Finally, Impact!

I write, because I must. It's an inner compulsion. My writing flows out with passion. And while I later go back and check for factual errors. structural issues, problems with syntax and stray typos, I don't generally change anything just to please a particular audience. I do, however, always hope that what I have written will eventually have an impact.

This attitude and its conflict with other ways of thinking about writing and the marketplace is discussed in my last and final CS blog post from 2015.

Publishing for Impact

Often after seeing reviews of my books, I am left with the impression that even if reading the book had been an enjoyable experience, ultimately no impact has been made. Lives have not been changed. Minds have not been touched. The worldview they came in with is intact. And that's okay, but I always hope.

Today, Facebook told me that the fans of Our Lady of Kaifeng  had not heard from me in a while. Not knowing what to post, I scoured the internet for new mentions. I did not find any new reviews, but I found something even better. Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy way was mentioned when discussing the meaning of the word autoist.

Source: Stackexchange

The impact I am having is not literary or political -- but I am making a contribution to the English language!

Why is the word "autoist" necessary to describe someone who does things only for the love of the thing? Because "hedonist" isn't right, and "selfish" or "egoist"  have all those negative connotations, and because while "autistic" is actually closer than you think, it, too, is heavy with misconceptions.

So there you have it: the opposite of an altruist is an autoist, not an egoist. And  altruist, in case you are wondering, is just "social metaphysician" with a positive connotation.  So the opposite of an egoist is a social metaphysician. But if you want to avoid words with negative connotations for the concepts you are discussing, just use autoist and altruist. They are pretty much self-explanatory, if you understand the etymology.

The Ratio of Reviews to Books

My new year's resolution when it comes to publishing is to improve my reviews-to-books-published ratio. This means writing and publishing fewer books and expending more time and energy in getting people to review the books that are already out there,

I am actually thrilled with the reviews I did get this year, so I compiled them into a video and am sharing it here.

"You must be really disciplined," one friend told me, "to keep writing so many books year after year." No, actually it's a lack of self-discipline that makes something like that happen. It's unbridled passion that compels a person to start writing one book in the middle of writing another one. The two Theodosia and the Pirates books happened to me when I had not even finished writing the second half of Our Lady of Kaifeng. How embarrassing!

As an author,  you want to have many more readers than books to your credit, and I think that requires discipline. So in the future I will write less and work harder to recruit readers for the books I have already written.

Why just a few moments ago, I put this New Year's resolution to work when the dogs made a commotion and Bow alerted me to the fact that a car had pulled into my driveway. It was two older Jehovah's witnesses, a man and a woman, and they were lugging Bibles and pamphlets as they walked up to the door.

Lickety-split I went and fetched my own books. Three of them were easiest to get hold of: Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain, and Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain. I've written other books, of course. Those were just the ones that came readily to hand.

"Merry Christmas," I greeted the white haired man and woman opening wide the door, before they even had a chance to knock. "I see you have a lot of information to share with me," I said, eyeing their literature. "But I have a lot of information to share with you, too. I have written these books, and I want to give them to you as a Christmas present."

The man glanced down at the volumes I was proffering. The picture of Theodosia and Jean on board ship did not seem to appeal to him on the cover of the top book. "I don't think I want them right now," he said with a look of displeasure, as if I were offering him something not quite kosher.

"Oh." There was a very brief silence when I considered telling him that I did not want his literature, either, But I decided that would not be polite. So then I just said: "Well, then you have a merry Christmas, anyway." And they said merry Christmas, too, in a half-hearted way, and turned and walked back to their car, dejected.

In terms of handling solicitors, I think that went rather well. But as a seller of books, I have a long, long way to go. Like any other gospel, you just can't give it away!

The books I offered the Jehovah's Witnesses

What Does April 19 Mean to You?

In the United States, April 19 used to be a day to celebrate the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  More recently it has become a day to mourn lost liberty.

19th-century depiction of Battle of Lexington
Source: Wikipedia

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Mt, Carmel Massacre.

http://www.pubwages.com/22/remembering-the-mount-carmel-massacre

How many people need die to preserve liberty generation after generation? That really depends on how many people still remember what liberty is. If we all remember, then no blood need be shed. Even if only most of us remember, liberty can be defended without a single shot being fired. Sometimes all that takes is a symbolic reminder.

At Weihsien, not a single shot had to be fired, because the prisoners believed in the symbol of the American flag on the plane that brought seven men to the camp. It was not those men who freed the internees in the Courtyard of the Happy Way. It was what they stood for.

Excerpt from Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way
Purchase on Amazon

If we all stand together, not a single one of us has to die fighting for freedom. But that is more easily said than done.

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   Related

http://notesfromthepens.blogspot.com/2016/04/cooperating-to-achieve-common-goals.html

Money as Quality Control

Have you ever noticed that the food in the cafeterias of our public schools is not all that different from prison food? Nominally nutritious, it does not taste very good. The same is also true for food in other institutional settings, where people have very little choice. This is why food in hospitals is not very tasty, though it can be quite expensive, and why the food in concentration camps is also pretty bad. And don't even get me started on what they feed chimpanzees in zoos and sanctuaries!

 

A Bowl of Oatmeal Can Be Had At Home

Now, before you stop me and say: "Well, of course, the food in concentration camps isn't very good! It's not supposed to be!" -- Let me tell you, not every concentration camp is intended by the people who run it to be a death camp. Some Camp Commandants really do want to provide their inmates with humane and even happy circumstances. But there is something about the concentration camp setting that makes it impossible, even when the inmates themselves are preparing the food they will eat. And while we might be tempted to say that this is just the nature of cafeterias, that is demonstrably not true.

Contrast your average institutional cafeteria -- school, hospital, geriatric nursing home -- with your favorite cafeteria-style restaurant. Why is it that the food is bad in the former and good in the latter? It's not so much the price, but the fact that diners have a choice. We vote with our money, rather than in some other way, and every vote is a veto. The votes are not averaged out. There is no majority rule. We do not collectively decide which restaurant we are all going to patronize. Each of us takes our small wad of cash and decides for himself. And that makes a huge difference!

Each of us gets to decide whether we eat out or not, when we eat out, how often we eat out, and where we choose to eat. The money that we use on our dining choices does not merely pay for the food and the service -- it also serves as quality control. Take away the right to say no, to decide not to eat there, and while there still will be food on the table at first, it will not be as good -- nor will the service be adequate.

Excerpt from Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way

The problem with public as opposed to private cafeterias is not redistribution of resources. It is that  marketplace voting is no longer operating as quality control. At Weihsien, people could still vote who the head cook would be, but they made that decision collectively. Individuals had lost their veto. They could no longer decide to take their business elsewhere, because to allow them to do so might cause somebody who is not as smart or farsighted to go without food altogether. Even when the choices are more varied than that, the fewer choices people have, the less likely their choices are to function as quality control.

Of course, it's not always clear what has happened. For instance, in the average American school cafeteria, people can still bring food from home and turn down the cafeteria food. But did you know that once most of the children are eating cafeteria food, some entirely subsidized by the government while others still paying a fee for their share, the votes of the children who do not like the cafeteria food count for considerably less than in an open market? It is this kind of creeping change that has reduced the quality of the food in the American supermarket, as well. When free market-style choice is coupled with forced choices that are legally introduced into the system, we don't always see clearly how we have been robbed of our veto. Many food choices that we might like to make today, such as buying unpasteurized milk, have been driven underground, where people must pay cash. Yet the people on public assistance with food stamps are becoming a bigger and bigger market share in the supermarket. When producers of valuable food are forced to sell it not on the open market, and a large percentage of consumers are forced to buy only in the supermarket, the food in the supermarket no longer represents our free choice. In those areas where a majority of shoppers are not there by choice, the quality of the food in the store is considerably reduced. Even liberals have noticed that food in poor neighborhood supermarkets is not as good. But do they understand why? It is because the free market has been disrupted there.

When people have no choice, they cannot exercise a veto on bad food. And that's why a lot of food available in the store today isn't as good as it used to be. This is not a failure of the free market, but rather evidence that the market is not free.

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         RELATED ARTICLES

http://www.pubwages.com/42/my-experiences-with-socialized-healthcare

http://hubpages.com/politics/Chocolate-Under-Communism

Passover and Easter: Celebrations of Rebellion Against Authority

It's that season. Everything is in flower. The birds are chirping, and two of the major religions have a holiday that falls very close to the vernal equinox. So is it all about flowers and springtime? You would think so, if you saw the Easter decorations or went to an Easter egg hunt.

My Hyacinths in bloom

But though it's true that Easter is named for a pagan holiday about springtime, rebirth and fertility, two of the world's major religions celebrate acts of rebellion against oppressive authority -- successful and unsuccessful rebellions-- at this time.

