Constructs ~

The following are sample essays of which when presented in final form will be accompanied by methods of analysis designed to engage users in examining the ideas presented. The goal of the engagement is to foster critical thought processes while encouraging real-world development of the presented ideas and/or their offshoots discovered as a result.

Sample 1 – On Diversity

When I consider diversity, I think of Earth’s biosphere. And how incredibly diverse it is with an estimated 8.7 million species of plants and animals alive today.

When I further consider diversity, I think of the system of classifications which we humans use to catalogue the rich fields of life, within that biosphere, enjoyed here on Earth.

The plant and animal kingdoms are classified using seven basic divisors: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

Today’s humans are classified as the species, Homo-Sapiens, which happens to be the last surviving species of the Genus Homo, having emerged in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago. The species Homo-Sapiens migrated outward into Europe, Asia, and beyond and thrived, while other species within the Genus Homo, most notably Neanderthalensis which, while continuing to live on, were finally lost to history in their entirety about 40,000 years ago.

Today, on Planet Earth, only one species of the Genus Homo exists. That species is Homo Sapiens. I do not say this to belabor what is an obvious fact. I do, however, say it with full intent to reiterate it, simply because it is a truth vital to the making of my point.

That point being that Homo-Sapiens, as of now, are the current end of the line of the genus Homo. There are no further classifications. No further divisors. There is only the one species and not again to belabor the point, but rather to drive it home, only the one species within the entire Genus. And we are it, Homo Sapiens.

If there is no further classification, no further divisor of the particular and specific animal known as Homo Sapiens, then one may ask what might be the point of this writing exercise of mine?

And it is the following, and in a word, “Race.”

The word “race.” When I consider diversity within the biological kingdom of life, I do not consider what I believe to be inherently false, misleading, and self-perpetuating terminology based on the concept of the simple single syllable term “race.” And as a sidenote, I would posit that never in the history of humanity – the species Homo Sapien – has a single syllable caused so much trouble as has that of the term “race,” with the exception of the single syllable term, “God,” yet I shall leave that for another discussion.

Race is not a classification of diversity within the plant and animal kingdom. It simply is not. There is no debate here. Yet Homo Sapiens, the very species which came up with the afore-mentioned system of classification of the diversity of plant and animal life within our shared biosphere – which, by the way, was a masterful exercise in logic and critical thought – also, in what can only be seen as the very antithesis to that logic and critical thinking, decided to foist upon ourselves the idea of a further level of classification of our own species. And named it “race.”

For no other species which exist today or have existed in the past is this further level of classification applied; this label of “race.” And with the term, and that it be expressed in language have such necessary, though highly unfortunate, conjugations of the term arisen. Those include “racist,” and “racial,” among others and phrase related ideas like “race-biased,” and its ilk.

My position is simple. I do not acknowledge the term “race” – in context to the discussion at hand – except in an awareness that it exists and with an understanding it exists as a tool of language designed solely to divide Homo Sapiens among ourselves.

Is that a bold statement? I don’t know. I certainly do not pronounce it with the intent to so be. What I do know is it is what I believe to not only be a simple product of the most rudimentary critical thought process, but also a knowledge inherent within the soul or the spirit if you will, of the species Homo-Sapiens, of which I am one, and as such, consider myself well qualified to opine on the matter.

I’d like to now offer for thought the idea that the term “race,” and the innocuous varying characteristics within the species of which give it rise, such as skin tone, facial structure, and other completely random and meaningless yet quite natural variables iterated unique in each and every person who has ever lived, are what are used to designate one “race” from another.

Most often of course, the specific terms used to designate the false idea of race – yes, I’ll cut right to the chase and term “race” in this context as false – and as such to further perpetuate the error, are what I refer to as “color codes,” since the use of the terms “black,” and “white,” and “brown,” and “yellow,” and “red,” are just that. Codes applied to primary colors and their variants within the spectrum that we Homo Sapiens are able to see. Codes which say for instance that you, “brown” person, are different from you, “black” person, and you, “white” person, etc.

As an aside, the fact I use the phrase “color codes,” indicates I postulate a code exists and as such so must a deciphering of that code. But that too, is content for another discussion and/or a continuation of this essay at a later point in time.

Before delving deeper into this, allow me to offer a quick study. Twenty-seven years ago, my youngest daughter was born. My elder daughter was four at the time. For her first two and half years I was not in her life as her mother and her were unknown to me. Once I married her mother, I raised her as my own and along with her younger sister, who was born a year after the marriage. Neither of these two girls ever heard me use color codes to differentiate one human being from another.

