I imagine by now I’ve offended so many Sedona Method purists that it’s not funny any more.

If you can’t see the humor around you, then you really need to release some more.

Like that joke I use: “You can get anything and everything you want in life if you only KISS BUTT.” Now, this is probably taken seriously by some career government officials who use that particular strategy to get re-elected term after term.

But the code in it is very simple:

• Keep It Simple, Sweetheart. Always apply the simplest release technique possible for any situation.
• Don’t move off your Butt to get what you need/want. Use only releasing to get it to show up in your life.

KISS BUTT – see? Funny, no? Well, at least you’ll remember it – which is the point.

The Universe can be seen to be one huge joke. And the people still here never got the punchline. Far from being the butt of the joke, they actually started the joke themselves.

For the Universe is built out of limits. We agreed to have limits and so we have them.

I do a lot of volunteer work for an outdoor education center called Scattering Fork. We take small groups out in the woods on what is callled a low-ropes course, and have them do team challenges – which make them think and act outside any particular box they are in. I’ve started telling them that there are the 1) rules for that particular challenge, the safety rules for that challenge, and anything else they want to make up for themselves. The first two sets you have to follow – but you can do whatever you want with the third set.

And it takes awhile before they figure out that they set far more limits than the challenge requires.

That is really a microcosm of this Universe we are in. None of this that surrounds you is serious. Start releasing all the time, consistently, and you’ll see this to be true. You’ll find yourself calmly cheerful, optimistically expectant for the next thing that the Universe is bringing you.

People who are serious about the world around them haven’t figured out what the joke is. And might not for a very long time.

But those who have will just smile quietly and ask you if you need any help with that…

Because that is actually how easy it all is. This world around us is a piece of cake, a cake-walk.

So remember, always:

All you have to do in life to get whatever you want is KISS BUTT.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

Waking early the other day, I was taking the extra time to just consider recent events and resolve my day’s plans before I headed into them.

The oddest thing occurred to me – do we own ourselves, really?

(Warning – standby – rant alert.)

Here’s some points that have come across my lines recently:

• Government seems to be taking a larger run out of our lives (like enforcing healthcare choices), whether we want it to or not.
• Congress and elected officials seem to be listening to lobbyists and party officals more than the voters who elected them.
• Our food has increasingly had to be shipped in from thousands of miles away instead of being grown where we can ask and find out what went into it.
• We are being discouraged from working and being independent, since if we did make a fortune to retire on, we’d have it all taxed away – but people who never earn enough to pay taxes are given money from those who do.
• Various scams abound, from credit card companies and usury-level charges along with extraneous fees, to career politicians with their perks, to interest groups who are taking government money (ours) and being paid to promote some extremist agenda, to “Humane Societies” who aren’t trying to handle excess dogs and cats, but are rather trying to make us all into vegans by driving our farmers out of business with regulations.
• Our state-run, mainstream media won’t report on public demonstrations with more people attending than the President’s inauguration, but will tell us about a flu which is less harmful than the regular one – and that we should all line up and pay for shots to protect ourselves against this fiction.
• While the earth has been growing colder since the late 1990′s, our pollution has been growing greater but the only solutions is to what: raise taxes and cost of living for everyone.

So it seemed to me that we needed to stop and take all this into account and see what we could actually do about it.

Of course, the bulk of the problems above really deal with government issues – we are trusting an unresponsive, lobbyist infected government to handle situations we could and should handle ourselves.

Let’s look at some simple solutions to these:

1. People have stayed healthy for many more years than there have ever been insurance companies. And some of the cheapest health care right now has been started in some states where you pay a monthly fee directly to the doctors’ office in order to keep you well – not just when you are sick. No middleman – no one betting against your survival – no one saying you now can’t get any further treatment. And guess what – it’s cheaper by more than half.

