I am going to clear the air here. (about my motives)

I am a newbie here. I have had a few question my sincerity. I am going to make sure when you are done reading this you have no doubts. I am a midwest farm boy. I have a mother that is a Democrat that votes Republican and a father that is so far right you will never move him. My father is a very talented man, and a Veteran. He was stationed in Greenland and much of what he did there is still classified. He is also a small business owner. I went to church every Sunday until I was 18. When I was 8 my grandma died,when I was 11 my grandpa died and my mother was diagnosed with cancer. At the age of 11 I had to face a harsh reality. There was a very good chance that I would have to raise myself. So, I did. I would not depend on anyone for anything. I grew up watching video's on MTV I liked the idea of a story in pictures set to music. I liked art. I read the bible twice. I went to college,and when I went to college I discovered that there where Methodists,Catholics,Christians,Muslims,Jews,Aitheists and they were all in one dorm. Not only that they weren't fighting,they were friends. How could this be? This threw my worldview into shambles. I dropped out of college and took a factory job. I did it for 8 years. Then an awesome thing happened. It can only be summed up in one book. Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A student that has no way. A failed education,they drop out. They take a lower paying job,and get a different kind of education. He learns about machinery what makes it work. This need to know will drive him to study perhaps engineering,mathmatics,and maybe even machine design. Back to college to find answers,and by God teachers had better have them. Furious learning. Graduate with a different degree,Communication. Study speeches,rhetoric,semantics,persuasion,small group dynamics,interpersonal,dyiads,triads,ethos,pathos,logos and the great minds before. Discover that you are a deep thinker able to see both sides,and then decide that it is ALL demographics. You see if I was born in Iraq,I would be a Muslim. If I was born in Canada I might be a Hockey player. Born where ever you get the idea. People are just people. They put their pants on the same way you and I do everyday. If you ask me what I am doing here? I want the truth,and I won't stop until I get it. I want answers and I want them now.

learning paragraphs... :P

Welcome to DU!

I got as far as Presuppositions of logic. That is a long post.

of us are the people who don't expect you to be exactly like us to respect you. Your ideas are important to us and our ideas are aching to make there way to you too. Don't be too thin skinned and remember that we have been beaten with the crazy meaningless words of the right wing for too long. We do consider ourselves part of an underground of common sense and accountability. We are in search of truth like you. We are trying to enlighten each other. We have to keep in touch with reality together and bounce news off each other because we aren't getting the straight story from the national mass media.

Thanks for being here and help us keep a lid on the coup that has been in the making since this democracy stood in front of greed and said no.

Welcome to DU and we're glad to have you.

I've read some of William James, he was a pragmatist like Pierce, but I've never actually read Pierce.

your correct him on his grammar? So wrong in so many ways. Not everyone is a "holier than thou in grammar" as you claim to be. Why not cease the crap about grammar and try and conceive what the man is saying and just answer his questions or don't say anything at all.

WTF is wrong with you?

I'm kidding!

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

I would suggest patience. I am probably old enough to be your grandmother, and I have very few answers myself.

The book that opened your eyes is a great one. Many here have read it and found profound truths in it.

Hang in there, keep asking questions, have fun!

Welcome!

and the rest, as they say, is history

The tri on the truck.

The Soldier Servant on the stack of cans.

the jerk - sniper
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4150647508611270621#


If anything it is really interesting use of imagery.

he hates these cans.

With most of them, it's simply a case of displacement. They're frustrated with the government, and lacking a clear route to express their outrage, turn on their friends -- and then brag that they're merely being true to their "conscience".

Democrats are not supposed to be a lockstep party; we're all about diversity and heterodoxy. I'm sure that you and I don't agree on a few topics. We can use that to build the strength that comes from well-informed compromise and cooperation, or try to beat each other into submission.

I do not choose the easy route of hip radicalism, right or left. I choose Democracy. It is why I am a Democrat.

And if no one has said it before -- Welcome to DU!

--d!

but do use paragraphs, it makes it that far much more easier to read.

:hi:

As to questions and all that... it is a lifetime pursuit, and the more you learn, the more you know that you do not know.

