How bad will it get before we see a change?

How can people be programmed like a machine? 
It's been a ten days since we saw Baltimore break out in what I would say is "minor rioting". I'm not here to debate the level of damage or violence and I know that a riot like that hasn't happened in quite some time. Many of our members of society were glued to the tube, hanging on every word Nancy Grace, Barrack Obama and Bill O'Reilly said.  That's where the problem lies. We as a nation are too conditioned by "social proof". If something new our unusual happens we often look to others when decided how to properly react. In this case, those others were the talking heads on TV. Its human nature to do this and its part of how we develop our belief systems over time, especially when we are developing them. Most of us will subscribe to the dominant theory, keep our head down, never question it, not because we are sheep or anything like that, but because we are so frickin distracted. 

We all have several roles we play in life. And, we literally 'play' those roles. We act different around different people, in different environments. We can usually sense when a trend is shifting that directly concerns peer appraisal of an aspect of one of our roles. It's a lot harder to notice the beginning of a revolution that will demolish Versailles and the beheaders meet the guillotine. I hope you follow that I wish no ill will towards those who are the oppressors in our society, and if I could’ve saved Marie Antoinette, I wo……...

I do wish that we could start to acknowledge it. I was even a little disappointed with the way things turned out in Baltimore. I didn't want to see any violence or vandalism, but we missed an opportunity to show the leaders what the American people are capable of. We can peaceably assemble and do it at the capitol, with a mob.  

We sit, governed by an entity that is not holding up its part of the bargain, and the reasons why are beyond the scope of this post and even the scope of this blog. We are programmed to be incapable of showing our bought and paid for leadership and the institutions that suck up tax payer's scarce resources simply to maintain their place in the establishment. I know that it will continue to get worse and worse and more of our constitutional rights will be interpreted away based on party affiliations and lobbying corporate interests.

It’s not okay for me to spew negativity. I am passionate about the spin on injustice that we are suckered into buying, or have no choice in this free nation. I apologize for the attitude of this post, but I continue to be disturbed by these games that satisfy the masses. Had there been no riots, there would have been no indictments passed down to those trained killers, and bullies who’ve lived with impunity in a different world be having brunch right now.

"Often your thoughts are not your own."

We give enforcing entities a little power as civil servants or agencies and it's not enough. We pay for their salaries and it's not enough, they take valuable seizures to earn more, they make decisions based on personal agendas that have ended or are postponing the freedom of one in every 100 adult, American men's lives: 1 in 9 African-American lives*. It's not okay. Now, that money is a prime aspect and the hundreds of thousands of Americans that get rich off of the suffering of the millions of socially inferior or less fortunate (by way of birth, environment or genetics), complicate things even further and have caused a divide in our cities, families and especially in Washington. Take a closer look. We pledge allegiance to a political party and not to our country. We have a nation that we could be proud of still, but I see it getting worse. Of course, it will get worse before it gets better, if we don’t allow the scale in hands of “blind justice” to tip beyond a point of return.

I am done spouting and I’ll get to the real point I’d like to make. This is the reason that half of the readers are shaking their heads. Posts like this one can quickly ruin ones credibility, but at the risk of doing just that I will tell you only the truth. If you don’t subscribe to my point of view, I believe you just haven’t had the time to examine the nature of our system of order and justice.

The Bible says, “The love of Money is the root of all evil.”  However, more often you can hear it correctly misconstrued when stated.

If money isn’t the root of evil, it sure as hell is the root of distraction. Most of us are forced to spend most of our time chasing, thinking about, or working for it. I want to challenge my readers to think of the reasons this is. I’m not claiming a conspiracy. I simply believe that when you view money for what it really is that your very attitude towards it will put it in the back seat to what is important.