The single daffodil that bloomed by my lagoon this year

In Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, though the story is set in China during World War II in a concentration camp run by the Japanese, some of the characters are influenced by the Judeo-Christian symbolism of the Passover and Easter scenarios. Marah Fallowfield, for instance, sees the Camp Commandant as a sort of Pharaoh whom she asks to let her people go. She also warns him of the consequences, should he fail to do so. But Commandant Izu is working from another playbook, and he eventually has Marah crucified. What is ironic about the good faith, literal belief of these innocent characters is that the vast majority of people who celebrate these springtime holidays do not see them as celebrations of rebellion at all. Most devout Christians and Jews understand all their holidays as ritualized submission to authority! That right there is the real conflict in my new novel.

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Historically, there is a process whereby people forget. Successful religions are founded by rebellious visionaries, but they are kept alive only if those in power find them useful.

For instance, while Passover is about slaves rebelling against their masters in Egypt, the big focus for most believers is on the supernatural miracles and the absolute necessity of total submission to the priesthood and the payment of  taxes in gold to a particular god and not some other god. Though the new testament is about a man who called himself a "messiah" -- which is another name for the King of Israel -- and who was crucified for failing to pledge allegiance to the puppet king installed by the Romans -- most Christians put the emphasis on the need for ultimate submission to their God in the form of Church membership, including paying a tithe. So while the holiday celebrates rebellion from rulers who tax people, those who take it seriously do not think they should follow the example and also rebel. They believe they should submit.

In the same way, when Americans celebrate the 4th of July, which is the time when they declared their independence from the British, but had not yet won it in an armed rebellion, most  see the patriotic holiday not as a time to renew the fight for liberty, but to show submission to the Federal government -- which is much more oppressive than the British were in 1775-6.

Springtime seems to be a natural time to celebrate liberation. Coming up soon is April the 19th, an American holiday about a struggle for liberation from great Britain in 1775, but oppression of Americans by the ATF in 1993. There's just something about spring in the air that makes people long for freedom -- and other people eager to crush that longing in the bud.

A wasp on my peach blossoms

Some of the most successful films at the box office these days are about teenagers rebelling against oppressive governments -- The Hunger Games and The Divergent Series --  but there seems to be a real disconnect when it comes to understanding what real oppression would look like.  It would look more like the British in 1775 or the Romans in the time of Christ or today's Bureau of Land Management hounding ranchers, and a lot less like some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland in which people have to fight each other to the death on a daily basis. Even in the Courtyard of the Happy Way. most of the daily life was undramatic and ordinary, and people just tried to keep their nose clean and do their jobs. Oppressors want you to be happy. When people chant slogans learned straight from the Nazi death camps, such as: "When we're no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." --  they are unwittingly giving in to oppression. By all means, we should change ourselves for the better, but only if it helps to change the situation. If the situation is intolerable, we do not adapt to accept it as normal.

Assimilation is the Natural Result of Tolerance

There is one sure way to eradicate an ethnic minority, but it is the complete opposite of what most people think. It is not through persecution, discrimination, harsh measures or intolerance that differences between and among people disappear. Distinct ethnic identities merge with the dominant culture exactly to the degree that they are shown tolerance and kindness and given an equal opportunity to thrive.

One example of how this works is seen in this video by Charlie Hyman about the Kaifeng Jews.

Here is an excerpt from Hyman's narration in the video:

"Treated as an untrustworthy community by the Yuan, the Jews of Kaifeng had their so-called Golden age during the reign of the Ming,...It is during this prosperous age that the Jews underwent extensive Sinification.... By 1489, the Kaifeng community matched their neighbors in dress, language and daily life... The Jews of Kaifeng adopted the practice of ancestor worship. ...They melded the teachings of Confucius and traditional Judaism... This vigorously autonomous group was almost completely absorbed into the greater Chinese community by the process of Sinification...  The key to this development was tolerance. Kaifeng citizens accepted their Jewish neighbors as equal. .

 ..Various dynasties have desperately tried to assimilate myriad cultures, with decidedly mixed results. Yet in a situation in which the Chinese authorities made little attempt to Sinify a populace, this foreign group became completely Chinese in almost every way. Simple acceptance and societal integration was all it took for the community to abandon their previous ways of life and essentially become Han....One has only to look at the emphatically independent Jews of pre-war Poland and Russia to know how little Jews assimilate when treated as the Other. But because the Ming never thought to hate and fear them, today in the streets of Kaifeng, the descendants of Jews and the descendants of ethnic Han walk side by side, indistinguishable. It begs the question: if China had treated the people of their nomadic frontier as equal, instead of as barbarians, would those 56 ethnic groups have dwindled one by one until only the Han remained?"

Had Hitler chosen to treat Jews in Europe as equals, he would more surely have eradicated Judaism than by setting up extermination camps. The surest way to erase differences between people is kindness. And the surest way to keep ethnic minorities strong is to set up barriers and build walls and establish ethnic quotas, as in affirmative action.

