ABOUT THIS BOOK

YOU NOW HOLD IN YOUR DIGITAL HANDS the free online very early draft version of Philosopher, Social Theorist, Writer, Journalist, Musician, Inventor, and most importantly, Agape Master Vincent Frank De Benedetto's Magnum Opus and master work, LOVE:  Properly Understood, the Most Powerful Social Force Available to Humankind.

[© 2020 Vincent Frank De Benedetto]

This is the bible that the present age, with its troubling amalgam of human problems and miseries both ancient (crime, hatred, violence, greed, bigotry), and modern (terror, hacking, climate, disinformation, nuclear war) is desperate for. This volume not only asserts, as do other other vaguely similar written works, that we should love others, but presents singular and comprehensive arguments regarding why, and uniquely and importantly, how, thus the basis for my assertion above that I teach, and not merely preach, Love.

This draft should be used as your principal pedagogical (learning) tool, as well as your practical daily Agape handbook, until publication of the full volume. This document, especially as it develops, will be a practical handbook for use in daily living by everyone, especially 1.) persons wishing the study and practice of Agape, or 2.) simply wishing to learn, and live with, good character, or, 3.) wishing to build and live a life of conscience, or, 4.) possessive of the understanding that to change society we must change the human heart, which then drives a change in behavior, or 5.) possessive of the desire for actual political, social, economic revolution in this world, especially as informed in part or whole by Love.

Obviously, there is overlap between some or all of these classes of person.

But are there still persons in this world who hold such aspiration? The short answer is, there must be--and there'd better be.

This abridged volume, two full web-pages long, works in tandem with the content at 1.) AgapeOrder.org, 2.) Center4Love.com, 3.) brotherhood.love, 4.) the discussion of the phenomenon of stupidity here, and of course 5.) this abridged volume will work and complement the balance of its own content, yet unpublished. All aforementioned bodies of content will eventually merge into the finished, published volume.

This present, far shorter work can be so used as a proxy guide since it incorporates the notion and principle of the love ethic, or brotherly love, Agape in the language of Greek philosophy, of Mr. De Benedetto's awaited seminal volume. The present work, as the future final one, also both incorporates, and points to, related material from Mr. De Benedetto's pending companion volume NEIGHBORS OF DEATH (pending).

NOTE:  By abridged, I mean that this online volume is but a fraction in content and length of what the finished work will be. Unavoidably, for several reasons, many, if not most, content and concepts are missing from this version, including narrative of many of the most compelling, disturbing, injurious, and illustrative real-life incidents and events, although I'm taking pains to ensure that the most foundational elements are here. Indeed, you can see that even this germ of the full work is growing in length, presenting much content and a very helpful serving of profundity and practical content.

Of course, when the print version of this volume is published, it will be far more complete.

PAGE TWO OF THIS SITE

The free abridged online draft of my book is two full web pages long. You are presently reading the first; the second is here (page pending), and also resident as the last link in the Table of Contents, below.

These were originally independent web sites, with page two serving as a promo site for the book, but now both sites, though still formally separate, are technically conjoined as both bodies of content are relevant and indeed critical to the topic, and will appear in the finished print volume. In fact, page two is actually longer than page one and just as substantive, though the title of volume one is as stated on this page, LOVE, not LOVE ETHIC, as still presented on page two.

I'm slowly moving the content of page two, which is differently-themed, beige-and-white not black-and-white, to page one. Expect uniformity of presentation in the near-future.

Your Smart Phone & Washing Machine Came With One

Why didn't You?

Consider the present volume that you are reading a kind of morally elevated, intellectually supercharged, and functionally superior Human Being Owner's Manual, for yourself.

This dimension of LOVE, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD is fully consonant with my definition of Agape:  a deliberate condition of existence that considers the welfare of others in approximate proportion to the measure of consideration that we usually give to ourselves. Explicit in this definition is the psycho-social reality that we must love ourselves, and in love of self lies the warrant (i.e. justification) and utility of all assistance to self in the form of guidance and advice proffered here, by me, for you.

VOLUME #1

Composition of this volume began September 2020. The first of a 3-volume set, see bottom of page, it will ultimately be extensive.

SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON YOUNG PEOPLE - YOU OWN THE FUTURE

YOUNG & OLD - GET INVOLVED

YOU MAY FEEL ANXIETY OR EVEN ANGER ABOUT ONE OR MORE ASPECTS OF YOUR LIFE, OR EVENTS YOU SEE AROUND YOU.

INSTEAD OF ANXIETY OR ANGER, HOWEVER--TAKE ACTION!

HOWEVER, TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION! MEANING, PUT YOUR TIME, MONEY, AND ENERGY TO THOSE SOLUTIONS THAT SEEM TO MAKE THE MOST SENSE, AND HAVE THE BEST CHANCE OF INFLUENCING AND CHANGING THINGS FOR THE BETTER! FOCUS ON, AND SUPPORT, THE IDEAS THAT SEEM THE MOST POWERFUL!

SUPPORTING THE WRONG IDEAS, NO MATTER HOW ATTRACTIVE THEY SEEM, CAN DO A LOT OF DAMAGE TO PEOPLE AND THE WORLD!

THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE AND THINGS VYING FOR YOUR TIME, MONEY, AND ATTENTION! FROM YOUR CELL PHONE AND SIGNIFICANT OTHER, TO SOCIAL MEDIA, SCHOOL, WORK, AND YOUR HEALTH, TO GLOBAL EVENTS SUCH AS CLIMATE CHANGE AND TERRORISM, TO THE MANY OTHER PERSONS AND GROUPS WHO CLAIM TO WANT TO HELP IMPROVE, OR EVEN CHANGE, THE WORLD!

SO YOU MUST BE SMART IN ADJUDICATING (I.E. DECIDING) THESE VARIOUS CLAIMS ON YOUR TIME, MONEY, AND ATTENTION. WHO SHOULD YOU PAY ATTENTION TO? LIFE IS SHORT, AND YOUR TIME, MONEY, AND ENERGY ARE VALUABLE. DON'T FOCUS THEM IN THE WRONG DIRECTION! STUDY THE WORLD AROUND YOU CAREFULLY, INCLUDING ALL THE PROPOSED ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS. STUDY THE IDEAS PRESENTED TO YOU, AND THE PEOPLE PRESENTING THEM, TO DECIDE WHICH ARE THE MOST CREDIBLE (I.E. BELIEVABLE).

THEN, BEGIN TO GET INVOLVED! AS YOU KEEP READING, WATCHING, LISTENING, LEARNING, DISCUSSING, THINKING, AND SIMPLY LIVING TO GAIN FURTHER EXPERIENCE, YOU'LL SLOWLY COME TO YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS.

LAST, DON'T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE DIRECTION, AS, OVER TIME, YOU RECEIVE AND EVALUATE NEW INFORMATION, INCLUDING YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES!

EMAIL LIST

If the ideas in this book draft resonate for you (i.e. strike a chord within you), especially my basic thesis (i.e. assertion or claim) that Love is required to save this world, please involve yourself by helping me build a movement to actually implement these ideas.

My site BROTHERHOOD OF MAN (which is also the draft of VOLUME III of my 3-volume AGAPE TRILOGY) contains a list of steps to take or options to exercise to involve yourself with my ideas, but for now PLEASE, AT A MINIMUM, JOIN MY EMAIL LIST (onehumanfamily@fastmail.net) so I can keep all interested persons together for regular dissemination (i.e. communication, usually to a group) of information, and concerted action as scheduled or appropriate.

Brothers & Sisters, I assure you:  without a group effort, no social change is going to occur!

THE STATE OF THE WORLD IN 2023 IS HORRIFIC.

Why review the state of the world in a book about Love? Obviously because the state of the world, the world actually being nothing but an extremely large group of human beings, is probably the best gauge we have to determine how loving these human beings, us, are being toward each other.

What follows is a thumbnail sketch, based on key parameters, of the status and condition of the human race, culminating in my own overall aggregate value of C-.

The solution, obvious to me but not likely to most of you, is:

1. The elimination of the market system, as its categorical economic imperative to sell, sell, sell and never stop selling, in concert with the reality of competition to do so, all of which processes occur in the psycho-social context of essentially unrestrained human ego, produces a cancer-like socio-economic environment that few can withstand. Hence our interminably high global rates of mental and physical disease, and conflict of every sort, at every level, and in, and across, every dimension of national and global society.

   Even our terminology acknowledges the problem and its ubiquity and makes it plain: we speak, for example, of our adverserial legal system.

   Adverserial? Well, that's a problem, right there.

   I'm more a mutual search for truth kind of guy, muh'self--and I suggest in the strongest possible terms that you become the same, if you want this world to ever again reach a point of peaceful equilibrium.

2. Global adoption of Agape (i.e. Brotherly love) as it is our most powerful force, principal, and building block for every aspect of existence, from social relationships to the erection and operation of a modern global economy, our new standard for success and general referent to be human happiness, such as employed by the nation of Bahrain.

3. Such other changes that adoption of numbers #1 and #2, above, would imply or require, such as sharp population control.

The preceding statements regarding our required solution are like good poetry. Each statement is dense with meaning that will take you time, likely a lot of time for most people, to even begin to fully understand. This is partly why revolutions don't occur often, even when desperately needed. Thomas Jefferson said that we should have a revolution in America every 20 years. We're 227 years overdue by his standard.

Still think my notion of the need for a wholesale paradigm shift in America is unnecessary, inappropriate, ridiculous, or even traitorous? Listen--if Love of Brother is good enough as a foundational principle for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Erich Fromm, John Lewis, Leo Buscaglia, a handful of other notables, and likely another handful of just plain folks who deeply believe in it and, without fanfare, live it, it's good enough for me.

The proposed blueprint for the new paradigm that humanity desperately needs is here. Begin your study of this question, and then in about five years you might be qualified to opine. At 63 years old, I've been studying it for about 40 years.

And no, Love, properly understood is not a left-wing philosophy that will result in a world of abortion-on-demand, unrestricted affirmative action and illegal immigration, infinite rises in crime, drugs, and the cost of living as government bureaucracies expand in size, scope, and power, loss of freedom of every kind, incompetence in every part of society as the new American dynamic and trademark, a culture run by young people with little knowledge or experience in governance as well as the history of America, herself, continuing rise of the homosexual ethic, concomitant with a rising disdain for, and emasculation of, the male Caucasian with a creeping matriarchy, economic reversals as American products and services lose all luster in international and probably national markets, as well, and complete loss of American military power and prestige. In fact, the preceding description largely describes American society as it already is.

Why do you think that I've adopted the tagline: Love, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD?

The power of Love, properly understood, will decelerate, and perhaps even reverse the above trends.

THE OVERVIEW OR SKETCH

Under Construction

• Percentage of American adults who reported their mental health was not good 14 or more days in the past 30 days: 14.7% (i.e. almost 15%)

• Pending

• Pending

• Pending

CAN YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ABOUT LOVE?

• WHAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF SOMETHING EVERYBODY THINKS IS LOVE, BUT IS NOT?

• IS TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK REALLY LOVE?

• CAN LOVE EXIST TODAY?

• CAN LOVE EXIST IN THE MODERN WORLD?

• IS LOVE REALISTIC?

• IS GOD LOVE?

• AM I LOVE?

• CAN THERE BE LOVE IF GOD DOES NOT EXIST?

• ISN'T LOVE CORNY AND OLD-FASHIONED?

• CAN I BE A REPUBLICAN AND STILL PRACTICE LOVE?

• WHY ISN'T THE WORLD A MORE LOVING PLACE?

• WHY AREN'T PEOPLE MORE LOVING?

• ISN'T LOVE A PASSIVE AND WISHY-WASHY TURN-THE-OTHER-CHEEK PHILOSOPHY AND WAY OF BEHAVING?

• HOW COME EVEN CHRISTIANS AREN'T MORE LOVING, AS CHRIST TAUGHT?

• ARE WE SUPPOSED TO REALLY LOVE EVERYONE?

• ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LOVE HITLER AND OSAMA BIN LADEN?

IF SO, HOW?

• ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LOVE PEOPLE WHO COMMIT HEINOUS CRIMES, LIKE ABUSING CHILDREN?

IF SO, HOW?

How many of the above questions important to understanding Love can you answer correctly?

Not many? Or...any? In that case you must have a copy of LOVE:  The Most Powerful Social Force Available to Humankind, right away.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. LOVE

3. WHAT WILL SAVE THE WORLD

4. NAME THAT TUNE

5. HELPING PEOPLE

6. THEORY OF EVERYTHING

7. DUAL-CAUSE OF ALL HUMAN TRANSGRESSION

8. DO NOT HARM THOSE WHO HARM YOU

9. FOUNDATIONALS:  ONE HUMAN FAMILY

10. THE PRESENT NATURE OF HUMANITY

11. PEOPLE

12. THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

13. YOUNG & STUPID

14. NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

15. SELF-LOVE:  AVOIDING SOURCES OF PAIN

16. WHAT MAKES THIS WORLD BAD

17. HATE

18. ANGER, INTRODUCTION

19. ANGER, EXPRESSING OR GIVING

20. ANGER, RECEIVING WITH LOVE

21. ILLNESS

22. MIND

23. INTERNET

24. ACKNOWLEDGE NEAR-CERTAINTIES

25. LOVE & THE STANDARDIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

26. INTRUSION

27. ACHIEVEMENT

28. DISTRESS CALL

29. HOW TO SOLVE A PROBLEM

30. IMPEDIMENTS TO LOVE

31. STRESS

32. NOISE

33. NUTRITION

34. LEARNING TO KILL

35. NEURONAL RESTRUCTURE

36. MEA CULPA

37. THE ACTUALIZED SOCIETY

38. LOVE IN U.S. FOUNDING DOCUMENTS

39. LOVE IN FOUNDATIONAL INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS

40. LOVE AND THE FATE OF NATIONS

41. LOVE AND FOREIGN POLICY

42. HISTORY OF LOVE

43. LOVE & THE PALEO LIFESTYLE/PALEOLITHIC MAN

44. AGAPE SECRET TO A PEACEFUL DEATH

45. QUESTIONS

46. THIS BOOK - PART II

- If You Find This Work of Value

- Links & Resources

- More of My Work

- About the Author

INTRODUCTION

I STAND AS A MAN, ALONE.

