Lightbearer's Creed

Darkness may gather but I shall not fear, for my purpose is clear. My destiny is to be a beacon of Light in a world of shadows, recognizing that my flame, having grown into a spiritual fire, does not fear turbulent winds, for winds now only fan the flames.

From this day forth, I am dead to my past and alive within my future, always present in the moment, perceiving, loving, serving, protecting, and honoring Life.  I will do everything possible to minimize the harm I cause other Life, deliberate in my efforts to serve the greater good.  It is not my place to judge the nature of other beings, only to understand and respond righteously, with virtue and compassion — never with arrogance or malice.

I am an emissary of Loving-Light: a watchful guardian and guide,
a benevolent peacemaker and healer, a humble arbiter of wisdom and harmony.  I offer myself in loving service to the welfare of all beings, recognizing it as my own.  I enjoin myself to be a lightbearer, striving always to exhibit the qualities of Wisdom, Love, Generosity, Diligence, Fortitude, Integrity, Equanimity, Humility, Self-Restraint, Selfless-Service, Skillfulness, Prudence, and Heroic Courage.

I vow to promote and preserve a just and enlightened community, with grace and honor — remembering that to do so requires I remain mentally, ethically, and physically fit to serve effectively, always prepared and willing to live up to the physical and moral demands of any situation.  I will always be mindful of the needs of my community and strive to fulfill them.

Today my vigil begins and it shall only end with my death.

— Matthew Lee Morgan
[CC-BY-NC-ND License]

Morality, Society, and the Return to Simplicity

Let us consider the problem of societal complexity through the lens of technology for a moment. Technology is indifferent to the ideas of good and evil. A tool of technology does not decide the manner in which it is used; only the wielder of the tool can decide whether it is used for good or evil purposes. However, one of the problems with the idea of "good and evil" is that it requires a subjective moral judgement as to what is "good" and what is "evil." When it comes to any subjective determination, different cultures, subcultures, and individuals will never fully agree on specific issues or criteria. This the place in which complexity arises in social life. Additionally, "the road to hell is (often) paved with good intentions," in which good natured people with genuinely good intentions can still cause serious harm because they simply could not grasp or foresee the consequences of their efforts. For example, as Elon Musk and others have warned their contemporaries working on General Artificial Intelligence (AI), although their intentions are generally well-meaning, the outcomes of their work cannot be comfortably predicted, and one reasonably possible outcome of their work is the extinction of the entire human race through the accidental or intentional whims of AI. Such is why collective intelligence, and the simplicity that supports it, is so critical to the wellbeing of us all.

In certain societies we may do well (or not) at using cultural values and moral principles to inform our decision-making by using the terms "beneficial" and "harmful" instead, while erring on the side of more freedom and less restrictions on individual liberty. However, even this approach requires an active use of the skill of discernment, and people (each having their own conscience) will never entirely agree on specifics. I say "skill of discernment" because it truly requires the skillful use of mindfulness, intuition, and critical thinking not distorted by ego-desires or fleeting emotions. The most viable approach in ensuring a group of people can interact harmoniously and with stability (and use technology wisely), with maximum freedom and least harm to one another possible, is to use the simplest, most general set of values and moral principles possible.

With a simple moral code of ethical conduct (incorporating individual rights and responsibilities) agreed to by all participants, it falls on individuals educated to effectively use the skills of discernment to modulate their own personal behavior to, primarily, minimize harm to other life while, secondarily, maximizing their own happiness. And, when a person causes another harm, intentionally or unintentionally, and the parties are unable to make amends and resolve the issue themselves, it would fall on the entire group's (family's, community's, city's, or state's) "collective intelligence" to determine on a case-by-case basis what the most beneficial way would be to handle the transgression. There is no need for complex legal frameworks and dedicated "experts" to make this work, and, in fact, such things are generally a hindrance to the application of collective wisdom. It is more beneficial to all if the collective group alone, not an individual or small group of people, is entrusted with the authority and power to enforce on individuals the group's decision of how to resolve a matter. Wider circles of social structures (e.g. states, cities) would defer decision-making on specific issues or situations to more local social structures (e.g. communities and families), only stepping in when the more local social unit was unable to collectively resolve the matter on their own. Law and order is best maintained, effective, and agreeable to people when its implementation is genuinely democratic and, as importantly, built from the bottom-up, rather top-down in which centralized authorities assume a corrupt control over all levels of society.