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 Related Reading

http://hubpages.com/literature/ISRAEL-The-Two-Halves-of-the-Nation

https://www.amazon.ca/Israel-The-Two-Halves-Nation/dp/093824514

Bullying the Thrifty

Years ago, I read a children's book by Judy Blume, called Blubber. It was a book about bullying. And I was disappointed in it, because it did not vindicate the obese little girl who was bullied. It merely showed the people doing the bullying that what they did was not "nice".

The copy of the book that I read had this cover.

My disappointment need not reflect on the value of the book to other people. I was just hoping for a different book, one that looked at things from the point of view of the person being bullied, who had some secret virtue that no one was aware of, and I wanted the turning point to be when that virtue was revealed. But Judy Blume never showed how the bullied girl felt about anything. Instead, she described in detail the revulsion that even "nice" girls in the class had for not only the person of the obese girl, but also her character: she was phlegmatic, she had no sense of humor about her problems and she did not stand up for herself, making her an easy target. I learned a lot about normal people and how they think when reading this book, but I was disappointed that there was no turn-around, no empathy and no appreciation of a different point of view. In the end, the nice girls decided not to bully, because they did not like how they felt about themselves when they were being vindictive, but not because they had learned to admire and respect the victim of their bullying. Deep down inside, the main character still felt the victim deserved to be bullied, but she now felt it was beneath her to engage in bullying. To my way of thinking, this book represents the "Kindness Movement."

A person who has been bullied isn't looking for kindness. What is needed are honest, smart  people --  people who are perceptive enough to see what it is that each of us has to offer. Victims don't want charity. They crave fairness. Bending over backwards to be kind, ordinary people miss the virtue behind the presumed sin.

In Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, Bertha Higginbotham is a character who resembles the victim in Blubber.  She comes into the camp morbidly obese, and even after losing a lot of weight on the Weihsien diet, she is still quite heavy, when everyone else is emaciated. Jealous of her good health, people accuse her of stealing sugar, on the mere circumstantial evidence of her weight. That would be like accusing your co-worker who earns the exact same salary as you do of theft, merely based on the fact that he has savings, while you do not. People do this every day, and nobody thinks anything of it. Who will stand up for the thrifty? In my book, it was Father Horvath.

When politicians suggest that we tax the rich, they are not going after corrupt people who have stolen from others. They advocate taxing  anyone with savings, and they rely on the hatred of the masses for the financial Bertha Higginbothams of this world, who may seem unattractive, but who have hidden virtues. 

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Spiritual Impulses and Common Sense

What is the difference between being religious and being spiritual?

Religious people follow received doctrine, often based on a holy text that is then interpreted for them by clerics and priests. They may never have seen a god face to face or heard the voice of a demon or experienced a miracle, and usually they don't ever expect to do so. But they believe -- or profess to believe -- what they have been told by religious authorities.

A spiritual person has direct experiences of a spiritual nature. He sees visions, hears voices and receives messages directly from the spirit world. His holy knowledge originates in his own mind, and he is more likely to find himself at odds with authority. That is why genuine visionaries are so often martyred.

Religious people by and large are non-limerent, Spiritual people experience limerence both as a personal unidirectional attachment and as a general flow of ideas. They do not study; they are inspired. They do not "work at a relationship"; they fall in love. They do not memorize doctrine -- they receive epiphany.

In Our Lady of Kaifeng, Marah Fallowfield is spiritual, though non-religious. Ted Sesame is religious,  but decidedly un-spiritual. The conflict between their points of view can be seen  most clearly in this scene:

Sesame was cross. “Fine. Then here's your answer. Mr.

Ch'en is a deranged dope fiend. If he thinks that we can build a

whole airport for American planes to land just outside our

camp, without the Japanese noticing, well, he's completely

insane.”

“And besides,” Gilkey said. “we have over fourteen

hundred people here, most of whom are either elderly, women

or children. There is no way that we could make any sort of

exodus from this place without the majority getting killed or

dying of exhaustion en route.”

“In Exodus there were women and children and infants

and elderly people. And there were no airplanes or airports.

And they got out okay,” Marah said. “They went on foot, and

all they had to eat was some unleavened bread and gold that

they stole from their neighbors. Which you would think would

not be any good for purposes of ordering food in the desert.”

“Well, yeah, but they had manna dropping from heaven

and Moses to part the red sea for them,” Sesame replied.

