The Power of the Press (Publication)

The old newspaper people (as well as those who presume and assume to know everything) would have us believe that the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, created a special class of privileged people with extraordinary rights above and beyond all other citizens, rather than merely ensuring the same rights to everyone regardless of any station and office, to “publish” their own thoughts. However, powerful trade organizations and commercial enterprises had a tremendous advantage previously, in dominating and controlling the publication process (press) until the costs of publication, became virtually free. But then one still had the challenge of creating original content, as opposed to replicating what is “owned.” That’s what much of the discussions about the “freedom of the press,” really was about -- that it was not "free," but who owned those exclusive rights.

So it doesn’t mean that those who label and certify themselves as “The Press,” know more than everybody else, are capable of knowing more than everybody else, or in fact, are more objective by training or disposition, if not by noble birth of entitlement. It’s always hard for a people used to “special” privileges, to now live in a world in which everyone is entitled to them as basic human rights -- even if it is an era in which every(wo)man can live like a king, which is largely in knowing how these days, rather than having all the money and power in the world for their exclusive use and enjoyment

A theme that was entirely overlooked in the disappointing year-end sales known as “Christmas,” is that in a time of falling prices, the consumer is king -- because there are far too many goods than can be absorbed efficiently in the marketplace during times of change. At times of such disruption and chaos, those with a keen eye for value can come off as “robber barons,” because they are at the right place, at the right time, and realize that -- and are fully prepared to act on that opportunity.

The great majority of people however, will let every opportunity pass them by because they are absolutely convinced that good things only happen to other people, and are constantly occupied with the envy that they are not somebody else, with somebody else’s opportunities, while letting all theirs go ignored and denied.

Such people grew up in a time in which the machinery of virtual publication did not exist, and still think their own role in it, is to take a seat in the audience as one of the faceless, nameless “masses,” and dutifully repeat what they have been instructed to say as their own lot in life -- and so when given the chance to be the person and identity of their own making, choose to be some fictional other, rather than integrating the wishfulness of their lives to their own daily realities, in which such wholeness of being and doing, is the simplicity of their existence.

Freedom of the press, is that liberation for everyone -- to fully take advantage of to create their own reality of their lives -- not as a fictional, wishful-thinking, and projection of the secret identity they wish they were, but simply to express that as who they really are.

Change is Good

Actually, whether one thinks it is good or bad, it is inevitable -- as long as one lives, and the responsiveness to those changes, determines one’s quality of life -- and also its quantity, but the quantity, doesn’t necessarily imply the quality. That is true of everything -- that the quality implies the quantity, but quantity is no indication of quality.

Quality is what makes a difference -- while quantity are differences that don’t make a difference, other than more or less, which is meaningless in a life dedicated to experiencing and knowing that difference, which is growth, evolution and fitness. For many people, such differences don’t matter, and that too is the way they are -- and what is important to them.

But for a few, the differences that make a difference -- is all they care about, and is the difference they look for, and therefore, bring about -- usually because they can, which their awareness is the first indication of. Many others are familiar with the “words” mimicking those who can tell such differences -- but usually, their impulse, is to ban, suppress and eliminate all those who can see those differences too easily -- and so they put themselves in charge of what everybody can ONLY see. Those are the petty tyrants of every arena of life -- from the smallest households to the heads of state -- usually disproportionately found in the mass media and periphery -- all those who want to be, as their lifelong striving -- which was known in a previous time as the desire for fame, glory and fortune -- usually disproportionately undeserved to their true talent and destiny.

These are the interlopers of history, rather than its mainstays -- that encourage the dreams of the unworthy, while the truly worthy, go about the real business of creating positive changes in society that time and history rather than fleeting fame, self-promotion and opinion will know about.

That is the essential quality of fame -- that their unworthiness is soon and shortly discovered, and their objects abandoned as though they never existed, which is the worst of fates for those who seek merely the renown, and not their own essence of being and finding out who they really are, instead of what they, or others would like them to think.

The changes of life ae the challenges to that essence -- to know under the many different situations and contexts, the person one really is -- and not just what they would like everybody to think, as though it could be so easily manipulated by creating legions of anonymous aliases on the Internet to pronounce one’s true identity as King of Kings, that even God with all his power, is foolish not to fake and manipulate, in their smallness of thinking.
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Reinventing the Future

At times like this, when the old status quo is seriously in question, and no longer viable, a lot of old ideas revive as the new, rather than realizing the need for the new -- makes even more sense than ever, and that the present crisis is precisely the right time to implement it.

Why do you even need electric cars?

The ultimate clean, green machine is renewable human power -- and the state of the art in this is bicycling technology, infrastructure, lifestyle. That would be something world-class the people of the world would travel to Hawaii to see and enjoy. Instead, your leaders think the way to have a competitive advantage is to out-New York New York, Monte Carlo, Acapulco

In the mainland, we even have tanning booths to give one a far superior tan -- without the burn, and swimming pools are in most major apartment complexes. Every society has to take it to the next level -- and not just out-Zimbabwe Zimbabwe, Haiti, Sudan, and other pre-industrial societies.

Then Hawaii could be truly "paradise" and not just some slick advertising campaign that the world can't see at any theme restaurant in their own community. Instead of building the Disney world and keeping it in a resort area, manifest it in real, everyday reality. Appreciate what you have.

Even if one can’t bike personally, pedicabs make a lot of sense and would provide healthful employment to many -- over the well-known occupational hazards of driving fulltime, and every time.

The present economic crisis is precisely the problem caused by everyone attempting to keep up with the proverbial Joneses -- in buying a bigger house, car, achieving accounts to provide them the illusory lifetime security that they think money rather than ingenuity and resourcefulness is -- and so when that all disappears, are depressed with the realization that they have nothing because all that money they thought would simply “appreciate,” meets the world of daily reality and the simplicity of it.

One doesn’t need a car to get to the market; one just needs to get to the market.

The problems are that one never questions the assumptions about fulfilling basic human needs, and when one gets back to those basics, order and prosperity are restored in the world in the ways that really matter.