Darwin Was An Atheist and Other Lies We Were Taught

Darwin Was An Atheist and Other Lies We Were Taught


Charles Darwin was the ultimate atheist, or so we are encouraged to believe.

"As a Deist, Charles Darwin believed that God set in motion the physical laws of the universe, which he proposed included laws of "natural selection" and the mutability of the species. Clearly, Charles Darwin was not an Atheist, and those among the 'conservative' Theists who misrepresent him as such, do him great disservice. "
- Bill M. Tracer in Biography, September 7, 2007

Science cast Darwin as the godfather of the modern belief in a godless evolution of everything by molding his reputation into something Darwin himself would have strongly disapproved of. As Bill Tracer said in our opening quote, Charles Darwin was a Deist based on the evidence he saw in his travels and understood from sorting his copious data.

Science, in general, approves only of facts and theories it can prove or that it believes it can prove in the future as more data becomes available--and nothing of anything science can't understand or comprehend at the moment--it ignores Darwin's belief in a creator because the belief didn't fit with what the powers of the science establishment want us to believe.

Darwin saw creation as a work in progress, not as a six-day one-time series of events that happened a few thousand years ago. He likely wondered why an all-powerful deity needed to rest after one week of work and how a deity that didn't live on earth supposedly created everything according to an earthly calendar of six earth days. And maybe why spirits of good people who had died and gone to heaven needed streets paved with gold--or any kind of streets for that matter.

Ironically, Darwin's God seemed to work like a good and diligent scientist today, including making the odd mistake and working toward new horizons of creation. Instead of wiping out his mistakes (think the Great Flood of the Bible) God tweaks his creations and lets them develop and evolve into something better on their own.

Unlike modern scientists who believe that if they can prove or understand something it couldn't possibly have been created by a deity--that is, if I can understand it, it can't be of divine origin--Darwin saw connections he believed could never be explained or understood. His grasp of "everything" known was much greater than science of today will even acknowledge exists.

Extra-sensory perception (ESP), one identical twin feeling pain when the other is hurt, even many forms of original thinking fall outside of what science today is prepared to accept or understand. It simply ignores what it can't comprehend, as if nothing exists or is real unless it fits inside the box science made for itself. Witness how hard it was for Einstein's ideas or any other major theory backed by considerable mathematical evidence to be accepted as mainstream.

(As an aside, science has also cast Darwin as the wise old man with the long white beard, if you remember images of him, like a venerable Greek philosopher. Darwin was actually clean shaven for most of his life. He only grew the beard late in his life because he found shaving too hard on his skin. The beard photos convey the image of respect science wants people to have of Charles Darwin, even though science his misrepresented his theories.)

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Friedrich Nietzsche was an evil atheist who wanted to destroy everything religion has ever stood for.

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
- Nietzsche (first written in The Gay Science, later in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this version in "The Madman")

Nietzsche must have had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek when he wrote this. Others, following his full explanations of how fantastical and unsupportable the descriptions of hundreds of gods of various religions around the world, claim that man created God in his own image, not the other way around.

The Christian God, for example, is not the God that Jesus of Nazareth spoke of in the Bible, but a semi-creation of Paul as he created his church in Greece. The Christian God of Paul (and of the Church of Rome that followed his lead) was a Father--Christians of the day were sexists who could not abide by a non-male God, Rome still does not accept women priests--with female characteristics.

He is kind, loving, caring, protective, helpful, attentive to all prayers and watchful of every move we make and notes every thought we think. Just like a good mother caring for a young child. The fact that no evidence exists of these characteristics in real life affects nothing to the religious propaganda.

The Followers of Jesus of Nazareth in the Holy Land, on the other hand, were Jews who had female leaders (Mary Magdalene, among others) as well as male leaders and who believed in peace and love, as taught by Jesus. The Church of Rome systematically had them destroyed, most by 250 CE, the rest in the Inquisition.

The fact that the Christian God (the same God as that of the Jews and Muslims) also must have created devastating diseases, natural disasters that have killed millions over the years and atrocities such as genocide the Abrahamic religions conveniently attribute to the Devil. Which they decline to admit must also have been created by the same God. But the Devil has given Christians a convenient dumping ground for everything they don't like about creation and everything unpleasant they can't explain about life and their own religion.

Nietzsche was not an atheist at all. He wanted religions to reformulate their concepts of God to conform with what is real, provable and even that may be sensed by people who are attuned to something beyond the material world. It was false gods that he wanted to be dead and buried.

Nietzsche could see a real divinity at work--perhaps even that nothing could exist without that deity--but he had no opportunity to be heard among the voices that shouted against him. His concept of existentialism was twisted to make it seem like nihilism or unfettered moral licence.

He believed that we should live today, for today is all we have. Whatever we are going to do, we should do it today. Not because we won't exist tomorrow but because tomorrow's conditions may have changed to prevent the good we want to do today from happening.

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Advertising is an emotional force designed to sell product or concepts that will generate cash flow. The most successful advertisers have learned how to manipulate human emotions so people believe they need things they really don't need. "Advertising" is a cleaner and more socially acceptable word for "brainwashing."

As a student in a media advertising class many years ago I was assigned to write commercials that appealed to the emotions. Those emotions should preferably appeal directly to some need my target market would have.

What if my viewers or listeners or readers didn't need what my sponsor had to sell? "Create a need" was the reply. You can always create a need if you base it on an emotion, such as vanity or the need for acceptance.

So we have a cosmetics industry founded on the belief that looking like a movie star is right and good. Revlon, founded by Charles and Joseph Revson and Charles Lachman (he contributed the "L" to the company name) began in the makeup rooms of movie sets in the 1930s. Every woman, they reasoned, wanted to look like a movie star.

The mind-molding advertising campaigns over the years have been so successful that the fact that a majority of men looking for a female mate want to see what she looks like without makeup matters little. Their advertising makes fortunes every year.

We have commercials to convince us that battery operated tooth brushes can reach places that "manual" brushes cannot, a concept that apparently doesn't stagger the beliefs of buyers. They also do not encourage us to use floss, where real cavities begin--tooth decay almost never begins where people brush, instead it starts between the teeth and at the gum line--because there is little money to be made by selling cheap floss material.

We have car manufacturers encouraging us to buy new cars so our old ones don't break down on our way to work--and so we will look especially good in them--but they don't make cars better so they won't break down as often. We don't hear about military vehicles breaking down in the middle of battles, so manufacturers must be able to make durable vehicles.

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In conclusion, let me leave you with one personal experience. As a student in a grade seven geography class, I found myself intensely interested in a map of the world on the wall, moreso than the lesson being delivered. As the tropics were very different from temperate Canada, my homeland, I was eager to learn about tropical countries so different from what I had experienced.

I noticed that the name Ecuador seemed strangely different from the names of its neighbouring countries which were mostly named after people or names in European nations. I also observed that the equator ran straight through the map of Ecuador.

Being a student of modest achievement and struggling enough with English that I knew nothing of any other language, I asked my teacher if the country name derived from its location on the planet, at the equator. No, I was assured, the similarities of the two words were mere coincidence. The very idea was dismissed quickly, with a sneer from the teacher for my interruption.

"Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name."
- Wikipedia

What can we learn from all this? No source can be trusted completely. Question everything. The truth does not emerge smoothly and effortlessly from what we see, hear and read on a daily basis.

