P.6: Curricular Interests

Stepping back and forward one more day in the life of, I bring you to my educational pursuits. I am a constant student.

Archimandrite Father Eusebius Stephanou, founder of the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian. May his memory be eternal.
Archimandrite Father Eusebius Stephanou, founder of the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian. May his memory be eternal.

I also cry at movies when they have a very high impact. A close friend of mine recently passed away. He founded the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian. I had been a supporter of his for years and for a time was on the Board of Directors. The ministry was controversial within the Orthodox Church and in some ways I was critical but the late Archimandrite Eusebius Stephanou occasionally published some of my writing, wondered at my insight, and whenever I saw him he would always lament that there weren’t enough wealthy patrons to support me in a ministry of writing, though I was a layman.

The brothers would read from the writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian and discuss them regularly. St. Symeon was all about tears. The type of tears St. Symeon described are those that happen when there is close engagement in a profound theological love relationship. They are not just tears of joy. They embrace every Christian mystery.

St. Symeon the New Theologian said that we should not let a single day pass that we do not shed tears of repentance
St. Symeon the New Theologian said that we should not let a single day pass that we do not shed tears of repentance

People cry at movies because of a close engagement in a drama. I’m convinced that it is a gift of imagination they have that causes them to emote this way. It is a form of empathy. The healthy body is designed to relate to others, to experience with others, through active engagement of the mind and heart, in a participation between their knowledge of their own experience and what they understand and can relate to in the experience of another.

Not everyone has the gift of tears. Not everyone is an empath but those who are are often thought a little strange by those who are not. For Symeon, continual tears were the appropriate result of a healthy relationship with and in Christ. He did not talk just of agape love, a higher cerebral love divorced from the body. He spoke of divine eros, a love relationship with God that produced a continuous flow of tears. These were not just tears of joy for Symeon. They were tears of profound communion. I’ll spare you the special theological terms behind it, reserving those for my Cosmostrophy page, where I feel more at liberty to discuss my religion.

The reason I am blogging here in My Story is so you can know who the founder of the Restoration Party is and better understand the values I would like it to embrace. It is an elaborate way to share where I am coming from. It will provide some context for the proposals, viewpoints and mission reflected in the Restoration Party Manifesto that I am in the midst of writing as I continue to blog.

The harder the conflict the greater the triumph - George Washington
The harder the conflict the greater the triumph – George Washington

I do realize that political enemies will come along and take the things I say out of context so that I may be misrepresented. It’s the way of the world. Blogging here provides a simple way to access the whole picture and acquire my personal understanding of the truth. I am a Christian but I am not on the Christian right. I am Orthodox but I am a critic of Orthodoxy and of Christianity as a whole. I am associated with the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian but have complex views when it comes to charismatic movements.

To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones - George Washington
To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones – George Washington

And the truth is that, like St. Symeon, I am a man of many tears. When other people hurt, I hurt with them. When they rejoice, I rejoice with them. This week, I had approximately 300 loan requests. Of those, approximately 90 cars had broken down, 80 jobs had been lost, 5 husbands had died, 2 wives, 3 sons, 4 had cancer, 11 had spouses with cancer, 7 fatal accidents, some lost all they had through law suits, others gave all that they had caring for their elderly parents, 20 cars in tow, 14 on the verge of repossession, 120 had moving expenses, about 40 moves were simultaneous with cars breaking down. It was like I was reliving my own life again through them, and all like me, were broke enough to have no credit or savings sufficient to handle the impact. They were all desperate enough to call me, knowing they would pay sky high interest rates. There were also 4 weddings and about 20 vacations. It’s not all bad until you see they can’t actually afford these things.

James and Chickie Carvin at the Group Home where Chickie stayed in Lake Worth.
James and Chickie Carvin at the Group Home where Chickie stayed in Lake Worth. Chickie holds up a flower he grew himself in the garden there.