Money

Celebrity

Sex

Fame

Guns

Religion

Philosophy

Technology

Business

Law

Politics

Energy

War

Greed

Hate

Media

Answer:  NONE

Love, properly understood, is the most powerful social force available to humankind.

The principle of Love, properly understood, underpins everything in this book:  every perspective and prescribed course of action. Indeed, Agape, "brotherly Love" in the language of Greek philosophy, underpins everything that I've written, as an adult. The definition of Love as I formulate it, is:

"Love is the active consideration, and acting upon, of the interests of the other, all others, in approximate proportion to your consideration, and acting upon (usually), of your own interests."

OR

Love is the active consideration of, and acting upon, the interests of other people, all other people, in more-or-less the same proportion as you consider (and usually act upon) your own interests.

We live in a world of pain of every kind that is absolutely unnecessary. Yet the door of avoidance, redress, and especially prevention is already wide open--JUST WALK IN.

MLK

the when and the how

the gentle brown cow

the why and the where

yes he'll meet you up there

the ox and the bow

and the horse and the plow

the squeal of the sow

fierce

urgency

of now

Many, now and historically, feel or perceive an affinity for Love. And of those a subset genuinely understand its categorical import for the future of humanity. In some measure they understand, in other words, the Why of Love. The longstanding bugaboos are the When and the How--and the absolute need for the sage deconstruction and application of this confounding couplet.

Happily, thus is the focus of my work.

Philosophy, and philosophy alone, is going to save the world.

Specifically, the notion or principle of "brotherly love," Agape in the language of Greek philosophy. Various historical thinkers have used different terms in its identification, such as Confucius who simply referred to building character or exercising benevolence. In my work, I refer to Agape, or Love, however, which I assert as the "parent" or subsuming (that which contains other things) concept or rubric (i.e. category or grouping).

In other words, my work asserts that Love, in its Agape form, specifically, is the general category into or under which attributes like benevolence fall.

Ideas, alone, will save Humankind from itself, and our most powerful idea and social force is Love.

What are we saving Humankind from? From itself. That is, from it's baser instincts and impulses that, left unchecked, will destroy it. Will destroy us.

Philosophy is the only framework that can save the world.

A, if not the, preeminent concern of philosophy is Truth.

As I watch the documentary Why We Fight, it is asserted that governmental powerholders in the United States, through its history in at least the 20th and 21st centuries, presented falsified information to the American public in order to garner support for this or that military action. A notable example given is the Vietnam war.

If true, it represents a breach of trust, respect, and Love toward and for the American people, by her leaders. And were such breaches commonplace between nations and citizens, nations and nations, and citizens and citizens, the world would comprise a place of social, moral, and practical dissolution and anarchy--which, in fact, it presently does.

The solution? A recast of the world to one based on Truth, meaning deliberate accuracy in all things, where no person deliberately deceives or misinforms another. The commitment to the telling of truth could originate from an intellectual understanding that accuracy simply makes for a better society, or from a belief in Love for ones's brothers and sisters, an ethic undercut, if not explicitly violated, when deceit occurs.

Truth, of course, is an ideal, though even more foundationally, an idea. Insofar as saving the world, then, originates with and requires embrace of an idea, the discipline and mindset of philosophy is elevated and revered, for, uniquely, ideas are its province, Truth at once it's grand objective, and chief methodological tool.

THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Physicists and philosophers of science have sought a "theory of everything" with renewed interest and vigor since 1915, that is, a grand unifying theory that could explain gravity, a large-scale phenomenon, and quantum mechanics, a minute-scale phenomenon, as the two parts comprising the integrated whole of the physical universe. However, what if the most substantive and relevant "theory of everything" resided not in the physical world, investigated by the tools of conventional science, but in the social world and the world of ideas, and was thus investigatable and indeed definable by social science? I assert that Love, properly understood, is this, or certainly a, theory of everything, in that:

1. It is scalar, or extensible and thus can and does apply fluidly to every part of society and the human dynamic, from personal exchange between persons, to erection and operation of an entire global economy.

2. It exists everywhere, since humans now exist everywhere, either in latent or actual form. We carry it within us at all times, waiting for activation.

3. It's pertinent to every action and endeavor of humankind, from the seemingly smallest act toward oneself or another, to the apparently largest or most broad, of great severity or import, or simply affecting one or more large groups of people.

4. It's the only social force capable of both resolving, if not preventing conflict, and uniting everyone in our human family.

5. Humankind can likely survive and even actualize without a grand unifying physical theory of matter and energy such as our present leading theories of everything, "String theory" and "M-theory," in particular, but likely cannot actualize, nor even survive, without a relevant grand unifying social principle--such as Love.

   Even forms such as liberal democracy, inferior and ready for deprecation, are what keep humankind from fully imploding, and they are social, not physical, forms. The physical will not survive without the social.

6. It's discoverable and learnable by anyone.

7. It's practicable by everyone to some degree and in some form.

8. It both drives and explains behavior.

9. It's a natural phenomenon, existing naturally and thus needn't be artificially created to exist.

SUGGESTED LINKS

THEORY OF EVERYTHING

FOUNDATIONALS:  ONE HUMAN FAMILY

The first Foundational, that is, primary reality, principal, or postulate, is that everyone on this planet is a brother or sister in one human family. Our One Human Family.

But what of your biological mother, and father? Your mother, for example, is your parent. Doesn't this relationship supersede mere sisterhood?

In the context of this query, yes, being your mother supersedes just being your sister in our one human family. Ultimately, however, your mother is, in fact, both your mother and your sister. Familially, that is, in your familial relationship she is your mother, while in socio-existential, which includes zoological terms, she is your sister.

Imagine a mother-son relationship whereby each is deeply estranged from the other, for some reason. Or where neither knows, or perhaps even knows of, the other, because the son was given for adoption, for example. In declaring mother and son brother and sister in our one human family, and not just mother and son in a familial bond, we retain the integrity of the foundational notion that all persons are connected, the connectedness paradigm.

Were it not for our Foundational or First Principle declaration of the reality and integrity of this form of bond, the connectedness bond, the mother and son in our example would have no connection to each other whatsoever, since no familial connection exists. Familial connections are subject to weakening, breaking, or not even existing in the first place, while our socio-existential connection, at least in its zoological component, can never be broken, given the scientifically established reality that all human beings are descended from a single initial human. The other component of this relationship structure, the moral component, is integrated more arbitrarily.

Suppose a mother and son were separated at birth, and never reunited. Neither knew anything of the other. Then, by coincidence, the son lay dehydrated and injured at the side of the road. After a time, the mother came along and spied this individual at the side of the road, obviously requiring attention and assistance. Barring any errant circumstance, it's extremely likely that the woman, with no knowledge that this individual is, in fact, her son, would assist him at least minimally, perhaps by offering water and a blanket. Why would she do that? Not on a familial basis, as she doesn't know that this is her lost son. On what basis, then, would she assist?

She would render assistance on the basis of her common humanity with the victim, that is, at least, her implied connection to him, and, at most, her actual and active feeling of connection with him. This, brothers and sisters, is the reality of the existence of our worldwide mutual connection, and the reality of that connection asserting itself.

DUAL-CAUSE OF ALL HUMAN TRANSGRESSION

Whether the brutal atrocities of the terror group ISIS, the bullying of a group of mean teen girls against another lone teen, the lies of the employee stealing pencils from the company supply locker, or any act of human transgression in between, there are just two reasons, alone or in combination, that people transgress, that is, fail to love, in so many ways, neither of which is the fault of its bearer.

Here are the two reasons and causes:

• Reason #1:  ILL OR UNDER-TRAINING IN MORALITY, THAT IS, LOVE

• Reason #2:  LOW NATIVE INTELLECT

There you have it. A key secret of The Universe, just revealed to you by me, Vincent Frank De Benedetto, political philosopher, in this important volume, the new bible of moral elevation for humankind, for the 21st-Century and beyond:  LOVE, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD.

Please spread the word far and wide. The future of Humanity depends on it.

CIRCUMSTANCE

These two reasons alone, or taken with their effects or consequences, is considered a circumstance.

When said dual-reasons, above, exist in concert with two or more additional conditions, events, or people, a set of circumstances has been created.

EXAMPLE #1

Mr. Smith, generally lacking money but not desperate, steals all of Mr. Jones' money. Mr. Jones, were he a philosopher or social scientist interested in the most expansive, powerful, accurate, and deeply-rooted approach to the etiology (i.e. causation) of human phenomenon, would not ascribe the loss of Mr. Jones money to the actions or behavior of Mr. Smith (and thus would not blame Mr. Smith), but would ascribe the loss of Mr. Jones money to a circumstance. This circumstance being the combination of the low intellect and lack of moral education of Mr. Smith, for neither factor could we blame Mr. Smith.

EXAMPLE #2

National economy suffers severe downturn, making it extremely difficult for anyone to find work, including husband Raymond. Wife Rhonda suffering because there is little income in the household. Exchange:

Wife: I am miserable because of you!

Husband: no, you are miserable because of a circumstance.

Wife: what circumstance!

Husband: The downturn in the economy, because of which I can't get a job.

Ascribing causation to (i.e. "blaming") a circumstance, that is, a phenomenon, rather than a person or group, is likely not emotionally satisfying for the great bulk of human beings. But it represents our most powerful understanding of the etiology or causation of all human and existential phenomena.

IMPLICATION

Eat the Pain

Acceptance of the dual-etiology (two cause) circumstance paradigm implies and indeed requires an acceptance that, since people cannot ultimately be blamed for their transgressions, society cannot rightly impose punishment upon them, at least not severe punishment, no more than severe punishment should be imposed on a newborn puppy who soils the carpet. The pup did what he did because the combination of low native intellect and lack of proper training provides him no pathway to do anything other. The behavior of the canine remains constrained by the confluence of these two factors--and so do we.

Those who accept this paradigm must also accept that in a society where nonLove (i.e. all phenomena save that Loving) remains a potent force, individuals and groups of individuals are going to lose resources to the transgression of others until such time that Love is formally introduced into the given society (or perhaps section of society) and comes to characterize that society, as shown in the actual changed behavior of people. In other words, until we've changed our society and people continue to injure us, since we don't believe in severe punishment for such injury, we're simply going to have to largely, or some cases completely, absorb the physical or psychological injury, in other words, colloquially "eat the pain," with as much equilibrium and equanimity as we can.

This absorption would be guided and permitted, and is described, by the FETO* principle, which describes and allows for some brothers and sisters of more limited native intellect or inadequate or lesser social training, to injure, while the segment of the injured of more extensive or expansive intellect or developed training, simply accept the injury.

_____________________

*FETO:  most Actualized and Actualizing, if challenging, principle of human social organization:  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

PRINCIPLES OF REGULATION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

ACTUAL SCOPE OF FETO PRINCIPLE

The production paradigm informing a fully egalitarian, that is, properly understood, "Communist" society, as described by Karl Marx and others, is described as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," or what I term From Each, To Each, or simply the FETO principle. The principle, however, is far more extensible and thus powerful than we thought, and we needn't understand it as applicable only to production, and thus unnecessarily limit its scope, as (i.e. because), in fact, this principle comprises a key defining element or definition in the area of desirable general (i.e. non-economic) human behavior, as well, describing, specifically, the generation, interpretation, and distribution of behavior.

DO NOT HARM THOSE WHO HARM YOU

I REFUSE TO HARM ANOTHER BECAUSE THEY HARMED ME.

I ADVISE YOUR ADOPTION OF THE SAME PRINCIPAL AND PRECEPT (I.E. GUIDE FOR ACTION).

SPECIFICALLY: I REFUSE TO HARM ANOTHER JUST BECAUSE THEY HARMED ME, AS THE COMMISSION OF SUCH ACTS OF INJURY TOWARD ME CLEARLY MEAN THE BROTHER OR SISTER WAS 1.) TOO ILL-TRAINED IN MORALITY, 2.) OF LOW NATIVE INTELLECT, OR 3.) BOTH, TO REFRAIN FROM HARMING ME. IN OTHER WORDS I'M NOT GOING TO PUNISH IGNORANCE. THAT WOULD BE IRRATIONAL, IF NOT LACKING COMPASSION AND EMPATHY. I WILL BLOCK THE INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF IGNORANCE, AND WORK TO CHANGE IT, OF COURSE, TO REVERSE IGNORANCE, BUT I WILL NOT PUNISH THE HAPLESS TRANSGRESSOR BY HARMING THEM THROUGH PUNISHMENT OR IN ANY OTHER WAY. THEN I BECOME THEM, AT LEAST IN PART, AND WHEN A LARGE PORTION OF HUMANITY ADOPTS THIS RECIPROCAL-HARM PARADIGM THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY IS COMPROMISED, DRAGGED INTO THE MORAL AND BEHAVIORAL MUD AND MUCK--which of course is where humanity precisely is, at present, today, 2023.

Can you say "Ukraine war," for example?

(The word "ill," above, means "under," as in under-trained. It does not mean suffering a lapse in health.)

I'M NOT GOING TO ARTIFICIALLY TURN MYSELF INTO A DE FACTO VERSION OF THE TRANSGRESSOR, THAT IS, THE BROTHER OR SISTER WHO COMMITTED THE INJURY AGAINST ME, WHICH WAS AN ERROR. WHY WOULD I? WHY SHOULD I REPRODUCE THEIR LIMITATIONS AND DEFICIENCIES?

WE MUST ADDITIONALLY SO REFRAIN TO ACT AS EXEMPLARS OF THIS PRINCIPLE, AS EXEMPLARS MUST EXIST TO CLEARLY ILLUSTRATE TO HUMANITY HOW IT MUST BEHAVE IF IT IS TO SURVIVE, AT MINIMUM, FLOURISH, BETTER YET, OR EVEN, BEST YET, BY FAR, ACTUALIZE. HUMANS RESPOND TO LESSONS BUT RESPOND BEST TO EXAMPLE. WE MUST BE THAT EXAMPLE.

In fact: many of us are ill-trained in morality, and/or of low native intellect. It's a human reality at present, which is probably why a benign program of gene selection is probably part of the puzzle of the actualization of humanity, long-term.

