Archive for History
Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
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Rev. A.D. King
The Reverend A.D King, younger brother to Martin Luther King Jr., is a significant figure in history whose contributions are often overshadowed by his older brother’s legacy.
Dr. Babs Onabanjo seeks to highlight the Rev. A.D.’s contributions on civil rights, and the historical events that drastically changed America under A.D.’s watch. Dr. Babs’ goal is to “build a community of love, hope and humanity that will transcend race, color, national origin and ethnicity” and has come forth with a documentary to tell A.D’s story entitled “Behold the Dream: Brother to the Dreamer.”
Be sure to tune in to hear Dr. Onabanjo share the story on Logical Soul Talk, Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 6:00 pm ET. You can listen to the show online, or call 347-843-4544 to listen to the show by phone (press 1 to join the conversation).
As a president and C.E.O of A.D. King Foundation, Onabanjo focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and A.D. King’s role in bringing about the powerful lessons it teaches us. In addition to his duties managing the foundation, Dr. Onabanjo is a professor of computer science at Atlanta Metropolitan State College in the division of business and computer science. He has multiple degrees from Clark Atlanta University, Alabama State University, and Auburn University, and is a specialized consultant for various groups and companies around the United States.
Don’t miss this opportunity to speak with a living representative of Dr. King’s legacy!
Families Are Forever – Like It or Not
Posted by: | CommentsI just spoke with about two dozen relatives about a family reunion coming up in March. This is significant only for the fact that one of the biggest pieces of the Logical Soul work came together after I agreed to organize a reunion back in 2008.
Michael with Mary Tootle, age 95
I discovered the missing link to ancestral influence, i.e., that decisions based on our past – even by those we never met – can affect our current-day relationships, health, motivation, and even finances. I call there “ancestral decisions,” and they are much more anchored than we can imagine.
As I spoke with my kinfolk, I began to feel the fear, hope, and love that binds us and makes us feel connected. Some of them – like my aged cousin Mary Tootle – has a special way of bringing out a huge wave of love every time I speak with her.
Family can do this when nothing else can. I need it now especially since I just said goodbye to my beloved wife Brigitte who is visiting her family in Germany, and will be attending our neice’s and nephew’s church confirmations their in Munich. (Gruss Gott, ya’ll . . . Nicola und Christoph!!)
If you’re having problems with your family, get over it!
In fact, resolve to love every minute of their nagging, bitching, moaning, anger and fear. Right in the middle of some upset, go over and give them a hug (I know its not “cool,” but we are always so worried about looking good we don’t have time to see what’s right in front of us!)
We all want to be loved, and the best way to get it is to give some. Tell each family member at some point that, because you won’t live forever, you want ensure that love remains a legacy for those who follow you both.
Love family members – right now! This is the best gift you can give YOUR descendants . . . and heal your ancestors at the same time.
Do it today.
A Brief History of the End of the World
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a scene near the end of Mel Gibson’s 2006 movie Apocalypto where a Mayan villager – who by this time is also an escaped Inca prisoner – is being chased by his captors bent on killing him. He runs out on to the beach where he stops and gazes out to the ocean. His pursuers likewise stop and gaze.
What they beheld – for the first time ever – were men in longboats rapidly approaching the shore from Spanish Galleons moored in the distance.
Just as the Mayans probably felt it was the end of the world when blood-thirsty Incans enslaved and killed them, so too did the Incans marvel as they succumbed to the onslaught and diseases of the Europeans. The speed of change – with new technology and alien beings – make the world instantly frightening and wondrous.
To those of us born in the 20th century, the onslaught is felt as ever-increasing rate of change. Our own aliens – computers – are ones we created, yet are unable to STOP creating them. The very physicality of all this technology bombards our senses daily, and keeps us tuned to its every need through sheer force of wonder.
And its not just computers. Humans as a species are multiplying and evolving at such a rapid pace we are, in just a few short years, outstripping ALL predictions about how to deal with our neighbors and ourselves.
What’s the answer? Look inside. Find the source of thought and wonder. Realize that there is an intelligence that guides us – that which R. Buckminster Fuller called universe – that will always be with us and a part of us. It will also eventually consume us.
