A Fresh Opinion

When Will We Stop Drugging Our Children?

I'm not really one for "shock video" but sometimes we need a slap in the face when confronted with the depth of greed and corruption on this planet.

The Purpose of the Blog...Revisited

I started this blog just under two years ago. I figured I'd take a moment and reflect on its performance.

My very first post stated the blog's purpose: To give one Scientologist's observations of day-to-day events. To offer how Scientology may be able to help us understand these events AND help a person live a better life in their own estimation. To provide "a fresh opinion" as the title of the blog suggests.

After writing 55 posts, I hope I have made some inroads into accomplishing the blog's purpose.

Not every post was written with a view of disseminating Scientology. Sometimes I ran across items that were just so compelling, I wanted to share them:

An elephant painting

Using music to uplift an entire generation

The power of the human mind

A world-wide "hugging campaign"

Each of these posts, however, did have a common thread. They spoke of creativity and ability. If you interview a hundred Scientologists and ask them how has Scientology helped them—probably a good 90% of them would tell you their creativity and/or ability had been significantly improved. L. Ron Hubbard once said that the "accent is on ability."

Some posts discussed the field of mental health. Others the environment. A few on the media. There were several on marriage and parenting. War and terrorism were mentioned. Celebrities and fame. Sports and even human rights. A wide variety of subjects have been addressed here.

I also gave my personal views of what Dianetics and Scientology are. Not official views, but simply how I understand these two subjects.

Sometimes the world can be quite chaotic. We see people strapping bombs to their chest and walking into crowded restaurants and then exploding themselves and others. We see a media fixated on what the latest celebrity has done to devalue their life or top sports figures (role models to many) cheating or being harmful to people and animals. We see kids going onto school campuses killing fellow students.

On a more personal level, we are confronted with a high percentage of marriages failing and too many people experiencing too much physical and/or emotional pain.

Some of us try to make sense of these things. Some of us prefer to look the other way and just keep on pushing along.

After thirty-five years of helping thousands of people with Scientology, I've learned one thing with absolute certainty: if there's some area of your life that you'd like to improve, there's most likely a piece of Scientology that can help you do just that.

Thank you for reading this post. If you're a subscriber to this blog, thank you for wanting to stay connected here. I'll continue to offer ideas and ways to better understand our world.

60 Minutes Gets It Right

I'm not a big fan of "60 Minutes" as they too often hurt people under the guise of investigative journalism, but this time they got it right.

The following video demonstrates how music  can save lives. Very Well Done "60 Minutes" and continue to bring this kind of information to our TV sets!

The KEY Reason Relationships Fail

i just produced a video slide show that gives the KEY reason relationships fail and how to remedy this. Here is the video:

(Note: after pressing the "play" button, it might take a few extra seconds for the video to start playing)

Get the book

Politicizing the Environment

In an earlier post I discussed the ongoing contentious debate about the environment. I'd like to add to that post here.

First of all, I'd like to say:

"Calm down, people!"

When one side of the "debate" rants on about how there will be no life on this planet in the foreseeable future (or at least no human life) and the other side counters that anyone too concerned about the environment is a self-serving, overly sensitive fruitcake, well, I get to thinking that these two somewhat fixed points of view may not be capable of solving whatever problem does exist.

Would I like to see the world subsist on a continually renewable source of energy? Yes, who wouldn't?

Would I like to see any areas that have been polluted cleaned up so that we have full use of our natural resources? Yes, who wouldn't?

Would I like to know the legitimate environmental factors we need to understand and address without any political bent whatsoever? Yes.

I guess part of the problem is that one side of the discussion rolls out their experts (with many initials after their last name) and these experts tell us what's wrong. The other side then rolls out their experts (also with the initials) and they tell us what's wrong with what the other experts just said.

It kind of reminds me of being in a court room when someone is on trial for murder. The prosecution and the defense both present their "experts." One expert testifies that the person was insane when he committed the murder. (Duh! Who isn't somewhat insane when they murder another human being?)  The other "expert" comes on and of course tries to refute the first expert's testimony. A very interesting drama.

Experts. Hmm. Well, my concept of an "expert" includes the ability to listen, observe and make independent and reasoned judgements based on data and not opinion or politics or funding.

So, let me repeat what I said earlier in this post:

"Calm down, people!"

Let's get some rational data collected, understood and then applied. It is our environment. We are in command of it. Let's get in command of our own emotions on this subject and move forward without all of the political posturing.

Net Etiquette and What to Do When It's Not Present

Net etiquette, or as it also known: Netiquette.

When I move around the net, read other blogs, read comments left by people, I notice a fair amount of communication that can only be classified as rude and offensive. And after considering this for awhile, I concluded the following reasons for this behavior:

1. People who do this realize they can do so with anonymity and therefore are more likely to let their distempered comments fly. Some people recognize this character trait as cowardice.
2. It requires a bit of effort to step back and look at the other person's viewpoint. And after doing so, it requires another bit of effort to compose a response that shows respect for the other person. That's more effort than some people wish to expend. This character trait is known as laziness.
3. And I guess there are those who just seem to enjoy this kind of thing. They seem to enjoy bating other people. They seem to enjoy seeing this kind of communication broadcast to the world. Now I say "seem to" in each of those last three sentences, because I'm not inside of these folks, so I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

When you see someone act offensively on the net, you could engage them and perhaps some rational dialogue will turn things more civil. But I think there's a certain "type" of person on the net (he also exists in the real world) who just doesn't turn civil.

What to do?

I realized a great strategy to use when this type of behavior presents itself:

IGNORE THEM.

Don't engage them. Don't respond to their comments. Don't get caught up in their tactics. Don't even recognize them. Simply ignore them and move on.

You see, this "type" of person actually derives a good deal of his power from the good works and the good intentions of others. When you don't lend them any of that power they are, well, quite weak. Therefore, the more you ignore them, the less power they have and the less current and future impact they have on our world. And I mean both the online and offline world.

If you employ the above, I'm fairly certain you'll feel better and if you recommend this strategy to others, you're moving in the direction of putting more sanity and reason in your environment.

So there you go. Feel free to share this with your friends, families and associates. And ask them to pass it on.

That's NOT an Elephant Painting...Is It?

I didn't believe this even while I was watching it: