Shock: We’re Dying From It
October 27, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · Leave a Comment
“Shock,” said my instructor, “is what we all die from. No matter what kind of injury, sickness, or stress the body has gone through, in the end the cause of death is shock.”
This was in the middle of a ten-day Wilderness First Responder Course in which we had been learning to splint broken bones with sleeping pads and webbing, how to set a broken arm, stop blood flow, and treat heart attacks. But shock was the one of the most important of things to learn how to cure.
Why? Because once you go into shock your survival rate rapidly plummets, and once it reaches a certain point there is no going back. A broken bone can be set, but there isn’t a way to pull someone out of serious shock.
We have heard of culture shock. It’s when you enter a new country or circumstance and where the social rules have changed to such an extent that you find yourself not knowing how to behave or what is going on. But there is a comfort — uou can go home, back to a place where things are familiar and the shock will leave.
Future Shock
But there is a new kind of shock: future shock. This is when events, terms, technology, and nations are changing at such a rapid rate that we can’t keep up with it. We are left confused and unsure about how to behave.
Alvin Toffler wrote his book Future Shock in 1970. Reading it today he sounds like a prophet. His predictions of what the future would be like for those living in these times, and his concerns for the stability of our nation and communities, are almost dead on.
The term “future shock” was coined by Toffler in an article written for Horizon in 1965. He then spent the next five years studying the idea and came away with “two disturbing convictions”:
First, that “future shock” is a real sickness from which increasingly large numbers are already suffering. This is not just an idea; it is felt by everyone but recognized by few. Children that have grown up in an ever-changing society don’t know a difference and yet still don’t know how to adapt.
Secondly, Toffler was “…appalled by how little is actually known about adaptivity. In the most rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been exposed…we remain pitifully ignorant of how the human animal copes.” We don’t know how to adapt. Technology goes out of date faster then we can keep up. Definitions of education, work, religion, morality, sex, country, and patriotism change. With this continual shift we are left preparing for the future before it comes. The future is crashing upon us before the present is even lived.
“Many of us have a vague ‘feeling’ that things are moving faster. Doctors and executives
alike complain that they cannot keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Hardly a meeting or conference takes place today without some ritualistic oratory about ’the challenge of change.’ Among many there is an uneasy mood — a suspicion that change is out of control. Not everyone, however, shares this anxiety. Millions sleepwalk their way through their lives as if nothing had ever changed, and as if nothing ever will.”
Change is the constant and increasing dilemma in our lives. No matter what direction change is taking us the rate of change itself is astounding. And it is only in our understanding of it and our ability to adapt that will keep us from shock of the future.
We have the ability now to channel change. What we say, think and believe can impact literally thousands within moment, thanks to technology. Days when it took generations or thousands of years for an idea to take hold are gone as information and communications fly through cyberspace.
What does all this change mean for our society as a whole? What about the structure of nations, families, jobs and science? Will we be able to reinvent ourselves for the future, before the futures comes?
In 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote, “In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collisions with the future. Citizens of the worlds richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.”
That future is here, and it has come to soon. But it need not put us into shock, we can reinvent the way we do things and lead out in the direction change is taking us.
Recovering From Shock: Three Treatment Steps
1. Embrace It.
The first step to adapting to future shock is acknowledging the rapidity of change. Sleepwalking through life will only put us further into shock. Change is exciting, it is an opportunity and it is happening whether we like it or not. Embrace it. Enjoy this age and take full advantage of the opportunities it presents. Enjoy the journey and don’t fall into believing nothing is happening. Instead, believe that anything can happen.
2. Reinvent, Reinvent, Reinvent
We may not be able to control the change that is taking place or the effect it is having on our lives, but we can reinvent the way we do things. Attempts at this have taken place with the ever-increasing fashion of “going green.” Going back isn’t an option; going forward and reinventing is. The way we do things from how we look at money to how we build houses, get an education, vote, and use energy can have astounding impact on the direction the future is taking us.
Taking control over everyday products such as food, energy, entertainment and leisure will have a huge impact on our ability to handle change. We are victims of change when we are reliant upon outside sources that feed, clothe and house us. By using our time and resources to take more control over the future of our lives we will be directing what kind of change impacts us. This isn’t a call to live in the woods unconnected with the rest of the world. It is simply an idea that perhaps we can limit future shock by limiting the outsourcing of our everyday lives.
3. Get Educated.
It has been said that to be educated is not to know everything worth knowing but to be able to find it and sift it out from everything that is not. Educate yourself in technology, current events, and sciences. Educate yourself about the future. But also educate yourself in the past. The understanding of history and philosophy will make the current rapidity of events understandable. Education gives us tools to be able to see patterns in our own day and prepare for it and the understanding of where ideas and thoughts come from and their validity. Education will be one of the greatest tools to avoid future shock.