Failure to doubt, to question and to do our own research opens us to be victims of those who want nothing more than to take from us. That applies to our devotion to beliefs as well as to our money.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to teach children what they need to know, when they need to know it, rather than leaving too much to their learning on the street.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

Still Waiting For The Light To Change

Still Waiting For The Light To Change


We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.
- Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)

Sometimes all we can do is to roll with the punches, deal with the circumstances life throws at us, and look for the chance to enact change.

Many would call that powerlessness. After all, when your choices in life are outside your control, you can't be said to have control of your life.

Do others have control over your life? Many times it seems that way, that if only someone else would do what you want or what they promised to do, life would be better. It's hard to wait for someone else, especially when you know that the other person is giving your promised work low priority but its very important to you because you can't progress with several other things in the meantime.

I confess, I allow disappointment to creep into my life sometimes. It's always a disappointment with people. The vagaries of weather (no one's is stable now, likely never was), the ups and downs of politics (the few honest ones get shot down more often than the crooks), illness, even being the next person in line after the last item on a great sale was sold don't bother me.

That's life. If I expect to find great pleasure in the good things about life, I must be prepared to accept the things that really suck. Without one, I couldn't appreciate the other. The good looks good only by comparing it to the bad. "No pain, no gain" may not be true for athletics and exercise, but it's true for emotions. The more and worse you experience that bad, the greater your opportunity to appreciate the good when it comes.

People who promise something but don't deliver really get to me. The guy who delighted me when he said he could fix my tractor--he unstuck a valve and replaced a spring--has kept the parts at his place for weeks because he is too busy with his own projects to put my tractor back together. The computer expert friend who may have been able to help me avoid having a rootkit destroy my hard drive if he had given me the necessary advice in a timely fashion has kept my computer out of commission for weeks because he's too busy to help, even though he has promised to do so several times.

I bought a snow blower for my tractor. I asked if the man could deliver it because I had no way to get it home. He said "No problem" and I paid him. He phoned that evening to ask how I planned to get the 750 pound blower off the back of his pickup truck. I reminded him that I had told him ahead of time that I had no way to get the blower down from a truck. He forgot. Now he has my money and my snow blower, because he forgot he couldn't deliver what he said he could.

These people were not intending to lie when they made their promises to me. They simply didn't organize their thoughts and plans to the extent necessary to avoid conflicts. They didn't plan ahead. They got too busy to get all the work done they promised to others, but didn't extend the courtesy of telling the others when they might be able to get to their needs.

Sometimes just coping with the problems life throws your way--whatever their nature--is all you can do. It's called survival. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It's always painful at first. Eventually, if you keep looking, you will find a way to circumvent what may be severe consequences of a problem.

Some say God doesn't give us more than we can handle, though they wish God didn't trust them so much. Some call it courage or perseverance or strength of character that people can get through their lives with burdens far greater than the average. It's not really any of that.

Life is tough. Those who have it easy and don't appreciate what they have waste their lives because they don't accomplish much of real value. Those who slog their way through what seem to be incredible trials and tribulations, always looking to a brighter future find ways to enjoy life more because they appreciate the contrast between the bad and the good.

Moreover, the survivors act as role models for the rest of us. If it weren't for them, our species would never have survived the long process of natural selection.

We literally exist because those before us--at least many of them--survived rigors of life far worse than we can imagine. We don't owe them anything. We do owe it to ourselves and to those who will follow us to survive and to improve.

Those who don't struggle with life don't improve because they don't know how. They have never had to work their way out of problems and difficulties that might have destroyed them. The survivors know how. They learn as they struggle.

As individuals and as a species, we inherited much because of those who struggled and survived before us. It's our job to struggle and survive so that future generations will know it can be done.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to teach their children the skills of coping, of surviving and of thriving in a struggling world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

Your Life In A Day

Your Life In A Day

With the passage of time, all such actions or lack of them, appear less significant. And anyway, since the cells in our body die and are renewed, replaced by different ones, we do in a literal sense become difference individuals. The connection I have to the boy I once was is now so fragile that it requires an act of conscious 'faith' to maintain that we are in any significant sense the same person.
- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, Vintage Press (Random House), 2008

Today ain't like it used to be. But then, you aren't either.

As Faulks suggested in the quote, our physical self changes every day. In fact, there is no part of your body that still has the same cells as it had 15 years ago. Over that period you have been completely rebuilt.

In a world obsessed with the shape and appearance of the human body, that might seem disappointing. Especially as strings of genes in our DNA don't always and forever reproduce themselves exactly. Over time, they tend to lose code at their tail ends. Even our replacement parts don't reproduce exactly.

So what is the real you? Your body changes over time, completely replacing itself repeatedly over your lifetime. Your brain's memory contains all the same stuff it did 15 years ago, but it has added 15 years worth of learning and experiences to itself. If you attempted to count the new information your brain has added over the past 15 years it would be so staggering you wouldn't be able to count it if you took the rest of your life. Your brain has changed markedly over the past 15 years.

Your personality has changed. Sure you retain many of the same habits, relationships, values and so on, but if you could meet the you of 15 years ago today you might not recognize yourself. You don't even look the same in the mirror.

What identifies you as you? How do you know you are the same person?

Let's add a little perspective. Do you remember a movie or television program you watched over the past week or month? Was it real? Was there a real program you saw or maybe it was just a memory? In fact, you can't prove you even saw it. Memory proves nothing, as the recall of witnesses in recent court cases has shown. Some memory has been altered over time, some is purely invented.

For that matter, you can't prove you existed yesterday, or that there even was a yesterday. As shocking as it may seem, maybe today and the world you know about today came into existence when you gained consciousness this morning. If you believe that someone can create a movie in which you participate as viewer and in which you find yourself thinking that it's really happening at the time, then why could it not be possible that a whole past, an entire history, was created when you woke up today?

I know, it's not the way you have been taught to think. It's not what you have been lulled and trained into believing.

You have family members, loved ones, neighbours, work friends who aren't with you now as you read this. You can't prove they even exist, at this moment as you sit reading this. You trust that you can move from where you are to some other place and you will find them where you expect.

You may be right. But you can't prove it. When you move to one of these places, you change your own reality. You change from the present NOW to another NOW. Once there, what you are doing in this NOW will be equally as unprovable. It might be just a created memory, like your memory of that movie or TV program. What we know as memory and history could be entirely self-created memory.

The only reality you can depend on is this one, the one you are in. If you hope to be remembered by someone in a future NOW, then you had better act in ways that will cause you to be remembered. If what you do in this NOW only benefits you, then others will have no reason to remember you later. Why should they? They will be busy with their own NOW of the moment.

That may give you some insight into what you do with your time, the time you think of as NOW, as your own. Do you want to be remembered or not? Memories of people who think only or mostly of themselves don't last long. People remember (or create memories of their NOW moments) others who helped them, who cared for them, who showed them that they mattered.

If you believe that your body, your own personal NOWs, are all that are important, you have no reason to believe in a God. God serves no purpose if all your NOWs will eventually vanish and be forgotten. If there will never be anything left of the YOU you know when you die, then there is no need for God, no afterlife. Not even any purpose to what you are doing in this NOW. If nothing of you will continue to exist after you die, then life has no purpose. Does that make sense, that everything around you has no purpose?

Look around you. Does it seem as if all this could have happened by accident? The moon is as old as earth, as are the other planets in our solar system, yet they have nothing remotely similar to the reality of NOW you live in. Why? Cosmologists and science fiction writers claim there are likely many other civilizations out there somewhere in our universe, but they have absolutely no evidence to support their claims or speculations. No one has any evidence that the NOW you live in is anything but unique.

Does everything change constantly or does it all remain the same? Or do--gasp!--some things change constantly while others remain the same? Sorry, that last statement doesn't make sense to a thinking person. It's inconsistent, unlike anything in evidence around you. Everything you know changes, though some things change slower than you can detect so it seems as if they remain the same. Rocks change just as surely as the universe itself changes. We have evidence. At least we have memories of evidence we believe we read.

Your body changes when you die. Many of the bacteria that cohabit your body with "you" today--there are more of them than of cells in your body--may live on in other environments when the life that was your body has dissipated. Your body cells may separate into various atoms and molecules, but they won't disappear. Even if someone were to burn your body, the matter would change into energy, as Einstein proved. Remember e = mc2

Does that mean that when you die you are gone, or not? Are you comprised of your body and nothing else? Every atom that was your body remains and becomes something else. Does the part of you that you think of as "me" disappear? In nature, nothing disappears. It's the natural Law of Conservation. Why would the "you" that you spent so many years creating disappear? That's assuming you believe there is something more to you than animated cells.

If the "you" you created disappeared at your death, that would defy nature's laws. It would defy everything you have come to believe is real. Stuff doesn't disappear, it just changes.

You created something. You created you. Maybe you didn't create everything you know as real, but you created something. Does that make you a Creator? Does that make you God? Well, sort of. For that to be strictly true then there would have to be 6.7 billion other Gods on the planet. That doesn't make sense.

What makes more sense is that you, as creator, are part of a larger Creator, a system. You can't hold the whole system together. But you can be a component of it. You can't be God. But you can be part of God. God can be part of you. This isn't a religious lesson, it's an exercise in logic.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Christianity and the figure believed even by Muslims as the Son of God (Jesus and his mother are both mentioned in the Qu'ran), taught that. Read the Gospel of John. Read it straight, not filtering what you read through what you have been taught. If you grew up in a Christian family, your beliefs were more those of Paul, not so much of what Jesus taught. Paul, a Greek, taught what he believed and attributed it to Jesus and God. That's what inventors of religions do, they never give themselves credit or their followers wouldn't believe them. Read the actual words of Jesus, not their context because the Church of Rome doctored up the context of the few words of Jesus that were recorded.

Jesus taught that God is within each of us, not up in the sky somewhere. He said that we could find God within ourselves. We just have to look.

Having read this far, you have had a peek at possibilities relating to existence, your own and that of the world you know. Look further. Never mind the crap you have been taught by others. (Sorry, that was rude. I detest being asked to "have faith" in something for which there is no evidence when real evidence of something different is all around us.)

God, the purpose of life and the continuance of you after the death of your body are not subjects about which you need to "have faith." The evidence is all around you. Nature gave you some of it. Your brain can now give you more. If you want to know what life is about, study your surroundings and think it through.

What is real may not necessarily be what is around you. NOW is like that movie you saw and remember. Reality is much more significant, more grand, much superior to what you see in advertising or hear in your place of worship. Or to what you see as you look around the room you are in.

Look for it. Start now.

One final point. While you are creating you, create something worthwhile, something worth enduring. Keep in mind, if you want to be remembered, don't be too generous at helping yourself because selfish people aren't remembered fondly.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who can think for themselves as adults, who will pay attention to what is real instead of advertising disguised with smoke and mirrors.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically

How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically

"The social, emotional and spiritual are part of a child's connection with the world."
- Mary Paradis, director of development at the Vancouver Waldorf School

Why doesn't every child deserve the kind of education kids get at some private schools? The schools I refer to--Waldorf and Montessori are among them--teach the whole child, not just curriculum dictated facts and skills.

Children develop along four main streams: intellectual, physical, emotional and social. Mainline school systems address the intellectual and physical needs of their children, but curriculum seldom leaves time or room for social or emotional/psychological development. At that, intellectual development follows strict guides and physical development varies hugely from school to school and among various districts.

What would those strict guides be that schools follow? Education systems, in general, are designed to produce future employees who can do the jobs that big employers such as industries need to be done. And they produce consumers who will buy, use, throw away, then buy more of the products those industries manufacture.

Schools produce employees and consumers. The evidence is so glaring that those who argue against the claim have difficulty finding evidence of support. In fact, those who argue that schools are not designed to produce employees and consumers of the future delude themselves and try to persuade others so they don't feel so alone. If you doubt, just look at what topics fill school curricula and the young adults the schools produce.

Ironically, many of the leaders of the industries that employ public school system graduates themselves attended private schools. Is this true irony? In fact, no. Private schools, in general, prepare children to be leaders in their communities, not followers as public school systems do.

Providing "the right thing at the right time" in a child's learning development is the key to teaching to the whole child, according to Ryan Lindsay, president of The Waldorf Association of Ontario. Public schools, on the other hand, provide indoctrination of facts and skills in the employee-consumer model at the time most child have the ability to manage them. Those who are not ready fail--emotionally, if not by repeating school years--drop out when they reach the minimum age, often believing that they are too dumb for school. They try to work for large companies so they can depend on a steady income.

"We make sure we focus on teaching children how to think and not what to think," according to Lindsay. "We like to think we are laying the foundation in a more thorough way so that when children get to a certain age the approach aids their intellectual development."

Casting aside the lack of expertise you may feel regarding the topic of education as a whole, if you attended a public school do Mr. Lindsay's statements ring a bell about how you were taught? From what you know of adults today, do they know how to think, not just what to think when they make purchases?

We must keep in mind that private schools have the same number of teaching hours in their days as public schools. They don't have eight-day school weeks. Private school students are in class roughly the same number of hours as public school students the same age. Sometimes less if they have special assignments that take them outside the classroom.

What's the difference?

Some may claim that public schools have many more problem children to deal with than private schools. From my personal experience as an educator, I can see that argument having some merit. I also know that classes I taught in public schools had far fewer "problem children" than many of the other classes in the same schools.

In my teaching years in public schools, it was the teacher in my classes who kept getting into trouble, not the students. In my case I kept wanting to deliver to my kids what they needed and wanted and were desperate to take in and develop, not just what was on the curriculum. I believe my mission was to grow whole people, not just adults who were ready to be employees and consumers. I did. Administration often objected.

In general, classes with "problem children" do little to address their emotional and social needs. Consequently their problems tend to be emotional or social in nature--bullying, depression, fighting, shyness and so on. Where children have intellectual development problems--slow learners--very often the slowness of intellectual development relates back to emotional or social problems of the past.

And often to emotional or social problems of the present. How efficiently can we expect a child to learn if he or she has problems with a drunk or abusive parent at home, with a classmate or neighbourhood child who bullies them to and from school or on the bus, with a parent who does not provide a home atmosphere that supports what is taught at school, or even with the results of a recently broken close friendship?

For a child, emotional and social problems always take precedence over intellectual challenges in school. Always. It's how we are built. Emotional and social problems are related to our individual ability--our basic instinct--to survive. For our ancient prehistoric ancestors, intellectual development and learning took place when survival and personal safety and comfort were not at stake.

Most private schools address the social and emotional needs of their students. "I could never say enough good things about the value of community in a school," says Karen Murton, principal of Branksome Hall, a private school for girls in Toronto.

If a child can't get enough help with social or emotional development at home and his school doesn't have the time or the authority in its curriculum to address these needs, where does he get it, where does he turn to fill in the blanks he knows inherently he must fill? Television. Movies. Video games. Rumours picked up in casual conversations with peers. "Information" gleaned from overheard adult conversations behind closed doors and at parties.