DLC "new kind of Democrat" place. Hell, I wouldn't doubt that today MOST people who post here would consider themselves socialists of one stripe or another.

We're at a volatile time when we're under serious attack by the capitalists on ALL of our rights, including free speech.

We're also beset by a SMALL percentage of posters who are RW trolls sowing disinformation and division.

I appreciate your sincerity, but there's really only one question that only you can answer. Are you on the side of the people or are you on the side of the elites? It HAS come to that point.

but that doesn't make me elite. Socrates once said, I am the wisest of all Greeks,because I know,that I know nothing. I roll with the plebes. Most intellectuals,have huge ego's and only like the smell of their own farts.

the capitalistic "Masters of the Universe" who think that they are the ONLY ones who can give orders to the rest of us.

The "intellectual elitists", although they exist, are NOTHING compared to the elites that I speak of and, IMO, are mostly a product of RW propaganda.

Good to know you're on the side of the people. :fistbump:

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in the plural, for are there not as many truths as there are direct individual experiences and indirect collective interpretations?

I would like to see social (and therefore economic and political) structures self-organized from the 'bottom up', with workers' councils making workplace-related decisions and electing representatives to executive levels of an enterprise, and local village, town, county, city district councils organizing themselves and sending representatives to higher councils all the way up to the governments of nations and of the world. In this I would call myself an anarcho-socialist: defending self-organization within a framework designed to benefit the quality of life of the greatest number of 'common people'.

Self-governing bottom-up systems, as one can easily imagine, can lead to great creative diversity but can quickly degenerate and break up or fall prey to authoritarianism and other abuse (call this the 'warlord syndrome'). By their very nature they express a wide range of cultural differences which should all be considered legitimate in the wider social body, so that a self-organizing community of 'bible-believers', for example, would send its representatives to higher councils in just the same way as a community of scientific or free-thinking atheists, or whatever.

It is interesting that your first experience of diversity led you to drop out but then work to overcome those pre-conceptions, those prejudices.

Such a society as I propose needs what I call a 'socialist framework'. This framework has to impose a limited but firmly-enforced set of rules, beginning with the universal application of the rule of law, without which no system can work. In the area of social policy, the main set of rules would be designed to enforce the bottom-up self-organizing political system described above, ensuring maximum freedom of choice and representation at the level of everyday local life. In the area of economic organization, rules would protect an open market economy of the kind described by Adam Smith consisting of both private and cooperative enterprises, but any enterprise of sufficient scale and/or of such a critical nature it becomes vital to society should be organized under the political supervision of the relevant social level - be it regional, national or supra-national. Such 'infrastructure enterprises' might include global communications (and a guaranteed right of access to and expression of information for all), energy grids, transport infrastructure and projects in the oceans or in outer space, for example, as well as, necessarily, the organization of efficient and sufficient military forces, judicial systems and police. There will also necessarily be rules designed to defend and develop the quality of the ecology of the natural environmental biosphere of which we ourselves and our own quality of life are but a part.

Of course, I am waiting for the existing order to be overturned before much of this can be put in place... ;)

Anyway. Greetings from here in Spain (as you see, I don't even have much of a vote!). Welcome to DU.

Trotskyist's heart! :) This is almost exactly my plan for my "socialist utopia". Bottom up is the only way to a fair system for EVERYBODY, not just the few.

You'll find the same here... some brilliance, some dip-shit answers, but always, always a provoking thought.

It's a good thing to want truth, but I've got to tell you, truth is always defined subjectively.

:hi:

When I first went to college, and was paying my way, I got myself a job sleeping above the mortuary with the task of answering the phone. (If I would go with them to collect bodies they said they would pay me extra.) I only slept there one night, and had this dream: I was in a church, kneeling at an alter, there were candles burning off to my right in a stand, and I was praying asking "What is Real?" After a time an answer came to me, and that answer was "It's All Real" which made me laugh and cry at the same time. In the dream I get up and walk out a side door and sit on some steps in an archway. Friends I knew walked by and would ask if I was alright and all I could say was "I'm just fine, don't worry about me" as I sat there laughing and crying. When I woke from that dream I said to myself I was not ready for religion and went and got the job of helping milk cows on a dairy out of town.

