A hidden thought.

If you think you are your thinking, consider this. I'm going to write another blog about the thinker, but right now in the city in which I live, virtually no one is thinking correctly, because none of them have learned how to think. A city full of churches, and colleges, yet this city has one of the highest crime rates in the entire nation. Unfortunately, we can't learn something we think we already know. It's like I always say about the trick public education plays on Americans. If someone thinks that public education was actually and education, then they're never going to actually educate their self. It takes a tremendous amount of research into life to actually become educated, which is something that does not happen during public education.

A sociology professor studied various neighborhoods paying attention to the number of “high status” people, versus things like pregnancy rates, high school dropout rates, crime, etc.(1) He found something interesting. Whenever the number of educated, professionals, managers, what we would think of as “high status” etc. dropped below a certain percent of the total population certain things would double. This phenomenon is something Malcolm Gladwell calls a tipping point. Teen pregnancy doubles, high school dropouts double. In his book Tipping Point he gives several examples of this phenom. Looking at it from outside these neighborhoods this makes sense. It’s easy to think about from this perspective, but what about the other side? What if it is happening to you?

That is a pretty profound discovery. It’s a big deal in all of our lives because it is happening to all of us. We don’t have to be a poor kid, in a poor neighborhood, for this phenomenon to be affecting us. Consider the human brain is way more apt to notice the negative, the problem, the issue, so something like this would only become noticeable once it became a problem. That is exactly what Gladwell was doing; looking at the problem. It is simply easier to measure in such places where the problem is incredibly glaring. If there was not a lot of social problems in your community, you had some educated people around. That is all. It's that simple. Maybe consider yourself lucky?

This measure can be used at all times, regarding anything. It is easy to look up. Countries with legitimate education systems do not have these social issues. The number of educated people in a population is a direct correlation with issues such as homelessness.

Be careful with that thought though, it may not have been so problem free as you were lead to believe it was. I’ve never forgotten the psychologist at MU who told me the most screwed up kids she counseled were from wealthy families. Wealthy people have a tendency to think they do no wrong simply because they have money. It's a high form of arrogance. The sexually abused, the violently abused, the neglected, aren't exactly going around bragging about it, particularly if they are from affluent neighborhoods. They literally cannot afford to out their parents. This reminds me of a high school friend, who grew up in what was a mansion to me. He was not raised in a healthy way. He spent his whole life denying the abuse and neglect he suffered, and is dead now from suicide. His parents were affluent, and successful, but we still lived in a small Midwest town full of the most ignorant of people.

I, unlike my friend, grew up on the bottom rung of white people land. My caretakers had jobs one did not need a high school diploma to get. I lived in trailer parks as a kid. Factory workers, and prison guards for parents. Growing up we were called river rats. That means living in a river town barefooted. River rat is another term for white trash. We were poor. My family was, and still is, uneducated. Looking back on my childhood I never met anyone who was actually educated. Many of them would tell you they were, but upon a thorough inspection that just wasn't the case. They, affluent people, avoided people like us. No one ever to my knowledge even recognized my plight. Instead, it was blamed on me. Much like the homeless here are being blamed. There was something wrong with me they would say. 

This experience in life makes it easier for me perhaps, to have empathy for others in similar situations.

Say you are a black kid in the ghetto. It can't be that hard to imagine. We all know it's going on. Imagine the only world you know is what your mother has allowed you to see. The things you see at school, on the streets, and what the TV gives you, which is probably going to be your main babysitter. It doesn’t take one long surfing YouTube to get a sense of ghetto culture in America if you don't want to go get first hand experience. It’s quite dangerous, particularly if you're white. Our life as this ghetto child would not be optimistic, or filled with positive experiences. It doesn’t mean we can’t make it out, but that it is a long upward struggle. We would know the white kids on the other side of town have a huge head start in the rat race. 

Just the fact of being immersed in everyone else's miseries by proximity would skew our worldview terribly. Even if we were white. Like standing in the field of a cell phone tower it cannot be dodged. Think of all those kids, poor ignorant people, gangsters, criminal minded people, filling those project buildings emitting the energy of suffering, anger, bitterness, hopelessness. It being no more our fault they were born there, than it is their own. 

Think about how our psyche is an electromagnetic force, and that we are all in what Jung called the collective unconscious. We simply cannot stand in the presence of others without being affected by whatever energy it is they are emitting. As children we are totally helpless to this force because we do not have anything else to measure it against.

Imagining this can fill one with a certain kind of hopelessness. How many people avoid even thinking about how this is happening right now because it is so uncomfortable? How many just immediately jump to blaming something out there? How many children suffer this fate? Doesn't thinking about it consciously cause us to wonder what can we do? The problem is so large it seems to cause a sense of hopelessness; isn't that what they feel?

Well...This study gives us exactly what we need; it tells us what we can do. Those children cannot possibly know what they are capable of perpetually surrounded by those doing so little. It seems clear to me just using this one study alone; that an actual education obviously affects the community as a whole. Not pretending to be educated, but an actual education. If you want to make a difference in the world, educate yourself, and then go shine your light into the dark.

Now which among us would be thinking to ourselves, while growing up at the bottom of the pecking order, with life barreling down on us, “You know, I’m making these bad decisions in life because there aren’t any educated people living near me.”? Who is doing that? I was not doing that when I was a kid. I thought I was surrounded by educated people. All the people I grew up around assured me they knew what they were doing. They had jobs, titles. I had no idea what was really going on, and neither do those in the ghetto. Clueless. No one really explained anything to us. Virtually no one had any idea what was going on.

There is a saying somewhere about how it goes. If a man depends on his pay check, his title, his social status regarding being right, he cannot be convinced he is wrong no matter what is said. If a person has devoted their whole life to a lie, convincing them they live a lie will be virtually impossible.

