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(sorry for the length of this -- I wound up writing more than I thought I would)Hey coolmel, thanks for that link. I checked it out and initially I had my suspicions about where that site was coming from,but the more I looked it over I began to realize it was not your standard communal, socialistic fare. Red flags were going up for me when I was seeing things like "conscious capitalism" amidst "spiritual/new age" type of talk from members about compassion, sharing, and treatment of workers and other intellectual flowery language. It was making me think it was just an euphemism and a front for a socialist philosophy trying to hijack the word capitalism. I was thinking, 'why does capitalism need some qualifier like compassion in front of it?' because to me capitalism in and of itself is inherently compassionate. I know that would sound like an astounding statement to many people. They've come to have an aversion towards the elements of human nature operating freely in the world incoporating self-interests, "greed", profits and the like when in reality that is what ultimately benefits the world. All that also goes back to the virtue of selfishness as espoused by Ayn Rand.Anyway, regardless of all that, I realized that that site is really trying to promote a philosophical message about the free market and its overarching potential of compassion that can come with it by people with good hearts doing what they choose to do voluntarily to benefit and help themselves as well as others. Granted, there are some people who will abuse a capitalistic system and exploit others and thus give capitalism a bad name. After all, human nature isn't perfect. We're not living in a utopia, at least not yet anyway, but that doesn't discredit capitalism or rather a liberty utopia of a free market. You will find though that most people actually are genuinely good and we're all for the most part a mixture of good and bad to one degree or another. It is the very rare who are perfectly saintly or downright evil. Most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes. When people hear the word "capitalism" many different things tend to come to mind for different people. The word capitalism tends to have bad connotations in our society now. When it comes to capitalism, I can certainly understand the concern about government subsidized corporatism. That is a basturdization of capitalism that I am against. Corporatism/mercantilism is wrong, but it is only made possible by government. People tend to wronly focus their ire on what they see as faults in capitalism when the real culprit is the government. Big corporations are able to benefit and exploit power they acquire from privileges granted to them by the government. Separate those mafia like connections from the government and you take the power away from both the government and the corporations. I'm for a free market that is free from the government. With all the attention and time people spend focusing on supposed abuses by businesses, I've always wondered why on the one hand people are so distrustful of the private sector yet on the other hand seem to show no aversion and skepticism at all towards the government. If you're afraid of any entity being so large and powerful that has acquired unjustified power that it can abuse and exploit people with, then why on Earth would you entrust that power to the government and not hold the government to the same standard that you would hold a walmart to? It seems contradictory to me. The real monopoly people need to be afraid of is the government. After all, if you think about it, all government is is an entity that is providing a service. It just happens to have a monopoly on that service. I hope I'm not wrong about that site, but I like what appears to me to be the message the site is promoting. It seems to be trying to sell the message of liberty and capitalism with a new age/spiritual twist to it that says how such a system is best for our world in improving our world and evolving the human race to this "great awakening" if you will. I guess, it's a kinder, gentler sort of capitalism it's trying to portray. From the small portion of messages that I briefly scanned over there, it seemed the members themselves were also practicing what they were preaching in that their tone of discussion seemed to be surprisingly warm, polite, and kind to others without the harsh flaming and fighting. I would certainly say that the human race seriously needs to evolve. It is in my opinion that, to state the obvious, human nature for one is flawed. Obviously we know that much. Well, as you always hear, people have always attributed different things as being the root of all evil in this world such as the old cliche "money is the root of all evil". Well, here is how I view things. Yes, human nature is flawed and thus imperfect so it can be said based upon that that people are the root of all evil. It is wrong to say that external things like money are the root of all evil because that misses the deeper issue. Money is simply a good tool by which to test a persons character,but it is not a determining factor. I like what actor Will Smith said once....."Money doesn't change people. It merely amplifies what's already there". Touche! So now that we have established that much, let me dig a little deeper. It is actually not enough to simply say that people are the root of all evil. If one is to say that human nature is flawed and that people are the root of all evil, that then begs the question....Why is that so? and What can be done to change that, if anything lest it means that we have to accept it as our eternal condition?.....Well,I'm going to hit you up with a few key points, but I won't get into all the details to explain my little hypothesis unless you want to hear it later. It is something I've given a lot of thought to that I could probably write an essay about. Here is a general summation....Human nature is flawed because obviously we are still a primitive species that on a cosmic scale, is still in its infancy. We're social creatures who have only been out of the jungle for thousands and thousands of years now, just a blip on the cosmic radar screen. You look back through the progression of mankind since the dawn of man when it made an evolutionary jump to homo sapiens and then started ancient civilization by forming local tribes and communities up to more modern civilizations with city states and forming governments and religions. So you can see that it has up to this point for us been our eternal struggle in our existential existence on Earth to learn how to co exist and cooperate with each other as we evolve. This is what has produced the concept of morality. Morality was a byproduct of evolution. As they say, necessity is the mother of all inventions, and it was necessary for us as a species to move beyond the animal kingdom and develop a code of conduct, morality as principles to live by for our own survival without which we would have just torn each other apart. As you can see, we've come a long way, yet we still have a long way to go. At this point, we are a type 0 civilization, according to a theoretical physicist. I won't go into what that is all about. Further explanation of that is saved for my essay. As human beings evolved, they went through a physical evolution of their bodies. The human brain has also gone through a remarkable evolution as our brains have become more sophisticated. The human brain still has a left over function from its more primitive days. It is the reptilian part of our brain, that part that controls some necessary involuntary functions of the body and stimulator of emotions, but it is also a part of the brain that is responsible for more primitive behavior that is in constant battle with our more evolutionary advanced part of our brain responsible for reason and intellect. So with that in mind, it is my belief that human nature can evolve and that it isn't something we have to accept as a part of the eternal condition of mankind and our fight for eternal vigilance. So human nature is not the ultimate root of all evil. What then is? What is holding human nature back? Just look at our world and observe all problems with people on both a micro and macro world and just think about what is causing most problems in the world. When you stop to think about it, just about all problems can be traced back to government and religion being at the heart of them. I think it is the tools, the concepts of both government and religion at their very core, their inherent nature, that are moreso the root of all evil because people aren't all bad and human nature can improve. It is government and religion that have the potential of turning people against each other and making human nature worse. Government and religion have the distinct ability to dampen and thus devolve human nature. You can see that it is government and religion that makes everything in our world worse and it is reaching a breaking point. Government and religion are also different forms of collectivism so they fall under the umbrella of collectivism. Above government and religion is collectivism. So the over arching root of all evil in this world is collectivism which gives rise to government and religion and I am speaking of coercive collectivism, not the voluntary kind. The evil, immoral force of coercive collectivism allows for government and religion to corrupt mankind by turning people against each other and leading people trying to control others through those tools instead of letting each other be and living harmoniously amongst each other. People just become angry, resentful of each other and rude towards each other as a result of these forces. The world is what we make of it and we can change the world and make it a better place where we can have great progress while at the same time achieving a state of utopia, the true "heaven on Earth". For people, for human nature, for this world to evolve before it's too late, it needs to be jolted and have an epiphany. It needs it fast too because we are at a critical crossroads that is going to make us or break us. In evolutionary theory, to get something to evolve and even make an evolutionary leap, there needs to be the right conditions in the environment that act as environmental stressors on a species. With the environmental stressors providing the force, the challenge the species needs as a catalyst to be faced with in order to make that jump, the species will become strengthened by those challenges and will thus be jolted into a "punctuated equilibrium". There is no other way. There is no way around that. That is the only answer for the future survival of our species. So what is the answer needed as that environmental stressor for us? I think you know what I would say ;-)Well, I made my post longer than I initially had in mind for it. I always seem to do that. I could go into more detail on my ideas there and explain more of that another time. Let me just leave you with this link to an eye opening book that you can read free at this link..... <a class="user" href="http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/&quot;&gt;http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/&lt;/a&gt; If you haven't already heard of that book, you should find it very interesting and thought provoking. There is also an updated version of it you can buy online that was published after 9/11 and it is entitled "Healing Our World in an Age of Agression". I hope I've given you something to think about.

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You know, when some moron decides to act like a big baby by yielding their power to digg down someones comment for simply giving their opinion in a thoughtful manner, I wish they would have the guts to respond instead of merely hiding behind their vote. I've noticed a lot of childishness with how people utilize these tools and behave towards each other on here. Must be the immature, pimply faced teenagers.

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