Please consider that list carefully. Your child, or at least many of the children in your community, derive most of the emotional and social development information they receive from these same sources. Are they the sources you want young people to take as models? Think about their content.

Public schools could provide factual input, but most don't. They have the same amount of time with their students as private schools, but public schools spend their non-curriculum time dealing with created problems rather than teaching what the kids need to know to prevent them from happening.

One kind of school deals with kids who may already be broken. Another teaches what kids need to avoid breaking.

As astonishing as it may sound, addressing the emotional and social needs of children would not be a costly change for public schools. Most teachers already know this stuff and just need some direction, guidance and the authority to teach it.

If private schools can grow men and women who can lead major industries, professions and governments, public schools should easily be able to grow men and women who can think for themselves, who are more than mere automaton employees and consumers who work and buy as they are told.

If you believe what you have just read, then your family, your community, your world needs you to speak up about it. Only by speaking up will you find how many others think like you so that we can all work together to make life better for the future.

If we don't talk about this, we leave industries to manipulate their way into the lives of every student of every public school.

That's simply not acceptable.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and other interested people who want to know what children need to learn and when, not just what industries want them to be taught and how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Collection of Quotes to Touch the Heart

Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.Faith is having the courage to dance to it today.
- Dr. Peter Kuzmic, theologian, Slovenian-born, citizen of Croatia

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.
- Dennis Wholey, American television host and producer (b. 1939)

Laughter is a smile with the volume turned up.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)

People laugh because I'm different, I laugh because they're all the same.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)

No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)

Be like the flower that perfumes the very hand that crushes it.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)

Last night I watched a movie that was so difficult to understand that I couldn't figure it out until the very end. Then I had to return it to the store. It reminded me of life.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

You don't have to win at life. Life is not about winning. Life is about playing the game and trying to influence others so that they win.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

They say you can't go back to your childhood, that the places you remember will have changed. Even if they haven't, you will have changed so that the you of long ago wouldn't recognize the you of today.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

When your heart breaks, it changes your life. But you had a chance to avoid the hurt. When a child's heart breaks, the child has no defences, no preparation, no means to recover. The reassembled life has no possibility to achieve it's former potential.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

If you hear a great piece of music and your day is not better for it, the problem is not that the music is deficient.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

No matter how much technology you have at your command and friends in your social networking site, there is no substitute for the gentle touch of another live human, for the feel of their breath on your neck, for soft whisper from their lips into your ear.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

Don't think you're ugly. Everyone is beautiful sometimes, always when they smile. Don't think you're beautiful. Everyone is ugly sometimes. The difference is attitude and confidence. Even movie stars are pretty plain looking without makeup. They believe they're beautiful, so that's what they become.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com

You Were Inevitable

"Life only starts to make sense when you realize that sometimes--often all the time--two completely contradictory ideas can be true.Everything that led up to you was wrong. Therefore, you should not have been born.But everything about you is right: You had to be born.You were inevitable."
- Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls, Viking (U.K.), 2007

Perhaps the most inspiring words I have ever read.

Jonathan Coe's multi-generational narrative takes the reader through decades of grievous family history, where everything including abandonment, emotional abuse and the beating of a child that blinded her points to a cold, dire, sometimes brutal existence for the recent descendants. Yet the blinded girl had to be born and grew up to be happy and fulfilled, according to the narrator of the story.

But, That's me, I thought. And it could be you.

Maybe the terrible family history and problems you had to face in your life prepared you for the total person you are today.

You are not the tragedies of the past in your life, nor the calamities that befell your family before you came along. You were the product of them, yes, but you came through them.

To the average person, the rock that will one day become a beautiful sculpture is nothing but a rough, crass chunk of space debris. To a sculptor, the rock is the protection that has surrounded the beauty he will soon reveal from within, for eons. Somehow or another, the rock clothing that surrounded you has been chipped and drilled away to reveal something beautiful. Something beautiful that is you.

If you identify yourself as being the product of a troubled past, you will act the role of the troubled person of the present waiting for something else to go wrong to destroy your life. If you see yourself as the beautiful creation you have become, you will be a different person.

You are not your past, nor the inheritor of the troubled history of your family. You are who you are. Not only are most of your ancestors not alive today, not even you can live in your own past. You are who you are today, no matter what happened in the past.

Your past is no more real today than the genocides of Hitler, the agonies of The Great War to End All Wars or Joan of Arc tied to the stake. Today is today. It can only be today. The past brought you to where you are today, but it does not force you to be its victim.

You were inevitable.

If you want to make yourself useful to the world, make it better for someone. The more people whose today you improve, the more likely they are to pay the favour forward.

The world improves not by those who destroy, but by those who create and improve in preparation for the future. Generally speaking, your life is better than the lives of any ancestor in your past. If it doesn't seem that way, then maybe you aren't looking at what is right and good.

When you see what is right and good in your life, pass it on. You don't know how much better the future can be for your descendants. But you can try to do what is right and good for them.

Teach right. Teach good. Teach peace. (What I call the Philosophy of T3)

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow into a better world that they will help to create. You can help to prepare them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

The Mystery Of The Future Revealed

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still; it is we who move in infinite space.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet (1875-1926)

This quote struck me because it turns backwards our thinking about the future.

The way we think of the future, most of us believe that it must bounce around as if trying to avoid us and detection. To many of us, the future is unknown, a mystery that will unfold in some fashion in ways we can't imagine at this time.

Not so. Rilke says it's not that way at all.

We are the ones who bounce around, not knowing where we are going.

Our governments seldom have long term plans for the future. As they are elected for relatively short terms, they focus on the duration of their terms, plus a couple of years more. Most give little thought to what they want for their country 25 or 50 years in the future.

They can't set policies to prepare for a future 50 years hence because they don't think about it. They only set policies they hope will get them elected next time.

Businesses, especially large ones, set long term objectives. They want to think their way into the future to be prepared for what they will face then. However, their long term plans can turn on a dime when their financial fortunes hit rough patches. In effect, they plan for the long term future, but act in their own best interests in the immediate future. Profit today, not prospects tomorrow, are what counts for them.

As individuals, most of us go through our lives as if we don't know what to expect of tomorrow, let alone what our lives might be like in ten or 20 years time. Planning might come in the form of retirement investments.

As of this writing, I recently passed my 65th birthday. I have reached the age when traditionally, in western countries, people retire. Then, going by historical records, I could be expected to die within the next decade. But it's highly unlikely that will happen.

I could easily live for another 30 or 40 years, as my ancestors lived well past the age when their own peers were dying off. I eat healthy, try to exercise enough. I make long term plans because I expect to be able to fulfill them.

Should a person of 65 years have plans for what they might be doing at age 90 or 95? To a younger person, that might seem silly. But unless my peers and I make plans for our future, we may find ourselves in wheelchairs, sitting in hallways of nursing homes for our final two decades of life. That's not my idea of Golden Years.

The future begins tomorrow. The future 25 or 50 years from now will depend entirely on what you and I and others around us plan tomorrow. We will meet the future knowing what it's like because we will have planned it. If we plan it.

My wife and I will move to a different home in a different Canadian province within the next two months. Everything will be new to us, except our citizenship. One of the first tasks we plan for our new property will be to plant trees where we want them.

We will plant spindly young trees no taller than ourselves. We plan to sit in their shade for years after they have reached their full height.

