A Republic is a representative-based government without a monarch. In a Monarchy the government is headed by an individual typically legitimized by heredity often thought to be christened by God. The leadership of a Monarchy typically rules their entire life or until they abdicate to a descendant. In a Republic the governmental legislators are legitimized by their Constitution and via selection by citizens.
There are a few versions of what makes up a Republic and in the case of America the politics are most well defined as a representative democracy. Contrast that with the early democracy of Roman where citizens voted in the Assembly in a form of direct democracy, America selects it's representatives and indirectly adheres to a democratic philosophy of governance.
The idea of a Republic comes from the Renaissance. The most basic core value of a Republic is Liberty. Said another way, a Republics first priority is value-based Liberty or Freedom for it's population. This is an interesting distinction. The latin phrase “libertas populi” means something more like “civic liberty” as opposed to the more nebulous “personal freedom” though both ideas can be found in that phrase.
The definition of liberty is where we begin to see a split between liberal and conservative citizens of a Republic such as the United States of America. Historically, liberals would bring an emphasis to the idea of personal freedom (it is good for everyone for individuals to maximize their freedom: to each his own) while conservatives would prefer to it through the viewpoint of civic liberty (it is good for everyone for individuals to adhere to a common standard: for the betterment of all) Neither of these overarching philosophical talking points address what is actually being stated in the Constitution under Article four.
In Article four of the Constitution it says that the U.S. government will “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government.” Because the concept of a guarantee has become so watered down today, and as well because we are more focused on federal governance than on individual State governance we might want to take a moment to talk about that phrase.
When the Constitution was signed the colonies were separate States. This means that they were sovereign but with both internal and external relationships to another governmental entity, namely the United Kingdom or Great Britain. The Constitution legitimized a federation of governance over a collection of States. And why would a State switch it's allegiance from G.B. to this new United States of America?
Well, the federal entity was guarantying (i.e. militarily protecting) the States sovereign right to implement a Republican government as opposed to being governed by the Monarchy in England.
What other roles does the new United States of America play other than military defense? According to the founding documents, it would liaise on behalf of those united State with other sovereign nations. It would also play a role in signing treaties between U.S.A. and other nations. How about education, healthcare, financial stability, retirement of its citizens, federal taxation? In all of these cases... it was left up to the States to decide. In the case of taxation however, it wasn't until the first World War that the federal government had grown so large that the constitution was amended to allow for federal taxation (something previously considered unconstitutional.) It was also the advent of federal taxation that lead to ever-increasing growth of scope of responsibility within the federal government (i.e. now that funding was available, so much more could be done.)
So what is distinctive about a Republic?
As you can see if you have been following the other blog entries, nearly all of the other forms of government are based on economic theory. At this point, a Republic stands alone. It's bold declaration that it values civic liberties as the foundation for it's guiding existence makes it revolutionary in it's approach to governance. You might now wonder if that is true in the light of the existence of Monarchies, but in that case you need to know that nearly all Monarchies were again also Republics (U.K. under the King/Queen, Italy under the Pope, etc.)
There have been attempts at drawing a distinction between Republics and Monarchies saying that Monarchies are about land ownership while Republics are about acquisition of wealth through commercial production but this is a fairly recent concept and it breaks down as an argument under certain living examples today.
The fact is that faith played a huge historical role in the formation of Republics. Take for example the Catholic faith. Many Republics in the Middle Ages were legitimized by their position with relationship to their King/Queen and how they related to the Catholic Church. Later under Luther and the Protestant Reformation there were many Republics created without being legitimized by the Catholic Church. This was a further move toward civic liberties often legitimized by Constitutions and not by the Catholic Church. But still, the formation of a Republic existed as a matter of united civic values relating to faith.
In the case of the U.S.A the colonial leadership they continued to feel that faith played a role in legitimizing their governance but rather than coming from the Monarchy, their power came from the people in a way that can only be described as a Republic. From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
And why did we form a Republic?
We often hear it had to do with “taxation without representation” like we seceded simply because of taxes! The fact is that they were struggling with the laws and the poor implementation of the rule of law in the States. In essence the Monarchy was on a power trip and living out a tyrannical set of abuses for whatever reason on the colonies. The colonies would have been satisfied to have been considered Republic-governed States, a part of the U.K. They were not being treated as such.
