How you can make yourself safe

"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without."
- Joseph Wood Krutch

To people in the western world who are used to having whatever they want, this quote sounds very unpleasant.

Doing without doesn't necessarily mean having money but no way to spend it or not being able to obtain the comforts of life. It can also mean what you give because someone else needs what you have much more than you do.

Should you care about the illiterate, the crippled, the chronically ill, the desperately poor, those who live in regions where genocide is taking place or those who are starving? If you don't fit into one of these categories and no one you love does, there is a great temptation to avoid caring.

The good citizens of Germany in the 1930s didn't care, so along came Hitler to exterminate as many of these "misfits" as he could. Along with them, he cleared out those who disagreed with his political philosophies or his manner of governing. He assumed that his people, those who voted for him, didn't care if these "genetically weak" people simply disappeared because they said nothing and they did nothing to help them.

Giving is not just a way to help those who are less fortunate or a way to make yourself feel better about doing good. It's also a way of ensuring your own safety.

Tomorrow you could be one of these unfortunates. Very few of them expected to ever find themselves in such a situation, so don't think it couldn't happen to you.

By your actions, you set the standard for others. If and when you need help from others, it will be available to you if you have done your small but meaningful part in the past.

Do it now. Others will follow.

Doing nothing is safe, for now. Dangerous over the long term.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to put your future in perspective today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Buried in information we can't use: how to get out

The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.
- Marya Mannes, writer (1904-1990)

This quote seems to place a measure of blame on forms of mass communication for the decrease in the amount of real communication among us. This is akin to blaming the sun for the weather being too hot.

Mass communication media bring large amounts of information to us, which should allow us to do something with it. However, we don't do any more with the large volume of information available to us now than we did when the volume was small in the past.

We don't know how to deal with it. We haven't been taught to cope with a large amount of information input.

Our education systems were designed in the 19th century, when kids needed to stop playing and learn a few of the basics that would get them through life. Any curiosity they had was blunted so that this basic information could be conveyed and skills taught.

Now we have far more information and children remain in school longer. In fact, education has become a lifelong endeavour. But we haven't overcome the truncation of childhood curiosity in the early years of school or preschool.

Without curiosity, people have little desire to learn vast amounts of new information. It's available, but so what?

They also don't have the skils to deal with it in a useful way. What should they do, write an essay on what they have learned? Run next door to inform their neighbour? Use time on free access television to redisseminate what they have learned?

They don't know what ot do with what they have. Consequently, most people avoid soaking up the new information. They don't have to dust and clean clutter in their heads, but they would have to sort it and organize it regularly. For what?

21st century education systems need to rethink their whole purpose and methods of teaching. Without this, a few people become knowledge rich while the vast majority become anxiety prone, shaking their fists at the world for putting them in such an untenable situation.

The feeling is like starving while in a hopper filled with grain, but the hopper is loading the grain onto a belt where it will be taken to be ground up.

How should school systems choose a limited amount of information to teach children and young adults when new information (some of it contrary to what was valid just yesterday) arrives faster than the old information can be taught?

We don't need more information to be dished out at us at an increasing rate. We need skills to be able to cope with that and other problems that arise in our lives faster than we can manage.

We don't need more information from schools. That comes in more digestible forms from other sources now. We need to be taught how to cope with lifestyles that are routine around the world today but have never before existed in history.

While our students learn about trigonometry, English literature and the Great Rift in Southern Africa, they can't cope with the changes in their personal lives. So they take drugs and alcohol, drive fast, dress in shocking ways, swear at their teachers, beat each other up and sell the film of it on eBay.

While we watch it all happening, shaking our heads with Tsk! Tsk!, we do nothing. And it all gets worse.

Now you know something can be done. Don't shake your head and Tsk! Read Turning It Around and tell others about it so we can make the necessary changes collectively.

The world is waiting to see what you will do. Because you know the answers, you have the solutions. You have the book they know nothing about.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show the path through progressively darker days.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Do you mind if I lie to you?

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
- George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

Who cares? you may ask.

Language is the means by which human endeavour functions. Almost everything we do in a day is related somehow to language that has been communicated by someone else.

When the communicator of a message is insincere, meaning he or she is not telling the whole truth or is intentionally lying, the receiver not only might do something which is harmful to himself or others, or may be useless, but it may cause him to lose trust in the word of others.

Losing trust is about the worst thing that can happen to a person because that person, in turn, cannot be trusted by others and does not want to be emotionally close enough to trust others.

Ill intent on the part of the listener is equally deceptive. When a listener intentionally twists the meaning of a message he has received, any amount of damage to the conveyor of the message or to others as a result of the message is possible.

Look what resulted from the skewed messages that Hitler received about Jews prior to 1938. And how he changed even those messages to suit his cause of world domination and purification of the aryan "race."

When we do not teach the importance of truth to children and ourselves maintain the standards we teach, we find ourselves in a world where no one can trust anyone.

We can teach truth as a value and have it make a major impact, at least in the primary grades of elementary schools. This should be sufficient to make truth much more important to the adults of the future than it is today.

However, we must also teach that many people do not tell the truth, that they try to deceive us. Otherwise children get the impression (rightly so) that we are teaching them a hypocrisy not what I do. We must teach that many people deceive others as well as the importance of telling the truth ourselves in order for children not to become confused, resulting in the kind of teenage angst we see today in western countries.

Children understand so long as we teach them the whole story. And so long as the teachers do not themselves deceive the kids.

Things can change. It must begin somewhere. It can begin with you and me.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to make truth a guiding principle of humanity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Of Laziness and Progress

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

Note that Heinlein says "progress" not "new products on the market." "Progress" is a word with many interpretations.

Nonetheless, more progress is made in technology during periods of strong competition, including war. And more progress is made by lonely souls who work by themselves than by people in groups.

I have never met a lazy man. I have met several who have said they were lazy, therefore tried to find easier and faster ways of doing things. But they were industrious persons.

I have also met people who have given up on life, who essentially have considered themselves doomed to live out a negative kind of fate that has been laid out for them and from which they felt they can't escape.

"Lazy" was created as a derogatory term for someone whose problems they can't face and we don't intend to help with.

A person who uses the term "lazy" to describe someone is selfish and self-centred, an egotist who wants the world continually turning their way.

Not one among us knows what goes on in the mind of any other of us. We don't know the restrictions under which they live or the burdens they carry. Maybe they should not hold to these restrictions or carry the burdens. But they do.

Describing that person as lazy does nothing to help. It only hurts.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to clarify how little we know about each other, thus how incapable we are to judge them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Communities are responsible for their own problems

We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The author of this quote has the right idea--make children responsible for the choices they make in their lives. That includes being responsible for (accepting liability for and consequences of) their mistakes.

However, it seems to absolve adults of any responsibility for doing anything beyond teaching children that there are consequences for their actions.

This is wrong thinking! And it's potentially damaging to children.

First teach children that they have choices and that each choice has its consequences. Teach them about their choices and the various kinds of consequences. Teach them the severity of the consequences.

Teach them how to cope with severe consequences if they must face them. Give them the skills to survive and thrive after making terrible mistakes in their lives (or after a disaster over which they had no control strikes).

Then make them responsible for the consequences that follow from their choices.

Now where does the biggest responsibility lie? It lies with the parents who must do their job thoroughly and completely before they shift the blame for mistakes onto their children.

Before that, the responsibility lie with the community to teach new parents what they need to know about parenting. Today communities are teaching nothing of significance to new parents.

Until communities take responsibility for teaching those who will raise the young who will be their future, no one should be pointing fingers at children and telling them to take responsibility for their behaviour.