“And we don't?” she asked. “We have a camp full of

saints and martyrs, social workers and philosophers and

clergymen, and nobody can perform miracles? Can't Eric Liddell

part the China Sea for us? And you, Mr. Gilkey, who are so

good at creating extra space just by redistributing rooms,

couldn't you work a loaves-and-fishes miracle for us, too?”

“This is real life, Marah, not the Bible,” Sesame said.

“So you don't actually believe!” she cried. Here before

her stood a professed Christian who said he believed in the

literal transubstaniation of matter in the Eucharist, and here

was she, the staunch atheist, and yet he had faith in nothing but

compromise when it came to practical reality, whereas she

believed in miracles ...

People with common sense are rarely spiritual.  Visionaries are usually low on common sense. Great religious movements are built on the hard work of plodding multitudes with common sense, but no vision. But without the visionaries, how would they ever get started? And once the people with common sense take over the faith, how can the vision be maintained?

 Kipling had an apt verse on this head:

He that hath a Gospel

To loose upon Mankind

Though he serve it utterly—

Body, soul and mind—

Though he go to Calvary

Daily for its gain—

It is His Disciple

Shall make his labour vain.

--Rudyard Kipling

Beware of the false spiritualist, though. That would be the person who tells you that spirituality leads to a calming effect and will make you reconciled to the status quo. Such people are soap peddlers. No real spiritual leader ever had as his goal the perpetuation of the status quo. Visions don't work that way!

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The Earthquake in Taiwan

Yesterday, I was cleaning off my desk, and I ran across some souvenirs from my time in Taiwan. These were not the kind of souvenirs that you collects as a tourist, but just things that accumulate in your life when you live in a country for a while. You stock up on stamps, and then you never have occasion to use them all up.

I was in Taichung, Taiwan in 1999, when the terrible earthquake took place. My daughter was two months old at the time. The earthquale itself did not hurt us -- we came out of it completely unscathed  -- but dealing with rationing of electricity and water afterwards was pretty tough.

In my desk while cleaning up yesterday, I found a scrap of paper from an English language newspaper at the time giving details of the rationing plan so that we could know what to expect.

The odd thing about my urge to clean out my desk yesterday and digging out that scrap of newspaper is that it all happened right before there had been another big earthquake, this time further south, that day.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/asia/taiwan-earthquake/index.html

A former student of mine who is now in Kaohsiung reported safe on Facebook. There was no facebook at the time when we were there, and it took a while for my family in the US to learn that we were safe.

If you want to read a fictionalized account of my experiences before, during and after the earthquake, you can read it here:

The Once and Future Nanny

The new earthquake has occurred just in time for Chinese New Year, making it hard for people in Taiwan to travel home for their celebrations. I hope it all turns out better in the aftermath of the quake for the people there right now. An earthquake can be a terrible thing, and fatal to some,  but the real suffering for fortunate survivors happens afterwards when power and water are cut off for hours and days at a time.

Though I have never been through a war or the rationing that it can entail,  I did draw on some of my experiences in the Taiwan earthquake for the feel of my forthcoming novel, Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way.

In the short term, disasters have a way of making us lose weight and become more fit. I remember how much better I looked after having to haul groceries, including water, up nine flights of stairs to my apartment for a week. Of course, my new-found fitness did not last. As soon as power was restored, I started using the elevator again.

My daughter and I after the earthquake

Here's hoping that all the babies are plump and healthy in Taiwan today, and that if any of the mothers caring for them lose weight, it will all be a temporary improvement in their health, and not a permanent hardship.

Autoism versus Altruism

[This is a Vlog post, so the text below is a transcript of the video.]

A lot of times when people talk about the virtue of selfishness, they do it in the context of having to defend themselves from people who say that there's an unequal earning capacity and maybe this person does not deserve to earn as much as they do, and maybe, in fact, they should contribute more or give back more or give back to society. And it's the Ayn Randian concept of the virtue of selfishness that says: "No, We don't have to give back. I mean, after all, we haven't taken anything away from anyone. This is what I earned, and so it's okay."

All right, then. Yes, there is that aspect of the virtue of selfishness, but there's a lot more to it, and if you read The Fountainhead, and you see how Roark stands up for his architectural ideals, and how he turns down good, paying jobs just because he does not want to alter his design, then you see that there is a great deal more to the virtue of selfishness than just doing that which pays the bills or earns you a lot of money. It has to do with integrity. And if it's okay to turn down work that you really need in order to pay your rent, then aren't you being, perhaps, what other people might consider a saint?

So what is a saint? Is a saint an unselfish person, because he doesn't consider his own profit on the marketplace? Is a saint somebody who throws his life away -- somebody who ends up on the cross, maybe, for his beliefs? Or is a saint someone who looks inwardly to determine what is valuable, rather than outwardly?