So with obvious faith when they wrote the phrases...
"... the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles them ..."
"... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ..."
"... appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world ..."
"... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
...they established a new Federal Government and in the Constitution promised that the new United States of America would "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government."
So, is America a Republic?
It is clear historically that we are a Republic. But the founders of America were not ignorant. They understood that tyrannical leadership can spring up at any time and break, redefine, pillage and destroy what the generations before them suffered so hard to defend. In the Declaration of Independence it also says...
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes...”
The “such principles” they refer to are the unalienable God-given rights they mention before that phrase. The Republic of America was not a government founded on economic policies but on faith that informs the politics of the nation.
So with the same understanding and educated effort of Ben Franklin, who after he helped to draft the Constitution was asked by a woman, “Sir, what have you given us?” when anyone asks us what kind of government America has, we should reply...
America is “A Republic... if you can keep it.”
Here are the links to the blog posts:
Sunday, July 19, 2009
What is Communism
Communism is like Socialism but with the safety wheels taken off. If you want to learn about some of the history of Socialism, you can read a previous blog entry in this set.
Communism is a social and economic political ideology. According to the founders of the philosophy, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (mid 1800s), authors of The Communist Manifesto, the exploited working class within a Capitalist society must rise up in a revolutionary manner to overthrow their Capitalist forms of government in order to implement a transitional Socialist dictatorship via the collective working class (think: philosophical modern Democracy ruled by only the “working class” ) in hopes to eventually evolve into a form of governance of communal classless society that equally shares ownership as well as the means of production.
Today there are a number of different forms of transitional Communism. The most famous forms are politically moderate Communist ideologies that push less for revolution and proletarian (working class) democracy but rather believe in parliamentary forms of governance where representatives would vote in place of the citizens. These moderate communist forms are often politically referred to as Reformists or Social Democrats.
In America in the 1800s New Harmony, Indiana underwent an attempting to form a Capitalist + Socialist form of economic experiment. Within 2 years it failed because Capitalism values personal ownership and personal sovereignty. But Socialism is only a transitional stage between Capitalism and Communism according to Karl Marx. In the early 1900 Vladimir Lenin lead Russia into a Socialist revolution which resulted in a similar incompatibility of values. 100 years earlier in America it was also said that the New Harmony Experiment failed because the leadership in the situation were all not embracing a purer form of Socialism (in the educated and motivated sense of the word.) Back in Russia Communism would not be allowed to failed because of such values.
After 4 years of civil war lead by the Bolsheviks under Lenin, a form of social communism had taken hold but the leadership still struggled with capitalist ideals like personal sovereignty. Joseph Stalin followed Lenin in leading the Russian Communist movement and crushed any remaining over capitalist ideals converting Russian Communism into a form now referred to as the Communist Totalitarian ideology. How did Stalin do this? Lenin opened the door to the Marxist economic philosophy in Russia. Stalin wanted to ensure that Communism continued and that he would remain the figurehead to that movement. As a result his implementation of Communism resulted in something called Stalinism which was most famous for maintain communism with him as the head by: enlarging the reach of his government in ways that reduced personal sovereignty, national and international spying, punishment by law enforcers that did not involve court-based judgments, political “purgings” by killing, suppressing or exiling political opponents, extensive use of propoganda to establish a “personality cult” around him in order to maintain control over the nation and his Communist party. This is what it took from the Stalinism form of Communism to crush the values found in Capitalism.
Nearly 80 years later we learned that the Soviet Union established by Lenin, bolstered by Stalin, was nearly bankrupt. America in the 1980 cranked up nearly every political and social pressure to hen reveal that the U.S.S.R. was a failed experiment in Socialism and Communism. By the end of the 1980s the Soviet Union was no more and former Soviet nations began to move back toward Capitalist economics.