Will we do little more than to sit in the shade on a summer's day? Not at all. Chances are we will plan how to take the world by storm with our new ideas on those future days. As usual, those ideas will be rejected by the majority of people when posed, then be adopted heartily by the same people a few years later when they realize they are better than what they have.

We make our own future by building it, day by day, thought by thought, one daringly new action after another.

The future is nothing to be frightened about. We will build it ourselves, by our actions and sometimes by our inaction.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach their children how to prepare for the future, how to cope with it and to build it to their own satisfaction instead of just surviving it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Are You Really That Helpless?

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
- Thomas A Kempis, German ecclesiastic (1380-1471)

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates, Ancient Athenian philosopher (470-399 BC)

Many people claim they wish they could change the world, but they can't. Yet they would find it difficult to change themselves, even offensive if someone else suggested it.

Changing the world isn't hard. It simply can't be done by one person. Because they know they can't do it alone, many fail to make any attempt. Rather than working to gather others who will spread the same message, they do nothing, often ignoring the advice they would give to the world as to how to achieve new objectives and goals.

"If you can't beat them, join them." As common as that saying is, it identifies its users as guilty of something, and as quitters, if not as losers.

Starting with the ancient Jew we know as Abraham, the Semites began to spread the word among the other tribes they met about how to live a good life. Jesus of Nazareth picked up the theme about 550 years later. The Muslim Prophet Mohammed continued the theme with his own religion. In about 2500 years, around half the world believes the same precepts about living a good life.

Mind you, not every one of those people adheres to the rules. Generally speaking, the Jews are fairly peaceful people, except as they must defend themselves against those who would annihilate them in the Middle East. A large majority of Christians and Muslims are peaceful people, I believe. In fact, most of the people who belong to non-Abrahamic religions have similar beliefs about how to live a good life.

Considering how incredibly brutal the world was up until 600 years ago (and how brutal it still is in pockets around the world), we have come a long way. We probably have six times as many people on earth today as 600 years ago, which means that even more than in the past we humans have changed to a more peaceful and helpful life style.

We have no trouble hearing about those who violate our norms. The media ensure that we hear as much that's bad among us as they can get their hands on, and they make up some of what they tell us as it is. But the vast majority of people on the planet live good lives, healthier and longer than ever before in history.

Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed spread their words, others paid attention and passed them on. The same can be said of The Buddha and the originators of Hinduism, Taoism and other religions.

These people believed that their words would eventually spread around the world. They were right. They didn't give up because it couldn't happen within their lifetimes.

What does that make us, the good people of today who don't believe we can make a difference? Short-sighted, at the least.

Changing our own attitudes about what effect we could have on the future of our world could make such a difference in decades, centuries and millennia to come.

It's not so hard to tell others about the values we hold, so long as we don't try to convert them to a particular religion or ask them for donations. They will listen and, in time, they too will spread the word.

You can make a difference, if you believe in yourself.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make a big difference in the world of the future by teaching children what they need to know to operate it with integrity and with honour.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

For Those Who Resent Others

If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.
- Barbara De Angelis, relationships coach

The first part of the quotation sounds like the basic material of any relationships coach. The second part, the part that most omit from the equation, allows the whole thing to make sense. It drives home the part about loving yourself.

I relate to most of the quotes I use because they conform so well to my own experience, either personally or through observation of others. This one describes much of my life.

My childhood was totally without love. It was without hate or rancor too. It could better be described as a business arrangement between my parents. One set of grandparents--the ones I saw often--exemplified the same business arrangement. My other grandmother, a widow, loved her children and grandchildren, but lacked the means or skill to express her love, so it went largely unnoticed.

When I married the first time, I made the best business decision I knew how to make, based on my experience growing up. My wife, who left me and our two children a decade later so that she could further her career, succeeded in the teaching profession, reaching the position of school principal before she died of cancer caused by excessive and persistent overwork.

Not long after her death, my new wife and I suffered a huge financial loss, so were unable to provide my now-twentyish kids with what their mother had led them to believe they deserved from me, in the sense of financial benefits. In turn, they made the best business decision they could, they dissociated themselves from me totally. I have not seen them for 15 years, or my grandchildren ever.

Working my way through my grief at being alienated (albeit illegally and by lying to their own kids about my being dead) I learned a very important lesson, how to love myself. That lesson showed me that I have value and worth as a human being, something I had not recognized before as everyone who knew me treated me as a business contact. That's how it works, people who treat others like business associates gather friends who treat them the same way.

Knowing how to love and respect myself gave me the insight to be able to love others. Lo and behold, I no longer resented others because of the love they withheld from me. They wanted to love me because I loved them.

What's more, the more love I gave to others, the more I received back. It was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Only the gold turned out to be love, not financial wealth.

My conclusion is that the resentment I had for others I should love--perhaps including my own children, but I'm not certain--vanished when I learned to love myself. I thought I loved them but maybe they sensed resentment. I certainly didn't know how to show them love very well then.

As a side benefit to my new life, I no longer feel lonely, even when I am alone for a long period of time. As another benefit, people come to me with their offerings of love because they know what they will get in return. It's a good deal both ways.

Now I see a world of lonely people who have business arrangements as relationships, who don't know how to give or receive love fully, who have troubled children even though they tried their best to raise them well, who can't keep a marriage or "significant other" relationship for long because "the business" changes.

Money is the most important thing in their lives, though they tend to think of it in terms of possessions--"he who has the most toys when he dies, wins." They think I'm simple because I'm happy without being rich. They don't even appreciate that they are rich without being happy.

I don't know how to explain it to them.

No one should have to go through hell to get to heaven, as I did.

There are important lessons to learn and we need to teach them. Those of us who know. We may fail with some, but we will succeed with many if we keep trying to teach them. We will regret our failures, but only until we consider our successes, those we love and who love us in return because of what they have learned and received from us.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow happy, loved and successful children into happy, loved and successful adults and parents of their own children.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

How You Can Make Your World A Better Place

If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.
- Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993)

It's almost too simple to imagine that we live in a world we create for ourselves within our own mind. But it's a fact.

Few would disagree that there are real things in the real world, stuff made of matter and energy. The more scientifically savvy might say that we should include dark matter and dark energy. Fair enough.

How do we know so well that these things exist? We see, hear, taste, touch or smell them, or we see evidence of their existence such as we do when we detect that gamma rays have been somewhere we have a detector.

How do all these senses and cognitive processes work together? They're all conduits of information for the brain. The brain, in turn, acts on some of them by sending out messages through the same conduits to nerves and muscles so they will act according to the brain's wishes.

Work with me here while we try an analogy. Let's say that we substitute NASA's Mars Rover staff for the brain and the rovers themselves for the senses. We accept that the rovers are mechanical robots of sorts. They sense light and have other equipment that performs similar functions to our own senses.

The NASA staff act like the brain for the rover robots, receiving messages from the robots and sending messages back to the robots to act according to NASA's wishes.

What do the NASA people know about current conditions on Mars if the rovers refuse to send or receive signals? Nothing. What does your brain know about the real world around it if your senses refuse to send to or receive signals from your brain? Nothing. In the absence of input and the ability to send signals to their remote slaves, neither the brain nor the NASA staff know a thing.

Do you remember when the first rover landed on Mars and began to send signals back? Pretty exciting, as I recall. Not long after signals began to be exchanged, the rover captured an image that looked as if there was some sort of life form or manufactured object in the form of a face. Everyone at NASA and many who watched from home on their TV sets had a guess of what the "face" might be.