One of my last calls was a girl living in a group home. My brother had lived in a group home like that. She had Down Syndrome like him. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Internet would ever become accessible to Down Syndrome people living in group homes but here she was trying to get a loan to pay for her $330 medical bill. Her medical bill was all of $1.33 greater than her social security check. I get paid commission and it was my job to upsell her while I issued her the $500 loan she needed for the $1.33 expense. A better loan rep than myself would have sold her a credit monitoring service for $39/month and credit repair for $99/month, both of which she qualified for, as she neither knew her credit scores nor had good credit. Had I been a fiction writer, I would never have thought of such a scene. The reality is something I will never be able to remove from my mind.

What this situation does to an empath with a conscience is it prompts passion. It makes me want to fix a seriously screwed up system before it dries up my tears, numbing me with the repetitious sales pitch that drags my soul to hell. When I previously mentioned my work made me cry, some of my friends contacted me because they were concerned about me. They needn’t worry. I’m not suffering from depression and I’ve never had a suicidal thought in my life. It’s when the tears stop that I start wondering what is wrong with me. It’s when a person doesn’t care that the disease becomes evident. As we consider reality, there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. But we are sick.

Father Eusebius Stephanou welcomes Orthodox Christians to the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian.
Father Eusebius Stephanou welcomes Orthodox Christians to the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

The Orthodox like to distance St. Symeon from the charismatic movement. They think Pentecostalism is demonic and believe he can only be understood in a monastic context. After all, he was an abbot and there is little evidence he spoke in tongues or conducted healing services as he promised material blessings in exchange for faith gifts.

And speaking of demons, the Orthodox view spiritual warfare very differently. The devil is spoken of and his demons but defeating them is largely a matter of overcoming passion. It’s passion that is the enemy. Orthodox exorcism is all about overcoming fleshly passion, which is one reason the tears of St. Symeon are anything but Pentecostal. They view Pentecostalism as a carnal replacement for genuine spirituality. Their fasts are not viewed as entreaties to God so much as exercises in overcoming desire. It is all about discipline. The mind removed from the things of this world is freed up to contemplate the things of the next.

John Climacus - the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The role of the demon is to distract and tempt with sin so that divine love is unknown.
John Climacus – the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The role of the demon is to distract and tempt with sin so that divine love is unknown.

The role of the demon in the life of a Christian is that of an annoyance. They are sent by a master of folly to distract and drag down a spiritual aspirant who for lack of discipline willfully engages in their temptations. Whereas the Pentecostal will offer verbal incantations against the demons and suppose these have rendered spiritual victory, the Orthodox finds victory only at the end of life’s journey in a soul that has climbed to spiritual heights in his own liberation from passion. It is not as though there is no passion. It is a passionate dispassion that evolves as he comes to grow in his love for Christ and by that is the devil defeated.

In the meantime, all that happens in life happens in the permissive will of God, who permits the demons to tempt man in various ways. Destruction and loss are like that. We get too attached to things. We need to realize who we really are. And with that in mind, I will proceed with my story.

I was a music composition major when I was in college. I chose it because I had a strong sense of calling to be a writer. Actually, what I wanted was to be a movie producer – an interactive movie producer -but I had to take things one step at a time and wait for the technology to evolve. It was the music that reached the soul so I thought I would start there. I had a sense that I should write something that would change the world for the better – that media was capable of affecting people in positive ways. I wanted that to happen. It was a realization I had my junior year and it wasn’t a bad one. Prior to that I’d been in it for the wrong reasons. I was seeking admiration.

