Rev. John

Discernment is one of the most vital skills of our age. Misinformation clouds our shared reality, and the truth often gets hidden in the fog. The more you broaden your knowledge base, the tighter your vision of reality. Be curious, be empathetic, be a seeker of truth.

Its a sad time for our country, but it's not the end of times. This shutdown is exposing weaknesses in our system of governance that we *can* fix, so they can never be broken again. We have to learn to hold our leaders to true accountability, and never allow anyone to leverage our fear for power.

It may feel like voting isn’t enough, but there is no greater tool for change than a unified voice with a shared vision.
If we want to move off the path we’re on, we need to change how the majority, and the powerful, see the world.
We don’t just need people to vote.
We need people to vote for hope.

Politics must be insulated from money. When public consent is manufactured to serve the interests of the wealthiest few, the republic becomes theater, not representation.

No society can thrive while its people are forced to watch a tiny elite bend the system for themselves. We need to do better.

A terrible and shortsighted ruling. It paved the way for a system where financial backing determines election outcomes. We have an attention economy where viewer count is about funding, and thus the information people use to decide how to vote is unimaginable skewed by the money in politics.

My mission extends beyond occasional platitudes. I invite you to join me in honest conversation to help me seek understanding.

A Sapio-Renaissance is on the horizon: a rebirth of wisdom, where together we can shape the future of humanity. The world need not remain as cruel as it is.

This is precisely society's purpose. We band together against the forces of entropy to stave off the indifference of the natural world. Our species can only advance when society learns that we must move past survival, and sees how to thrive together with shared purpose and dignity.

Some of our greatest moral failures have taken place under lawful authority, power does not equal righteousness. The individual may struggle to see what is good, so while we must act one our own, we should never act as if we are all on our own. The more knowledge we share, the better the act.

Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil. When no good option stands before us, it falls to all of us to raise one up. True goodness sees every human as worthy of life and equal in creation. Evil begins when it tells you your neighbor is the enemy.

Its an appeal to authority. Many people have been conditioned to believe that someone, somewhere is in charge, and that they wouldn't be in charge if they didn't know what they were doing. We are ruled by fallacious reasoning. But this needn't be our fate, the power to make change is within us.

Indeed, one of the purposes of civilization is the pursuit to conquer suffering. Global food issues are mostly avoidable, and as a sign that we are not fulfilling our duties as humans. Food, medicine, and knowledge is vital to a modern dignified life.

Oversight may show the shutdown was intentionally engineered, a tool to approve unconstitutional demands and use public programs as political leverage. Congress needs to find the courage for moral action, and the humility to rebuild some friendships across the aisle.

Indeed, especially after Citizens United. Together they paved the way for legal entities free from ethical constraints and social responsibility, yet able to fund elections. With nearly all our information being corporate controlled, we're watching "manufactured consent" shape our public will.

Companies will hold a stake in competitors to maintain the ability to sue them if their charity or employee benefits get too high. We've literally made it impossible for large corporations to be a net benefit. It's a cancer that can be exorcised, however, when enough voices call for it.

It runs deeper than greed. The psychology of corporate America is built on the idea that a corps. highest duty is to profit its shareholders, *above all else*. Above even the most basics of human dignity. It's a spiritual cancer, a sort of meme-like error in thinking that allows mass dehumanization.

Children may sometimes learn a lesson from a "big talk", but most lessons are learned passively. Children watch and mimic how their parents interact with the world, with each other, how they talk about others, and how they react to stress. A child's behavior is a reflection of what they know.

It's common to say we should honor and respect our parents, but it's less discussed that parents must earn the respect of their children. The young are still full humans, with their own drive of free will and sense of fairness. A parents role is to guide and protect, not to master.

Its not hate. I love my country, I love all its people. I'm sad to watch its leadership treat life as disposable and destroy decades of effort to make America exceptional. I'm sad to watch manufactured consent dominate the public square. But I love us enough to know we can do better.

Science is not without its failures to be sure. But modern science is about the collaborative effort to find and verify the truth. The examples you give may have arisen out of early science, but they were also corrected by later science. Its the drive forward to understand our universe.

Of course! That's why I'm here.

Indeed so, and to some that is unforgivable. But in the very near future we need to be a whole country again. I condemn the action, but I still extend empathy to the person. We'll need the vast majority of citizens united, it'll take a lot of empathy to bridge the divide.

It's time we all see healthcare as essential. To honor "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..." and to "promote the general welfare" we must realize that universal healthcare isn't just permitted by the Constitution, it was demanded by its moral purpose.

We need to restore honor to the government, and vote for people with integrity who take their roles seriously. We can't live in a world where everything is a joke or a dismissal, where everything is a spin, where everything is a lie. A house divided cannot stand. Make America Whole Again.

I don't think ICE recruits realize they are the sacrificial lambs, the literal scapegoats, for the Trump regime. The masking is dehumanizing, their orders are dehumanizing, their actions not protected by qualified immunity. They insulate the order givers by making everything "unofficial".

Its not easy to speak of warnings, too often its comes off as a prophecy of doom. I try to offer possible routes away from what we're seeing. Agape is a guiding light. It will take action and effort to fix, but love will be the foundation.

Trump has been in charge for half of all government shutdowns in US history, by his own dictation he claims that a shutdown is the Presidents sole responsibility and a sign of failed leadership. We need to rally together to save the USA. We need leaders who govern with wisdom and compassion.

It's hard. But there is hope, and the amount of anger and bewilderment I see is proof of that hope. I think it comes from that fact that we *know* we can do better as a people. We can feel that it's wrong, but could be made right. Stay kind, keep informed, and the discomfort will pay off soon.

I think we might see sapio-renaissance within our lifetime. A total epistemology change where our shared wisdom is firmly rooted in our personal and governing choices. Science is the collaborative effort to seek truth and understanding, more people just need to see it.

The algorithms may be working as intended. Those ICE ads are targeted, some of the keywords might have flagged it as a prime location to either inspire fear or convince college bound people to route into ICE. Even without purposeful manipulation, the algorithms drive engagement via outage.

No one person can know all things. The truth takes cooperation and effort from countless people to test and affirm. It is only by standing together and speaking together that we uncover the reality before us. We cannot let ourselves be imprisoned for false comforts.

#Philosophy #Spirituality