In this very long article I hope to discuss the dangerous cliff on which we presently stand.

I have lightly discussed revolution in a couple of former articles but this is an in-depth look at what can precipitate one.

The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew an absolute monarchy and ended a system of feudalism for the aristocracy and the Catholic Church.

The precipitating cause was a famine. This was most likely caused by crop failures caused by the eruption of the volcano Laki in Iceland in 1783-1784 whose sulfur fumes and dust clouded the northern hemisphere. It is estimated that 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide filled the atmosphere.

Temperatures plummeted to such an extent that the Mississippi froze at New Orleans and there was ice in the Gulf of Mexico. This caused enough famine and hardship in France to make the people desperate.

When the system that is looked to for stability and the well-being of the masses falters, for whatever reason, conditions are ripe for revolution.

It can be an actual cataclysm or the perception of one that triggers a revolution.

After the overthrow of the French Monarchy a period of relative stability existed during which time the Industrial Revolution began to occur.

Machines were invented which could produce much more than men could individually.

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Between 1834 and 1846 France’s economy mushroomed as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

However, the means of production was in the hands of a few who could afford to buy the machines by accumulating enough money to buy them.

The machines displaced hand labor and caused a migration of people from farms to the cities which possessed the power to operate the machines—steam and water-power.

This led to a rise of capitalism and the middle class which ultimately created a class struggle. It became a struggle between the owners and managers of the means of production and the laborers.

About that time two people developed a philosophy that attempted to deal with this problem.

 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles produced The Communist Manifesto in which they used the term ‘Proletariat’ to define the working class. These are the people in a Capitalist society who do not own the means of production but sell their labor for a wage.

The ‘Bourgeoisie’ were defined as the managers of the means of production.

Where there is a reasonable amount of freedom in a system of government, there will always be a conflict between these two groups. The laborer wants to receive the most financial advantage for each hour of his work while the manager wants to maximize his profit.

This is not the case in either a Monarchy or a Dictatorship. What you get is what you get. A person is essentially a slave in either of these systems.

How much material wealth is spread among the masses is a function of the generosity of the leader.

Unfortunately both the Monarch and the Dictator generally have other aspirations—grandeur or conquest—which permits no surplus for the masses to enjoy.

Socialism’s goal is to spread the surplus capital, the difference between what the actual generators of that production, the ‘proletariat’, have generated minus the cost of that production.

Of course, what history has shown is that this system kills incentive for investment because the would-be venture capitalist is not willing to expend the effort if there is no possibility to accumulate some of the surplus capital.

There is no point being the owner of the means of production if it is a ‘break-even’ venture. If a person’s expenses exactly balance his potential income there is no point in working harder.

The common laborer is also not likely to attempt to better himself and advance into the ranks of the owners of production when he realizes that he would be no better off to assume more responsibility and work harder.

This is the flaw in the concepts of Socialism and Communism.

The dream of Utopia is just that, a dream. The fathers of modern day Socialism/Communism , Marx and Engles, never addressed how this perfect state would come about. They produced The Communist Manifesto at about the same time as the French Revolution of 1847.They, like most idealists, would have enjoyed living in a system in which one could enjoy prosperity and leisure without trading the hours of their lives to achieve it.

Marx’s definition of Capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the Proletariat by the Bourgeoisie.

The French Revolution of 1847 was precipitated by conditions not unlike those presently existing in the United States.

The Industrial Revolution showed people that if they could acquire the ‘means of production’ they could become wealthy. Machines could out-produce people but it required money to buy these new machines.

Those with aspirations could achieve that by borrowing money. This caused competition for money which raised interest rates and increased speculation.

The Russian people, through the actions of Lenin and Trotsky, became, for the most part, almost unwilling participants in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The Crash of 1929 and the following Depression created a pattern of similar thinking in the United States. The election of a Liberal President who fathered The New Deal, Social Security and permitted a fertile climate for the labor unions probably averted a revolution in the US as its citizens looked toward the apparent success of the Soviet’s first Five Year Plan.

We Americans are facing a series of hardships with the loss of enormous wealth in auto manufacturing, investments, home and business values that we may be on the verge of acceptance of either a total socialistic system or a revolution.

Socialism stifles investment and creativity; revolution creates chaos.

Utopia is an impossibility and Marx and Engles realized it.

It is unfortunate that the followers of their philosophy do not understand this and are willing to create a revolution to lose everything in the hope of achieving that which is impossible. Revolution has only led to a long period of misery.

Today we are seeing the possibility of a revolution in Iran.

Could a revolution there create a ‘fall-out’, as the volcano Laki did to France,

that would affect the United States?

During this period of religious significance to both Christians and Jews, a mental  ‘almost overload’ has “….come upon me”–while I was raking last fall’s leaves.

Not being a theologian the following is the best that I could do.

Christians celebrate Easter as the rebirth of the Savior—someone who would cleanse them of sin and perpetuate their survival in Heaven.

Pagans celebrated this period as the resurrection of crops and fruit trees–those things necessary for their survival.

The Jews celebrate it for another reason—that they were ‘passed over’ and so survived to today.

It appears to me that ‘survival’ is a major component of this holiday season.

People want to hope for better times. They need a belief that things will get better as the pagans knew would happen in the spring. Or is it simply that people have faith that things will get better?

Faith is blind acceptance of a possible outcome. There is no available data to back up faith.

This seems very appropriate for what is happening today.

The Jews had faith that a Messiah would come and make things better. When Jesus came into the picture He didn’t help them in their struggle with the Romans so he was rejected as not being the Messiah that they expected.

Today we are experiencing a similar situation. Times are tough; fear is rampant.

Obama has been compared by many to be a ‘Messianic figure’.

The fact that he was elected President might have been as a result of this perception by a large number of people. In his campaign he said that he had a plan that would solve all the problems facing our country and perhaps the world, by extension.

I wonder if Obama and Congress will “deliver us from evil” or must we wait another four years for some, as of yet, unknown Messiah?

There is a connection between conservatism and greed but it is not an absolute “A=B”.

One can be ‘conservative’ (as I am) and not be greedy (as I am not).
Greed stems from conservatism but is not necessarily the end product. Too much conservatism is greed.

In other words, I want to be self-sufficient and in so doing I must accumulate enough of the  ‘implements’ to do so. In primitive times this meant arrowheads, wood,  skins and dried meat.

Today it is money. I feel money is a vehicle (a bartering medium) that will allow me to trade for those things that lead to my survival.
It has never been my goal to accumulate more than I feel is necessary to meet the goal of survival in a modern world– a world of taxes and shelter and fuel (energy) and transportation and food and some left over for pleasure.
Without some pleasure life becomes merely existence.

Those who accumulate simply with that as a goal are indeed greedy and that breeds resentment in those who are truly deficient.
This leads to extreme ‘liberalism’  using the vehicle of guilt to take from the truly greedy….and give to perhaps the less greedy.

How much is ’sufficient’? Who evaluates how much pleasure one is entitled to?
How much money do the apparently  deficient allocate to pleasure that gives them the appearance of insufficient means of survival?

My grandfather’s favorite expression was, “Moderation in all things.”

In short be conservative (self-sufficient) but not greedy.

For a number of years I have been going to the same resort in Jamaica. Quite a few years ago I met the man who picks up trash and plastic cups from the beach, arranges the beach lounges and chairs for the next day and then rakes the beach.

He’s a Rastafarian as is his father and was his grandfather. They eat vegetables and some fish but not meat. They don’t believe in violence or war. They don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes but they do smoke marijuana. (A topic that I have planned to discuss in a future post).

He’s an interesting old guy who leaves the resort at the end of the day and walks to his home in the mountains.

He has been doing this for a long time. He told me that he had to cut off his ‘dreads’ that had reached to his knees in order to get this job.

I returned home yesterday bringing with me an interesting topic.

While sitting on the beach near the end of the day Pablito noticed that I started to pick up a plastic cup not too far from my lounge.

“No mon, leave it. I pick it up.”
I told him that it wasn’t mine and that I wouldn’t leave a cup on the beach.

“I know,” he said. ” Inside you Rasta too. But if everyone was like you who didn’t leave trash on the beach, I would have no job and my family would go hungry.”

Slobs do, after all, have a place in ‘the order of the universe”.

                                                     John W. Malenda

Friends and loyal readers, I will be “off-line” for a couple of weeks but don’t despair, I will return!

                                                 John W. Malenda

I had not anticipated readership in other places on the planet.

Being unable to sleep last night because of this, I wondered if I should moderate my ‘rant’ to consider whether there are “relative” truths and “absolute” truths. My intention was not to turn my writing into philosophy but to the exposition of major decisions that are based on inaccurate or insufficient data.

More than fifty years ago I read a significant book, “An Introduction to Scientific Research” by E. Bright Wilson. In it he gave various examples of flawed conclusions.

One of my favorites was:

“The results of the experiment were inconclusive.
One chicken died, one chicken lived but the third got away.”

This is an excellent book if a person is truly interested in searching for truth.
I consider my books to be friends and this is a lost friend. My advice is do not loan out significant books. They seldom come home.

Back to the point.

By posting my articles I have found that, through the comments that have been offerred by others, my mind has collided with some truly great thinkers from around the world.
This has caused me to consider ideologies other than those which apply directly to me.
I have avoided political and religious issues because the bases of these cannot be proven therefore I leave them untouched.

It is obvious that when parents compare their children they can say, “My son is taller than your son.” That is easily provable.

However, when one says, “My son is more intelligent than yours”, that is not so easily proven. The first child may bring a report card home from school covered with “A’s” while the other only achieves “C’s”.

It would appear that the first child is the more intelligent but his grades may have been achieved by sheer persistence or even possibly by favoritism by the teacher.

The latter child may be bored with the material being presented and so ignores it. Instead he may be shaping in his mind the destiny of his country or the entire planet.

No one wants to be wrong. It is an unpleasant feeling.

Whenever a person changes direction it implies that he had originally made poor choices, that is, he has admitted that he had acted on wrong or insufficient information.

I responded with a comment on another Blog with regard to meditation. (http://www.writtenvoice.com)

“What is static has proven itself to be safe. When we move, we move into uncertain territory. This causes if not fear, apprehension.

The mind is satisfied with its present state. It too feels safe and rejects change.
Meditation brings about change and this is why many people have difficulty meditating. The mind will not let them. The mind is afraid of change because it will no longer be the same mind. It takes on a new identity.”

So change can imply that previously held views were incorrect.

My earlier postings stressed making decisions based not on opinion but on fact. However, opinions must come first. Without an opinion a person simply accepts the “status quo”. They do not look for alternatives therefore they cannot determine the truth.

The truth is tested by the scientific method-cause and effect.

Neither political, economic nor religious systems can be compared as there is no possibility of evaluating them.

If one asks which is the better system they have to ask, “Better for the individual, the country or the planet?”

This opens the argument again to opinion.

How is “better” defined?

This post will be followed soon with another that considers more of a “world view” than my personal experience.