Remember the Year 2013. That’s the year a Supercomputer will be built that EXCEEDS the computational power of the human brain. By 2049, that power will be available to almost everyone on the planet.
Scary? You bet. Or awesome. You decide.
Health Care Paradigm: Man vs. Nature
Posted by: | CommentsFor most of the history of mankind, men and women have striven to survive by killing, cutting, plowing, and taming their environment. In the beginning, the world was a very hostile place, and mankind needed every survival skill he had to adapt.
The current, modern world view, i.e., love and cooperation, did not wifely take root until mankind had sufficiently subdued natural forces such that they were no longer an immediate threat. Even so, mankind still rails against nature and makes war on other men. Regardless of the modern-day consequences, we are still trying to “fix” ourselves and the world around us to fit our view of what we consider to be “safe” and “good.”  Â
In the field of health care, for example, there are two opposing paradigms – or world views – that are each vying for attention: medical versus holistic. Each have their advantages and their disadvantages.
Can we win this battle?
The first paradigm we will consider is the Medical Model. This world view was born from the Newtonian-Cartesian idea (from Sir Isaac Newton and Renee Descartes) that each individual is like a “clock” that is, essentially, a machine that operates as a closed system, i.e., the body and its “parts,” or functioning organs.
The Medical Model dictates that, when something goes wrong, we “fix” it. This paradigm attracts some of the best and brightest minds in the world – those who know how to really fix things quickly with skill and determination. This model, therefore, works best for emergencies, i.e., things like broken bones, bullet wounds, sudden poisoning and other first aid crises.
The Medical Model does not, however, work so well (long term) for chronic illnesses or emotion-based disorders, i.e., cancer, diabetes, arthritis, depression, and anxiety-related disorders. Doctors are still taught to treat all disease as an invader, and to make war on the bugs, viruses, bad cells, and other soldiers of this “invading army.”
But all war has casualties . . . AND very expensive!
If an organ malfunctions and we can’t fix it, we operate to remove it. If cancer is detected we either cut it out, poison the body with chemo toxins, or blast the body with deadly radiation. Once that’s done, the doctor will continue to observe the presence of the “enemy” cancer cells in the patient, and try to kill them over and over again, whenever they appear.
If the patient doesn’t die in 5 years after all this destruction, he or she is considered “cured.”
With other chronic diseases, such as arthritis, medical doctors can only teach people how to “cope” with the symptoms, while “research” looks for more efficient ways to “tell the body how to stop fighting itself.”
The problem is, disease may be a product of faulty internal wiring more than an “army” of invaders . . . but we’ll cover that alternate paradigm in my next installment.
The other problem is that there is no incentive to find a valid cure, even if it could be found using this paradigm. The “research” will continue as long as it remains funded, and alternative approaches are never considered – regardless of clinical effectiveness – so long as they don’t fit the medical paradigm.
Is this the fault of the medical doctors? No. They are overworked, and only doing what they learned the best they can.
When presented with these types of a illnesses, most medical doctors are instructed to follow “the protocol” for each specific disease, mostly to avoid any claims that they didn’t “do their best.” Even if they know this protocol will eventually lead to the patient’s death, they must follow the “rules” or risk a malpractice suit and/or loss of their license!
Robert Mendelssohn, MD, laid out this dilemma and more in his ground-
breaking book Confessions of a Medical Heretic, first published in 1978. In the book, he blasts his associates for “benign neglect” and called for doctors to reconsider and change their current paradigm for the benefit of the patients, themselves, and the world at large.
Dr. Mendelssohn has since passed on, but his banner has been taken up by others, and change seems to be coming slowly but surely to the increasingly-outdated Medical Model.
The SECOND health care paradigm is the Holistic Model. I’ll cover that in the next installment.
The Logical Soul: A New Paradigm
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Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
The Logical Soul ™ represents a new paradigm – or world view – about the way we look at our so-called “subconscious mind,” the field of motivation, and the way we transform ourselves from survival-based human beings needing therapy to what Abraham Maslow called “self-actualized” humans.
Maslow said that the level of needs of an individual governed their outward motivation. For someone who did not have all his or her survival needs met, this is where they would remain . . . and act towards the world and others in a manner that reflected this inner need.