So is America Communist? In my opinion, like socialist ideology in America, people still promote certain values found in Marxist ideals like “class war” or “political governance of the means of production”, or “the subjugation of personal sovereignty for the purpose of social reform” or even “communal ownership via federal governance (of certain resources or opportunities)” but fundamentally America itself and its founding documentation doesn't allow for the Elected to simply do away with our Capitalist Republic in favor of the current winner 's sociopolitical-economic ideology. Well, not inevitably. It will always take a revolution to undo our Constitution or Bill of Rights or the values found in the Declaration of Independence. That is not to say that various expensive sociopolitical-economic “experiments” could not be attempted in ignorance in such a way as to simply cause long and painful and sometimes irreparable harm to America without actually turning us into something we are not.
It is better that we know the definition of these ideologies and their historical experiments before we simply jump out-of-context into some new political movement.
Here are the links to the blog posts:
Communism is a social and economic political ideology. According to the founders of the philosophy, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (mid 1800s), authors of The Communist Manifesto, the exploited working class within a Capitalist society must rise up in a revolutionary manner to overthrow their Capitalist forms of government in order to implement a transitional Socialist dictatorship via the collective working class (think: philosophical modern Democracy ruled by only the “working class” ) in hopes to eventually evolve into a form of governance of communal classless society that equally shares ownership as well as the means of production.
Today there are a number of different forms of transitional Communism. The most famous forms are politically moderate Communist ideologies that push less for revolution and proletarian (working class) democracy but rather believe in parliamentary forms of governance where representatives would vote in place of the citizens. These moderate communist forms are often politically referred to as Reformists or Social Democrats.
In America in the 1800s New Harmony, Indiana underwent an attempting to form a Capitalist + Socialist form of economic experiment. Within 2 years it failed because Capitalism values personal ownership and personal sovereignty. But Socialism is only a transitional stage between Capitalism and Communism according to Karl Marx. In the early 1900 Vladimir Lenin lead Russia into a Socialist revolution which resulted in a similar incompatibility of values. 100 years earlier in America it was also said that the New Harmony Experiment failed because the leadership in the situation were all not embracing a purer form of Socialism (in the educated and motivated sense of the word.) Back in Russia Communism would not be allowed to failed because of such values.
After 4 years of civil war lead by the Bolsheviks under Lenin, a form of social communism had taken hold but the leadership still struggled with capitalist ideals like personal sovereignty. Joseph Stalin followed Lenin in leading the Russian Communist movement and crushed any remaining over capitalist ideals converting Russian Communism into a form now referred to as the Communist Totalitarian ideology. How did Stalin do this? Lenin opened the door to the Marxist economic philosophy in Russia. Stalin wanted to ensure that Communism continued and that he would remain the figurehead to that movement. As a result his implementation of Communism resulted in something called Stalinism which was most famous for maintain communism with him as the head by: enlarging the reach of his government in ways that reduced personal sovereignty, national and international spying, punishment by law enforcers that did not involve court-based judgments, political “purgings” by killing, suppressing or exiling political opponents, extensive use of propoganda to establish a “personality cult” around him in order to maintain control over the nation and his Communist party. This is what it took from the Stalinism form of Communism to crush the values found in Capitalism.
Nearly 80 years later we learned that the Soviet Union established by Lenin, bolstered by Stalin, was nearly bankrupt. America in the 1980 cranked up nearly every political and social pressure to hen reveal that the U.S.S.R. was a failed experiment in Socialism and Communism. By the end of the 1980s the Soviet Union was no more and former Soviet nations began to move back toward Capitalist economics.
So is America Communist? In my opinion, like socialist ideology in America, people still promote certain values found in Marxist ideals like “class war” or “political governance of the means of production”, or “the subjugation of personal sovereignty for the purpose of social reform” or even “communal ownership via federal governance (of certain resources or opportunities)” but fundamentally America itself and its founding documentation doesn't allow for the Elected to simply do away with our Capitalist Republic in favor of the current winner 's sociopolitical-economic ideology. Well, not inevitably. It will always take a revolution to undo our Constitution or Bill of Rights or the values found in the Declaration of Independence. That is not to say that various expensive sociopolitical-economic “experiments” could not be attempted in ignorance in such a way as to simply cause long and painful and sometimes irreparable harm to America without actually turning us into something we are not.
It is better that we know the definition of these ideologies and their historical experiments before we simply jump out-of-context into some new political movement.
