The Bible says that God created Man in his image and this statement has led to centuries of confusion because man looks into the mirror, sees his reflection, and concludes that God looks like him. Of course this is an erroneous conclusion because God is not in a human form but is a spiritual or possibly even an energy form, not flesh and blood. So God created our spirits, our souls, or the indwelling spirit that fills our bodies. So the manlike form that we see is the product of creation, possibly the result of Evolution and certainly the product of adaptation, but our spirits are without doubt divinely created. The primitive men we see in illustrations are really just speculations and may or may not be true. The reality – according to the metaphysical sources – is that early man was Red, not white or black and the races sprang from the Red race.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

THE RICH, THE POOR, AND THE REFORMERS

Civilization as we know it probably began in the Middle East and probably in Mesopotamia or Egypt. These societies were agrarian with each family farming for itself – essentially a subsistence life. However, very quickly these societies divided into farmers and craftsmen and not long after that came military and governors. Of course the governments and the military were consumers not producers so the society had to support them in the form of taxes. Naturally as the society continued to evolve it began to stratify into classes with the military and officials becoming the upper class, the nobility, and the rich. The point of this obvious historical review is to point out that mankind has always been divided into the rich and the poor and that wealth has never been equally distributed. In fact the very idea of equality much less egalitarianism is a relatively modern concept.

Nevertheless this idea that business, businessmen, and capitalists are evil and that the primary purpose of government is to distribute the wealth of society equally. The underlying principle seems to be that the capitalist has no right to the profits because those profits are earned by the workers he employs, therefore, the revenues generated by the business rightfully belong to the workers. Because these capitalists are reluctant to return the profits to the workers who earned them it is the responsibility of government to seize those profits and redistribute them to the workers. The fact that this has never worked in practice is ignored by these social activists who generally have never actually had to earn a profit or been accountable for the results of their decisions. Currently we see this philosophy being employed by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He has seized the assets of foreign investors, fixed prices, over employed people, and then blames the US and others for the failure of his policies. The standard of living is declining, goods are disappearing, and while prices are fixed the items are only available on the black market. This result was first observed under the Emperor Diocletian. Lessons from history don’t seem to be learned by social activists.

Of course the most famous of these social reformers was Lenin, who corrected the abuses of the aristocracy by slaughtering all who disagreed with him, seizing all methods of production, confiscating all revenues in the name of the state, and eliminating private property. Theoretically this was supposed to take the revenues generated by the workers and return the wealth to the workers equitably. Of course as George Orwell observed in his famous satire “Animal Farm” some animals are more equal than others. In practice the wealth was not distributed equally but along selective party lines and the result was the stratification of society into the rich and the poor – a fact either ignored or denied by the social activists who even today believe Marx was right and Lenin failed to implement Communism correctly. Hugo Chavez seems to be one of those who think Lenin was wrong and Marxism is right. His failures to make Marxism work he attributes to interference by the US.

But these are the obvious actions of these social reformers whose failures are highly visible. However, there are social activists among us today who still believe in the tenets of Marxism but don’t use such inflammatory names; instead they call for social reforms through legislation. This began with the infamous book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. This book was later determined to be a hoax but the damage was done, industries ruined, and DDT was banned. Of course the damage to public health was ignored in favor of the animals which were alleged to be endangered by DDT. This was followed up by various other efforts at social reform and perhaps the most famous was the ban on smoking. Any empirical ties between smoking and cancer remain statistical even though the incidence of lung cancer has remained steady even as the number of smokers declines. But these were just warm-ups for the social reformers because they really are after business and the rich. These are their real targets because they truly believe that the rich have no right to what they earn as long as there are people living in poverty.

They are attacking capitalism as evil and as allowing the wealth to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. They believe that the profits earned by a corporation should be shared with the workers through profit sharing and not distributed to the shareholders – who of course capitalized the business to start with. The idea that it was the capitalists who created and grew the business is ignored. The workers wouldn’t have jobs and there would be no revenues much less profits to share without the capitalists who funded the enterprise initially. These social reformers rarely have actually run a business or have held positions where they were required to earn a profit. Instead, they are opposed to layoffs as a cost cutting measure because in their eyes that is immoral. For them the socialist ideal of employment over efficiency and profit is what should drive industry, not return on investment.