People had all sorts of guesses, including speculation about alien life on Mars, either then or in the past. You may have had an opinion as well because that's what our brain does, draw conclusions based on input. Using the same "sensory" input, or reality, many brains reached many different conclusions. Some of them were outright fanciful, if not borderline crazy.

Every time you see, hear, taste, touch or smell something, your brain reaches a conclusion about what's out there in the world around it. Other people's brains, given the exact same input, could easily reach different conclusions. What, then, is real?

"Real," to us, is what our brain says it is. Our brain doesn't give a whit what other brains think, it stays with its own conclusions. What it "saw" through its senses and concluded from the input is what is real to the brain.

That applies to many things in our lives. In truth, to almost everything. No two brains see the same reality. So what's real?

What's real is what your brain says is real. So why not, as Dr. Peale suggested, have your brain sense a bright and happy world?

That's not reality, you say. Some bad stuff goes on in the world. Just read a daily newspaper or watch television news to see some of it. Fair enough. But what is your source for good news, for happy and bright events that would more than counterbalance the bad stuff we get fed constantly? Most of us don't have that source for positive input or feedback.

So our feeble brains reach the only conclusion they can, based on what they have to work with. The world must be a terrible place with lots or dreadful stuff going on. Who could blame a brain for thinking that way?

With that as a starting point each day, what's to stop your brain from going deeper, from making more dire conclusions and predictions based on the same input day after day? Surely life would become depressing.

Some people couldn't cope with that level of depression, from constant, unrelenting negative input. They might turn to alcohol or drugs. They might fight with and kill a spouse. They might rob a convenience store when they need money to pay off bad debts or drug dealers. They might adopt any of numerous emotional illnesses we commonly call neurological disorders. They might commit suicide.

Who could blame a brain for that? It acts on what input it receives. If the input is all bad, constantly, maybe it eventually loses control. Maybe it causes its slave senses to turn a car into a lethal weapon or to rage at other drivers, co-workers or children.

You can see how this works. Fill your brain with what you want it to conclude about your world (it's world) and your brain will respond accordingly. It's that simple.

Fill it with good and helpful thoughts and the world will be good and helpful. You know how it works now. It's not deception. It's working with what you have around you.

A brighter and happier you will make those around you happier as well. Bonus. As they get happier, others they meet will be happier too and eventually it will spread farther. Around the world maybe. Another bonus.

But there's more. Call within the next 15 minutes and you can have your brain give itself a dose of feel-good neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin.

All for the same low price. The time you took to read this.

Act now. Before you get to a newspaper or television.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have bright and happy children grow into happy and healthy adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Sharing Prejudices Or Love

If you think well of others, you will also speak well of others and to others. If your heart is full of love, you will speak of love.
- Mother Teresa

The world is not made up of you, the people you know and people like you, people with your biases and prejudices, your tastes and preferences, your standards of ethics and morals.

It's made up of nearly seven billion people you have never met, whose lives you know nothing about, whose cultures you know little about, whose backgrounds, fears, family values and daily struggles you can't comprehend based on your experience.

Do not assume that because you and your friends believe something or that because you can justify to yourselves some line of thinking or point of view that you can speak for them. They don't want you to speak on their behalf any more than you would want them to act for you.

Men and women around the world have many characteristics in common. However, what most of us think life is like for us relates to our culture, not to those common characteristics.

We all want to experience happiness. It would be a shameful experience to calculate how little time and effort we devote to those who lack more experience with happiness because they're too busy finding food for themselves and their families, some way to earn money so they can buy something with which to shelter themselves or simply a way to avoid being killed in the night.

We all experience fear. Many fears. Everyone has them, though we try to cover them up and pretend otherwise. What do we do to help relieve the causes of fear and risk in countries where it dominates the lives of most citizens? In some cases, we engage in war to "liberate" them. So, how do you think that has worked out?

We all need love, as Mother Teresa suggested. How can we offer love to people we have never met? People whose lives we know nothing about?

Love has two basic components. One is security. Think about the people you love. Don't you want to protect them when you can? Think about those who love you. Surely they try, in their own ways, to provide some security and dependability for your life.

Touch is the other component of love. We don't think of love that way usually. We think of love as something mysterious that either happens or it doesn't. That's not because love doesn't have common characteristics, but because we aren't familiar with the physical characteristics of love. Other than the physical component of sex, which is but one small part of the totality of love.

Touch is a critical component of love for those closest to us. The more two people who love each other share their love with touch, the more secure they feel. That applies to parents and children as well as to lovers. We even tend to measure the love that another has for us by the amount and the kind of touch they offer to us. Yes, touch is a "love meter."

When children grow up and separate from parents, often by long distances in this modern world of international economy, what the distant kin remember--what holds them together as "loved ones"--is their memory of how they used to show their love for each other through touch. They may not consciously think of it as touching each other, but touch will be a component of almost every good memory they have of sharing love.

A smile is the closest we can come to showing love for someone without actually touching them. A smile is sort of "love by proxy." That's why everyone appreciates having a smile from others they know and even from strangers. We show our love for other members of our species--even to our pets--with smiles. Somehow our pets understand that kind of love, though they, like us, would prefer to receive it through touch.

Most of us find it hard to ease the fears of people we never see and to better their lives with loving touch and smiles. But it can be done.

Next time you watch one of those television commercials that asks you to donate a dollar a day to help orphaned children in Africa or people in some war-torn, poverty-stricken part of the world, note how often those making the appeal touch those needing your help. They do for strangers what you can't do. These organizations usually have lots of people who would like to work in such situations, but they can't afford to send more than they can support with food, shelter and defence.

Do you travel to other countries on vacation? If you look, you will find treasures as valuable in poor countries as in wealthier ones that can afford to advertise to attract your tourist money. You can actually see more, meet more people and learn about them, travel cheaper and give the cash you saved to those who need it in poorer countries. With your smiles and your casual touch you can share your love with them.

You will find yourself thinking that if you lived in similar circumstances you would likely do the same sorts of things they do to survive. That empathy will demonstrate to you how much of the truly important parts of life we all have in common.

To accomplish these suggestions, you will have to defy the advertising that those with money throw your way to get you to spend lavishly in their countries.

Then your choice will be whether money or love is more important to you.

Mother Teresa had millions of people who loved her. She had no money to spend on them. What she had to share was a smile, a touch. They loved her back for the love she gave to them. Her cost: nothing. Her rewards: priceless.

Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to grow socially and emotionally healthy children, not just intellectually and physically healthy ones.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Life Is Worth Living

"Cancer isn't about dying, it's realizing that life is worth living."
- Adrian Welsh

How could one young man have touched so many lives so deeply, have garnered the love of everyone he knew?

Adrian Welsh died after a four year battle with cancer on March 13, 2008. He had celebrated his twenty-third birthday just a few days before.

One week after his death hundreds of people jammed into the community centre in the hamlet where he lived for a Celebration of Life. The double auditorium filled with chairs, dozens of people had to stand through the entire service. They did so willingly, without a thought for their discomfort.

They came not out of curiosity, as is often the case with funerals or memorial services, especially of one so young or someone who died in a tragic event. They came out of love, first of all, and secondly out of respect.

Adrian Welsh was special.

Many of the comments given in person and in the souvenir program for the event noted that he died before he had a chance to live his life. They were wrong. Adrian lived more life in 23 years than most people do in 80.