2. Career politicians (and career government workers) are really a self-perpetuating business all by themselves. According to the Golden Rule, you have to give before you can get. But government has to take before it can give. And do you know who is writing all these bills that the Congressmen don’t have time to read? Lobbyists and professional government clerical workers – neither of which are elected, both protected from being fired for incompetence. Politicians only want to be re-elected so they can get the perks they voted in for themselves. They live in a different world and even if convicted still get a posh annual retirement income of hundreds of thousands each year – while they are in prison.

3. While there is all these complaints of Cargill, ADM, and Tyson controlling our food chain – no one is telling the stories about how community gardens have been springing up on empty lots inside our cities, as well as on rooftops. Where people are contributing their own labor and getting – literally – the fruits of their endeavors. There is the movement of locally-grown food, some call it the 100-mile diet, getting your food from within a hundred-mile radius of where you live. That way you could know what was in it and maybe even lend a hand in raising it, if you wanted.

4. Taxes have less and less to do with supporting the common good, and more for supporting the friends of whoever is in power in government. (Look at where those “stimulus” funds are actually going to…) Factually, if you take the recommendations given by the IRS guidelines, the most inexpensive way to work is for yourself as a corporate entity and increasingly resorting to barter of your business goods. That is the least-taxed method of making a viable living these days.

5. It looks like all the biggest scams are government sponsored or sanctioned. Credit card companies used to be regulated by the states and had to keep their interest fees low until the Feds in their “OCC” elected to take this right away from the States – and credit fees doubled, to nearly 1/3rd of the original loan. The Humane Society of the United States is actually anti-pet and anti-breeder and anti-farmer. Anything that has four-legs and reproduces is under their auspice – and is getting laws passed to make it more difficult to have pets or eat meat. Yet is runs no animal shelters – and had closed many down, destroying all their occupants. They are a special interest in Washington and do nothing humane. But government scams abound – since the government has a monopoly, who can stop them?

6. Our media has never been accurate in its whole history. They have always, always written sensationalist stories to sell advertising space. Any idea of “Journalist Ethics” was invented by Academics in order to sell classes for journalist wannabe’s. And when they lose their joint control of the air waves to cable and the Internet, they complain about how these “aren’t really journalists” – thank Gawd – and continue to pander to various government officials for “scoops”. The mainstream media has never, ever reflected the real world. Their soap opera’s actually get the closest, way more than their “reality” shows. (Who eat bugs in the jungle for a living?)

7. Read the actual NASA reports and you’ll see the global warming issue is a hoax. Warmest year on record was about 1998, last two years we have had record snowfalls and cold internationally, this summer was one of the coolest on record in decades for many states. Who started this rumor? A career politician. But is CO2 rising? Yes. Effect on global temperature – nothing. Our problem with CO2 starts with our governments, which expel this by the megaton every year and have nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, we truck our food in from thousands of miles away with all that exhaust and refuse permits to set up windfarms off some politicians’ East Coast homes. (Because they are unsightly?) Solutions to this fictional global warming are to tell polluting companies they have to buy credits from less-polluting companies. But the states with politicians in charge get more credits assigned to those states – instead of states with huge forests and pastures filled with grazing animals. (Oh, finally tracked down that other fiction. Excess cow flatulence is caused by feeding them corn and other grains, not their natural diet of grass – which most cattle are raised on for the bulk of their lives.)

- – - -

OK, take a breath, slow down.

The world isn’t all bad. Nor is it all that bad.

But the question comes back – Who Owns You? Or — Do You Really Own Yourself?

Consider this – if you own property and don’t pay the taxes on it, what happens? Some government employees are able to come in and seize your properties for the back taxes with guns and put you in prison if you resist. If you use a gun to defend your property, they are able to use lethal force (kill you) in their “defense”. And your relatives probably can’t even sue for “wrongful death”.

However, if you don’t make enough money to pay taxes because you don’t work, then you qualify for the government renting a house on your behalf and even giving you all sorts of handouts. Who pays for these? Oh, they tell some people who do work for a living to cough up – or they will come and take it, this all backed by gun-toting government employees, against which you can’t defend yourself.