In my experience, the more I see it as the illusion of fractal and centralized banking the easier it is for me to create it in my life. Money is the biggest, but it’s only one distraction. Distractions come from every direction, even within our own minds. You have an often untamed babbling of nonsense that springs forth from, God knows where. I believe we all have this baseless “voice” that never shuts up. And, you shouldn’t want it to. It is to be mastered; the first thing on your path to lasting change. Even though, it is ongoing and the only off buttons, have a small side effect of unconsciousness. Since there isn’t an off switch, find the volume knob. This is a powerful step. The way to figuratively “turn down” this scripting is through an understanding of how the radio works. There is a popular consensus of where the station comes from, but a shift in your perception doesn’t literally turn it down, it empowers one to choose how sensitive one is to this Kim Kardashian in your head. Why would you listen to something that limits your fulfillment? The consensus I spoke of, belongs to more than the self-help gurus, it belongs to all men who conquer self. It comes from conditioning, programing, brainwashing, you pick the name, but the primary sources are clear

I want to challenge every reader to put any bias and ego aside and use your concentrated perception, not on Ms. Grace's words, but the very valid emotions and assessments that come from a logical mind when it is clear of all programming. I hate to think that I am a puppet, and that's how I felt when I realized that my own thoughts were not my own. Your thoughts are not your own. You are subject to conditioning just like anyone else. The mainstream media is not the best place to get your fix of current events. Unless, of course, you want your news poisoned with programming that we often adoringly call "spin". Spin is deceit and that's a fact; no spin. 

Are you good at your job? How about if you have 20 years’ experience?  How good would you be? What if your job was to play Chess and you studied and learned from mentors early on, mentoring others later and had a couple of hundred years of Chess industry information to draw on? You'd be pretty damn good right? Now, imagine you are teaching new Chess students to play, but you’re super powerful Chess boss creates an environment where you and all of the best Chess players compete, not on the board, but against one another for a coveted position of prestige. The only catch is; these noob Chess players aren't to be taught how to play effectively, they are only to be distracted with learning how to move a couple of pawns. If you can effectively get them to believe they are getting really good, and their Chess style is better than a competing style, you get the coveted position of prestige. These students come to Chess class daily to hear your leftmost pawn movement theories, but you really know how to annihilate your opponent on the board. Power corrupts, and you'd like to keep your status and not fall from Grace, so to compensate for the deceit that you are filling these many student's lives with you shift your views. Of course, you can still destroy any other Chess player, but you convince yourself that the leftmost pawn theory is one of the most important beginning and middle game aspects. Hell, you even start to move your left pawn first when you play.

If a student notices that there is much more going on behind the row of pawns and is bold or dull enough to stand in front of the rest of the students and suggest that there may be more to it than this, he is invited to make clear his points. With your leftmost pawn, you start and as the others watch, laughing at his absurd notion, you go on to make a quick victim of him. Everyone, including yourself is reinforced in left-pawn theory, and rarely ever will anyone raise their hand to suggest otherwise again. Subgroups may for believing the bishop, or knight is key. But they are so distracted they don't realize that controlling the most squares, and the important squares could be a factor. During their days of lifelong right-pawn Chess students, they have many other distracting roles. When they turn the TV off in the morning after recharging their conditioning of pawn theory, they must go off and pay even closer attention to their tainted Monopoly class, maintaining the ability to watch your Chess class on a 65 inch curved smart TV, with instant playback, and pointless features. Not everyone buys into your theory of pawn power, but they identify with it while they are able to get better and better at Monopoly and trade that game for hotels. Some get caught up in pawn theory and all of the other distractions and trade Monopoly for Sorry or even worse: Candy Land, the most distracting game of all.

The code must be entered consistently as the person develops. Some things we believe are ridiculous. We would still believe in Santa if everyone else did and there was no one to tell us when we are 7 that he is only a myth.

The Newest Designer Drug Takes it's First American Life

You may not have heard of it yet, but like many designer drugs this one causes erratic behavior and often death.

A new designer drug has hit the streets of South Florida, killing a young man last week. Known as “gravel” or, more commonly, Flakka, alpha-PVP has been on the DEA radar for over a year. Many of these designer drugs, known as “bath salts” and entering the market from other countries, mainly Eastern countries, have had an effect on populations elsewhere giving the US a warning of things to come.

