- WHAT CAN I DO? -

Be kind enough to translate your favorite chapters of Learner into your mother tongue and broadcast them for free on the Internet. A list more or less wise of personal suggestions.

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LEARNER full text (2024) and chapters

All or nothing, PeaceWorld or death

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APPRENTI texte integral (2024) et chapitres

Tout ou rien, Le monde paisible ou la mort

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WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- WHAT CAN I DO? -

“I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how to solve their own difficulties... my work will be finished if I succeed in carrying the conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.” Gandhi quote from Raghavan Iyer’s, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973, p. 373.

My sister Karen did me the favor of leafing through an early version of Learner while I untangled its spiel. She took what I wrote seriously and got upset. “None of this is my fault,” she said, or something to that effect. “What do you expect me to do? How do I protect my children? Tell me what to do!” 

Don’t expect some lone ranger to rear his white charger and stop this nightmare single-handed. Quite often in the past, like-minded enthusiasts have jumped hand in hand into the deep end of the acid pool, wrecking vast stretches of landscape and bringing many innocents to harm. The psychopaths’ dream made real.

Either an international consensus of Learners will solve these problems or no one will. 

Besides, Gandhi taught us another truth. Each of us merits respect or pity in line with the quality of our actions. Only the actions of the Other merit condemnation or approval. The Other, him- or herself, is a divine manifestation equal to our own. As such, each is exempt from our hatred. We come to grief when we turn aside from this sound principle.

Listed below are some personal priorities I playfully call Policies. Let’s hope they don’t induce more control-freak errors. Pick your favorites from them or follow your own.

Policies Before and After: Celebrate More, Sacrifice Less.

We are not talking about a spotless paradise here, but the reduction of sacrifice except of oneself and a corresponding boost of celebration. Pick one celebration, pick several and celebrate them! Avoid sacrificing anyone but yourself. Celebrate your ties with others!

Policy the First & the Unfirst: Do what You Do Best and Avoid the Rest. 

This policy cannot be overemphasized. It applies as much to individuals as to groups at work, in art and in worship; to our institutions and social instruments. It applies to power, leadership and defiance: to every activity. 

The short answer? Concentrate on what you do best. 

Everyone does their best at at least one thing. In everything we do, we occupy a point of excellence along a bell curve of interest and performance. Each of us may slam along some of them like no one else could. On others, we would crash before we worked up to respectable speed. Focus your passion where it best fits your talents. 

Weapon managers would rather produce armies of interchangeable generalists to shuffle like playing cards and deal out wherever we show marginal utility but rarely personal excellence. When our warrior companions die off, we must assume their place by rote and seniority. The world of “human resources” (that despicable term) is just a vast replacement depot for war. 

As a result, most human activity becomes a mediocre botch. We muddle along somehow – at monstrous cost and ineptitude – doing marginal work that bores and disgusts us. Jobs boil down to elementary, repetitive tasks. To earn our daily bread, we repeat a few infantile routines each day for years on end until we gag over their futility. Many personal dreams and initiatives are pulped in the process, sidetracked into frustration and despair. For many, homelessness and unemployment appear to be the only alternatives to vocational mediocrity, self-loathing, existential longing-for-the-end and not much else. 

So take the advice a good doctor gives a depressed patient. Go find a hobby. If you can make a decent living at it, so much the better. Some people play mean piano, others bring us closer to God or make a killer risotto, others still can get children to smile. 

Find out what really turns you on and go do it. No special talent can go to waste. If you don’t know what you are good at (a failure most of us share in this shabby civilization), it’s simple: do what is best for others and most rewarding for you. 

Consider the opposite. If you have no gift for a task, don’t mess it up; give it up instead and let some enthusiast take your place. If you are not a worshipper of children, don’t make, raise or teach them. If you are uncomfortable with foreign languages, don’t bother with them. Don’t peddle what you don’t believe in. Don’t compromise an endeavor with your incompetence or indifference. Don’t protect selfish employers who would not cross the street to protect you. More important still, don’t force others to do what they would do poorly. 

The one exception to this rule involves the activities socio/psychopaths. No doubt they will point to the paragraphs above to justify the worst evils their talents permit. One way or another, they must be turned away from the evil they do best and made to do something better or nothing. May a cure be found for them and their satanic disability, which they consider a rare talent and legitimate source of profit. Pay most of them much better, instead, to hold themselves in check.

Similarly, most of our institutions act like blockheads. Regardless of their range of competence, they declare they can solve any problem they encounter or offer an acceptable compromise. 