The blind should not lead the blind, especially when they both have the ability to learn to see.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to clarify the responsibilities of parents and the responsibility of the community to teach parents what they need to know to raise their children well.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Small choices affect your daily life

It is our choices ... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
- J.K. Rowling

Most of us don't realize how even small decisions we make each day affect our lives. These can be positive or negative influences.

An ill-considered comment made to a mate, friend or colleague could be like poison in drinking water, thereafter affecting the trust that person has in us.

A choice to visit a library or shop for clothes might affect what inputs our brain, thus making a permanent change in the way we think about life and our future.

People with below average IQs have achieved postgraduate degrees from universities. People with physical disabilities have learned to perform feats of physical prowess that would shame the average person (witness the Paralympics).

Understanding our abilities can mean knowing our weaknesses, which could result in our avoiding anything that would display these weaknesses to others.

However, knowing our weaknesses can mean identifying those parts of our lives that we can improve, usually at very little cost other than time and effort.

You can even choose whether this will be a good day or a bad day. The day will unfold, magically, the way you choose.

Choose wisely.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help everyone make wise choices.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Emotional development: critical to your life

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
- Grace Murray Hopper

A ship in port is safe from fast acting harm. But not from slow damage, such as from rust, corrosion, sun damage or drying up or clogging with dust of lubricants that help machinery to operate.

So it is with human bodies. Those who seek to protect themselves from harm (of the fast acting type) from others remain safe, but eventually build walls around their lives so that their world is little more than a few rooms, a workplace and a conduit between the two.

Life is a risky business. It was designed that way so that survivors would become more skilled, more sensititive to their surroundings, more aware of other life and how to interact with it.

Those who close themselves off from risk shut themselves off from life. They destroy their own lives just as surely as if they smoked three packs of cigarettes each day.

The secret to risk is not in avoiding it or in facing it, but in learning how to cope with it while still having a life that is independent from the risk.

Learning how to cope with risk and hardship is part of our emotional development. We need coaching with that, just as we need coaching with our intellectual development (which we get in schools), our physical development (which we get with sports and various other activities) and our social development (which is underedeveloped for many people because it is not guided from any source).

Emotional development is one of the major streams of development of life. If we do not develop strength in this part of our lives, we will have problems coping with problems and tragedies that confront us.

As with the other streams of development, emotional development must begin in childhood. If it doesn't begin there for a child, that person will have problems throughout his or her life.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to have coaching for emotional development taught to parents and by teachers. Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

The morally compromised US middle class

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in
the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the
elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life--the sick, the needy and
the handicapped.
- Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978)

Humphrey was a pharmacist before entering politics, thus developed a sensitivity toward those whose lives were most compromised by their health or the political environment in which they lived.

He failed in his bid to become president because the largest component of voters, the secure and healthy middle class, did not share his sympathies for those on the margins.

Only a few decades later, the percentages of US citizens in each of these "marginal" categories has increased dramatically.

A now smaller (by percentage) middle class, that went along with its leaders in ignoring the marginal minorities, now rigidly follows the baton of their industrialist leaders whose primary interest is and always has been their own wealth and power.

The weak, the helpless, the powerless are left to fend for themselves. Should they happen to be victims of Hurricane Katrina, for example, they could have died while waiting for rescue. The vote-powerful middle class of the US has totally forgiven its administration for leaving poor and helpless people to die or starve for several days before providing emergency services that could have been available when the storm hit.

The strong and healthy middle class forgives itself easily for ignoring those on the margins. After all, those who drop from the strong and healthy middle class to the weaker margins disappear beyond their horizon, thus giving the remaining middle class voters the impression that they are still "in charge."

Their leaders in the US Administration repeatedly tell the strong and healthy middle class that they are still the largest component of voters and that they are still in charge.

The middle class believes.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to shine a light in the daarkness.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Political leaders turn potential friends into enemies

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border.
- Pablo Casals, cellist, conductor, and composer (1876-1973)

Why indeed?

We have an instinct to avoid, reject or shun what is different, what we don't know or don't understand.

In our distant past, our ancestors knew everyone in their tribe and they knew some neighbouring tribe members with whom they traded. Anyone else was a stranger, thus likely to be an enemy, someone who might kill them.

Today's enmity toward strangers goes beyond that instinct, however. In western societies people get frustrated, anxious, worried and fed up with the lifestyle they must endure in order to "fit in" with others in their community. Some can't handle the stress and want to relieve it by taking out their anger on strangers.

That anger can sometimes be relieved through sports. For others politics or the military offer them ways to make others "pay for their sins" of being strangers.

Coming back to today's quote, we would all like to love our neighbours, no matter where they live. But we can't love someone we don't know.

The "others," it seems, don't want to know us. They don't try. Some of the strangers want to kill us, if our media and our political leaders can be believed.

But do we try to get to know them?

Who should make the first move toward friendship, toward getting to know each other? Toward loving each other?

You can be certain that it won't be our political or military leaders. They would have too much to lose if today's strangers became our friends. They depend on conflict to get them reelected. They depend on someone always being wrong.

They depend on making friends into enemies sometimes in order to get our vote.

If we need a program to tell us who the good guys are and who are the bad guys, we have let someone else do our thinking for us.

Count on it, if we allow someone else to think for us, they will never make strangers into friends. They always, without fail, want to make strangers into enemies.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show everyone that the world is full of potential friends.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

History repeats itself based on fear

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
- Mark Twain

The old saying is that those who do not know history are destined to repeat it. Others say this is incorrect, that history never repeates itself exactly.

Twain takes the middle ground. History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but it follows similar patterns ("it rhymes").

Mostly those patterns involve war, aggression, oppression and some form of totalitarian regime. That is, those who know their history can see signs that one of these is coming.

A telltale sign of an oncoming totalitarian regime is the spread of fear amongst a people. Note the level of fear that has been promoted by the White House among American citizens. The level of terror alert is broadcast daily.

Terror, mind you, despite the fact that there has only been one attack against people on American soil since Pearl Harbor, in 1941. The current US administration wants Americans to be afraid.

People who are afraid will agree to limit their freedoms without a fuss, in the name of protecting themselves. The freedom that the US administration constantly tells its people that it fights for, it takes away from them silently.

There is no need for fear. Fearful people do not think rationally. They are easily manipulated by leaders who have agendas that are not in line with the values and best interests of their people. That's why they use fear, because they can't seize power any other way.

It worked for Hitler. You do the arithmetic.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to shine the light on deception.
Learn more at htto://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Help us fix the world or shut up!

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity."
- Harlan Ellison, U.S. writer (1934- )

Ellison has an acerbic wit that he uses to see the worst in the world around him.

He has a great following of people who praise him for "telling it like it is."

The trouble is, people who find fault with the world around them but do nothing to improve it are nothing less than destructive to those who listen to them.

If Ellison were to read 'Turning It Around' thereby learning the one and only way in which the world can be made a better, healthier and safer place in which to live, would he do what he could to help it improve? Or would he say it's hopeless?

What would you do? What will you do?

Encourage others to read the book.

Encourage others to join the TIA group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turningitaround

Not so hard, is it? But it's the only way anything will ever improve. That's a guarantee.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to push hope along the path to a better world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Learning what love is

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love."
- Sophocles (c. 496BC - 406BC )

Very easy to say, isn't it? We likely all read that kind of thing at least once in a while.

But what does it mean? How can love free us of all the weight and pain in life? How is that possible?

Those who must ask this question have not experienced real love. I regret having to say that. As someone who has experienced that kind of love only in recent years, I can testify that the statement is true.

Can I, then, tell you how to find that kind of love? Probably not. But I can tell you three ingredients of it: trust, commitment and touching.

And the greatest of these (if that is possible) is touching. We all have a basic human need for touch. If that need is not met to our (usually unrecognized) satisfaction, then our lives will be unsettled, even fearful.