Quartal and Quintal Harmony - a Flute Sonata by Paul Hindemith
Quartal and Quintal Harmony – a Flute Sonata by Paul Hindemith

In the 1970’s the University of South Carolina music department placed much emphasis on the avant-garde. It was futuristic. Every music course pointed forward through history and asked what would come next. I wrote a paper at that time on a forthcoming digital age and purchased my first synthesizer in the hope of developing it. I was no prolific writer back then. I was new at the craft but I managed to work up a portfolio at that time, which included some symphonic works, string quartets, jazz combo pieces, madrigals, canons, some counterpoint for piano, background music for poetry readings, some polytonal polyrythmic stuff in honor of Charles Ives and a trombone trio sonata in the quartal style of Hindemith.

Some of these works, including the first movement of the last, were performed at Seminar and received quite nicely there and then on my final day of school, the final performance of my trio sonata was scheduled so that my parents, who were driving up from South Florida to take me home, could hear it.

The end of a day begins another.
The end of a day begins another.

I was excited about the future and the lessons I had learned. I had learned about John Cage – a man who used elements of chance in music, and Charles Ives, who saw music three dimensionally, and sought to portray reality by music as he walked through a park on the Fourth of July. They had taught me to look at the interaction of the world itself as part of the music. I had also studied Indian music and learned to see music as a message from God. I had learned to look around me and find music in everything and even to see everything as music. I had learned to appreciate and came to believe in God as a master orchestrator of all, making music out of chance, simplifying the complex in ways that united in a single epic story.

The night before the trio sonata I was on the verge of telling my parents about all of these things. I wanted them to be excited with me and feel my time at USC had been well spent.

But that wasn’t meant to be. In the juggle of packing my things, I had somehow lost my entire music portfolio. I frantically searched my apartment, doubling back through my suit cases and opening up trash bags. I darted over to my locker at the music building and even went to the stadium, where the jazz band rehearsed. Nothing. I then showed up to the performance and the other two players failed to come. There sat waiting my parents and my music teacher.

College students. Finals week. Who would have expected them to show up to something they got no credit for? I should have known better – and they had their parts with them. They had taken them with them to practice. My parents were convinced that no trio sonata had ever been written and  that I was lying to them. Fortunately, my composition teacher came and assured them he had seen it with his own eyes. He passed me, knowing I had done the work, but the thirteen hour drive back home was an uncomfortable one and I had no portfolio to build on. Suddenly my future looked very bleak. I took a job at a Savings and Loan.

When God orchestrates, he also conducts. He does so without impeding freedom. What seems random to us is foreknown and brought to a perfect climax.
When God orchestrates, he also conducts. He does so without impeding freedom. What seems random to us is foreknown and brought to a perfect climax.

I have no regrets about my lost portfolio. There was one thing I understood. That event was merely the opening movement of a larger orchestration piece. I stopped to hear the sound of it. I was enjoying how the story, told polysymphonically in the form of all events, was unfolding. I respected the writer. I was drawn to a masterpiece in the making. It was as if the music, as if a song, was just starting with my journey back to South Florida with my father and mom.

My academic career didn’t end there but I will point out here that each new chapter of my life has begun with a sort of tragic ending involving loss. In the music business we are taught to observe and analyze form. We know that the ending of a piece by Beethoven is going to have a significant build up. The end is not really the end just yet. It gets better and when it is complete it leaves the listener fully satisfied. It’s like great sex that way, with climax upon climax in one final long and wonderful climax.

Destruction is rarely the end. It typically signals a new beginning.
Destruction is rarely the end. It typically signals a new beginning.

That’s how I’d like my life to be. I’d like it to end with perfect satisfaction. I believe the orchestrator of all things has that planned. I’ve seen the patterns the way I see the themes and motifs of Beethoven finales long before their recapitulation. A good ending is set up from the beginning. Destruction and loss are little more than doorways to new chapters in the book of life.

I’ll tell you about the pursuit of my Master’s Degree on another page. That also involved gainful loss and that will be a theme here. I told you about the salmon and the ant on page five. It is a story of loss and rebuilding. All of this will lead up to Chapter Eight of the Restoration Party Manifesto. Our country is about to suffer very great loss.