Unfortunately, the "old-world" social systems of most industrialized nations, buried under mountains of legal language not even experts can fully grasp, corruption that manipulates this complexity, over-centralized forms of power structures, and toxic methods of enforcement, have become so burdensome, confusing, and counterproductive at maintaining social cohesion and harmony, these systems have been causing for more harm than benefit for their peoples. What is needed is a fundamental reset and shift in our way of thinking, such that all complexity, corruption, and harmful methods of enforcing double-standards are stripped from the systems used to maintain social order. The People collectively yearn to return to simplicity in all areas of public life, in which common sense, compassionate wisdom, logical reasoning, and evidence have genuine influence on how our collective values and principles are applied to specific issues and situations.

With compassion and evidence guiding us, we could use collective intelligence, at all levels, and the skills of discernment at the level of individual conscience to make much wiser decisions about the use of technology and addressing moral transgressions than our current set of representatives, who are generally corrupt, unqualified, sociopathic, or otherwise manipulated by egocentric forces, are capable of. To make this shift happen peacefully will require us all to have the courage to conquer our fears, transcend our petty or egotistical beliefs, let go of ideologies that no longer serve us, and learn to trust again in simplicity and the essential goodness of one another. A peaceful transition will require carefully building up new socioeconomic models of living from within the old, gradually replacing the old ways without directly opposing them. We must learn to let be, in simplicity, what we wish to see, and let go of all complexity. This is a tall order, I know, but history shows us that it can be done – that it must be done.

On the Existential Threat of Selective Censorship

(A loving reminder and warning I offer out of heartfelt concern and genuine compassion for you all.)

The society we have known thus far is unraveling and failing for many reasons, but let me try to briefly identify one particularly fundamental cause based on the behavior I have noticed people actively engaging in lately: namely, disconnecting from others who challenge us to grow and learn and be invested in one another. People have generally forgotten or were denied the gift of knowing how to truly listen to each other with genuine presence and emotional investment. Many have forgotten how to respect others by giving them their full, open-minded attention and appreciation, denying the dignity and invalidating the existence of the other person. We do this quite commonly while failing to recognize that such treatment is a major source of our own suffering, loneliness, and despair when the tables are turned.

When there is a society-wide culture that promotes a disrespect for and avoidance of different points of view, that society is inevitably doomed, because society is a system and all healthy systems require healthy feedback loops. We all need to be heard and have our concerns acknowledged and our fears validated, or we start to go a little crazy inside because suffering must be transformed for it to not consume and corrupt us. Although transforming our suffering requires personal courage and personal effort, we all need our pain to be acknowledged and validated along the way, and we need others to help guide us through the difficulty. Through truly listening to one another, we can see that all misbehavior stems from ignorance or a place of deep suffering. When we recognize this, we lose our instinct to be fearful and mistrustful of others by default.

The potential destruction of civilized society will, ultimately, be a result of this behavior of willful avoidance generating a huge buildup of anger, resentment, fear, and despair in us all. Why deny others the kind of attention and appreciation you want others to pay you, and that you need in order to be sane and happy? Being truly emotionally invested and involved in the wellbeing of others, as well as in their hopes and doubts, dreams and nightmares, staves off disaster for us all.

– With Love, Respect, & Gratitude for You All

A Paradox: Struggling Against Our Own Humanity

//Remembering What is Worth Remembering//

None of us can get through life without making serious mistakes.  Most of the time we do our best to do what we think is right in an imperfect world, using the scattered pieces of information available to us, trying our hardest to make choices we think will lead to a better future--a future that is always totally unknown and unpredictable.  On top of this less than ideal environment for even knowing and understanding what the right decisions to make are, our countless imperfections, our engrained impulses, our baser instincts, our unintentional short-sightedness, and the constant struggle we have within ourselves, often lead us astray.  Inherently, "to error is human," and, in fact, all life in existence struggles to the make the best of things in a chaotic world and necessarily makes mistakes along the way.  What is more important than the mistakes themselves is that all that can be learned from them, is, and that newfound knowledge is proactively applied to do better in the future.

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore, nor excuse the impact of, those mistakes we make that are excruciatingly painful to others and ourselves, made in our darkest hours, when it seemed there was no light to guide us as our own light had faded in the darkness of the pain and the fear.  Though, were we, and those we've loved but deeply hurt, not victims of our own blind humanity in the times we were truly lost?  Must we judge the character and value of a person's entire life based solely on their worst errors?

Can we accept that we all share, among a great many other things, the common experience of inducing pain and sorrow we never wanted for ourselves or our loved ones?  Can we all agree 'we are not magnificent'--that with all our natural flaws, whether they include in any particular person a mental disorder, disability, or malady, or none at all, we do our best to find a sense of happiness and safety, even if we are looking in all the wrong places?  Is it not true that we all abhor living in fear, being controlled by sadness, bitterness, and regret, and that we quite often do things that seem to make us feel better in the moment but leave us just as empty as before?  Is it not clear the 'human condition' is an inherent paradox, and to be human is to be a walking, talking paradox of mixed emotions and mental conflict, having only a dim perception of the real world whilst possessing dangerously limitless but immature imagination?