If you fear, then you do not have a sufficient level of trust, commitment and touching from another person.

To get that from another person, you must first be prepared to give it to someone else, even if you don't receive it yourself at first. That may mean heartache. But eventually it means love.

If you have love, you know it. If you don't, you really don't know what love is.

But you can try. Begin with an understanding of that basic need for touch. Give it freely, honestly and tenderly. Not as a prelude to sex, but as a goal in itself.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to point the direction toward love.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Can you recognize when someone is troubled?

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not."
- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

As a kindergarten-age child, I lived in a two-family household with another boy my age as a companion in mischief. His younger sister, when seeing what we were up to sometimes, would claim "When I was a boy, I never did things like that." To our retort that she had never been a boy, she replied with great determination that she had indeed been a boy.

A few years earlier, living as an only child with my parents (with never another child to play with), I was known to keep an imaginary cow behind our diningroom door. I played with that cow every day, to the consternation of my father who thought his young son was likely demented.

Does this mean that the word of a child can't be trusted because imagination is as real to a child as reality? In a court of law this may be the case.

However, in most life situations, a child may be using an imaginary situation to convey what he or she is unable to convey by other means. In other words, the message has a meaning, but the meaning may not be the same as the words would suggest.

Adults don't do that, do they? Most stage plays and some TV programs do exactly that. They have a message that is couched within a story line--at the end you may forget the story but remember the hidden message without knowing it.

Anger is another way in which we express our anxiety over something, though our anger is seldom on the topic of our anxiety. Or we might simply be tired. We flare up at something insignificant, but we don't convey the message behind our anger, which is that we are very tired or considerably worried about something.

When the behaviour of someone is uncharacteristic of that person, look for the meaning behind the message. The meaning may hint that something as severe as suicide or nervous breakdown could be in that person's future unlesss he or she gets some relief. A troubled person always gives signs, but we need to pay attention to be able to recognize them.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help us identify unusually stressful times in the lives of those we love.
Learn more at htto://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Beware of those who use force to win an argument

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."
- Michel de Montaigne

Those whose arguments are weak need aggressive behaviour to make people believe that they're right, since they can't support their opinions with solid facts.

Those with the strongest arguments may depend on reason rather than a show of force. Yet they may not win the day in convincing others because they won't use the dog and pony show.

People who have discovered the secrets to happiness and wellness never beat down your door or campaign in houses of parliament because aggressiveness is in opposition to what they believe.

Be careful of those who make the biggest show to win the hearts and minds of others. When they are successful, they transform back into what they really are and often to the exact opposite of what they preached during their campaigns.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to reveal the sources of wisdom as well as the fountains of deceit.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Rich people can't be happy, they don't know how

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
- Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

Do you know any rich people who are happy?

Think of it this way: Is there one rich person whose life you would like to take over for your own? If there is, you likely don't know much about the life of that person.

Oh, you might like to have the disposable income these people have. But the troubles, the pressures, the enormous responsibilities, the loss of free time, the loss of freedom to do what you want when you want, broken marriages, wasted families...no.

It's not what you have, but what you do with what you have that matters. If you want to consider yourself poor and disadvantaged, go to it. You will set yourself up for a poor and disadvantaged life.

A survey was done a couple of years ago to determine which group of people were the happiest in the world. Go ahead, take your ten best guesses.

The people of Nigeria, Africa, were happiest in the world, in general. You don't need to know very much about Nigeria to realize that its a troubled country, poor (though it has oil), sometimes violent, religious disturbances. Yet its people are happiest in the world, as they evaluate themselves.

Are you happy? Are you even certain what happiness is? You have a right to find happiness, but if you don't know what it is you will not likely ever find it.

Rich people convince themselves that wealth and happiness are the same thing. They aren't, but wealth is what they substitute for happiness. They have no idea what happiness is. But they are quite prepared to tell everyone else that wealth is happiness. They use those who believe them as their support system. Money is their god.

Poverty and adversity are not pleasant ways to live. But poor people can get enough and be happy. Troubled people can find their way out of their problems, eventually.

Rich people, by their nature/attitude, a way of life they chose for themselves, can never have enough of anything. Wanting is what drives them on.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to put life in perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Robots will never be as stupid as people

I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.
- Alice Walker, writer (1944- )

I disagree with the author of this quote. Most television does not belittle the intelligence of people.

Rather, people who watch such programs have already sacrificed their intelligence before they turn on the television.

Instead, television appeals to the level of intelligence to which its audience has already sunk. Television knows its market.

Every baby is born a genius. After that some figure out how to use their genius while most lose theirs over the course of a grindingly mundane life. How low they sink in intelligence depends upon how much they fight against their loss of intelligence.

One of the best ways to observe how much of their intelligence people have given away is to watch people shopping in a grocery market. Try it. You won't believe what you see.

Robotics makers would never produce a human-like robot to simulate how these people behave. No one would buy it because people would claim it was a waste of money to invest in something so stupid, so inefficient, so wasteful and so self-destructive.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to prevent the shocking loss of intelligence from children by stimulating their curiosity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Basic human needs we don't teach about

In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages
can sicken and grow touch-starved.
- Diane Ackerman, writer (1948- )

If 'Turning It Around' is the most important development in history for correcting social problems we have in our families, our communities and our countries that affect the lives of everyone, then spreading the world about the basic need for touch is of similar importance to individuals.

We all know we have a basic need to eat. However, we don't teach enough about this basic human need, and not properly, so we have many people who get diseases, who become disabled, who become mentally weak because they don't get the right kinds of nutrition into their bodies.

We all know we have a basic need for rest. But we don't teach about this basic need enough so we have people working 60 and 80 hour weeks, sleeping only a few hours each night so they can be "successful." Yet what they end up being is worn out social misfits, if indeed they live long enough to appreciate what they missed in life.

We don't seem to know anything (or at least enough) about our need for touch. An abundance of literature exists from academic studies to show that people who receive the amount of touch they need are healthier, happier and better adjusted to their surroundings.

Couples who touch each other frequently every day remain in love. Frail and elderly people who have pets (or grandchildren) as daily companions live longer, stay happier and heathier. People recovering from any illness, any tragedy, any downturn in their lives fare better when they have a "support system" that provides them with the touch they need.

People who have enough of the right kind of touch in their lives don't want to conquer the world. They want to help bring peace to it.

TIA will teach that too. Please help us by spreading the word about this group and encouraging people to join. If they can, get them to read the book too.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turningitaround/

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to bring peace to each life and to the world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Teaching forgettable stuff, not teaching what we need

Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women like to be a man's last romance.
- Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

The irony of this quote coming from a man known publicly to be gay has not escaped me. Perhaps his sexual preference allowed him to be more aware of the idiosyncracies of others not like him.

The nature of the message may be a symptom of hypocrisy in our culture, the double standard. We want a mate with knowledge of love and sexual prowess, just not someone who has experienced it with anyone else.

If people cannot learn these things by experience, where can they learn them? The simple truth is that we don't teach these things. Most adults remain ignorant of these important facts of life.

So here's the problem. We suffer as individuals and as communities and societies, but still we refuse to teach what all young people should know before they involve themselves with marriage or another form of partnership.

The big hurdle is not teaching the facts, but getting over our reluctance to do so.

There is nothing shameful about sex, nothing that should be kept secret about how to involve ourselves in successful relationships.

The sooner we get over that, the better. We need to speak up, as individuals and as groups, to tell those responsible for education in our communities and our countries what we need teachers to teach.

We have teachers teaching algebra, geography of distant lands and history of wars that are forgotten shortly after an exam, but we don't teach what people need to know for the whole of their adult lives.

Speak up, my friends. That's what TIA is all about.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help teacher teach what people need, not what some stiff necked old fogies in their ivory towers want children to learn.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Newspaper and TV are trying to twist your mind

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
- Edwin Schlossberg

Yeah, so?

Most writers write not just with a point of view in mind, but with the objective (however well disguised) of convincing their readers to accept their opinions without question.

That's propaganda. We read, watch and absorb propaganda every day without thinking about it.

And that's the point. We don't think about what we read or "learn" on TV.

When a newspaper article or a TV program has you wondering or considering possibilities or debating whether the facts provided truly expressed all those available, that article or program has been successful and its producers were skilled.

If you have nothing to think about, nothing to mull over in your mind after experiencing an article or program, the effort was designed to prevent you from thinking by giving you only one point of view.

Even if that one point of view is best in your opinion after considering all the facts surrounding a topic, you won't know for sure unless you have all the facts to consider.

After you read an article or watch a TV program, ask yourself if you have anything to debate in your own mind. If you don't, then the producers were trying to bend your mind to their way of thinking.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to make you think. Thinking makes you live longer.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Freedom of speech may not be necessary

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, founder of existentialism (1813-1855)

This quote is loaded with meaning and implication.

If you ask most people why they believe that freedom of speech should be a right, their answer is to stumble through a bit of confusion that amounts to "because others told me it should be a right."

In many parts of the world freedom of speech is not a right. People in those cultures proceed through their lives much as those in countries that grant the right. In other words, few people miss freedom of speech unless they are told that they don't have it and they should have it.

As Kierkegaard said, if you don't take the trouble to think, you have no need for freedom of speech because you have nothing of value for others to listen to.

But, you cry, I think! OK, when? Thinking requires time and enough of a settled environment around you that you can ignore everything else to think about what you want.

Thinking requires you to sit and "do nothing." But, you reply, I don't have time to sit and do nothing.

Point made. That's why Kierkegaard says that you would not miss freedom of speech if you lost it.

Any thinking that is done in the midst of other things that are happening is merely regurgitation of what someone else has already thought before you.

If you simply repeat what someone else has thought before you, then you don't need freedom of speech. The person before you does.

Think about it. Yup, that's what I said.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to give people a reason to need freedom of speech.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

The "secret" to world peace revealed

"Some studies show that successful entrepreneurs often have the same characteristics as children with attention deficit disorders. They are curious, impatient, fast moving, and uninterested in the trivia or details of a school subject or, later in life, of the details of a business."
- Brian Tracy

This quote doesn't apply just to children with attention deficit disorder (or to successful entrepreneurs), but to all children. They aren't interested in trivia or details that don't mean something to them.

And what means something to them? No matter how apparently unimportant a fact is, if they can somehow apply it to their own lives, it will be important to children.

Children's don't distinguish between important and unimportant details taught in school the way adults do. They want to know what will help them to be good adults. They want to know about what it means to be an adult.

In decades past, history was taught as a succession of wars, treaties and leadups to wars. Heroes were war leaders. So children grew up thinking that war was a way of life in adulthood. Political leaders accommodated them with either fighting wars or fearing things that happened between wars. Wars happened at the rate of one per generation (no mere coincidence).

History now is taught as what people do between wars, what people do when they are not killing others or fearing being killed by others. In countries that teach this form of history, war is becoming anachronistic. War is primitive, outdated, a base form of settling differences.

To children who grow up being taught what life is like as a competent and confident adult, including how to make and keep friends, how to work toward a life goal, what skills and work habits are expected by employers (and teachers in later grades), how to have a happy and successful marriage and how to raise healthy children, life is much better than it was for people in the past.

These things are not taught in all schools or in all countries. Where they are not taught, life is primitive and violent. Look around you to see where they are not taught.

Turning It Around has a way to ensure that these facts and skills, plus the attitudes needed to maintain them, are taught in all parts of the world. However, it won't happen unless those who know the "secrets" of TIA spread the word.

That's where you come in.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to build better lives for all people on Earth.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

How can we make the world more peaceful?

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How marvellous! A quote about housecleaning.

No, it's a metaphor, my friends. Think about a scene where almost everyone has kept the front of their home clean, tidy and orderly. Then there are the few who have not.

What would you think of those who had not kept up the community standards of cleanliness in your community? You and your neighbours would help those few to understand their responsibility to their neighbourhood, I think.

Believe it or not, clearing away social problems such as drugs, violence, high divorce rates, homelessness, emotional breakdowns, bankruptcies and even teenagers with attitude problems is easier than cleaning in front of your own door.

How is this possible? you might ask. Why has someone not thought of this before? Simply, no one else looked in the right places for the answers. The solutions are not hard, but you can't find them by letting others look in the wrong places.

If everyone in a community except you kept their house fronts filthy and unkempt and you were the only one who had the clean property, would you say that change for the better (toward cleanliness) was impossible? Maybe you would. But it's not impossible.

Any kind of social change that is effective happens in the same way, only one way and only one possible way. It must be taught to children. Young children. Kids who grow up believing that house fronts should be kept clean will keep their own clean and will encourage others to do the same.

Kids who know what is necessary for a successful marriage will remain married because they know what to do before their marriage falls apart. Kids who know the skills of parenting (what children really need, not just clothes and food) will be good parents and will grow competent and confident adult offspring.

The world can be a place of peace, your community can be clean and safe, your family and you can lead happy and fulfilling lives.

Teach the children what they need to know, before they need it. Teach them right. Teach them good. Teach them peace.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to change the world one house front at a time.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Wishing is for the lazy

We will receive not what we idly wish for but what we justly earn.
- Anonymous

So far as effectiveness in getting things done, wishing and worry are in the same category. Neither accomplishes anything positive.

Wishing is what people do when they don't plan to do anything to accomplish what they wish for.

"I wish things were different." Well, guess what? They won't be a bit different, they won't ever change until you do something about them.

Wishing is a form of self-deception we do willingly. We hope that, somehow, conditions will change themselves so that we can have what we want while doing nothing to earn it.

Nothing improves by itself, including making the world a better place to live in and individual lives worth living. 'Turning It Around' could do both, but not without your help.

Wishing and offers of good luck to those who work to achieve a better world are no help at all. We need you to spread the word.

For the first time in human history, people have the ability to make this a safer, cleaner, healthier and more loving world. This is the first time this has ever been possible.

The bad guys are hard at work destroying it. Silence by the good people helps them because they have no opposition.

We need you to do a small bit to help us make it better. Spread the word about 'Turning It Around' and encourage others to join this group.

Direct them to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turningitaround

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to encourage you to help us improve our world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Success: getting through today

"Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone
can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly,
patiently, lovingly, purely, until the sun goes down. And this is
all that life really means."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Each day is a lifetime. No one can prove that yesterday ever existed. Maybe it was only a created memory.

No one knows for certain whether there is a tomorrow or if there is what it might bring.

No matter what your problems of today, they will only last until the day ends. Tomorrow will not only be a new day, but it might provide a new perspective on your problems.

Your objective today is to get to tonight. Do it in the safest and best way you can. If you get there, your day has been a success. Yes, a success.

You don't need to worry about tomorrow's problems. And today's problems will only last for another few hours.

The world will be a little different by tomorrow. Tomorrow you may have wiggle room with your problems that didn't seem possible today. The next day, that wiggle room may be large enough for you to see your way out.

Tonight is coming. Have patience.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to get you through today because tomorrow will be better.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Believe what you are taught and you will never be happy

"To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have."
- Ken Keyes Jr., author of Handbook to Higher Consciousness

Those who get upset about what they don't have (unless they don't have the essentials of life) have been brainwashed by the industrial establishment.

Industry wants us to want more, and more, continually more than we have. That's what keeps them making profits that please their shareholders. It does not, however, make us happy. Ever. Ever.

It wants us to work harder to earn more money so that we can buy bigger, better, more expensive things we don't need to be happy. Following the way they teach us, we can never be happy.

It's simple. It's how industry works. It thrives on profits and gullible people.

Follow what industry tells you and you will always be a seeker, but you will never find happiness. Unless it's in addiction. Some people actually believe that they are happy with their addiction. Good luck to them.

I'm not. I hope you aren't either.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to shine the light of greed in everyone's face.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Do children need teachers or educators?

A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron.
- Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

The objective of a teacher is to teach the prescribed curriculum to his assigned students.

The objective of an educator is to help his students to learn what they need to know to manage what comes in their lives, how to cope with its downturns and how to take advantage of opportunities it offers.

For an educator, the curriculum is a means to help his students, whereas the curriculum is an end in itself to a teacher.

An educator grows competent and confident young adults. A teacher grows children who can pass tests assigned by boards and ministries of education.

Learn the distinction.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help education systems understand what children need instead of what professional ivory tower dwellers want to convey.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Know your dark places but don't live there

That man is truly good who knows his own dark places.
- Beowulf

Those who judge others either are unaware of their own dark places or they disown them.

The objective of life is not to dwell in our dark places, nor to remain constantly bright and cheery. It's to form a balance where we are aware of the potential for both, while not allowing the negative to take us over.

When we know our own dark places, we can look at the misbehaviours of others differently. We can forgive more easily.

Should we ignore the misbehaviour of others, such as allowing most criminals to walk free without accounting for their crimes? Of course not. But we can work to ensure that they do not remain as social rejects while in prison so that they may have the confidence and personal fortitude to be able to fit into society when they are released.

However, would it not be better to give these people the tools and skills they need to survive in the world before they go off track? No one is born wanting to be a criminal, they become that because they can't cope with the rigours of their lives.

We can teach children and adolescents the knowledge and skills that will help them to stay within the bounds of social acceptability as adults. And we would prevent many psychological disorders and welfare cases at the same time.

Imagine the tax savings alone. Half our current taxes are spent repairing broken people. We could save that by teaching what people need before they need it.

That's what Turning It Around is all about. Join us and learn more.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to keep people from breaking when Crazy Glue won't work.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

One lone idea

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have.
- Emile Chartier, philosopher (1868-1951)

This sounds more like a joke than a piece of good advice.

In order for an idea to bear fruit, it must have some background of its thinker to compare it with. To Karl Marx, communism seemed like the ideal form of government because he had nothing like it to compare his idea to.

Communism failed not because it was defective in its pure form, but because of human weaknesses and frailties.

In the case of this quote, Chartier means that a person with an idea (such as an idea learned from someone else) needs to compare that idea with others so that he doesn't take off with it and wreak havoc.

Racial purity is another idea that seems wise on the surface until you think that multitudes were killed in Europe during the Second World War and multitudes more have been killed in Bosnia, Rwanda and other places since in order to achieve racial purity. Genetically, we are all of one race.

We cannot afford to let one idea stand alone without taking other factors into consideration. History has proven how dangerous it can be if people just go along with one idea and don't question or challenge it.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to bring second and third thoughts to everyone.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

How can you recognize beauty?

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!
- Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

The concept of beauty is as mysterious and elusive as that of love. Smith saw beauty in the rising of the morning sun. Others see it in flowers, in the sight of their children at play or in the eyes of their loved one.

Beauty is also as difficult to pin down as taste. Both are learned, for the most part. Yes, we learn what is beautiful by listening to others. Smith was trying to teach others that dawn is beautiful, for example. (Taste is also learned, as we may see by differences in food and beverage preferences among various peoples of the world.)

The important thing might not be to see dawn, but to see some form of beauty and to give ourselves the opportunity to appreciate it frequently.

Beauty is one of the treasures of life. And it's free. It's something not to be missed by anyone. And it's available to everyone.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help each of us recognize beauty in our lives, no matter where we live or under what conditions.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

You probably will be like one of your parents

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked
it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
- John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

People today travel much farther in their lives than they did in Muir's day. But do they travel farther in their spiritual or emotional lives than their forebears?

Most of us discover as we get older that we become more and more like one of our parents, or like a grandparent or whoever influenced us greatly in our early years. Some of us find this surprising.

We shouldn't. We're programmed to replicate closely a person who influenced us during our early years, even if we conflicted with that person frequently.

Breaking away from that programming can be done, but only with strict self discipline and commitment to being different. If our early childhood experience was bad, we can learn what we lacked and give it to our own children so that they (and we) will have better lives.

One important point is that we must teach to those who follow us what we have learned. Otherwise those who follow will have to learn the hard way, the same way we did.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help us break the cycle of reinventing the wheel with each succeeding generation.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Is animal slavery better than death?

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?"
- k.d. lang, singer (1961- )

Lang, with one of the most charming voices in music today, is clearly an animal rights activist. And a vegetarian.

By equating "pets" with animals whose meat is consumed as food, she uses a form of propaganda whose purpose is to swing the unaware to her point of view. Not entirely bad, in principle, as that is what all advertising does.

Her argument is emotional, but not logical. She wants us to believe that "pets" equals good and "dinner" (killing animals for food) equals bad.

Her reasoning makes no room for others to point out that pets we call animals are more like prisoners or slaves than friends who are kept in their most natural state and environment.

Animals that have been bred for food have been hybridized to the point that they are little more than mannequins that manufacture food. Intelligence has been bred out of them. They could not possibly fend for themselves in the wild as their ancient forebears did.

Perhaps a more reasonable (though disconcerting) question to ask would be: Is it better to be a slave owner or a mannequin killer?

Humans are built, by nature, to have the ability to chew and digest meat, though we cannot digest most forms of plants that traditional working animals eat. Should we need animal pets for company?

Study of why city dwellers keep pets would reveal that in pets they receive what they cannot receive from their fellow humans. Mostly attention and touching.

We should be teaching each other how to satisfy our basic needs rather than debating difference between animal slavery and death.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to put life in perspective for those who have been blinded by social convention.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

We are taught to be puppets

Language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies
of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher (1772-1834)

Language is both a defensive and an offensive weapon in the possession of someone who knows how to use it.

It can get someone into something they desire to be a part of and out of something they wish to avoid.

Language can ease the pain of being dismissed from a job, help to manage the transition from married to "formerly married", or it can crush the spirit of someone who fails to provide quite the level of service an insensitive customer requires. Language is a doubled-edged sword.

And yet, we do not teach the use of language as a tool for accomplishing things. We teach young people how to write quickly forgotten college papers, how to kill an enemy in war, how to succeed in business by putting career ahead of family and how to reduce whatever disposable income one may have by buying objects or personal items that are entirely unnecessary.

In other words, we teach people how to be manipulated as objects, but not how to think for themselves, defend themselves with words and achieve what they desire through peaceful means.

This won't change unless TIA supporters do something about it.

If you are happy with the world as you see it today, then you have no reason to want it to change. If you can see room for imporvement, then take the only route that is possible to make change. Help us to turn it around.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show you that change is possible, but only through one way.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Desire for stagnation means being old too soon

"Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth."
- Joseph Joubert

Loving themselves is an interesting variation on having an excess of pride in themselves.

Not changing your opinion means that you are not open to changing circumstances, including uncovering of new knowledge or changing of environmental conditions.

It means "being old" no matter what your age.

Ironically, politicians and the media love to sink their teeth into political leaders or elected representatives who change their positions on issues. They act as if nothing ever should change or that a politician should always make the right choice of position on an issue despite the evidence that might point in a different direction before new facts come to light.