That is sad but I am not a sad man nor do I glory in anyone’s loss. Never in my life have I ever desired loss and I do not desire it for this country. That is why I have been doing everything I know how to persuade others to implement Solution A, as outlined in Chapter Two of the Manifesto, as also the subsequent chapters I am presently working on. I am not a passive aggressive type who would sabotage himself just to live out some sense of unworthiness and neither do I want that for America.

God can bring beauty out of ashes.
God can bring beauty out of ashes. We need to be reminded of this.

No, I believe my losses have been a part of the orchestrator’s curriculum. They are there to teach me to teach others that we can rebuild and that when we do rebuild we can build even better than we were first building. There is a storm coming and we are about to experience very great loss. I have referred to it as an apocalypse. It is that bad. I am going to write some songs and in them I will spell out the path to reconstruction. We will be without electricity and government, but maybe enough of us will remember the songs, that these little curricular interests of mine will be shared. We will rebuild. We will get through this. God willing, I will provide a road map to restoration and we will follow it.

P.5: The Salmon and the Ant.

The First Bookmark in the New James Carvin Bookmark library. Think like an ant. Just rebuild. Fretting is no help.
The First Bookmark in the New James Carvin Bookmark library. Think like an ant. Just rebuild. Fretting is no help.

My Internet library burned down two weeks ago and I didn’t even know it until this morning. I’ve been compiling it since Google Chrome was invented. I didn’t realize until this morning that I deleted all the bookmarks I’ve ever been compiling on Chrome.

 

That means basically, all my research references are gone for any endeavor I’ve had since about 2006. A search to retrieve Chrome bookmarks shows me the best there is is an undo workaround for a single browser session … http://www.howtogeek.com/111784/how-to-recover-accidentally-deleted-bookmarks-in-chrome-firefox/ .

 
Do ants have emotions? If they do, their coping mechanisms don't interfere with their progress.
Do ants have emotions? If they do, their coping mechanisms don’t interfere with their progress.

As as heads up, the way this occurred is that I was logged in as my wife (I thought) when trying to set up her computer. She complained that she didn’t need all those bookmarks. Thinking that since I was logged in as her and that Google had just duplicated my bookmarks when it created her account, I started deleting all the stuff that was mine that she wouldn’t care about. Basically, I had it all in one folder that was hierarchical and there were a few other top priority bookmarks. Deleting these made room on her book marks bar. It also erased about 5000 hours of my work. I have discovered this morning that it is not retrievable.

 
That was today. So now let me bring you a few days backwards in my life. And while I’m at it, I’ll cover a few decades. My patience is tested more than others with problems like these, as if I was an ant constantly rebuilding while some cruel and curious giant onlooker thwarted my every effort. I could get bitter but what use is that?
Ant man. This really has nothing to do with this story.
This really has nothing to do with this story.

Currently, I have a car that has been in the shop for two weeks because of an air conditioner problem. Actually two shops. I brought it into the first shop, they vacuumed and charged it with freon and gave it back for free. That was nice. Then I started using it over the weekend and the a/c went out again after the car heated after about eight rides despite the fresh charge.

So I brought it back to the shop and they tested it and it turned out to be a leak in the compressor. Kia compressors cost more than $1000, so the warranty company had to send out an inspector to verify the leak. The inspector was a jerk and started cussing loudly in front of the children in the shop. The warranty company had already delayed everything by not returning phone calls so the a/c company told me they refused to work with the warranty company ever again. He said this was the first time that had ever happened in his business in forty years.
This image also has very little to do with this story.
This image also has very little to do with this story.

So after five days testing until the problem duplicated so that the first shop could locate the leak and then another five days waiting for the appointment with the inspector that the warranty company required, the problem was still not fixed.

