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It is not only natural, but one of the critical reasons for human survival is that we band together and project power in a concerted way against the things that may pose peril to us. It is the force of numbers that allows cultures and groups to survive. The “rugged individualist” is really only possible with prior establishment of a strong group with collectivist tendencies.

So what is the problem with concentrating the force of human will. Most people are generally concerned with others and can be trusted with the reigns of power. The problem with focused power tends to occur when the centralized authority looks to expand, or defend from perceived threat. There are also opportunities for individuals to indulge should they possess the propensity for such behavior and find themselves in control of a powerful apparatus.

Many areas of concentrated power can be destructive to individuals that are not necessarily in violation of generally accepted moral principle.

One of the typical concentrations of power is business. Large corporations tend to make soulless decisions that can have very damaging effects to those with the least amount of resistant force. Most of the time, it is financial impoverishment that is the greatest fear here, and all of the things that can happen in the chain of circumstances derived from the impoverishment of potentially large groups of people. It seems that the re-allocation of resources toward those with the ability to work within corporate structure tends to be both motivation and eventual outcome should no coercive force work in opposition to innate human drive.

While this is a concentration of power that can be said to have both good and bad results, there is no doubt that there are greater powers in the world. No corporation can withstand military opposition, indeed most cannot even withstand the backlash from large segments of the population.

Another common concentration of power involves religious institutions. Religious institutions have, over the course of centuries, been a highly impactful area of concentrated human power. There will always be a segment of the population that will be zealots regardless of the particular stripe of religious belief. There are currently a group of men called “morality police” in one particular theocratic part of the world. Many religions call for death to vocal non-believers, and have the power to enact such disgraceful abuses. Almost no religion has seen long term longevity without an abuse of those outside the group of core believers.

Of course, the greatest mass murderer in history is government. Sometimes the previously mentioned concentrations of power manage to gain control of the true demon. The establisher of law and controller of military can find no equal in either the religious institutions or the corporate power centers. That is one reason that we may see each of those types of organizations assume control of the real power. Governments allocate for themselves the right to take life or property without consequence, so long as power is secure. It is and always will be the biggest bully on the block. This is one reason that the founding fathers of this country sought to cripple its ability to project power without gaining full consent from the governed.

If anything has ever struck a metaphysical chord with me it is the topic of fortune. Luck has had a reputation through the ages of being handed down directly from God. I do believe that humans attach importance to things that they can’t control and to explain the unexplainable. It is just part of who we are. When we see a person of talent skill and character(virtue) who is unable to achieve the type of success that seems within their grasp, it is gut-wrenching. Particularly in those that we love. We all hope for good, or at least neutral fortune to touch our own children so that they can realize their full capacity. Conversely, it is unseemly for someone to reach beyond their ability due to good fortune. Within man-made societal structure, one could expect to see ability and merit have a greater bearing on the outcome, assuming one resides within an evolved modern setting. The universe, however, is not as kind. I think we can all look no further than our own families to see examples of capable people who, through no perceived fault of their own, seem unable to make an impact commensurate to their ability. At lunchtime from work yesterday I drove past the cemetery that holds the remains of my great grandmother Leva Olga Sipress. She lived to be quite old so I was able to have very clear memories of her from my youth, though it is difficult for a young person to truly connect with someone of that age. I guess mostly I remember the chores that we did at her house. I also remember being somewhat uncomfortable for her as a teenager seeing her body begin to breakdown to the point where her vision and hearing were greatly affected. Her stone says that she was born in 1887 and died in 1983. I knew some of her story and some of it was apparent from the stones next to hers. To the right of her is the stone for her daughter Alice. She died at the age of two, and from what I was told it was from causes that are easily remedied in our time, but were still lethal in those days. What could she have been had she had the chance? It is safe to say that dying at the age of two means that the potential could never be realized in her life. That type of misfortune was certain to be treated fatalistically and said to be the mysterious workings of God, especially in those days when relatively little was still known about modern treatments for disease. To the left of Leva was her husband Herman. He was an engineer for the railroad when an explosion killed him in 1923. He was nine years older than his wife, but that still puts him at about 45 when he died all those years ago. My knowledge of the railroad would tell me that it did require a man of some skill and above-average intellect to be an actual engineer on the railroad both then and now. One cannot be sure whether or not he was working in a position commensurate to his ability in those days, but it seems unlikely that he was a buffoon in that position. His passing had an impact on generations to follow including my own. His son, my Grandfather Art, was a musician. He was also a bit of a tinkerer. Because the main breadwinner was no longer around Art left home at age 14 and traveled with a circus playing trombone in the band. Not a particularly wise move, and certainly not one that would lead to a great measure of financial success. While he played and loved music for his whole life, his time as a tinkerer provided the greatest benefit to his own family (he ended up having seven children including my mother) in jobs that were considered fairly skilled for the times. He was a machine maintenance man at a large manufacturing facility and a horn tester at a local musical instrument manufacturing company. I wonder what paths he may have chosen had he a father that could give both advice and financial aid in getting and education. Since my mother was a single mother, I spent enough time with him to know that he was not an intellectual slouch. In addition, I can say he was the hardest working man I had ever then or now met in my life. He could afford to send only one of his children to college but largely was unable to move their station in life much higher than his own. I am explaining all of this simply because it is my belief that wealth, affluence and personal capability are all very difficult to realize full potential in one lifetime. It takes several generations to create a lasting change in a family with potential. That one accident created enough difficulty to delay our family’s process of evolution by at least 1 and maybe 2 generations in my estimation. The generation older than me is filled with bright people of unrealized potential. I am not saying that all of them should be wealthy, successful and philanthropic, but most of them seem more capable than others I have met along my journey who have worked in closer proximity to their capabilities. I grant that this is an oversimplification, but it does dramatize the point that both fortune and virtue must work together for a person to do the most good in his or her time on Earth.

