I question how much control I have on my circumstances. My efforts some times give me more than my expectation, some times less and some times none at all. There has to be a dimension beyond all my abilities and my understanding of the world. Look at how the smartest politicians plunged their nations into the world wars, which produced no real winners. how very smart people sometimes get defeated miserably. But I do know that when I steal from brother, shortchange a friend, or break my promise, I feel so bad that my joy of resulting material gain is dwarfed. As I go on my smart spree I like myself less and less.

This raises a question in mind, "do I have more control over how I can make myself feel than on the outside world?" Seems like I have total control over how I can make myself feel about myself.

Some times pain and defeat come from no where. Some times you see good people suffering a lot. But if my control on the outside affairs is limited, or none, then the only thing I can worry about is my self image. On the average I see that good people create a good world for themselves, and bad ones get surrounded by bad things.

Any definition has to 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 facts 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 or 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.

I am also appalled by our average living conditions, and by our average way of thinking. Try this for your thought about improving the wellbeing of the nation. See what you think how much value this contains.

Forgive the length of the argument.

CAPITALISM

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%. Extreme greed for wealth has a degrading effect, the same as that for power, on community.

Sward used to be greed’s tool to acquire wealth and power. Democracy detached sward from greed. But with unrestrained capitalism, greed uses money as its weapon. Too much concentration of greedy power of wealth in a few hands causes poverty and associated fears for masses. Poverty is the worst form of torture. All fears are detrimental to happiness. Societies, with just distribution of wealth, have been very content and creative, throughout the history.

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. This trend tends to degrade contentment and suppresses creativity of community. When a community starts measuring happiness exclusively by wealth and the associated worldly successes, virus of high level greed-fear combination destroys contentment, which destroys family values. 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. The rich and the ones craving to become rich have disdain for honest work, while the poor/nearly poor have lost their pride of performance. The number of people who are satisfied with their financial status is small, and is shrinking. The resulting loss of emotional fulfillment leads individuals to flagrant ways of pleasure.

Greed is nothing but fear of future. Greed inevitably leads to trickery, which is a desire to acquire more without due effort or merit, a desire to shortchange one’s fate by avoiding due payment. It grows out of the feeling of entitlement, which is based on pride. This pride is not the same as self esteem, which grows from serving causes higher than the self. Greed is like an uncontrolled forest fire; it keeps growing larger. A hole in the ground cannot be filled by digging deeper and deeper into it.

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, first for their businesses to survive against the unscrupulous competition, and later, after testing the fruits of corrupt methods, to prosper. The first offense of a kind against one’s own self is the most painful. Each subsequent one is easier than the preceding one. 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. All 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, retarding the country’s progress.

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.

As globalization advances, the economic gap between the developed and underdeveloped economies of the world keeps shrinking. This is eating away the advantage the rich countries enjoyed. The resulting tightening profit conditions within the rich countries make their big businesses, having had tested blood of easily rising wealth during the post world-wars era, tend to exploit domestic consumers and to shortchange the employees more and more, creating unscrupulous competition for smaller business, forcing their ways down the line. This keeps lowering the standard of living of the masses. In the game of greed all involved loose.

In the U.S. there are many indirect effects of this excessively concentrated greedy power of wealth: the high cost of education and health care favoring the rich, the lobbying against raising the minimum wage to sustenance level, and securing the cheaper labor of illegal immigrants by lobbying against curtailment of illegal immigration. The resulting economic pain of the masses in turn adds to social vices like crime and substance abuse, taxing the strained resources of the community further.
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, which is more visible in the well developed economies, is only the beginning. Man’s pursuit of happiness is ever existing formidable force. History is nothing but a story of mankind’s pursuit of happiness. Only means and methods keep evolving. This force initiates new currents in accordance with the perceived changes in the reality. Each new generation brings forth clearer perspective of the prevailing reality. The majority of 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 demand for more profound socialism is forming in the mind of the world masses. Often, at beginning, revolting masses are acutely aware of their pain but not clear about remedy. We are in the early phase of Karl Marx’s ‘Class War’.
But we can use a less fierce and very effective remedy than the one Marx recommended. Unless the real underlying decease is addressed, treating the symptoms only with political adjustments will not quell the masses. Fortunately, since in democracies law is not in direct cahoots with tyranny, the revolution is liable to be less violent. But the descent is growing in size for sure. It seems like the next lesson on humanity’s curriculum is that, ‘unchecked commercial greed is detrimental to community’s happiness’.

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.

What we need is a way to defuse power of money on economic decision-making 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.

Let us use a hypothetical model:

1) No business can employ more than one thousand persons.
(Underdeveloped economies may start out with smaller numbers. The initial retardation of progress, very probable in their cases, caused by such a system, will be easily taken over soon, since much more mental resources would be applied to progress.)

2) An individual can:
Own one business totally (100%),
Own the next business up to 40%,
And then invest no more than 8% each in any number of other businesses.
3) Non-personnel entities (businesses, organizations, governments, etc.) can invest no more than 8% in other business. A pension fund tied to one business can invest fully in its mother business, and can invest no more than 8% in any other business.

Thus, no individual can control financial destiny of more than 2 thousand employees. The 40% control over the second business can ensure crucial immediate needs for the main business. For the rest, even if seven or more individuals/investment pools form a group to control many businesses, the high number of members required will make it unrealistic for the group to function harmoniously for long, especially beyond a generation, since pride, greed or fear in the participants will raise its head along the line.

Such a scheme would spread usage of money to many hands, minimizing its potential to exploit the society, without blocking any individual from accumulating wealth.

Such a scheme will need to be implemented gradually; say for the first five years a business above the limit can hire one employee to replace every two lost, then over the next five years one for three and so on, until at the end of a set duration (say 30 years – by which time a business would have recycled almost all of its work force) or until the limit is reached, whichever comes first. After the grace period the limit would be rigidly enforced for all business. This will allow large enterprises to down-structure gradually, and to keep disposing off excess equipment by retiring and by liquidation, with least amount of disruption to individual enterprises and to overall economy. The capital beyond the limits would seek out other promising businesses during the grace period. From the day of the deadline the investment limits would be operative.
During the grace period the beyond limits capital will have ample time to shift gradually and methodically, since the down structuring large businesses would tend to achieve high profit potential through increased vigilance, and since other promising avenues of investment would keep opening up. The general atmosphere will be that of high hope rather than panic.

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 combinations of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and Entitlement programs. But such a scheme, as proposed here, transfers operational control to society, negating state’s potential for abuse.
The following should be some of the results of such a scheme:

For the community:
• Larger portion of population would become economically comfortable, thereby enhancing creativity, resulting in higher level of overall contentment.
• Higher appreciation for individual skills, to make businesses competitive, will become the norm. Demand will rise for exceptional skills/unique abilities, bringing wages more in line with individual employee’s value to the business. (A high value employee within a tier can make 2-10 times higher wages than an average coworker.)
• This will reduce wastage of our most precious resource; human potential.
• The benefits of wider spread of money will raise the standard of living of masses and reduce the number of poor.
• Services like education and health care will be made more affordable by wider community focus and competition.
• Government regulations and interference would decrease, raising economic efficiency.

For individuals:
• Better standard of leaving would lessen worries.
• When there are only a handful of entities to compete with, competitors think in terms of rank, but when there are thousands of entities to compete with for a few different levels, class/status becomes the aim. After reaching a comfortable level, when it is perceived that his/her potential financial plateau has been reached, the focus of the person shifts to family and friends, and to self expression in noble aspects of life; arts, music, literature, science, social work, sports, etc.
• The social atmosphere of a community with short status pyramid, with each stratum containing no less than a few thousand individuals, remains relatively humble and cohesive. The ultra status concept does not develop, avoiding superiority-inferiority spectrum.
• Higher worker appreciation in terms of recognition and remuneration would make pride of performance popular, thereby increasing work satisfaction and in turn creativity and productivity.
• Dedication to their causes on the part of individuals will rise, resulting in higher loyalty to larger collective causes, like charity efforts and the good of country.

For the government:
• Increased affluence would enlarge the tax base, providing more for safety, security and comfort of the nation.
• Defused special interest lobbying would lighten its grip on legislation, thereby making the government more honest.
• Character would receive higher focus in elections, as the impact of special interest contributions declines.
• Reduced economic oversight would make the government that much smaller, providing room for higher efficiency.
• Lighter lobbying would ease off the pressure keeping taxes unfair.

For the economy:
• The number of businesses will multiply many fold, making competition broader, thereby adding quality and values, and making market-cornering much more difficult.
The number of small/local businesses would increase many fold. The combined effect would enhance opportunities for creative energies of community, thereby increasing its total wealth.
• Large projects would employ pyramids of businesses. Manufacturing and service businesses will be employee oriented, while suppliers and heavy equipment renters will be capital oriented.
• The number of foreign and domestic trade businesses will grow.
• Watch-dog companies in each category (management, labor, material supply, engineering, etc. – just like existing credit bureaus), would crop up, encouraging higher efficiencies.
• Investment firms to accommodate the maximum 8% investment mode will flourish.
• Companies providing special services like research and product development will become more numerous.
• Economic swings caused by recycling of obsolete business concepts, which is an inherent character of free enterprise, would occur more continuously in smaller doses, thereby making economic swings shallow, affording stability to economy, making inflations and deflations shallow.

A large business can produce 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, man used to think that democracy has no chance of survival against it. What he forgot to consider is that 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 self respecting and independent minded population and 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.

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. Because of the much slower pace of international exchange of the period, it took more than a century for a substantial number of nations to subscribe to democracy, making it a prominent factor in the world. Today’s fast and massive commodity/information exchange all over the world is merging cultures of the world at an accelerating pace. Once the applied economic system proves its value, by rapid enhancement of prosperity and of well being of the nation, the concept would spread in the world within a generation, making the remaining disadvantage, if any, against large foreign businesses, fade into insignificance.

Entrenched big business will resist the proposed scheme fiercely, dragging the struggle for a generation or two, until overwhelming popular consensus is achieved. It is human nature to resist change. No entity associated with life, be it a living being, a business, a system, or an idea, ever wants to compromise its existence. Two hundred plus years of unrestrained enterprise has made us affluent and a super power. But now the existing system of capitalism is getting in the way of society’s well being. Past cultures provide vivid examples of outmoded systems resisting modifications; India’s cast system, China’s Confucius inspired submissive social culture, glory aimed brutality of Rome, Sparta’s extreme militancy, and many others. The world, including the West, mesmerized by the prosperity and the conquests of the West of the last few centuries, wants to follow the western models without much doubt. Most of us change by soul-searching caused by pain. Longer the time a system has been successful, the harder it tends to resist modification. Wide spread, deep social pains of long durations result in revolts and revolutions. Higher level of objectivity takes smaller pains to change. It took two agonizing world wars for the historically belligerent nations to learn the lesson of cooperative coexistence. Let us do it with smaller amount of pain this time. Historically, effective leaders with vision have diagnosed and remedied ailments early, avoiding devastating upheavals.
None of us has a complete understanding of prevailing realities; the system we choose to apply will require initial adjustments. And no system serves forever. As the collective human mind evolves and conditions change, systems have to change. Therefore, the applied system will require periodic modifications.

Self esteem is how much you like yourself. This comes from being true to yourself rather than following your lust for self gratification.

We play our part in the drama of life. We feel affection for our family and friends. Affection impels us to put our self in the place of the other, feel his/her pain. Mothers are a very vivid example of this. This affection is willingness to forego your own gratification to make others happy. If your sacrifices have been proportional to the affection you feel towards each of your loved ones (family, friends, community, country..), you like yourself; you feel honor in your heart. This is how we build character. Our character decides our worthiness for our happiness. The one who cheats his heart, gets cheated by his heart out of happiness.

Morality is very personal, and cannot be learned 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 accepted 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 my equation of life.

Individual acts with the level of mercy in his heart. History is full of examples of people who could forgive the most intense offenses against themselves. When most of us are hurt, we want to hurt/destroy the one who has inflicted the pain. Vengeance is an effort to change the past.

But a community acts with the average compassion/fear in the emotional makeup of all its citizens. This is called justice. Community create laws to this effect. It is supposed to keep potential criminals afraid. The people hurt by the offense feel vengeance to a degree, according the level of mercy in their heart, while the unaffected ones in community want to apply the law, thinking that it keeps crime in control.

As civilizations evolve the level of fear in the heart of average member changes. The amount of punishment applied by justice tends to be in proportion to the level of fear. In Moses' time it was deemed appropriate to stone adulterers to death. 1300 years later Jesus negated the practice. As a result, the then society saw that the level of pain for the offense was outmoded. Man had become more civil, and had smaller fears of his neighbor, and so felt that the punishment was too much for the crime. Now, in our time law does not even consider adultery a crime. But you hear about aggrieved spouses committing murders and suicides.

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.

The concept of spiritualism is presented to us as supernatural; magical. But if the whole creation obeys logic, then how can spiritualism, or anything else be beyond logic?

Now, let us see how we apply logic. A child figures life based on its previous experiences, and often comes up funny reasoning. At the age 16 -18, we used to feel that we have all the answers. Then, in a few years we start observing that life is not all black and white. We all have experiences, how a baffling situation becomes non existent, once we find the right answer; what used to matter so much becomes unimportant. We start seeing that our database of accumulated experiences is inadequate.

The discrepancy comes from the difference between brain and the total mind (we call it heart), of which brain is only a small part. Our desires, love hate, instincts, etc. reside in our total mind, not in our brain.

Relaxing the mind takes us beyond brain. This is where answers to baffling situations pop-up from. I feel that brain only knows parameters based on experiences of our life, but integrated mind knows them all. This is how the realities of our baffling problems evaporate; how griefs are dissolved.

To me, to think with the whole mind, in calm state, is spiritualism. It gives me depth in understanding of my self and of people around me. I achieve more tolerance, towards myself and others; I receive more love and respect. It reduces my frustrations, anger, anxiety, guilt and unhappiness. We can call this character building. I don't know whether the universe is real or an illusion. I don't know eventually where or how far my method will take me. But I don't care. When the journey is so beautiful, who cares about the destination?

A new born brain is empty. Brain only analyzes experiences starting with birth and stores the results within itself, to be applied to subsequent experiences to find happiness. The total mind is much more, it contains our desires, love, hate, instincts, intuitions, premonitions, etc. Some times when we are overwhelmed by a baffling situation we ask our deeper mind for the answer, We call this soul-searching. And often a good answer pops up in the mind unexpectedly. Again, when our brain runs against a wall, we sleep on the problem (dwell in the mind beyond the brain), and often get the answer. More relaxed the mind is quicker the answers come to the upper layers of mind, which we call consciousness. Some times the world tells that our project on hand will fail, but an inner voice, which is called faith, sometimes keeps telling us that it will succeed.

The answers beyond this life and beyond this world lie deep in our mind, below the brain. Brain understand the only parameters (dimensions) we have experienced in life so far. Our mind knows them all.

I suspect understanding of concepts like nothing, infinity, god, what is before and after life lie deep in our mind, not in our brain.