Now, every institution and system does a few things quite well; it does most others remarkably poorly. 

Take capitalism (take it from me, please!). There may be no better way to create and concentrate wealth. Under many circumstances (especially weapon-dictated ones), these are essential activities. Naked capitalism should reign in those cases and do what it does best. On the other hand, capitalism fails (dismally) at reducing misery. If the situation calls for reducing poverty, balancing an ecosystem or revealing true faith, for example, avowed capitalists should bow out. 

The same logic applies to militarism, communism, religious faith and other processes of thought, conviction and ideology. If they can deal effectively with some topic, they should be tried with broad-minded liberality; if defective for whatever reason, they should be fenced off. No method should be forbidden outright. It should just be consigned to situations that benefit the most from its interaction — and only those. 

That means we cannot reject the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a whole, no matter what evils it may have committed in the past. We will need a World Court and a WTO to regulate the World Bazaar. Expertise of this kind will be essential. Learners just have to persuade its associates to foster PeaceWorld and suppress weapon mentality and its technologies. 

For example, we will require that the WTO police the trade of weapons around the world. At this point, there are 600 million light harms on this planet: one for every ten people on Earth. Worse yet, many of them are traded, issued and maintained by merciless thugs, tyrants and gangsters. Meanwhile, decent folk walk around defenseless. We are left to wonder, “Why are so many innocents persecuted and gunned down so readily and so often?” WTO leaders must halt this proliferation of loose weaponry. They cannot excuse themselves from this supervisory task simply because it might interfere with national sovereignty. 

National sovereignty is another heady issue we must take on. Every nation should enjoy self-determination over the activities of its willing adherents, so long as only a few protesters dial up a 1-800-MYRIGHTS telephone number and complain to the World Court. In no case should a nation benefit from external sovereignty: license to attack other nations — in the same manner no citizen has the sovereign right to attack another. 

What’s more, we cannot turn our back on the rich, as revolutionaries have decreed in the past. The privileged should feel free to accumulate any wealth they need, provided everyone else subsists in comfort. 

In essence, we cannot reject or embrace any social practice as a whole. First, we must see who does what well and encourage that. Then, we should determine who does what poorly and shift their attention to something they do better. Our primary criterion should be: is peace enhanced? Then encourage it. Is weapon mentality enhanced? Then watch it carefully and be prompt to downgrade it. 

According to Learner, nothing need be accepted or rejected entirely. Truth demands that every point of view be heard and valid principals honored. We have not managed that yet because our info systems have not evolved to that crest of excellence. Cooperation over competition; celebration over sacrifice … except where those secondary practices would work better. 

From the point of view of peace mentality, our worst institutions are those that demand absolute control, uncompromising obedience and rejection of outside influences. Of course, those weapons institutions are the deadliest, most persistent and powerful: the ones we venerate most despite their worst venom.

These recommendations all alone would take lifetimes to fulfill. We are expected to do things we neither want to nor are any good at. Each of us must abide by this collective insanity. Society takes great pains to quash our basic talents and aspirations. Until it supports our innermost priorities, our masterworks cannot take shape without titanic struggle. 

We have reached the point where we welcome this struggle. This stupid, stupid waste of time and effort has become the prerequisite of artistic creation. We must first suffer terribly to wind up doing what we would rather do best. Instead, we should accomplish it from the beginning and improve along the way while benefiting from culture’s nonstop support. 

Policy the 2nd: Gather Together. 

Go find like-minded people for group activities, (reading, art, hobbies, charity, Learner, whatever). Act in concert over issues of mutual concern or celebration. Find new recruits and form different groups for different purposes. Plug into computer networks and databases. Attend the house of worship of your choice and let it reflect your spirit. Contact Learner peers across the planet. Shake off the alienation that allows weapon mentality to thrive. 

Policy the 3rd: Become Political. 

Not for me, the first part of this Policy, only for passionate enthusiasts. I must exhaust my initial task (writing Learners) before I can move on to the next one (preaching it).  The politician’s work does not interest me.

You, attend political functions. Make your opinions known. Climb to the peak of political responsibility, as high up the ladder of leadership as you can bear the heat. Get in touch with media workers. Write, call and visit your representatives. Give them an earful! Get in touch with famous individuals and corporations about the things they do well and those they don’t. 

