Foot Note:

Machiavellianism made Europe hungry for power, culminating into devastating world wars, which basically produced nothing but losers. The greed sent them conquering the world, to acquire wealth and resources. That made the left-out belligerent nations (Germany. Italy, Etc.) feared the winners in the game. In the game of greed, all involved lose.

Let us address the most basic issue.

The only reason I ponder over definitions and meaning is to learn. The reason I wish to learn is to gain more control over my affairs. The reason I want to control my affairs is to become happier. So in the end my purpose is to be more happy.

When a person, greedy for wealth or power puts me into a disadvantage position, I have no control over his attitude. But whether I do such things to others, when I have the opportunity, is the question in front of me. Would my greed add to my happiness, or subtracts from it?

We all know that fear reduces happiness. Now, greed is the flipside of fear. It is fear of not having enough. What we feel is what we become. Nursing the fear of future increases it. A gain of million makes us feel bigger, in that, we could buy more than before. Once we test the fruit of the million, we may want to get ten million, and then a hundred, and so on. You see, greed is a fire that spreads as we feed it. Once we get enough for sustenance, to crave for more makes us unhappy. This does not mean that we reject what comes over way in the rightful manner. But greed makes us deceitful. Deceit results from fear.

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you' are not just empty words. What goes around does come around. Arrogance always outreaches it self in the end, bringing misery.

Science bases its theories and conclusions on observations; perceptions. On the other side dogmatic religions disallow reasoning, substituting 'faith' in place of reasoning. Defining and understanding faith is a tricky business.

We have met people with very deep convictions of sincere heart. When we listen to them, we get swayed by their ideas. But when we repeat the new understanding to others, not having as clarity of the bases of our borrowed new convictions, we do not remove the skepticism from our audience's mind/heart. This is how the concept of faith gets distorted. Can you imagine, how swayed the people who hears an exalted master of wisdom first hand would be? We exude our personality, our sincerity. Call this the aura if you like. But the followers do not have the same deep understanding of the principals. After a few generation, the preachers, failing to enlist many followers would demand blind obedience, calling it the faith.

Faith is not the same as blind obedience. And the true wisdom is not without the base of logic. But mind's perceptions are of higher level than the sensory perceptions. We all have gone through soul-searching. This is when our perceived concepts of life fail us, and we seek help of our deeper mind. And amazingly enough, answers do pop up. This the road to wisdom. But again, it is only the reasoning of higher order.

Thus science and healthy religion are not contradictory, but complementary.

I read this somewhere: 'Four ways to recreate life energies are, sleep, laughter, music and healthy religion.' Healthy religion does reduce our worries and cravings, giving us happiness.

The difference between an honest believer and an honest skeptic should be confined to the definitions of God and spirituality. Their ways of dealing with life should be quite honorable; they both should have learned tolerance and compassion.

Man, as distinguished from some other animals, like lizards, tigers, snakes, etc. forms social groups, and prefers to live in a society, rather than in isolation. Elephants, Ants, Monkeys, and others form societies. A society achieves more abilities and strength by division of labor. This creates leadership roles. Leaders have larger influences than others on the overall thinking of the society. The collective thinking sets trends and traditions, which we call culture.

Most animals do not carry their memories much beyond a generation. As a result, their cultures change fast, as conditions change. We have accumulated knowledge for millenniums. And over the past millenniums our cultures have deeply integrated religions, which give long, perpetual memory. Therefore, our cultures are much more profound, at the same time being stubborn.

Words are labels describing names, actions, concepts, etc. Each word creates a different image in each of our minds, according to our accumulated experiences of life. Within a culture the differences are small.

The word spirituality has different meanings for each of us. Spirit by definition is the essence of us. This spirit is not perceptible by senses, it can only be perceived by our mind proportionally to our self awareness. Therefore, staunch followers of doctrines of religions attribute magical properties to it, associating it with blind obedience, discarding logic.

Everything in this universe has a reason, and it becomes cause of something. To me logic permeates all. To me spirituality is logical, only of a very high tier. In this sense I believe in spirituality. It tends to save me from the pitfalls of life. But I abhor the word spirituality in the popular sense.

Why bicker about a label? let us face it; the goal of life is happiness. Let us use logic, to climb up the pyramid step by step. As I increase my self awareness, I climb further steps. I don't know, if there is an end to the journey, and if there is, I don't know that I will ever reach the pick. But I don't care. The additional fruit each step up brings me is very sweet.

Knowledge is the accumulation of data. When we have enough dots connected to make a comprehensible mental picture of a subject, it creates a meaning in our mind. The ability based on discerning quality helps us connect different pictures to create mental patterns. The popular word to describe this status is smartness. The imaginative ability to interpolate and extrapolate the patterns to deal with probabilities of unknown situations is called vision. These are the different stages of dealing with the basic data.

The purpose of knowledge is to enable us to manipulate the forces affecting us to suit our purpose. The purpose of life is happiness. The trick lies in defining the happiness correctly. The meaning of happiness is defined by our passions. As a result the definition is different for each of us.

We apply our knowledge according to our definition of happiness, which is based on the knowledge of the self. For the sake of simplicity let us call the knowledge of the world/universe as outside knowledge, and the knowledge of the self, of our mind, as inside knowledge. The outside knowledge is a two edged sward; it cuts both ways. The effectiveness of the application of the outside knowledge is proportional to the level of our inside knowledge, the level of self-awareness, which we call wisdom. We have seen smart persons with self defeating or self punishing attitudes plunging into disasters. Knowledge without wisdom is a curse, not a blessing.

The accuracy of our definition of happiness is proportional to the level of our inside knowledge, the wisdom.

As we go through life we constantly receive reactions from the outside, in the forms of affection, anger, gain, loss, peace, quarrels, and so on. We ponder over each of this stimulus to figure out the cause and effect.

Pride makes us feel that we are right, and the world is wrong. A proud person has a closed mind. On the other hand, an open mind keeps figuring out the more correct direction to steer toward in future.