Here are the links to the blog posts:
What is Socialism
Socialism is first and foremost an economic theory. If someone says “This country is socialist” they mean to speak specifically to the way politics manages the economic administration of the country.
So what does this economic perspective encompass? Traditionally, socialist (economic) political agenda includes collective ownership and administration of (1) the means of production, (2) the distribution of goods and it's fair distribution across the full spectrum of society in an egalitarian (aka all people are philosophically equal) manner.
To offer a little history the most famous promoter of the Socialist perspective was Karl Marx. He said that socialist ideals would be achieved via class struggle where the working class would fight to come into power. Said another way (that you have maybe heard in the press), Socialism would be achieved via a proletarian “class war” revolution.
In an American form of government we are ruled by a Constitution. All other laws in our country are based on and conform with the rule of law provided by the Constitution. If laws are suggested that do not comply with the Constitution then we hear that the ruling was “un-Constitutional” and the ruling is typically addressed and reversed.
In a proletarian (or working class) “class war” the only way an American form of government becomes truly socialist would be via revolution. A revolution would be required to abandon the Constitution which explicitly declared that we have a Republican and not Socialist form of government. Said another way, no matter who is elected in the American form of government, the elected rulers cannot simply convert the government from a Republic to a Socialist form.
As late as the late 1700 and early 1800 a man by the name of Robert Owen from Wales helped to co-found the Socialist economic theory. Mr. Owen believed that Socialism should be founded on three core philosophies: (1) people are a product of their environment and are not responsible for who they have become. They are a socially engineered creature and society is responsible and not the individual, (2) all religions are absurd and weaken mankind while general spirituality is acceptable to a degree, and (3) that the government should manage the output of the nation on an administrative level.
Socialism has not moved far from the days of Robert Owen. In fact in as late as 1825 Owen himself ventured to implement a form of Socialism within a Capitalist society. The experiment lasted two years, was placed in New Harmony, Indiana (USA), and was a miserable failure. Even though a lot of money had been invested in the socialist experiment (this was a historical hallmark of Owen's form of socialism... the large financial investment) it was said to have failed because the social mix in the planned community consisted of people who were well intentioned but contained others who were called “wrongheaded enthusiasts” or “lazy theorists.” Said another way, for Owen's Socialism to have worked in a Capitalist society it would have demanded that all those in power be well educated in the principles of socialist production, confirmedly well intentioned.
On the flipside Josiah Warren, a participant in the experiment, said that it was a plan doomed to fail from the beginning because it ran against traditional Capitalist values such as individual sovereignty and private ownership. It seems that Josiah had a grasp of the incompatible values between Socialism and Capitalism while Owen would have to subjugate Capitalism to the values of Socialism to be successful.
So is America Socialist? Well, I think this selection of history demonstrates that while America is confirmedly Capitalist that people from time to time attempt to implement Socialist philosophical economic theory into it. Because Capitalism is not compatible with Socialism one or the other eventually must step aside. And since Capitalism values personal individual sovereignty and private ownership and these value must be removed from society for Socialism to inevitably work, I don't see America truly embracing Socialism anytime soon.
As an additional side note, it took two years for Owen's Indiana experiment to fail. Again, recall that it required a large investment and as at war in Capitalist values and it still took two years to fail. If you increase the scale of the experiment to encompass all of the United States and increase the investment from, say, thousands of dollars to, say, trillions of dollars you can imagine that America could try a grander “Capitalism + Socialism” experiment again, but he result will likely be one of three scenarios:
1.Capitalism leaves the equation quickly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America.
2.Capitalism leaves the equation slowly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America but the investment is so expensive that it reduces everyone into either the “working class” or into the “administrative (governing) class” (read the history of Communism.)
3.Capitalism stays and Socialism leaves slowly, and we are again buried under the investment of the experiment in a new national great depression.
At the moment I don't think we are in a place that could truly afford the investment to make such an experiment a success (if it could be a success at all.) I worry that we might try however and end up in scenario #3 above.