We all want to be loved and remembered fondly, despite the very serious, yet very human blunders we've made.  I, for one, believe our best qualities and greatest achievements are the only things of value worth remembering once we are dead and gone...




//"We're Living at the Mercy of the Pain and the Fear Until We Dead It, Forget It, Let It All Disappear"//

"Yeah, yo
This is not the end, this is not the beginning
Just a voice like a riot rocking every revision
But you listen to the tone and the violent rhythm
And though the words sound steady, something empty's within 'em
We say 'Yeah', with fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something that's invisible there
'Cause we're living at the mercy of the pain and the fear
Until we dead it, forget it, let it all disappear (yeah)

Waiting for the end to come, wishing I had strength to stand
This is not what I had planned, it's out of my control
Flying at the speed of light, thoughts were spinning in my head
So many things were left unsaid, it's hard to let you go

I know what it takes to move on, I know how it feels to lie
All I wanna do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

Sitting in an empty room, trying to forget the past
This was never meant to last, I wish it wasn't so

I know what it takes to move on, I know how it feels to lie
All I wanna do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

Yo, yeah
What was left when that fire was gone?
I thought it felt right but that right was wrong
All caught up in the eye of the storm
I'm trying to figure out what it's like moving on
And I don't even know what kind of things I said
My mouth kept moving and my mind went dead
So, picking up the pieces now, where to begin?
The hardest part of ending is starting again!

All I wanna do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

This is not the end, this is not the beginning
Just a voice like a riot rocking every revision
(I'm holding on to what I haven't got)
But you listen to the tone and the violet rhythm
Though the words sound steady, something empty's within 'em

We say 'Yeah', with fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something that's invisible there
(Holding on to what I haven't got)
'Cause we're living at the mercy of the pain and the fear
Until we dead it, forget it, let it all disappear"

Statement on Behalf of Matthew Lee Morgan

November 13, 2015
“An eye-for-an-eye makes the whole world blind…”

To Those Who Judge Without Knowing,
Please allow me to tell you about the true nature of the man who stands before you today — the side of him that only those whom have made an effort to, actually get to know:

Matthew is not some solo maverick who operates with flagrant disregard for the rules.  Nor has he been anything but entirely humble about the diversity of talents he has had at his disposal.  By no means is he glamorous either.  He is not the scion of some high-society family, not the epitome of ‘studly’ masculinity, nor the shining example of flamboyant charisma that immediately and effortlessly wins over people’s ‘hearts and minds’ upon first impression.

No, he is none of these things.  He is merely a (naïvely?) hopeful soul whom has, ultimately, never lost faith in the ideas that people are fundamentally good, when given a real chance to be, and: “Love never fails.” {1st Corinthians 13:8}

As a ten year-old boy, he suddenly gained a bottomless well of compassion — rooted in deep feelings of sorrow — for the plight of his fellow, equally fallible human beings.  At that tender age, he was profoundly struck by the evil and corruption of the world around him, perpetuated by people who were simply lost, broken-hearted, abused, and/or neglected.  The utter tragedy of the ‘human condition’ dawned on him, in all its dystopic ugliness.  Despite all his trials and tribulations, enduring the deepest pains and sufferings of life, he never allowed the wickedness of others, that he was incessantly afflicted by, to harden or corrupt his own heart.  The core of his soul has always been firmly rooted in and nurtured by the good soil of God’s Love.

As such, despite falling victim himself to irrelevant distractions, a broken heart, a permanently broken body, and psychological traumas, which caused him to stumble in darkness for a period of time, he has — in the end — remained an unperturbed idealist resolved to confront, and help others overcome, the canyon-like gulf that exists between an ideal world (driven by a spirit of love, patience, forgiveness, and hope) and the world as it is now (driven primarily by fear, anger, despair, and the petty, self-destructive desire for ‘eye-for-an-eye’ retribution).

His unusually astute awareness of the ever-widening gap between the two ‘worlds’ had cast, until recently, a shadow over his own state of mind, making him chronically depressed, stressed, and overwhelmingly anxious, sometimes to the point of being fatalistic about whether what he had to offer the world could ever make a difference.  Only under the most unfathomably suffocating and unbearable times of near-total hopelessness has he ever cracked under the pressure and done something egregiously bad, in a last-ditch effort (however misguided) to cope with mental torment.