You see, this whole situation could go down in a couple of years where you live. What if you had lived in Detroit when the auto industry crashed? All of a sudden everyone with money just leaves. Or some inner city where a mass of foreigners, think here refugees from the Middle East, move in slowly over a two year span? Some event occurs, then the number of “educated professionals” drops below 5% and suddenly crime is doubling. It wouldn’t even take half of a decade to play out. All manner of reasons would be being used to explain the phenomenon. Politicians saying this and that, on and on. Passing stupid laws. No one really has a clue.  

The city in which I live just cleared two homeless camps at the beginning of the coldest week we've had this winter so far. No help for the abused. It's common knowledge to anyone with any kind of legit education at all that those homeless people were all terribly abused and neglected as children. They just went in and cleared the camps. There is obviously a shortage of legitimately educated people where I live, but I assure you, they will tell you all day long they know what the problem is.

How many of us have a story in our head for why we are doing what we are doing?  Considering this kind of information most of us really do not have any idea at all. If you are still trying to have empathy for being a black child in the projects, we’d probably blame our mother, or father, the man, the system. I've first hand experience dealing with inner city people. They have a long list of reasons why it is the way it is, and never not once did I hear one acknowledge the actual reason. If it were us, like them, we would most certainly blame rich white people. We wouldn't be far from wrong saying it that way. The truth would be something like, rich white people pretending they are educated.

Very few of us would be aware enough to know that we should be blaming the elders in our community for being so ignorant. We will have some story in our head for why things are the way they are, for why we are a gangster, or pregnant at sixteen, why we are robbing someone, dropping out of school, selling drugs, making daily decisions based on this story, when in reality that story is not even close. All we really needed was some legitimately educated people living in proximity to us while we were growing up.  

This puts the ghetto in a different light does it not? The trailer park? Nefarious things are going on there, not for lack of money, but for lack of knowledge. I think this makes it hit home how important it is to educate one’s self. It literally benefits everyone, even those you do not know personally, to actually be educated. It involves much more than merely having a job. There are a plethora of examples of people getting extremely rich who have no education at all. The most ignorant of people can acquire monetary wealth.

The truth is, those children raised in such situations, have no idea whatsoever that any other situation even exists. Far too many are grown up still believing it as adults. I call these children in grown up bodies. They may dream about it, the good life, but they have no idea what it actually is. A good life requires legitimate know how regarding life, and has nothing to do with money. How many black children have dreamed to be a white child so they wouldn’t have to live in the projects?  This too has been studied. Having no clue that most white children get totally raped and abused. They have no idea that most white people are neglected. What they are given is all there is to them. They cannot necessarily be blamed for their ignorance. If blame is to be laid, it is to be laid at the top. Every human that has ever lived is an exact evolutionary reaction to its environment. The problem is that this information is no where in their story, it’s no where in their environment. Very few of them ever get the chance to look it in the eyes.

Can you see why I say that positive thinking mumbo jumbo does not work? Why these supposed ‘gurus’, in their Cadillac Escalade's are a fraud? For every Sage, there is a Robbery. If they really wanted to make the world a better place, they could definitely go live in the ghetto, facing the negative head on. They would shine their light in the dark. Their mere presence would greatly alleviate the atmosphere of some of its ignorance. But if we asked them, they would say to rid yourself of all negativity, to avoid it, to rid it from your mind. To ignore it. To just clear it away. They do not realize that to get rid of it one must face it head on. What they are really saying though, is to act like it’s not there. They would have us avoid those places filled with negativity. That is apathy defined.

That is how they are creating negative, by their false idea of what positive is. We desperately need them to change their idea of what positive is. Positive is going into the dark. We need them to cancel the wave, not create it. They think by ignoring negative it will go away, when this in reality only creates more negative. It can be quite difficult to wrap the thinking around this idea for someone whose career, whose paycheck, whose way of life depends on ignoring the negative. Creating positive, creates negative. The universe balances all things. 

One more time. If someone is amassing ‘positive’ the universe will create ‘negative’ somewhere to balance it. If one does not understand what they are doing, they will be creating negative in places that will be unknown to them. Ask a rich person what they are doing to create homelessness and I'd almost bet the bank you get a blank stare, or better yet, an offended glare. If a place exists that is all ‘positive’ there must be a place too, that is all ‘negative’ to achieve balance.

It is best to never attempt to amass only positive.  

When things are out of balance, problems are occurring. Problems is a strong word perhaps. Discord maybe. Disharmony. Suffering will be occurring in order to create change, to create balance. Homeless exists to let those who don't think they are the problem, become aware they are the problem. It’s physics playing out in human drama. We are light. Like the ghetto, trailer park, or rural small town, lots of seemingly bad things are happening in order to stimulate change. The balance of educated people is gone. Suffering creates growth; this type of growth is education. Suffering is the teacher that brings about greater awareness.

I think here lies a perfect way to actually measure education. Not just people with jobs, cars, and houses, but actual educated people; it's reflected directly in the social issues. I currently live in a small city filled with higher education institutions, colleges everywhere, yet homeless people are everywhere; they cannot actually be educated for these issues to exist here as they do. A super expensive car, house, and toys does not equate with actually being educated. Acquiring wealth in a culture of greed is an algorithm and requires very little intelligence. A mass of people with very few educated individuals will have considerably more social problems.  

One last fact. Our economic system is a closed system. At any given moment in time, freeze the system. The more money one person has, the less someone else must have. If there is a guy on one side of town hoarding money he does not actually need, there will be another man, on the other side of town, without any money that he actually needs. I can't say it enough, the Universe balances all things. I doubt very much this is something someone who doesn't know how to think will understand at all.