Is Honesty Really the Best Policy?

Is honesty better than guile and subterfuge?

Many people would say that subterfuge is better, because it’s a lot more clever. Here’s how the argument goes:

“You don’t give away your game plan so everyone can see it, do you? If you do, you are a fool, because now everyone knows what you are doing, and your secret to success can be duplicated by everybody, taking away from your profits. What good is that? Would you rather be Microsoft or Mozilla? Who do you think has a better life, the fools who work for a non-profit, or filthy rich Bill Gates? Only simpletons and fools are honest and open.”

That’s the logic of planet earth, anyway.

But of course on planet earth, we live in hierarchical societies where a few have a lot of power, and the “masses” have very little. We live in an environment where knowledge of clean energy exists, but is not implemented. We live on a planet where millions of people continue to die unnecessarily from the disease of cancer - a condition that was cured back in 1931. We live on a planet, to summarize the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, where governments bribe the people with money taken out of their own pockets. What can we in the United States do about a corrupt Congress which passes legislation that benefits only a few special interests? Not a hell of a lot – other than every four years, vote for another Democrat or Republican who will do the same thing.

This is the kind of helpless situation you get into when you believe that guile and secrecy is better than honesty and openness. You get hierarchical societies where information and resources are hoarded, because of the belief in scarcity. You get a “follow-the-leader” mentality where individuals give away their power. You get a false and polarizing Democratic – Republican dichotomy, where people continue to rigidly support one party or the other even though both parties are corrupt to the core and do exactly the same things when in office.

Openness, honesty and integrity is always superior to secrecy, guile and subterfuge. I talked about this concept in an earlier blog post. However, things have gotten so far out of hand that I feel I have to repeat this message.

Here is a little packet of energy – lets call it a quanta:* A quantum is the building block of all matter and energy, according to physics. We are going to call this quanta the most basic “bit” of information that exists.

Just as matter and energy combines from quanta to form subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and the various shapes that make our world, so too do bits of information combine to form subsets or collections of useful data. Javascript, for example, is a collection of information – a programming language that helps us create dynamic web pages. Any programming language is essentially composed of 1’s and 0’s – the basic quanta of computer information.

Banking, politics, physics, are all collections of information. So is a blueprint for a house. All information systems came from somebody’s head – they are essentially collections of thought. Here is an information system – a Sumerian tablet:



Guess how useful this is? Not very, because no one now knows how to decipher the symbols that represent the information being conveyed. That knowledge used to be in someone’s head, but even though the data has been written down symbolically, the information that it represents has been lost.

What is information? It’s ideas – thoughts, concepts, that people can understand. If you don’t understand something, it’s worthless.

It’s one thing to simply lose information, but it’s quite another when you deliberately attempt to hide information. The more you try to conceal something, the more energy you have to expend to keep it out of sight.

Secrecy leads to obfuscation, and obfuscation is just extra data you have to add into the system to keep prying eyes from figuring it out. Security systems (codes, encryption, etc) are always expensive add-ons that take time and resources to maintain.

Even when you take out data to prevent people from understanding your information – as in a file that has been compressed or zipped, or computer code that has been minified (taking out spaces and comments and substituting single variable names for longer ones) – you need a special program to maintain the code. That is your extra data. Obfuscation, guile, subterfuge and lies generate extra data into the system, and require more time and energy to maintain the system. The more sophisticated the information system you are trying to hide, the more effort it takes. This eventually leads to a breakdown in the system.

The point is, information systems are only as good as they are open and transparent.

What would happen, for example, if the inventors of Javascript tried to make it so that only a small elite could understand it? Well, it just wouldn’t have worked, because people are smart and can reverse engineer just about anything. (Crime solving is just the reverse-engineering of a crime – the gradual discovery of the data and the information systems used by the criminal to commit the crime.)

Here’s how guile and subterfuge works:

First there is a quantum, a unit of information that combine into a collection that we call an information system. In an open system, that information just sits there and is accessible to anyone: * Perhaps the * represents an open-source program -- code that is free to all users. What if someone wanted to take that code and make a proprietary program that he or she could sell? Well, they would have to cloak their program with security programming, and hire staff to maintain the security system around the program. The same applies to dishonest persons and criminals. Dishonest people lie to obscure their connection to some kind of activity.

Here’s what a lie might look like:

A datum surrounded by other data that hide it.

The very fact of hiding something generates extra data: the “front.” But a front is also a collection of data and needs to be maintained, because lies are themselves data. Criminals forget this little fact until their lies contradict each other and the system caves in on them. The whole thing blows up – the obfuscating data in their carefully designed system of deceit simply falls away, and they are left with the simple truth exposed: *

The origin of the saying “too clever by half” encapsulates this idea of obfuscation through additional information, and the eventual result.

In other words, lies themselves are information systems.