As Alvin Toffler wrote, “Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological
abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, and progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments.”
Future shock is here. Do you have the treatment?
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Declaring National P.O.O.P. Day
October 4, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 3 Comments
My three year-old daughter Liberty is in the “potty talk” stage, where she finds every excuse to relate everything she says to feces and/or flatulation, including the Pledge of Allegiance.
She recently recited the Pledge and ended it with, “…with liberty and justice for poop.”
At first I laughed. Then, as I realized how relevant her words were, it wasn’t funny anymore.
The “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” passed by Congress and signed by King George on October 3, 2008, was Washington taking a $700 billion dump on the head of every American.
I found another meaning in Libby’s innocent words: In a gross act of injustice to ordinary American’s, Washington thought it expedient to dole out “justice” to the poop perpetrated by the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and idiotic corporations. America is now the land where stupid crap pulled by the big guys gets tossed to the little guys; the aristocracy get the protection of the government at the expense of common Americans.
And to think that they pulled it off in the name of the little guy — you know, “Main Street.”
My little carefree Libby, innocent and precious beyond words, has no idea what landed on her, her children, her grandchildren and beyond that Friday of infamy, the day where America sold the last remnants of her soul to the devil of expediency.
National P.O.O.P. Day
In honor of my daughter Liberty and every other innocent American who will be scraping Washington’s and Wall Street’s poop off their lives for generations, I hereby declare October 3rd to be National P.O.O.P. Day. The acronym P.O.O.P. stands for:
- P: Punish at the Polls
- O: Ownership
- O: One American
- P: Prepare
Punish at the Polls
Break free from the tyranny of two-party mediocrity, monopolization, and rationalization. Throw off the shackles of “the lesser of two evils” thinking. Stop compromising with your vote. Vote your conscience. Vote on principle.
The Founders viewed elections as “mini-revolutions,” and it’s time for a revolution. Punish every Senator and Congressman who voted in favor of the bailout bill by booting them out of office. (See how your representative voted here.) Show them who is in charge. And in case you haven’t heard, there are more than two presidential candidates in the current election.
Ownership
With the advent of National P.O.O.P Day, it’s time for every American to stop the insanity of irresponsibility and apathy. Take ownership for your life and your results. Take ownership for your education, your career, your income, your financial health, your spiritual moorings. Stop selling out to false security and accept the responsibility of freedom.
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.” -Thomas Jefferson
One American
It’s time to cast off our feelings and attitudes of futility, helplessness, and hopelessness. You can’t do everything, but you can do something. Do it. Stop waiting for social validation — act. Never underestimate the power of one individual acting from conscience.
Do something good, anything. Every day. Get out of debt. Write a book. Write to your Congressman. Read to a child. Love your spouse. Forgive your brother. Turn off the blasted TV and read the Federalist Papers instead.
You are One American, and America is nothing but the aggregate of all its Ones. Be the change. Make a difference.
“Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prepare
There’s no easy fix to the problems that have been amassing for longer than a Century. Make no mistake — we are in for hard times.
Prepare.
- Spiritually: Deepen your relationship with God. Develop faith and overcome fear. Pray and meditate daily. Find that “connection in the stillness” and hold onto it like your life depends on it, as it indeed does.
- Financially: Get out of debt. Spend less than you earn. Produce more than you consume. Build cash reserves. Invest in hard, collateralized assets.
- Temporally: Build a year’s supply of food and water. Learn how to grow a garden. Become an emergency preparedness expert.
- Mentally: Turn off the TV and devour the classics. Become a constitutional scholar. Understand what you’re fighting for.
- Socially: Expand and strengthen your relationships and networks. This will both extend your sphere of influence as well as give you resources in difficult times. Associate with like-minded people. Discuss the classics with your family and friends.
“Giving up the illusion that you can predict the future is a very liberating moment. All you can do is give yourself the capacity to respond — the creation of that capacity is the purpose of strategy.” -Lord John Browne of Madingley
Throw the Poop Back
The poop has hit the fan. And it’s time for us to start flinging it back. In a good, productive way.
The principles within National P.O.O.P. Day represent the People taking back their power by assuming their responsibility. This new National Poopyday (as opposed to “Holiday”) represents us throwing back the crap that has been thrown on us against our will and in violation of our beloved Constitution.
The early American colonists had the Boston Tea Party. Our generation has National P.O.O.P. Day. Support National P.O.O.P. Day by emailing this to everyone you know and publishing it in full in every possible venue. When the air finally clears — however long it takes — we’re going to have our Republic back.
Join National P.O.O.P. Day on Facebook
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The “McGuffy Paradigm” & Why It Should Be Revived
August 15, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · Leave a Comment
Have you heard of the McGuffy Readers? Do you know there were 120 million of them sold in the middle part of our nation’s history? They were the standard educational text for America for a hundred years. So, what is in them?
