Truth vs Falsehood (28 page)
Similar correlation charts can be constructed that show the almost identical pattern for the percentage of each consciousness level with incidence of physical illness, mental disorders, victims of crime, automobile accidents, health insurance coverage, rates of AIDS and STDs, arrest rate, domestic violence, child abuse, incarceration, birth rate, gang membership, exposure to violent media, drugs, and the time children spend watching television. A typical child watches twenty-eight or more hours of low-level television programming per week, seeing more than eight thousand murders while just in elementary school (Winik, 2004). In 75 percent of murder stories, the killer goes free and gets away, unremorseful, and often with an inflated hero image, complete with brutality, profanity, obscenity, and strong sexual imagery.
While public attention is focused primarily on the socio-economic problems of inner-city neighborhoods, the same impairments are visible in semi-rural areas as well. Small-town newspaper reports reflect the same types of problems that prevail in the big cities. The
Court Report
(July 2004) for a typical town of a few thousand people lists (for one week) twenty-seven arrests for disorderly conduct, trespass, intoxication, driving without a license or on a suspended license, domestic violence, driving under the influence or without insurance, etc. Collectively, the law violators calibrate at 185 and represent recidivism and lack of personal responsibility.
The rate of true poverty is far higher in non-free-enterprise systems. The price of freedom entails some degree of risk, which, in turn, spurs greater effort and enterprise. In contrast, welfare societies are more complacent and less innovative because the government assumes responsibility for their survival.
The Strength of America
Both the pessimist and the optimist ruefully observe that earthly human life is not universally beatific nor is it exactly a celestial realm, and the thinking person concludes that it seems to be a proving ground, a staging area, or a school of opportunity that offers an almost infinite potential for individual and spiritual growth. To help understand the seeming inequality of human life, it is important to remember that at the moment of birth, every individual already has a calibratable level of consciousness, and the overall course of the ship already appears on the compass.
Despite its limitations, America’s society calibrates at 421, higher than that of any country in the world. The very foundation and structure of the government arise from the loftiest of ideals. Democracy (actually a constitutional republic) calibrates higher than any other prevalent form of government (at 410); however, it does not guarantee perfection but only a relatively high level of integrity, intention, and accountability. The power of government is by free consent of the governed, which in itself differs dramatically from governments based solely on force and within which there is no free consent. A positive view of America is not optimistic but simply factual.
The unique greatness of America was the thrust of de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America
(1835; cal. 455) and has been corroborated continuously by numerous thinkers and statesmen ever since. Hillary Clinton stated, “America is the greatest country the world has ever seen” (TV News, New York, June 21, 2004). This theme continued in
Defining America,
the subject of a special issue of
U. S. News & World Report
(June, 2004).
Calibrating levels of truth and consciousness is very pragmatic. It saves time and laborious efforts to understand phenomena by cutting through rhetoric and appearance and getting quickly to the core of an issue. A calibration is like a fast snapshot that captures the essence of an issue. The calibrated level reveals in capsule form what it is really all about.
The United States Economy
This is the ‘great giant’ that Admiral Yamamoto ruefully regretted having awakened at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It also turned out to be the formidable nemesis because American industrial might proved to be unbeatable. This economy, the product of free enterprise and financial capital, turned out to be the great bulwark and fortress of freedom that the free world enjoys to this day. Inasmuch as a vast economy cannot arise without capital, the nature of capital itself deserves examination.
The common conception is that capital means wealth or money in the bank. It fails to recognize that the true source of capital is the creativity of the mind from which the accumulation of money is the inevitable consequence or the automatic result of creativity, genius, inspiration, dedication, hard work, integrous and often grueling self-sacrifice and effort, as well as discipline and resourcefulness. One single brilliant idea (e.g., Edison-electricity) can, does, and has spawned more wealth than the total product of the economies of whole nations. The enormous accomplishments of America are well-documented in the book,
They Made America
(Evans, 2004).