With the Logical Soul (tm), un-met survival needs are found, accessed, and changed, such that individual human evolution can take place more quickly and effortlessly. While this technique fills a very great need and its results are astounding, however, its widespread use may take a while to become established.
The reason? Established paradigms will not allow it to spread too quickly, if at all. A paradigm – or world view – when accepted by most members of a population, tend to become entrenched in that same population, and remains entrenched until usurped by another.
For illustration of this phenomenon, let’s look at what happened to Swiss watches . . .
For centuries, the Swiss had a corner on the watch-making industry and market.  “Swiss-made” was synonymous with quality watch-making, and no one outside of Switzerland dared to challenge those craftsmen . . . until someone did.
Sometime around the mid-1900s’ a technology called “digital timekeeping” became possible. It was only logical, therefore, that the Swiss should capture and utilize this rising technology because, after all, they were the captains of that industry!
That’s not what happened. The Swiss craftsmen could see no value in digital watches, and expressed disdain for anything that didn’t have little gears and a clock face – their field of expertise.
The problem was that digital watches were here to stay. They kept better time, had fewer working parts, and came at a much lower cost. The Swiss, unaware that a fundamental change had just taken place, ignored the chance to capitalize on this change. Instead, the Japanese captured it and never looked back.
Today, even quality watches are digital, and Swiss watches are more of a novelty than a necessity. The watch industry there never quite recovered from the paradigm shift that invaded their little hamlets.
Like that, the Logical Soul ™ is based on a different paradigm (“holistic”) rather than the existing – and dominant – “medical model” followed by most doctors and therapists. Consequently, it will require more effort to educate people over time of the excellent and far-reaching benefits.
The “holistic model” of care and self-actualization, however, requires a bit of education – and most people tend to accept the norm rather than expend effort to learn a new approach.
The shift, however, is taking place. It is only a matter of time before there is a paradigm shift in the population and alternatives become mainstream.
In future posts I will explore the rise and fall of the medical model and other paradigms, and how their dominance affects not only your health care costs, but all aspects that are connected to it, like politics.
Overcoming Self-Sabotage in the New Year
Posted by: | CommentsThe new year is upon us, and the “resolution bug” bites us with the promise of glorious health, grand riches, and perfect relationships. Then, sometime before March, reality sets in.
You wanted to lose that 20 pounds, get the ideal job, find the perfect life mate, and get out of debt. But somehow progress is slow or nonexistent, and before you know it, Thanksgiving arrives and you have nothing to show for your (by now) forgotten resolutions.
Why is this? Why do we sabotage ourselves? Why does self-sabotage slowly ruin our best-laid plans?? Is it laziness? Partly. Lack of willpower? Might be. Forces beyond our control? Could be.
The main culprit, however, is far more subtle and powerful than we could imagine.  This culprit? . . . . a second “self.”
That’s right. There is another “self” in there with you! While your so-called ego self is the one who speaks and makes logical decisions (and resolutions), it is powerless without its twin, the inner self.
This inner self (or force) was even given a name by the ancients:Â Ka by the Egyptians, Chi by the Chinese, Ki by Japanese, and Ku or Unihipili by the Hawaiian Kahunas. They speak of this self as one who does not speak, but embodies the senses, memory, and driving force required to accomplish anything.
Even modern brain scientists understand the profound impact of this silent self. Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD wrote in her book My Stroke of Insight how her own stroke experience revealed the power of her right brain, and that this entity exhibited, in her words, “different values” than those of her left brain self.
I’ve discovered that we can apply Newton’s Third Law of Motion to relationships with other people . . . and with our hidden self! This Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
By ignoring the integrity of this being, i.e., NOT treating this being as a separate and distinct self, we westerners are missing half (or more) of our ability to accomplish our goals and dreams. So long as we try to program, hypnotize, manipulate, or otherwise control “our subconscious,” it will just fight back.
This self knows ALL our tricks, remember?  The “equal and opposite reaction” is this: the more we ignore this being and try to reach our goals without his or her support, the less certain we will succeed.