In Our Lady of Kaifeng, Father Horvath has this idea of autoism rather than altruism. Now, of course, the term autism had not yet been coined or was in the process of being coined, and he wasn't aware of it, so he called it autoism, because he simply etymologically deduced that the opposite of an altruist would be an autoist. And he tells Marah that she's a saint because she's an autoist -- because she listens to her inner voice rather than to the voice of society. And that's where sainthood comes into play.

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It's All About the Beef

A man  by the name of LaVoy Finicum was shot dead by the Federal authorities, while he had his hands up. The Bundy Militia has stood down from their takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon. And life goes on.

One side will quote you Bible verses as if they were the constitution, and sections from the constitution as if they were Bible verses. The other side is laughing and saying: well, how did you think it was going to end? Did you really think you could go up against the big, bad Federal government with a few guns and some Bible verses and the constitution and win?

Even my most libertarian friends have said to me: that is just like asking for war. Yes. that's what it is. And so was the American Revolution. The only difference is: then, those fighting for freedom had the support of those who were not. Today, asking for war is not really practical, because no one will stand up and be counted with you, and they will just say you deserved what you got when it happens.

So here's what I really think: no matter who you are, right wing or left, Bible-thumper or unbeliever, strict constructionist of the constitution or a follower of unfettered democracy: It's all about the beef. It's about your food supply. It's about the price of meat in the supermarket. It's about that steak dinner you like to eat, or the hamburgers you buy at the fast food place. And even if you are a sworn vegan, it's going to affect you where it really hurts: in your pocket book and your belly. There will be economic repercussions for all of us when those ranchers give up and close off their businesses, and go on unemployment and welfare, with their hat in their hands, like everybody else. It's not just on our heads -- we will feel it in our stomachs.

Should the Federal government own that land? No, they shouldn't. The constitution does not allow that.  But who pays attention to the constitution? That document has been pretty much ignored since before the Civil War. It was a good idea, but the people will not fight for it, so it's very, very dead.

However, city people need to realize that when they allow the authorities to destroy the independent farmer and rancher, they have only themselves to blame when there is nothing but factory produced food on the grocery store shelves. Do you want free range chickens and grass fed beef? Where do you think they come from? Not a collective farm run by hippies, I assure you. And not from the government.

This is just like what happened all those many years in the concentration camp near Weihsien in Shandong Province. When the prisoners did not stand up for the Chinese farmers who were shot for selling them eggs, they lost their egg supply. It's that simple.

You don't need to like the farmer or rancher who raises your food. You do not need to believe in what he believes or go to the same church or use the same jargon. But when he goes down, you need to get ready for very hard times at the dinner table.

Socialism is Favoring Relationships Over Individuals

The latest news from China is that a "circuit breaker" has been applied to their stock market to keep it from crashing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-04/chinese-stocks-in-hong-kong-extend-annual-slump-as-yuan-declines

In other words, the "needs"  of society to have a stable stock market have been placed above the rights of individual stockholders to sell or buy as they please. That in a nutshell is the entire dilemma of looking at everything from a social perspective. How can society be more important than the people of which it is composed?

I made a second book trailer for Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way that addresses this issue.

This trailer is about the personal and spiritual issues addressed in the novel, but if you are an economist or a political science major, don't let this put you off. The issues are all the same, whether the relationship in question is one between two people or among all the people in a country or region. What is paramount, the individual or his relationships?

Over and over again, we are told that relationships are more important than individuals. For instance, yesterday, I saw a TED video that claimed people are happiest if they have stable relationships, not when their personal achievements are at their best. In other words, if you spend your entire life loafing on the couch, but your sweetheart is right there with you, that is better than being a successful athlete, businessman,  hunter-gatherer, explorer,  artist, writer, scientist, farmer, rancher, privateer, craftsman, silversmith or shopkeeper.

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness

Why do you suppose those people are trying so hard to sell us on being low-achievers with good social connections? Could it be because that is what socialism is all about? People who work in factories as automatons and people who work in offices as bureaucrats have this in common: that they try to solace themselves for their less than creative day-to-day life by having good personal relationships outside work.

But, of course, these relationships cannot be based on admiration, respect or hero worship, so then the connection itself is elevated to a place of worship over and above the individuals. People sacrifice their own desires in order to keep the relationship aloft. They put in circuit breakers  to prevent themselves and their partners from getting out of the relationship --  for the sake of the relationship and against the best interests of those involved.