While my grandfather’s family may have been struck by misfortune, my grandmother’s family seemed a different lesson. My Great Grandfather on her side (last name of Cochran) appeared to be of some talent and affluence in his own time. I have heard stories that range from ownership of hotels and amusement parks to the owner of the Ohio Power Company. It would appear that he made some progress in allowing further generations to have a positive impact on the world on a large scale. In this case, as the family mythology goes, it appears that his major deficiency may have been in training the next generation. Beyond my Grandmother, who becomes a kind of black sheep for marrying a musician, he had a number of sons. Whatever skills may have been with the father do not appear to have been transferred to the sons. Within one generation the sons consumed the ability to make deep impacts into their environment. Whatever the virtues of these younger men were, they were not able to build upon earlier generations. This is truly a case where fortune was in their favor, but virtue was not.

Hopefully, the lesson here lies in the recognition that both fortune and virtue working together allow some large productive contribution to humankind. While most of the people in these stories gave more than they took, I can’t help but wonder how much human capacity lay unused. I am aware of my own inevitable journey to anonymity, and it is a painful foresight. I do take some solace in the fact that I have made a solid attempt at being the quiet cog, pushing the possibilities of moral and spiritual contributions by those generations that may follow me.

Cultural diversity and its importance to the educational system in America can be put into a hierarchal priority just under merit, reasoning skills, discipline, commitment and the modeling of success. I hope that most people are honest enough to admit that other than anecdotal evidence it does not appear that there has been any empirical evidence to show that results from knowledge base are more widely expanded within diverse groups vs. a more monochromatic group of people. The problem associated with an emphasis on “diversity” is that there is no acknowledgment of anything beyond a canvas of gray-toned judgment, and no attempt to model superior merit within each culture, simply an attempt to include each culture without an eye to results. Examine the most successful people for patterns, and once those habits have been identified, duplication should serve better than a mishmash average of behaviors. Imagine any task that requires skill of some kind. A group coalescing around the merit of diversity would always lose to a group formed around task-centered merit who may or may not be culturally diverse. It seems to me that you handicap yourself by placing too much importance on this issue. Maybe I take some issue with diversity on a subconscious level because I have become the target for removal from the education system. I can only hope and pray that capitalism will hinder the cultural diversity priority from ever reaching the job market. When profits are on the line and jobs are at stake, most employers could care less about skin color…results are of far more interest.

Diversity of thought has a place. I think that is really the goal behind all this business of cultural diversity. The question is: How much does culture affect diverse thought and is there any quantifiable way to gauge the benefit. It seems that within any culture there are wide-ranging and diverse thought processes, but do they follow patterns based upon empirical data. If it were up to me, candidates would be hired and students would be accepted without ever revealing the color of their skin. I can’t help suspecting that diversity is a sham catchphrase, and has become a simple tool to promote an affirmative action agenda from what must be admitted to be left-wing educational dogmatists as a way to distract from the true goal of meritocracy. If those who want only a left-wing student body to be educated in the great state of Michigan are now reading this essay, I will certainly be under more strict scrutiny with regard to merit and will most likely be rejected, given smaller justification for this action than my more diverse peers. If you simply seek to hide from the truth in order to advocate a political agenda, I can take consolation in there fact that I want no part and would never accept an invitation from politically correct and filtered education. If you are truly open-minded and want a diverse group of thinkers, I’m your man. I can guarantee that if you would be open enough to accept ideas and thoughts that will be expressed even when they run in diversity to your educators, I’m your man. If you want to fill your school with people who will honestly face the truth above all and be open-minded to better ideas regardless of culture, I’m your man.