What we feel is what we become. A surgeon and a murder achieve different levels of happiness out of their actions of cutting others open. Our mind is the sum of our desires. Desires manifest themselves as fear and greed, the former being the feeling of not having enough for the present, and the later being the feeling of not having enough for the future. Again, the feelings of shortages become us. A mother of an infant, sacrificing deeply her sleep and comfort, is one of the happiest people in the world. This brings us to the concept of dedication. Craving for gratification increases the ‘Me’ factor in our equation of happiness, while dedication to causes higher than our self decreases it. Of course, we need to sustain our existence to serve our causes. But confining our efforts to easy sustenance is ample. Anything more that comes our way, we accept as God’s mercy, but we ought not to crave for it. This brings us to the need for hard work, or say, applying ourselves to the best of our ability to the tasks at hand. Another way of saying this is to live in each moment.

Science moves forward at its own pace, even though the pace is always accelerating.
Unfortunately, we know what we know, but we never know how much we don't know. I don't think science will be ever able to unravel all the mysteries of nature.

But our basic purpose is not knowledge, but happiness. If I can find pills that would take all my pains of life away, then why do I need to learn?

But the quest for happiness is quite illusive. Great ones have pondered on the question for years and decades throughout the history.

Fortunately a handful of exalted minds have left us some pearls of wisdom. But those ideas are way above our heads. Therefore we call them spirituality, and look down on them. Actually if we try them in our small feeble ways, the results over the time amaze us. I have found the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, and few like them (but watch out, there are a lot more misguided and crazy teachers too) to be quite good. Amazingly they all give us the same thing, the logic of living. My opinion is far from conclusive, but I enjoy trying them according to my small abilities.

I find that they all tell us the same thing: life is like a mirror, you love life and it loves you back, you cheat life and life cheats you. A loving person creates a loving world around him, and a criminal lives in constant fear.

Jesus said 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you', and the Buddha said there is no sin like hate. Another one said pride is the root of all sins, and kindness saves you. To me, they all are saying the same thing.

From the beginning, to find the reasons and remedies for the unpredictable phenomena of nature and life, humans stretched their imagination beyond the realm of available facts. Such a quest is emotional thinking, driven by greed and fear coupled with pride, which makes you fool your mind. This is how some prophets come up with off answers.

In a family, parents hold large control over the children. Since in pre-industrial time humans always faced the raw forces of nature, and often the flagrant and lawless interaction with others, the stronger of the two ganders, man, was the head of the family. Therefore, naturally, a figure of the supreme father was imagined. This is how God, and associated concepts were formed. We call this set of concepts spirituality. Spirituality demands blind obedience, because logic cannot explain it. Since spirituality depends largely on imagination, its format differs from culture to culture. Over time, mystery, myth and rituals were added, by greedy and misguided spiritual leaders.

Trade with other lands created towns. As communities grew in size, more law and order were established within, and their collective abilities were better able to counter the threats from outside and the wreath of nature. But we know that even the national strengths of a mighty super power, like us, is sometimes not enough to overcome the threats. For this reason the concepts involved in spirituality keep improving, as new facts are uncovered by cumulative observations and logic (i.e. scientifically), throughout the history.

Around 700 B.C, Iron was discovered. This made for higher production, enhancing the division of labor, and faster transportation and communication, by clearing land for roads faster. As a result, the kingdoms stared expanding. The ensuing wars devastated communities. This pain encouraged deep introspection. The world saw the lords of wisdom emerging. These exalted persons shaded all the crud from the definition of meaning of life, and gave us the quite correct roads to happiness. Incidentally, they defined the entity controlling our fate. Ironically, indigenous Indian religions deny the existence of God, and place ‘Karmas’ in the status of the supreme entity.

We perceive that everything has a cause, and that it becomes reason for a subsequent event. We call the understanding of this cause and effect as logic. The universe is logic. You can see this more vividly in mathematics. And so logic is the only vehicle on which, our effort to sustain our existence, and to manipulate the universe, within our sphere of influence, to achieve happiness, can ride. Majority of people in the world still proffer blind obedience to their religions. This gives them temporary respite from fear and impetus to their greed. This is an effort to shortchange your fate of due efforts. This is pride. On the other hand all sound religions preach humbleness.

Now no new religions are taking root, not only because all cultures of the world are already deeply rooted in their respective religions, but also because we have enough wisdom available from the masters to please the sincere followers, seeking deep wisdom about life. And science is destroying myths at an accelerating pace. God, being only a tool for this purpose, is slowly taking a back seat.

A community cannot function without some socialism. By definition, socialism is nothing but taking away some individual freedom for the good of whole community. Even law of land is socialism. But in-here we are addressing financial socialism. Countries around the world try it in varying degrees and by different combinations. But so far most of the experiments have tried to shift the control from money to authority. USSR was an extreme example of this. This cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. The axiom, ‘the rule that rules the least is the best’ applies to any power, whether it stems from force of authority or that of wealth. A community left virtually to its own devices has the highest potential of prosperity, only proportional to its level of ideological social justice.

American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. But such a scheme, as proposed here, transfers operational control to society, negating state’s potential for inefficiency and abuse.

Larger the organization, the more it is open to mismanagement and abuse to the cause. The activities of government should be confined mainly to security, order within, disaster relief, and keeping eyes for trouble spots. To regulate the behavior within the country it should only make blanket laws, and should stay away from micro-management. Otherwise, we are asking for inefficiency and bad management. Being so large, it can hardly be proactive, slow in reacting, and many times use remedies that are off or worse than the problem.

This approach can make our government small and more effective. As it is, departments just grow in size, and the outmoded one refuse to die. The employees resist loosing their jobs or prestige, or taking on competitive amount of work. We all are selfish to a degree.

Autocracies are very efficient, as long as the government is honest. But this cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. Communism and dictatorships provide vivid examples of this principle throughout the history. Democracy functions in relatively clumsy and slow motion, but the fact that its governance is much more in tune with all the citizens' well being, keeps it away from extreme tyrannies. ‘The rule that rules the least is the best’. Until some one comes up with more benevolent form of government, democracy is the best deal we have. If we can keep our government from meddling too much in our economy, we can have more effective democracy. As we have laws to restrain our emotions of violence, if we can find a way to restrain extreme greed, we can achieve much more progress and happiness. We need to make the wealth distribution more just.