THE PRESENT NATURE OF HUMANITY

In social intercourse with a human being, it's important to understand what you're actually dealing with:  generally speaking, the present-day human, as all humans before him, is little more than a smart monkey. There are arguable partial exceptions, such as Albert Einstein or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Indeed is the query, "Is there intelligent life on Earth?" a staple question by Dr. Michio Kaku asked of each of his interviewees.

Knowledge of this reality is key to negotiating life among our species, with a minimum of pain.

HumanOrigins.com, a project of The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, asks "How Do We Know Humans Are Primates," answering:

The nature of man as just defined is why profound and sublime notions like LOVE remain so unattended, unknown, grossly misunderstood, and indeed seemingly perpetually elusive for humankind, even given its numbers, that is, its large global population. Persons or groups attempting to promulgate such notions meet with extremely limited success, even paying for their philosophy with their lives in several celebrated historical cases.

Moreover, in considering the phenomenon of people hurting other people, it's probably true and important to realize that some people, perhaps many, actually don't really know how not to hurt you, and others. they were simply never trained, or they're so filled with emotion that it's become a roadblock to loving behavior, an umbrella term or rubric that includes such behaviors and attitudes as respect, tolerance, compassion, mercy, charity, sympathy, empathy, forgiveness, solicitude (i.e. caring), concern, understanding, and warmth.

As may be quickly apparent to some of you, this insight regarding the actual nature of humankind explains a lot, in terms of the problematic being that we so often encounter in our daily travels, and the near-ubiquitous propensity of humans to misbehave and make mistakes, including the infliction of any of myriad forms of pain, whether inadvertently or deliberately, on others, and even themselves.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Accordingly, and unfortunately, always expect the real possibility of the worst kind of behavior directed at you, including death, in the form of manslaughter or even murder, by those from whom you'd never expect it, such as neighbors, friends, romantic partners, and even family members. In case of such injury, then, might you be angry, disappointed, or deflated--but not really surprised, or at least not shocked.

Nor do civic or even religious affiliations, no matter how demonstrative and apparently strong, necessarily imply genuine purity of heart, humility, conscience, and cooperation. To the contrary, in fact:  religious difference and zealotry is historically responsible for a consistent pattern of injury of every scale and kind, toward believers and non-believers, alike.

Moreover, brothers and sisters, you will also find that, though, in the case of some, you possess an elevated and substantive system of morality, expending significant personal resources to help others, many, likely most, and possibly all, persons around you, family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and others, will commonly fail either to recognize, or acknowledge, your solicitude, and will still persecute, prosecute, or otherwise injure you, up-to-and-including killing you. "No good deed goes unpunished" remains a key though melancholy insight into our present skewed human dynamic, and indeed did ancient Chinese Philosopher Confucious advise:

Act with kindness but do not expect gratitude.

Some persons may do you in slowly through constant low-level stress or other incremental injury, ala' "death by a thousand cuts," while others may elect to kill you quickly, in one of the many ways available.

In all, brothers and sisters, not a pretty picture of our species.

There is an answer, however:  LOVE, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD.

CULPABILITY

There's little point in blaming human beings for their actions. This is not to say that transgressing persons should not be restrained, segregated, or rehabilitated. They should and they must, especially if their actions are particularly injurious.

But human beings are so dumb; misbehavior so ubiquitous, the rule rather than the exception; their ability to modulate their own behavior in substantive service to the interests of others, so weak; wisdom and love so rare and difficult to cultivate, so seemingly outside the ken of what humans easily do, that to assign blame for any reason other than those mentioned above, restraint, segregation, rehabilitation, or compensation, is pointless and incorrect. It is simply the nature of the human beast to err, and thus, grand punitive plans for correction are not appropriate, and blame reveals itself increasingly as a diffuse, irrelevant, and impotent posture.

Fostering proper behavior is really not much more than a technical problem, one that any society should solve with relative ease--but not by unduly or inordinately punishing the dim-witted, or at best dimly-enlightened, primates who can't help what they are. That is, who can't help but err, especially given that, thus far historically, the larger social framework within which they exist and acculturate, this or that system of class rule depending on historical epoch, has adopted or promulgated neither any ethic of love, nor systematic program for brain actualization or optimization.

Accordingly, given the innate retrograde nature of the human brain, in concert with an immature and inadequate system of social development, what kind of behavior would we expect from these beings?

FREE WILL

Why...is he imprisoned?

If human behavior patterns are so constrained and deterministic, and the human organism so hopelessly stupid, or at least limited in thought, what of free will? How can there be free will if the human being must and does reside in a small box not of his making nor under his control?

It might be more strictly useful to think and speak in terms of free won't, as the human being will never, because it cannot, move beyond its programming, so to speak. In other words, will never behave in a manner not made explicit by their programming or implied by it. By the size and shape of that box.

But, there is free will within limits. Within the limits of the range of choices that its evolutionary definition has made available to it, which includes, of course, the many influences set upon the human organism from forces that seek to persuade, ranging from politicians to corporations.

I recall, for example, the very first time that I tasted McDonald's food, after having eaten nothing but real, home-cooked food my entire life--the McDonald's food was utterly disgusting. Now, however, after having eaten McDonald's food for years, one of its products, the Quarter-Pounder with Cheese, though I rarely eat it, is one of my favorite burgers.

Have I arrived at this preference by free will?

If you think that young people, depending on specific age range, are not particularly educated, wise, or life experienced--you're generally right, of course. Caution, however, because if you concomitantly imagine that becoming an adult, or interacting with adults, is going to change this--forget it. Adults, in the main, that is, most adults, at least evidently in American culture, continue to behave stupidly, with low levels of awareness of many, if not most, things, and a cavalier disregard for most people, save those from whom they need or want something, or, generally speaking, members of their immediate family.

Note, crucially, that I assert that most people continue to behave stupidly. I do not assert that most people are stupid--as easy and axiomatic as this latter assertion is generally considered by most people to make.

In moving through life, the two characteristics you'll likely encounter most frequently in other people are:

1. Disrespect

2. Cruelty

The qualities we see commonly in children. In fact, if you are a child reading this, you likely recognize some or all of these qualities in the less mature or intelligent of your fellow students. In fact, you may see these qualities in just about all of them.

In fact, and in sum, most adults remain children. Rarely, if ever, will you encounter an adult who is truly a loving person--and the trick here is that, because its likely that you, yourself possess only the most fleeting acquaintance with Agape, if you ever do encounter said individual--it's not assured that you'll even recognize them as such. That you'll even know it.

Some persons who treat you with cruelty or disrespect, upon hearing your complaint of disrespect or cry of pain because of their cruelty, will respond by treating you with even further or greater amounts of cruelty or disrespect. I personally have and do experience this in my own neighborhood. Some of these persons are sadistic or outright sadists, that is, they enjoy and find emotional or intellectual enjoyment or fulfillment seeing or knowing that, someone else is suffering. I've experienced this kind of individual, too. In fact, my experiences with these kinds of regressive, malign individuals has entered the realm of the criminal, such that I felt compelled to begin a book about said people and experiences.

The year 2020 still finds the human race--our One Human Family, such as it is--in a wretched condition regarding how it treats itself, that is, how we treat one another.

Just this morning, for example, I learned that a neighbor whose house stands in extremely close physical proximity to ours, who appeared to be cooperating with my family on a matter of importance to us, is evidently not cooperating, after all. He deviated unilaterally from our agreed-upon plan with not a word spoken--and I had just touched on the matter with him again only about 24 hours prior.

The import, here, is that, in the first place, he evidently possesses no love, at all, for me or my Mother, and by extension for my Father or my sister. Secondly, he evidently can't be trusted. His word means nothing. Moreover, as I understand Judaism to required some reasonable fidelity to one's fellow man, he evidently doesn't take his own religion seriously. There was a kindness that I showed he and his family prior to their permanent relocation here, that he evidently neglected, discounted, or simply forgot, which sharpens the sting of the betrayal.

You'd think, and certainly hope, that this individual, a 31 year old orthodox Jewish man, married with several children, would have reached a minimal kind of standing by this time in his life in intellect, maturity, and character, that is, in sum, in Love, to eschew such an action, if not treacherous then certainly undesirable in its injury to us, and to the budding friendship between my family and his. He evidently hasn't reached that baseline measure of wisdom, however, and like many, if not most, people, he likely never will.

The psycho-social reality is that most adults in American, and likely world, culture are essentially children. I was in earlier years. He and his wife are simply two more. To wit does Erich Fromm ask (temporary paraphrase):

In some good measure the human race still comprises the inmates running the asylum, or the children largely prevailing over the parents, out-shouting or out-muscling them.

Speaking globally, who are the "parents," the role models? In the year 2020 as I compose this it seems a bit quaint to even continue posing such a question, much as it seems dated to many to think or speak in terms of "character."

Does anyone ever aspire, anymore, to develop and be of "good character"? Does anyone yet know what it even means?

In short-term tradition we might have pointed to a figure such as POTUS, the President of the United States, as an example of a role model. At present, however, shall we consider the current POTUS, Donald J. Trump, an exemplar of a parent, or a role model? I doubt that even his supports would recommend it, and would likely have to suppress a smirk at its mention.

In an earlier epoch, would another POTUS, Richard M. Nixon, have been a sound parental figure for the children of the nation, and the nations as children? Likely not.

Indeed, a better group of mentor candidates can be found here, under "Mentors."

Assessing People

Be aware that the manner in which an individual behaves in your presence, may not be the way they behave in the presence of others. This can be true of male friends, female friends, a male and female who are friends, or a male and a female who are more than friends.

For example, I have a friend whom I once observed behaving in a crude and potentially violent manner toward another person. This friend, however, has not, nor ever would, behave that way toward me. Yet that violent side of him evidently does exist. It's merely a coincidence that I was present in the circumstance that elicited that behavior from him, allowing me to see it, or I might have never know that it existed.

This reality explains, or certainly documents, why your spouse will shock you by cheating, your business partner by pilfering, or your teenaged son by using drugs. In all such instances the victim is shocked because the behavior of the transgressor was always such that impermissible behavior, or a predilection was concealed. It is this possibility of concealment that forms the core of your lesson for today, and is why I advise caution in this book as some of those who injure you most grievously--will be those whom you love most arduously and whom you thought loved you in like measure.

THE HUMAN BEING

SPECIES:  HOMO SAPIENS

WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE

2 + 2 = 4

No Calculator Needed

. . . . . . . . .

Perhaps the most famous modern human is Albert Einstein, the most famous human scrawl, his scientific notation E=MC².

Dr. Einstein revolutionized the world of physics and with it our practical understanding of the physical world, a momentous shift resulting in an interminable stream of other new discoveries and technologies, many of which with practical application have shifted the course and structure of our own lives, day to day.

These facts, however, pertain only to the physical sciences, and employ of the adjective only is, in fact, not arguable. There is no equivalence in import between the two sciences, physical and social-clearly the latter is the more important. Far more.

In the social sciences we have our equations of moment, as well, several of my own creation, including:

This equation is critical in understand humanity as a social phenomenon. It refers to the fact that the average human, nothing more than a smart monkey, can't seem to deconstruct his own mistakes prior to, and often even after, making them. He can't seem to anticipate the disastrous consequences. In other words, he can't seem to comprehend that 2 + 2 = 4.

For example, as the remnants of my immediate family go through their final phase, my age 61 and my Mother's, 90, this phase marked by every manner of difficulty-poverty, illness, crime-my sole sibling, a female 57 years old, today, can't seem to understand the simple logic of my continuing exhortation to her: please assist me with basic household and family matters, to free up my time so I can devote myself to the attempt to resolve our larger, more complex problems.

This is 2+2=4 logic. In other words, straightforward, direct, explicit, practically any human being can understand it. except her, evidently, as she continues to defy it, does not assist, and thus our major problems remain unresolved, meaning, as a practical matter they slowly worsen, heralding not much more for my family than its unnecessarily sad ending.

Other examples of the 2/2=4 phenomenon are: if you steal this woman's purse, you're likely to be caught and go to jail. Yet, the mugger will steal the purse anyway. If you smoke these cigarettes every day, you're likely to develop cancer and die. Yet the smoker will smoke them anyway. If you don't bring your umbrella to work today, you're likely to get soaking wet. Yet the harried worker will run out of the house minus their umbrella. If you sleep with your neighbor's wife, he could find out and harm you. If your cup of coffee is short a bit of cream and the household has run out, and you elect to use the small creamers that have been sitting in the frig since the 1800s, without tasting them first, even though they seem to smell OK, they may just be spoiled and you could become ill. If you attack Pearl Harbor, the United States is likely to destroy your country, in return. And so on. None of the individuals involved in these actions seemed to understand that 2 + 2 = 4. they erroneously imagined that it equaled 5, or some other number-or simply didn't think about it, at all.

This phenomenon underpins, and has since the dawn of time, all of human activity. Humans can never seem to actualize, that is, to bring themselves to a mode of existence and consciousness where they start to understand the wise choice, and the foolish choice, and elect for the wise choice every time. In other words, they can see that 2/2=4, not 5.

On the largest human macro scale painted with the broadest brush, global military conflict, such as the Vietnam War, to the smallest human micro scale, street violence and insult, such as the property damage done to my Family's automobile, all four tires slashed, humans continue to have difficulty differentiating what they should do, versus what they rather obviously should not do.

Insofar as this equation then represents the continuing folly of man, this continuing folly, and with its formal rpsn and declaration of its existence and reality, we hope a concomitant effort to resolve it, this difficulty, itself, in our modern age inhibiting further advance in science, itself, I declare the equation our most important, far more important than any other.

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC OF 2020

My bleak education in Humanity continues.

The loving or commendable actions of individuals during the pandemic doesn't compensate for the errant or undesirable actions of Humanity, itself, namely its continuing unthinking commitment to liberal capitalism, a paradigm of social organization that is obsolete, or at least not actualizing, that is, eliciting and actualizing the full potential of every person. Until humanity realizes this profound error, events such as the 2020 pandemic will continue, and the affirmative actions of disparate individuals won't amount to much.

And of course for every loving action of an individual there are millions of nonloving actions by the great balance of the other individuals that comprise humanity.

This is because in the modern industrial age, in fact in any age where any system of class rule exists, the needs of the ruling class will remain paramount. In our age, with our system of class rule, capitalism, the needs of the ruling class 0prevail and do not include a broadly or even narrowly-educated citizenry.

In contrast, a key characteristic of the Actualized Society will be its comprehensive focus on the cultivation of the human mind--every human mind. Every person on the planet will be educated, broadly and narrowly, including, and likely underpinned by:

1. Cultivation of the ability to think, both critically and generally.

2. Cultivation of a moral sensibility, and skill in acting upon it.

   Note that I refer to skill in loving others, not capacity or ability, for while the former, skill, will likely elicit and refine that capacity or ability present in each individual, capacity or ability, itself, arguably varies from individual to individual, and cannot be increased. Having said this, it is also true that exponents of Agape education, that is, teaching Love, believe that there is tremendous progress possible in the processes of eliciting and refining, themselves, drawing from a huge latent and unused store within each person, that the processes of eliciting and refining, themselves, will realize.

Prevention of both mental, and moral, illness will be paramount in an actualized society.

And as the paramount role of the human mind, and its physical repository, the brain, will have been realized by the founders of the Actualized Society and will underpin social organization and all social operations, anything that tends or serves to erode the mind and brain, such as drug use, will be rejected--as it should be even now.

THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Every nation has some kind of justice system, that is, that part of its overall governmental system concerned with preventing and punishing action or in some cases inaction considered criminal.

If a crime is committed, someone can and often will be arrested, usually tried using one adjudication mechanism or another, and convicted if found guilty. A punishment of some kind will usually be meted out.

In point-of-fact, however, a justice system is a morally antiquated mechanism and any nation that still has one is likely not an actualized society.

Please see finished volume for the simple explanation for this assertion.

"YOUNG AND STUPID"

...As it were.

This phrase and the notion that informs it, known to many older persons, is not an insult to young people, as examination of the following information will reveal.

Could this phrase describe you?

As this writer is 61 years old, and has only reached full wisdom recently, himself, I easily define "young" as anyone under roughly 45 years old. And anyone under about 35 years old likely still has much the mind of a child, or an egotist. Remember--American culture, and others, is not one that exactly imparts, teaches, or reinforces deep and genuine responsibility and maturity.

Indeed, present conventional brain research suggests that the human brain is not fully developed until age 25. However, other sources put the figure past that age, perhaps well past:

Moreover, clarifying, there isn't any necessary connection between physical and general cognitive brain development, and morality, anyway, so even when the brain is developed, transgression against others can still occur, especially in a society, including a global society, short on moral education and the Love ethic.

Examine your behavior toward others, and even toward yourself. Do you cause injury to either? Has someone indicated to you that you're hurting them? If so, were you lovingly responsive--or egoistically defensive? Did you seek to fully understand the nature of the injury you're accused of causing, or reject the injured in a fit of self-righteous hubris? Did you seek out those much older and explicitly wiser than yourself, for counsel?

Your answers to these questions will determine if we might rightly refer to you, regardless of age, as "young and stupid." This phrase is not so much an insult as an assessment or even a statement of fact, so phrased to create a mild coloration of humor, and because, as many older persons are aware, youth and stupidity, the latter based on the commission of obvious, or especially injurious, mistakes, often do go together.

And thus is it possible, by the way, as implied here, to be old and stupid. As my work increasingly asserts and describes, Stupidity is a phenomenon that can influence anyone. I've fallen victim to it, myself, throughout my life, and still do.

Full content pending for this chapter, as all chapters.

NAME THAT TUNE

Part of the utility of this book is in identifying Love where and as it presently exists, as, like dark matter or other enigmatic physical phenomenon, Love remains a largely unknown entity not merely in definition, but in presence, application, or location. In other words, Love is subject to that phenomenon whereby a thing exists without proper identification. Yet, if humankind has a resource at its disposal, it's our duty to discover, develop, and sharpen our understanding of that resource, and Love, in fact, properly understood, is a foundational resource, unlike any other, equalling if not surpassing even fire, the wheel, or our understanding of relativity or gravity, in overall importance.

The 14th Dalai Lama, for example, in his address while receiving an honorary degree from London Metropolitan University, on May 20, 2008, asserted:

His Holiness neither uttered the term "Love" nor made any explicit mention of it. Yet the phenomenon of "warm-heartedness" as commonly understood would certainly classify as Love, or an expression of it. And so it goes, whereby Love, unseen, or at least improperly identified, already exists in many forms and milieus and plays a role in the activities of humanity. Whereby humanity already has this powerful tool at its disposal, and thus the key to unlocking so many of our doors that seem closed, we must be made aware of it.

Hence, part of the raison d'etre for this book.

Regarding the likely importance and primacy of Love over this or that scientific or social discovery, even those of great moment such as fire or the wheel, without Love as our critical socio-existential guiding principle, these and other discoveries in both physical and social science could indeed harm, rather than help, us, as their power might be perverted to the gain of the few over the many, or even to the benefit of the many, itself, for a perceived gain that, if not ground in Love, would itself become a harm.

In fact, without Love important discoveries might never be made in the first place, as the desire to cure a disease, invent a better wheel, or enlarge our cosmic view that drives some scientists and researchers, for example, essentially comprising a love of humanity, a love of itself in the form of the pride of discover, or likely both, would not exist or not exist as strongly as presently seen, generating a smaller and weaker science.

HELPING PEOPLE

Once one accepts the necessity for, and wisdom of, helping people, the behavioral course, itself, is easy. It's first and cardinal rule is:

You can become aware of this need in one of five ways:

1. They ask for help.

2. You observe them and realize they need help.

3. Someone else tells you that they need help. The "teller," themselves, may have observed or otherwise become aware that said individual (or group) needs help. Their knowledge of the need will, itself, have been drawn from these five conduits.

4. Your knowledge that on the whole human beings need help drives an assumption that they probably need help.

5. A combination of the preceding four ways.

Most major belief systems carry this same message to one degree or another. Christianity, for example, makes it explicit in the Second Great Commandment of Christ, which is Love Thy Neighbor.

THE FORCE

As an aid to the most full conceptualization and understanding of the phenomenon of Love as I define it, one might also loosely understand Love as an analogue to the light or good side of The Force, the metaphysical entity of both light and dark dimension underpinning events, and the narrative, itself, in the iconic film franchise Star Wars. "The Force," in its original and most satisfying cinematic exposition, is a metaphysical, even magical, cosmos-wide phenomenon, perhaps "presence," of evidently infinite power that human beings and other species can tap into, and use, to 1.) physically manipulate matter and 2.) the thoughts and behavior of humans and other living organisms, as well as to 3.) peer into both the future and the past. The "dark" side of The Force brings with it its own additional or separate body of nefarious or malign powers.

In Star Wars IV, a New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi exhorts Luke Skywalker at a critical moment:  "Use The Force, Luke, Use The Force," and, indeed, helping someone in our real world who requires help, or proffering or displaying Love in any manner or context, is akin to using The Force, as Love, properly understood, is roughly analogous to this fictional entity: it is potentially everywhere, or can be, and holds great power to effect profound change in thinking and behavior, and unlike the fictional Force of Star Wars, also both strengthens and extends through use. Moreover, Love can form the basis both for interpersonal relations and economic structures, which is not the case with "The Force" of Star Wars, all of which renders Love, properly understood, while roughly analogous, far more powerful than its fictional analogue.

TRIPARTITE BASELINE FOR HELPING

In helping others, you will have to expend at least one of the following three of your personal resources:

• TIME

• MONEY

• ENERGY

The only way to help, then, for many of us, is to make an effort to lose, or attenuate, the strong, sometimes obsessive attachment to these resources, especially money, that life in a money-based society has compelled us to develop. Some of you may have a particularly difficult time with this.

There is no other way, however. Helping always means giving something. And if you're giving something, then logic dictates that you will no longer have it.

Helping, however, is the right, and indeed the very best, thing that you can do.

CAN'T HELP

What if you can't help one in need?

You probably can.

The truth is, you probably can if you really make the attempt. Most cases of cannot help reduce to will not help.

If you can't proffer all the help requested, then you proffer as much as you can, and you arrange for someone else to provide the balance. If you genuinely can't provide any help, then you arrange for one or more persons to provide it all. In doing so--you are, in fact, helping. Helping to get help is still helping!

Benjamin Franklin is understood to have said:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender, be."

The Founding Father was dead wrong on both counts, proffering a prescription for precisely the kind of global society under which we presently suffer, one of alienation and disconnection whereby the bonds between us, if they exist at all, are loose, when they should be airtight.

In fact, the bonds and connection between all of us to each other are tight, by definition they must be at least zoologically (if not also morally), as science now tells us definitively that we are all descended from a single common ancestor, but we erroneously perceive the bonds, the connection, as weak or loose and we act accordingly, treating each other shamefully and deplorably, in general terms.

You can help. And you must.

...to 1.) relieve the suffering of your brother or sister, 2.) build or perhaps re-build your own morality and good character, and 3.) help establish a world where Love, properly understood, is the norm, instead of the toxic stew that we presently call, and that masquerades as, "society."

The Big Ignore (a.k.a. Ignore & Avoid)

Ultimately, if you elect to fail your brother or sister by not assisting them though they've asked, or their need is evident, you will suddenly find yourself in the awkward position of actually refusing them; of actually delivering your refusal...or will you?

Will you have the integrity, courtesy, and decency to speak with the asker to state and perhaps explain your refusal...or will you simply take the path of least resistance and begin avoiding their phone calls, email, and texts? This course of ignore and avoid is common--and just as deplorable. It is completely and utterly disrespectful and unacceptable, and even calls into question for not assisting, for if your reason is genuine and substantive, you should have no trouble explaining it to the asker. If you anticipate having trouble explaining it--maybe your reason/s aren't so good, after all, and you should let your heart do the talking.

YOU

As the Principle of Love requires you to assist those who need help, so must others help you when you ask them, which at some point or points in your life you inevitably will. You probably need help now, but don't realize it or won't acknowledge it, having been acculturated, whether in its Western or Eastern varieties, with the counterproductive, inefficient, immoral, de-actualized, and indeed often pathological ethic of "self-reliance." In fact, whatever you are, you are in good measure because of past and or present help from others. you are, and have, already benefitted from the assistance of others, many people in many ways at many points throughout your lifetime. And it hasn't ended yet, nor will it. In fact, you'll be relying on the good faith actions of other people even after you cease to exist, from your relatives and friends in their various post-death functions, to the undertaker and guys digging your grave.

As human beings we simply cannot escape the reality of our social dependence. We can either acknowledge it and engineer it to work in our favor--or hopelessly try to ignore it, and suffer the myriad consequences as it cogently reminds us again and again that it is not to be ignored. The utility of the principle of Love that I teach is that Love, properly understood, is the key psycho-behavioral tool for enabling and maximizing that dependence and connection. This is also why just about every great leader and thinker through history, Christ, King, Confucius, Gandhi, Fromm, et al., has made Love a part of their personal or professional philosophy--it's no accident.

We humans are individuals, but are also organized into groups of individuals:   family, neighborhood, city, region, country, and world. In any form, we're going to encounter, and have to grapple with, the "Love Train" sooner or later. There is simply no escaping it. Better to jump on board now--or have it run us over.

"Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps," "God helps those who help themselves," "I got mine, now you get yours," there are a million variations and the misguided, propagandistic idiocy falls under many names, but don't buy any of it--it all represents the same ethic of disconnection, the principal conduit to create and maintain what we still suffer under, a global society that remains de-actualized, that is, is not yet what it is capable of becoming. When it becomes that, when we become that, we'll be living in an actualized society. At which time, by the way, I assert that we'll no longer be a society, but a community.

...and likely something of a utopia, if I may permit my confidence in Agape to appear so bold.

Those very bootstraps, themselves, that we're supposed to "pull ourselves up" by...were they designed, manufactured, shipped, and sold or otherwise distributed by you? Not likely. We're each of us dependent on the other, many others, in fact, for the very bootstraps by which we're supposed to pull ourselves up.

"I get by with a little help from my friends," precisely. For most of us, it's the only way we can "get by." Individualism, at least our present pathological individualism--is a lie.

HOW TO HELP

First, you information gather, starting by simply asking the individual perceived to be in need, what kind of help they feel they need. What you DON'T DO is shove the help that you think they should have or want, down their throats. That's not help, it's bullying, intimidation, or simple ego gratification--bad for you and likely bad long-term for them.

IN FACT, begin your overture or solicitation to assist by offering that which the individual most likely needs:  the "coin of the realm," that is, the most common form of value for their particular culture. For example, if you want to maintain a helping posture in the context of American culture, America being a society almost completely dependent on, and very highly valuing money--offer money:

The second, qualifying statement, "It's OK..." is used to assuage any concerns the individual may have about accepting assistance, based on their genuine concern for you--that is, their concern that you can actually afford to give them money, and that to do so would not injure you or yours. You employ the qualifying assurance to indicate that you can, indeed, afford to help, to give them money.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

It probably won't take you long in starting your personal practice of Agape to realize the hard truth of the above assertion.

Again, Agape is brotherly love, expressed in the language of Greek philosophy.

For several reasons, your attempts to help others will sometimes either be misunderstood, or simply not wanted, even in situations where it is obvious that assistance is direly needed.

In such situations you may find yourself criticized or even excoriated (severely attacked or criticized).

Brothers and sisters, I can assure you, based on my own devoted daily never-ending practice, that as a practitioner of Agape YOU WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD. By family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and essentially most people. This is due, in large measure, to the almost categorical lack of acquaintance with Agape of almost everyone. Most people know nothing about Agape, nor do they know that they know nothing about Agape.

In the language of computer science:  it's a recursive algorithm of the empty heart, that we must work to heal.

Should this reality discourage you from attempting to reach out to persons who appear to need help?

Absolutely not. You may simply need to learn more effective, sensitive, and personalized ways to do it.

Your personal practice of Agape, as you begin this way of life that we hope will last a lifetime, is a large and beautiful diamond in the rough, stunning, mesmerizing in the form and luminescence of its basic perfection. There is nothing wrong with, and indeed you must, shape and polish this diamond over your lifetime, as your skill, knowledge, and devotion to Agape, and its objects, your brothers and sisters in our human family, progresses.

SELF-LOVE:  AVOIDING SOURCES OF PAIN

Love of Self (LOS) is a foundational part of the practice of Agape and maintaining a loving posture or being-in-the-world, and thus is LOS rightly open to explication with example. Here, we'll explore one dimension of this phenomenon.

A principal source of pain for human beings is their propensity (i.e. habit or tendency) to take people or things, including events, for granted ("TFG"). Or put another way, to assume.

This propensity commonly works in concert with ignorance of relevant information, and a low level of awareness. In fact, lack of awareness is the fuel for much personal and social fire, that is, emotional and sometimes physical, pain.

There are countless examples of the TFG phenomenon. In a common example, suppose your 79 year-old parent, 25 lbs overweight, retired from ownership of a dry-cleaning shop, spending most of their time, now, alone watching television and reading the newspaper, with little exercise, seemingly in reasonable health, "suddenly" dies. You are obviously devastated, not merely because they passed away, but because their death was sudden and unexpected.

In fact, neither their death nor its apparent abruptness should have been unexpected, because:

1. People die all the time. For example, according to World Population Review, there are 163,898 deaths per day in the world, which is 6,829 per hour, 114 per minute, and just about 2 deaths per second (1.90).

2. Some people die early. But for those who do not, 79 years old arguably marks the start of the target range at which most people will die. A death at 79 years old should not have surprised you.

3. If the death was sudden, or, better, seemed sudden, it was likely because you, and perhaps even they, were simply unaware of the medical issue they had that killed them. They may have had a cancerous growth, for example.

4. When was the last time that you or they initiated a medical check-up? If the answer is Never, or, many years ago, then both you and they were akin to persons playing craps in Vegas--the House always wins.

5. Relatedly, their 25 lbs. overweight condition, in conjunction with their age, marked them as prime candidates for death.

6. As did their solitary lifestyle, which is explicitly linked to lifespan: research shows or suggests that elderly with little social interaction die sooner than others.

7. Moreover, if your parent ran a dry-cleaning shop for a period of time, perhaps an extended period, they were likely breathing the hazardous chemical PERC, which may have been responsible for their illness and early death.

8. Last, their physical proximity to the television could have hastened their demise, as well, especially close-proximity, as these units emit harmful radiation.

In short, the passing of your parent shocked you because you took their continued existence for granted, remaining in ignorance of their conditions of life and health. Put another way, you assumed that they'd simply always be around, or certainly be around for many, many more years to come.

Unfortunately, you were wrong on both counts.

INVERSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "TFG" PHENOMENON & A CARING WORLD

Now, brothers and sisters, there is a connection between taking things for granted, and the character and related function of the world around you:  the more caring the world, the more you can take things for granted, with relative impunity (i.e. without punishment or penalty).

Also relevant in this regard is the related phenomenon embodied in my song title 1,000 Hidden Dangers, first conceptualized by me many years ago for a song lyric for my band project, MESSAGE OF HOPE.

Much more to come.

VIOLENCE

Defense of self, including use of violence when absolutely necessary, is a key part of the proper practice of Love, as:

1. Without love of self the practice isn't very practical, as it omits fully half of the Love required, and

2. If violence in some form and measure is genuinely required to stop a brother or sister from transgressing, and said violence is absent, they will or certainly may continue transgressing, as you have failed to assist them in overcoming poor character and behavior--your failure simply isn't very loving toward them, thus keeping the practice of Agape immature or irrelevant.

WHAT MAKES THIS WORLD BAD

At this moment, I'm itting in my kitchen (can't even type; my hands are cold), freezing, while this snazzy new Kitchen-Aid convection oven that we bought continues its "burn-in."

The burn-in is a period during very first use of an oven or similar appliance whereby the materials used in manufacture are exposed to the high heat of the oven for the very first time, and react, usually with an odor, and-or smoking.

Of course, the instructions say nothing about a burn-in, only advising, innocuously, "There may be a slight smoking temporarily, this is normal."

Slight smoking? In fact, the unit does not appear to be smoking, at all, but there's a God-awful stink to the thing, as it performs for the first time. At this moment I have a total of four windows open in this house, hence my freezing--it's 30F in my area--and I'll be opening at least one more, the one in our upstairs bathroom.

My breathing over the last fifteen minutes has been self-constrained, as I attempt not to breathe deeply. Were this manufacturer fully competent, the burn-in warning or alert would (fingers still cold) have read this way:

"Alert - A burn-in period of one full hour is required for all manufacturing residues to fully disappear, once exposed to the high heat of the oven. Recommended:  before first use, turn oven temperature gauge to full temp, 450F, open over door 1/3, and wait 60 minutes."

[The oven has just finished preheating to 450F. I opened the oven door about halfway, and I'll now wait about thirty minutes. I will then shut the door, reduce temp to 375F, which is required for the very first item that I'll be cooking in the unit, and I'll cook the item. Thus, since Kitchen-Aid did not provide truth on this matter, I have to create, and abide by, my own truth.]

This kind of inaccuracy, leading to pain, is one of the principal transgressive factors making this world bad and life unpleasant. Pain in this case roots in the unpleasantness of a house-filled with a malodorous (i.e. bad-smelling) and likely toxic odor, possibly accompanied by smoke, in concert with the anger and-or frustration of realizing that the warning contained in the instruction booklet was deliberately sanitized and inaccurate. The real pain, however, comes because this kind of sloppy-thinking and-or deliberate deceit exists in every geographical location in human society, from China to Russia to New Zealand to the United States, and in every quarter, from education, to medicine, to technology, to transportation, to relationships, to food production, to travel. Every part of our lives is affected by it.

Or--now in this age of marijuana legalization, perhaps the writer of the instruction manual was high at the time of composition. Or the editor who proofed it was high. We just can't know, and it's highly unlikely that they'll admit it, which is why the legalization of drugs is utter categorical folly for any society that doesn't want to trip all over itself, or already fancies itself "The greatest nation in the history of mankind" (ring any bells, America?) and purports to want to stay at that rank.

[My heart seems to be beating a bit faster. Could it be the cold in here, or the toxic stink? Is my Mother, 89yo, upstairs, smelling this? Could it harm or even kill her? What about other persons, especially the young and the old, using this oven for the first time?]

If the inaccuracy was deliberate, then the proper use of language would permit us to add another noun to our identification of the problem. To inaccuracy, we'd be able to add the word LIE.

[1:57 pm, actually it now occurs to me that even if the stink didn't bother my Mother, upstairs, the cold, might.]

When I purchased my Hamilton-Beach convection oven about eight years ago I took great pains during the shopping process to find a unit whose inside walls were not coated with a non-stick material. This time I really hadn't time to exercise such care. So presumably one of the toxic elements that I'm smelling, and that is probably shearing off a hedge or two of my neurons (i.e. brain cells) is the non-stick coating. I'd rather have food stick a bit, and save my neurons.

2:05 am

OK, I'm simply going to have to shut these windows a bit. I am really freezing.

. . . . .

[WRITING NOTE:  The above entry contained several typos that may have been caused because my fingers and hands were cold. I let one remain, "itting," but corrected the others for readability.]

SUGGESTED LINKS

GRASS NOT GREENER: The Dark Road Ahead for All Americans if Drugs Are Legalized

HATE

[WRITING NOTE: These ideas are still in formulation. © 2020 Vincent Frank De Benedetto.]

Hate is diffused, eliminated, or even prevented upon realizing that they whom you hate committed the actions for which they are hated because said individual is "stupid"--a common, evidently universal condition that is generally not their fault. You can't blame someone for being stupid.

Better, in fact, than calling someone stupid, however, is to observe that they are unduly influenced by what I term the "phenomenon of stupidity."

This assertion, quizzical to some, permits me to disabuse you of your hate, and even antipathy toward people, in as generally readily and deftly a manner as a skilled and seasoned pickpocket easily and swiftly disabuses you of your wallet.

Stupidity is a universal, near-immutable / almost intractable condition of individuals and groups that renders them almost blameless in their behavior.

Tucked securely away in your rear pocket--so you thought--it disappears almost magically once subject to the requisite "touch," that is, knowledge and savvy about a topic, manifest in physical action or other external phenomenon or expression.

If you hate someone, it's likely because they've committed an extremely injurious action against you, directly injuring you or your interests, or by failing to do something requested that was required to help you, producing the same injurious result:  pain or at least its perception.

The way to mitigate or even eliminate hate is through the genuine realization that you can't blame someone for being genuinely stupid, which they undoubtedly were in injuring you.

Yes, this is to say that causing injury to another is always stupid.

My work no longer conceptualizes stupidity, an attribute ascribed to a person, but the phenomenon of stupidity, which can and often does influence one or more persons, but is not conceived as a characteristic innate to one or more persons.

Nor, by the way, based on my paradigm, can you blame yourself, in case you find yourself hating yourself.

TERMINOLOGY CONVERSION

A shift in conceptualization may imply a shift in terminology, for, in this case, even referring to the phenomenon of stupidity, rather than labeling someone "stupid" may be understood as nonoptimal because the word "stupid" is still employed and this term continues to carry with it a strong pejorative connotation of personal insult.

The phrase phenomenon of stupidity might simply be replaced with the a phrase such as phenomenon of error, which, as its antecedent, does convey a mistaken, nonoptimal behavior without a connotation of personal insult. Acts of grievous or particular error, which are often when the words stupid and stupidity are most often traditionally employed, might be replaced with straightforward phrases of clear equivalent communication such as phenomenon of grievous error or phenomenon of particular error. Or, in obedience to the message of stark simplicity in communication of Strunk & White, we might simply employ only the replacement phrase phenomenon of error, and from there specify what the error was and how severe or grievous.

A basic conversion in language away from "phenomenon of stupidity" does seem correct, however, with or without it's own variation as just initially discussed.

DEFINITION

We human beings should not hurt each other. It's immoral and counterproductive in many ways, so the individual who hurt you obviously should not have done so. They made a mistake, likely because they're lacking in 1.) native intelligence, that is, their level of intellect, usually expressed in neuronal density, 2.) dearth of life experience, 3.) ignorance, that is, lack of knowledge, or 4.) education and training in interacting with people.

I use the word stupid as a shorthand term for all or any of the three paths to error that I just described.

Once you genuinely come to internalize, that is, understand and accept, that it's not a human being you can blame, that you can't blame a human being for your injury, you concomitantly come to understand, perhaps slowly, that your usual kicking boy, guilty party of choice--is actually innocent.

That you won't have, nor ever will have again, the satisfaction of blaming your usual favorite antagonist or transgressor, whomever that may be:  blacks, women, welfare moms, crooked politicians, liberals, conservatives (if you're liberal), homosexuals, your ex-boyfriend, your next door neighbor, or the head of that giant predatory corporation.

The only culprit you can genuinely blame, can deem culpable, is a circumstance, a condition of life or society, which, alas, isn't very satisfying.

While your initial exposure to, and reckoning with, this reality may be frustrating and unsettling, as you see so many of your fellow human beings, your brothers and sisters, not end up executed, in prison, under house arrest, or suffer any number of other punishments that they didn't deserve, your discomfit with the new notion should warmly and slowly ease and give way to the satisfaction, and gratification, of a powerful new insight and understanding into people, society, and justice that you know is correct.

ANGER - INTRODUCTION

Anger is a key problem for humans as our collective ignorance in both preventing and redressing this emotion leaves us highly-stressed, drained, and miserable. There are a great many brothers and sisters walking around this planet angry, distorting the physical realm as they're left prone to heart attack and any other malady rooted in, or greatly exacerbated by, stress, and distorting the social realm as their anger skews their general behavior.

Given our clumsy, ill-informed social skills, we're adept at making others angry, and they, us, but few apologize or proffer appropriate reconciliatory behavior for such transgression, while those made angry lack the social tools to effectively ask for its redress. Neither party, in other words, has been taught the loving and productive resolution of anger.

Ego-capitalist society finds the elimination or even great reduction of anger a virtual impossibility as it simply doesn't have the tools to provide its citizens and, moreover, the basic social and economic operation of ego-capitalism generates anger in boatloads in the first place. How could it not when the principal focus of its activity and allocation of all resources is not the development and actualization of the human being, but the generation of profit for owners?

Anger is essentially a product of a mismatch between the generally reasonable social expectation of people and the actual behavior, generally substandard, accorded them, both dimensions reflecting societies with uneven, inconsistent, and unfortunately, largely non-existent moral teaching. When Humankind cannot give itself morality it will give itself chaos since the moral development of humankind over the arc of its years has been toward increasing demand for respect and rights, that is, for Love, as seen in movements such as #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, and the recognition of the phenomenon of microaggression.

Indeed did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assert in his 1964 Commencement address at Wesleyan University:  "The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long but it Bends Toward Justice."

But insofar as our increasingly-developed collective awareness of what should morally exist exceeds that which morally is, social chaos, tumult, and dislocation will exist.

As "An armed society is a polite society," we might say of a Love-centered society such as the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, "A loving society is a peaceful society."

ANGER REDRESSED

Are you angry right now?

Here are some general steps:

1. Calm down. I love you, and if no one else will help you, I will. You are NOT alone.

2. Move. Moving your body will release the tension and tightness characteristic of anger. Even an easy movement such as walking will help.

3. After exercise or other movement has calmed you down a bit, think about A.) exactly why you are angry, B.) exactly who you're angry at, and C.) what you want them to do to redress (resolve) your anger. Write it all down. Read it a few times so you won't forget.

4. You'll be speaking to the individual who got you angry, and it would be helpful for you if you had someone to support and assist you in this. They could even go with you to speak to the individual. Try to find someone, a parent or relative.

   If you absolutely cannot find anyone, I'll try to assist you. If we're at considerable distance I'd be willing to call the person on your behalf and speak with them. Payment? If you can afford to pay me for this effort, do so. I need the money. If not, don't pay me. I'll do it for you, anyway.

5. Find the individual who made you angry and speak to them. Give them your thoughts, as determined above. And there is nothing wrong with bringing your note with you.

Before you speak with the transgressor, keep in mind certain realities about anger:

Pending.

ANGER - EXPRESSING

Expressing anger, an essential human process, comprises an awkward and stressful, if not impossible, proposition for many people.

I'll bet you're angry at someone at this very moment.

ANGER - RECEIVING

Receiving anger also comprises an awkward and stressful, if not impossible, proposition for many people.

ILLNESS

Loving others requires focus and mental energy, both of which diminish during illness. Illness also erodes the ability of persons caring for the ill to love, for the same reason.

MIND

Your most important general task over your lifetime is the preservation of the health of your mind, and its repository, your brain:  as you may eventually realize, much of Western, and other, culture tears down the mind. Sugar, for example, which is contained in just about every food and beverage item, is actually a poison, extremely toxic to the brain and body.