I then took it to the Kia dealer, explained the history of the problem, and they have up until now still not been able to duplicate the problem. Fifteen days without my car have now passed and they are charging me extra for diagnostic fees. I have no idea whether they will get the problem to duplicate in front of an inspector. Odds are low since it takes them many trials just to get it to duplicate for themselves.
And yes, this image also has nothing to do with this story. But it's pretty cool. Eh?
And yes, this image also has nothing to do with this story. But it’s pretty cool. Eh?

This is, of course, the third major problem I’ve had with this used Kia since I bought it April 30th. I had to replace the shocks six days after I bought it and I had to replace the fuel pump assembly a month later because of a fuel reserve leak that required me to replace the fuel pump and all of its related parts. The warranty covered the fuel pump as it is listed but the warranty company refused to honor the warranty because it was not the pump itself that was damaged.

The correspondence and dispute with the warranty company caused the car to be in the shop a week at that time. The total had already come to nine days shop time between that and the shocks incident. Adding this current two weeks, my car has been in the shop almost a month since I bought it a little over two months ago. I have no idea how long it will be to resolve the current situation with the a/c or how expensive this will be.
 
The First Bookmark in the New James Carvin Bookmark library. Think like an ant. Just rebuild. Fretting is no help.
The First Bookmark in the New James Carvin Bookmark library. Think like an ant. Just rebuild. Fretting is no help.

But that’s just the car. There’s also the people. Many of my friends know that my wife, who never smoked or drank and stayed physically fit, had a stroke when she was 38, leaving her partially paralyzed for life and chronically unemployed. Others know about my sister and her stroke and that she is the reason we moved to Tallahassee as her husband abandoned her in a nursing home. Not so many people know about my sons. Not every story gets told. I’ll simply summarize by saying something every parent knows – much patience is required, much time, much expense.

The lost bookmarks are not the only data I’ve lost. I’m used to this kind of very great loss and this is far from the first time I’ve had to rebuild. This is not something most people can relate to since most people don’t work during all of their “spare time.” It is not a hobby for me. It is a recognition of my career. Hence the analogy of the ant.
I'm sorry, dear. It was not my intention to put you through this. Thank you for not giving up on me or on us.
I’m sorry, dear. It was not my intention to put you through this. Thank you for not giving up on me or on us.

Then there are lost friends. Three of my wife’s four bridesmaids no longer talk to her. The reason is that they don’t like me. They don’t like me because I refuse to quit. They believe I should have a normal job and be like a normal person and think more like they do. They won’t talk to her because they want her to leave me or me to change or something like that, as if I could. Her half sister did the same. It is very lonely being the wife of a relentless entrepreneur. People are controlling that way but for her it is a very great loss. And for me it is a very great source of sadness thinking that my wife has lost so many of her very best  friends on account of me. I have to comfort her when she cries.

James Carvin's Back Ups saved since 1987. 11 Books plus, inventions, correspondence, contacts, images, almost all deleted now.
James Carvin’s Back Ups saved since 1987. 11 Books plus, inventions, correspondence, contacts, images, almost all irretrievable now.

In my life, I’ve had computers break down on me at times when I could not afford back ups and back ups I’ve paid for that failed when I attempted to restore them. The bottom line is the loss of the majority of the work I’ve done in my life. I toted around jazz drives, Syquest drives, floppy sequential back ups, and five large computers for years, carrying them to at least seven places we moved to in the hope of restoring the data.  I took it all to a computer repair shop about ten months ago to see what I could retrieve. I had managed to save some of that data onto an external Seagate drive that I had collected back ups to. At last I had the hope of having all my remaining data on one drive. I asked to have the retrieved data be added to the other data I had already saved, but they made a mistake and wrote over the other data. This made me lose all my recent data. And the previous data was too corrupt they said to copy. It left me with very little.

James Carvin's data brought to the shop for restoration to an external drive.
James Carvin’s data brought to the shop for restoration to an external drive.