Well, the first page of the first book talks about cats and rats, the second page shows the cat eating the rat, the third page is about a brother and sister trying out a homemade sail boat, fanning it because there is not enough wind. Skip down the pages; stories about boys that are fat getting caught in games of tag by skinny and fast boys, old men with makeshift bandages over broken legs, young girls being kind to old and young blind men.
Then we have three different notes on a bird’s nest with five eggs in it. “Do not rob the nest,” it says. And, “Tom will not rob a bird’s nest, he is too kind to do so.” Then a few more pages and we have twelve-year old boys chopping wood with the caption, “Ned and John are hard at work. John has a saw, and Ned has an ax. They will try to cut all of the wood which you can in the pile. Do you think they can do this in one day?”
Interesting…animals dying, skinny boys catching fat boys, charity for the downtrodden, protecting a bird’s nest. Young, unfortunate boys breaking a sweat — not to mention breaking child-labor regulations and facing dismal obituaries someday that may contain the words “hard worker” in them.
These stories are real! You know as well as I do that in the real world we don’t get anywhere by staying home forever and being entertained by The Cat in the Hat. No offense intended to fans of Cat in the Hat; I’m just a little burned out on the media-mania out there. I want some backbone to my children’s stories!
Life is an experience like no other! It is about toil, hardship, joy, service to others, excitement, challenges surmounted, focus, driving out the imperfections in ourselves, moving the cause of liberty, and making a difference! This is where we find our happiness. There is so much more to life than most of us realize and experience; we have so much dormant ability. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
Love the challenge! Face life with all its wonder, mystery, and difficulty. Take a stand in spite of opposition.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, recently deceased, was a man who lived life to the fullest. In a speech at Harvard he said the following:
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days…A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.”
Struggle? Isn’t that for foreigners — or at least anybody but “me”? It is time we all took a step back and asked ourselves some tough questions: Why are we fighting so hard for the stagnant life here in America? Why are we so intent on outsourcing our window washing, lawn care, weed pulling, the teaching of our children (public education), thinking (the media), policy making (anybody but us), and the good life (our entertainment gods and goddesses); and all this in the hopes of allowing ourselves the Pastoral boringness of a fake, aristocratic ease and laziness.
There is a constant discussion in our country about illegal aliens and the work that they do because we won’t. “Isn’t hard work something that migrant workers do?” we ask. Isn’t it our ultimate goal to get out of work, to “retire,” to “arrive” and never have to work again? No! It’s not — or at least it should not be if we want to call ourselves Americans! Work is for us, if we have a spine or any real desire for happiness and success in this life! “The love of work is success,” said David O Mackay.
Virgil also wrote of this in The Georgics:
“No easy road to husbandry assigned,
And first was he by human skill to rouse
The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
In drowsy sloth to stagnate.”
In our affluence, we have forgotten that happiness comes through work, service, love, and faith. The greatest nation on earth doesn’t know what it stands for anymore. Actually, WE as individuals don’t know what we stand for anymore. After all you and I are America!
Too many of us stagnate in the mire of complacency, afraid to be leaders. Make the change, not excuses! Join the Cause of Liberty, subscribe to the Sentinel, and experience the Georgic Revolution in your life!
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The Truth About the Road Less Traveled
August 3, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
I recently took the road less traveled…
…and ended up getting lost and hundreds of pesky stickers in my clothes and socks.
I was on my regular run the other day, exploring a few streets I hadn’t been on. I passed a heavily wooded area and noticed a faint trail disappearing into the underbrush. In the mood for adventure, I headed down the path, not sure where it would lead to. A half hour later, I finally emerged onto a street that I recognized, my lower half adorned in a thick layer of tenacious stickers, and thinking of how my experience was a fitting analogy for other life pursuits.
As romantic as Robert Frost makes it sound, taking the road less traveled is never easy. It’s far easier to go along with the crowd and never make waves than it is to take a stand, go against the grain of popular culture, and make a lasting difference.
Martin Luther King, Jr. took the road less traveled and was murdered for it, as was Gandhi. George Washington, wanting nothing more than to be a quiet farmer, suffered through years of toil and hardship as a General, then stayed in the trenches during two terms as President. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for attempting to free France from the rule of England and claiming that she saw visions. Corrie ten Boom endured the horrors of Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews. Jesus Christ was crucified for speaking truth.
The people who rock the status quo boat are usually kicked off the boat and are often drowned. But because of their courage and sacrifice, the rest of us enjoy smooth sailing.
We can complain today about slow traffic lights, while sitting in our air-conditioned cars listening to the radio and talking on our cell phones, because of the thousands of soldiers who suffered and died of frostbite, starvation, and disease at Valley Forge.
Is the road less traveled romantic and easy? No. Inspiring and worth it? Yes. Will it make a difference? Absolutely.