I was adamant that those adults who interacted with my kids, not use those terms either. My wife was very good about it as she knew what this meant to me and was of a similar mind. Of course, most adults who were in our lives, while not in philosophical support of my wishes, for the most part abided, choosing to chalk them up as just another of my many hippie’esqe quirks. And who can blame them? I had in fact spent twenty years, long-haired and barefoot, following the Grateful Dead around the country, but I digress.

So for the most part, these girls, up until they entered more prolonged public interactions with other kids and adults – via school, friends, sleepovers, and other events, and at which point they could no longer be shielded from such – through an apparent ignorance inherent in the species which accounts for the self-perpetuated avarice of thought and idea – never heard one human being differentiated from a fellow human being through the use of a color code.

I should mention we had no broadcast television, and the internet was modem based and accessed only by myself for work. The only television programming we had was via VHS tapes. And 90% of those were Star Trek along with kids’ films and cartoons which were deemed by my wife and I to be of educational value.

One weekend morning I was watching a kids’ movie with my youngest daughter. She was about five years old at the time. I wasn’t paying much attention to the film and was reading a book as we sat together on the couch. She was quite absorbed by the film and quiet, and then she said to me, “Daddy, I like that girl’s hair.”

I put my book down and looked at the TV screen. There was a scene in which the three little girls who were the protagonists in the film were sitting together side by side. What I saw, having been raised in a society which uses color codes and me not “knowing any different” until I was of an age to begin formulating a different thought line than my peers, saw what unfortunately may be indelibly written in my psyche – but more on that later – were the three girls; a black girl between two white girls.

Of course I didn’t say this to my daughter, and simply asker her, “Which girl?”

And my daughter answered, “The girl in the middle.”

My daughter saw three girls. And that’s all she saw. One, the girl on the left, two, the girl in the middle, and three, the girl on the right.

If I would have asked her what differences she saw in the girls, she would have commented on their dresses, their hair – long, short, curly – the personalities they portrayed in the film, and very likely if pressed, or on her own, she might have said one girl has darker skin than the other two. But in her saying that it would be no different than her commenting – which she had over time – on the difference between the color of my skin and her mother’s. I worked outside, and in the summers became very tan. Her mother stayed out of the sun as she burned easily and thus our skin tones come August would be remarkably different. But no more different than is a young person to an old person, a short person to a tall person, a blue-eyed person to one with green eyes, etc.

It’s simply a difference between people – of the species Homo Sapiens – of whom all are unique in a myriad of ways, in the same way as each bird which has ever lived has had a feather pattern entirely unique not only to other species of bird, but to those within its own, or any of a number of examples across all species within the plant and animal kingdoms.

And what is my ultimate point with all this? It is to posit the idea that we, homo sapiens, would be much better served by the intelligence granted to us through evolutionary processes and/or by God if one is so inclined, if we nixed the idea of “race” as a divisor among the collective of humanity. And in doing so, we nix, as well its ancillaries. Most notably the use of color codes.

To be perfectly clear, I am saying we ought to cease and desist using such terms as black, brown, white, etc. to describe fellow human beings. Some may say, this is just another way for one group to ignore the past/current plight of another through recent history.

I say no to that. Absolutely no. For if we really want to acknowledge the plights, the suffering of one group of humans at the hands of another, then why not acknowledge all of them and constantly be cognizant of all of them. Including that first group of homo-sapiens who trekked out of Africa 300,000 years ago. Why did they do that anyway? Why did they leave? Africa is a large continent and surely there was enough room for the small number of humans who existed then. Maybe some left, simply because they were driven by the desire to explore, to see what was beyond the savannah, across the river, over the mountains, etc. And maybe some were driven out for reasons we can’t know but can easily theorize upon, based on our own experiences as members of the same species.

And that first group left, maybe they met up with another who had left their home for similar reasons. They joined forces and multiplied and then they discovered a beautiful valley, and they all settled. The valley was divided by a river. They explored both sides. There were those who said the east side was best to settle upon and those who said, no, it was the west side that was better. There were arguments. They could not agree, so there was a fight. People were injured or even killed and those who chose the west side lived apart from those who chose the east side. And maybe they lived that way for a long while nursing grudges of the battle that began it all. The west siders raising their children on the premise that the east siders could not be trusted and vice versa. And then one day new settlers came in from the point of access the first group, before dividing, had come. That being the east, the east siders told the new people that there was great settling on the west side and that the west siders were evil and together, the east siders and the newcomers could attack and defeat them. So, they did just that, but some west siders escaped and traveled farther north to get away. They made it all the way to France and painted animals in caves and lived lives away from the evil east-siders and their new-comer pals who had so horribly attacked them. And stories grew and grew over those thousands of years until it became simply a known fact that anyone coming from that way – that way being the only way the east-siders could come if they ever were to come – must be evil and must be vanquished and/or absorbed as slaves, etc.

And you have to figure this accelerated version of things happened much more slowly but did so in multiple locations across multiple migratory paths out of Africa. And in many cases some groups were vilified for thousands of years by others and those which were more powerful ruled through what they saw as a necessary subjugation, and can you imagine how many groups with names and unique identities came and went, were persecuted and were persecutors, over the last 300,000 years?

Can you imagine how those groups, identifying each other by who knows what fallacy of thought – akin to our own of this day – who would be completely confused by a divisor as that such as we use today? A color code?

The point is all of these divisors are arbitrary. All of them. And yet, they are so ingrained into our histories and cultures that they seem inescapable. And that is why I, even with my belief and conviction of thought associated with it, still saw the little girl in the middle on the TV screen in the movie as a “black girl.” I will probably always see people by their color codes or whatever other arbitrary, and completely irrational, divisor we homo sapiens place upon each other.

And if that is so, why write any of this? It is because this is not about me and what I see. This is about what that little five-year-old didn’t see. She did not see the product of ignorance, of habit, of a complete lack of critical thought which leads to the perpetuation of division and all the anger and resentment – and what that inevitably leads to – which accompanies it.

My elevator speech version of this is very simple. I can get it across between only two floors. It goes like this, “We adults, we’re wrecked, man. But the children aren’t. So, let’s make sure they stay that way. Un-wrecked.”

Almost exclusively, do adults perpetuate the same crimes upon their young, foist the same weights, which were committed against them, saddled upon them. And nobody does this consciously. Humans do what we do because we have not thought of another way to do it. Often, we don’t consider anything to be wrong specifically – other than having some negative notion tied to a fatalistic viewpoint – but I would suggest that somewhere down inside, we absolutely know something is way off kilter, which can be changed, and as we are an optimistic bunch, that there must be another way.

Here’s another way.

Diversity:

Kingdom

Phylum

Class

Order

Family

Genus

Species

All Stop.

Sample 2 – Lottery Representational System (LRS)

A basic tenet for a position of public trust is that such a position be coveted by none and honored by all. Mac LeBlanc – 1952

Coveted by none and honored by all…That is the LRS in a nutshell. Unfortunately, the exact opposite scenario exists within current society and its political mechanisms. So how do we change it? How do we change an existing structure which seems so very embedded within the very framework of democracy that change of such magnitude would seemingly spell a complete dismantling of said framework?

I’ll tell you how.

1. Have an open mind.

2. Now, seriously…have an open mind.

3. Admit the system is broken. That part’s easy, right?

4. Realize what you already know; anything broken can be fixed. And in fact, can be made better now that a break has been found and thus identified as something to improve upon so as to not repeat the break. It is important to note that improvement is an ongoing process.

All current existing positions in government will remain the same. This goes for local, state, and federal.
All positions in government will be served for one four year term.
There will be no more elections. Government positions will be filled through a lottery process. The lottery process will be based on drawing individuals through the use of social security numbers.
Only those citizens who are between the ages of 37 and 59 years old will be chosen to serve. Once a person is chosen and serves their term, their name and number is forever removed from future lotteries. In effect, nobody serves more than one term.
Though the term is four years, each person chosen shall serve for six years. The first two years of the term will be served in a training mode. The training will consist of the specific education required to best represent their constituents among the whole in a manner best fitting a democratic government as outlined in the Constitution. There are many details I will add to this at a later time.
The LRS will serve legislative and executive positions at all levels. Judicial positions at all levels will operate in the same manner and positions will be filled via the same process except in that only members of the bar of any given state will be chosen for local, state, and federal positions. Obviously one must have an understanding of the law to best serve as an arbiter of it. Though even for judicial positions the two year education period will be in effect.
There are many obvious details of which are not currently listed. Such as what if someone is chosen through the lottery whose cognitive abilities are severely impaired? Or what if they are a convicted felon? Or what if their neighbors think him or her a dunce or a ninny? Or a sociopath or worse, having personality traits consisting of all those things and in effect being on a par with today’s elected multiple term serving politicians? The answer to that question is many fold and will be addressed later. In short however, I believe in humanity and I believe when equitable situations are in play people behave equitably and in fact will even go out of their way to do so and will rise to the occasion.
The number one premise of the LRS is, in fact, that people rise to the occasion. People want to do well by others. It is in our nature to be thus.
What does the LRS replace and why would it be an improvement over that which we have in place now? The LRS would not just simply replace one system with another. It would be like putting out a fire and at the same time creating a framework which cannot burn. I’ll come up with some fun and more clear metaphors later.
To continue on in the manner in which we now govern ourselves – rather, allow ourselves to be governed – would be a folly of incredible magnitude. It would promise only one thing. Revolution. Continued revolution. Why not try, evolution? That’s what the LRS is all about. Evolution. In fact, many of the details of the system will include mandatory checks – inventories, if you will – of current operating levels. And modes of improvement will be required. Improvement of systems will in fact be a bedrock premise of the system.
Ok…how does it all get put together and dialed in and actually implemented? Through you and your efforts in force with those around you. Through us. All of us working together. Tall order, yes. But so was getting past monarchies and state sponsored deplorable acts such as slavery and wars and going to the moon and not wiping ourselves out as of yet. We can do the tough work. The LRS wouldn’t be that tough to implement in comparison to other incredible things we as humans have done.
We need a group of people. People committed to the idea that human beings are one family and that together we best find our own purposes and directions in life. There is a more articulate way for me to appeal to others for assistance and I will endeavor to put it forth as time permits. In the meantime, EarthRaft – this platform which is now simply a domain name with a website – will be a place to make all this happen.
Funding. Yep. We need it. To bring minds together so to hammer out ideas and implement them.
And one more thing…EarthRaft is for you and me. 100% you and me. In fact, there is nothing more that I would want than to see EarthRaft function to bring people together who are far better suited in developing and implementing ideas than I.