Yet, despite this devastating (if not debilitating) experience — not of his own choosing — by the Grace of God, Matthew stands before you, now, a genuinely ‘new creation.’  Through a complete spiritual rebirth, he has purged all of his formerly paralyzing doubts, fears, and grief; and has achieved a total peace of mind and psychological freedom he had never known before.  This all thanks to — he happily admits frequently — a unification of perspective between sciences, philosophies, and Spirituality (guided by a harmonic synthesis of the most fundamental, uncorrupted aspects of Christian, Native American, Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic, Hindi, and other spiritualities).

Matthew is a heart-warming fulfiller, and shining example, of this quotation: “All us stumblers who believe Love rules, stand up and let It shine.”  In a world full of talkers, Matthew is a thinker and doer.  He doesn’t say much unless you ask him directly, which most folks have learned not to do — to their own detriment.  When he does speak, you wonder if he isn’t some sort of alien who sees the landscape of human ideas and experiences on an entirely whole other level.  The thing is though, he usually makes uncomfortable sense in a world where most people would rather just hear what they are used to hearing, which is often not anything of any real value.

Those who actually know him generally like him well enough, provided he keeps his thoughts mostly to himself.  And when he does talk, it isn’t that they stop liking him — rather, they become less satisfied with themselves.  (Common sense and honesty come so naturally to him, people can’t even see them for the gifts they are.)  When inclined to, he can speak intelligently about most anything, and even though you sense he has strong convictions, he has a gentle and humble way about him that let’s you keep your own.

Nowadays, his favorite topics are all about God, the nature of the universe, music, and why people believe and behave the way they do.  When engaged on these subjects, his eyes light up, he smiles brightly, and suddenly, like a little kid, the tiredness melts away and he becomes ageless and hardly able to contain himself.  Such grace seldom makes proper sense for those looking in from the outside.

The last several years of Matthew’s life have represented a true story of personal courage in the face of the darkest depths of remorse, self-hatred, and despair a human being can possibly bear and survive, having pulled himself out of a death-spiral of utter hopelessness.  Ever since he was given a second chance at living a life that is actually worth living, he has not taken a single blessing for granted, no matter how small.  Nor has he, even once, deliberately hurt himself or others through any choice of his own.

In all the time I have known him, he has been a rather kind and gentle soul.  Yet, since his ascension from his own personal hell, he has become all the more impenetrably loving and pure of heart.  For the first time in his entire life, he is truly at peace with himself and the imperfect world around him.

Before I close, I must mention this: Matthew’s prolonged dive into the dark depths of “lessons hard-learned and wisdom hard-earned” (as he had once put it) cost him very, very deeply and dearly.  He has always profoundly mourned the loss of his daughter, his greatest pride and joy in life, as though she had died in his arms four years ago.  Truly, the only thing he seems — at all — to fear any longer is the possibility of finding out something terrible has happened to her, because he hadn’t been there to protect her as her father.

Given all that I have mentioned up to this point, to say that Matthew takes nothing for granted these days would be a gross understatement.  He has always had an uncontainable passion for learning, and, though he occasionally stumbles (as we all certainly do), he has never failed to learn from his mistakes — he is not doomed to repeat them.

I implore you to recognize that, to turn your back on Matthew now, after all the remarkably good things he has accomplished and become, would be an unforgivable travesty and miscarriage of justice…



Most Sincerely,

//ORIGINAL SIGNED//
“Matthew’s Best Friend”

Reforming a Broken, Societally Self-Destructive Criminal "Justice" System

Hello Difference Makers,

Waking up the oblivious public to the disaster that is our mental health and criminal justice systems, and reforming them, has been near and dear to my heart since I was 10 years old, and even more so since living with severe mental illness for years as an adult and getting caught up in the criminal 'justice' system myself. I have always tried to make a difference in reforming society to actually live up to our values and ideals, with the little influence I have. If every adult citizen in America had the same intimate, insider's look at how screwed up both systems are, from start to finish, they would be massively and fundamentally overhauled immediately. The problem is the vast majority of Americans don't know any better or just don't give a shit, because "it's not their problem." Yet, crime and mental illness affect us all enormously, regardless of where you stand in society.

Award winning Producer, Director & Human Rights Activist Matthew Cooke is calling for your help to build a reform movement by supporting completion of the documentary, "SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON".