“Cathinone” is the scientific name for the family of synthetic drugs that have burst onto the scene lately, being marketed as plant food, detergent incense and, thus the name, bath salt. These drugs only became popular recently, but have been around since the 1920’s. There is little known about the immediate effects of this and other designer drugs and nothing known about the long-term effects. That is what makes this class of drug so scary. We have seen how out of control, an individual can be who is under the influence of bath salts, when not long ago a man using a similar drug stripped down and assaulted homeless Ronald Pappo before the police shot him to death.

The new drug is molecularly similar to antidepressants known NRI’s (Norepinephrine Re-Uptake inhibitors but have a much different effect on human beings. This is a very dangerous and hard to contain drug. It’s dangerous for above mentioned and obvious reasons. It is hard to contain because it is cheap and if demand rises will flood through customs in packages and delivered to a buyer’s doorstep. One of the contributing factors of the popularity of these drugs is that it is not tested by conventional drug tests, making it an alluring alternative to more established drugs for the millions of American’s who have to take drug tests for probation or work.

It’s cheap, plentiful, novel and undetectable by common tests. Bath salts are no longer sold in head shops and gas stations, but have been substituted for more costly drugs by street dealers. It’s hard to say if this is fad drug or here to stay. Many young adults in Florida are buying a bath salt drug that’s active ingredient, MDPV, reportedly gives a similar high to Ecstasy. It is marketed by dealers as “Molly” (short for Molecular MDMA) and MDMA is Ecstasy in its purest form. However, what costs the street dealers less than $100 per kilogram, can cost the unknowing end user the same price for a single gram.

There are hundreds of these designer drug compounds and law enforcement still isn’t the answer. Until real education about drugs is introduced, young people will not have the tools to properly weigh the pros and cons of experimenting with drugs like these. The DARE program is a failure. It would be great if we could rely on parents to educate their own children regarding the dangers of addictive drugs, like Flakka, it’s never going to be a reality.

So what is the answer? Trial and error, perhaps, with a faster measurement dynamic of current program success. We cannot allow a program like DARE to be implemented by the same entity that gets the majority of it’s funding from the thing it is trying to prevent. The CDC and State Health Departments should have an escalating role in the prevention of drug abuse in young people. In fact, these agencies are more relevant to drug abuse than any other and must eventually be tasked with the jurisdiction over the areas or drug abuse and mental health. The old way is not working. Quite the opposite.

Law enforcement’s long-time jurisdiction over drugs and abuse has been a huge failure and led to a conflict of interest for our Departments of Law Enforcement. More so, growing up in a society that has always attempted to control drug abuse in this manner, it can be difficult to imagine a better way. This mishandling of our attempt to curb drug abuse has led to daily, tragic miscarriages of justices. Drugs being the most prevalent legal offense has shifted our attention concerning true criminal behavior and actions and resulted in massive amounts of money for the agencies that nibble at the problem.

Drugs, like Flakka, flow through our borders, and now through our postal services from other countries. Police make a valiant effort at fighting the drug trade, but as time has proven, are just inadequate. Law enforcement can’t stop something that is in such high demand by the people. Something must be done to minimize the demand. If our schools could effectively drill into our young students the absurdity and insanity of addictive drug use the way they drill in the multiplications tables, we would see a drop in demand and the cartels and pharmaceutical companies would have to find new jobs because neither is going to cater to the < 1 million Americans that want drugs, if our programs were successful. But, do we really want that?

After all it’s not just cartels and big pharma that makes money on the drug trade.

Flakka isn't news. It is one of hundreds of drugs just from its family of designer drugs. It wasn’t the first and won’t be the last drug to make it into America. Until we pull back our own veils and see the failure that this “War on Drugs” has become, will we be disturbed enough to make a change and stop the problem at it’s source: the demand.