A community cannot function without some socialism. By definition, socialism is nothing but taking away some individual freedom for the good of whole community. Even law of land is socialism. But in-here we are addressing financial socialism. Countries around the world try it in varying degrees and by different combinations. But so far most of the experiments have tried to shift the control from money to authority. USSR was an extreme example of this. This cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. The axiom, ‘the rule that rules the least is the best’ applies to any power, whether it stems from force of authority or that of wealth. A community left virtually to its own devices has the highest potential of prosperity, only proportional to its level of ideological social justice. Additionally, relatively free and prosperous atmosphere allows voices of wisdom to be heard louder, thereby enhancing positive social values.

American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. What we need is to introduce a rule by which our greedy behavior is restrained, the same way as the existing laws restrain our violent behavior.

A large business can produce more cheaply, when in tough competition, than a cluster of small businesses. But in unrestricted free enterprise, giant businesses tend to quell down competition by mergers and absorptions. Then in complacent times wasteful lethargy and inefficiency seeps in easily. On the other hand a small business tends to remain vigilant due to closer watch of its stake holders, afforded by shorter pyramid of the organization. In some commodities the system may put us at a disadvantage for a time against giant foreign businesses. But higher creativity and innovations generated by broader participation of collective mind will override the disadvantage soon enough by improving the products, finding cheaper substitutes, moving to higher technology items, etc. The desire for profit would shift its focus from squeezing consumer to creatively adding values. Euphoric motivation growing from the new hope would make the system start bearing fruits quickly, and the pace would keep accelerating until the process is close to saturation. In less than two generations from the time the system is adopted, the transformation of the community should be awesome.

Since autocracy can act more swiftly, the rest of the world used to think that democracy has no chance of survival against it. What it forgot to consider is that the governance of democracy is more in tune with the well being of all its citizens, and so it receives highly motivated support of its population, and can sustain itself against all kinds of foreign tyrannies. The results of the conflicts over the last hundred year period prove this: monarchy and dictatorship are all but dead, and communism is dying, but democracy is alive and spreading. Similarly, diffused economical power will prevail against all attacks from large foreign corporations due to massive, highly motivated, creative participation. Comparatively insignificant American colonies of merely three million people won against the then mighty British Empire, because of self respecting and fiercely independent minded citizens. Top leaders like Washington were supported by hundreds of courageous and dedicated second and third category leaders. Such a system of restrained capitalism, as addressed in here, will create a society full of upright citizens, interspersed with tens of thousands of bold and innovative economic leaders.

The United States of America was founded on the basis of diffusion of state’s power, curtailing the power’s potential for injustice. The dazzling success of the system has made the concepts of democracy and capitalism popular around the world. The existing form of capitalism worked very well for a while, because then, wealth making power could not converge easily into a few hands. Industrialization has changed that. Now a few rich have undesirably high power to manipulate wealth distribution and politics, and to influence social values. Unrestricted capitalism favors the rich. It is easier to make money with money than by working. Extreme greed for wealth and the power of highly concentrated wealth has a degrading effect on community.

Man is a social animal. In a community, attitudes of the perceived leaders set trends, and the followers reinforce each other’s thinking accordingly, creating euphoria over time. This is how ordinary people gear up for heroic efforts in times of community crisis, like wars. Now big money makers have become roll-models, and have too high an influence on community’s thinking. As a result, now ruthless greed generated by reckless enterprise has become popular world over. Too many of them heedlessly fall in the spider web of our luring credit industry, sinking deeper in misery. And seeking and pursuing quick money-making schemes makes one abhor hard work. Being valuable to society by honest work has gone out of fashion.

Simply defined, morality is: ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’. The existing degenerate environment of greed forces new entrepreneurs to compromise their moral convictions and adopt cunning ways. This craving for quick gratification is evident in mature and growing economies all over the world. Look at how processed food is made unhealthy with harmful preservatives and cheap ingredients, the quality of food in chain restaurants has degraded over the years, farm produce is made unhealthy by high-breeding, and the quality of dairy products by rampant use of hormones and antibiotics.

The U.S. seems to be leading the way. This makes the nation fat and unhealthy, requiring more medical attention. On the other side, medical drugs/treatments are marketed at exorbitant prices, and once they are in circulation, our medical drug industry shows instances of suppressing and discouraging immerging cheaper/better remedies, and of suppressing discoveries of dangerous side effects. The common man is getting squeezed from every side. Our automobile industry ignored, or bought and shelved technical innovations, to avoid prerequisite expensive modifications to production processes, loosing against foreign completion in the end.

A revolution almost always has wide spread economic hardship at its base. Too much wealth in the hands of a few robs democracy of its effectiveness. The present worldwide wave of expression of dissatisfaction for the existing political establishments is only the beginning. Man’s pursuit of happiness is ever existing formidable force. Each new generation brings forth clearer perspective of the prevailing reality. The majority of the world population feeling safer than before has shifted its focus to achieving comfort. The biggest obstacle to comfortable living, the common man sees now, is the unjust distribution of wealth. As a result the demand for more profound socialism is forming in the mind of the world masses. Often, at the beginning, revolting masses are acutely aware of their pain but not clear about remedy. Unless the real underlying decease is addressed, treating the symptoms only with political adjustments will not mollify the masses. It seems like the next lesson on humanity’s curriculum is that, ‘unchecked commercial greed is detrimental to community’s happiness’.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.

This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to how much interest an individual can own in how many businesses.

After decades of terrorism aimed at us we have started asking loudly why the radical elements of the world hate us.

The West, powered by technological advantages, imposed ruthless imperialism over much of the world for material advantages for three centuries. This caused a lot of suffering. After the world wars, the mankind, in general, has learned that conquering other countries hurts the conqueror more than it helps, in the long run. The US, having more fair and humane attitude internally had made huge progress by then, and had employed milder international policies up to that time. This made her emerge as the leader of the war-broken West. But since then, we have exploited the underdeveloped world economically. And to achieve and support the economical advantages we manipulated underdeveloped countries’ politics. In some instances we even have been the ‘king maker’. This has generated pains round the world.

Pain generates anger. A culture handles its anger according to its emotional makeup, which in turn is influenced by its collective religious base, whether be it based on dogma or reason. Thus some cultures are more forgiving of the past then others. In addition, different cultures have more home-generated hate than others, stemming from their family, social and political environment.

When deep anger is allowed to linger on, or to grow by additional factors, it crystallizes over time, and turns into hate. Hate differs from greed, in that, hate does not weigh gain against cost; it just wants to destroy. This is directed more towards the US for two main reasons, because she is the leader of the West, and the memories of our unfair dealings are fresh in the minds around the world. Even our gestures of generosity have been tainted by political considerations. Greed goes hand in hand with pride, which keeps us blind to our follies. As mighty as we are, new technologies are making it feasible for a few to hurt many. And, some cultures are producing large numbers of hateful people who are ready to risk their lives to cause us pain. They will overwhelm our policing resources not too far in the future.

We need to focus our generosity towards the pains of people around the world more, and less on our immediate gains from these efforts. In the long run, this self-less generosity can earn emotional goodwill of the common populace around the world. We all think emotionally somewhat. But the Eastern cultures are more emotional than the Western cultures. We can influence the Eastern cultures more easily through their emotions than through objective representations. Such efforts will divert their hate to somewhere else, and we can stop being their prime target. Change of attitude frog-leaps by generation. It is better to pay for our deeds by reducing the pain of others early than by incurring suffering later. Hate is a monster that devours itself, if nothing else is available. Let us pull out from its path. Meanwhile we can keep defending ourselves with force, need of which will taper down, as goodwill grows.

Any definition has to be based on the available facts. The process of defining the purpose of life has to start with most basic facts available to us. The only definite facts available to us are that I am, and I like to be happy. All other perceptions can be questioned.

The next step is what can make me happy? Our mind is an ocean of desires, with cross currents. I want to eat when I am hungry. But at the same time I see that my child is hungry, and there is very little food available. I choose to give it to my child. Life is full of such conflicts between gratification and self-giving desires. Making correct decisions causes the least amount pain for me. Spur of the moment emotions make us take wrong decisions. To follow my integrated mind gains me the most. This builds our character. Our character decides whether we move to greener pastures in life or to dry land. An angry person creates an angry world for himself, and the world created by a caring person cares for him.

Following my integrated mind (calm heart) seems to the only purpose of life.

Everything that happens has a reason, and it becomes the cause for a subsequent event. We call the analysis of this as cause and effect logic. To me there is nothing super natural.

It is just that we do not possess all the facts pertaining to any scrutiny; we have very limited knowledge. But that should not keep us from using logic, if we are willing to keep in mind that our conclusions are only probabilistic, not absolute. But if a cult tells me that by performing a ritual of cruel acts on animals I can gain power over people, I know that the probability of that being true is incredibly small, and I walk away from such ideas. This is what logic can do for me. I know with extremely high probability that two plus is two. It is the analysis of abstract truths that take me in realms of substantial probabilities. Applying logic in my sphere of knowledge is just fine. Thus even when some idea, beyond my knowledge of comfortable level defies my logic, I know with high level of certainty that that idea is wrong. Generally we do not much judgment about what doctors say. But let a doctor tell me that aspirin can cure food poisoning, I would know that the doctor is off his rockers.

Unrestrained capitalism is basically a trickle down economy. Not much trickles down. The rich keeps us poor by exploiting the society, and short changing the employees, and they yield to high an influence on the government.

Of course, the rich and the legislatures are all people, who possess greed the same as we all do. It is the system that is at fault.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.

This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to the maximum percentage interest an individual can own in all other businesses.

Absence of both, pain and pleasure, is boredom. Pleasure is the opposite of pain. Just as absence of hill at a location is not a hole in the ground there, or that absence of positive is not negative. These pairs are exclusive of each other.

Love and hate are exclusive of each other and disinterest is lack of both.

On the other hand, things that are divided in levels, like heat/cold, tall/short are questions of degree, defined in reference to thresholds. While, those that are inversely proportional to each other are defined by degree, like pride/humbleness. We define heat/cold in reference to our body tolerence, and pride/humbleness by the average threshold of the community. Warm weather for one person may be cool, and a person with a particular level of pride may be deemed proud in one culture and humble in another. But on a range of 1 to 10, you cannot have 5 pain and 2 pleasure at the same time from the same stimulus.

By giving pain to others. doctors feel honor and satisfaction, while a criminal self degradation. What we feel becomes us, and builds character. Our character makes us gravitate to the place in the life accordingly. The doctor creates a peaceful world for himself, while the criminal lives in fearful world.

The free will allows us to make the choice. Some can say that the free will lets us choose between defiance and cooperation with God.

Living beings have two basic concerns, security and comfort. Relative global border security created by the conviction recently crystallized in the mind of mankind, that conquering others is a losing proposition in the long run, has made nations feel more secure within their borders. The broad coalition formed against Iraq in the Desert Storm war portrayed this conviction. This has allowed nations to shift more energy towards material gains, intensifying their productions. To achieve high values for the participants, international division of labor is inevitable, which cannot flourish without massive international trade. As a result, and supported by the fast and massive communication and transportation facilities, the tide of international trade is rising. Thus, progression of economic globalization is an undefeatable factor of today’s life. During this early phase of globalization, some national authorities are trying to keep the tide out. But these efforts are doomed to fail, like the Jackson era attempt of killing the then budding banking industry failed. In a handful number of generations the international trade of material, labor and services will become quite cohesive and will resemble, to a degree, to our interstate commerce.

Prior to the industrial age, cultural influences used to migrate, almost exclusively by face to face human contact, on coattails of trade, as trade requires two way trips to other lands. The story of the Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, provides a vivid example of this. Conquering cultures met with deep resentments from the conquered. The fusion of these cultures was very slow and temporary for the most part. Because of the much slower pace of international exchange of the period, the trade inspired interfacing of cultures was slow and gradual, but the results were cumulative. Today’s fast and massive commodity/information exchange all over the world is merging cultures of the world at an accelerating pace. As cultures fuse together, the ideologies will converge. The more forgiving cultures will merge sooner than the fanatic ones, but the process is non-reversible. As armed violence takes back seat, the culture fusion becomes easier. Man's pursuit of happiness is relentless throughout the times. This will encourage the learning and adopting the good values from others.

Desires contained our mind define us. We call this ego. Our ego tells us what we deserve in life. In accordance with this pursuit of happiness we identify objects of gratification, like the car, job, spouse, friends. This forms attachments. The more we dwell on an object of gratification the larger portion of our total meaning of happiness attaches with it. This is how we sometimes get to deep infatuations, saying that “I cannot live without such and such”. This can lead to lunatic or fanatic state.

We call this attachment ‘Love’ in usual language. This is based on expectation of future gratification. When the expected gratifications do not come forth we feel betrayed, disappointed. This leads to hate.

On the other side, when we help a stranger, an animal, or give to a homeless on the street, we know that no gain will ever come from this action of ours. This is mercy, compassion. This is universal love. We all have to define the value of selflessness for us, by trying it a few times, and make a judgment, as to what adds to happiness, selfishness or selflessness. World cannot teach this to us, we all have to learn this ourselves.

Morality is very personal, and cannot be acquired from outside sources.

What I feel from interactions with the outside world determines my morality. There are no set rules that can be applied to every one.

Take for example the basic teachings of the past masters: 'Thou shall not kill', and 'Thou shall not steal'.
Now, say some one is about to kill your loved one, should you kill the assailant? The answer depends on the content of your heart; the level of mercy Vs. that of fear. History talks about persons with exalted minds, who forgave their killers. But to imitate them blindly can cause more grief in you heart than peace. We must act according to where we are on the ladder of mental evolution. It is a soldier's duty to kill, and a spy's duty to steal. If your children are starving, is OK for you to steal food?

The idea is not to succumb to flashes of passions in your heart, but to act according to your total mind.

What is right in one instance may be wrong in another, and what is right for one person may be wrong for another one.

The test lies in 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you'. This will keep you from stealing from your brother just for gratifying your senses, and will keep you from hurting others for smaller causes, or for twisted mental attitudes. If I have become rich after being poor all my life before, should I wish others to be poor to satisfy my pride, or should I help the poor to conquer my fear of the past?

Community sets rules and laws for it to live harmoniously together. For me to share the fruits of living as a member I should strive to obey the rules in normal circumstances. Because, if I violate the norms of the community because of my small greed or fear, I will be causing disruption in the system, thereby causing pain to brother members for frivolous selfish reasons. But when the threshold is crossed by some rule acceptable to the community, say child abuse becomes norm, it becomes my duty to revolt. That is, I am willing to sacrifice my morality in smaller amounts to create proportionally more happiness. Since, I am a member of the community, I try to follow the rules and customs to a limit. It is the judgment from your heart, that matters.

Wisdom from books and other from other sources, is valuable, as it gives me insight into my heart. But the final judgment belongs inside my mind. Just make sure, We follow our whole heart, and not spur of the moment passions.

Following such approach keeps raising mind to higher levels, by reducing the 'ME' factor, which is the root of all sins and pains, from the equation of life.

The United States of America was founded on the basis of diffusion of state’s power, curtailing the power’s potential for injustice. The dazzling success of the system has made the concepts of democracy and capitalism popular around the world. The existing form of capitalism worked very well for a while, because then, wealth making power could not converge easily into a few hands. Industrialization has changed that. Now a few rich have undesirably high power to manipulate wealth distribution and politics, and to influence social values. In the US the richest 1% own more than 35%, and the top 3% own more than 50% of the total wealth, while the bottom 50% share 4%. The world statistics is even more appalling, the top 1% own 50% of the total wealth, while the bottom 68% share 3%. Unrestricted capitalism favors the rich. It is easier to make money with money than by working. Extreme power of wealth has a degrading effect, the same as that for power, on community.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.

This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to how much interest an individual can own in how many businesses.

Defused special interest lobbying would lighten its grip on legislation, thereby making the governments more honest.

In a revolution common people risk theirs and their loved one's lives.

Masses live in their small worlds. They are mostly concerned with their own and their family's safety and comfort. Only when their pain due to injustice/repression becomes too deep, then out of their deep frustrations they rise to confront the forces of enforcement.

We all have different ideas and morality. In accordance with these, people tend to use means available in small groups to start with. It takes time for leaders with courage and vision to rise up out of the chaos. Then revolutions tends to take cohesive actions.

To me, these masses fighting for their rights are the heroes, whether they win or loose. Some times, it takes more than one try, spread over years or even centuries. But in the end, people's will wins.

Rebellions effected out of greed for power or wealth are not revolutions. The masses do not participate knowingly in these.

Mind comprises of desires, either in pure forms or twisted forms (for instance defeated pride can turn into jealousy).

Desires fall into six broad categories: vitality (perpetual life with perfect health), beauty, strength, wealth, fame and power. These desires drive us relentlessly. We are helpless against them. Our quest for happiness comes to us naturally. According to our desires we drift to different places in the creation.

We are not fully aware of all the desires contained our mind; the degree varying from person to person. The less a person is aware of the self, more he obeys spontaneous surges of desires. Such an act defies some other desire. As we travel through life we attach our desires to different aspects. A child receiving life sustaining help from its mother attaches the meaning of happiness with her. When the child happens to defy her wish for some temptation, the child feels remorse. This instills a new desire for punishing the self. New car can take unreasonably larger proportion of meaning of happiness for a while. This can make us refuse to lend it to a close friend, violating the friendship, and causing the feeling of guilt, which makes us feel less worthy of happiness. We can call this character or self esteem, which decides which direction we go from here in life.

I believe to work on untangling our mind with diligence reduces the amount of pains we would receive in the future. To me, this is the control we have on our affairs. This gives us the purpose of life, since purpose presupposes control over the involved affairs. Other than that, the pursuing of our desires is forced upon us by nature. In cooperation with nature we should keep pursuing our desires with all our heart, avoiding generation of new conflicts in our heart.

Whenever more than one person decide to live as a group they need to make behavioral adjustments to make the coexistence cooperative. This limits the expressions of human emotions to mutually accepted levels. Members bring to the table different skills/abilities and needs. For this reason a group is stronger than the sum of all the components. This how a society forms and develops.

When a society grows large, the division of work process naturally assigns the accepted rule enforcement to certain individual/s. This is government in nutshell.

Agriculture brought the need of territoriality.

All humans possess greed and fear. This causes the need to defend/attack other groups. As a result, societies chose the physically and emotionally strongest as their leaders. This later turned into kingship. Greed causes abuse of power.

Man's need to understand the forces of nature beyond his control brought in the idea of religion, which caused priesthood. The idea of obeying the prevalent religious ideologies without question gave more force to authoritarian concept. Later kingship merged with priesthood to varying extents to create ruthless and abusive god-kings, and ruling priests, losing the original concept of good for all members.

After much agony man settled on democracy format.

Thus the government is only a tool of a society. Democracy tends to hear the voice of all members of the society. This a better form than autocracy.

Any government that rules too much makes society unhappy. The rule that rules the least is the best. And a society left mostly to its own devices is most progressive. A happy medium is always desirable. Government needs to use its enforcement abilities sparingly and wisely, interfering only as needed.

The sense of power makes human beings proud. The more check a society, as a whole, has on its government, the more benefits it derives from the existence of its government.

Capitalism is essential for production. But commercialism is based on greed. Too much economic control in the hands of greed makes the society unhappy. Greed needs to be channeled, to make it work for the society, and not against it.

Authoritarian governance is bad business. It allows the state to crush our wellbeing. More the responsible a government is to its population, more benevolent it is. Democracy is the only way to live
Having no government will make the law of jungle rule the society, and will open the nation to foreign invasions. But a huge entity like a government should not be assigned the routine affairs of other entities. Again, USSR did that. Economic controls by all governments has made a mess. We should let the society itself apply its vitality and creativity in solving its problems, up to the practical limits. Just one law restricting the sizes of businesses can make the society run its own affairs much more effectively.

I am not a libertarian or a conservative; I do not worry about labels. To me, what makes the society happy is the right way. Some one may come up with a better idea than mine. But the government should not have its fingers in all pies deeply. Can you imagine what would happen, if government starts deciding what medical procedures will work on which sicknesses, or how engineers should design machines and structures?

All nations have some socialism. A society is made up many people. The voice of people should be heard loudly. Each of us have different opinions. The rules of socialism needs to be formatted with care and thought, A loose socialism would make for social injustices. But the society itself would be much more effective in running its affairs, and keep adjusting its affairs, once the base rules are formulated.

Our mind is like a child. You have to coax it to change it; harsh methods boomerang. It is like changing a habit, it is a slow process, but success comes with time and persistence. It depends on how deeply the habit is associated with pleasure in our mind.

I could figure things out and produce desired results faster than many others at work. But each time my expectations for the reward, like advancement, were sabotaged by my arrogant push. It is the ego that tells us what we deserve. It took me years to stop blaming others, and to turn the inquiry for the reasons inward. As my ego got detached from my efforts more and more II started getting positive results, sometimes immediately, and sometimes belated. But when they were late in coming, I did not defeat my self, and slowly the positive results piled up. My ego kept me from approaching my full potential.

I had a very cherished cause from my childhood. After I reached the ability, I applied myself fully. I was going to reform that part of my world. Well, the world did not change as much as expected, only I acquired deep satisfaction of being true to my heart in applying my efforts. I look back, and see that if I had been able to detach my ego from the start, and had not been so sure about my diagnosis, I would have been able to understand the existing problem more and to adjust to the changing situations, and would have come out with much better results. Also the whole episode would not have been so painful, because of the defeats and the occasional resentment in the recipients of my efforts. In other words, do your best without worrying about the end results. This tells me that I don't have much, if any, control over the world, but have full control over my mind. I think, as we change, our world changes accordingly. It is like, to correct the movie film, rather than trying to correct the projection on the screen. The movie strip resides in my mind.

Have you ever tried to change a loved one's attitude? It changes only with suffering you willingly accept to make the change. While you are willingly making the sacrifices, you are reforming your mind. A couple of such successes makes you a person who is not bothered by similar attitudes from others any longer. You cannot change the world, only yourself.

We see many times, a caring person creates a caring world, a violent person makes his world violent, and a cheater lives in a cheating world. It seems like life is a mirror that reflects our attitude. There are instances of an honest person getting cheated in his life, but the overall gain outweighs the losses by far.

See how right my thinking is. If it is flawed, this will not be the first time.

Ego makes us sure of our views. It is good to always have 5% doubt. Our passions distort our perceptions of reality.

I misunderstood the intention, I thought your feelings were hurt.

You are being mighty nice. World with people with honesty of heart makes it beautiful.

Your kindness has helped me forgive myself readily for my mistake of misunderstanding. This is not my first mistake.

You seem to have a wide perspective on the issue of capitalistic behavior, and the effects of Govt. controls.

I have lived in more than one economy, and even in the USA I have witnessed the degradation process caused by commercial greed. It is painful to watch. My idea of the remedy has developed in my mind over years.

I have been adding to my write up all related issues over months. My original write up was 3 pages long, not 8. I believe, I have now included all my understanding.

I have no experience in presentation or in lobbying. I only want to get the social evil removed to ease the pain in my heart watching conditions around me.

It pleases me to receive comments and suggestions from informed people. Thank you. Let us a find viable solution together, and then talk to more people. I don't care whose idea does the trick.

I firmly believe that controls on social affairs by entities other than the society itself, have ways of losing effectiveness over time, due to loosening focus, greed, or influences by outside interests. Also governments are not omniscience. They cannot understand and fix every ones else's problems. Our government produces the value of 50 cents out of each dollar it spends; and there governments in the world that produce only 10 cents worth. Governments should confine their efforts mainly to security, law and order, safety net and the top tier management of the country. Its attempts to micro manage social affairs always creates a mess. Remember, USSR tried that intensely.

It seems like my response to the Philosophy graduates offended some people. I am sorry for making some persons feel bad. I had no intention of it.

I am a new member, and not good at navigating through the website yet. I did not notice the 70 year old's previous write up.

I have a mind with limited means. I cannot relate to all the situations portrayed on the forum. I only select the ones I understand and respond. If I this is causing any resentment, I am willing to take a back seat.

It pains me to hear the stories of you 25 and 64 year Philosophy graduates.

I hope, we are talking only about the lack of satisfaction of being successful, and not of not making enough for sustenance.

I cannot directly relate to your situation, since I have had relatively successful career. But I have had my share of pains; actually deep long duration pains. Therefore, my thoughts might help.

When we are growing up, we look around and at the world and identify which glories we would like to acquire. Later, I realized that finding the road that I should take, instead of the road I want to take is the only satisfying way. In this scheme of creation we all have our appropriate places. We have volitional control on our mind, but not on the world. Call the area out of control as our fate, if you like.

Once we identify the right road we drift towards it easily. The idea is to stop struggling against the universal scheme, and let our efforts cooperate with it. I wanted to study to become a writer, but fate took me to another road. After a while I learned to obey the universal wish, and started applying myself fully. Are you familiar with the myth of the Greek king Sisyphus, who was condemned to hell? There his task was to roll a boulder uphill. When the boulder reached the top, it rolled down on the other side. Then he had to roll it up the other side, and so on and on. Well! after a while he fell in love with the rock. The same thing happened to me. I started enjoying my work.

How to find the right road? My disappointment took me deep into my mind. After a while, the sad search turned into soul-searching (introspection). I found that solitude expedited the progress.

Later this process helped me out of deep pains. Even now, my life is far from being good, but my levels of forgiveness and tolerance are higher that before.

Good times come and go. But what we do with our minds stays with us. The question is do we digest the poison life gives us during the bad periods or just store them in our mind. If we learn to take life in the right way, our bad times feel milder, and during good periods we capitalize on opportunities easily. We ought not let life defeat us. Life itself can be bad enough at times, why help it by making the bad periods worse, and the good periods less good? Some people call this faith; may be it is that.

Academic philosophy never appealed to me. But may be we can apply whatever discerning abilities we have in understating the life; how add to our happiness, learn to tolerate pains and not mind the defeats.

How are you two now?. May be by this time you two have good news for us.

Best wishes.

I am still learning how to pin point the aims of reply. I may have posted my response in a wrong place earlier.

Here it is:

It sounds like my write up was confusing. Sorry. Let me try once more.

Brain is only a small part of the whole mind. For simplicity I call the rest of the mind heart. Brain only obeys the heart and decides on how to navigate through the world to fulfill the heart’s commands. Brain is empty at the birth. For each occurrence in life, it stores the details of the associated people, things, circumstances, and the remedies applied. This is how we identify the correct strategies for the future. A crude analogy would be that brain is the navigator, and heart is the captain of the ship, or if you like brain is the GPS system and heart is the driver. The brain does not understand the aim of the command or the possible outcomes of the effort. In effect heart is the only part of the mind that thinks. In addition, brain has the ability to interpolate and extrapolate between the known facts, and to apply the strategies to the immerging unknown circumstances.

Again successive similar emotions build our liking and disliking, or habits if you like. Greed, caring, slickness, cruelty, laziness, industriousness all are habits. I normally like to apply myself fully. I remember, on a job we had almost no work for about three months. After the work arrived, it took an effort to pull myself out of the habit of laziness. Fortunately, the required effort was small, because the habit of hard work was already deeply entrenched in the mind.

A selfish person drifts further and further on the road of selfishness, and so does a lazy person become progressively lazier, unless some deep pain makes them soul-search. Similarly, positive habits (the ones that add to our happiness) can be broken by sudden large changes, like an industrious person winning a big lottery.

Our heart is an ocean of emotions. An emotion is nothing but a conceptual thought. A concept is a pyramid of thoughts, like the word "city" is a concept comprising of people, houses, buildings, roads, traffic, businesses, schools, emergency services, and so on. Many times we know that we like someone or something without clearly knowing why? That particular emotion can be a giant pyramid, in the case of a reasonably coordinated mind.

Happiness is having the feeling of no shortage. Ego always wants more, dwelling on the feelings of shortages. The feeling of shortage causes us pain, and when the shortage is filled we feel pleasure. When we are at the crest of a wave we feel pleasure, and at the trough we feel pain. Relief is the pleasure; it comes only after the pain. Our hearts are churning. The intensity varies from time to time and from person to person; it is a question of degree.

Introspection (soul-searching) increases our self awareness. When our self awareness is stronger than the temptation, we get saved. When we introspect, we travel back to reach the fork, from where we took the wrong road. Many times we are in grief, or are overwhelmed by a problem, and after enough introspection the right answers pops up in our mind out of nowhere. That is how clear, calm minded persons come up with correct answers quickly. Their emotions are aligned.

One combined human cell in the embryo knows how to make a human being, and what the parents look like. It creates all the organs and body functions and provides immunities. Single cell-life evolved into tress, fish, birds and mammals. This is life force. The deeper we look higher the intelligence of life we see. Why couldn’t such a thing be true about mind? What if we travel back to the earlier correct forks? It is like travelling from one of the millions of leaves towards the stem or the root. Does the ultimate happiness, ultimate truth, (some call this God) lie at the bottom of the mind? I don’t know. But I know that as I go deeper I find more effective tools of happiness. Some of the things that used to irritate me, and frustrate me, no longer bother me. My tolerance and forgiveness are increasing. That makes my world better, making me happier. I suspect that is how enlightened ones found high levels of happiness. That is how; I suppose the lord of wisdom came up with gems like ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’. I don’t know how deep I will be able reach, and I don’t care. Each baby step on this road brings me more happiness. When the journey is so beautiful, why worry about the destination?

The right way to reason things out is to gather all the facts that we can obtain with reasonable effort, and then apply all the dimensions we possess to the logical process. Engaging more of the heart gets us better answers. For example, when after having received a bad news, a loved one shows irrational anger over trivial things; our brain tells us that "I don't deserve this". If we follow up on this spontaneous emotion we would wind up making the situation worse, and both of us would suffer more. But looking deeper in the heart you realize that tolerance and sympathy should be the order of the day. Then we both gain.

Our method of reasoning is very personal. Only that, the more of the heart we involve the more correct answers we get. People who only use the spontaneous surges of emotions are emotional fools. And the ones who only follow their emotional habits without any doubt (searching deeper into the heart) are liable to fall into pain causing ways. The people who think that they are thinking only with their brain are in reality obeying a small part of the heart, continuing with their emotional habits.

Tell me whether this is objectivity or subjectivity? I don’t know what the correct label is; I am not a literary scholar or a philosopher.

I hope I have addressed the issue, without talking too much.

Sounds like my write up was confusing. I apologize. My excuses are that English is my third language and that at times my mind races way ahead of my pen. Let me try once more.

Brain is only a small part of the whole mind. For simplicity I call the rest of the mind heart. Brain obeys the heart at each moment and decides on how to apply

The right way to reason things out is to gather all the facts that we can obtain with reasonable effort, and than apply all the dimensions we possess to the logical process. When we consult our calm, integrated heart, and not just temporary emotional surges, like anger or infatuations, we get all of our dimensions into the play. Our heart is an ocean of emotions. An emotion is nothing but a conceptual thought. A concept is a pyramid of thoughts, like the word "city" is a concept comprising of people, houses, buildings, roads, traffic, businesses, schools, emergency services, and so on. That is how clear minded persons come up with correct answers quickly. We all have met people with chain-lightening thinking process.

For example, when after having received a bad news, a loved one shows irrational anger over trivial things, our brains tells us that "I don't deserve this". If we follow up on this thought we would wind up making the situation worse, and both of us would suffer more. But looking deeper in the heart you realize that sympathy and tolerance should be the order of the day. Then we both gain.

Our method of reasoning is very personal. Only that, It is better to involve the whole faculty at our disposal (the brain plus the heart), rather than only a part of it. People who only use the heart are emotional fools, and the ones who only use the brain are liable to fall into devilish ways, acquiring a painful life. We need to use our whole mind. Let the heart speak as well as the brain.

Is this objectivity or subjectivity? I am willing to be taught, if some one wants take the trouble. I am not a "philosopher" or a scholar. Whatever thoughts I have are learned from the streets of life, not from any school.

I have come to the conclusion that if I had taken what came to me without arrogantly feeling that I deserved more, I would have achieved much more in the material world and would have acquired less worries and frustrations. It is my ego, making me feel that I am worthy of more, that spoiled the results of my efforts.

Ego manifests itself in the forms of greed and fear. Greed is fear of not having enough. All fears are self fulfilling professes.

All I had to do was to apply my abilities without pre-judging the outcomes. I look back, and see all the opportunities lost.

We can call this 'me against god' or 'me against fate'. I don't give this any label; it is just plain common sense to me.

I have total control over my will. I can choose to be lazy or to be active, and if be active, then what should be the direction of my actions. Should I use this will to compete against my fate, or to apply my abilities to their full potential in cooperation with my fate?

I will try.

Brain is a part of the mind, and is not be ignored in the process of figuring things out. My reservation comes from the fact that widely accepted definition of objectivity is associated only with brain. Brain only knows the parameters derived from our past experiences. If this type of objectivity is correct, then highly intelligent persons should be most successful in their endeavors. But we see many extremely intelligent people falling flat on their faces. Normally very intelligent people rise to the governing levels of nations. And still history is full of examples of politicians plunging their nations into self-created disasters.

Our total mind is much more than brain. It contains our instincts and deeply buried emotions/desires. A relaxed mind talks to us. Engaging the whole mind takes us to higher and more correct objectivity.

Of course! logic is the same all over the creation. Question is how many dimension we involve in our decision-making. Maxwell raised questions about validity of Newton's model of the universe, and Einstein went farther than the both of them, by adding more dimensions in the reasoning.

Brain gives us answers quickly. It should be used to filter and validate the answers coming from deep mind, because deep mental distortions can give wrong answers. For instance, if some guru tells us that human sacrifice will make us happy, then right away we know that the idea has to be wrong. If a super computer comes up with an answer, which contains some where in it, that "2 + 2 = 5", we can use our calculator to check that part, and know that the overall answer is based on a wrong premise. If our brain disagrees with what our deeper mind tells us, then walk away from the answer. The only advantage of using the whole mind is that we are liable to get more correct answers. And by such trials and errors we identify distortions in our own mind, continuously cleansing it.

Morality is based on personal objectivity. Normally personal reasoning is labelled as subjective, but to me it is higher objectivity.

Murder is unethical for a civilian, but is ethical for a soldier. Cutting some one open is unethical for most of us, but not for a surgeon. Similarly, in a given situation, lying to a dying person or a child can be merciful, while telling the truth may be cruel. How can morality not be subjective to the person, and to the situation? Compassion should be better parameter of morality than any other.

Society derives its ethical rules from the average level of compassion of its members. Society calls this justice. Social rules help members live in harmony, with the benefit of the collective ability. But when these rules achieve merciless rigidity in a particular instance, or due to changing times, they have to be opposed and modified. Can you see us stoning adulterers to death, or throwing those into fire who steal from burning houses?

If mercy is the base of morality, then its core has to be personal, with the shell made of ethics and justice. Again ethics are subjective to the society in question. Otherwise we would be the same as some cruel cultures in the world that we hear about.

The most basic facts I know about myself are: I exist, and I like to be happy.

Being in existence does not require any effort on my part, but being happy does.

To me, making myself happy is the only purpose of life. The dilemma comes from trying to define happiness and identifying the means to achieve it.

Gratification makes my body happy. But if totally selfish behavior can make one happy then why did Sadam Hussein lived in constant fear for life? what is the part the giving plays in the equation of happiness? Why a mother of an infant is extremely happy, even when she is living a horribly uncomfortable life to make the child happy?

Tolerance comes from compassion. Ego is the opposite. Compassion wants to give, is willing to accept suffering for worthy causes. Ego wants to consume even at the cost of causing suffering to others. The point at which they meet is the level of our tolerance.

Things, people and circumstances form parts of our ego, as well as our body. Home, our city, the job, family, friends, the economic and the political environment, our abilities and our shortcomings, they all form our self identity, ego. Our ego tells us what we deserve. We fight for our rights, and then more.

The amount of our tolerance for an entity is in proportion to the portion of our ego it occupies. We are more tolerant of our loved ones, than of others.

We judge others by these parameters (our preformed notions; prejudices). We wish punishment for those who are better off than we think they deserve to be.

Our mind stores our emotions to relive once again. That is why a surgeon builds a different emotional make up (character) for himself, than a murderer, even though they engage in cutting others up. When we wish punishment for others, our mind swallows that emotion. I suspect this is the reason Jesus told us not to judge others, or we will be judged by our own parameters. An angry person creates angry world for himself, and loving person receives love.

Sorry, I meant "the light (not the time) that leaves the sun arrives here after 8 and half minutes."

Try this for a size:

Theory of relativity, backed by some proofs, says time is relative, not absolute. The concepts of space and time do not apply to energy. We see that the light that leaves the sun arrives here after 8 and half minutes, but the time itself does not spend any time in the journey; it arrives here at the same time it leaves the sun. This takes us to some interesting conclusions. Let us say that two events occur, one on the earth and the other at our nearest star, which is 5.4 light years away. The event on the star is 5.4 years in our future and the event on the earth is in the future of the star by 5.4 by light years.