I once had a friend in England who was a big fan of 1984 and Animal Farm.  I  convinced him he should read Atlas Shrugged. But all he liked out of that huge book was the story of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.  He thought the whole rest of the book should have been trimmed off as excess. He especially did not see what the point was of recounting Dagny Taggart's love life. To him, that was entirely spurious.

Unless we understand that the minimal relationship -- one consisting of only two people -- is a model for all our more complex relationships, we won't be able to fix the problem of putting society before the individual.  That's why the relationships in Rand's books are important.  That's also why unrequited love needs to be the model for all love.  Love precedes the relationship. It does not derive from it. The person comes first. The relationship is built on individual feelings,  not the other way around.  Society could not exist if it were not for the people. No god could survive without worshipers. If we all die of starvation, where does that leave society?

The Nature of Happiness

In our current culture, we have two main views on happiness, which are diametrically opposed;

1. You must stay in the present moment, forgetting all about the past and the future, in order to enjoy true happiness. A representative article belonging to this school can be found here, in a review of  a book by Alan Watts:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/06/alan-watts-wisdom-of-insecurity-1/


2. A meaningful life, one based on working in the present to secure future rewards, not necessarily for oneself, but for others or for abstract ideals such as knowledge, love or civilization, is more sustaining than the momentary happiness that comes from focusing on the present.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-happy-life-may-not-be-a-meaningful-life/


Both views are widely accepted, so much so that I see the same people posting memes sometimes in favor of the one view and sometimes in favor of the other, seemingly unaware that they contradict each other. And for those of them who really live in the present moment, with no concern for consistency, maybe it really does work that way!

As a believer in the "pursuit of happiness" rather than its immediate possession, I may seem to fall into the second school, that of Victor Frankl, the holocaust survivor, but I really don't buy into his embracing suffering for its own sake. For instance, if you believe in the future, why would you sacrifice your young pregnant wife to your elderly parents? Even without the holocaust, the parents eventually would have died. Living for the future means saving the young, so they can transmit your  culture and your genes on into a possibly limitless future.  None of my grandparents stayed behind to take care of their parents. All of them made sure that their children survived, which is why I and my  daughter even exist. This to me seems to be the productive way of living for the future.

But on the other hand, it is very difficult to simply give way to sensual pleasure -- eating, procreation, taking care of young -- without thinking what those things mean for the future. The emptiness of drug induced pleasure comes precisely from the fact that this natural signal that one is on the right path to a sustainable future has been hijacked out of its biological context. A drug high, unlike a natural high, is lulling one into a sense of happiness in the present moment without any positive implications for the future.

In nature, every sensual pleasure is a stimulus created to guide the living being onto a productive path.

http://www.pubwages.com/49/who-are-the-flowers-for

Often religious highs are made to mimic drug highs and to create in the mind an elation that is at variance with natural stimulus. So a person meditating or praying can cause the depression and pain of being in a hopeless situation in the present to dissipate and be replaced by a pleasure that comes not so much from anticipating a future reward, but from experiencing that reward in the present moment. That is the true danger of religion as an opiate for the masses -- not the promise of reward after death, but the granting of a reward now that prevents people from taking positive action to change the present.

In Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way the Camp Commandant wanted everyone in the camp to be happy, so that they could not only survive their internment but also thrive under his direction. In order to make this dream of his come true, he gave people flower seeds and encouraged them to put on plays and concerts, to sweeten their captivity.

Marah Fallowfield, on the other hand, did not want everyone to be lulled into a present happiness. She wanted them to fully experience their momentary suffering, so that they would rise up and rebel. She found happiness from being truly present to the evils of the moment, while plotting a brighter future.

Sometimes we are deluded when we plan for a future that never comes. Sometimes we are deluded by momentary pleasure that is ultimately meaningless. But actual happiness does not come from pretty flowers or pleasant odors or soft caresses. It comes from a past, present and future that are integrated together as a whole. Happiness does not require us to  bypass death.  Death is inevitable. Happiness  means making sure that what we value outlives us, whether that is our children, our handiwork or our ideas.

http://www.pubwages.com/33/what-is-immortality-and-how-can-i-get-some

A Trailer for Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way

I recently finished writing Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way. It is now undergoing the usual editing process, and it will not be available for sale until next year.

The issues in this novel are intertwined between personal and global concerns. But one question that we try to resolve is: what makes someplace a concentration camp? Is it it just that you're not allowed to leave? What other characteristics do concentration camps tend to have?

The following trailer deals with this question.