Now if your property is owned by a corporation that you run, the taxes are much less and if it’s a non-profit, you might not pay taxes at all. Similarly, if you don’t really work for a living on anyone’s paper, and barter for everything you own, your taxes are very low, if not non-existent. But you do work for a living and control your own property – and don’t pay for someone else’s upkeep.

Can you control government? No.

Can you improve the government you have? Yes.

Solutions you can do to own yourself

• Let’s do one thing – make all government employees (including the elected ones) all term limited. States can do this for their own Senators and Representatives, they don’t have to get a Federal law passed (which will never happen).
• Another thing: educate yourself on taxes and learn to avoid high taxes by being smart. Only the dumb rich are taxed. Only dumb governments tax the dumb rich enough to make them move to lower-tax states. (Ask New York and California how this works. Both are failed experiments.)
• Vote your representatives out of office on a regular basis, otherwise. Let someone else have a chance.
  How about sunset provisions in every law, including the ones which have been on the books forever? This would mean government officials have to re-vote in all laws every few years to keep them on the books. (Like the Civil Rights Act, which is now being used to protect White minority voters.)
• Get your food all locally. Help grow it yourself to keep your costs down.
• How about insisting your city start recycling materials (they can actually sell the metal and plastic today, while organic materials can be composted back into – yes – local city gardens, or parks, or local farms. (Why does NYC keep dumping it into the ocean – isn’t that just more pollution?) And so we won’t have to spend all that fuel and CO2 trucking, training, and shipping food from California to NY, or Florida to California, or Arkansas to Alaska…
• Quit watching TV. Period. Rots your brain.
• Cut off your power usage by unplugging anything that doesn’t have to be on (like a refrigerator). See if you can’t get a solar cell to run some devices (like night lights). Figure out how you could have the same quality of living without extra doo-dads that someone sold you during a TV infomercial…

Those are just some of the ideas I’ve had for your to reclaim your life for yourself.

You can own yourself.

It will take some work.

But the more you can limit government and work it out for yourself – or in cooperation with your neighbors – then the saner life we can all have.

Try it.

Go ahead – leave your comments below. Agree? Disagree? Could care less?

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

(For part one, part two – visit those links. Meanwhile, we join our author after he just explained how he figured out how to make more money doing less on his grass fed beef farm…)

Now, this all doesn’t look like much money for having to go out and check our beef cattle twice a day, every day. Certainly wouldn’t pay your expenses if you think you have to make $50K per year to make a living. Practically, the Feds say you are below “poverty level” if you make less than $24K for a family of four (which is something like $16K if you are an individual – but they still take taxes out of almost every paycheck and hold it for you until the end of the year. Such nice folks we have in government.)

Means that most rural families are “poor” according to the government and are so eligible for massive handouts from the rest of the country which are comparatively “rich” and can afford to pay for everything we “need.”

But when you look at a lifestyle where you can raise everything you eat and if you don’t buy the hype that you have to have a color TV and a boat to take to the lake on summer weekends – or a 3,000 square foot house and all the latest gizmo’s which make life easier. When you look at life as a very simple operation (if you leave Madison Avenue and the Government out of the equation), then your actual cost of living is very small.

Once I got my credit card bills paid off and started working as a contracted laborer (freelance web design), I found out that I didn’t have the commuting expense to work and back so many times a week. I quit watching TV and suddenly didn’t feel “compelled” to buy this or that – or even see the latest movies which were coming out.

I started having more time to myself, and felt more at ease and secure and healthier.

No, I don’t “make” anywhere near the $50K slot. But I don’t have to work for someone else except every now and then – and I don’t have to leave home to do it. The quality of my food is completely under my own control. What vegetables and beef and fruit I eat are how industrious and efficient I am with my time and the resources around me.

True, my parents bought and paid for this farm with their own jobs and I am simply reaping this harvest based on their work. But I also keep the farm running and my Mother live a comfortable retired life, not having to fix things or simply rent out the farm because she can’t manage it.