Why America is Successful
The field of consciousness innate to America supports creativity, invention, education, and innovation, and it rewards self-initiated efforts with acclaim and excitement. The discovery of electricity, direct and alternating current, and the light bulb resulted in lighting up the entire world as well as providing a ubiquitous, ready source of power for industry and productivity on all levels, from giant machinery to the kitchen toaster.
Out of America’s inventiveness, as if electricity were not enough, arose the telephone, the telegraph, radio, television, the airplane, the computer chip, the Dictaphone, the computer, the whole electronics industry, the Internet, computer hardware and software, and the list goes on. The entire worldwide airline industry arose from the flight at Kittyhawk. A worldwide entertainment industry arose from the invention of the movies. Add to these the seminal discoveries in medicine, pharmaceuticals, materials research, and a cornucopia of scientific inventions that pours forth and benefits the entire world.
In addition to this enormous productivity are added carefully crafted merchandising and supply-and-delivery retail systems, such that Walmart is the largest corporation in the world, with over one million employees. Corporate America is catching up on sexual equality, which is not just an American phenomenon but is a worldwide social shift in other countries as well, such as Denmark, Canada, etc. (ATF, 2004).
The calibrated level of most of the big corporations in the world (Ford, General Motors, etc.) is at approximately the same level as the U. S. government agencies, which reflects responsible, accountable performance and pragmatic integrity. (Jack Welch, former president of GE, at one time was proclaimed by
Fortune
magazine as the foremost CEO in America, a reputation hard to obtain in the field of very competitive, high-performance CEOs.)
Add to America’s discoveries those of refrigeration, air conditioning, the microwave oven plus hundreds of appliances, the steamboat of Robert Fulton, the Watt/Evans steam engine, Howe’s sewing machine, the Winchester rifle, the Smith & Wesson revolver, multistage evaporation and distillation (sugar refining), radiology, clipper ships, the Otis elevator, escalators, robotics, cybernetics, the razor blade, the cotton gin, skyscrapers, FM radio, the super heterodyne circuit, Polaroid imaging, copy machines, digital computers, transistors, software, hardware, medical devices (MRI and CAT scan), plastics, and, last but not least, atomic energy. Henry Ford perfected the assembly line and introduced time/motion studies out of which eventually evolved safety devices and the science of ergonomics.
The life of Ben Franklin exemplifies the essentials of the American tradition. He was inventive (Franklin stove, bifocals, electricity, the lightning rod), self-educated, dedicated to self-improvement (
Poor Richard’s Almanac)
, and of virtuous generosity (he founded the University of Pennsylvania). He demonstrated entrepreneurship (owner of a printing business), personal freedom, and broke through the social class (from poverty to wealth, from daily worker to international diplomat and social icon). He supported all religions and taught that the worship of God was best served by doing good for self and others. He also demonstrated continuous self-improvement as a lifestyle. He was a writer and publisher, accomplished politician, and statesman who assisted in construction of the United States Constitution. All in all, he personified the potential and realization of what became the American dream of opportunity.
Similar creativity and ingenuity are exemplified by the legendary life of Andrew Carnegie (cal. 490), who arrived from Scotland with twenty-five cents in his pocket. He built the steel industry and then established the tradition of philanthropy. He even tried to stop World War I by offering the Kaiser a huge fortune to not go to war but was sadly unsuccessful. Both Franklin and Carnegie demonstrated the potentiality of the essence of America.
It is this immense creativity that is the ‘capital’ out of which monetary wealth automatically evolves, along with millions of jobs and a rise in prosperity in which, like a rise in sea level, everyone is lifted because it eventuates into the public arena rather than just private ownership. It manifests as the enormous infrastructure, including public holdings, the transportation industry, and the enormous commerce that supports all governmental operations. Capital thus becomes the enormous uplifting energy of the entire field of a society that recognizes and supports the value of individual and private ownership. That was the very thing lacking in Mao’s China, which calibrated at 150 and saw the greatest starvation (30 million people) the world has ever seen, indicating the total failure of Marxism, collectivism, and the philosophy upon which they are based (i.e., Karl Marx, level 130). All governments are operationally capitalistic for they all depend for survival and operations on capital, whether its acquisition is by conquest, confiscation, or taxation.