Ergo, keep away from sugar, as well as all artificial sweeteners. Your principal beverage should be water, from a tap with excellent filtration, or for store-purchased water, from a glass bottle, never plastic, as you don't want chemical contamination from the plastic leaching into the water. Kind of defeats your impulse toward health, would it not?

If existing American and global health choices remain poor, especially the present massive consumption of sugar in all its forms (sucrose, fructose, dextrose, etc.), expect global health to remain poor--and this means you, and your family. Expect continuing poor health in all respects, including that of mind and brain. Dementia, already a growing global scourge, will continue its insidious forward march, and ultimately come to define the mind of man.

Without a deliberate shift away from unhealthy food and beverage, environment, and stress, expect that in your lifetime you, yourself, and/or some of those around you, such as your own father or mother, will become demented. This disease, dementia, is insidious because it often develops incrementally, that is, a bit at a time, usually slowly, and is thus hard to detect--until it's too late. That's what happened in my family.

Stress also comprises a powerful and explicit antagonist to the health of the entire body and brain; worse than poor food, in fact. Avoiding stress in the modern world, however, is very difficult, nearly impossible, if not actually impossible in many instances--which is why the solution to the pain of humankind is to be found not in the physical, but social sciences, specifically that area of social science, such as my area, studying and promulgating the formal and official adoption of the Love ethic (properly understood).

Actualization of Mind

If your most important general task over your lifetime is the preservation of the health of your mind, your second most important general task over your lifetime is the actualization of your mind, that is, your effort to ensure that you actualize, or realize, or completely bring out, or make happen fully, everything that your individual mind is capable of.

For example, if you have the innate (inside you from birth) ability and talent to cure cancer--you must cure cancer. If you have the innate ability and talent to rid the world of poverty, you must rid the world of poverty. If you have the innate ability and talent to design a spacecraft that can get us to Mars and beyond in half the time presently required--you must design it. If you have the innate ability and talent in social science, or even the creative arts, to craft and promulgate a message and perspective to make everyone on Earth realize, and even act upon, their common humanity--you must craft and promulgate that message. If you have the innate ability and talent to decode the basic viral DNA, and thus pave the way for an antiviral vaccine template that will cure all present and every single future virus--you must conduct that decoding. And so on.

By the way, in reading these thoughts there are two things that some of you may be starting to realize, perhaps occurring to you as you read. First, that the present global system of class rule, capitalism, specifically, in both its economic and even social spheres, certainly and rather absolutely does not encourage, nor even much tolerate, the kind of freewheeling, spirited, and probably lengthy, and resource-intensive processes of individual and social discovery required for actualization. If you've realized this, you've realized why we must shift from a global system of profit and ego, egocapitalism, to one built explicitly on Love (properly understood), for, as we begin to Love each other, we want each other to actualize, to really and deeply be our best selves, and for our human community, which refers to all of us, together, to actualize, as well, to be the best group that we can be.

The second epiphany, or realization, that some of you may be having as you read this book is that permitting anything that in any way compromises the human mind, the sole organ required for both individual and group actualization, such as the legalization of drugs, including marijuana, is nothing short of sheer, utter, flagrant, potentially-irreversible, and large-scale, stupidity.

It cannot be permitted.

LINKS

GRASS NOT GREENER: The Dark Road Ahead for All Americans if Dope is Legalized

Full vs. Partial Actualization

Let's discuss physicist Albert Einstein for a moment.

To be continued.

LINKS

My health site treats these critical topics, as well.

Ergo, def. "therefore"

LOVE & THE STANDARDIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Chapter pending.

INTRUSION

In life you'll find that both human and non-human beings will encroach or intrude into your physical, and sometimes psychological, space if you're not diligent in protecting it.

For example, if you fail to regularly clean, declutter, vacuum and inspect your physical living space, whether a house, apartment, condo, or space you rent, lease, or barter from another, you'll find, sometimes sooner rather than later, that any number of likely unwanted squatters have taken up residence with you.

Your newfound friends would likely include such beings as mice, rats, squirrels, racoons, or birds, or even, depending on your location, larger friends such as bears, and on the more diminutive side of the spectrum:  flies, fleas, ticks, lice, cockroaches, moths, carpet beetles, silverfish, millipedes, or termites.

The human end of the spectrum will have its interlopers, as well, ranging from erstwhile romantic partners whether spousal or otherwise seeking a renewal of the previous relationship, or perhaps a renewal simply of an element of that relationship, such as sex, to, in my own real-world dilemma, a two-bit lawn cutter who regularly trespasses on the property of my family in the course of his work for a next-door neighbor, though apprised and even warned repeatedly by me to refrain from such trespassing and keep off of our property.

This individual suffers from the ubiquitous social malady or maladaption / maladaptation condition that I conceive and label Gross Stupidity Syndrome (GSS), a condition whereby the sufferer "acts stupidly," or "with stupidity," that is, engages regularly in one or more acts committed, or refrained from commmission, that cause substantive unnecessary injury to one or more persons or harm to one or more resources, or both, without necessarily asserting the attribute stupidity as innate to the transgressing individual.

Even your employment is subject to intrusion and possible usurpation by someone wishing your position, who may somehow insinuate themselves into your physical work environment to influence your employer or otherwise simply into their consciousness.

INTERNET

The Internet is virtue and vice connected at the technological hip. Along with its virtues the Internet brings decided vices.

In terms of harm to our physical organism, for example:  Humankind did not evolve to sit in a chair for an extended period of time, as typically happens with Internet use.

Nor is it necessarily salutary to be exposed to every manner of moral and intellectual detritus on the Net.

Internet use should only occur with Internet 2 (not in existence yet), as defined, described, and advocated at my Internet resource TWONETS.COM.

ACKNOWLEDGE NEAR-CERTAINTIES

I, as a philosopher, and any intelligent layman, will both advise against presumption. In life, it's best never to assume anything, about anyone or anything. Just FIND OUT. Things are often not what they appear--and this is true even for smart people. How much more true is it for the rest of us who, honestly, aren't really that smart.

For example, yesterday morning at 2:09 am I called my neighbor directly across the street because it appeared that someone in their family had left their car lights on. Though I have little respect for this family, my better-self often prevails, and in this case it directed me to call them to let them know, lest they find a dead battery in the morning. I've taken similar actions in the past to help them avoid injury, though not lately, since they destroyed our relationship.

Having two telephone number for this particular family I called both. The second call, to a mobile telephone, succeeded and I left a voicemail concerning what I'd observed. The first call, to their home landline, did not succeed. Upon calling, I heard their outgoing message and began leaving my incoming message. Before done I began to hear a series of noises on the phone, culminating in what appeared to be a hang-up. In other words, someone appeared to have hung up on me.

Now, adherence to the No-Presumption rule (NPR) means that I would not presume to have been hung up on, but would instead wait, and hold judgments and conclusions until information-gathering was complete. However, in select cases one may acknowledge "near-certainties," supplanting the NPR.

In this case, for example:

1. I've had fairly experience with this orthodox Jewish married couple, and

2. I'm smart

Accordingly, my confidence level is fairly high in this case that I know what occurred. I feel it highly-likely, a near-certainty, in fact, that one or both of these pitiful imbeciles hung up on me, and this pair of reasons is sufficient to support invocation of the ANC override.

Specifically, I base this conclusion on what I already know to be their mediocre intellect and value system, as well as the particular behavior of their answering machine as I was leaving my message. When an answering machine permits you to leave a message but as you're doing so the machine stops, perhaps regurgitating a bit, it's often because the recipient of the call terminated it as the message was being recorded.

ANCO (the ANC Override) guideline is meant to spare perceptive or otherwise extremely intelligent persons the possible humiliation, wasted time, and personal or social reversals in engineering events to hold a presumption, when that presumption is likely superfluous. In this case, for example, if I was angry at being hung up on, and wanted to approach the two imbeciles about it quickly with my anger intact, ready to present it to them before it began to eat at me, it could be psychologically injurious to me to hold myself in a state of uncertainty. It can be painful to feel anger but remain uncertain as to the specific cause of the anger, because if one acts in a responsible and loving manner and refrains from expression of the anger until it can be correctly directed, pain is caused. This process can be circumvented in select cases when ANCO is employed.

ACHIEVEMENT

Change Your Framework, Change Your Life

You don't need work--you need a system of work.

You don't need eating properly--you need a system for eating properly.

You don't need sleeping properly and getting enough sleep--you need a system for sleeping properly and getting enough sleep.

And so on.

A key point is that your lifestyle is determined in large measure by the framework or system that you, another, others, or circumstances has emplaced in your life. For example, if for one or more reasons you suffer continuing financial hardship, suffer a poor marriage, and engage in inordinate use of drugs or alcohol, this framework will largely determine the daily activities that you can and cannot easily engage in. Under this framework, you likely couldn't, for example, rent a limousine and take a one-week vacation gambling in Atlantic City. You couldn't purchase a $10,000 diamond bracelet that caught your eye, nor is it likely that you could win the Boston Marathon. The options available to you are determined by your present life framework or system and they could not include any of these things.

In my case, I've still not achieved the platform for success that I need. For example, I'm still locked into a lifestyle of expending too much time engaging with fattening food, glamor photographs, and television (watched on my laptop). Why? I desperately want to break from these activities, but have not done so yet, though there is intermittent progress, comprising, I believe, a general upward trend, though slow.

I'm still engaging in these activities, that we can collectively consider my lifestyle, because the changed framework, or system, that I require to disengage from these activities, or have them unavailable or undesirable in the first place, is not yet emplaced. The secret or key to life change is not that difficult to discern:  in my case, to disengage from the aforementioned set of activities, key elements in what we can refer to as my present lifestyle, which is determined by my present framework or system, as explained above, I've simply got to change the framework, or system under which I'm operating.

The most effective, hence powerful, way to change your framework is by creating an alternative framework, comprised of elements, from predicates and presumptions to concrete daily activities, that you find more appealing, and easier to implement or operate, than your present framework.

Then, just as the flow of water conforms to its easiest path, your behavior will conform to its easiest path, because your new framework or system will have "built-out" (i.e. left absent from the original native design) the mechanisms required to encourage, facilitate, and even permit, undesired behaviors and activities, and "built-in" (i.e. included in the original native design) those desired.

BASIC PREDICATE FOR ACHIEVEMENT

This, however, is a fiction.

[Does not refer to content just above. This is a new section.]

DISTRESS CALL

Trekkies, that is, dedicated fans of the Star Trek science fiction franchise, know the phenomenon of the distress call. A Federation starship, that's the United Federation of Planets, the controlling intergalactic fraternal body featured in the franchise, will receive a signal through space, typically from an alien starship, indicating a serious problem and soliciting assistance. Such an event is typically used to open and theme an episode of Trek, no matter the particular Trek series.

Trekkies also know that when a Federation starship or other Federation vessel is solicited with a distress call, it responds in some fashion, almost without exception, as the Love-oriented axiology of the Federation would permit no other response. It would be unheard of for the Federation to ignore such a plea.

Yet isn't our recent outreach to my Mother's affluent brother Joe, for financial assistance, akin to the broadcast of a signal for distress in the Star Trek universe? And while the morality of the Federation is established and sound, the same cannot be said of the morality of my Uncle Joe, or indeed his two brothers, S. and J., also my Uncles, as Joe took the plea submitted solely to him, and alerted his brothers, the group of which responded, "No."

The amount requested was $1000, which my Uncle Joe, as we understand his financial resource, could have easily given us. Alternatively, each of the three brothers, whom I now permanently term The Three Scrooges, could have easily given us about $333.00 each, for a total of $1000 requested. But they did not. In fact, none of them elected to give us--myself and my Mother, their Sister who will be 90 years old this Spring and is ill, a dime. Not one thin dime.

Such is the pathological individualism of the global system of ego-capitalism, the real epidemic to be feared, readily infecting even families. Nor will a mask prevent it, I'm afraid.

When the crackpot science-fiction imaginings of underpaid television writers exceed the full vigor of the moral code of established societies and the theorists and philosophers who designed them (such as Mssrs. Locke, Rousseau, et al.), it may be time to rewrite that code and re-establish those societies. And while we're at it, let's dispense altogether with the paradigm of society, in final favor of community.

It's time.

PROBLEMS IN LIFE

It took me some years in my life to realize that everybody, or just about everybody, has problems. I actually thought that I was the only one.

A key warning regarding problems that develop in your life is:  work to solve them right away, as problems left unresolved tend either to get bigger and more severe, or simply keep you frustrated and miserable. And remember that a problem that has you unhappy, today, may have you miserable tomorrow, after it's grown and festered.

Persons and nations alike, take heed:   matter how bad something is--it can always get worse.

HOW TO SOLVE A PROBLEM

Learn the True Nature of a Thing

To solve a problem you must truly understand the problem. Whether the problem is another person, a difficult life circumstance or situation, a health issue, a financial problem, or anything or anyone else, to address it, or they, you must clearly understand it, or them. You must know what or whom you're dealing with--you must truly and clearly understand the problem.

My beloved Father would often say, "You've got to understand. Because if you don't understand--you're going to misunderstand."

In my own life, for example, most of my problems have, and do, revolve around conflict with people, because they unthinkingly or cruelly commit misdeeds against me or my family. These are situations where other people are clearly incorrect in their behavior, but either don't realize it, don't fully realize it, or simply don't care--outward expressions or even declarations of theology or morality, aside. I'm only too happy to admit (and try to correct) my own mistakes, but as regards this entry, the mistakes were not mine.

Also see topic People, above.

IMPEDIMENTS TO LOVE

1. Stress, physical

   (includes polluted air and poor nutrition)

2. Stress, psychological

3. Inebriation

4. Drug high

5. Low native IQ

6. Lack of training in Love

7. Illness

8. Lack of social reinforcement

9. Lack of time

10. Ego

11. Distraction

12. Noise

13. Compromise of cognition, i.e. ability to think

STRESS

Stress, especially sustained stress, is more inimical to health in body and mind than even poor eating.

One key in negotiating stress is to structure and respond to it such that it actually builds your brain, not erodes it.