My income is also taken out in non-taxable ways – such as barter and payment in other “currencies” than money. Working for my room and board is one example.

I then spend the bulk of my time on stuff I want to do, and am not taxed for thinking or writing or blogging. I give tons of stuff away that is really useful.

So I don’t really feel I need a lot to live on. My health is excellent and I don’t carry insurance. Don’t really need to. Isn’t insurance something a little counter-productive, since you are hedging a bet against yourself?  The taxes I do pay whenever I buy something or license something – all these go toward supporting the schools and hospitals and roads. Even though I mostly don’t use them.

I don’t need a lot of income, so don’t need to pay tax on it.

The result is that I can say that a farm which makes $16,000 a year from raising beef cattle is sustainable and outrageously profitable. At that rate, I could buy a used tractor every year. Or get a loan for more land and pay it off in a decade or so.  Or simply stockpile some savings instead of giving it away to insurance companies – so if I did have to get medical treatment, I could simply pay the bill that way. (Like I do with my dentist – I was paying more for insurance and the deductible than I was in just paying for the treatment when I needed it.)

That’s the Kool-Aid I make. Look at the incredible prosperity you are already surrounded with. And quit listening to people who say you have to buy this and that. Quit figuring that you need approval from others, or inflated ideas of security, or that you need to be controlled or control others. These three points – approval, control, security – Levenson’s Sedona Method says are the base for all the chronic thinking we have floating around our heads. Get rid of those base considerations and the thought can simply be let go, released. Keep doing that consistently or intensively, and your mind quiets right down. You aren’t habitually thinking so much – and can actually quit having to “think your way” through life.

And you can come up with ideas about how you don’t need to “make a lot of money” to be abundantly prosperous and fulfilled.

There’s also the benefits of going through the pasture, checking your cows, scratching them where they seem to like it – and getting the satisfaction from those simple actions. Raising calves and watching them grow – like any crop, but more mobile.

The point is that all your “pay” for living in this universe isn’t coming to you in a check or through an electronic account somewhere. And it doesn’t need some government approval or license. Take a walk in the early morning or at sunset and see if you are getting paid very amply for the little time you invest.

That’s the meal I cook, the Kool-Aid I drink . Join me.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

I imagine by now I’ve offended so many Sedona Method purists that it’s not funny any more.

If you can’t see the humor around you, then you really need to release some more.

Like that joke I use: “You can get anything and everything you want in life if you only KISS BUTT.” Now, this is probably taken seriously by some career government officials who use that particular strategy to get re-elected term after term.

But the code in it is very simple:

• Keep It Simple, Sweetheart. Always apply the simplest release technique possible for any situation.
• Don’t move off your Butt to get what you need/want. Use only releasing to get it to show up in your life.

KISS BUTT – see? Funny, no? Well, at least you’ll remember it – which is the point.

The Universe can be seen to be one huge joke. And the people still here never got the punchline. Far from being the butt of the joke, they actually started the joke themselves.

For the Universe is built out of limits. We agreed to have limits and so we have them.

I do a lot of volunteer work for an outdoor education center called Scattering Fork. We take small groups out in the woods on what is callled a low-ropes course, and have them do team challenges – which make them think and act outside any particular box they are in. I’ve started telling them that there are the 1) rules for that particular challenge, the safety rules for that challenge, and anything else they want to make up for themselves. The first two sets you have to follow – but you can do whatever you want with the third set.

And it takes awhile before they figure out that they set far more limits than the challenge requires.

That is really a microcosm of this Universe we are in. None of this that surrounds you is serious. Start releasing all the time, consistently, and you’ll see this to be true. You’ll find yourself calmly cheerful, optimistically expectant for the next thing that the Universe is bringing you.

People who are serious about the world around them haven’t figured out what the joke is. And might not for a very long time.

But those who have will just smile quietly and ask you if you need any help with that…

Because that is actually how easy it all is. This world around us is a piece of cake, a cake-walk.