Vote, even when your alternatives seem like loser, trivial options. Assert your political convictions and learn those of your fellows. When you cannot find an acceptable ballot choice, insist on your right to register a disgusted abstention. Political anonymity is the routine sanctuary for victim and tormentor alike, but that form of political escapism has become too costly for us and profitable for them. We would be better off confronting our responsibilities instead of letting them drop.

Every time you refuse to vote,

You approve those policies and leaders 

You hate the most.

Those who proclaim, “I am not political” actually are. They have just concluded (falsely) that their needs are best served by the status quo. As for those who don’t vote out of sheer disgust, they only sour their existential nausea. 

Policy the 4th: Charity. 

The more funds you hand over to a good cause, the less money weapon managers acquire. Make a point of supporting needy individuals and worthy instruments with your time and money. Tithe, but be picky about it. Don’t just shovel money over to monolithic charities or church corporations. It is quite likely their directors warp legitimate mandates with crooked agendas personal or institutional. 

Find new ways to help others. Reach out beyond your circle of friends and clients. Be good and make your goodwill count. 

Charity unlocks Miracle. 

Policy the 5th: Actualize what You Visualize. 

Note the bumper sticker that reads: “Visualize World Peace.” 

Constructive visualization should be taught to every young Learner: another survival skill we only pick up by osmosis, trial and error or not at all. What a miserable education we have to endure!

For example, make a wish list and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Note and cross out your desires as they materialize. Refresh your list from time to time. Simple visualization.

Or else “daydream” shamelessly. Your dreams – if they are adorned with the love of humanity – will be more rewarding than the Byzantine exertions of those who gross the most.

Essential skills like Judo and other martial arts should be learned, that coach one how to fall without breaking one’s bones. Babies should be taught something like that while they are learning to walk. The same goes for learning how to swim.

Overcoming this unawareness is just half the battle. Once you visualize your ideals, actualize them. 

Policy the 6th: Take Responsibility. 

Let’s say something noteworthy happens to you, for good or ill. Ask yourself, “Why did I attract this into my life?” My thanks to Context, Inc. for verbalizing this subliminal conviction. Too bad Andy Revell, its founder, left us in 2004. 

Do not make this a reason to feel guilty for living in troubled times, for being sick or for getting in trouble. Make it a method to attract better circumstances for you and yours.

Let’s change what we can for the better, and die trying to change what we think we cannot. To hell with “patience with the things we cannot change!” Don’t accept anything less than excellence in your life and splendor in your society. Take big risks, be bold and love fearlessly. Recall the words of Reverend Jesse Jackson and “Keep hope alive!” 

Everyone should thirst for, be quenched by and drunk with the Peace of God.

Policy the 6th Point Five: Laugh more. 

Masters of laughter should open every formal and spontaneous gathering; start with them during public ceremonies and private parties. Ah, ha, ha, ha! Gandhi was so grim, notwithstanding his constant good humor; you should overflow with laughter. Laugher is appropriate in many more settings than we admit. It is another passkey to miracle    . http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/08/video-laughter-yoga.html 

Policy 6.75: Cry Honest Tears when the Laughter Stops. 

Repent and transform everything from the root of your soul to the outer limits of the universe.

Policy the 7th & 7.5th: Seize the Lead if You Will; Get Out of the Way if You Won’t. 

Learner is largely written for leaders to come. Whoever honors their topic of passion shall lead in that field. 

So far, people of vast depth of soul, great heart and exemplary wisdom have withdrawn in disgust from running this world, even though that has always been their natural responsibility. They should take up the struggle once again and lead us back onto the straight and narrow from which we have strayed. We need those people everywhere, as good as they come and improving all the time. The dictatorship of compassion will demand unlimited cooperation. The best leaders must get immediate access to their topics of passion. 

The time for pious meditation and scholarly non-interference has come and gone. It is time to climb down the mountain, astride the ox of wisdom (as per the Tao).

Those less talented (elsewhere oriented) gang way! No time is left to waste squabbling over leadership roles. Otherwise, under the rule of weapon mentality, malevolent busybodies seize most of them by violence, since there is no better alternative. Only morally bankrupt creeps can justify the cheesy contradictions of weapon mentality; only they can find satisfaction enforcing social mediocrity for such shabby rewards.

Only the shining example of outstanding leaders at every level will improve average leadership. With so many bad role models presently in control, it is no wonder our leaders line up around the block to file for moral bankruptcy. 

This planet is a patchwork of slums mismanaged by warlords; Learners will turn it into an Eden ruled by the most upright tribal leaders we can find. The military salute goes to the badge of rank, not to the person who wears it; political recognition should go to outstanding individuals and not to their station, wealth or status.