So long as we see ourselves as “individuals,” i.e., undivided beings, we will continue to buy into the illusion that this hidden self is really only a part of what we consider “us,” and has no abilities outside of what we “program” it to do!
Begin to speak the language of your hidden self and you can begin to influence its behavior. Find out what he/she needs, then act to give that. Otherwise, you will always be a “victim” of self-sabotage since this hidden self is not on board with your wishes!
Tiger Woods: 50% Off . . .
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Or half . . . whichever is less. Tiger Woods action figures. Right.
The man’s personal life is in shambles. Whether or not his professional life takes a hit remains to be seen. Sponsors are backing out just as more women and hookers are coming out. On thing is certain: Tiger’s problems are his own, and do not affect my life (except that I probably wouldn’t have anything to write about today without him)!
This whole Tiger incident appears to be yet another smokescreen thrown at us to hide the shenanigans going on over at Capitol Hill. Maybe we won’t notice that the things they do over there DO affect our lives??!
News always demands a crisis, and those who understand how to use memes (politicians and their handlers) to control crises news reporting will always be in charge of the content of our wallets.
The best solution? Chill out. Relax. Turn off the news. Go to a show. Meditate. Play with your kids. Do the mental detox thing . . .
Muckraking journalism, believe it or not, has been around for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years, and will continue for a thousand more. So it won’t do any good to get all worked up about it! Just when you think journalism has sunk to a new low, remember Thomas Jefferson.
Back in 1802, the illustrious author of the Declaration of Independence was serving as our third president. It was in September of that year that journalist James T. Callender published his expose of Jefferson’s affair with his mullatto slave, Sally Hemming.
The liaison was denied by the family and others for two hundred years, but shown by DNA testing to have a basis in fact. There was indeed a connection – if not with Jefferson, then with one of his white family members.
Does this redeem James Callender? Yes, and also Jefferson as well. For it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote repeatedly that, although he detested most of what journalists of his day said about him, he would forever stand for their right to say it. Freedom of speech was his cornerstone commitment.
Let it be known that I, too, defend the rights of people (in the immortal words of author Stuart Wilde) to be as stupid as they want to be!
I also have the right NOT to listen!
Can’t Duck the Health Care Issue
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Rather than try to “duck” the current debate over health care, I’d just like to point out that the whole issue is a red herring. A zoo. A horse of a different color, you might say. Rather than make a monkey out of myself for trying to resolve the issue single-handedly, I thought I would offer you another Scape-goat, namely memes.
Memes are mind viruses that exist for the sole purpose to replicate themselves. Just as the purpose of a dominant gene is to pass on a particular genetic trait, such as dark hair or brown eyes, the purpose of a dominant meme is to perpetrate its own idea as THE idea that everyone (i.e., human carriers) mindlessly thinks are theirs. These ideas, however, come in the form of information packets that spread through a crowd or group of people like a virus or odor.
Unlike a virus or odor, however, memes attach themselves so insidiously to the person, the carrier actually thinks THEY are the originator of the meme, and not merely the carrier. Using a form of logic based on “group-think,” each carrier human truly believes he or she “knows the truth” about the issue, and that this truth is unwavering.
The ego loves this stuff. We become like super heroes, fighting for “our family,” “the cause,” “the Truth,” “our children,” “the poor,” or “God and country.” This is why and how memes are able to spread so quickly and powerfully. We think WE are the ones doing it when, in fact, the memes are doing US – and are often manipulated by those who understand this process to take advantage of the infection! Like an evolutionary superhero, the meme continues to replicate undetected until another – equally powerful meme – challenges and defeats it.
History is replete with powerful memes that lost: multiple gods (to One God), paganism (to Christianity), Welsch language (to English), slavery, fascism and Nazism. And there are many more.
Just as there is a “gene pool” that creates stronger genes by mixing, the “meme pool” also shows an ability to grow stronger over time, and even mutate. Witness the so-called “death” of communism in the Soviet Union and even China, while a similar form is rooting and growing in Europe and even in the bastion of capitalism itself – the United States! Vacuum tubes became transistors that became micro-chips. Fax machines didn’t die – they just mutated as online communication!
Memes evolve faster in an ego-friendly environment. It seems the stronger our ego, the more firmly-entrenched memes can become. Since the ego is really a human invention (albeit an ancient one), the growth of memes can perpetually blind us to reality.
The actual truth is that – as John Donne poetically pointed out – “no man (or woman) is an island.” Like it or not, we are all connected, either by sympathy or antipathy. Memes utilize this connection (and ego blind spot) to spread their poison. Getting back to health-care . . .
With the current health-care debate, most of us believe one of two things:
- Obama’s health care system is a tactic used by an out-of-control government to rob the few productive citizens of their hard-earned rights and revenue in order to supply the many ne’er-do-wells whose main goal is to vote themselves more and more entitlements, or
- You believe that the poor – through no fault of their own – are caught in a web of poverty, sickness, and disease; and it is the obligation and duty of those who have more to provide for these unfortunates. You also believe that government is the only force capable of enforcing this equitable situation, and that controlled socialism is the lesser of evils to runaway capitalism.
Memes control both beliefs. Both are based on partial truths, therefore they become like “trojan horses” to the mind, infiltrating and poisoning our happiness and peace of mind. This battle of the “points of view” (POV) will continue until one meme “wins” over the other.
There can never be any winning, however, since no truth – even a partial one – can be stamped out forever. It will resurface in mutated form at another time, another place.
The only win-win solution, in my humble opinion, is to “detox the mind” as follows:
- See and understand Memes for what they are
- Release the NEED to replicate a particular meme, and
- Establish as personal and cultural priorities things like relationship, happiness and peace of mind.
These days even DUCKS have better sense than we do!
How and Why We Underestimate Our Mental Potential
Posted by: | CommentsThe human race has the capacity to put men on distant planets, explore the depths of the oceans, invent nano-technology to replace living tissue, and create energy sources that replace fossil fuels. We also have the ability to exhibit the depths of depravity, stupidity and triviality.
While most of us humans still consider depravity and stupidity undesirable traits, we have somehow come to accept triviality as, well, acceptable! I find this disturbing in the sense that triviality can be a deadly form of self-delusion that hides the true nature of reality, and of life.
Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie
Take for example our most important news concerns of the day: Brad and Angelina’s dinner menu, Nicole Richie’s post-delivery pictures, party crashers at the White House, and any stupid thing Britney does. How, we might query, does this feed a single hungry person or add to human knowledge at all?
Hello! It doesn’t.
And It’s Getting Worse
Marketing expert Troy White writes
Celebrity-gossip websites have seen a 30% growth over the past 12 months “ many offline print magazines are seeing a 50%+ growth rate “ this while newsworthy publications like Time are seeing a 17% decline in readership.
Scary. If I believed we were capable of little more than this, I would fear for our race. Global warming may never get us, but our own folly certainly will . . . given enough time and lapses in leadership.
I still believe, however, that humans have a destiny that transcends even
Bucky Fuller
their ability to hide it from themselves. R. Buckminster Fuller in his groundbreaking book Critical Path, paid humanity many high compliments. He wrote:
all humans, including the assumed-to-be ˜illiterates’ and ˜spastics,’ are born with a comprehensive and superb inventory of subjectively apprehending and synergetically comprehending faculties “ as well as objectively articulating capabilities. (p. 26)
This is Fuller-Speak for all humans have the capacity to be very intelligent, and to express this intelligence. But how? By focusing on Britney’s latest arrest photos? Probably not.
We Are Asleep
Fuller cites the fact that 99% of humanity does not know we have the ability to make it on this planet and in the universe (as of 1980 anyway). Maybe Britney, Brad and Angelina are diversions intended to numb the pain of our collective fear. Perhaps we have made the decision that we are helpless against natural forces, and accept our fate by ignoring it.
This may be true. We have, after all, been bombarded with bad news even before CNN, FOX and NBC. Since biblical times, prophets, seers, and soothsayers have been predicting our demise. It seems to be a popular sport, then as now.
Thomas Malthus
The economist Thomas Malthus predicted in 1805 that overpopulation would result in the destruction of all humans by 1900 and the same theme was played again in the 1960’s and 70’s.
So far we’re still here.