Change is a fact of life. Resisting change is a sign of decay.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to bring to light the need for acceptance of change rather than of stagnation.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Politics matters to you

"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important."
- Eugene McCarthy

Despite what our media would have us believe, the lives of ordinary citizens of the United States, China, Morocco or Finland are affected very little by the day to day operations of their governments, no matter who is in charge.

A government can only nudge its people a tiny bit on one direction or another. Rarely can it make a major difference in anyone's life unless that person does something to make him outstanding as a risk. People will not behave differently from the way they want to behave for long, despite what laws may be passed or which leader is in charge.

The people of each country get the kind of government leadership they deserve. The interest they pay in the welfare of their country determines how well their govenrment is run.

When people care more about their own welfare than that of their country or their countrymen on a continual basis, corruption and abuses abound in their government.

Each of us must care for ourselves and our loved ones. But if we don't also care for those who are in our political group (our fellow nationals), we pay a high price.

People care for what they are taught to care for. If they should care about the welfare of their country and their countrymen, this must be taught to children before they reach adolescence. After that their life priorities have been set.

We get what we teach.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help everyone recognize that teaching values to children is critically important.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

The world of koi

In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed
in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You
are limited by how you see the world.
- Vince Poscente, Olympian (1961- )

Koi, for want of a better description, is like a large goldfish. The size to which it grows depends entirely on food supply and the amount of space it has to swim freely in.

When we see the world, our city, our community, our neighbourhood as a fearsome place, we make our world smaller. People who live in progressively smaller worlds inevitably become bigots because they fear the unknown and not-understood "others."

Those who love others see the world as being a much bigger and much friendlier place.

Those who love have hope, while those who fear sink into despair.

Those who love see the future as a better world, whereas those who fear face the future with mounting dread.

Your world is what you make of it. Not what I or anyone else tells you it is, but what you believe it is. The choice about what your world is like depends entirely on you.

If you can't look past the bad, you will never see the good. The bad always seems closer.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to broaden the horizons of each person within its care.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Reforming our lives

"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."
- Raymond Lindquist

We tend to fear the unknown while embracing what is familiar. This is true even when we know that what is familiar may be wrong or even harmful.

We stay with a religion whose belief set we have bypassed with our own thinking. We remain in the same job because changing might expose us to something risky, or expose our weaknesses to others.

We continue to live in the same neighbourhood because it's the one we know, even if our neighbours are unpleasant people we would prefer not to associate with.

We live with the same mate because separating means new and frightening life possibilities.

Others leave their mates believing that anything different would be better. That may require more intellectual blindness than courage. For a relationship is one factor in our lives that can be reformed.

Reforming a failed relationship, that takes courage. It requires us to let go of the familiar in order to learn new things about the needs of a relationship, the needs of our mate, our own needs that we may not have recognized. A failed relationship cannot be reformed without new learning.

Any kind of new learning requires courage. To accept new information into our lives and process it in order to use it as knowledge that can transform our lives requires courage because we might have to accept that we have been doing some things wrong. Things that have resulted in the failure of the relationship.

Accepting that we have been wrong requires courage as well. However, we can't build our lives without it.

I imagine it like completing each layer of a pyramid. There is comfort in completing a large part of a complex job. Yet it takes courage to launch into another layer.

A pyramid cannot be complete without its pinnacle and we can't reach our own life pinnacle unless we keep doing things that require courage.

Neither a pyramid nor a life may be built in a day. Each requires many small acts of courage. And once in a while it requires a major act of courage.

Courage requires us to let go of the past and do something frightening and new.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show courage by example.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Self-deception: when money is more important than friends

"To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage."
- Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer (1709-1784)

Life is not about continually striving to make more money. Those who believe that money is critical to their happiness are never happy. They use money as a substitute for happiness because they don't know how to find happiness. They have lost their way to happiness.

Life is not about convenience. A happy person doesn't do just what is convenient, because much of what is worthwhile in life, stuff that makes us happy, is not convenient.

Maintaining friendships is often not convenient. "Friends will wait while I am busy with other things" is an attitude that gives evidence that the speaker has lost the value of friendship.

Losing the value of friendship may indicate the loss of the path to happiness. Once lost, we may never find our way back. In our confusion, we substitute other things for happiness, then persuade ourselves that what we now believe is important is really important.

Friends are really important. Maintaining friendships is hard work. It's inconvenient sometimes.

Friends need something from us and often have little to give back. If we aren't prepared to give more than we get, they won't be there for us when we need more than we can give.

Get over it. Get on with it, if life means anything to you.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to teach what is really important in life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Can you turn strangers into friends?

"God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference."
- Anonymous parody of prayer by St. Francis of Assisi

Despite the parody, let's examine the "prayer" for truth. It's not a sacrilege.

We don't need to like everyone. We don't need everyone to like us. Those who try to make everyone like them fail, inevitably.

We need to tolerate and be passably friendly with everyone. However, some people will not respond in kind, no matter how hard we try. So forget them. Pretend they don't exist. Why sweat for people who don't deserve it?

We don't have the good fortune to run into people we do like often enough. We need to stop and take advantage of those times we do. And we need to go out of our way to visit with them when we can. These are people who we would miss if they died, so we shouldn't miss spending time with them when they are alive.

Maybe we don't really need eyesight to tell the difference. Maybe we need the social skills to turn strangers into friends. Such skills are seldom taught, yet they are very important to every one of us. Some never learn them.

Be friendly with people you encounter. Smile and say something nice. When the opportunity arises, do small favours for them. When they realize that you are sincere, they will come around and be friendly.

Remember, some people feel so betrayed by others that they no longer believe that true friendship is possible.

Prove them wrong. It's worth the investment.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to re-establish and teach the skills for making strangers into friends.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

You can't buy what is really important in life

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
- Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Frankl doesn't mean to spend all of your money on things that please you. He means to enjoy your life in ways that give it meaning.

As a Holocaust survivor, Frankl would have a different perspective on life than many of us today. He knew that money meant nothing to those whose lives were swept away by the Nazis.

Friends would have been valuable, but business associates would have meant little unless their support could be bought (not likely if their own lives were at stake).

Family would have been extremely important, as would family friends.

An old song says "The best things in life are free." To some, the best things in life can be bought. To others, anything that can be bought is a mere convenience, something to get us along as we move to more important things.

Those who continuously seek money and what it can buy will never be truly happy because they value objects that merely bolster their defences against a world they don't understand and can't work successfully in. Objects are their fortress against the treasures of real life, goals they know they can never reach.

What is valuable in life cannot be bought with money. It can only be earned with an investment of time and love.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to show us what is important in life, not important to industries that want our money.
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Does God love killers?

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from
the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
- Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary]

The greatest failures of any religion are the hubris by which each believes it is the only true way to eternal life at God's side and the intolerance of those of other faiths who hold similar beliefs about theirs.

Did God put us on Earth to squabble over whose religion is best?

Virtually every major religion in the world today has an equivalent of "Thou shalt not kill" as one of its commandments. While each pays lip service to this dictate from its God, not one of them adheres to it strictly.

Given the right conditions, each uses abuses by those of other religions or the inhuman ignorance of atheists or pagans as excuses for violating their own most sacred commandment.

If God is a creator, why would He want killers by his side?

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to make clear what the purpose of religion is in a world that has lost track.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

You may be a slave without knowing it

"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
- Marcus Brigstocke

The irony of this statement is intended to smack you in the head. If it doesn't then you haven't been paying attention to life around you.

Anything--absolutely anything at all--that impacts your brain from an outside source repeatedly will affect your thinking, perhaps even altering your lifestyle or your view of the value of life itself. The key word there is "repeatedly." Very little will change your life if you hear or read it just once.