This documentary will enlighten the general public as to the actual realities of our hypocritical, self-destructive 'hell-on-Earth' prison system ("glorified dog-kennels" is sadly accurate) and to the reality of our most EGREGIOUS FAILURES as a country in modern times:
-not living up to our responsibility to ensure the most basic of human rights for those we strip of all choice and freedoms (including assuring their safety, wellbeing, and dignity)
-not doing more to help victims of poverty, abuse, and mental illness, to prevent THOSE victims from creating victims of crime
-not upholding the moral high-ground we currently claim to live up to
-not having basic/natural compassion for our fellow, equally-fallible human beings, by not giving the incarcerated REAL support and opportunities to rehabilitate themselves through EFFECTIVE education, therapy, substance abuse, and other social programs (using money we save from reduced populations in our broken system of incarceration), not the half-assed, underfunded, misguided, or otherwise ineffective programs already in place
-in sum, not living up to our social responsibilities as individuals, communities, states, and country.

The documentary is "...a chilling exposé of the criminal justice system in America, told through the eyes of its victims and narrator Matthew Cooke. Executive produced by Adrian Grenier and Susan Sarandon, and featuring Harry Belafonte, Deepak Chopra, Russell Simmons, Michelle Alexander, Tom Morello, and Brandon Boyd.

"SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON exposes the horror of the criminal justice system-- from the time you get arrested, to the time you are tried, to your incarceration, to (if applicable) the MOMENT you are released. We tell you what to do to survive... no guarantees.

"The 3rd act focuses on solutions & how we can survive prison as a country.

"Statistics:
-the Innocence Project estimates there could EASILY be anywhere from 40,000 to over 100,000 people in US prisons who never broke a law at all.
-77% of Americans going into state prisons return within 5 years.
-If you're an American, you're more likely to go to prison than
anywhere else in the world.
-More black men are in prison now than the total enslaved in 1850.
-1/3 of all the women in prison in the world, are in US prisons.
-The U.S. has the largest prison population on the planet ([>25% of the world's incarcerated;] larger than China)
-The US has more prisons than colleges and universities.

"Some people ask me, with all these famous people in the film, why can't THEY just pay for the movie? GREAT QUESTION! They are investing in the movie not JUST financially but with their time — which is also worth a LOT of money.

"Power in numbers speaks much louder than a handful of celebrities in the movement for deep political change. My ideal scenario would be 2 million people donating 5 cents each, because that would mean 2 million people were invested in changing this broken system. And that would make it happen.

"Anything you can afford - a dime, a dollar or more - represents your heart's participation in this movement to reform criminal justice.

"Your support isn't just about this movie. It's about a movement to radically reform the criminal justice system which so desperately needs our help.

"If we collectively inspire each other across political and cultural lines to free ourselves from the school to prison pipeline, get victims of crime the healing they need, give offenders the hope to actually turn their lives around, and rehabilitate we will have truly earned the title 'civilization'.

"If we want to break crime cycles in communities, we need prevention through investing in jobs & education. We need more restorative justice programs, which are proven to be some of the most impactful experiences with a 90% success rate in preventing people creating any more harm.

"But none of this information happens without us banding together, and it can start with this film.


"SOME OF THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT WE ARE AND WILL BE SUPPORTING:
-Prison University Project
-Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
-Amnesty International
-The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice
-American Civil Liberties Union
-Innocence Project
-The Drug Policy Alliance
-The Dream Corps
-Homeboy Industries ["...provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community."]


"There are two ways to help:
1. Contribute - even small contributions raise their popularity and give them more visibility on the site.
2. Post to Facebook - in the end, the more people hear about them, the more likely they are to meet their target."





Thank you!
Matthew Lee Morgan

Feed the Hungry

Brothers and Sisters,

I am writing today to ask you to help me make a difference in the lives of the millions of Americans who have trouble making ends meet. I'm hoping you will help me by donating to my personal fundraising campaign to help fight hunger.

Did you know that one out of every six Americans struggles with hunger? This is a problem people of all ages and backgrounds face across the country. Hardworking people struggle to put food on the table for their families, and the government programs designed to help these individuals cannot close the gap.

I believe that the primary thing standing in the way of ending hunger right now is people's inclination to be apathetic towards issues they'd rather not think about. Even those who think about and talk about such problems as ending childhood hunger rarely take direct action to actually help address the problem.

In the words of the current Dalai Lama, "To meet the challenges of this century, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility." This universal responsibility we all share for our collective welfare requires ACTION on the part of each person, not just talk, and especially not ignoring that a particular problem exists. There is no excuse for 1 in 5 children in America to face hunger on a regular basis. We each have a social and moral obligation to ACT to resolve this unacceptable situation. Supporting this food drive is an action on your part that will have a direct impact on reducing hunger in America, the last place on Earth that should have such a problem in the first place.

That is why I've created a Virtual Food Drive for Feeding America. I'm trying to raise $100 to help Feeding America provide nutritious and much-needed food to families battling hunger. I have already donated $10 to the fundraiser. Every dollar I raise in my Virtual Food Drive will help provide 10 meals to hungry families.


Please donate to my Virtual Food Drive today and, just as importantly, spread the word about it!

http://help.feedingamerica.org/goto/wisefromwithin


Your Hungry Brothers and Sisters Thank You for Your Support,
Matthew L. Morgan
"wisefromwithin"

Homosexual Equality (the Lessons of History & Clarifying the Concepts of "Marriage")

[Originally Posted 9/24/09; edited and expanded 1/10/15]

Despite being 100% heterosexual, I find choosing to support homosexuals having equality of social status, as well as rights and protections provided under the rule of law, in amazingly simple decision to reach given the constitution and lessons provided by history.  I realize large social changes take time, but how can so many of us still be so blind to the lessons of the past?  It wasn't so long ago in the annals of world history that the majority of men struggled vehemently to deny women equal rights to own property and participate in the voting process of democracies.  Not so long ago the majority of whites in this country so passionately fought, either through force or active bigotry, to deny blacks genuinely-equal social status and legal rights.  And now, our society once again finds itself socially polarized, this time on the topic of homosexual equality.  Well, let us be honest with ourselves.  As past generations had their social revolutions, this generation is, too, experiencing a social revolution, and I would argue success in overthrowing the current social status-quo with regards to granting homosexuals equal social status and legal rights is as every bit as inevitable as the successes hard fought for by blacks and women over the last couple hundred years.

I was told a story recently about a black man who was obliviously broadcasting his side of a cellphone conversation about homosexuals to a small crowd sitting nearby him.  Needless to say, his opinion of homosexuals was passionate, egregiously unfavorable, and, quite simply, astoundingly hypocritical.  Past generations of this man's family, as recently as his parents undoubtedly, poured their blood, sweet, and tears into fighting and struggling against that very same prejudicial attitude towards blacks—simply because they were "different" in some relatively benign way compared to the majority.  Nevertheless, there he was, as blind to the absurdity of his irrational attitudes towards homosexuals as whites' attitudes had been towards his ancestors.  It just goes to show that personal self-awareness and rational reasoning can be absent in anyone, even someone whose heritage should have made him realize what a hypocrite he was being that day.

We all must always be on guard against and actively fight against prejudice and hatred, especially within ourselves.  We each harbor a degree of stereotypical thought processes in our daily lives, usually without being consciously aware of its subconscious influence on our thinking and behavior, and occasionally have what would be deemed by our own self to be 'undesirable' emotional responses to certain circumstances we encounter.  To provide a relatively clear-cut example: if you were a middle- or upper-class white, who genuinely believes they do not have a racist "bone in their body" thanks to a non-racist upbringing, walking through your nice, mostly-white family suburban neighborhood at dusk and see a young African-American male heading towards you on the sidewalk wearing a hoodie that hides all but part of his face and sagging, baggy jeans, there is a really good chance you are going to have an instinctually negative emotional reaction upon first recognition of those circumstances, such as a degree of anxiety, even though your conscious belief system reminds you seconds later that you should not judge that person and their potential threat to you based on a stereotype; despite this rational reminder you may continue to feel tense until you pass him without incident.  This example was constructed to maximize the understanding of the general concepts, but countless, less clear-cut real life examples exist in practically everyone's daily life in which the brain is naturally, inherently, constantly interpreting and evaluating the things in its environment at a subconscious level, using probability as its guide in prioritizing how it evaluates what things should receive what percentage of the finite resource of one's attentive awareness at that moment, and judges what the safest instinctual interpretations of the things going on in that person's environment are.  Because of the way the brain automatically processes information about its environment based on probabilities, which are determined by patterns recognized in past life experiences and engrained "background information"/knowledge, stereotypes we know about, whether we consciously object to stereotyping or not, factor into how the brain instinctively reacts to its environment.  To a large extent, instinctual responses are unavoidable at the moment they occur, and can only be overridden through conscious evaluation of a given situation using good reasoning.  Thus, the path towards social prosperity and harmony, which benefits us all in the end, must begin with a thorough, objective self-evaluation of the quality of one's own rational and moral reasoning and knowledge-base which forms one's established worldview, belief systems, and values.