A solitary leader is like the prow of a ship without its keel and hull. However, the whole is stronger than any of its parts. Learner calls on those who won’t lead as much as those who will. 

The info proletariat grows its elite on demand, a bit like the way a honeybee colony cultivates a new queen. While info proletarians support their current elite, they should also nurture an assortment of proto-elites. Find the best leaders and bear them in triumph to City Hall! 

Blaming current leadership is only a half-measure. Anyone satisfied with doing so little, hands the control of his life to others and their flawed understanding of his misfortune. If you don’t want to lead, fine; find those who do, find out what makes them tick and if they can love and be loved fearlessly. Uphold them, inspire them to do their duty, then challenge their righteousness. Watch over them, correct them when they stray and insist that they do better. Or replace them with someone better.

Policies the 8th and the 8th and a half: Study Learner, become a Learner. 

Read this text, get to know it, challenge it and figure out where it is gone wrong. Discover better alternatives and send them to me for inclusion. Get your best ideas published on your own. Discuss the ideas in this book with others and find out what they think. Identify Crimestop and confront it wherever you find it. Defy weapon mentality in your own thoughts and on your daily rounds of conversation and Learning. 

Policy the 9th: Satyagraha. 

Seize shared victory. Find out what other people need, find out what you need and make both happen. Practice the Golden Rule with everyone, yourself included. If you cannot recall the Golden rule, look it up and memorize it. Like most concepts of peace mentality, it is part of the heritage of every language and culture. I repeat it to you here: 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

With this additional proviso: always bear in mind that the needs of others may differ from your own.

Policy not the 10th: Have No Children unless You Must. 

It is simple. Couples that have no children or only one add to Learners. Those who have two, reproduce themselves. Those who have three or more produce warriors and warrior-breeders. Men who inseminate and run, and women who are made pregnant and plop down, spawn those who will be nourished with all of PeaceWorld’s strength. Unlike on WeaponWorld, no infant will be abused without immediate repair on PeaceWorld; that kind of abuse will become an unheard-of disgrace.

Traumatized by weapon mentality, intoxicated by its violence and untruth, we find these terrors perversely rewarding. We may free ourselves from this collective nightmare by halving human birth rates several times within the next few decades. 

Policy the 11th: Learn! 

We are all Learners, have always been and will always be, for as long as we stray here on Earth. 

Airports handle airplanes and travelers; everything revolves around their fluid transition. Humans are built the same way, to Learn. Every human need, desire, aspiration and fear centers on Learning. Luxury does not increase it and dearth does not diminished it. Matter and Spirit absorb it equally. Doing good and suffering evil are analogous Learning scenarios. Birth and death are among its most instructive lessons. Live to learn and learn to live.

Once we recognize that learning DNA’s Song is a good reason why we spend time on this sorry, beautiful planet (as revealed in The Cosmic Serpent, John 1-5, and Genesis 28-12 of the Bible, among others), everything else will assume its rightful place in the scheme of things. No matter what fate may befall us, we still have the choice to die well and reincarnate into Christ’s life. Once you lash your faith to that pier, no one can set it adrift again.

Policies the 12th, 12.3rd And 12.666…th: Dig Ponds, Grow soil, Plant Trees and Hedges. 

Shallow ponds are natural magnets for windborne topsoil, pollen and sediment. As water plants age and decay, they produce perfect fertilizer. Organic household and garden wastes are more useful once fermented into topsoil and natural gas, provided households are kept clean and healthy and those wastes are turned over periodically to promote aerobic breakdown into good soil and avoid anaerobic decay into incinerator ash and landfill ichor: these last the industrial standard today.

The ways and means of soil regeneration are undergoing a New Age renaissance that compensates for thousands of years of official neglect and abuse.

Per Kristin Ohlson’s The Soil Will Save Us: How scientists, farmers, and foodies are healing the soil to save the planet, Rodale, Inc., NY, NY, 2014, so-called organic farming can raise the same amount of crops as the industrial kind, do so more sustainably at lesser cost, with fewer chemical and mechanized inputs. Theoretically, the extra CO2 humanity produces every year could be bound up in super fertile, high-carbon soil. Its restoration would involve a few basic steps plus many new insights and innovations and of course lots of hard labor.

Stop adding chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides wholesale to the land except on a temporary and local basis, with microscopic precision and with a specific goal in mind.