He wasn't wild and crazy. He was daring, refusing to give in to fears and doubts.

Adrian believed that life is about having fun with whatever you do. Everyone wants that, but few manage it. His desire for fun was different.

He believed that for him to have fun doing whatever he was doing, the people he was with had to enjoy themselves too. That was his prime objective in life. He put the welfare and enjoyment of those he was with ahead of his own.

For a guy who was basically shy, Adrian made a huge number of friends, a few of them very close and special friends. He accomplished this by helping everyone to enjoy their life, whatever they were doing.

Nine years ago, at age 14, he began his first job as a part time dishwasher in the restaurant of a resort. He gained an interest in cooking by watching the chefs who prepared meals in fine dining styles. Two years ago, at age 21, Adrian became the head chef for that restaurant.

The daily newspaper in the city nearest where Adrian lived posted two pictures with the half page feature celebrating the life of this young man, a rare tribute to anyone. One of those photos showed him and a friend paddling a canoe, the feeding tube through the front wall of his abdomen visible on his bare chest.

Adrian never allowed circumstances to prevent him from enjoying himself and from having fun with whoever he was with.

Everyone who knew Adrian Welsh has their own special memories of him. There is one memory that each one of them shares.

Adrian had an infectious smile. He smiled at everyone, whether he knew them or not. Everyone within the range of his smiles felt immediately comfortable, at home, no matter where they were.

More than anything else, Adrian's smile and his caring attention to those around him will be a legacy that will last for a very long time.

He passed that legacy to me, as one who barely knew him.

Now that you know how, you can build your own legacy in the same way. It won't cost you a thing. Thanks to Adrian.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want their children to grow to be happy, confident and lovable adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Can You save A Life?

"In life you can never be too kind or too fair; everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. When you go through your day expressing kindness and courtesy to all you meet, you leave behind a feeling of warmth and good cheer, and you help alleviate the burdens everyone is struggling with."
- Brian Tracy

Some will always think you a sucker for being so nice. They may even criticize you and try to take advantage of you.

Too bad. Jealousy will do that to people.

They hate to see others who do good works, who do charitable acts without expectation of reward, who try to help others, because it doesn't conform to their miserable and depressing viewpoint of humanity.

They are so focussed on themselves and the dirty tricks and misfortunes fate has played on them that they can't look at the world from anyone else's point of view.

If you can't think what life must be like inside someone else's skin, you can't appreciate the hardships that others endure. Those who can and do look at life from another's point of view usually (in my experience, always) find that they wouldn't trade their life and their troubles for those of anyone else.

That's a strange phenomenon. When we only look at our own problems and consider how hard life is on us, we seem to have the worst problems in the world. When we seriously think about the problems that others must endure--really learn what they are and how other people struggle to cope with them--we never want to trade ours for theirs.

Think of any famous person you know, especially someone whose life you may have studied to some extent. Not just the good stuff, but the bumps, potholes and sinkholes of that person's life as well. The more you learn about the real life--the inside story that the public doesn't usually learn--the more likely you will be to be thankful you don't have that person's problems.

Look at the people you meet every day, the people closest to you, with the same eyes. Every one of them struggles with problems and almost every one will hide them so that you learn nothing. Everyone wants you to think they are fearless, until proven otherwise. Everyone wants you to believe they never make mistakes, until they are caught.

Everyone wants you to believe that they can make it on their own, no matter what their problems and no matter how little help they have with them, until they break down.

Sometimes that breakdown is emotional. Sometimes it shows up as an addiction. Often it appears as unusual or antisocial behaviour, though this is usually done away from the eyes of others these people know. Sometimes we learn about that person's problems as a result of suicide or murder, or both.

If you are only thinking about your own problems and not those of others around you, when they go over the edge you may not be prepared. You may not be able to help.

You may miss the signs and live to regret it for years afterward.

Other people have it worse than you. If you dig deep enough, you may find that everyone else does. Be gentle. Cut them some slack. Forgive. Offer a shoulder, or some time to listen.

You may save a life. You will certainly enrich your own in the process.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to teach others, especially children, how to cope with life's problems and how to help them understand the vulnerability of others they know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

We Complain, But...

Better to light a candle than to rant against darkness.
- Confucius, Chinese philosopher (circa 551-478 BC)

Yet we do rant against darkness. Often while refusing to let others provide a light.

We complain that many parents do a poor job of bringing up and tending to the needs of their kids. But, although you can find birthing classes in every city and town, classes to teach young adults the knowledge and skills of parenting are almost nowhere to be found.

We complain that teachers don't do a good enough job teaching what kids need. But we also complain that education taxes that go to hire more and better teachers, to outfit classrooms with usable up-to-date resources and to build curriculum that addresses social and psychological needs of children rather than "the basics" are much too high.

We complain about the evils of consumerism, about how Christ is no longer more than a few letters in the word Christmas and Santa Claus has become the real hero of the spending season. But we spend more time buying more useless gifts for more ungrateful people with each passing year.

We complain that we must buy more locks and pay for security services for our homes because of rising crime rates. But we continue to give people with severe problems more reason to need to turn to theft to satisfy their needs.

We complain that drugs have become a part of daily life for so many people. But we withhold information about the effects drugs have on the wrecked lives of addicts from children before they are exposed to drugs on the streets where their schools are located because we desperately want to keep them "innocent" for as long as possible.

We complain about the regimented lifestyle that has us following the same routine every working day. But we join the crowd with uniform suits, shoes, coats, accessories and vehicles so that we fit in with the "business ethic" of our employers.

We complain that we find it necessary to embark on exercise programs just to get enough physical activity to stay fit and reduce the anxiety associated with constant stress. Then we drive several times around the parking aisles of shopping malls just to get a parking space that's as close to the entry door as possible.

We complain about the corruption of politicians. But we continue to elect the warriors who frighten us that foreigners want to harm us or that the economy will tank if the other party is elected.

We complain that it's almost impossible to find real meaning in life. But we attach ourselves to religions or political parties whose primary purpose for existing is to give power to a few people who get well paid to feed us dogma that wouldn't make sense to a ten year old child.

We complain that there is so little that is worthwhile on television. But statistics show that televisions are on in most homes for several hours each day, presumably spewing useless pap to people desperate to feel that they know what's going on.

Light a candle. See what you're missing. Get a real life. Help your kids grow into healthy, well balanced adults. Spend the emotional energy you now spend on complaining on investing in effective measures that will correct the problems.

Go to the TIA web site and join the people who want to make a difference.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know so that they can avoid leading sheep-like lives as consumer lackeys as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Making Life Worth Living

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

"If I were any better, I'd have to be twins." I suspect my friend who says that regularly may not have "graduated" from grade school. He has never had the luxury of unassigned cash to do with as he liked because he has raised two families of children, much of it on his own as his wives left him. To him, buying a good cup of coffee from a coffee shop is a luxury because he doesn't have to make his own.

Yet that is the reply he usually gives when someone asks him "How's it goin'?"
He won't burden you with his troubles because he knows you have your own. As he can't likely help you with your problems and most people don't care enough to help him with his, he doesn't talk about them.

He talks to God. God, he claims, has been good to him. Though he prays daily--often for others, including me and my wife-- when he is in a particularly big fix he knows he can't handle, he prays extra hard for help. Without fail, something happens and each situation gets resolved. Always.