How do you know what the future will bring? I believe that prognostication is the result of an internal calculator that runs the math for all life’s possibilities. The better the calculator, the more accurate one is at taking advantage of some opportunity. But beyond the potential to grasp possibility for great opportunity, one can also see the metaphorical train coming down the track. In many ways, in a society that is hyper focused on safety, it is easier to see dangerous possibilities. It is far easier to spot these things after one becomes a parent and becomes more deeply involved in the actuary of child safety.

For some reason, be it inexperience or machismo, young men are especially prone to ignoring their internal calculator at key moments in their life. Every day the news tells the stories of the premature death of young men and women who seem externally to be so short sighted and unwise as to evoke disdain. What is it that could drive these people to do things that belie even the most basic level of common sense? And beyond that, are there those who never allow themselves to engage in dangerous situation with very little return? I think the answer to these two questions are related.

For reasons as varied as peer pressure, the need to fit in, avoiding humiliation, impressing females or the simple thrill of danger I have had many moments in my life that could have easily ended in an obituary in the local news and the disdain from people familiar with the level of stupidity it took to engage in such activity. Even more, I cannot think of any of my peers growing up who did not engage themselves in activity that could have ended the same way. Our group was lucky enough not to suffer any casualties, but I would chalk that up to something more along the line of randomness than wisdom or skill.

What skills and knowledge should I have had to gain the things I wanted without allowing exposure to the potential for an early death?

Consider the few items previously mentioned. First, it would be impossible as a human being to shed the need to fit in, and I don’t think a comprehensive understanding of peer pressure occurs, at least not with the people I knew, until later in life. Second, there are also measurements that can be made with regard to the opposite sex and what sort of activities actually achieve the desired effect. Lastly, the issue of avoiding humiliation can put a person into situations in which choices seem to narrow and can become very dangerous with long lasting irreversible effect.

After consideration of these things, I would be inclined to address each topic singularly. For those that I love, some considerations should be made with regard to the release of adrenaline, impressing the opposite sex and avoiding humiliation in ways that do not involve the exposure to dangerous situations and have unnecessarily heightened risk levels.

Over the course of my years, I have found many things that give one a sense of danger. Examples might be public speaking, or an event that involves a stage of some kind. Athletic competition lends itself well to anxious moments of adrenaline filled mania. Even the competition of business can be tension filled bursts of anxious desperation. The primary point is that only the simple minded equate the bodies reaction to fight or flight impulses exclusively to high risk activity. There are many activities that allow you to simulate and practice danger, and still receive the same endorphin benefit.

Bold interaction with the opposite sex can be quite thrilling, and is actually a process that can be written down as a set of procedures. We are stuck with our specific mental and physical attributes regardless of polish, but the techniques are actually something that can be grasped and used by most people. A little research can go a long way, and this skill should not be underestimated. Indeed, this is a skill that should be acquired early. As pointed out in other essays, the selection and acquisition of a mate is a hugely undeveloped skill for most (even though permanent mate selection is not the specific topic addressed here and comes later in the process), particularly considering that it has such a significant bearing on the quality of life.

Avoiding humiliation is really a function of the peer group involved. Some groups value dangerous activity and you will find yourself engaging in very risky behavior based on the simple human desire to fit in and not be held in disdain. No human can subdue the instinctual need to fit in, so for this issue I believe it is important to have control over who is present in the peer group to which you belong. What is your perception of “cool”? My guess is that when you break it down, this attribute occurs more often than you think within most people. Even the most antisocial criminal can appear “cool”, depending on the definition. Unfortunately, most people use the cool factor as the first peer filter when several other prerequisites should be considered first. Indeed, when thinking about what attributes to list as of superior value to “cool”, my own list became so long as to become unwieldy for insertion into a short essay. Selection of peer groups is another essay unto itself, but the short version is to avoid those who are self-indulgent and consider people who are honest, will protect each other and push each other to improve.

Keep in mind, danger occurs naturally in the animal kingdom and man may be the only species to artificially infuse his life with known unnecessary risk. While it is true that one must be able to act calmly in dangerous situations, this skill can easily be developed without imperiling your earthly existence.