The Zone

During a big change in your life, you can sometimes run, emotionally, off of the snowball effect that tends to onset, usually, around the three week mark. This is how long it takes an average person to build new neural pathways in her brain. This is true for me, and I have always heard that it takes an average person 21 to break an old, or start a new habit. By this time, if you stuck to your plan 100%, you should be kickin ass and making it look easy. This state of being is known by many names, but I've always called it....... SUPER DEDICATION MODE, or SDM (Not really. I don't have an acronym for my "the zone".)

Every time I've ever been in super dedication mode, I was on my A game in everything I did. In the gym, I'd workout twice as hard, I would get A's in school, and do better in life, generally. I don't know how I manage to lose that after I have it. Some people, you can see have it all the time, others will never experience the power of the 100.

I'm sure that I am actually smarter while in it, my mind is strong and positive, I tend to be a great deal more confident. I don’t second-guess myself and I've noticed that I’m more happy and, seemingly, lucky.

Now, the question would be, “How you obtain this level of peak performance and maintain a high level throughout the rest of your life?” One thing that has helped me through my addictions and troubles, is challenging myself to be better every day, and then auditing myself honestly each night. So, by waking up and thinking of how I will improve myself today, preparing and planning, taking action, and then finally measuring the results is a great place to start. This process is easy, and fun. Gamifying habit breaking is a must. Finding your own little advantages to breaking a nasty habit or forming a positive one is the backbone of the topic for this month, so it can’t be that easy.

No. In fact making a habit change, or, much more difficult, an addiction change, is just that: difficult. I want to remind you that anything worth doing is difficult. The more difficult, the better the reward for succeeding at it will be. The most difficult part may be over for a lot of you, if you have stuck with your New Year’s resolution. If you have, then you have almost created the habit, or broken it. You are much less likely to revert back to your unwanted behavior or lack thereof, so give yourself a pat on the back, just don’t take a break at this crucial time.

Breaks are hard to avoid, but you must keep in mind what goes on during a break. I can tell you that in my life, I’ve hit SDM twice. Both times it was punctuated by a break. These punctuations, in my case have lasted years. I just wonder where I’d be had I not taken the break. My advice for this is to make a written list of what may happen during your break, and if you can somehow continue your routine, possibly in a less functional manner, to decrease the likelihood of slipping back into the old habit and out of the zone.

During my time in the Army, I had a friend who introduced me to working out in a gym. He was my personal trainer, nutritionist and coach. He helped me reach a level I had not ever gotten close to prior to that. We worked out together for about six months and I was looking forward to time off and visit back home. I worked out harder and longer, ate better and even set my alarm to wake up in the middle of the night and drink a protein shake.

Once I got home and showed off to all my friends; which is one of the main reasons that I wanted to get fit in the first place, I felt like I didn’t have anything to work towards anymore. When I returned, I stopped going to gym altogether. Had I written out a list of anticipated obstacles for my upcoming visit and return to base, I would have been prepared to deal with them.

I have one other example that is so similar to the last one that there isn’t much of a reason to mention it. I know once I hit Super Dedication Mode again, within a couple of months, I will do what I can to keep it.

I hope you learn from my mistakes and prepare for unavoidable hiatuses in your life by preparing to maintain your mindset.

Anyone has the ability to make any change in their life as they see fit. The know-how is a different story. I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but I welcome comments and nuggets of wisdom for keeping yourself in the zone, in the comments section below.

Update on my New Year’s Resolutions:

I am completely failing at the main one: quitting smoking. I don’t want to talk about it. I will give another update soon and I’ll discuss the reasons for my failure.

I am happy to report that I have been working out on the planned schedule and doing cardio above what I had planned. I am eating right (for my diet) which means eating lots of protein all day, and lots of carbs in the morning.

I will keep you posted and with better news of my main resolution. Just because, I have given in several times, doesn't mean that I’m not closer to my goal than I was on the quit date and I must keep trying and not let myself get any leeway as far as allowing myself to smoke without getting disturbed about it. I know I will win this. A positive attitude is kindergarten for making change.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment. Let us know how you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be a NY resolution. It can be a today resolution. Make a commitment here and hold yourself accountable.