A Thinking Problem in Americans

[harold800]

Young people, if answers on this forum are an objective measure, are, for the most part, reductionist, linear, fractionated, divisive, syntactic thinkers. They are the products of the limited choices available in our education and health care delivery systems. They have chosen to examine the tree and not the forrest. Making the right connections is the problem, and so they rant and rave and make noise, but they do not contribute to the strategy we must have in this real war against the father of lies. They may now choose to become productive units in the body of Christ. But to do that, they must begin to see life through a different lens, instead of the machine which all our biological sciences are based, they can choose to see life through the model of natural language. and they can choose to reject machine thinking. To make this vital choice, may mean contradicting what their parents and elders believe to be true. Daniel Boorstin, the ex-director of the Library of Congress, has named this time, the Age of Negative Discovery. One young Jewish Rabbi, has said it is the time of Jonah. But whether our youth are too far gone is something we will just have to wait and see. Certainly eleven years is not much time for a new revelation like Rosen's to be known. Galileo was not appreciated until years after his death. Rosen's insights are much more profound and earth shattering than Galileo's. They challenge the very foundations on which our intervention houses of knowledge have been built. They will fall, but whether or not we will choose to tear them down and re-build, is akin to going up against a giant much more vicious and destructive than was Goliath. Things have changed in my lifetime of 68 years. From fifty years that it took to see changes in the attitudes of Americans in my father's generation, the time is now only one and a half days. With just three prime-time television shows proclaiming a new message, the entire American buying public attitude can be changed. So we just might be able to discover the lie that has guided us into this time in history, and act on it, or since it requires great effort, and since most of us prefer the comfort of the old to the discipline of the new, we will complacently self-destruct.

Whether we like this government administration or not, it is us, as we face the rest of the World and we are uglier and more destructive to the great majority of them than ever in our history. We are not a land of the free. If one has a license to educate or practice health care, there are serious obstacles to teaching the truth. But, many nations in the world are seeing the Lie that forms the foundations for our decision-making. It is that money is the source of life. And the messages that pretend to liberate us actually enslave us to the purchase of products and services, and it is this message that the poor nations of the world are hearing and seeing. Our own young people are so enslaved by this thinking system that few can even figure out what life is all about. It is about being a witness to the truth in such simple things like how to save your teeth. Or what kind of soap to bathe with , or what kind of food to eat or vitamins to take. Every message that comes out of the world teaching authority that explains life itself and provides behavioral guidance is a lie. But to take a position for the truth is to qualify one as a reject just as was Jesus. Young people seek approval and applause. It is their greatest need. And so the prospect of taking a position that will classify them as crazy, is not very enticing. And few will do it, I suspect, however I have been wrong in the past. All I can do is hope and continue to share my truth with those who want to know it.

 

[Multi-Elis]

All I can do is hope and continue to share my truth with those who want to know it.

State it here clearly if it is worth listening to.

So you are saying the thinking problem is the materialism, money=happieness, way of feeling?

 

[harold800]

no! What I am saying is that the thinking problem is much more profound than materialism. It is in how you believe living systems are organized. All of our biological sciences information, which includes medicine, is based on the model of a machine. In other words, your doctor looks at you as if your resemble a machine. Marchines are organized from out-side in. We are self-organized. No one does it to us. No one is to blame for what i am or where I am. I am to blame. I made the choices that got me here. My fault, My fault, My most grievous fault. The better and alternative way to look at life is to see it as you see your own or your children's natural language acquisition. This is how you are organized. You select the words that you use in order to best meet your needs. God pays in money and many other comforts when we teach the truth that liberates people from the need to have money in order to have health. Technology cannot diagnose human problems It merely misleads. People are not made like machines. They are made like our vocabulary. And, One Word of God's is enough to heal. The reason that this is not clear is that you, without realizing it, think about life with the only option you have been given, machine thinking. But it is not like that at all. Now you have another choice. It will be a faith decision. All science is. Don't be misled by the justification of a statement that it is scientific. The word, science means, search for truth. We have been sidetracked through technology. Do you think God meant for little children to be sick? I don't. The only reason for it is the failure to see life as it is. We won't make them well like we fix the car. We will make them well because they will choose to think about the problem differently. And they can't do that if their parents still use the car image to think about the problem. The healing comes from inside-out. And it is a word problem. OUr diagnostic problem is to discover the missing word. Even faith healers have it wrong. Jesus did not heal with a charge of energy. He healed by giving the person a choice and the healing word. He never overcomes us. But this is the image we've been trained to accept. He overshadows us. There is a difference. There is no force involved in overshadowing. The choice is always ours

 

[Mr.Cheese]

I'm an English tutor at school and I think this thread gives too much credit to whatever is teaching them empirically. Our kids can't read or write to save their lives. The thinking problem is that no one is teaching them how to think in the first place.