We need to recognize that marriage under the law and marriage 'under God' need not, and should not, be considered one and the same thing in this debate.  I myself was legally married in a court of law to my wife almost five years before we married through the church.  The argument by the majority of religious people, who improperly entwine the concepts of legal marriage with "spiritual" marriage, and, in so doing, believe that allowing such legal marriages some how sullies the 'sanctity of marriage' ("sanctity" being a term that, by definition, can only be associated with religious marriage 'under God'), that legal marriage should be prohibited for homosexuals, despite the fact that our constitution specifies the necessity of recognizing a 'separation of church and state,' is simply untenable.  Measuring how sanctimonious a marriage is has everything to do with how faithful, loving, and selfless the behavior of the two partners towards one another is, and has nothing to do with what is in their underwear—in similar fashion to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s belief that a person should not be judged based on the color of their skin, but "by the content of their character."  There is no doubt in my mind that there are countless homosexual couples whose behavior is far more laudable than many heterosexual couples.  Let us leave the religious side of the debate to the religious establishments and stop letting conservative religious arguments unconstitutionally influence our government from obeying its own constitutionally established protections.  The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."  This constitutional amendment did not happen by accident.  It was one of the most consequential and direct results of the Civil War and the overall social struggle to restore the human dignity of, and establish legal rights and protections for, blacks.  It will take time but it is certain that the 14th Amendment, and the same kind of revolutionary social attitude that gave birth to it that exists today, will earn homosexuals equal social status and protection under the law across this country in the years to come.

[The prediction I made nearly five and half years ago, when I first published this post, concerning the social progress that would occur to provide for equal social status and application of law for homosexuals turned out to be correct, though the good fight against prejudice continues....]

Insights from "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

[Book Section 1 of 2: "Experiences in a Concentration Camp"]

-Book is an answer to: "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?
-Concerned not with the main figures, but of the xp. of the unknown and unrecorded victims.
-Capos: prisoner leaders; fed decently; often more brutal to reg. prisoners than the SS; demoted if "ineffective".
-Stripped of identity; known by number; prisoner numbers, not qualities mattered.
-Moral/ethical debate nonexistent, only the instinct to survive; only the most cutthroat saved themselves at the expense of others.
-"These former prisoners often say, 'We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.'"
-Three phases: initial period of admission (into camp), distinguished by shock; the period when well entrenched in camp routine; the period following release/liberation.
-"Delusion of reprieve": condemned man has the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.
-Consequential decisions (even life-and-death) treated with no regard or seriousness by the decision-makers.
-Stripped of any connection to former life; only had 'naked' existence.
-A grim humor developed (only thing that could now be taken was their life); affords an aloofness and ability to rise above any situation.
-A curiosity over the fate to be befallen; a objective detachment as a means of protection.
-The thought of suicide was widely entertained due in part to the hopelessness of the situation.
-The fear of death subsides after the first few days.
-"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."
-Entering the second phase, a "phase of relative apathy in which he achieved a kind of emotional death," a self-defense mechanism characterized by blunted feelings, unmoved by the suffering around him.
-"It is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all," that "hurts the most."
-Insult is more rousing of indignation than the cruelty or pain itself.
-"Regression" occurred in camp inmates - a retreat to a more primitive form of mental life, characterized by very simple wishes and desires.
-How helpful is it to dwell on imaginings of good food when you've adapted to poor food (applies to other things as well), "for the sake of knowing that the sub-human existence which had made us unable to think of anything other than food, would at last cease"; more harmful than helpful?
-"...my body, is really a corpse already"; great mass of human flesh behind barbed wire, crowded into a few huts, which rots daily because it has become lifeless.
-When in an austere environment, seemingly small decisions about how to deal with circumstances end up having a profound impact on a person's mental state and willpower.
-"The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. ...The salvation of man is through love and in love."
-"I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss.... In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
-"Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance."
-The prisoner finds refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence by escaping into the past, finding solace in nostalgic memories.
-An appreciation of the beauty of art and nature develops far more than ever before.
-Meaning is found in the smallest of significances.
-"...suffering completely fills (disperses through) the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little."
-In such difficult situations "a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys"; "grateful for the smallest of mercies".
-Comparisons of wellbeing and luck were strictly relative to the experience of the person making the comparisons.
-"Freedom from suffering" was the primary source of any relative 'happiness'.
-"Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated... under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value."
-Resigned to fate, combined with a great apathy.
-Guilt at the idea of escaping the situation when all the others would not be able to.
-A continuous fluctuation between hope and despair in the last hours and days of captivity.
-"We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be 'somebody.' Now we were treated like complete nonentities. ...Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded."
-"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-"...there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision... which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate."
-"...in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally... any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity.... ...the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful."
-"...there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. ...not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."
-"It was impossible to foresee whether or when, if at all, this form of existence would end. ...A man who could not see the end of his 'provisional existence' was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future...."
-"This feeling of lifelessness was intensified by other causes: in time, it was the limitlessness of the term of imprisonment which was most acutely felt; in space, the narrow limits of the prison. Anything outside the barbed wire became remote - out of reach and, in a way, unreal."
-"Regarding our 'provisional existence' as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless."
-"One could make a victory of those experiences turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate...."
-"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it."
-"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."
-Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."
-"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life.... Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct."
-"He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden."
-"When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life."
-"Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being."
-"'Freedom' - we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. ...Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours. ...Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true."
-"...no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them."
-"A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely."
-"We were not hoping for happiness.... And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness."
-"...for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare."