So remember, always:

All you have to do in life to get whatever you want is KISS BUTT.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

While 97% of all you see out there in Internet Marketing is scam-laden bunk, so are 97% of their customers.

This planet, and all cultures on it, runs on 9%-97% subconscious/unconscious reaction-only.  And that is what passes for “popular”. Sorry I even had to finally find this out. This doesn’t mean anyone has to get pessimistic about how the place is run, just that any forward progress has it’s work cut out for it.

Because most of what passes for “progress” is just old stuff re-hashed. Like anything, anything out of Washington in general or your local politician’s mouth specifically. Because they were elected based on popularity.

Our last few presidents have proved this over and over and over. They have about 6-7 months of sustained popularity and after that, they are attacked for so much as getting into a secure limo to ride somewhere.

And Congress by polls is the most popular when it does nothing and just sits there – and local Congress people can come home to get re-elected, saying that they used all their power to stop the other side from doing anything and still got most of our tax money to come back to the state and it’s people.

So? What kind of result is that? We pay them to do nothing and make sure nothing gets done?

It just struck me today when I was critiquing a marketing company, going back to what’s hit my lines as some sort of scam. When I looked over their operation, it was all that type of stuff. All scammy, hit them where their emotions sit. Get them to spend money.

These guys were all about money as the key point to their touted “success”. But the actual self-help products they were pushing were disguised. Most of these at their base were actually there to help people improve their lives. But what were they pushing? More and better: wealth, success, personal-esteem, health, money, approval, personal power, better control over your life. Things. Stuff. Junk. Tricks.  Not a mention of peace of mind, personal freedom, unlimited happiness. It was all “how to get more money”, “how to attracts (blank) into y0ur life”, “do nothing and get everything”.

If you’re familiar with the Scam Free book, what do you see? They are pushing feelings and basic desires. They are using the same buttons scammers use. All the good which is found in the materials and services they sell is hidden under a bunch of typically-crass and overworked, hackneyed tripe which came out years ago from Madison Avenue Psychology Studies.

And these guys say they “really get” social media marketing. Yawn. Look over their sales pages. They are simply the same classic “feel good” pages with all the elements any successful sales page has. And success in this instance is “clicks through and buys” or “clicks through and goes on a mailing list so they can buy later.” They measure their success by how many dupes they’ve managed to keep on their mailing lists.

What do I do with most mailing lists? Opt-out. Why? Because they are sending me really stupid offers and so think I am really stupid.

I just don’t need more stupid people on my lines – or condescending ones. Especially those who are only “selling” something. Much less stuff I don’t need.  Because you know you are going to get scammed.

Look, while this might be effective, it really only works on about 3 percent of those you sign up. That’s where your money is coming from. And these people are really, actually either consumers or customers. They simply consume everything you sell them, or are creatures of habit (custom) and just keep coming back for more, regardless. (And they probably work in factory, cubicle, or union/government jobs where they have to make very damned few decisions in life – so being able to buy anything on their own is an esteem bump.)

The whole world is extremely long-tail – more than we realize – so it’s split up into billions or more niches which are interactive with each other. So now we can each “sell” to our niche-customers/consumers and make our own pile of money, can’t we?

Barf.

I don’t know about you, but I buy once I’ve checked out the quality for myself and then what my friends, family, and associates  have to say about it. And online, this is the social networks we belong to. So Heflin, among others, say to just limit yourself to those social networks you can really participate in – meaning the ones you like to participate in because they’ll actually give you something you want in return.

And leave the bulk of them behind.

Literally 1 in a million will really be giving out dependably good products and incredible value with every offer. The rest are really just wanting your money on an irregular or regular basis to keep their own coffers and pockets lined.  To the vast bulk of companies out there – you are nothing but a number which can be replaced with another number. This even extends to jobs and employers these days. Been there, done that.