Regardless of speculation, I do not believe America has a Socialist form of government. Based on this history I do believe we might be heading for a new experiment in merging socialist values with capitalist values.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Karl Marx said that Socialism is only a transitional stage. History tells us that his assertion is true. Countries do not inevitably stay socialist. According to Marx, on one end of the economic spectrum lives Capitalism, on the other end Communism. Karl Marx said that Socialism is the transitional stage from Capitalism to Communism.
Read my blog entry on Communism to learn more.
Here are the links to the blog posts:
So what does this economic perspective encompass? Traditionally, socialist (economic) political agenda includes collective ownership and administration of (1) the means of production, (2) the distribution of goods and it's fair distribution across the full spectrum of society in an egalitarian (aka all people are philosophically equal) manner.
To offer a little history the most famous promoter of the Socialist perspective was Karl Marx. He said that socialist ideals would be achieved via class struggle where the working class would fight to come into power. Said another way (that you have maybe heard in the press), Socialism would be achieved via a proletarian “class war” revolution.
In an American form of government we are ruled by a Constitution. All other laws in our country are based on and conform with the rule of law provided by the Constitution. If laws are suggested that do not comply with the Constitution then we hear that the ruling was “un-Constitutional” and the ruling is typically addressed and reversed.
In a proletarian (or working class) “class war” the only way an American form of government becomes truly socialist would be via revolution. A revolution would be required to abandon the Constitution which explicitly declared that we have a Republican and not Socialist form of government. Said another way, no matter who is elected in the American form of government, the elected rulers cannot simply convert the government from a Republic to a Socialist form.
As late as the late 1700 and early 1800 a man by the name of Robert Owen from Wales helped to co-found the Socialist economic theory. Mr. Owen believed that Socialism should be founded on three core philosophies: (1) people are a product of their environment and are not responsible for who they have become. They are a socially engineered creature and society is responsible and not the individual, (2) all religions are absurd and weaken mankind while general spirituality is acceptable to a degree, and (3) that the government should manage the output of the nation on an administrative level.
Socialism has not moved far from the days of Robert Owen. In fact in as late as 1825 Owen himself ventured to implement a form of Socialism within a Capitalist society. The experiment lasted two years, was placed in New Harmony, Indiana (USA), and was a miserable failure. Even though a lot of money had been invested in the socialist experiment (this was a historical hallmark of Owen's form of socialism... the large financial investment) it was said to have failed because the social mix in the planned community consisted of people who were well intentioned but contained others who were called “wrongheaded enthusiasts” or “lazy theorists.” Said another way, for Owen's Socialism to have worked in a Capitalist society it would have demanded that all those in power be well educated in the principles of socialist production, confirmedly well intentioned.
On the flipside Josiah Warren, a participant in the experiment, said that it was a plan doomed to fail from the beginning because it ran against traditional Capitalist values such as individual sovereignty and private ownership. It seems that Josiah had a grasp of the incompatible values between Socialism and Capitalism while Owen would have to subjugate Capitalism to the values of Socialism to be successful.
So is America Socialist? Well, I think this selection of history demonstrates that while America is confirmedly Capitalist that people from time to time attempt to implement Socialist philosophical economic theory into it. Because Capitalism is not compatible with Socialism one or the other eventually must step aside. And since Capitalism values personal individual sovereignty and private ownership and these value must be removed from society for Socialism to inevitably work, I don't see America truly embracing Socialism anytime soon.
As an additional side note, it took two years for Owen's Indiana experiment to fail. Again, recall that it required a large investment and as at war in Capitalist values and it still took two years to fail. If you increase the scale of the experiment to encompass all of the United States and increase the investment from, say, thousands of dollars to, say, trillions of dollars you can imagine that America could try a grander “Capitalism + Socialism” experiment again, but he result will likely be one of three scenarios:
1.Capitalism leaves the equation quickly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America.
2.Capitalism leaves the equation slowly and Socialism becomes the economic theory for America but the investment is so expensive that it reduces everyone into either the “working class” or into the “administrative (governing) class” (read the history of Communism.)
3.Capitalism stays and Socialism leaves slowly, and we are again buried under the investment of the experiment in a new national great depression.
At the moment I don't think we are in a place that could truly afford the investment to make such an experiment a success (if it could be a success at all.) I worry that we might try however and end up in scenario #3 above.