These are the people who are horrified at the “obscene” profits being generated by the oil companies. What is being ignored is the difference between gross revenues and net profits, but this subtlety is ignored in their drive for wealth distribution which is and always has been their objective. This is the whole purpose of the graduated income tax – it is a legislated method to strip the wealth from those who earn it and redistribute it in the form of handouts to those who did not. These are the people who feel that there is something morally wrong with some people being rich while others are poor. They never make the connection between decisions, lifestyle, responsibility and wealth. Those who work hard and make responsible decisions prosper and those who do not suffer the consequences of their bad decisions and efforts to redistribute the wealth to the poor has historically only resulted in increasing the number of poor and lowering the quality of life for everyone. The reality is there are poor and there are rich and there has always been this dichotomy and every effort to form an egalitarian society has failed.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Rich and the Poor

Once again we hear the cries to tax the rich, to make the greedy corporations share their profits, that the number of people living in poverty is criminal and that the government should do something to alleviate the suffering of the poor. These cries to help the poor are delivered with heartfelt emotion and with such passion that it appears that the poor among us have just been discovered. These cries to help the poor take many forms and among them we see concerts held to raise money to save the family farm. We see charitable organizations like Habitat for Humanity building homes for the poor. There are various government programs already in place to help the poor and indigent, there even re-training programs offered by both private industry and the government, yet year after year we hear these cries to help the poor and more needs to be done. Perhaps it is time to step back and conduct a critical review of the situation, but first perhaps a little historical perspective is in order.

From 4000 BC until 1800 AD the larger portion of the population was devoted to agriculture with a small proportion of the population occupying themselves with trades, government, and the military. Effectively the population was divided into the rich and the poor with the greatest majority being the poor. The stark reality is that farming has always been a subsistence living and only the largest farms could generate enough income to allow for expansion, which enlarged the size of the farm and the income. The large farms evolved into estates and the children climbed the ladder of success reaching senior government posts and aristocratic status, the smaller family farms remained as they were and yielded a subsistence living. Occasionally the sons of these subsistence farmers were join the military and rise through the ranks to positions of great power. Obviously it can be concluded that the family farm provides for a solid family structure and solid foundation for nation states, it does not lend itself to wealth generation or career opportunities for the children. It can further be concluded that society naturally separates itself into the rich and the poor or the haves and have-nots. But if some of the have-nots are able to rise just as some of the haves fall into poverty then the people in these categories are not forever fixed there like the Indian caste system, then it can be concluded that a person’s situation in life to some extent is self-determined.

But if the poor have always existed and in all likelihood will continue to exist, why hasn’t someone or some government solved the problem? Well there have been numerous attempts to solve the problem of poverty. The Gracchi in Rome observed that there was a large number of unemployed in Rome who were subsisting on the state while slaves were tending the fields. Their attempts to reduce the number of slaves tending the crops in an effort to provide more employment to the unemployed in the city resulted in the mob killing them. Since that time there have been numerous efforts to reduce poverty and unemployment through various redistribution programs. The French Revolution was an attempt to establish an egalitarian society, which failed and gave rise to Napoleon. Then there was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Marxism which also failed, although there continue to be many determined Marxists who insist that the failure of Communism was not in the philosophy but in the execution. Jack Kennedy established the Peace Corps which was an attempt to alleviate the condition of the poor in various foreign countries. Whether or not this was a successful program can be debated but there is no doubt that the poor throughout the world still exist. Closer to home President Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” and attempted to establish “The Great Society” which was a program fueled by taxation. This was a huge welfare program intended to improve the lives of the poor which collapsed under its own weight and left a legacy of welfare recipients that now span generations.

After all of these failures to help the poor it would seem obvious that wealth redistribution punishes the rich but does not reduce poverty or the number of the poor. However, to those people who know precisely how the rest of us should live and who seem to abound in every time period, they are once again determined to reduce poverty by taking wealth from those who earned it and give it to those who – in their opinion – deserve it even though they have done nothing to earn it. The complaint is that the number of poor people – not necessarily the poverty stricken but just the “poor” is increasing while the wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It is their idea that corporations should be responsible to their employees rather than to their shareholders seems to be one of the cornerstones of those who are seeking to remake the world of economics. The reality is that most of those employees also own stock in the corporations in the form of mutual funds, common stock, or 401(k)’s. The idea that corporate profits should be returned to the investors rather than to the employees in the form of bonuses and profit sharing is fundamental to their view of economics. The reality is that it was the investors who took the risk and it was their capital that allowed the company to create the jobs that those employees hold. To strip the corporations of their profits may give an immediate boost to the employees but in the long term it will result in fewer jobs as the corporation cannot upgrade equipment, expand the business, or even effectively compete. The basic premise in this philosophy is that the objective of business should be employment and not profit. This is the very foundation of socialism and it had always resulted in stagnation, high taxes, and a lower standard of living.

Currently Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela is in the process of redistributing the wealth. He has nationalized business, seized foreign assets, and fixed prices, all in an effort to improve the lot of the poor and improve their standard of living. Of course the result has been just the opposite as goods become scarce, black markets grow, and prices soar. While a laissez faire market may not be necessary for prosperity any plan to redistribute the wealth to alleviate poverty is doomed to failure. The poor are poor for a reason and universally that reason is not the luck of the draw but the result of their decisions. The government might mitigate their suffering but solving the problem of poverty cannot be done by government, the solution is in the hands of the poor themselves.