Get in Touch with your Heroes.... Now!!!

Really sorry to hear that my friend and colleague Peter Gerlach passed away at 77. I had the pleasure of interviewing him 4 times for YouTube, sadly one of the interviews did not record and was lost forever, but I was told that our last one included 'a lifetime of takeaways.' I was looking forwards to collaborating more when I finished my current projects... Silly me for waiting. His wisdom lives on in his work. I honour you Pete thank you for all you taught me. funnily enough look at my facebook status from the 12th of October: Hey if you like or admire someones work or writing or whatever they do you should send them an email before they croak. I have exchanged emails with most of the people who really influenced my thinking that were alive during my lifetime. Alfie Kohn, Warren Farrell, Stefan Molyneux, Pete Gerlach.... Nathaniel Branden, another hero, died December of last year - I had never bothered to even try emailing him. Marshall Rosenberg died this year. For ages I wanted to tell sci-fi author Brian Aldiss what I thought of his writing, and how much I loved his ability to build rich worlds - even just for one short story or a novel. He is 90 now! I finally emailed him today, almost 10 years after the thought of wanting to tell him first crossed my mind. Perhaps he is too busy to reply but at least I put it out there, we'll see. Get emailing your heroes they might croak like Nathaniel Branden and Marshall Rosenberg. Talk about timing!

marriage

you know, my whole life I have taken it for granted that if I got married I would take the ladies name as well as her taking mine. So much so that the first time I realised it was when I mentioned a scenario that it was a feature of in passing to a flatmate around 6 years ago and rather than comment on the scenario he remarked that it was "very modern" of me to add a girls last name before my own. Isn't it weird? I never even regarded it as a thing, even although I knew that most people don't do that. Only problem is that if the tradition continues my descendants will have a massive long list of names.

Causes of Economic Crash of 2008

Here are the best videos I have found in this topic:

Tax codes

Apparently Americans spend 6.1 billion a year complying with US tax codes. Wouldn't it be nice if they just replaced the 67,000 pages of tax regulations with the FAIR Tax and everyone could go out volunteering, spending the afternoon with their family, or making something that other people want for some extra cash?

Posts on Education

I would not say that our society is one for bringing out the excellence in people
our education system for example only really focusses on learning things and writing them out again in exams
besides reading, writing and arithmetic (and memorisation) it does not teach people many skills
it is also very authoritarian and does not foster independent thought, initiative or critical thinking
so what we are really seeing when we look at humans are humans with one hand tied behind their back
I am all for education but a different kind of education that edifies people and helps them feel confident in taking on challenges and learning from mistakes (I was a piano tutor for 8 years or so and I have also been a classroom assistant)
then we will see a different kind of human being
in this day and age memorisation is really not a very important skill, because you can get all the info you need at the click of a mouse. People need skills if they want to live independent and self-responsible lives, if they want to have options instead of having to take what they can get (be it from employers, or the state.)

Higher Education is so screwed up right now that the stuff that should be considered a worthy hobby is seen as vocational; and the stuff that is actually vocational is considered to be an unworthy hobby! C'mon people we can do better in the 21st century lets teach about the Socratic question: how is a good life lived?

"Work and love; love and work... that's all there is." - Freud

I think Freud was right when he said "Work and love; love and work... that's all there is." People obsess about sex, money and power, but none of those come close to either being occupied in fulfilling work or in the love of others - because those three things are all means to an ends, whereas fulfilling work and love are processes which are their own ends.

A Blessed Life

I live a blessed life. Sometimes I get down but not because anything is objectively

wrong with my life, it's just my own negativity and unprocessed shit. And whenever I go

a level up and see through my own bs I am just thankful to be alive. I live a life of

service and get to make a living helping others heal and grow. I'm immensely

intelligent, a good communicator, great writer and speaker, musical, and have cultivated

many talents. What more could you want? I love my life!