Regardless of speculation, I do not believe America has a Socialist form of government. Based on this history I do believe we might be heading for a new experiment in merging socialist values with capitalist values.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Karl Marx said that Socialism is only a transitional stage. History tells us that his assertion is true. Countries do not inevitably stay socialist. According to Marx, on one end of the economic spectrum lives Capitalism, on the other end Communism. Karl Marx said that Socialism is the transitional stage from Capitalism to Communism.
Read my blog entry on Communism to learn more.
Here are the links to the blog posts:
Saturday, July 18, 2009
What is Democracy
The word democracy means “majority rule.” What does this mean in practical terms? Well, fundamentally it means that when faced with a decision that results in “rule” the majority of people decide.
Let's quickly imagine what a majority ruling could mean in reality. Think about various scenarios: race demographics, companies that employ us, folks on a camping trip, etc. And now imagine that for each situation there are no guiding principles but rather decisions voted upon by a group of available contemporaries and whatever that majority looks like in that moment decides what the current rule looks like. Sounds sort of wild-west doesn't it?
Now, you might imagine that a majority rule scenario was how we were founded, correct? But rather than voting on a moment requiring a ruling, we voted on a constitution that established a basis for future rulings. In that case you would be mostly right, except for the fact that we didn't vote as a country of people in an opportunity. A number of colonial leaders voted or rather drafted the Constitution which defined a new way of governing, not by majority rule but by a rule of law that outlined a limited form of government with a very particular purpose.So if Democracy means majority rule, how did the phrase get re-purposed to mean a select group of people rule? Is it still a Democracy if the majority does not rule but there is another guiding rule of law that is simply implemented by a representative minority?
Is America a democracy? Well, I believe as a philosophy, we could say that we are philosophically democratic. But in reality, we are ruled by established law and to this day we continue to refer to the Constitution as our basis for law and legal rulings.
To offer a little Democracy backstory, in ancient Rome if you were a citizen, you were allowed to vote in the Assembly (think about how big those meetings must have been!) This was a more true form of Democracy. In an American form of government you cannot vote with regard to Congressional laws unless you are a seated senator (and even there you will find certain exceptions.) So, clearly America may be philosophically a Democracy, but in reality and by all practical means, we are not a Democracy by that definition of that form of government.
By the Middle Ages, Democracies began to take a different form. The groups being allowed to vote became smaller and more representative rather than inviting citizens to vote. Some might blame the degree of education or lack thereof during the Middle Ages on the reason voting power became representative. Said another way, Democracies simply began to morph into an elite group of empowered individuals who ruled in their delegated minority and simply called themselves representatives of the majority. It is as if by the Middle Ages the notion of Democracy almost fully transitioned from a true form of citizen governance to simply a philosophy of words. In this sense of the definition for Democracy, America does partly fit this form of rule. But we still have a guiding Constitution which forms a basis for rule, which again challenges the notion of America having a Democratic form of government.
Finally America was established and we “Declared” and “Constituted” our rights and rule of law. Interestingly enough there is not a single mention of democracy in either of these documents. I find it interesting that while there were documented (not in these documents) various philosophies of Democracy, that our form of government is not described as a Democracy.
In the case that you might be thinking I am drawing up a straw man, I am not. You might want to ask me, “Well, just because they didn't say it, doesn't mean it isn't true, right?” Let's take an example of that:
If you were to say, “Steve is a fighter,” and your basis for this is founded in the probability that Steve didn't mention that he isn't a fighter, well, you might be right, but you might as well be wrong. Now, what if I did explicitly say, “Steve is a lover.” In that case would it not be more accurate to say, “Steve is a lover, not a fighter.” It would be more accurate yet to say “Steve is surely a lover, but he might also be a fighter,” as long as the two things aren't contradictory.
Equally as interesting, it is explicitly documented in the constitution under Article 4, Section 4, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...”
In the blog article for What is a Republic you can decide if it is possible for America to be both a Republic as well as a Democracy and if these ideas are contradictory.
Here is where you scratch your head. If you have been asked or asked people “What form of government does America have?” and the popular answer to date has been, “We are a democracy” then you might want to examine why the notion of a Democracy is now more popular that the answer “We are a Republic.”