This can be done, in general terms, in this manner:  don't simply let the stress "happen" to you. Throughout the stressful episode keep your mind active--think about what is happening, how it can be redressed, prevented, or terminated. Keep building, in this manner, new neural pathways to compensate for those that may be eroding by the stress.

LACK OF TRAINING IN LOVE

One can't practice Love if one doesn't understand what Love is.

FALSE FORMS OF LOVE

BUREAUCRATIC LOVE

Definition: action, 1.) thought to comprise genuine and proper assistance, 2.) rendered by fiat or as if by fiat, 3.) against the wishes of the individual, 4.) especially by anonymous or indirect forces, that is, those the individual has neither personally seen nor interacted with, as is 5.) typical of that seen as assistance rendered by government agencies or other bureaucracies.

In sum, false bureaucratic assistance is 1.) that rendered without direct one-to-one human connection, 2.) that discounts the wishes or preferences of the involved individual/s.

The pain and suffering and/or maltreatment grossly evident in some cases make similar action easier to consider genuine Love. For example, a mentally-ill homeless person freezing to death on a New York City street in Winter presents a more categorical and thus compelling case for a bureaucratic action, even if such action runs counter to the profession, i.e. their own voiced preference, of the homeless person. Even then, however, were Love as I fully define it the animating element, the homeless person would not be forced off the street. The strategy, to prevent the psychological injury through injury to agency (of the homeless person) that would occur during, and be part of, such force would be to proffer assistance without said force, likely meaning employ and offer of alternative options, such as assistance in conveyance to some dwelling other than a homeless shelter or whatever target location the homeless person protests against, or, employ of a new kind of technique I'll call Rapid Response Shelter-in-Place/Sheltering Environment, where the homeless individual stays right where they are, but a safer and healthier (notice I'm not asserting categoricals such as safe and healthy) Sheltering Environment is erected for and around them, perhaps a small extreme-weather tent dwelling with its own heat source, that is attended to by social workers, retrained in my prescribed manner, or better yet family members or friends of the homeless person.

If Muhammad wishes not to come to the mountain, the mountain, as it were, comes to them, and thus are they rendered safe, but said render causes no injury to their psychological or mental integrity or condition, including their feelings of their own agency. If individual agency isn't considered paramount and safeguarded in America--then it's a devalued principle and not safe, anywhere. Interestingly, the libertarian principle that citizens possess agency that must be categorically safeguarded, and the Agape principle that it's wrong and immoral to force persons to do something they protest doing, as it causes them psychological pain, at the least, are one and the same in their ends and objective: no coercion.

* * *

As always, Brothers & Sisters, and Fellow Americans:  if I'm missing facts or other relevant information, or recommended perspective, on anything that I've written in this entire book or throughout any of my work, do NOT hesitate to proffer your recommended corrections.

Then, we discuss!

As a Philosopher I am at all times interested in one thing above all:  TRUTH.

* * *

(Contact me at OneHumanFamily@fastmail.net with your telephone number and I'll call you A.S.A.P. Or I'll send you my number. Your preference!)

NOISE

Noise, a real and distinct environmental and social problem not yet generally on the radar of regulators and society-at-large, is likely the number #1 quality-of-life issue in America, and elsewhere.

In fact, noise is one of our most potent stressors, and is of key importance because it interferes with, and indeed compromises, two key or Foundational elements or aspects of our humanity:

1. The ability to think

2. Relatedly, the ability to love

Loving others requires focus and mental energy, both of which diminish, or even disappear, in the face of noise. And the louder, longer, or more irritating the noise, the greater the reduction in loving capacity.

I assure you:  whether you're working through an algebra problem, formulating your next business plan, reconciling after a fight with your spouse, trying to figure out what to do with your life, or attempting to be attentive toward a suffering person, that is, attempting to show love, none of it's going to happen properly, if at all, with a leafblower blaring outside.

The reality is as inescapable as it is simple:  any activity requiring use of the mind, and for that matter the body, requires quiet, or relative quiet. This is simply how we humans are built.

Noise & Illness

It is inappropriate, disrespectful, and insensitive to produce, or permit the production of, loud noise, especially inordinately loud noise such as that from leafblowers, commercial lawn mowers or riding mowers, tree chippers, and non-stock Harley-Davidson motorcycles, when a nearby resident is ill, especially very ill. If the resident is also elderly, production of such noise is that much more inappropriate as such persons under such circumstances can be close to death, and a respectful, even spiritual, silence, is completely warranted as patient and family undergo the wrenching or otherwise traumatic experience.

Establishment and maintenance of such silence reveals knowledge, understanding, and respect for the gravity of the situation; this behavior equates to Human Civility 101, yet my own neighbors, both Christians and Orthodox Jews, are evidently too obtuse, uncouth, and shamefully insensitive to embrace such an obvious moral posture. I reached out explicitly to our local Rabbi's wife, who promotes herself as a community-building life-coach--but she's been categorically and shamefully unresponsive. So much, evidently, for the virtues of orthodox Judaism.

One might ask, "How can we know who is ill in our neighborhood? We don't really know our neighbors!"

Well, brothers and sisters, I don't know that I've ever heard a more clear-cut argument in favor of getting out there and meeting your neighbors.

NUTRITION

There is no question that the health of the body, as well as the mind, and one's mental state, all influence one's ability to show love, and more formally, to practice it.

Sugar is both a poison, and addictive, and its quick elimination from your body and brain is of the utmost importance in your practice of Agape, as well as for general health.

LEARNING TO KILL

Are you the kind of individual who wouldn't hurt a fly?

Well I suggest that you start hurting them, or, more mercifully, quickly killing them, because over the course of your lifetime you may find yourself in a circumstance where your life, or that of a significant other, is gravely threatened. If you have no experience whatsoever in taking a life, and have never thought about it nor grappled with its various implications, you may find yourself immobilized and unable to act in a life-threatening crisis, thereby unnecessarily abdicating a life that you value.

With the belief in Agape, or Brotherly Love that I advocate and teach, we value the life of any aggressor, as well as our own lives. But ultimately, self-love, a key part of the understanding and practice of Love, dictates that, as the absolute last step in a graduated response hierarchy (GRH), we take a life if absolutely necessary.

Accordingly, I recommend that throughout your life you embrace the opportunity to dispense small-scale death, in regard, for example, to the annoying insect that wandered into your home.

NEURONAL RESTRUCTURE

There is every reason to believe that as humanity practices love our brain structure will begin to change, reflecting the new ways of thinking and feeling.

Thus will Love slowly become, over the millennia, increasingly self-reinforcing as its unique cognitive rewire becomes predominant, and increasingly comes to define, become resident, and then remain essential to the new brain of man.

The Love Brain.

MEA CULPA

I am clearly an imperfect being, whose errors, mistakes, and missteps must be recognized, chronicled, and examined, just as those committed by others, which the present volume in large measure does, if we are to prevent such human error in the future, and better yet, devise a new social system in which such mistakes are "built-out" of the system from the start

Having acknowledged my propensity for mistakes, I will also say that we might group mistakes into two basic categories:

Mistakes made though the transgressor actively attempts to remain generally mindful and avoid mistakes, versus mistakes made by persons of low awareness who maintain no such personal duty.

Mistakes made against other people, versus mistakes made that generally affect only the transgressor, as the transgressor actively attempts to love others, and thus when mistakes are made they tend not to be of a variety injurious to others. I am in this category of transgressors.

December 21, 2020

My sister and her boyfriend, as usual, bungled their simple mission for this weekend:  shovel the snow at our family home, then bring home groceries for my Mother and me. My mistake was, last night upon being appprised by the sibling that the market they had gone to had just closed, not sending them to the Rite-Aid in my area, as they could have still purchased some essential grocery items.

This did not occur to me, though my sister did indicate that she had to get home as she had early work tomorrow, and, their purile behavior kept me stressed all weekend long. The aforementioned conversation occurred at the close of the weekend, around 10 pm.

4:55 pm

I just consumed a container of broccoli-cheese soup that I inadvertently left out and unrefrigerated for a period of hours. The soup smelled, tasted, and appeared fine, yet it's still a cream or milk-based product, and so could have, and likely did form some level of bacteria. I really shouldn't have consumed it.

I consumed it because I was stressed, tired, hungry, it was late, and the soup seemed to taste, look, and smell fine.

We'll know soon enough if I've a penalty to pay.

[Dec. 24, 2020, no penalty was exacted.]

What is The Actualized Society?

The actualized society is a near-utopia characterized by moral and technical near-perfection. That is, Love, properly understood, informs all social intercourse, and competence and devotion to task inform all economic and other social operations.

WHY AN ACTUALIZED SOCIETY

In 'The Actualized Society,' the problems described in "What Makes This World Bad," above, would never happen.

Additionally, however, consider the pandemic of 2020, which is, itself, a symptom of a world that even in 2020 is still held together by not much more than spit and chewing gum, to Russia and other nations attempting to destabilize the West and discredit democracy, to people using computers to hold hospital operations hostage unless a ransom is paid, to every manner of computer hacking, to climate change, to the war in Iraq which was completely unnecessary, to the fact that in 2001 eighteen men from Saudi Arabia who thought that flying jumbo jets into the Twin Towers in New York City was actually a good idea, to the fact that America and other nations still appear to require men and women to walk around patrolling wearing guns on their belts, men and women who, I might add, often commit atrocities upon their brothers and sisters, to the fact that most of don't even realize that we are brothers and sisters, to the number of murders and other serious crimes, and any crime, committed each year in America--and everywhere else--consider the fact that we lock the doors to our houses and cars every day and night and consider it normal, to the fact that in the year 2020 there is still a significant number of persons in America and elsewhere with nowhere to call home and no regular supply of food, to the fact our teens are so miserable that they take their own lives, and in increasing numbers, to the fact that in America our middle-aged persons are, likewise, so miserable that they take their own lives...

...to the fact that in our present global culture people lie to each other all the time about everything and think not a thing about it ("tell him I'm not in"), and of course the most powerful entities upon the planet, corporations, lie to us constantly, about everything ("fine quality since 1898"; "these cigarettes won't hurt you"), to the corruption of our food and land, including the fact that in the West and elsewhere we consider the constant consumption of small bottles or cans of a carbonated, sweetened beverage called "soda" normal when in fact it, and similar detritus comprises just about the worst thing that can be put into the human body, to the fact that just last night our Italian food order was incomplete as the restaurant again neglected to include the Parmesan cheese, rendering the meal flat, disappointing, and unacceptable to my 80yo Mother who deserved and was looking-forward to a nice, hot, Italian meal prepared to her preference but who, instead, was angry and disappointed, to the fact that not only are millions of persons worldwide lacking health insurance, but it's the very operations of their respective economies and societies, accepted and considered normal, that are making them sick in the first place, to the divorce rate, to the rising tide of addictions, to the pathetic maniac who wields his so-called leafblower like an assault weapon making life absolutely miserable for my family and likely others, and eroding our hearing (I just realized that I appear to have developed tinnitus), to the fact that people still judge each other prematurely on the basis of superficialities such as skin color or length of hair.

Also consider the putative (in-agreement) devolution of working relationships, cordial or otherwise, in the Congress of the United States. It's thought for some time now that issues of partisanship and ego, particularly during the Trump years, have compromised the ability of the legislative branch of the United States government to fulfill its mandate to productively produce necessary and/or desirable legislation for the American people, (in other words, to "get things done"), the divide between the parties seen as having become too wide. This is clearly an imbroglio (a kind of complex problem) rooted in whole or part in the loss of Love between members. Though not commonly considered as such, cordiality, consideration, respect, and honesty, all attributes present through much of the history of American governance, including and perhaps especially the legislative function, responsible for allowing persons of different views and capacities to function together to achieve, are actually functions of Love. When Love, that basic sense of connection to, and indeed affinity for, the other, disappears, so do its particular expressions. Such loss spells moral disaster for any social grouping or form, whether family, community, government, nation--or the entire world, and functional disaster, as such groups must normally work together, which becomes difficult or even impossible without Love.

Consider all this, and much more, too common in America and elsewhere, past, present, and likely future unless a radical change is made, and concomitantly (at the same time) realize that the human race even now remains as much 'Keystone Kops' as mature, principled, and competent species, and thus at this juncture obviously requires a cleansing, a purification, a near-total re-imagining, then a recast and rebuilding, based on our most sublime and important principles.

This is why we must build an actualized society. This is why the work in social science, unique and powerful, of myself, Philosopher, Social Theorist, Agape Master, and more, Vincent Frank De Benedetto, is required, along with any similar or otherwise helpful body of work, holding the same objective.

And you are required--to learn about, and support, such work.

WITHOUT LOVE, GOVERNMENTS FALL

Without Love, properly understood, governments fall, or tend in that direction, fast or slow.

Intellectually-engaged political theorists and philosophers can be quite pleased with themselves in positing the set of conceptual elements required to erect the framework of a new and successful government, but one element most miss is Love, properly understood. Love, typically seen as a weakness or denoting passivity or an ephemeral or otherwise insubstantial value, principal, behavior, or other element, is, in fact, a force, and sometimes the strongest and most powerful of all forces. The form of Love referred to is "brotherly love," that of Christ or Martin Luther King, Jr. or perhaps a family member toward another, Agape (uh gop' ay) in the language of Greek philosophy, it is one of several forms of Love postulated by ancient Greek philosophers, and a concept historically associated with Christianity, a connection that prevails, today.

Russian Premier Vladimir Putin is understood to be eager to dismantle Western Democracy, or otherwise see it fall. But what neither he nor likely any Western leaders understand is that the creation and longevity of government, regardless of form, is tenuous in the first place in the absence of a species-wide moral code. For without it, without Love (properly understood), De Benedetto's Law states:  in the absence of Love, the psycho-socio-behavioral phenomenon of nonLove will intrude, increasing in an escalating fashion. Nature and morality both abhor a vacuum so insofar as the phenomenon of Love is absent, its opposite, "non-Love" or simply nonLove will fill our social space, much as dark matter fills every square inch of space in the universe that is unoccupied by something else.

(The psycho-socio-behavioral phenomenon of nonLove can simply be referred to as the social phenomenon of nonLove.)

The problem for governments, any and all, is that the growth of nonlove doesn't restrict itself to injury to the people of a nation--it encircles and envelopes everyone and everything, including the governments of nations. Thus do we see crime, for example, infiltrating and corrupting every level of society, including the highest. Can you say Richard M. Nixon? On the street--a mugging; in the boardroom--embezzlement; in the Presidential Palace--genocide, coups, or collusion with powerful drug cartels.