 

[Risen Tree]

/me scratches his head and tries to figure out the point of this thread

 

[Super Gnat]

Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, harold? Just so I can better understand your position.

1. How do you define natural language and machine thinking? What makes natural language better than machine thinking? In your mind, what is the difference between the natural and machines?

2. You said "with just three prime-time shows proclaiming a new message" in your original post. Are you referring to any shows in particular? If so, which ones?

3. In what ways is the study of vocabulary and language acquisition superior to the study of biological systems and the construction of technological systems?

4. Little children have probably been getting sick since Cain and Abel. Why do you believe technology is responsible for sickness? How do you believe we can fix sickness through the study of vocabulary?


Thank you.

 

[harold800]

We, humans, can't think without a reference model. The reference model that is used by most biologists, including physicians is the machine. For a mathematical proof of which is best, read Robert Rosen' book, Life Itself. When I began to use this system of thought to diagnose and treat my patients, my success rate went up markedly and my patients did not need to come back But, aside from that, it squared with my faith concept in my Church. And so, I hope that clarifies for you. Natural language is like Whatever is spoken in your home and community. Natural has no words in it like hypotenuse. Unless your parents and community only speak math. But natural is also a very misused word in food supplements. A formula containing extracts of plants is not natural. It has been taken out of context. This is what is hard about communication. Although I may use words that look the same as the words you use, they don't mean the same to me as they do to you. That is why we cannot rely on syntax. Syntax is this linear word presentation. And that is why I suggested reading Postman's books and Mortimer Adler. Blood in the body is a word carrier system. It delivers the opinions of every cell as the whole confronts a hostile environment. It is a very dynamic system changing in content from second to second. The difference between the human body and the present body of people wanting to be Christian is that we can't agree on the same goals or roles. I believe that a unifying principle is to stop talking about salvation etc. and focus on helping one another develop their personal truth.

 

[Super Gnat]

I think I get your meaning. However, I don't necessarily fully agree with it.

For one thing, almost everything we can imagine is in some way shape or form a system. I think that consciously building our own systems (ex. computers) can help us understand the systems of the universe and ecology and human culture all around us. So in that respect, by thinking of a little-understood system as a machine, we are comparing a system that we don't understand to a system that we do understand. This can give us great insights and help us to better understand the systems of the body, of human culture, of ecology, and of the universe, to give a few examples. Of course it is not the whole picture, and it often does need to be combined with a wholistic view of the matter of interest. But it's like a project -- what's more important, realizing the details or grasping the entire picture? The answer is tha both are codependent and of equal importance.

I do take great exception to your words to the effect that math is not a natural language. Math is one of the languages through which we can express what we observe in the natural world. No flower has ever heard of the Fibonacci series as such, but they still follow it rigorously. It is true that not everyone can understand the world through mathematics, but it is a valid path for many to rejoice in God's creation.

And I'm not sure why you extrapolate your arguments about the way nature should be approached to the Christian body. If I may ask, in what specific ways do you believe the average Christian takes a mechanical (to use your own word) view of the body of belivers? And in what specific ways should they shift their viewpoint? I see your last sentence answers this, but I don't quite understand it. Thanks.

 

[Multi-Elis]

So you are part of the group of people who believe that claims that at least 50% of sickness is psychosomatic? I'm part of that group.
But it's realy hard for me to understand what you are talking about when refering to "mathamatical language" as apposed to "natural language". Strictly speaking, the only time I use mathimatics in my language is to explain to my electrical-engineer-mother aspects of dance, choreography, art and physical exercise of which she understands very little. She always seems to grasp the concepts when I liken it to, or explain it in terms of physics. It's a parable.

And the stangest thing of all, That I don't understand, is why we should or shouldn't be focusing on salvation, what do you mean by focusing on salvation, (here I insist on an explination, because I can think of two different meanings) and what you mean by the helping others find their truth. Psychologically accepting things?

such simple things like how to save your teeth. Or what kind of soap to bathe with , or what kind of food to eat or vitamins to take.