This is not the place to string out examples as evidence, but there is an abundance of it to prove that repeated impact of any message on your brain from outside will change your way of thinking.

Let's use (again) the example of Germans supporting the killing of Jews, cripples and the chronically ill during the Nazi period--something that would be unnatural in more normal circumstances--to show that propaganda alters thinking. Propaganda chief Goebbels knew what he was doing and he effectively made acts of horror the norm in Hitler's Germany.

Whether it be video games, television programs, movies, newspaper editorials disguised as news, opinions from radio DJs or lectures from a pulpit, your mind and your way of thinking and living your life may be altered if you are not prepared to cope with an onslaught of opinion that may not jive with the way you have chosen to live your life.

Children need to be taught this or their minds will be twisted without their parents being aware of it. They need to be taught that others want to make them emotional slaves to their political, religious or commercial benefit.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help parents and communities grow emotionally and psychologically healthy children.
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Bigots are bullies who use words, not fists

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
- H. G. Wells

Political correctness is prejudice in a tuxedo.

Those who judge others have some motivation for doing so. Mostly, their motive is to prove to themselves that they are better than those they criticize. For underneath their arrogant presentation is a severe weakness, a belief that they are not worthy.

They gain a following because they repeat their accusations frequently, not because they are correct. Others may be more interested in the easy route of following someone who will lead them rather than investigating whether the leader is worth following.

Truth is never at risk when such people are at work because they never get close enough to the truth for it to matter.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to give bigots enough self confidence that they will not need to denigrate others to make themselves feel better.
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Religions are committing suicide

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
- Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

The proper response to such a strong opinion is that truth is nothing more than someone's opinion dressed in formal robes.

However, Clark's point is that when a religion retreats into a position of denial as it is faced with newly revealed facts, it damages its own reputation, likely beyond repair.

When we think of the word "dogma" we associate it with firmly held, maybe irrefutable, religious teaching. Most religions, other than modern humanist varieties, were founded in ancient times, based on many sources, over a long period of time and given the limitations of the respective authors of their holy books.

For a religion to claim that its holy books are the words of God, despite modern revelations that some of the facts within them are inaccurate or just plain personal opinion, makes at least some people doubt the value of the religion.

Faith is a marvellous and powerful thing. But when a religion claims that its followers must have faith in "the word of God" when evidence points to something different, it's time for the religion to change or for a reformed religion to arise.

We humans are still dreadfully ignorant about the world around us, even about ourselves. When we claim to be knowledgeable because our opinions come directly from God, we poison the drinking water, spoiling the way in which every one of us understands life.

Religion must accommodate provable facts or it is nothing better than the wishful thinking of those who would hold power over us.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to have religion prove it has a place in our lives by embracing truth.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Who controls, mind or heart?

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.
- Mohandas K. (“The Mahatma”) Gandhi (1869-1948)

In general, "culture" means how some people do something or many things they do in common.

What's right in the mind may not be best if matters of the heart are considered.

Any movement of what has become known as ethnic cleansing (including that of Hitler who killed those with disease, physical handicaps and mental illness or low intelligence) may be rationalized in the mind as being good for the people of one particular cultural group.

Yet most people of other cultures believe ethnic cleansing is wrong.

It wasn't wrong in Hitler's Germany. But one day after the end of the Second World War, not a single Nazi could be found in Germany.

Both minds and hearts may be manipulated by others. That's why we must be vigilant to ensure that both are considered when any important decisions are made. Manipulators can seldom control both.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social problems,' striving to put the mind in touch with the heart.
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Make your employer rich, yourself poor

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
- J.D. Salinger, writer (1919- )

It's unfortunate that more people will never experience the sensation that Salinger had.

In Canada, a modern post-industrial nation of fairly well educated people, only six percent of its citizens read more than three books per year. This percentage is even high compared to citizens of other G8 nations.

Each adult must make a choice about whether to devote himself to improving himself or to improving the lot of his employer. Most people in industrial and post-industrial nations choose to work toward improving the lot of their employer, but give lip service to improving the welfare of their families. Some work longer hours, some watch more television, but they don't read to improve themselves.

The welfare of a family is not improved significantly by the breadwinner making more more money if it means that the working person spends less time building a sound and healthy family life.

People in Western societies work hard to make their employers successful because they are taught that financial and business successes are the prime components for life success. They don't know any other ways to improve their own lives because they aren't taught any. They don't read to find any themselves.

TIA believes that each person should know how to improve their own life and how to make the lives of their family members better, with the family being more cohesive and mutually supportive. To that end, the book provides guides for teachers and parents as to how to accomplish this.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to give each person the tools to improve their own life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

What do you do with your experience?

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
- Aldous Huxley

Everyone has a right to make mistakes. Everyone has a right to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

However, society tends to take a dim view of the wisdom of someone who makes the same mistake more than once or twice.

In many cases, the wisdom of a person who makes a mistake can reasonably be questioned when they were warned against doing something beforehand or when they had the opportunity to learn what they needed to know before following a particular course of action.

Behind their backs, others think of these people as being either stupid or arrogant (only rich people can afford the luxury of being called arrogant, the rest of us are simply stupid).

It's not necessary to grope through life doing everything based on trial and error. We can learn what we need before we act. But if we do act and make a mistake in doing so, we should learn from our mistake and avoid it in future.

Wiser folks among us will try to teach younger people what they have learned. Those who do not, show that they really have not learned a most important lesson of life.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people turn their experience into wisdom worth sharing.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Use someone else's anger to your own advantage

"Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry."
- Henry Ward Beecher

What someone says to you when they are angry is an honest expression of deeply felt emotions. These are always bad. That is, they are negative.

To never forget such matters means that they may be used as ways to improve yourself, not that they should be taken as unshakable daggers to your heart.

When angry, someone who cares about you will tell you things they truly believe you should change in order for people to like you better and accept you more. Use them as guides.

Do not transform these ploughshares into weapons to use against someone who has spoken from the heart.

These people usually care about you more than any others, even if it seems they do not. Even an enemy cares about you much more than most casual acquaintances.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to bring rainbows out of a cloudy day.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

A little nudge will get you there

"As a young man I was pretty dark and pessimistic, but I made myself change, as it became more and more clear to me that in life you get exactly what you expect, so you might as well expect something good."
- Eolake Stobblehouse

Stobblehouse, a Danish artist, did not use a strong enough word with "expect." The idea was correct.

An expectation is a concept of the present, one that may easily be changed to suit changing conditions.

What needs to be positive is our attitude. And we need to have a clear idea of what direction we want to go in our lives.

Attitude is a long term concept, one to which each of us is committed, whether we like it or not. We need to know where we want to go, to have goals and objectives, or we will never reach situations we want. Attitude gives us commitment, while goals give us direction.

On any given day, we can't do much to change our life. However, a collection of hundreds of small nudges in the direction we want to go will move us along faster and more effectively than all the wishes in the world. Each day gives us an opportunity to nudge ourselves along a little.

Others may not notice the subtle changes in us, in our lives, because they happen slowly. So they will accept change with little resistence, unless it is in their bests interests to keep you oppressed. In the latter case, we need a major change.

The important factor is a positive attitude. Life is frightening and depressing if we allow everything around us to impact us without any positive movement toward change on our part.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to give each person the incentive to nudge forward toward positive goals each day.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Is life nothing but a dream? Maybe

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
- Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)

Time is a human invention. The truth is that we don't know if time really exists.

In fact, we don't know if anything really exists. Each of us might be energy bundles that create their own "world" from time to time for their own amusement.

While this sounds crazy, there is good reason to believe it given the evidence. So many things about life don't make sense, do they? Could there be such immaculate creation around us, then such a vast amount of nonsense in our daily lives?

We search for meaning in life, yet it remains a mystery. Maybe the meaning of our existence is nothing more than for the amusement of our spirits (souls or essential energy). We all know people who live in such ways as to harm themselves and limit their potential. That doesn't make sense.

We also know of the massive human slaughter that happens needlessly each year (each day!) and wonder how it could happen when every culture in the world has social rules against killing each other.

Perhaps your life today is nothing more than a dream created to amuse your spirit for a short period of time. Maybe history (yours and everyone's) is nothing more than a component of that dream. Possibly people don't worry much about the future because they know that the next day they can create a different dream.

Nature conserves energy and mass (which is really only a singular conglomeration of energy "particles"--see Einstein). When we die, we rejoin the energy cycle, either as another form of mass (the Food Chain) or as pure energy again.

When we see what tragedy exists around the world yet make no effort to improve conditions, that may be because we don't care about that part of our dream.

Don't believe me? Then help me to improve the tragedy around the world.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to reveal the secrets of life so we can make sense of it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

The secret talents within each of us

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
- Horace, Roman lyric poet said to have influenced English poetry (65-8 BC)

An important lesson in life is to ignore most of the sayings about "the greatest" of anything. They never are, but they manage to get attention for the speaker/writer at the time.

Fools are right sometimes. Not because they are fools or because the odds favour everyone being right at least some of the time.

Fools (in the case of Horace who live two millennia ago) , what we might call people of lower intelligence today, also have intelligence. In many cases, a person considered to have low intelligence may be as good as anyone in his community (maybe better) at some things. These are not savants, but simple folk.

The human brain is complex. While it may not work well for some people to function at the level of a majority of people in many aspects of life, it may be superior in some respects.

We would do well to find what is superior in the minds and bodies of each person we know and encourage them to make good use of these talents. The Special Olympics is one example of what apparently unequal people can accomplish.

Every one of us can excel at something. We have trouble finding that for ourselves, but not so much finding it in others. If we help each other, we all get better.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to stress the talents and skills of those less privileged.
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Too close to the edge

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
- Lois McMaster Bujold

While I like the idea of this quote, I disagree with its wording.

Reputation is what people *believe* about you. That may or may not bear close resemblance to the truth. What they think they know about you may be wrong.

What they believe is influenced by many factors, including selective experiences others have had with you, lies they may tell about you, snippets of information about you on which grand generalizations have been created and even false impressions you have purposely left with them.

Honour is itself a false concept based mostly on whatever amount of pride you take in some of your characteristics or in what others think of you. What is honour to one person may be nothing more than false pride to another.

Integrity is what tells who you really are. You may believe what you want about yourself, but your integrity will tell how close the life you live is to the core beliefs on which you were raised.

When you know you are doing something that is wrong (no matter what your excuses for doing so), you separate yourself from the values you were taught as a child, the values that most people in your own culture and community hold dear.

Eventually, that separatation will show itself as alienation, where most of your community rejects who you are because of what you do or say.

You may run from the basic beliefs of what is good and right among your people, but you can't hide from yourself. Eventually, you won't be able to hide from others either.

Short term indescretions often extend into long term grief.

Teach that to your children so they don't follow the tragic paths they see others taking.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to shine a light on what is good and right so that we don't stumble around in the darkness.
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Internet junkies

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a
complete substitute for life.
- Andrew Brown

Most of us will read that and think how pitiful the lives of some people must be that they spend all of their free time on the internet instead of having a real life elsewhere.

However, who are we to determine how anyone else should spend their life? We have neither the right nor the privilege to do so.

Many of the people who judge others have lives that the others would consider wasteful or very restrictive. Should those who have made questionable life choices judge others?

Most people who judge others have themselves made poor life choices and want to make themselves feel better by putting someone else down.

An internet junkie has made a life choice that might be more fulfilling for himself than the lifestyle he previously had.

It may not be perfect, but neither are the choices we have made.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people put life in perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Education should teach us limits and detours

"To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Though I have never met anyone who was pleased with their personal limits, I have met many who simply accepted them. Many more who had no idea what their limits were.

People gladly and enthusiastically fight for freedom when a charismatic leader urges them in that direction. Yet most people don't even sense that they are losing their freedoms (gaining tighter limits) if the change happens slowly enough and sufficient rationale is given to satisfy the noisy ones.

The only way we can know if we are losing our freedoms is for these to be taught to us as children. We should also be taught what freedoms others have, or lack thereof, so we have some means of comparison.

When it comes to our own personal limitations, most people don't know what theirs are. They assume they don't have any and proceed as if the road to glory is paved with gold, only littered slightly by others who have the annoying habit of getting in our way.

We must give opportunities to children to learn what their limitations are so they will have the chance to overcome them. A person whose legs don't work knows what lies ahead in terms of getting around without the use of legs.

A person who has trouble reading because of a characteristic within their own brain should have the same advantage. Otherwise we label such a person as "slow," thus condemning that person forever to treating a road block as a prison, without pointing to a detour around it.

We each have limitations within our own brain. Our education systems, our religions and our family orientations are not designed to identify these limitations. This explains why we seem to have so many stupid people among us.

Stupid people have accepted their limitations, and generally ignore them.

Education systems could easily be changed to accommodate this new objective of identifying personal limitations are helping to work around them.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to eliminate stupid people by teaching them about detours before they imprison themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

No point in being reasonable

"I tried being reasonable. I didn't like it."
- Clint Eastwood, US actor and politician

The trouble with being reasonable is either that no one recognizes your effort or others see you as gullible or an easy mark.

"Reasonable" is no longer just "doing or thinking things that fall within the socially acceptable norms of the community."

Now what is reasonable is judged not by social norms but by the standards of the individual who uses them. Have ten people judge the same behaviour or the same object or written work and you will receive ten different replies and explanations as to whether or not it is reasonable.

There is no longer any point in being reasonable, as some people simply will not accept it anyway. They will not be reasonable themselves, or even with themselves, so they will not be reasonable with you.

The best you can hope to do is to sound out people whose views may differ from yours first, then tailor your words or actions to suit what they will not likely object to.

Unless your intention is to be different. Those who plan to be different are either admired or hated, usually both. Sometimes both by the same people.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people survive an unreasonable world in reasonable ways.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Treason or searching for truth?

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
- John Morley, statesman and writer (1838-1923

The key word in this quote is "duty." That implies that someone is telling someone else (usually a whole community or country) what to do or how to do something.

As with the military, those giving the orders do not want their orders or their motives to be examined by those who are directed to follow them.

Thus it becomes a crime to examine motives or details about orders of the leaders. Call it treason or lack of patriotism to one's country.

Or call it "unAmerican."

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people find the facts behind the power.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

Sheep to the slaughter

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
- John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

Opinion should be the resulting effect of the cause of considerable thought and research.

The research does not need to be done just in a library or even on the internet. It must come from a variety of sources, preferably sources that differ in their viewpoints on a given subject.

This part is simple. Those who do not endure the discomfort of thought and research on a given subject are not entitled to an opinion about what should be done about it.

Those who do not have an opinion on a subject are merely sheep who must follow the wills and whims of others who care enough about it to do the necessary research and thinking.

You are entitled to be a sheep, to be led where others want you to go. You are also entitled to learn enough to express an opinion and to be heard.

You are not entitled to receive the benefits of informed thought and its resulting actions if you are not prepared to do the work to play a role in your own future.

Man! that's ugly. Sometimes reality sucks.

Get over it. Life is hard work. There is no easy road, except to the slaughter.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to clarify the ugly realities of life so that we may all make our way through them rather than get bogged down within them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl