A Midwest Journal

It’s really just too easy to get hope into your life, making everything around you make sense. Life can be a calm, rewarding experience.

Really, there are only two steps:

1. Find out what makes you really happy and narrow your focus to these points.
2. Gradually get rid of those things which irritate you.

Now, along this line, you are adjusting your world view and your belief system to the one you’ve always wanted.

The only reason you don’t have this all settled by now is that you accepted (more or less) the people and instances around you which told you that you couldn’t be in control of your life and that things didn’t always happen for the better.

Your life is and has always been exactly what you make it.  So you can simply start re-making it by deciding what you want to improve in it and then move in that direction. For some, this means work. For others, they realize it’s just changing your attitude toward things.

At no time in our past has it been easier to change your mind than it is now. You can have access to the world’s religions and philosophies through the Internet and through all these massive amounts of books that are published each year. It’s just too easy to get all this data.

The next thing is to do something with it.

Just start tracking what make you happy, makes your life more pleasant – and then learn more about how to get this sort of material into your life on a regular basis. At the same time, make room for all this by simply getting all the noise and critical people and random effects out of your life. Do whatever actions you have to.

For critical people, this can be simply being pleasant to them – just not set them off. Don’t talk about subjects which you know irritate them. Be supportive and make all your own criticism constructive. If you have to live with these, then as you change your own actions, this will then help them adjust theirs. Don’t think for a moment they like to be critical – it’s just that they don’t know a better way to live life. So help educate them by your own example.

For example: you may want to get rich…

Now, it’s easier than ever to get rich. Lots of books on this subject:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
• How to Turn Your Abilities into Cash by Earl Prevette

I even compiled a lot of self help authors’ essays on money into a single book called Money: How to Get It, How to Keep It.

And you can get all of this data online for free if you want – just find it and download it from the Internet (I work to find and republish these after I clean up their formatting – and publish them as hardcopy versions if you want.)

But these books are the time-proven classics which tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the subject. Now, modernly, you can get Robert Kiyosaki or Dolf De Roos if you want to know about real estate. And others tell of other routes to getting rich.

The trick with all this is to follow your intuition and not your habits of “Get Rich Quick”. (I’ve been that route with the Utah Internet scammers and know that it just leads you into more debt – until you can force them to pay you back.)

Even that is its own example – you don’t have to be effect of anything out there. Just research it, apply what you learn, and change your life into what you want it.

Lots of hope for change in the future – and it’ isn’t tied to some politician. It’s up to you and what you want to do with your life.

Always has been.

(continued from part 2…)

The Zen of a Medianomic Lifestyle

If you started applying this to your own life, you’d quickly find that this is actually the most economical way to live. And the happiest and most sensible.

The government is actually telling you to be average. If you look over the tax code carefully, you’ll see they are also telling you to start a business and work for yourself – that’s where the real low taxes are. And you’ll see that the bulk of the jobs in the U.S. are created and maintained by small businesses. That’s what makes every recovery in a recession. When you make it harder for the bulk of your small businesses to get started, you are damping everything down.

But a living by Medianomics actually puts you into a sort of “Zone.” While you don’t have to be a big fan of Alan Watts, he did cover very simple explanations of Zen – which are applicable in any Medianomics lifestyle. Your best interests are served by simply enjoying the life you currently live. While you understand and empathize with the extremes, you actually live in the middle. And you live to experience your own life, not based on what “celebrities”, or politicians,  or Wall Street CEO’s do with their lives  – or any other extreme minority group. Your decisions are your own. People who stick with their traditional lifestyles live very mundane, but happy lives.

Like the credit card binge we all are now suffering through as well as the sub-prime mortgage mess our politicians got us into. We erred by moving from traditionally successful finances of savings and layaways. So the credit card industry now looks to be a blip on the radar. Politicians meanwhile tried to get more votes by pressuring finance companies to make risky loans to people who had never done anything before besides pay rent. Because home ownership was equated with a “right”. But it’s always been a privilege you earn. Always will be. And these guys crashed the economy (don’t worry, some group or another does this every 6-8 years like clockwork.)

If you stick to what works, what’s common sense, then you live a simple and happy life. You aren’t striving to keep up with all these fads going. You don’t dress like celebrities or cult guru’s. And you read the stories of stars and starlets who ruin their lives or kill themselves off over drugs or fast cars or psychotic lovers. Most of us don’t.  And that’s living in the Zen of the Medianomic middle.

Just be normal and enjoy it.

Medianomic Predictions

So, now you can predict what is going to happen:

• Every time one political party gets in power, they lose it rapidly. Always have a president of one party and a Congress of the other. Do nothing while they’re there.
• Extremists who threaten the middle (Islamic and other terrorists) will get wiped out. Not popular, as they don’t allow the average lifestyle to continue.
• If you are in a Long Tail group (Gays, Vegans, Environmental and animal “rights” activists) – make it easy to be compromised with in order to get what you want. Don’t run a campaign that everyone should live like you do. Just say you want to be left alone to live your own life. Those that do, can.  But don’t try to get the government to support your cause. Like organic farming, it usually gives you a result you don’t want – and no one else does, either.
• People who want to get elected (a form of celebrity) will stay in office only as long as they are “normal” to their constituents – and really accomplish nothing. You get a lifetime pension and benefits automatically, so why work at standing out from the crowd and risk being defeated in a primary?

And some advice about what you should be doing with your life:

• Use your common sense to pick your own careful path – and you can be in the “zone” all the time.
• Forget about listening to the mass media guru’s or news announcers who are constantly telling you the sky is falling. Realize that the sun will come up tomorrow, and the day after, and even the day after that.  Those extremists live by selling advertising to pitch products to the average Joe and Joleen – so they want to hook you into watching their shows in between commercials. Talk and listen to your neighbor on your block – you know them, the ones who have a house almost like yours…
• Vote for people who think and act like you do – and then hold their feet to the fire. If we had average Joes rotating through our elected positions (and maybe all government positions), we’d start having more common sense actions showing up – and maybe some real service, as well.
• Pick the social network of your choice – one which you can be average in.  Somewhere that you can lurk and watch the postings and not feel pressured to stand out, but can “like” all the stuff you actually do – pretty anonymously.
• Start ignoring the people who stand out from the crowd and try to lead it.

Because the trick to being happy in this seemingly chaotic world we live in is to luxuriate in the average, common-place stuff that surrounds you.  Realize that the average people actually rule this planet, not the titular leaders who change every few years. People vote with their pocket books and wallets and remote controls. Understand that the real power in this country is in your own neighborhood.

The next time some community-organizing activist comes around who says that you should go out and stand up for what is right and make a difference – that your purpose for living is to get your face on the evening news for the cause they are pushing… just quietly smile and nod and show them the door. But when that sales man comes in and says that if you buy “X” detergent because everyone else does – usher him in and get him some coffee and cakes. He’s telling you how great you are for just being yourself.

(continued from part 1…)

Medianomic Celebrities and the Long Tail

Chris Anderson has made a profitable study out of his “Long Tail” scenario. But he missed the most profitable point. The dull middle, where it’s really the most profitable. At one end, the “tall head”, you have celebrities and fads. Where a few people dominate one or two items and most of the advertising dollars to keep them there. For books, this means they have a steep curve up and just as steep down right after. They are blips on the radar. So any profit is made quickly – get in and get out. And too many are one-shot wonders – feast and then famine.

The Long Tail is the reverse. Very little profit made as you have to sell a lot of some very small-time sellers. Just as much total money changes hands, if not more – it’s a whole lot of hands, though. If you were running a bookstore, you wouldn’t keep a lot of these around.  A brick-and-mortar store couldn’t afford to keep hundreds of thousands of books available at any one time. The aggregate sales wouldn’t keep the lights on. And so long tail books usually do best as print-on-demand.

What keeps stores restocking are the evergreen products which continue to sell, regardless. You’ll find every bookstore in America (well, the bulk of them) sells some version or another of the Bible. Because people are always buying it. It’s the hands-down all-time bestselling book in history. Because is appeals to the middle, the median consciousness of English-speaking peoples. No, it’s not on the #1 spot every week. It just routinely sells. And sells. And sells.

So the real income to be made in book sales are authors like Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie, whose books just continue to sell, regardless of whether they are marketed or not. These aren’t Stephan King’s, or J. K. Rowlings’, or Dean Koonz’ – they are really more the William Shakespeare’s, Agatha Christie’s, Barbara Cartland’s, and Dr. Suess’s. No flash in the pan, but a consistent output of regular sellers – or one really good book based on common sense that just keeps selling regardless.

And if you look in any bookstore, you’ll find that the latest fad sellers are out front and hyped up. But the bulk of their stock is in books who just continue to sell routinely at moderate amounts. Anything that doesn’t sell is remaindered or discounted to get rid of it. Top-bottom-middle.

“Big Name” celebrities are mostly at the big head of this Long Tail. And you’ll see them mostly burn-out and fade from the scene. Some of them are smart, like Fess Parker (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett), and Alan Hale Jr. (“the Skipper” on Gilligan’s Island) bought restaurants and lived comfortably. Others, like Jimmy Dean traded their fame for their own brand-name foods. The evergreen actors and actresses (as well as musicians) continue to have a nice living off of this. Dylan continues to churn out well-recieved hit albums, while infomercials are a nice income for those TV celebrities who were on for a very long time.  What is normal for the stage and screen wouldn’t be normal for you and I – but it can be a regular living like anything else. And the really long tail of celebrity-dom has people returning to their car sales or construction jobs after their one quasi-hit.

Medianomic Extremists, Gays, Acorn and Everyone Else

This study also embraces the extremists as necessary. Without them, life would be a bland bowl of lukewarm, un-salted oatmeal. Diversity is the spice of life.

But there is a caveat – don’t expect because an extreme view is tolerated that it will ever be accepted. Homosexuals (Gay’s, Lesbians, queers, fags, etc.) have never been and will never be mainstream. Nature has basically seen to that. And while there is every reason to give these their legal rights, they need to stay out of the mainstream in order to preserve those rights.

That seems odd, but it’s true. Their main problem is that they aren’t being allowed live a normal life in terms of hospital visitations, insurance, and so on. Otherwise, they’ve gotten everything they want, as long as they don’t step on anyone else’s toes – like dressing funny or scandalously, or playing loud music that keeps the neighborhood awake.  Their real problem is that government and religion are too closely connected. Government took over the function of saying what a “marriage” is, which is actually Religion’s function. If they would simply drop the marriage moniker and simply be honest, saying that they are just actually licensors of civil unions, then this whole scene would go away. (Then, if you wanted to be married, go find a church that agrees with you, that you can be average in.)

But “don’t ask, don’t tell” is another policy that won’t disappear soon. Because the  vast middle is straight. And that’s they way they expect people around them to act. (If you notice what happened with this in the news lately – Obama had to fulfill at least one political promise. The head of the military and the Secretary of Defense said, “Yes, yes – but, we’ll need a year-long study before we do anything with this.” So they effectively tabled the motion. Have your political cake and eat it, too.)

The majority only rules as long as they also listen to the extreme edges. That’s Medianomic politics defined.

You’ll find an interesting thing happening with the old Civil Rights movement. They went mainstream, got nearly everything they wanted corrected, and now are busy turning conservative and building their own “good old boy” networks.  When some flock-less “Reverend” tries to start a protest rally for some imagined “right” that was stepped on, you’ll see only a handful turn out. The extreme became part of the middle and now has little to complain about overall.

Now, when some extremists get into power, they often find themselves isolated. Mostly where they don’t quickly learn to become mainstream in their actions. Especially in this Internet Age. Acorn is a poster-child for this. Better get respectable if you are in the spot light – or you get defunded. If they’d studied what happened to the National Endowment for the Arts, they would have known. An example of doing this right was former-president Bill Clinton, who quickly learned to turn everything the Republican Congress approved into his idea. And we got the excesses of Welfare corrected, plus some other stuff. The worst presidential example so far was Millard Fillmore, who wouldn’t listen to even his own party – a real extremist, elected because he looked and sounded “Presidential.”

(continued in Part 3…)

Medianomics is an interesting study.

It’s lacked a name so far, even though it’s principles are well known and practiced. No one has tried to put it all into one framework before – but it touches all of our lives.

It’s been known mostly by it’s results: the mundane, the average, the hum-drum, the mediocre. And as much as it’s been run down, it’s the way the vast majority of us live our lives.

But practically, it runs the planet, produces the majority of the goods, and consumes them in turn. The subject of Medianomics actually runs this humankind planet we live on.

A simple definition (and graphical) is found in the Bell Curve. It’s all that big hump in the middle which researchers found are in neither extreme.

Practically, it really looks like a 3D bump -like one you run over in your average car -  as there are all sorts of extremes out on the edge with that great common bump in the middle. Most of our academia (itself an extreme) only compares two different types of things, instead of studying a universe of them all at once. But that’s how we live our lives – the law of averages sur-plus in technicolor.

What does Medianomics cover?

Just about everything. Politics, Religion, Government, Celebrities, Economics, Media, you name it.

Because Medianomics studies involve the middle ground. It involves what is routinely popular and common sense. It comes from finding the “median” or the middle.

But it also includes the study of extremist edges, the fads, the oddball stuff that winds up in Freakonomics books.

It’s easiest to explain if we cover some examples.

What Wal-Mart, Dubya and Obama have in common

Sam Walton found the “sweet spot” of merchandizing by finding out how to offer and deliver most of what everyone wants for just a little bit less than anyone else. He started it out in the Middle West, where big store chains like J.C. Penney, Sears and Montgomery Ward had settled long ago and become complacent, fat, and lazy. They were also shrinking.

Walton apprenticed in Penney’s, got a business degree in University of Missouri, and set up his business operations in Arkansas. This was contrary to the “conventional wisdom” of all time. No one starts and expands a national (and now multinational) business out of Flyover Country (except the very Medianomic Warren Buffett).  But the business model was the one which made the success.

You won’t find specialty items in Wal-Mart – just the usual stuff you can find anywhere. Sure, they’ll stock some extremely popular items, but once they quit selling, they are off the shelves and sent back to be remaindered. Merchanizing is a very cut-throat, black-and-white business.

Because average people have average needs. While they will buy flatscreen TV’s, they also buy a whole lot more soap, tires, and dog food. So finding suppliers who can give decently priced goods and then have them set up their headquarters and warehouses next to yours in the middle of nowhere is actually a win-win all around. If you study Wal-Mart’s hub-and-spoke distribution in conjunction with his sales strategies, you’ll see exactly how brilliant this guy was.

The key point is that he’s selling to the middle, with prices that they can afford – and keeping it all under one roof as a convenience. Same way with expanding into groceries.

Bush and Obama were elected with pluralities (well, mostly) – so they knew how to tell the middle of the country what they wanted to hear. Both of them had decidedly different coalitions of middle-ground supporters, but nonetheless, they were popular when elected. But both were found to be polarizing extremists, who dropped in popularity rapidly. Subquently this made it hard to get anything done.  Both spent a lot (LOT) of our taxpayer money in order to get a lot of support from Washington cronies,  but this made them extremely unpopular outside the Beltway. (Because we voted them in to act like we do – and spending borrowed money we know isn’t very wise.)

But they both applied Wal-Mart marketing (Medianomically speaking) of telling the bulk of the people what they wanted to hear. But this talk of bipartisanship really gets annoying after awhile. Because it’s not possible. Both political parties are extremist – so they are unpopular, except within their hard-core middle.

What is popular (and always has been) is the independent middle. People who make up their own mind, regardless of what candidates say, and what party they are registered with. And they are usually “surprised” when some politician doesn’t own up or follow up on their many promises. Because they are being told by politicians every two years (or weekly in a special interview on TV) exactly what political analysts think they wanted to hear.

But a funny accident happened when Bush cut taxes – revenue went up. Which means that to find the real  sweet-spot of taxes, they have to keep cutting.  People don’t mind paying taxes as long as 1) they get something valuable back from it, and 2) it doesn’t make things too expensive to buy or costs them their job.  No one knows what the popular level of taxation actually is. Because our politicians quit being average once they live in Washington for a few years. They turn into elite extremists. (Voter-enforced term limits usually cures that addiction.) Since most elected officials buy into the notion that spending other-people’s money on your local pet-pork boondoggle is the way to get re-elected. Not.

(Continued in Part 2…)

Just got this book published over on Lulu.com – at my Go Thunk Yourself Self Help bookstore.

In these days of politicians arguing over health care, it’s refreshing to read about a philosophy over 30,000 years old which could do healing on serious illnesses, cure broken bones, and even bring the dead back to life – all as nearly commonplace miracles-as-usual. Max Freedom Long started studying this ancient “psycho-religious” belief-system back in 1917 and authored these two books just after WWII – once he had the breakthrough of figuring out how they did it…

And here’s the back cover material:

If we can settle the basics in this field of knowledge, we shall be on the road to apply that knowledge to the betterment of humanity, as we now apply what we know to agriculture and animal husbandry.

By freeing ourselves from the blindly resisting dogmas of outmoded religions, we will be able to take sensible and practical steps in a forward direction, replacing the disorganized growth under the dispensation of the animal-like low self by the dispensation of the middle self aided by the High Self.

It is as if our civilization had long been allowed to grow as a form of wild life, creating tangled forest and jungle growths, fields choked with weeds, and with the ever-present danger of fire wiping all away. The “wild growth” can be replaced with planned and ordered fields and forests, so to speak, with firebreaks protecting the cultivated sections from those still left wild.

While there will always be those die-hard individuals to whom a new idea contrary to their fixed and dogmatic beliefs will act as a red rag to a bull, and cause furious protests, it is plain that the average man or woman, thanks to the public school system, is capable of approaching new things with a fairly open mind.

These, who form the great majority, need only to organize and begin to work together to bring back the lost science which is needed to complete and perfect the civilization which we have all known for some time was mysteriously defective.

…We are at the turning of the road at last, and the prospect which lies ahead, even when seen mistily through a time veil as yet, appears to be very bright indeed.

MAX FREEDOM LONG
(From Chapter 21)

- – - -

But the next point is to take these basic data and see what can be accomplished by applying them to our modern lives.

So now you have in your hands a “missing link” to understanding the universe and all its workings. Bottom up or top down.

And it looks to be a very interesting life for all of us from here on out…

DR. ROBERT C. WORSTELL
(from the Introduction)

And here’s the link to that book preview: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-secret-science-behind-miracles/6347869

I may have a different idea about things like churches and religion than most, I imagine.

It came to me this morning that I probably never laid these out.

A “church” by definition is a group. Mostly of people with a common belief-system, usually religious or spiritual at least. It’s really nothing to do with any building. It should be helping you find Freedom, Happiness, and Peace of Mind. And if you aren’t getting these, you’ve got a right to look elsewhere. Not just the promise of them, but the actual life-qualities themselves.

Now the problem with religions in general is that mostly they’ve forgotten where they came from and are more pomp and circumstance than the original salvation they were intended to be.  Most have gone straight off the road into getting into peoples’ actual way when they are trying to find their own road out. Because they are part and parcel of keeping them in the dark – because they get more money, or support, or power, or what-have-you.

Of course, I’m saying “most” so you have an out with your own church. But if it fits you, then wear it.

My idea on these is a bit loose. You’re here for some reason you set out for yourself. And if you really want to achieve it, you will. But if you just want to mess around and take forever, then you’ll do that, too. Because you can only get what you want, not what someone else wants. That’s the way this place is set up. No one else can “make” you do anything. If you’re a victim, it’s your own damned fault.

The trick is wising up. That’s the whole reason I wrote all the “Go Thunk Yourself” series, re-published their referenced works, and also my latest, “Get Your Self Scam Free.” Because you deserve it.

Now, I’ve been having a hole in my line-up as regards Huna. But I just found that a couple of Max Freedom Long’s classics had fallen into the public domain. And interestingly, they actually tie a lot of what Napoleon Hill, Charles Haanel, and Thomas Troward were talking about. And also earlier authors such as Emile Coue. ( Of course if you like Long, you’ll also like Claude Bristol’s “Magic of Believing.”) So you’ve got a fair bit of study to do if you’re going down this line.

But my idea is that churches are support groups. It doesn’t particularly matter which one you belong to, as long as they don’t make you swallow that silly notion that they are the one and only way of redemption/salvation/enlightenment. That’s where they went off the cliff a long time ago. And became a spiritual dead-end.

But check out this stuff from Long about religions (while I’m busy editing this book into shape). I figure that there used to be a great deal of “magic” available to the early churches – only theymay have called them “miracles”. Levenson and Alan Watts cover this a great deal – both that this is something that gets easier as you get more spiritual and less worldly, and also that it’s nothing to pay attention to particularly as it can quickly become some sort of occult sideshow.

Here’s Max Freedom Long:

All we can take with us at the time of death is knowledge, and it should be the first duty of each of us to accumulate the correct “take-withable” knowledge by a careful study of the psycho-religions and the discarding of beliefs which cannot be substantiated.

It should be held in mind that no two inspired or revealed religions agree, and that teachings obtained from the departed through mediums show a similar disagreement. There may be one correct revealed religion and one correct teaching from a spirit or a spirit group, or there may be a partial truth in all such sources of information.

At present we have before us only one basic and practical criterion by which to measure such material, and that is Huna. I say this, because Huna work[s].

(from THE SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND MIRACLES)

…

The “Secret,” or body of information handed down from one magician to another, was what may be called applied psychology for the most part. The element of religion was very small, especially if we accept the technical definitions of religion in the best modern sense.

Dr. Paul Tillich, Professor of Philosophical Theology at Union Theological Seminary writes, “Magic is a special kind of interrelation between finite powers; religion is the human relation to the infinite power and value.… Magic is the exercise of imminent power, religion is the subjection to the transcendent power.”

All religions are mixed with magic. Prayer is magic. Everything we do to gain benefits for ourselves in this life or the next is a part of magic. Magic is getting something from supernormal sources. Religion is worship of a Supreme Being and an acceptance of whatever It gives us, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

(from SELF-SUGGESTION AND THE NEW HUNA THEORY OF MESMERISM AND HYPNOSIS)

Both are part of a soon-to-be-released book at Go Thunk Yourself Self Help Bookstore…

– Please pardon this political interlude –

Found this amazing lecture from Alan Watts, an Episcopal priest turned Zen Buddhist – and a very prolific and accomplished lecturer.

Here is a fascinating commentary on how government is actually optional to the person who is enlightened, who is independent, who is secure in their own being.

Government gets very insecure when people are secure and independent on their own.

They don’t like to have little facts pointed out to them, little accuracies in their lives like:

Mr. Obama – you say we are 1.4 trillion dollars in debt, yet we just approved two “stimulus” packages of over 700 billion each (and doesn’t this add up to that amount?) – and a lot of this is getting paid back with interest. Now if you just worked at getting it all paid back, wouldn’t that just take care of that debt?

Now you in the same speech say that having an increasing debt is very bad – but why are you then proposing a budget which spends way more than we are going to take in?

And did you know that the last time taxes were cut, it was the fastest response to any recession, and revenues actually increased?!?

So, Mr. Obama – how about you don’t spend more than you take in, that you look up what’s worked before, that you make these bail-out funds actually return to our Treasury?

Too simple?

It’s not my insecurity, after all. I’m happy out here with my little farm, finding beatnik philosophers like Alan Watts and Lester Levenson who are secure in their own skins and talk about it.

The knuckleheads we’ve somehow elected to represent us need some security in the worst way. Maybe they’d be more sensible if they were. Like those who aren’t going to get re-elected – they’re free to do and say whatever they want. Term limits anyone?!?