“That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.” -Thomas Paine
The Road Less Traveled in an Age of Comfort
Ironically, in America today most are far less likely to take the road less traveled, not because it is more difficult than it was in the past, but precisely because it’s easier. Accustomed to comfort, material abundance, and political freedom we often fail to see how simple it is, yet also how critically important.
We won’t be burned at the stake for speaking our mind, so few of us put anything into our minds worth speaking. We’re not engaged in a bloody war with the political establishment, so we become soft and fail to fight the good, peaceful fight of striving for virtue and obtaining a world-class education. We’re not faced with concentration camps, yet we often build ourselves personal prisons of complacence and selfishness.
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” -Gandhi
Our enemies and hardships are not murderous tyrants, starvation, disease, filth and poverty, and violent discrimination. Instead, they are ease and comfort leading to apathy, ignorance because we’ve delegated our political responsibilities, greed from valuing our privileges above our principles, and societal decay from failing to care for the institution of family.
How To Find the Path and Make a Difference
We can and we must take the road less traveled for the benefit of our nation and our posterity. Yet how we do that today, in an age of comfort and relative freedom, takes on a different, less grueling form than one might think.
Our Valley Forge consists of, among others, reading and discussing classics; being politically active; choosing to not to consume inappropriate media, no matter how popular or even if no one else will know; studying the Constitution, no matter how difficult it may be to understand; choosing to follow our dreams by becoming entrepreneurs, rather than selling out to false security and corporate benefits; and maintaining strong marriages and raising productive, self-reliant children.
Relative to being tortured, burned at the stake, dying of starvation, and being martyred, these seem easy, yet that is exactly why so few will actually do them. But those who do will leave a legacy. They are those who will save the Constitution and preserve freedom for future generations. They are those who will discover more efficient and powerful methods of alleviating suffering in the world.
Be among them. Choose to take the road less traveled.
This road, while excruciating for heroes and heroines in the past and simple for us today, is never easy. The easy, well-worn path is watching TV instead of reading Democracy in America. Easy is abdicating to the government your responsibility to make sure your children are educated. The popular path is to constantly eat unhealthy food and rarely exercise, then expect doctors and pills to take care of your health problems. Easy is staying in a job with benefits that you dislike, rather than risking change in order to find a career path more conducive to living your passions. Easy is seeing problems in society and waiting for the government to solve them, rather than rolling up your sleeves and going to work.
The hard and unpopular path isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Take the road less traveled — you might get lost for a time and you might attract stickers and experience other trials, but enduring hardship is the price of greatness. As Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Recommended Reading:
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Becoming One Who Goes Before by Stephen Palmer
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
21st Century Georgics: An Introduction
July 29, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 4 Comments
A key factor in maintaining freedom is sustainable economic forms. Are you maintaining freedom through the financial principles and practices you are using? Have American families adopted the economic forms necessary for the preservation of a free people?
The average American household pays over 34.5% of every dollar earned to interest payments. Forget about the taxes — that is serious bondage! Our system has become top heavy, threatening our economic solvency as a nation and necessitating large government bailouts to offset their blunders. When a government is forced to tax its people heavily to keep economic centers of capital from collapsing, how can we expect it to reduce in size? To force such a thing is tantamount to economic collapse.
We have allowed our wealth to centralize and grow in the hands of OTHERS. We have given them our money and the control of it for the “magic of compound interest” and then turned around and borrowed from them with a price.
Families are the foundation of American stability and economic growth, and it is time for families to regain real control of the resources of the economy. What do I suggest? We obviously cannot steal all of the money and put it in our families’ accounts! No, I am suggesting that we have all of the resources we need, and they flow through our hands day after day, and we relinquish control of them day after day. This is because we do not understand money; or, more importantly, we do not understand economy.
The Roman Poet Virgil wrote The Georgics in 29 BC. The concept of “Georgics” that came out of this poem was widely debated and discussed in the founding era of our country. The word basically means “to work the land.”
In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;
Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,
Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops
Burst, see! the barns.
It was felt by many of our Founders that this connection to the land, to hard work, and the dependence on God that is pre-supposed when seeds are planted, had a profound effect of building an independent and free people — especially when coupled with the other Foundations of Freedom.
Up until 100 years ago, 97% of Americans worked the land with plows — they were farmers. Short of a massive catastrophe, that isn’t going to happen in our time. What can be done in our day to bring the Family Farm — or at least its principles — back to life?
We must first understand Georgics. In the coming weeks I will be posting several articles outlining the basic tenets of Georgic Economics, with links to sites where you can learn how to establish a rebirth of freedom in your family through Georgic principles and forms.
American families must become independent centers of the U.S. economy if our liberties are to be preserved. I am calling for a regeneration of organic, financial systems centered in and controlled by America’s families.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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