Here are the links to the blog posts:
Let's quickly imagine what a majority ruling could mean in reality. Think about various scenarios: race demographics, companies that employ us, folks on a camping trip, etc. And now imagine that for each situation there are no guiding principles but rather decisions voted upon by a group of available contemporaries and whatever that majority looks like in that moment decides what the current rule looks like. Sounds sort of wild-west doesn't it?
Now, you might imagine that a majority rule scenario was how we were founded, correct? But rather than voting on a moment requiring a ruling, we voted on a constitution that established a basis for future rulings. In that case you would be mostly right, except for the fact that we didn't vote as a country of people in an opportunity. A number of colonial leaders voted or rather drafted the Constitution which defined a new way of governing, not by majority rule but by a rule of law that outlined a limited form of government with a very particular purpose.So if Democracy means majority rule, how did the phrase get re-purposed to mean a select group of people rule? Is it still a Democracy if the majority does not rule but there is another guiding rule of law that is simply implemented by a representative minority?
Is America a democracy? Well, I believe as a philosophy, we could say that we are philosophically democratic. But in reality, we are ruled by established law and to this day we continue to refer to the Constitution as our basis for law and legal rulings.
To offer a little Democracy backstory, in ancient Rome if you were a citizen, you were allowed to vote in the Assembly (think about how big those meetings must have been!) This was a more true form of Democracy. In an American form of government you cannot vote with regard to Congressional laws unless you are a seated senator (and even there you will find certain exceptions.) So, clearly America may be philosophically a Democracy, but in reality and by all practical means, we are not a Democracy by that definition of that form of government.
By the Middle Ages, Democracies began to take a different form. The groups being allowed to vote became smaller and more representative rather than inviting citizens to vote. Some might blame the degree of education or lack thereof during the Middle Ages on the reason voting power became representative. Said another way, Democracies simply began to morph into an elite group of empowered individuals who ruled in their delegated minority and simply called themselves representatives of the majority. It is as if by the Middle Ages the notion of Democracy almost fully transitioned from a true form of citizen governance to simply a philosophy of words. In this sense of the definition for Democracy, America does partly fit this form of rule. But we still have a guiding Constitution which forms a basis for rule, which again challenges the notion of America having a Democratic form of government.
Finally America was established and we “Declared” and “Constituted” our rights and rule of law. Interestingly enough there is not a single mention of democracy in either of these documents. I find it interesting that while there were documented (not in these documents) various philosophies of Democracy, that our form of government is not described as a Democracy.
In the case that you might be thinking I am drawing up a straw man, I am not. You might want to ask me, “Well, just because they didn't say it, doesn't mean it isn't true, right?” Let's take an example of that:
If you were to say, “Steve is a fighter,” and your basis for this is founded in the probability that Steve didn't mention that he isn't a fighter, well, you might be right, but you might as well be wrong. Now, what if I did explicitly say, “Steve is a lover.” In that case would it not be more accurate to say, “Steve is a lover, not a fighter.” It would be more accurate yet to say “Steve is surely a lover, but he might also be a fighter,” as long as the two things aren't contradictory.
Equally as interesting, it is explicitly documented in the constitution under Article 4, Section 4, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...”
In the blog article for What is a Republic you can decide if it is possible for America to be both a Republic as well as a Democracy and if these ideas are contradictory.
Here is where you scratch your head. If you have been asked or asked people “What form of government does America have?” and the popular answer to date has been, “We are a democracy” then you might want to examine why the notion of a Democracy is now more popular that the answer “We are a Republic.”
Here are the links to the blog posts:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Crazy Dream
When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. Second, as the younger version of me darted around the corner I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature. That never happened to me in a third-person perspective dream before.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30-something aged woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kid was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. Second, as the younger version of me darted around the corner I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature. That never happened to me in a third-person perspective dream before.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30-something aged woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kid was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
Crazy Dream
When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
Crazy Dream
When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.
Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.
In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.
There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.
I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. The younger version of me darted around the corner but I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature.
Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30 something woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kids was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.
The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.
Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.
Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.
So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.
So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.
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