Bad Counsel and a Short Leash

The military plays an important role in a nation. Like white blood cells (phagocytes) in the body, our soldiers and sailors defend the system against hostile outside forces. Their job in the system is to fight, to kill and, if necessary, to be killed. Serious business! Vital business in a rough world.

However, the military (like the body’s defense system) has a specialized role as a fighting machine, and generals have no business making policies in the best interests of the system unless the system’s under direct attack. Under normal day-to-day, decade-to-decade conditions, generals should be left out of policy-making. When they advise on foreign policy, they tend to advocate strategies for attack. That’s what they do. They’re fighters. Especially in modern nations like the US, militaries have powerful weapons and huge ranks of soldiers and sailors… and the generals (as well as weapons developers) are always looking for ways to put them to use. Heed their counsel under normal conditions? Bad idea.

In today’s tense and troubled world, the best political policies are those that foster peace, understanding, equity, freedom, and the well-being of all people. Those are the attitudes that lift the human spirit (they literally raise our spirit to a finer, lighter vibration). Political leaders must make the effort to keep their generals on a short leash, soliciting their help and advice only in times of genuine crisis. If given voice in times of peace, a trained fighter often sees a threat where there is no threat—a crisis where there is no crisis. Fighters often pick fights. Again, it’s what they do… and the fears and animosities stirred up by aggression produce a dense, dark spirit within us.

A light spirit brings happiness to us on Earth and carries us like a homing signal to a paradise afterlife once we shed the physical body. A dense spirit torments us now, and when we die it pulls us to dark, dismal realms for awhile… until we can sort through the troubled feelings, find peace, and ascend in vibration to the paradise where we all belong.

But let’s stay grounded for now and focus not on our personal destiny, but on the fate of our world and its big social systems like nations and religions. How best to avoid crises in today’s world? Well, one step is to identify those professions that are driven by humanity’s savage side—those that stir up people’s fears, doubts, animosities, greed, selfishness, lust, and other primal sensations—and to keep those professionals on a short leash.

• The military is one such profession, as explained above.
• The legal system, at least in the USA, is another savage profession. It’s based on litigation, which involves confrontation, intimidation, and a win-lose outcome between two parties. That sort of legal system, pitting foe against foe, invariably stirs up fear and contempt on both sides (darkening the human spirit), and it’s expensive! Those who control and manipulate the laws of society—i.e. lawyers—often tend to manipulate conditions for their own comfort and luxury, locking themselves into salaries that are much higher and benefits that are much cushier than the norm. There are alternative methods of conflict resolution (such as mediation, negotiation, and arbitration) that are more affordable, more humane, and less savage, but litigating lawyers resist those options for obvious reasons (e.g. they’re not as profitable to the lawyers). Short leash needed!
• The same applies to political leaders (at least, once again, here in the States). US Senators and Congressmen set themselves up for high salaries and health and retirement benefits that are far beyond the reach of average Americans, and many of them resist efforts to extend such benefits to the public… partly because of pressures from special interest groups, and partly because of selfishness. Short leash needed!
• Bankers and financiers (stockbrokers, venture capitalists, fund managers, etc.) also need a short leash, since dealing with large sums of money invariably stirs up the greed within us humans and opens many roads to temptation.

Well, there’s a long list of professions that require close oversight in today’s tenuous world simply because we humans have a savage side that can stir up all kinds of problems when we’re placed in positions of power. I started out with the military mostly because it’s in the news lately—President Obama seeking counsel from General McChrystal on America’s policy in the Middle East. Bad idea. Bad counsel. Short leash needed!

In any case, gathering up each of these savage-prone professions onto a short leash is just one step in minimizing crises in today’s world.

In all of my research over the past 35 years into political and economic systems, religions, science, industry, and other social systems—as well as the real meaning of human spirituality—I’ve never found a single panacea that would help bring all of human affairs into a state of peace and order… so I had to develop one.

There’s only one technique that I’m confident could bring humanity into balance, minimizing major crises for our children and grandchildren, and that’s the Vitality Ratio. It’s a simple, natural, outside-the-box economic theory that identifies the root of the most serious human crises (famine, mass execution, war, economic depression, class struggle, environmental pillage…) and lays out a single, workable, high-tech remedy for them all.

The longer I live, the more evident it becomes to me that the Vitality Ratio won’t be implemented in my lifetime. It’s a little too far outside of today’s political, economic, scientific, and religious box… but if our great-grandchildren are successful in building a peaceful world, and if you want a glimpse of what that world will look like, you might want to peruse the Vitality Ratio, and more important, The Project, of which the Vitality Ratio is just a part.

Meanwhile, we don’t let pit bulls and leopards roam freely in society without a short leash, and we shouldn’t allow savage professions to run amok either. They need oversight and regulation.

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Further Reading:

Politics and the Human Spirit series

Best and worst countries to be born  –   Election fraud 2012  –   Best and worst US presidents  –  Humor in politics  –  Biggest political news –  End of the American dream  –  Blown to bits in the computer age  –  Standards, the key to peace  –   What Obama and Stalin really have in common   –  Bad counsel and a short leash   –   Capital punishment & the human spirit   –  Edward Snowden and a transparent world