Pearl Harbor Day

Yesterday, I finished the manuscript for the second half of Our Lady of Kaifeng. And today marks the 74th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

There are many things that people don't agree about concerning World War II. But you would think that a seemingly objective fact, like when Pearl Harbor happened, would be incontrovertible. For someone like Marah, talking to her mother after the war, however, even the date was a point of disagreement.

Everything depends on your point of view. Even the date when something happened. Maybe if more people were able to shift their perspective, then we would have a lot fewer disagreements.

A Fallen Leaf

Sometimes, at the very moment when a leaf falls off a tree in autumn, a great gust of wind sweeps it up, and it appears to fall upward, instead of down. This is the same way we seem to be uplifted when we fall in love. Only later do we realize that we are falling, sinking into the ground.

When I think of that aspect of falling in love,  Luna Tsai, a character in Our Lady of Kaifeng , reminds me of the song "A Fallen Leaf".

What seems like the warm affection of an autumn breeze can be the cruel blow of inevitable death and decay.

But you would never know this watching the leaves as they fall by ones and twos from the sky, far above the tree from which they sprang.

They seem to be flying so high, they could never touch the ground again.

On the Causes of Inflation

"Just before winter sets in, the butterflies are most active."

"Can anyone deny the beauty of a butterfly? Or of the flowers on which it depends?"

Those are the words of Commandant Izu, a character in my work in progress, Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way. 

Does observing the beauty of the seasons help diminish suffering in the present? Do governments nudge those under their power by giving them things or taking things away? Should we be thankful for what we have, and if we are very full of gratitude for the little we have, will this ensure that we are compliant and do not rebel?

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/obamas-effort-to-nudge-america-000276

Of course, inflation is a massive government engineered nudge to force people to spend, rather than save money. But is that  merely a psychological manipulation? Can a single, isolated consumer resist the need to spend more on staple goods once the currency is inflated? Does scarcity cause prices to go up? Can rationing keep prices down?  Is the price of food higher because of inflation, or do we cause inflation ourselves when we spend more and more on the same foods? If we tried hard enough, could we just refuse to spend the money?

If the intended effect of food rationing is a fixed price on goods, can this intended effect ever be achieved, given that for every forbidden fruit, there exists a black market, where it can be purchased, if the price is right?

Related Posts

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-purpose-and-effect-of-rationing-in.html

False Claims About My Books

Some charlatan is trying to sell Our Lady of Kaifeng for over a hundred dollars, claiming it was released in 1900. Marah Fallowfield was born in 1900. I, on the other hand, was not yet in existence and hence could not have released the book back then.

The false claim is right above the blue box -- "released 1900"

Several of my books are being offered at inflated prices, and I can do nothing about that. However, please be advised that the more expensive copies are not being sold by me, and that any bizarre claims about these being antiques or having miraculous healing powers are also not coming from me. It is a free country, so if you would prefer to pay $121.37 for a book that you could buy for $10.99 new from the author, then at least know that you are not buying an antique or a magical time-traveling edition. Neither the book nor the author existed in 1900, and the main character was only just born then.  You could buy ten books for that amount of money. But it's all up to you. I believe in a free market.

FDR and Executive Order 6102

The ways of advertising are rather peculiar, and we sometimes get  ironic results. This morning, as I was looking at my other blog, Notes from the Pens, an advertisement from the United States Mint appeared in the left sidebar, reading: "Celebrate the Life of FDR." They were trying to sell me gold coins.

It is true that I have been researching FDR. It is also true that I have been researching FDR in conjunction with the word "gold'. But a gold coin commemorating the life of FDR is the last thing I would want to buy. On April 5, 1933 by Executive Order 6102, Franklin Delano Roosevelt confiscated everyone's gold and made the possession of gold coins a criminal offense.

When you make possession of gold coins a criminal offense, then only criminals can possess gold coins. Enter Bonnie and Clyde. Although their crime spree predated the Executive Order by FDR and involved robbing small stores and gas stations, they are best remembered as bank robbers. That is because, whatever their own motives may have been, people were looking for heroes to save them from the tyrant in the White House.

Wanted poster from FBI site

In my upcoming novel, Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, the protagonist, Marah Fallowfield, hero worships Bonnie and Clyde.

When Marah is interned in China in 1943 in a Japanese-run camp for enemy aliens, and she complains about not being allowed to buy food on the free market on pain of being shot, the Camp Commandant gently explains to her that President Roosevelt has instituted food rationing in America, too. She may have been stripped of her civil liberties by the Japanese incarceration, but were she to be repatriated in the United States, she might not have any more rights restored to her. That is because, during World War II, there was not a country on either side the conflict that was not in effect socialist and under totalitarian rule.

Look for Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way on Amazon by January of 2016.