No-till farming: don’t plow or break up the land. Use brains and natural processes instead of petroleum-fueled brute force and inert chemicals.

The more complex the ecological community on a farm, the higher the resulting carbon content of the soil. Establish a mix of local ground cover both perennial and annual. Sustain the soil’s microbiological community with as much care as that applied to aboveground herds and crops. Plant trees and hedges on marginal lands. Foster the widest genetic diversity in seeds specifically adapted to local conditions by cottage agronomy. Impose natural suppression techniques on harmful insects, weeds and disease. Industrial monoculture and livestock mass-penned in static lots on otherwise ruined farmland, those are signs of suicidal stupidity.

Drive animal herds across fallow fields; either by shifting farm animals quickly through small, moveable enclosures or by allowing predators to pick off, speed along and concentrate wild herds across vast stretches of land. You want lots of hoof prints, urine and dung in the soil, but only a quarter of the ground cover grazed before the herd moves on. Plant diverse food crops on the ground the herd has tromped.

It turns out that primitive slash-and-burn farming can be swapped for more thoughtful terra preta techniques whose slash piles are left to smolder under blankets of dirt or straw. This low-oxygen, partial burn traps a lot of carbon and trace elements. When mixed with bio-char, light and poor soils turn into rich, dark ones almost by miracle.    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm. Get to work!

Mushrooms can augment soil volume and improve its quality by means of myceliation (networks of its threads growing through the subsoil), fruiting, decay and propagation. The first stage provides soil structure, mineral concentration, and selective micro-organic control. The fruition stage provides food for passing animals both large and small, along with their deposit of scat, pollen and seeds. The stage of decay nourishes plant and micro-organic growth. Each step can be accelerated by intelligent human cultivation. Plus, at best, they turn into good eats when sautéed in garlic and butter. http://www.fungi.com/

Every celebration should include the planting of new trees, borders or shrubs hardy in your clime and widespread in your locale. Join with friends to create new groves, parks, orchards and forests. Plant trees along the biological demarcation lines listed in this book. Plant trees, more trees! Get politicians to promise to plant more trees: a promise even today’s bought and paid for politicians could keep. 

To repeat: micro-organic soil communities will receive as much attention and care from farmers and gardeners in the future as aboveground crops do today. 

Policy the 13th & Lucky: Cultivate our Garden. 

Let me quote the last line from Voltaire’s Candide, the masterwork of my childhood mentor and science fiction pioneer. 

« Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide ; mais il faut cultiver notre jardin. »

“That is well said,” replied Candide, “but our garden needs be tended.” 

Every day, thoughtless discards litter the streets of our global slum. Its front yard is a filthy dump of broken glass and trash that will take quite some time to clean up. In between those layers simmer additional ones of psychic hatred, fear and pain. 

Once we have cleared all this shit away, we will be left with a bare dirt lot and daily refills of trash. What to do? Give up? Abide in filth? Whine about lower profit margins? Indulge in half-comforting half-measures? 

Not on your life. Every day, for as long as our heart holds out, we will haul the filth away. How much it costs to do so will not matter. We will replant the garden: seed and water it with tender, loving care. We will plant trees and shrubs and tend them as well. With luck, our best neighbors will imitate us, drawn by our example. As local eyesores turn into lovely gardens, our disastrous neighborhood will turn into a parkland worthy of our affection.

Scaled up somewhat, this is what we must do across the planet. Weapon mentality – dragged out into the light of day – will be tossed aside like a rotten rag. Its prevarications of false economy will no longer be tolerated. 

Policy XIV: Fast when it’s fitting.

As long as a worthy Learner of Healing would concur, feel free to abstain from solid food for a day or so a week, a couple days a month or just on special occasions. Drink healthy liquids and break your fast whenever you wish, without remorse. 

Learners should become intimately acquainted with hunger. They should know it so well that they would no more permit strangers to go hungry against their will than they would let their own family starve. 

This policy does not apply to children and young people still growing up. They need regular daily meals to grow strong and smart. Fasting is only good for full-grown adults.

Policy XV: Reverse the Emotional Polarities of Weapons and Peace

According to Roland N. Stromberg’s, Redemption by War: The Intellectuals and 1914, The Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1982, p. 90, Europeans were swept up by similar sensations when warfare broke out, no matter which side they were on.