I heard a story this morning on the radio. A guy (let’s call him Mike) wanted to switch from cable to satellite. When the cable guy came over, he told him a lie. He said that he didn’t want to watch TV anymore and so he was going to disconnect his TV. The cable tech then proceeded to ask him questions for 20 minutes. Mike defended himself by telling more and more lies, until he finally blew up and told cable guy to just pull the plug and shut-the-bleep-up.

Have you ever been able to tell just one lie and hide the truth from someone? Well, maybe if you have a reputation for integrity. But then you got that reputation because you’ve been open and aboveboard with people. Lies, like mosquitoes, breed very rapidly, and come back to bite you in the end. Lies create a sort of black-hole phenomenon, until the buildup of energy then collapses the event horizon – and the entire system -- on top of you.

The basis for subterfuge, guile, obfuscation, propaganda, etc. are lies.

It’s really hard to lie, it’s hard to obscure, because you have to expend so much extra energy to keep the system of lies coherent. Integrity is the reason behind success in anything, even in sneak-thief activities, because illogic and inconsistencies stick out like a sore thumb and are recognized. That’s why the term “honor amongst thieves” exists. The most successful thieves are the ones with the most integrity! The “Ocean’s “ movies, although pure fiction, are great examples. Integrity is simply the coherent framework of an information system –any information system! Without that coherence, the system falls apart.

An intelligent person who recognizes this can cut through a lot of bullshit.

For example, I received an invitation in my emailbox the other day from a guy who claims to make over $600,000, automatically, every nine months. This offer came from a very respectable website. He offers “proofs” – photos of his big house and pool, his cars, and printouts of monthly income statements. When I went to his salespage, I discovered that he’s selling a course that costs $27. If this guy is making that much money without any effort, why does he need to advertise and sell a course for a lousy $27? The answer is that his sales page is a false front, because someone who really pulls in over 600 large every nine months on auto-pilot sure doesn’t need your paltry $27!

Nowhere is the art of obfuscation more prevalent than in politics. Politics, as it is practiced on earth, is the art of subterfuge. Politicians are stereotyped as liars, because they are skilled at saying one thing while doing another.

There are so many examples I can’t even list them. The “Monetary Control Act” of 1980, for example, gave the Fed the power to monetize virtually any debt instrument, including bank loans to irresponsible foreign governments, which resulted in an expansion of dollar-denominated debt on a world-wide scale. Bills that support oil companies and fossil fuels masquerading as environmental legislation, bills that purport to stop terrorism but curtail constitutional liberties, governmental accounting practices that obscure the actual allocation of funds, are all part and parcel of a political system that gives lip service to openness and honesty, and supports obfuscation and guile.

Such a system lacks integrity and must collapse, like the Leninist systems of the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Leninism is an insidious information system that revolves around duplication and obfuscation. In the old Soviet Union, for example, the Party and the government had duplicate departments, so that an appeal to a government agency could be overridden by a similar Party agency, and vice-versa. In the United States today, we have a similar system: the “national security” establishment duplicates many of the functions of our government, but these functions are hidden from the public. The very funding that supports these hidden agencies is supported by lies and obfuscation. If you don't believe me, try to ascertain where the funding for the CIA comes from!

The world financial crisis is also based upon lies – the lies that “structured products” are worth their nominal value. (See previous blog posts).

Almost every problem we have on earth stems from a lack of openness and integrity.

Secrecy and guile is self-defeating, illogical, and irrational. Information systems based upon these false principles must inevitably collapse.

So why not just do it the open and honest way?

Not because of any moral or religious imperative, but because it works the best. Openness and transparency is the strong fabric that supports even the cloth of dishonesty. That’s why criminals and dishonest people are often much stupider than the rest of us – and have a much greater chance of failure.

_____________________
Kenneth James Michael MacLean
http://www.kjmaclean.com
http://www.sunrise-production.org
http://www.marketingwithspirit.com

It's Nitty-Gritty Time Part 3

Even though current events seem to indicate that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, as my beloved grandfather used to say, I believe that the human race is coming together। There is tremendous demand for positive change, which is rocking the foundations of the old order. The "establishment" - which just represents the old way of thinking -- is resisting in the only way it knows how: through the old, conventional patterns of conflict, coercion, propaganda, and guile.


The old memes, or patterns of thought, have been strongly established within the human psyche over the past 5 millennia. They act as attractors do in chaos theory, forming basins that direct thought and action back to them.

Einstein postulated the well-accepted idea that gravity is the curvature of space. Like a bowling ball on a trampoline, space actually curves around a massive object, causing everything in its vicinity to have a tendency to fall into its orbit. When you put smaller balls on the trampoline, they move toward the bigger ball.