A Few Thoughts Concerning the Human Condition

//Society and the Impact of Selflessness vs. Selfishness of Individuals//
Institutionalized human morality, in all areas of social life, is ultimately rooted in and defined by the need to inhibit the aggregated impact of the self-centric intentions and impulses of all the individuals that fall within the societal framework.  Does a person knowingly act to achieve personal gain at the expense of others, or does a person seek to achieve personal growth by making the struggles of others partly their own, and investing in the betterment of all, for the sake of all?  Is it not true that building a network of true friends through a well-meaning and steady application of selfless behavior brings lasting flexibility, strength, and happiness to one's life, whereas creating a network of people that are distrustful of you, through deliberately selfish behavior, begets fleeting gain and a lasting counter-effort of those wronged, whom always prevail over the selfish individual in the end? Only a dedicated effort on the part of every individual towards genuinely appreciating others and the benefits of the diversity that exists amongst us all, faithful application of active listening, proactive, routine, deep reflection about one's self and their social environment that leads to true insights, making a consistent effort to apply those insights to maximize the benefit of all, being actively compassionate and forgiving, and having a willingness to consistently establish truly well-intentioned relations with others can bring forth lasting balance, peace, and happiness throughout all of society.  Is it not then in all of our own self interest to be selfless in our interactions with others and our collective social institutions? Perhaps most people lean towards selfishness because the idea that being selfless is more beneficial to themselves than being self-centered appears paradoxical, or at least counterintuitive.


//Human Perspective//
It is just incredible how self-centric humans tend to be, and how much unnecessary suffering results because of it. We are capable of so much more than we have already accomplished thus far as a civilization, because of this tendency towards self-centric thinking in the individual. Even after my perspective widened exponentially over the last several years, I still find it difficult at times to avoid self-centric thinking, but it is easier to do once you let your self accept that you are a very, very small part of a much grander picture.

Our Milky Way galaxy alone is so large it takes light, traveling at 186,000 miles/sec, 100,000-120,000 years to cross from one point on the edge of it, through the center, to the opposite edge. As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if it were reduced to 100 meters in diameter, the Solar System, including the hypothesized Oort cloud, would be no more than 1 mm in width, about the size of a grain of sand.  There are between 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and contains at least 100 billion planets. On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the "habitable zones" of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs within the Milky Way Galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars. The oldest known star in the Milky Way is at least 13.82 billion years old and thus must have formed shortly after the Big Bang.

The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy (the nearest galaxy to ours) are a binary system of giant spiral galaxies belonging to a group of 50 closely bound galaxies known as the Local Group, itself being part of the Virgo Supercluster (containing at least 100 galaxy groups and clusters within its diameter of 110 million light-years), which is itself a subcomponent of the Laniakea Supercluster (consisting of 100,000 galaxies stretched out over 520 megalight-years).

Just in the part of the universe we can see, there are over 100 billion galaxies and the approximate diameter of the known universe is 92 billion light-years. The diagrams below help the average person to understand how small we really are and how beautifully vast our universe is; and there are many very good reasons to believe that our known universe is just the very tip of the iceberg.

So how many stars total in the visible universe?
About 10 octillion stars (10 trillion billion stars).  Writing that out gives us: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  Care to start counting from "1"?  Each star system has a chance at harboring life.  Honestly ask yourself: what are the chances that we are the only intelligent life in all the universe?  There is no rational basis to think of our own self or civilization as being especially "special."  We are all interconnected with the rest of our incomprehensibly vast and diverse cosmos, and we ALL ought to start thinking and acting like it as we proceed on with our lives.


//Choosing Our Path//
Life really is an incomprehensibly vast ocean of possibility. We each are merely, drifting consciousnesses, floating independently along paths of our choosing. Occasionally, they cross paths in meaningful ways. More rarely, a couple choose to abandon the independent path they would otherwise have taken, and take a risk that the path and circumstances of the journey that they agree to share together will provide greater fulfillment and happiness.  Yet, no matter the path we currently travel, we must always remember that there are an infinite many others we can choose to follow if we find our current one becoming stale or untenable....

"Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you… Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and your self alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use." — Carlos Castaneda (The Teachings of Don Juan)