Fuller’s vision of the future gives us more hope that perhaps the modern doomsayers are wrong. He found, for example, that mankind in 1980 was using only .0000004% of the reserves available via what he calls our cosmic energy income account. He said that artifacts “ created and propagated by our own intelligence “ would consistently come to our rescue.
If this is the case, then we have severely curtailed our ability to create even more artifacts. But how much of our mental capacity remains untapped?
Let’s Look at the Brain Itself
The view of the brain as a type of computer has gained general acceptance in the philosophical and computer science community. The only question has been “ how powerful IS this machine when compared to, say, an IBM PC or a Cray? How well does the human brain actually perform?
Einstein postulated that we are perhaps using about 10% of our mental capacity. But of course, Einstein based his estimate on his personal observation as a patent clerk and a physicist usually surrounded by other brilliant minds. Even his first wife was a physicist herself, and instrumental in helping him formulate his Special and General Theories of Relativity.
One of the modern techniques used to consider mental capacity is to count the number of synapses, guess their speed of operation, and determine synapse operations per second. There are roughly one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) synapses operating at about 10 impulses per second, giving roughly 10 quadrillion synapse operations per second.
Another approach is to estimate the computational power of the retina, and then multiply this estimate by the ratio of brain size to retinal size. The retina is relatively well understood so we can make a reasonable estimate of its computational power.
The output of the retina – carried by the optic nerve – is primarily from retinal ganglion cells that perform center surround computations (or related computations of roughly similar complexity). If we assume that a typical computation requires about 100 analog adds and is done about 100 times per second, then computation of the axonal output of each ganglion cell requires about 10,000 analog adds per second.
There are about one million axons in the optic nerve, so the retina as a whole performs about 10 billion analog adds per second. There are about 100 million nerve cells in the retina, and between 10 billion and 1 trillion nerve cells in the brain, so the brain is roughly 100 to 10,000 times larger than the retina.
By this logic, the brain should be able to do about one trillion to 10 quadrillion operations per second.
Either way, that’s enough mental power and speed to predict everything Brad and Angelina will be doing over the next five hundred years . . . or perhaps we might even do something useful instead.
Next: The Limitations of the Conscious Mind
Awakening: Logical Soul Talk Interview with Becky Finley
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Becky Finley
On Logical Soul Talk tomorrow (Tuesday, November 10 at 6 pm on http://blogtalkradio.com/logicalsoul) I interview Becky Finley.
Becky says she had an “Awakening” a few years back and basically “disappeared” as one who identifies herself as a single individual.
While this may sound a bit strange to most of us, the idea of awakening has ancient roots, and is spoken of with some regularity by the likes of Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), Deepak Chopra (The Third Jesus), Tony Parsons (The Open Secret), and Satyam Nadeen (From Onions to Pearls). While eastern religions often speak of “enlightened beings,” this – according to Becky and many of the authors mentioned – is a fictitious idea.
“There is no such thing as an enlightened person,” states Becky flatly, echoing the words of Tony Parsons et al. “A so-called awakening experience happens, but it never happens to anyone! Once awakening dawns, the understanding becomes ‘There IS no one,’ so how could someone have an experience? How could they ‘become enlightened?'”
“Enlightenment,” according to Finley, is a state of being, but it “happens” to no one in particular since the so-called “person” has already disappeared. In fact, Becky points out that – really – NO ONE is actually here . . . that this is part of the universal illusion, the “maya” spoken of in ancient sacred texts.
Ms. Finley is a close friend with Satyam Nadeen, who declined to appear on my program. Nadeen emphasized he now lives the “life of a recluse” and no longer does interviews, workshops or Satsangs. Nadeen basically stated that “there is nothing to say” – implying the deepening of experience.
Becky apparently has no problem speaking about this admittedly esoteric subject.  She was with Nadeen at the time I called and graciously agreed to appear in his stead. She will also be happy to answer call-in questions and address any comments you may have.
As a side note, Becky is mentioned in my book The Logical Soul as the first person with whom I used the technique. As such, she has a special place in my heart, and can shed much light on how this Awakening process unfolds.
Mark your calendar, set your clock and DON’T MISS THIS SHOW!! It should be quite unique.