Imagine that thought has the same properties. Imagine that the big ball in the center is composed of all of the old, outdated beliefs of humanity, like conflict resolution through war, greed, scarcity, domination, control, guile, etc. Even though these thought forms are irrational, they have come to be widely accepted. And when that happens, they act as attracting basins, guiding the thoughts and beliefs of individuals to them.

If you've ever been in the presence of a powerful person, you know how he or she almost magnetically draws you into their space, and their ideas. If you've ever been with a group of people who all thought one way, while you thought another, you know what I'm talking about. Thought itself has a presence that you can feel, and it can entrain other thoughts to it. The more people agree on something, even if it is nutty, the more powerful it becomes.

It's the same with widely accepted ideas like patriotism, and war, and poverty, and "you can't fight the government." That's what has happened with the thought forms of the human race. We have built a prison of self-limiting thought, and we have been stuck in it for the past 5,000 years. But that is changing rapidly as the internet, and mobile technology, have brought us together. People all over the world are demanding positive change, but this demand is as yet undirected, and that is causing chaos. But it's a positive chaos, because it is leading to the establishment of a new attracting basin of thought.

The old thought forms are now coming up for inspection. As the consciousness of humanity rises, it is detaching from the old attractor and disturbing it. The thought forms of the new consciousness are forming a new attractor. Like a guy stuck in a bog, he's going to make a mess when he begins to extricate himself!

In order for this leap of consciousness to occur on a species-wide level, however, humanity must, as individuals, step into their power. By that I mean, individuals must trust themselves, think for themselves, make their own decisions and live their lives as if each decision has meaning. Stepping into your power means understanding that the universe has been designed to support each and every decision you make, and that your choices result in corresponding manifestations. In the new energy, it is no longer supported to allow others "higher up on the chain" to make your decisions for you. No longer is it possible to sit on the fence, or detach yourself from life, and hope that something good will come. When the wind blows strongly, you must brace yourself, or be blown hither and yon. You must have a direction!

The population increase has resulted in a vibrational acceleration of consciousness, on the subtle but powerful plane of thought. All of us feel this. Some of us feel it as an inner excitement, an eagerness to get going and create. Some of us experience this as nervousness or anxiety. And those who strongly resist the new energy strongly feel depressed, or panicked, as they see the old patterns of thought dissolving. This causes them to react irrationally. And if you have any inkling of what is going on in government and high finance, you know that irrationality is the order of the day!

In just about every country on planet earth, individuals have allowed self-seeking incompetents to rise to the top of our political and economic structures. I have been watching politics for 40 years here in the United States, and I have seen a parade of morons at the highest levels, who seem bent on doing the worst for our country.

But my message is not a negative one. I believe that the human race is creating the conditions we see manifesting before us - there are no evil forces out there deciding what is to be our future.
It is so exciting! This time, right now, is what many of us signed up for. We wanted to be here, to help push the human race to a new level of consciousness. No matter what happens on the way, I believe that we will evolve to a new level of awareness as a species.

The human race is manifestly an adolescent species. The first, very basic requirement for a sane species is internal cooperation. If you look over our history for the past 7,000 years, you will see quite readily that humanity has been fighting a sort of internecine battle within itself. The human race has never advanced for any length of time without collapsing again. Cultures have risen and golden ages have come about, but never permanently.

We have looked at history and assumed that it is a natural law that societies rise and fall, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

The truth is that our decisions determine the parameters and the boundaries of what is possible, and what is not possible. The big ball in the middle of the diagram above represents the collective thoughts of the race. The goal of the old order is to keep the thoughts of individuals revolving around the same tired and superfluous concepts. The goal of the new consciousness should not be to fight the old order (for then the action occurs on their turf) but to create the new.

It isn't possible to create something new by fighting the status quo, because then your thoughts are entrained and focused on what is not wanted. This is very well understood by those who prefer to keep things exactly as they are!

The questions we must ask ourselves are,
What do you want in your life?
What is possible ?

The answers to these questions will determine how far we can advance in our personal lives, and how far our species will advance. Fuzzy, undirected thought will lead to a fuzzy, undirected outcome.

With the huge increase in population, consciousness is approaching a tipping point. But will we go back to the old ways, or strike off boldly into a new era? Will this change be a very small quantum leap, or a large one?

Again we must ask ourselves, what do we believe is possible?
Do not fret। All is well. We are now on an exciting journey, both personally and as a race, into a new level of consciousness. If we reach for the stars, we will get them!

Kenneth James Michael MacLean
http://www.kjmaclean.com
http://www.sunrise-production.org
http://www.marketingwithspirit.com

Its Nitty-Gritty Time Part 2

For 5,000 years, human societies have been oriented around the belief systems of scarcity and unworthiness. Opposing that is a new rise in consciousness and a demand for positive change, which is as yet undirected. Our use of scarce and polluting fossil fuels, and our hierarchical political and economic systems reflect exactly what we believe about ourselves.