Exaltation, spiritual awakening, transformation, deliverance from narrow pettiness; above all, a surge of reunification by people of all kinds … plain folk with intellectuals, leftists with rightists, etc. The mysticism of a sacred union, the ecstatic revival of community, a union of hearts, the rally cry of Empire. A quickened pulse, a new strength and courage, a sense of brotherhood, a spirit of discipline and sacrifice. Revolutionary ecstasy aims to purify a corrupt world with a great, cleansing fire. Revolt against a rationalized, mechanized society, escape from unhappy personal circumstances, unification with something monumental and historically important, and the sexual emancipation of warriors. The temporary silencing of those opposed to war and permanently shutting them down. A fever, the salvation of Christianity (or your favorite religion). Physical force charged with moral energy becomes like love. War brings out religious feelings even in the anti-religious; it is an apocalypse. The abandonment of scientific internationalism and objectivity; the triumph of emotion over reason. A search for heroism, nobility, unselfishness as well as adventure, danger and even death. The urge toward group solidarity and kinship, a newly felt connection between the individual and the entire nation, the comradeship of the trenches. War hammers the world into new shapes. It is existentially real: the enemy and the perils of war are very real, while peace is so abstract as to strip the individual of his identity. Unity based on something simple, the common enemy. The ingathering of patriotic minorities into the mainstream, social harmony, solidarity, distributive justice and salvation through suffering. The old rationales for war were necessity, duty and justice; in 1914, the “new” ones became renewal, adventure and apocalypse.

At least until mass killing got serious a few weeks later, and ceaseless for years to come.

American citizens felt the same thing after 9/11. Stromberg states that frontline soldiers retain similar sentiments longer than rear-area civilians who revert to standard, peacetime alienation much more quickly. This may explain why veterans have such a hard time reintegrating into the civilian world with which they have lost touch after getting poured into to the crucible of war.

It will be up to Learners to turn the transformation from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld into the kind of moral crusade human beings seem to be hard-wired for. They will pump up PeaceWorld using the same passions listed above, (“It was him or me; them or us. The ends justify the means. I am  in command here; go die.”); they will exalt Peace with utmost sincerity and leave nothing unsaid about war.

This peace exercise will be very challenging. Learners will have to seize the righteousness of their cause, confirm their conviction through study, and convince everyone through the purity of their actions. The least trace of hypocrisy, weakness and hesitation in the reversal of these sentiments will jeopardize World Peace. 

Policy XVI and Especially for the Young: Protect their Eyes and Skin!

As you read these words, the ozone layer is unraveling and even the sun bears a lethal frown. Outdoor occupations once found healthy offer nothing more than skin cancer and premature blindness. 

Please get your kids to wear high-quality sunglasses and shaded hats when they go outdoors, along with long pants and long-sleeve shirts. They will thank you for that annoying interference later, when their contemporaries go blind or suffer early onset skin cancer.

Policy XVII and then Some: The Nose Is for Breathing; the Mouth, To Eat and Talk.

Oxygen is a 100% lethal addictive drug: another waste product (like alcohol) of plants and cyanobacteria. The human body was designed to consume an absolute minimum of it by breathing sparingly through the nose. Unless you are out on a run or some other vigorous activity, you take in too much of the stuff when you breathe through the mouth, which induces a cumulative lowering of vitality and thought. 

The nasal passages of many Caucasian faces are narrow, which compels occasional mouth breathing. This racial weakness should be resisted. If you catch yourself breathing through the mouth, make a conscious effort to breathe through the nose. If every Learner followed this simple rule, a lot of foolishness would cease along with premature aging of body parts, especially those in direct contact with the air: the lungs and digestive system, also the eyes and brain that reflexively take in more oxygen than they need whenever possible. After all, if you are breathing by mouth (which would only occur in nature during an emergency), more concentration and better vision must be required, accelerating their burnout. In the long run, too much oxygen can be almost as bad as not enough.

Policy XVIII: When You Die, Look Up Jesus for me.

I invite you to reincarnate into the life of Jesus. Find therein what you need to Learn to be saved. Break free, during His agony, from the Wheel of desire and death, and go to Paradise that very evening in His company.

Thus armored in life and with nothing left to fear, we should build PeaceWorld.

(Return to Policy 11).

Well, sister mine, that sums up my point of view for the time being. You have made so many wonderful things happen in your life, with so much spontaneous grace and elegance, without anyone’s say-so. Your achievements surpass most others’ I have beheld. You have taken the best care you could of your children and they have grown up as best they can. Let’s hope our descendants – spiritual and hereditary – will flourish in ways we cannot imagine.

IN FRENCH

…

COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net