Now mostly retired (his income is secure), he volunteers at a drop-in centre for teens in the village where he lives. As odd and assorted kids stop by his apartment unexpectedly and consider his home their second and him more of a father than their own, "The Hub" centre is a good fit. He may even take over as its director since he lives closest of the volunteers and the teens (the youngest is 11, but was already on his way to becoming a gangster) act mature and trustworthy when he's around.

His reward is seeing kids turn their lives around. He feels good about it.

Another friend calls several times each week to tell me his problems. He always has more than his share of problems because he repairs computers, usually for big companies whose employees abuse their equipment and fail to protect them with antivirus and antispyware programs regularly. Getting warranty claims resolved positively is almost impossible, people always want their computers back yesterday and some don't want to pay him for months (if ever).

I listen. When he calls to rant, I listen. Sometimes I put my work on hold for an hour or more, but I listen. By the time we hang up, his previously big problems seem nothing more than speed bumps on the highway of life.

Life for this second friend is rocky, filled with ups and downs. The downs don't last long because he feels pretty good when we get off the phone. When it's too early to call me, he exercises, roughly the way an Olympic athlete would exercise, to that level of intensity. Though he will count 65 birthdays as of this year, his brain kicks out the dopamine to make him feel good when he works to his physical limit.

He goes for physical therapy on his hand a couple of times each week and other visits for his bad knee, which has a nasty habit of locking, throwing him headlong onto something that is usually hard. He went through a wooden step in the first place that resulted in his knee being banged up, causing him more pain in a day (he can't sleep longer than four hours) than most people suffer in a year, or ten. Sometimes the locked knee causes him to be thrown down stairs, which is how he wrecked his hand.

But life's pretty good for him.

These two men use their minds to make their lives good, worth living. Wayne Dyer doesn't know them, but if he did he would use them as examples in his speeches and seminars.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children to approach life positively so that they can lead physically and psychologically healthy adult lives. And to be good mothers and fathers themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

You Can Do It

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.
- Helen Keller (1880-1968)

The irony of a blind woman advising people to look the world straight in the face delighted me. Helen Keller certainly did.

Blind and deaf from the age of 19 months, she went from being a fully sensitive baby to a young child that could feel, smell and taste, but had no other method to gather information about her world during her most critical formative years. She became as much as most of us could imagine a wild child to be. In effect, she was an uncaged animal who hurt herself as well as anyone who tried to help her.

Yet she became a college graduate, lecturer and writer who was especially well known for her inspirational work and her championing of the cause of deaf and blind people. While she could neither hear nor see? Yes, without any ability to see or hear through the senses we normally associate with these functions.

A home-school teacher, Anne Sullivan (1866-1936), brought Helen out of the abyss that was her life, taught her how to learn from others and to communicate with them. Anne became Helen's companion for life. Sadly, Anne died before Keller reached the height of her fame and consequently she received far more attention and praise for her miraculous work after her death than before. Anne taught Helen, Helen taught the world.

Helen Keller told us all to hold our heads high. That doesn't mean that we should ignore our weaknesses or the dark events that happen around us. It means that we should look beyond them to see the objectives we want to achieve.

Many of us get bogged down with the problems of our days. Relatively small problems take huge shapes and unsettle us far more than they should. In fact, most of those problems will have been forgotten a few years after they seemed so unmanageable to us. Helen says that we should treat them with the respect they deserve: attention, but not emotion. Work through the problems and get past them to push on with the rest of our lives.

How does a deaf and blind woman go through college, become an inspiring speaker and a well known writer? Were people impressed simply because she could speak and write although she was blind and deaf? And a woman at that, having grown up in a time when women couldn't even vote?

Helen Keller didn't usually dwell on her problems or her accomplishments in public. She just kept telling people that their problems would pass and that they could make more of themselves if they believed they could. That, more than anything else, was the reason she became famous.
She inspired everyone to do better. She persisted with that message and the world listened.
They liked what they heard so much that they came to look past her physical impediments. She wasn't just as good as any normal person, she was better than any normal person because she not only improved herself but she inspired so many others to grow themselves into better people.

That was enough. Go and do likewise.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to become competent and confident adults who don't succumb to their problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

One Good Reason For Hope For The Future

I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now only that place where the books are kept.
- John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

Let me say at the outset that what follows is a huge question which has been given too little consideration and to which I have no clear answers or solutions. Just some ideas.

Throughout history the greatest commitment that humankind has had was to its respective lands. Untold numbers of men fought and died, entire cultures were wiped out, families rent asunder and some put into slavery by acting to take or retake possession of their land. Almost a century after much Palestinian land was taken away from the Palestinians (who sided with Germany and lost the Second World War), the remaining Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza continue to fight to regain the land that was once the property of their ancestors.

Every country except one in the Americas fought to gain independence, thus full possession, of their land from the former European colonial powers.

Land represented who a people were. Empires were built by taking over land through coersion or conquest from their previous overseers.

In the 21st century, imperial powers hold economic strength and do not focus on ownership or occupation of land. It turned out that the wisdom of the ages, that control over land was the ultimate power, was wrong because imperial powers went broke defending their territories from others who wanted to build their own empires or to take their land back.

Today we have young people in the families of western and Asian nations obtaining university educations and taking positions all over their native countries and in nations of rising production and trading activity in other parts of the world. Families today communicate less by hugging when they meet than by exchanging email. Using VOIP technology, mothers and daughters can chat by phone from around the world as if they lived next door to each other.

When land was the tie that held families together, their values and principles tended to be much alike. Now that families are not tied together by the tradition of owning the same land as their forefathers, how have values and principles changed as young people have been exposed to many other sets of values and principles of people from many other cultures?

For one, people take a greater interest in what is happening in other aprts of the world. While 9/11 produced wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, peacekeeping efforts have taken place in several other places where genocide had already happened or was about to happen. Now it matters more than it used to if people somewhere else are slaughtering each other. It matters if some country wants to make war on another because they all have ties with the United Nations.

It matters if a trading partner does well economically because a rich country doesn't want to just buy products from a poorer country and have nothing sold back to that country, thus generating a balance of payments problem (more money going out of the country than coming in).

Health care has become an important issue, such as with the potential of AIDS to spread from its hot bases in Africa and India through genetic mutations of its causal virus. The world watches as people die somewhere from bird flu because a mutated bird flu virus (H5N1) could devastate the world worse than the 18 million who died in 1918 from the Spanish flu. Now it matters to everyone if personal health habits of people of a distant land act to promote the spread of disease to more health conscious countries.

Obseity, an enormous problem in the US and UK, is also a problem in most countries of the world, though to a lesser extent. Now everyone wants and needs answers to the causes and cures or solutions for obesity. Even poor countries have too many fat people and no one knows why for sure.

Has our tie to the land of our ancestors becoming less important resulted in our sharing and caring more about the people of other parts of the world? Or has it given impetus to rich countries to control even more foreign people through economic ties making their business leaders greedier than ever before in history?

I prefer to believe the former. But we must be aware that the greedy among the people of every country will always want to have power over others. So our caring and sharing must include measures of assistance beyond trade and health care. It must include education and basic services such as clean water at least.

As the world recognizes fewer ties to specific pieces of real estate, its people see each other more as fellow members of a global village. DNA research has shown that there are no races among us. Climate change shows us that personal and industrial activity in even distant parts of the world can affect us in our homes.

Now everyone matters. It will take world history a while to catch up with that change. Transition periods traditionally are periods of great upset. We can see the upset around us. What we may not be able to see as easily is where we are headed as a species.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com