In the August 2008 issue of Discover Magazine, for example, an article called "What Fills the Emptiness?" stated that

"If some clever engineer were ever to extract energy from the vacuum ("free energy") it could set off a chain reaction that would spread at the speed of light and destroy the universe."

Oh really? Well, I guess, then, that we are forever doomed to use scarce fossil fuels for energy. It's a perfect example of a limiting belief that constrains action into narrow, status-quo channels. It reminds me of the belief that women should not be educated, because increased knowledge would interfere with childbirth. These limiting memes have been a part of the human race for millennia; but we can no longer afford them if we are to advance as a species.

It is said that a country always gets the government its citizens deserve. That's because you can't grow something in soil that will not support it. It's time that human beings realized the power and importance of our choices, and our thoughts, in determining how our societies and organizations are structured.

As David Bohm, the brilliant physicist said,

"there is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly, but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, [which Bohm calls the holomovement] mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement."

This thought has been expressed in many different forms throughout history, and by every culture, and it essentially says that mind, matter, and consciousness are not separate, but united, and that each affects the other.

What is the result of a demand for abundance within a consciousness of scarcity? Precisely what we see manifested in the current financial crisis, which has resulted from an explosion of financial instruments that do not correspond with the goods and services they (supposedly) represent. When you really believe that you are unworthy, but demand prosperity, what happens? You run up big credit card bills! That is what has happened to the human race during the past 20 years: the there has been a tremendous demand for abundance without a corresponding shift in belief systems. The evil bankers and politicians, however, who supposedly caused the world financial crisis - without any help, of course, from honest and blameless citizens -- did not operate in a vacuum!

They felt the increased demand and acted upon it, precisely according to the parameters of acceptance in our collective belief systems. As my grandma used to say, "it takes two to tango!"

It is fitting that the old order has fastened itself firmly within the nation that also best represented the new order of freedom and prosperity for all: The United States. Today, the United States is the primary playing field in which the chaotic interaction between the old memes and the new consciousness is playing out, although it is unfolding in every country in the world. Other nations criticize the United States, with very good reason, but every person on earth is contributing their bit. The worldwide financial crisis has been created by each and every one of us, because we are all in this together. The actors on the financial and political stage are ALWAYS constrained by what the people will accept.

In the United States, Barack Obama is the representative of the new who is surrounded by those who wish to keep the old order in place. There is still a tremendous excitement that resonates around the world at the election of this man. He is a transitional figure who represents the hope of everyone in the world for positive change.

Monetarily, the United States has funded it's prosperity through the borrowing and the printing of money, and now it finds itself bankrupt, completely dependent upon the good wishes of the rest of the world. The worldwide explosion in derivatives contracts, the vast majority of which are denominated in dollars, has reached a nominal value of almost $700 trillion, but has an estimated market value of around $17 trillion. All of the world's major banks have balance sheets bloated with these derivatives products, and the question is, what to do with them? If these derivatives are valued properly, the banks collapse. Barclay's bank, for example, claims assets of almost 2 trillion pounds, while the Gross National Product of the entire nation of Great Britain is only 1.4 trillion pounds!

Because the United States was the leading country financially, and its currency the world standard, its practices represented the desire of all of humanity for greater prosperity. This is fitting, because the old and the new are uniting. On planet earth, in our culture of scarcity, the representation of prosperity is money. That is why the battle between the old and the new has focused in the arena of money and finance. It could have evolved in no other way.

Humanity right now is reaching for a new level of consciousness, which is just over the horizon. The human race is on the cusp of a new understanding. The only question is, will this new understanding come about smoothly, or will it involve a collapse of the current financial system?

We will decide. The actors on the stage are constrained in their actions by the decisions of the rest of humanity. Again, the people who we see as crooks, or as evil, are not! They are merely filling a vacuum of leadership and power that the rest of us are asking them to fill. And they are doing so precisely according to our vibrational direction, just as a movie actor will follow the instructions of the movie director. Would you blame the water for following the path of least resistance, as it moves down the hill and into the plain? Of course not!

We all know the growing pains of the adolescent, as he or she struggles with their growing body. This is precisely what is happening with the human race right now. We are growing, sometimes painfully, out of our old shell and metamorphosing into a bright, brand new creature. What will that new being look like? We will decide.

I believe that there is great, great, vast potential for a huge quantum leap in awareness. When that leap in awareness occurs, the face of our planet will literally change in a very short period of time, as the movement forward that has been blocked by our own self-limiting beliefs, dissolves. It is like a blind, deaf, and dumb person regaining the use of all of her senses. The horizons simply expand beyond what we thought was possible. That which is not known or even imagined at the old level now becomes possible!

Kenneth James Michael MacLean

http://www.kjmaclean.com
http://www.sunrise-production.org
http://www.marketingwithspirit.com