Value and cherish the people you find, or who find you, that you can really, really trust and give you more than you could ever expect to repay. And be that person yourself: give more than others expect and make each product you give far above the value expected or received in return.

There are so very many authors who cover this point that it’s just not funny. But then, I’ve narrowed the authors I study down to those who are consistent bestsellers, most of whom died last century or more.

So I’m picky. For good reason.

Be picky.

And help others get picky.

That’s our real road out of this mess we are surrounded with.

- – - -

Internet Marketing Links of possible interest:

Learn How To Excel In Your Business Using Social Media and Web 2.0-Free Seminar

…with top internet marketing experts for the advantage of all. Each marketing expert is sure to give … See all stories on this topic

‘Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?’ by Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins’ latest blog post is titled “Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?”. [Shawn Collins' Blog] Shawn Collins’ latest blog post: Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites? Shawn Says, “Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites? presentation from Affiliate Summit West 2007, which took place January 21-23, 2007 in Las Vegas, NV”. Search…

Internet Marketing Ideas | SnadBox: Search Engine Optimization …

…Internet Marketing Ideas – http://www.internetmarketingideas.info/

Marketing an Online Business In 2010 | Legitimate Home Based Business

…Marketing an online business is a very important thing that you have to do if you are involved in a affiliate marketing business or if you have an internet. Legitimate Home Based Business – http://www.onlinemoneymakin.com/blog/

‘Keyword Research Tools And Best Practices’ by Sean Rasmussen

…Most internet marketers start developing a list of keywords by thinking. They think about their business, think about the products or services they are offering, and then think about how ordinary consumers might search to find these items.” Keyword Research Tools And Best Practices… Sean Rasmussen’s Blog

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

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.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

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…)

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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…)

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

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?!?

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

You create the world around you. Actually. But the trick is to stay in harmony with everything.

Most people are stuck at just creating things around them. They are wanting that faster car, more stylish dress or suit, the huge house. Along with this, they want people to think well of them, to admire them. And they want to keep it all safe.

To have all this, they also support various scams. Insurance, so that it can’t get taken away – and they pay huge annual fees for this. Government, so that someone has police forces and attorneys and court systems to protect what they own – of course, that costs them in increased taxes and numerous laws. Any corporation will pay out additional sums in advertising and lobbyist firms so that they can continue to control whatever scene they want.

There are just three desires which keep all this happening – control, security, and approval. Lester Levenson worked this out awhile ago.

Now, supposing people really just worked out how to create the world around them they wanted instead of working so hard with all these scams? The funny thing is, once a person really starts to live in harmony with the world, anything you want or need just shows up.

All those old philosophies have held this as true for a very long time. Remember that old saying, “Consider the lilies of the field, they neither sow nor weave, but are clothed in the finest rainment…” Jesus was trying to tell us this over 2,000 years ago. Buddha said similar, as did Lao Tsu in the Tao. When you go back to the Sanskrit and earlier to Huna teachings, you keep finding the same thing over and over.

We are all here to create a better place, to establish more harmony for all those around us. And of course, that also includes the environment and all the various other species we co-exist with on this planet. It also means people who believe differently and live different lifestyles.

But once you get to this point of just accepting what is around you and releasing everything you consider non-survival to you, it all gets quite simple.

Some key points:

• Once you get up to the point you can have anything you want, you don’t have to have a lot of possessions.
• You’ll always get your Happiness, Joy, and Peace from within. So the external world doesn’t affect you.
• There will still be Goals, but they will be intuitional – as are the rest of your life at that point. Everything just flows through you.

For me, this came as a concept that you are constantly working to help the perfection of every atom of every entity and thing around you to shine forth more completely. Because everything is generally perfect anyway. Just might need some help to show it.

The point is that you drop the ego and just Be.

Releasing becomes constant and you simply keep going up to higher harmonious levels. And the rest of the world around you (which you actually created) starts getting more harmonious as well. That’s just the way it all goes.

So just quit all the efforting and start getting more and more stuff showing up around you by simply releasing.

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”