Quote of the Day - Ron Paul

Quote of the Day - Dalai Lama

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temple; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is the temple; the philosophy is kindness."

-Dalai Lama

Welcome to The Grizzly Truth; An Introduction

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Foreword

Welcome, friend; my name is Grizzly, and I call you friend because I am by default friendly toward you. All that it takes to maintain a friendship with me is honesty. This includes honesty not just to me, but to and within yourself.

What does it mean to be honest "to yourself?" How can one tell a lie to oneself? One has access to all of one's knowledge, so how can one conceal something from oneself? This is actually a condition called "denial", but how does it come about and what about the human mind makes it not just possible, but very prevalent? If these questions pique your interest, stay tuned to this sector of the blog-o-sphere.

Side-notes aside, I'm sure that by now you are wondering, "Why, Grizzly, have you chosen to stain the internet with this blog-spot? What is it that you are here to say?"
(If you weren't wondering that, do not be alarmed)

Why am I here?

I'm here to share what I know and what I think, ponder, or believe. I am only offering up information for your consumption. I think that there are a few topics in life that everyone could benefit from learning more about, and these are the topics I study and that I wish to share through The Grizzly Truth.

Politics

Politics in a nutshell.

Most people are not very into politics. The majority of people who ARE into politics, whether they'd admit it or not, are typically pretty biased towards either the Red Team or the Blue Team. Most people allow their tribal instincts to drive them to conform to the beliefs, morals, and opinions of the "Team Platform" and the "Team Leader" because they use this political party as part of their identity. They follow the garbage back-and-forth he-said-she-said of the campaign trail and they have this focus on the things the politicians bicker about instead of things that are actually important. 

For some reason, though, when you bring up the real problems with most people, they look at you strangely because the news stations and politicians aren't talking about these issues. They seem to go through a cognitive dissonance of sorts: they think, "No, if the government had made it legal to detain citizens and deprive them of a trial, there would have been an uproar and it would have made the news. That's just outlandish." You can tell them to look up the bill, that it's called the National Defence Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2012, signed just hours before New Year's Day, and that Section 1021 and 1022 are new provisions that authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial. 

You can tell them to look up the many news articles written on the topic; they won't look into it. They won't look up the court case and the decision by Judge Forrest to hand an Injunction to the Federal Government ordering that they not use these powers against citizens. They won't discover that during that court case, the lawyers for the Federal Government refused to confirm or deny whether the Government had used or will use these powers. They wouldn't know, as I know, that the Federal Government has filed for an emergency stay over this injunction and nullified the injunction before it is taken to an appeal court later. They will completely ignore this issue that is crucial to preventing our society from going the way of 1930s Germany and will go about their lives in willful ignorance, denying that such an issue exists, denying its relevance, or laughing it off.

Why are they in denial? How do they accomplish this? How does this passive apathy propagate through society? This kind of philosophical inquiry leads us to...

Consciousness

What grows from your consciousness?

What is consciousness? How does it work? Well, science doesn't really know that for sure, yet. Some people subscribe to to a school of thought labeled "determinism", which believes that everything is based in physics and determined from the previous state, labeling impossible the idea of spontaneity and saying that free will is essentially an illusion of our neurons and a bunch of electrical impulses - that our actions could theoretically be predetermined because we are simply a biological robot of sorts. Personally, I have a very complex opinion on the topic of free will, but be sure that it will be explained as time progresses.

So, what is it that happens when the process of denial is initiated? Well, let's break this down:

(perhaps even further than it needs to be)

I draw from my pool of knowledge and form a sentence based around ideas, information, and perceptions that I have about the world. I form this sentence into spoken words with my mouth, which travel through the air and are heard by another person. 

This person takes the words they hear and assign them meaning based on their knowledge and perception of the world, possibly coming to a different meaning than intended by the Grizzly speaker (me). They compare it to their knowledge of the world as a test of whether the information "fits" with what they believe or does not.

At this point, whether I am right, sort of right, dead wrong, making a good point or not... the validity of what I am saying is assigned by the other party's assessment of whether it sounds reasonable based on what they believe they know to be fact. I can give them information, documents, or resources to study, but at this point many people have made the choice to believe that what I've told them is completely false, hyped up, or unimportant. Typically this particular belief is based on some sort of fallacy - i.e. if Monsanto's Genetically Modified Corn (currently around 70% of the corn grown in the United States (MSNBC and the USDA)) causes rats to grow breast and lymph node tumors the size of their heads, surely GMO products are not in the food supply. If they were, the news would report this! They report every little thing in your kitchen that can hurt you! And if they are, then obviously this study is flawed! They were obviously proven completely and 100% safe before they became part of the food supply!

Dammit, Jim, we've lost him.

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My thought process is a little bit different. "Monsanto created Agent Orange... Produces Aspartame... and the FDA is littered with past Monsanto employees who won't eat GMO themselves but say it's safe for you..." Maybe I'll think, "Does he know that Monsanto is spending millions on ads to fight Proposition 37, a voter initiative in California, which simply stipulates that products containing GMO foods must be labeled as such so consumers can choose to avoid them?"

The fact is that the individual I am theoretically speaking with here has created a slew of assumptions and conclusions based on nearly no information, but then proceeds to ignore any further information as if they somehow revel in their ignorance; revel in not knowing how they are being screwed left, right, and center, as if non-observation of the problem will mean that it does not exist or does not affect you.

Technology and Science

Slightly different from the other two, I believe that understanding the technology we have developed and understanding science at a deeper level would allow all people to unlock more of their full potential. The power of the computational, technological gadgets that our amazing species has developed is mind boggling. 

Do you realize, you, out there, reading on the Internet? Do you realize that on this internet, you can find an almost endless amount of information about an endless number of topics, beliefs and thoughts. It's not just a place to use facebook and wikipedia. There are millions of websites out there that are there to provide you with some type of information in the hopes that it is valuable enough to you that you will support their efforts. This is why I have an Associate's Degree in computer programming - I wanted to take the potential power of a computer and mold it to my will so as to be able to create fantastic things with it.

And of course, Science is the lens through which most modern people think about the world. We're taught science in school, and we learn how the world works, and unless I just think a LOT more than other people, we use that information every day in deciphering and analysing the world around us.

I hope you are intrigued.

I certainly am. I can't wait to see what comes out of my mind, through my fingers and keyboard, and onto the screen next time. I don't know what it will be, yet, but I'm sure it will be just as fascinating. Want me to talk about something specific? Leave a comment below, let me know what you think about my Grizzly ramblings. What did you like? What didn't you like? Leave me feedback!

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