How is your truth supposed to affect these things?
I buy the cheapest toothpast that succeeds in convincing me, by good graphic design, word selection and color choice, that it will do the job.
I bath with what ever soap my mother buys - cheapest, but goodsmelling.
I only take iron pills, when it comes to vitamins, so that I don't get animic like most of my vegitarian friends, who are either fine with it, or had to stop being vegitarians.
What does all this have to do with truth?

 

[harold800]

The mistake I have made in this forum is to forget that you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. You cannot pour new thinking into the old thinking container. Your letter is testimony that you are a reductionist thinker. Don't take offense. It is just a fact. By separating mind from body, then you are doing a reductionist thing. They are integrated and together with the spirit of us make us One just as God is three persons in one. But all three have the same nature. All of us, thanks to Eve, are natural liars. This is one reason we have so easily fallen into the reductionist choice for trying to understand life through physics. And the great majority of our information about life itself and living systems comes from the reductionist, physics point of view. Your wine bag is a physics bag, and it cannot contain this new wine. You will have to make a faith decision to get a new bag before I can help you. If you want to know more, read the books I have suggested. Look on the Internet under Semiotics and under Relational Biology and under Complex Systems. And study to show yourself approved. This is ultimately going to affect your faith decisions. The real war is one between using physics and energy concepts to understand life or using Word, natural language concepts. An atom or a molecule can never give us understanding of life. It is not seen in its organized perpective of the cell. The cell speaks just as we do. It gives an opinion to the body, but the difference between body cells and us is that they all accept the same set of basic concepts. This is what divides us and it is obvious in these posts when people justify their statements with "I believe this or I believe that." You believe in a concept. That is what gives you your perpective. And, if those concepts are not seen in their correct hierarchical order, you will make mistaken choices about what to believe when and where and what. You are a typical victim of monocultured teaching. We need to grow and develop in a polyculture with a people who all accept the same set of basic concepts and are not free to deviate from them. The deviations in a body come from perspective, not from concepts. And this is what makes it difficult to communicate and to form one body in Christ. We must decide on a set of basic concepts on which to base our belief and of those we are not free to change. But each of us has a unique way of seeing things, as long as we can agree on the same concept, and then we can really become one body and one blood. Because of your choice to be a reductionist, physics, law thinker, my explanations do not fit with your conceptual framework. So I will stop now until you can come to the acceptance of two basic concepts from which there can be no deviation. Change happens through transformation and the life of the flesh is in the blood. Now, the next step after accepting these foundation pillars is to define the meaning of these words, transformation as opposed to conformation, and the meaning of the word, blood. When we have reached agreement on these foundation stones for conversation, then we can have a productive dialogue.

 

[Multi-Elis]

What if you came down to my level, spoke my language for a moment and used reductionism to explain your basic concepts.

What I don't understand, is what you are saying about physics not explaining life. For me, there are many ways to look at life. I like to look at things in a couple ways at once: When I lie down on the floor and do "entrechats" with my legs (small movement of exchanging feet positions that is done very fast and demands an enormous amount of energy) It's difficulty can be explained in physics: constant change of very fast aceleration. It can be explained by biology: muscles in ability to respond fast enough to the nervous system and has to compensate for it. It can be explained, how shall I say, psychologically. The improved performance is in direct relationship with what I'm thinking. Am I flying through the air? Swimming in the deapths?
There could be other ways to think about it, I'm just not aware of it yet.
How would you explain it using natural language?

It looks to me more that you don't know how to explain yourself rather than that your way of thinking is much better or worse. I guess I could read your books, but I have a long list of books I'm already trying to read. Most amazingly, not a single question that I asked was directly answered, making me wonder at the usefulness of "natural language" if natural language can't comunicate, or be relevent to every day experiences.

I am multi-cultruled. It's not in America that I grew up. I am an artist, and I am aware of another dimention to humain beings other than physics. When I dance, I want to be talking to people's "other dimention". I don't want to use words, because that talks to the mind. I want to use that other dimention that can't be explained by physics, because it talks to the soul.
Thinking about it has led me to notice that all of this other dimention, is very artificial in many ways. I can do a modern, rerospective dance, and look like I'm dancing something very deep and profound, when in fact, I am faking it, I am emphthising with an idea of something deep and profound that I invented which results in this deep looking dance. However, another person might watch the dance and really "understand" it in a way he/she can't put into words. That is the whole beauty of it.

I don't know what you mean by basic concepts: There exist already 3 basic concepts to christianity, and everybody has a different way of looking at the rest of life.