A free-enterprise society rewards individual invention and creativity. (Twelve million people in the United States are self-employed.) Everyone is free to create a new idea, obtain a patent, and then solicit venture capital and investors, e.g., Microsoft. An unrecognized, enormous benefit that arises from capitalism is the emergence of another typically American institution, that of the great philanthropists who then return to the populace the immeasurable benefits of the great museums, parks, art galleries, colleges, universities, planetariums, research laboratories, and music halls. Carnegie’s legacy was the establishment of great libraries all over the country, where every citizen has free access to the world’s information that is now being transferred to the Worldwide Web. The great philanthropic foundations are legendary (Rockefeller, Gates, Carnegie, Ford, Mellon, et al.) and pour billions of dollars back into society.
The capitalistic culture produces tens of millions of jobs and self-employment opportunities, of which there have been no actual serious shortage since the end of the Great Depression. The official unemployment rate is a misleading statistic in that it reports applicants for unemployment claims. In this lifetime, there has never been unavailability of self-employment opportunities or even of ‘jobs’, only unavailability of ‘jobs’ that people want. While the front pages of newspapers report a current unemployment rate, in the back of the newspapers are page after page of advertised, unfilled jobs and opportunities, and there are “Help Wanted” signs in most store windows for jobs that may not fulfill ambitions but would provide money if that were the most important lack. Paradoxically, people go back to work when their unemployment insurance runs out. The truly unemployable rely on the infrastructure safety net that provides numerous supportive and educational programs. The unemployment rate in the United States averages 40 to 50 percent lower than that of socialist countries. The huge economic engine of a free capitalistic enterprise system produces an economic base of staggering proportions ($1.5 trillion per year) that allows America to be the biggest philanthropic nation on earth.
A quick glance at the total capital worth of the federal government reveals that the hypothetical ‘national debt’ is a misnomer and a misleading statistic. The wealth of the government is currently (by calibration) $9 quadrillion inasmuch as it owns multimillions of acres of extremely valuable land, including oil potential, timber, mining, etc. In addition, its capital assets, if one considers all the ownerships—the property of the military, all the government buildings, highways, warehouses, and rights-of-way—are prodigious. The concept of a national debt is comparable to a multimillionaire who uses a small portion of his wealth to buy a new company with a 50 percent down payment, with the balance to be paid on a scheduled basis. He now reports that he is ‘in debt’ because he has payments to make on the balance of his loan. Such a millionaire cannot really be said to be ‘in debt’ at all but arbitrarily behind in payments, which he could easily pay off completely by selling assets.
Spending money faster than it is coming in, e.g., ‘budget deficit’ (Greenspan, 2004) is not the same as being in debt. In real debt, a person owes more than their assets are worth and therefore has a negative net worth, which could hardly be said of the federal government. There are states, especially in the western U. S., where the federal government actually owns 85 percent of the land, together with the water, timber, and mining rights. It can hardly be said to be ‘in debt’ when its real problem is budgeting for a vast array of programs, many of which are of dubious merit and represent political ideologies rather than actual public need.
When a society becomes industrialized and moves from an agrarian to a commercial culture, there is a time lag. This transition occurred not only in America but also in every other developing country. During this period, children and women labor at low-pay factory jobs. Emerging industries initially depend on low wages, long working hours, nonexistent employee benefits, and stressful working conditions. However, twenty years later, in a basically integrous society, the whole picture changes and the accumulated capital is now distributed through better working conditions and higher wages, which are the byproducts of economic development.