Status Quo of Electoral Processes

Candidates must raise money to compete. The amount of funding required increases dramatically over time. The sources of funding are nebulous and most, if not all, want something specific in return for their investment. This scenario has created a marketplace of our elections.
The marketplace is owned primarily by powerful and wealthy private interests who operate through proxies known as lobbyists.
More to come…but let’s hold for a moment and offer up an example of how EarthRaft may evolve…how I’d like to see it begin its evolution at least. Okay, the thoughts I’m putting forth in this section on status quo of electoral processes are readily apparent to all. I’m giving them some visibility here. That’s all. With the help of others these thoughts and their corollaries – as offered by collaborators – can be presented in a manner which makes them much more readable, discernable, cognitively digestible, etc. far better than I can do on my own.

Sample 3 – Live Earth Metric (LEM)

This is a unit of measure which most accurately measures item value. It is dynamic and constantly evolving. Its purpose is to take into account that which is the state of the art awareness of all costs and impacts involved in a given item’s creation along with all benefits derived from said item.

The Live Earth Metric will be a dynamic system of measurement utilized to gauge impact and benefit on the biosphere and the life forms which depend upon it. The LEM will be composed of many existing metrices along with those new and evolving. The LEM will be catalogued, indexed and formulated through analog means. Algorithms will be used to compute real time values though they must be daily reconfigured via analog means. In other words, people need to be involved.

Sample 4 – Social Structures

I’ve long thought people tend to be at their best when immersed in the arts. Whether as spectators/appreciators, creators or both. I’ve thought, Wow! What if every single person on the planet could have their day in the sun under the artist’s sky? Wouldn’t that be cool? Probably wouldn’t be any war or killing, thieving, lying, cheating or any of the other things done that day which people normally do so to – ironically – go along to get along.

Of course realistically…this would be tough. Arranging societal structures such so that each and every person on the planet had their chance to partake of the arts. And that it was all done fairly and freely and so on. Pie in the sky thinking? Nirvana-land thinking? I say no.

There is a way to do this and in doing it we also can restructure the rest of society in the same manner. Everyone gets a chance to do everything. Everyone gets a chance to do everything or better yet…everyone gets a chance to find their thing so to do their thing. I have a plan. I have a blueprint. And it will soon be discussed in detail on this page.

Vocation Rotations

Each person on the planet has an opportunity to embark on vocation rotations. I see this as part of a normal education process which begins at say, 16 years of age. Two year stints in various areas all over the globe. During the two year periods students will be exposed to region specific education and endeavors. For instance, while embarked in the West Indies of the Caribbean students may study ocean reef ecological systems and be exposed to all the technology associated with that specific endeavor. Students would be introduced to geologic and biologic conditions specific/endemic to the area. Atmospheric studies relating to the Trade Winds, for example would be something else unique to the area.

The point is every area on Earth has something unique and vital it offers to the whole. I am not saying each individual needs to be exposed to all of this incredible wonder – one would need to live many lifetimes for that! I’m rather suggesting that after a ten- or fourteen-year period – from age 16-30 – of experiencing a vast array of vocations and the unique experiences related to them and their geographies, a human being will be much better situated to achieve a happy and fulfilling life among his/her fellows.