 

[harold800]

natural language is soft science, vs. hard science which is physics, material, energetic. The reason I asked you to read the books is because these guys say it better than I can and I do not have time to write you a book. But the problem is deeper than that. You think with the emotional side of your brain. The logical, rational side is simply not involved in this conversation and in my experience, you are trying to defend your position, rather than seriously expressing an interest to know. I've been there and done that. But the mere fact that you are questioning is good. When I was at this point that you are at, it took me about two years to come around and then it was a surrender more than a rational decision. The reason came because I agreed to accept the Roman Catholic Church Teaching Authority. And believe me, there were many obstacles because I had been brought up Southern Baptist. But I wanted to be the spiritual head of my home. At the time, in order to mary a Catholic, one had to promise to raise the children Catholic and I made that promise. I lie, but not on purpose and I did not want to break my promise, and it seemed like God was not going to change my wife. God has worked this way in my life many times. One advantage of living to be as old as I am is that you have a lot of experience. It turned out to be the best learning experience of my life because, by nature, I am very argumentative. But having to accept a no, you can't say that, or a wait and study the subject more, and being involved in much scientific continuing education, I gradually developed the models I needed to justify what The Church teaches. One of the things that Rosen does very well is to explain the value of the modeling relation. I don't know how to use the drawing or graphing powers of this machine so I can't sent you that visual connection. But he has the drawings in his book, Life Itself, and it gives you a way to evaluate the veracity of your own modeling relations. Analogies are comparisons of two living systems, using some common element that they share. Metaphors are comparison, but not necessarily between living systems. A metaphor, the machine, is presently the model that the dominant biological mind has chosen to explain life itself. There are times when it serves me to refer to a machine, but I am aware now that it is a trap. And especially when one has very much education because it is easy to fall back into outside-in thinking. All nature change in the body takes place from inside-out. Natural language is a good model for explaining this if you have the opportunity to observe a little baby acquiring understanding of word directions first and then choosing his/her own words to express needs when screaming doesn't work. We develop our language in order to express our needs. The language of God can only be understood when we can die to ourselves. It is expressed in the greatest love story ever told, His submitting to the limits of being human in the first place and then refusing to use His awesome power to change anything as He submitted to the rejection, the humiliation, the torture, some say 5000 lashes, and the horrible crucifixion, just so I could learn to think about my role. Jesus had 84 disciples but 72 left Him when He began to talk about the Cross and His death on it. They knew who the Messiah would be. He would be a Force that would make all people bow to Him and they would either change or die. He proved them wrong. He is love so great that few of us can imagine it. And even fewer would choose to give their lives for someone like you who is so bent on challenging me to justify yourself. What I have to say is just as misunderstood and confusing as is this summary statement of God's, Jesus Christ Crucified. As I meditate on that whole scene, and look at life through this lens, I begin to see the wisdom of God in this war we are fighting against an energetic being whose only real power is to make us believe a lie. And he is very astute. He has limited your thinking choices for more than 400 years, and all the books that you read with the exceptions of those I have mentioned are written by reductionist thinkers. So it is almost impossible for people to day to think relationally. Coming from another country you may be able to recall the importance of relationships in your community. Most Americans can only relate life to money. They don't have much experience in sacrifice and dying to self. Fasting is not done to be more in touch with God's Spirit. It is done to be more attractive. There is a potential trap in fasting too. Since it really sensitizes one to the spiritual world, we need to be under headship during that time so we don't make wrong choices. We actually need to be under headship all the time. We are comparative thinkers. When we choose the wrong model to see things through, it distorts reality and colors it wrongly. We are not capable of self-criticism that is constructive. We will always be in favor of ourselves until we have such a string of failures that we will develop a failure identity. A good failure kills him/herself. But, through Jesus Christ, we can identify with a winner, who overcame death, who was able to organize himself anew and not only come out of Hell Himself, but bring others with Him. The whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, and when we reduce things to their parts, the first thing we lose is the organizing principle. That is what is called concepts. And that is what makes them so important. Because we are flesh and blood we cannot be organized around energy concepts. They do not apply to human beings. Words are the organizing principles of life. Energy serves the transportation of words, also the emphasis we give them as we speak. The tone, the sound, the movement, these are all energetic concepts, but they do not organize the system, in fact they can lead to chaos for a word organized system. We choose words because they help us to get what we need. We are natural born liars, manipulators and self-interested beings. When we try to die to ourselves, it is a continual struggle. The body wants food, water, movement. The mind wants power, friends, fun, and freedom to frollic, to do and say what makes us feel good. The spirit doesn't like being corrected. God only asks two things of us, humility and obedience to the law of transformation. This law states that we become what we testify to at the risk of our lives. Testimony has two parts, the more we live. It is the confession of error part and the witness to a truth part. Truth is what sets people free from the need for me. Jesus does that. He sets us free and like a homing pigeon, if we are His, we will want to return to His waiting arms. He doesn't want me as a slave or a servant. He wants me as a friend. Unlike a man, He can get arroused and even at the last moment, if we say, no, i've changed my mind. Don't plant your seed in me, He will back off. I can do this better than I used to be able to do it, but I can tell you that it is difficult to die to desire once it is aroused in a man. Jesus is so controlled, so loving that He will never go against my will. And I have often lamented this fact and asked Him to bring change in me through force. He will not do it because then it is not my love for Him that brings me back but Force. Satan will take control if you give him a chance. That is what demon possession is. And by ones self, that control cannot be broken. It takes help to unwrap the ties that bind us. Jesus supplies that help through other people who come into our lives when we are so down that you'd have to have a ladder to get up and even that will not help because you don't have the "energy" to climb it. My parents gave me my faith in the Bible as The Word of God, but they didn't teach me the relationship between science as a revelation source and His Word. They did not teach me about analogy. Only God can give you understanding, not I. All I can do is try to share my love. In my case understanding has only come after I made a faith decision to accept the guidance unequivocally. And, He has blessed me by giving me the right people to guide me in my life. We are in a war. It is a war for the thinking part of us. And the enemy is astute, but He cannot die to himself as Jesus did for you and me. He chose not to use His awesome power to save me against my will. He chose to love me to death. This time I am spending to try to get through to you is an act of love. It is a sacrifice of a part of my life to try to help you know the truth about life itself. But, like Jesus said, if they rejected me, how much more will they reject you. I have learned to reject rejection and to just keep keeping on, looking ever forward, knowing through experience that in time some of these seeds that I have planted will sprout. The numbers are few and far between in this nation of selfish people. They are more numerous in Guatemala where the people are starved for the Love of God. God bless you and guide you.

 

[Sunbeam]

I believe that a unifying principle is to stop talking about salvation etc. and focus on helping one another develop their personal truth.

Harold, that sounds newage. Personal truth is about awareness of ourselves which is subjective and independent of any analyzing from any source. It is not repentance, God's wisdom, or our fruits of the Spirit. To just accept how we are as fine negates salvation needs, and replaces it with a false peace.

 

[PennylessZ28]

You have read 1984 one to many times. Please, go preach your Anti-American New Age Love Earth dibble else were.

I am not reading through all these threads, two of your posts were enough.

 

[Tony W]

You have read 1984 one to many times. Please, go preach your Anti-American New Age Love Earth dibble else were.

I am not reading through all these threads, two of your posts were enough.

You stole the words right from my mouth.

 

[Mr.Cheese]

The Matrix has you...

 

[Tony W]

The Matrix has you...

All your base are belong to us.

 

[Deamiter]

Yo guys, it's not productive or wise to slam somebody's testamony into new-age or other boxes in order that you can ignore what he has to say. You can't pick out ONE sentence in his post and label him as ANYTHING!

As a physics major at a Christian univeristy, I can definately relate to what Harold has to say. Actually, my experience in following Satan through witchcraft has more to do with it than my field of study.

Perhaps I will horribly maul Harold's point, but look around at the many MANY Christians in our culture who use Christianity as the 'machine' he mentions. We go to church, we follow the ten commandments (when they're convenient) and look good to our other Christian friends. We are all TAUGHT that this is wrong, but even at a conservative university, it is the normal mode of living! My friends all seek success in money and in careers, though few are willing to be labeled 'wierd' for Christ's sake. Who is willing to stand up for Christ when faced with a legal battle in the school system or for witnessing on the job? And why aren't we prepared to go to jail for our beliefs as the disciples were?

Of course I'm speaking as one who is part of this culture, but don't you think that considering Harold's points might help us in our walk with God? Perhaps it would be wise to listen to one who's been alive for longer, even if only to hear what he has to say.

 

[Living4Him03]

You sound like my boyfriend...except he's only 23. He's very cynical. I'm very positive. He gets annoyed with my attitude, but Christ was not downtrodden and angry at the world. I'm not saying you are, just saying alot of thinkers such as yourself become that way.

 

[Living4Him03]

I do agree that the Body of Christ needs to repent and seek forgiveness for not being what we should be. We have really become hypocritcal and self-righteous, although there are many good things the church is doing.