Crime and criminal syndicates can become so strong that legitimate established governments sometimes have no choice but to tolerate, or even coordinate, with them. This is precisely what Vladimir Putin did with regard to the Russian syndicates--permitted them their territories and activities within the shadows of Russian society. Had he not, he may have met the same eventual fate as our own John F. Kennedy, a lesson probably not lost on the politically savvy Mr. Putin.

Thus, one of the many reasons that Agape must be established in every society is that without it governments become corrupt and fall, as do the masses that they govern, the descent and destruction of the former of a slightly different character than the latter, but an unceremonious end, all the same.

Content pending.

HISTORY OF LOVE

Chapter pending.

AGAPE SECRET TO A PEACEFUL DEATH

Content in this chapter is only available in the finished print volume, or to supporters making a financial donation, below.

Or to persons genuinely and utterly desperate to know, to whom I will provide the material, gratis (i.e. free).

Provision of all goods and services would be free within the social system that I advocate as the successor to capitalist liberal democracy:  THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.

Thanks in advance for your support, whether time or cash, for the continuing development of this volume, a genuinely unique and, in fact, seminal work whose success will see the long dreamt-of moral transformation of the human species, our One Human Family.

Does my theory of Agape provide for a Nash Equilibrium amongst the entire human race, or subsets within it?

It would seem so, as under it everyone "wins."

Chapter pending.

My work is unique and powerful, and of critical import. If you agree, please assist me. I can't properly promulgate these ideas without help, and it actually gets worse from there--email me for an explanation of this statement. I must build a support team, and so require help with tasks, as well as financial assistance. Please provide as much of both or either that you can, as often as possible. For money assistance, best is to set up a recurring donation. Use the PayPal button, below, no matter your form of donation.

Otherwise, please don't complain about the world of pain, in myriad forms, that we all continue to experience across this planet. In fact, brothers and sisters, while the Coronavirus of the 2020 pandemic has its symptoms, the pandemic, itself, is a symptom, though not of a pathology of the body, but the body politic, in other words the global citizenry--us, and the malformed world that we have thus far created in our history as a species. The pandemic is an obvious example of the circular, mutually-reinforcing pattern of large-scale injury continually generated by the twin phenomena of human stupidity and nonLove, each reinforcing and helping to create afresh the other, that befalls humanity when an incorrect principle or idea is selected, and compulsively retained, as the basis for our organization as a species.

This is why the world desperately needs me and my work on LOVE (there are a few others also working in this general area). The manifold (many types or forms) pain of humanity will simply never end until the political and moral basis for its existence shifts to Love, properly understood. This is my thesis and corresponding body of work, and self-imposed lifetime task.

Frankly, it's an amazing endeavor that anyone should be proud to support, and even participate in.

BROTHERHOOD OF MAN

I am pleased to offer my work absolutely free, online-or-off, provided that it is not changed, and I am attributed, for as long as I can, consonant with, and as an example of, my unyielding belief in, and endeavor to demonstrate and indeed build an early, here-and-now prototype of THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, an effort intended to demonstrate that under the right conditions everyone can, must, and, indeed, would like to contribute their talent to the world, and in return take from the world that which others offer, and in this simple yet powerful and elegant way comprise an entire global economy and society, that is what the long-dreamt-of Brotherhood of Man is, the most free and actualizing society, nay, community or even extended family, in my view, ever conceived. To be sure, the new form would be just as much Commune-ism as Communism, embodying and exemplifying the values of the traditional and perhaps most longstanding of the forms of the "intentional community," the commune:  cooperation, sharing, mutual-aid, compassion, empathy, simply...active Love.

In this way, through this model of human organization the baker ensures that the auto mechanic has bread, the auto mechanic insures that the schoolteacher has automotive repair, the schoolteacher ensures that the factory worker has education, the factory worker ensures that the computer programmer has assembled products, the computer programmer ensures that the sanitation worker has properly-programmed computers and even home devices, the sanitation worker ensures that the fireman has sanitation service, the fireman ensures that the landscaper has fire protection, the landscaper ensures that the electrician has their grass and shrubs cut, the electrician ensures that the farmer has their electrical work done, and the farmer ensures that the electrician has agricultural products for consumption.

This entire process, explicated here, as you can already see requires no system of money whatsoever, yet easily comprises an entire global economy. Governance would be industrial, not political, as the operative human reality then, as now though we don't acknowledge it, is that production and distribution of goods and services and the employment and needs-based distribution thereto required, is paramount and controlling for human society, not political control, with elected management bodies operating industry in an intelligent and organized fashion, and a value system based on an active ethic of Love underpinning everything.

Such a system of human organization, by the way, is actually what genuine Communism is, the self-serving claims of past and present totalitarian systems, and the polemical claims of right-wing politicians and ideologues, notwithstanding. Call a peach a pear if you wish--the reality is that it's still a peach, and I'm here to present to you, my beautiful brothers and sisters in our one human family, the sweetest and most juicy and delectable peach that you'll ever bite into.

Thinkers advocating such a paradigm include social philosopher Erich Fromm, and certainly Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the form of his Beloved Community, while, because it is believed that Jesus instructed his apostles to "hold all things in common," some scholars consider him the founder, or first practitioner, of genuine Communism. To wit, Christians and others might consider the words of Luke in the New Testament:

And the words of St. Ambrose in the 4th century:

To be clear, social and economic organization under the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN would not require us to relinquish our personal possessions. Generally speaking, common ownership would apply only to resources of finite availability such as land. In fact, only under a genuine shared system would we finally gain access, readily and naturally, to the material goods we need, want--and are entitled to as the workers who created them. The value of the above quotations rests in their assertion of the ideals, generally, of common ownership, and distribution by need, (and in our modern era of titanic abundance, we specify "want," also, not just "need"). The quotations also illustrate that the Communist idea, in its pure, hence proper form, is very old, and is, in fact, contained right in the New Testament, itself, the most modern portion of the Bible, the part believed to express the principles and teaching of Jesus.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters:  is it any surprise that Jesus Christ, the historical leader who formally taught radical love of neighbor, would also be the person calling for a mode of economic relation that embodied and extended this ethic?

If you've ever used a piece of free, open-source software, you are, in fact, already familiar with the use paradigm I'm advocating.

Want to watch a free movie online, no registration even required? Enjoy--and then imagine the entire world operating this way.

Then, after you've imagined it--help me realize it.

Commercial Potential

But--we don't have such an actualized social system yet, do we? Thus, accordingly, must I add that my projects, all under development, especially my books and musical release (as well as my t-shirt designs, invention ideas, and more), while all explicitly intended to actualize our world based on Love, are also created and engineered as commercial products intended to generate income. I must survive economically and thus have no choice in this matter, at this time.

I believe that the ideas that I'm trading in, Love and hope, that every person in the world, today, especially young people, seek, are of incredible commercial potential when creatively crafted, as I am skilled in doing, and will ergo create and comprise extremely large revenue streams. Those directly assisting me as members of my support team will benefit very generously from this success.

Please join and assist me, and may I thank you in advance for any assistance you will provide.

SUGGESTED LINKS

INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY

Below is another way to think about and consider your part.

YOUR ROLE

I am Vincent Frank De Benedetto, writer, philosopher, and, specifically, the originator of the system of principle and practice of Agape described in my work, prose, poetry, and music, my key work and magnum opus being the volume LOVE PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD, available free at loveproperlyunderstood.com, this Internet resource.

I am 62 years old as of the time of this writing, November 25, 2022, and my life thus far has been largely if not principally in service of 1.) the acquisition of knowledge and cultivation of ideas, and 2.) others in need, principally though not exclusively in the provision of caregiving to my own parents, one then the other, an activity I am still engaged in. I have not devoted much time in my life to creating wealth, nor am I a magician, metaphysician, alchemist, or pathological individualist. Thus, as is often true of our most potent and important writers, visionaries, prophets, philosophers, and humanitarian--I am poor.

To continue this work, and even to physically survive, I require the explicit and ongoing assistance of benefactors, patrons, and donors, in other words--you.

My key work and magnum opus LOVE PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD is a work of principal and practice, a document providing an extended statement and, indeed, blueprint for how the world must be reshaped. If you understand the value of this work and wish to see its further development realized, and promulgation effected, please consider:

1. Officially joining my Support Team.
2. Committing to assist with occasional tasks, remote or local (North Jersey).
3. Providing a one-time or occasional show of financial support.
4. Committing to provide regular financial support (example:  $20/mo).

Please use the PayPal button below to effect a single or recurring financial donation, or, email me for further information or conversation.

Brothers & Sisters in our One Human Family--Thank You.

PRESIDENTIAL RUN - 2024

Writing today, Tuesday, September 21, 2021, at 3:57 pm, I declare that, over the last two or so weeks I've decided to attempt a run for the Presidency of the United States. Such decision and its consequent action is not rooted in ego in any measure, I have little interest in ego, but in confidence that the confluence of 1.) my intellect, and 2.) knowledge of Agape, these both filtered and burnished through my unique life experience, can, in good measure, right many of the very many wrongs afflicting this nation, and in the best of cases, the world.

I did not begin this volume, LOVE, PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD, nor its two sister volumes, my AGAPE TRILOGY, in support of a Presidential run, but I do think it relevant to note that endeavor here.

My governance of this nation, and the influence that such management will likely have on the world, will be based on Agape, as this principal is unquestionably powerful, dynamic, robust, and extensible (i.e. capable of growing or shrinking in size or scope) enough to comprise such a foundation. Of course, the principle is generally misunderstood even in regard to what is traditionally understood as its native area of relevance, personal and social relationships. Many will find its application to practical politics baffling. I'll explain all in due time, however, and the nation and world may just find itself surprised, amazed, and eminently cheered.

There is one thing and one thing alone that can change the face of humanity, and that is Love, properly understood.

I ask for your active support in this interesting and likely inordinately (i.e. extremely) challenging endeavor. Please begin by 1.) contacting me so I can add your name to my email list, 2.) talk to as many others as you can about me, my ideas, and my Presidential run. Persuade others of like mind to add their names to my email list, as well. And last, 3.) begin to study and think deeply about my nascent (i.e. just starting) platform statements, here (campaign suspended; contact me if you'd like me to reinstate it and you'd support me).

Do you want a genuinely, dramatically, and permanently changed world?

Now is our chance. Let's not miss this rare, emerging opportunity.

LINKS & RESOURCES

MUSIC

In an important effort in musical forensics, I corresponded with the last surviving person with an immediate family connection to lyricist Chet Powers (aka "Dino Valenti"), composer of the 1967 classic song Get Together, a musical piece featuring profound and socially urgent lyrical poetry, who may have had knowledge of the explicit meaning of those lines, this person being the husband of Katherine Powers, Chet's sister, as Katherine, herself, whom I had originally attempted to correspond with, had just passed away.

Listen to the song here.

GET TOGETHER

Love is but a song we sing

Fear's the way we die

You can make the mountains ring

or make the angels cry

though the bird is on the wing

and you may not know why

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another, right now

Some may come, and some may go

We will surely pass

When the one that left us here, returns for us, at last (original line pending)

We are but a moment's sunlight

Fading in the grass

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another, right now

[Repeat Chorus, then musical break]

[Chorus again]

If you hear the song I sing

You will understand - Listen

You hold the key to love and fear

All in your trembling hand

just one key unlocks them both

It's there at your command

Come on, people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another, right now

[Repeat Chorus 2x]

All of which is informed by Agape.

My AGAPE TRILOGY is, itself, part of a multi-part, multiplatform body of work including prose (e.g. books and articles), poetry, a musical project, a radio program, and real-time in-person outreach such as speeches, interviews, and TED talks. I'm creating and promulgating this body of work in service of establishing the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, an "actualized" society, that is, as defined, described, and discussed, above, a quasi-utopia, characterized by moral and technical near-perfection:

1. MORAL:  Love, properly understood, informing all social intercourse and mechanisms of governance.

2. TECHNICAL:  Competence and devotion to task informing all economic and other social operations and activity.

AGAPE TRILOGY:  SCHEMA (i.e. plan or roadmap)

LOVE:  PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD, THE MOST POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE AVAILABLE TO HUMANKIND
VOLUME #1 (WHAT WE NEED) This web site.

NEIGHBORS OF DEATH:  THE PERNICIOUS FORCE OF NONLOVE THAT PUT THE DIVISION IN SUBDIVISON
VOLUME #2 (WHY WE NEED IT)

THE ACTUALIZED SOCIETY:  THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN & THE END OF EGO-CAPITALISM
VOLUME #3 (HOW TO GET IT)

MY FURTHER WORK & RESOURCES

CENTER FOR THE PRINCIPLE & PRACTICE OF LOVE
Physical headquarters for THE AGAPE ORDER (below), and production of my work in social science. Seeking support staff.

THE AGAPE ORDER
People committed in the here and now, before establishment of the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, to the principle and practice of Love.

AGAPE ADVISOR (uh gop' ay)
Unique & powerful counseling for any life problem, provided by me, Vincent Frank De Benedetto, AGAPE MASTER.

Cost is nominal, or free if you genuinely can't afford anything, at all.

OUR BETTER SELVES
"Toward Wisdom & Love in Our Global Society," various essays by Vincent Frank De Benedetto.

MESSAGE OF HOPE
Unique musical project centered on the same thematic as all my work:  transition from ego-capitalism to the BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, an actualized society. Visit the site to listen to a rough draft of what I believe will be a global smash hit:  VISION OF A WORLD.

GRASS NOT GREENER:  THE DARK ROAD AHEAD FOR ALL AMERICANS IF DRUGS ARE LEGALIZED
Legalization of drugs is a key mistake in that their widespread use, especially marijuana, will erode, then destroy, the trust that any society must have to operate. Drug use also causes a destabilization or other compromise of the human mind inimical to cultivation of the capacity for, and inclination toward, Love, which society must also have to operate, or certainly to actualize, that is, to operate with all latencies and potentialities realized, and even to actualize with regard to non-love-specific spheres of societal function including technical and economic.

VINCENT.CARE

My master Internet page and online home base. Specifically, my biography and work summary page leading to all my work, with a master list of just about all my Internet resources (i.e. "web sites").