We are each our own truth, according to our understanding.

If Wikipedia doesn't answer your questions, what are they? Maybe someone here can help.

Yeah, & Welcome to DU
ADW

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

And I think Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth ( ae911truth.org ) speaks the truth, but mentioning it can get a post stuck in the 9/11 forum. I didn't post for a long time after some of my posts were 'put in that dungeon.' But the events in Egypt kept me at the computer, (I don't have TV) and now Wisconsin is giving me a lot of hope for this country.

My mom gave me a book my Great Grandfather had called "Writing on the Wall, or REVOLUTION in 1907" by J. C. Cooper who had been a congressman from Ohio who fought the Trusts and documented voter fraud going on in those times. (Published 1903) The fight is still the rich against everyone else. Though their numbers are very small, they pay a lot of wages. (Lobbyist, news reporters etc.)

You finished with college? Got a job now in communications? Being a DJ at the college radio station was one of the most fun things I have ever worked at. (And that was a class, no pay.)

something else as the truth but there is only one. No gray areas. Twilight (gray) is the color of confusion. Darkness (black) is the color of lies and lightness (white) is the color of truth. The truth is right before you in everything. It is also inside you. Apply anything and everything to everyone including yourself. If it's not right for everyone including yourself then you have your answer. If you have found yourself void of having a conscious then seek medical help before it's too late. You are on the right path. The first required step is to think not just listen. Welcome to DU

and not to worry about those who would press ideological "purity."

But, my tired and somewhat aging eyes would likewise echo the poster who suggested that paragraphs would be greatly appreciated... ;)

GLAD you're here! :hi:

with the software here, the usual method of indenting the first line does not work. Instead you need a blank line between paragraphs.

"I am a newbie here. I have had a few question my sincerity. I am going to make sure when you are done reading this you have no doubts. I am a midwest farm boy. I have a mother that is a Democrat that votes Republican and a father that is so far right you will never move him. My father is a very talented man, and a Veteran. He was stationed in Greenland and much of what he did there is still classified. He is also a small business owner.

I went to church every Sunday until I was 18. When I was 8 my grandma died,when I was 11 my grandpa died and my mother was diagnosed with cancer. At the age of 11 I had to face a harsh reality. There was a very good chance that I would have to raise myself. So, I did. I would not depend on anyone for anything. I grew up watching video's on MTV I liked the idea of a story in pictures set to music. I liked art. I read the bible twice.

I went to college,and when I went to college I discovered that there were Methodists, Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Atheists and they were all in one dorm. Not only that they weren't fighting,they were friends. How could this be? This threw my worldview into shambles. I dropped out of college and took a factory job. I did it for 8 years. Then an awesome thing happened. It can only be summed up in one book. Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A student that has no way. A failed education,they drop out. They take a lower paying job,and get a different kind of education. He learns about machinery what makes it work. This need to know will drive him to study perhaps engineering, mathmatics, and maybe even machine design.

Back to college to find answers,and by God teachers had better have them. Furious learning. Graduate with a different degree, Communication. Study speeches, rhetoric, semantics, persuasion, small group dynamics, interpersonal, dyiads, triads, ethos, pathos, logos and the great minds before. Discover that you are a deep thinker able to see both sides,and then decide that it is ALL demographics. You see if I was born in Iraq,I would be a Muslim. If I was born in Canada I might be a Hockey player. Born where ever you get the idea. People are just people. They put their pants on the same way you and I do everyday.

If you ask me what I am doing here? I want the truth,and I won't stop until I get it. I want answers and I want them now."


As to your last line.

42
cheese
The Beatles
hot showers
sleep

I have given you some answers. Now you just need to find out what the questions are.

It's 41 not 42. Sheez!:silly:








j/k don't taze me

Smoke your 420
eat your cheese
listen to the Beatles
take hot showers
and get plenty of sleep
before being out on the streets again.

smoking is an unhealthy habit I don't encourage in others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II3DfPbffUw

but I have always been crazy, and that's kept me from going insane.

I thought there might be some Vegans though, casting aspersions about the cheese.

"What is an artery clogger?"

"I'll take capital catalysts for $400 Alex."



Jeopardy is such a fraud anyway. Like they go from answers to questions. Which would be impossible anyway.

Answer - 42

Questions
How much is 6 times 7?
How much is 84 divided by 2?
How much is 7 squared minus 7?
How many states were in the United States on 1 Jan. 1890?
What is the rank of Washington in states admitted to the United States?
How old was Ronald Reagan when he married Nancy Davis?

Okay, that last one really IS 41. But there are billions of questions with the answer "42". Good luck guessing which one they are looking for.

What Jeopardy really does is ask a quesion bassackwards.
"It is the product of 6 and 7."
"What is 42?"

The first line is just "How much is 6 times 7?" written in statement form. It's a question, not an answer.

Even Watson should have been able to figure that out.

Alright, I'm going with missing a zero as the truth and the light -and I am figuring Adam Sandler has that zero too.

Answer: 42

I thought peeps were well read around here

"The number has received considerable attention in popular culture because of its appearance in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.'"

Zen and the Art of Motorcycles was an inspiration to me when I was young.

I took it up and reread the book in my late 40's and still found it profound and easier to understand.

Welcome

:hi:

After only 25 posts.

Notice you didn't get kicked out if anyone questioned/doubted you. Unlike that hateful alternate mirror universe site, where we all have goatees, or the ones who have goatees here don't have them there, but are still evil.

My experience here is that everyone is given the benefit of the doubt. Ppl used to question me about my low post count (as I just did to you), and it took me years to finally get over a thousand, which is still not indicative of anything.

In my experience here, even the obviously right wing and Pea Tards are treated with respect until they go on the attack, scoring some illusory pyrrhic victory.

Stick around, you'll learn something. Promise.

Of course, that may set you off, and that will be fine.

Are you speaking about internet mirrors for censorship?

If you are I am as happy posting thousands of post there as here, or here as there, since it is not about the post.

Because either way, someone is going to send me the beer and travel money that is due.

I've had a couple of people get REALLY pissed off at me. To the point of a long string of private messages, but I try not to get too upset about it because, as I said, it's just message board shit.

Don't worry if people disagree with you or get pissed at you. Don't use ignore and that rec/unrec shit is bullshit IMO. It's a discussion board, so if you disagree, discuss.

One of the embarrassing things about this place and has been going on forever. For some inexplicable reason anyone with a low post count (even if they aren't new at all) is treated with not only suspicion but rudeness. You don't need to explain yourself any more than anyone else who has been here for years. Just ignore the excessively paranoid.

Welcome to DU.

The post count means nothing because who knows what you posted? I prefer the kinds of message boards that allow you to look up the poster and their last 25 posts. That at least gives one an idea of where they are coming from instead of a stupid number. Also, if you really like their writing, you can enjoy more of it.

It's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

That's the real thing.

in two ways.

For one thing, this http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt is a collection of what I consider to be my best essays (and that should be true for everyone who has a journal)

For another thing, since you have a star you can do an "advanced search". If, for example, you searched the user name 'hfojvt' in GD for the last week, then the search results will list my posts of the last week from the most recent to the oldest.

My own way of checking on a suspect was to search their name and search for "Bush" to see if they had ever said a bad word about Bush. Of course, that is now a less relevant test two years later, so I am not sure what would make a good shibboleth now.

Finally, if somebody is on your buddy list, then when you hit "my du" it will show your own posts in the last 48 hours and below that show if one of your buddies has updated their journal.

there is a reason.

but i am with you

take nothing personal. enjoy du.

There's nothing wrong with suspicion of newbs or wanting them to earn their stripes.

Why should any member "earn" anything here? Every message board is going to have it's share of trolls and eventually they're found out. So what? Treating every new person with automatic suspicion and especially rudeness because you think they may be a troll and JUST because they're new is stupid and excessively paranoid. Who wants to stay at a message board that's so damn unwelcoming? How many thousands of good people have been chased away from here almost the moment they arrive because of that excessive paranoia and childish need to haze?

Yeah, there IS something wrong with automatic suspicion of new members and a belief that any member needs to "earn" anything. That's classic REPUB paranoia and exclusiveness, and no one here should be adopting it.

You're who I write for.

Welcome aboard.

:toast:

(A "hello" from Will Pitt is not to be sneezed at)

But, FWIW, we here working in the pits of "Project X" welcome you, too...:hi:

you learn but also the more questions you have. It never ends but you become better and smarter for it. Good luck and welcome to DU. First rule here: Don't take everything personally and you'll last a long time here.

And whatever college let you graduate without learning to put a space after a comma needs to have its accreditation revoked.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was drivel, btw -- gawd-awful 70s drivel of the most self-indulgent sort, utterly without philosophical merit. It's not even the Cliff's Notes of philosophy, it's the Classic Comics of philosophy. It's the hour-long Oprah Winfrey special of philosophy. It is to philosophy what McDonald's is to food.

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Your judgement should not be held in the highest esteem.

121 rejections. It was required reading at the public high school I went to. Barely remember it -- perfectionism and search for truth drive the narrator insane. Lots of fancy names for people. Kind of pretentious, and had nothing to do with Zen.

I think it just looked like a cool title to carry around. Let people think you are a Buddhist with a Harley.

zen/motorcycle wasn't as bad as some, had some ok parts. Most of every book is drivel but can find some enlightenment in most.

Have you ever read Shopcraft as Soulcraft?

I cry for the state of our education system.

-Hoot

Sheesh, this is sad.

degree and the rest of his speech goes down hill at his lack of ability to communicate.

If I where righting for a weebsite or to get pubelishe I wood tak the time to profread everyting I right. If I wunt to post on the intranet thingy,forgut it.

That would only be a small part of it and not what saddens me.

It's a coherence thing, not a left-right thing.

Thank you for demonstrating your communication skills so, um, aptly.

Enjoy your visit.

-Hoot

of humor), but the guys talking about paragraphs, ESPECIALLY, are spot on. I assume you want your points read and commented on/discussed, else why post? If that's the case, you need to make it as easy to read as possible. Paragraphs do that. Paragraphs are more important than punctuation or mispellings/typos.

Writing correctly should be the norm. A continued and repeated failure to space after a comma (you did it about a billion times) isn't indicative of typos that need to be caught in a proofreading, it is an indication that you don't actually know how to use a comma.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright

And you should too

Who doesn't appreciate zombie slaves?



How will know if you have the truth? What is truth? Have you defined what you are looking for, or would that be unwise?

Its a great book and sounds like just the thing you would like.

My dad was from PA and my mother was from Italy. Dad and mom met after the war was over and married. My dad was in the military for 22 yrs. He was in WWII, Korea and had been to VN before most americans new what VN was or where it was. He said he was getting to old for another war. My mother came to this country and it was a culture shock for her. You see travelling from military base to military base she had made many friends of color who just couldn't walk into any 5 and dime store to have a cup of coffee with her. She couldn't understand why a foreignor like her could come to this country and walk into a dime store and get a coffee yet her friend of color couldn't and was born here in the US and her husband was in the military defending our country. I married a military man myself and we too had a chance to live all over the US and europe just like my parents did. You learn allot about people. You learn an open mind for one thing. Yes all the things you said is true. My husband and his family were also military family. Between all our families we had over 60 yrs military service. All democratics. Always voted democratics too. Life is wonderful when you learn people are really the same like you said. It is that simple. I don't know what more you are looking for.

and your family for all those good Democrats. :) I hope they all vote.

Sid

:hi:

I've been accused of being a paid RW operative a time or two. It happens on DU sometimes. You just gotta ignore it and keep doing what you're doing.

how stealth i have been at trolling. was really funny.

you have much to learn, zen grasshopper!

Don't let the chiggers drive you away--use the ignore function, I do!

:luvya:

:hi:

welcome :hi:

:rofl: We're ALL due beer and travel money.

still waiting to "get" that.

Sid

a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...

:cry:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=user_profiles&u_id=268002

Poor Elbert...I guess he was just too high-strung.