Other data losses were due to deliberate sabotage. It’s easy to sabotage people when they are low on cash and can’t afford proper redundancy. At the turn of the Millennium I had started a business from my home. I invented something that was in high enough demand to launch itself to the 105th most visited web site in the world at that time without having to pay for advertising. Lisa and I watched the WebTrends Analystics with amazement together. My service provider informed me I would need to pay for a server farm to handle the accelerating capacity. I lacked the cash for that for the rapid site development I needed and, as if to kick me down a little further, it was at that same time that my developers accepted a contract from Jeb Bush for MyFlorida.com and ceased all private sector work.

A lifetime of data back up attempts - all to no avail.
A lifetime of data back up attempts – all to no avail. James Carvin’s data history since the SE30 of 1986. No worries. The good parts have been properly restored in the book of life from the beginning.

I had to hire new developers very quickly at the same time that I needed the new servers but on a shoe-string budget. First I accepted a bid from a group from India. They were nice but they were incapable. Time was ticking. A month later I accepted a bid from a group from New York that was also doing the work for SesameStreet.com. They agreed to work for $10,000 and 5% equity.  I gave them access to the site. What they didn’t tell me was Sesame Street had backed out on them. When that happened, they became cash short like me, so before they went bankrupt they started outsourcing their work.

 

The salmon swims upstream so that it can spawn. It overcomes every obstacle because it knows what it must do. There is no telling it to change direction.
The salmon swims upstream so that it can spawn. It overcomes every obstacle because it knows what it must do. There is no telling it to change direction.

They hired some developers from Russia and as their company continued to fail, they wound up not paying their Russian developers. They gave access to the Russians to my server through a piece of code called a “back door.” When the Russians didn’t get paid, they got angry and systematically imploded all eight of the cartridge back ups and destroyed my entire business from within and left me a calling card, “Russian Hacker”, among the files in the data that remained. The 30,000 members in my database were then held up as hostage, as they proceeded to send an email saying they could restore my data if I paid them. The business had already been destroyed by then. I had already sold my car to pay the developers. It was all I had.

Satan can attack but he can only take the soul if you give it to him.
Satan can attack but he can only take the soul if you give it to him.

The loss of my data now makes all of this impossible for me to prove. Only my wife remains as a witness to what has happened in my life. Only my own soul survives as I look to rebuild.

There are also some print outs of the books I wrote. I still have those. I hate print. I believe in going green. Ink is ridiculously expensive and hard contracts take up space in my office. Lisa can’t file with one hand but she tries anyway. The drawers fall to the floor. At least fifteen printers have broken through the years. The books that are printed aren’t the ones I was trying to retrieve.
 
Not all brains work the same. When one part is not so strong, other parts take over. Analytical skills and abstract thought may be dominant where memory is weakened. It doesn't mean the memories aren't there. It means they are restored through other processing centers. The result is fresh expression.
Not all brains work the same. When one part is not so strong, other parts take over. Analytical skills and abstract thought may be dominant where memory is weakened. It doesn’t mean the memories aren’t there. It means they are restored through other processing centers. The result is fresh expression.

Somehow these great losses are symbolic of how my brain works. When I talk with people, I don’t use my memory. I use my soul. It is my soul that remembers. This is why I rarely express the same thing the same way twice. It’s why I don’t memorize speeches. I have to recompose everything that I say and think on a continual basis. My data centers work differently than those of other people.

It’s okay that the data is gone. It’s okay that I’ve lost my bookmarks. Life is short and we get sick and we die. There is nothing we can take with us. But our souls. These are very rich. Salmon don’t need maps. They are drawn by something deeper than memories. They are like ants that way. They just move upstream undaunted until a job written deep within them is done. It’s all they are wired to do. 

P.4: Independence

The record deficit that has now more than doubled the total Bush deficit is not a Republican or Democrat thing. It is a system thing.
The record deficit that has now more than doubled the total Bush deficit is not a Republican or Democrat thing. It is a system thing. I showed you how to fix this in chapter two. Help promoting that would contribute to the cure.

America is a sick country. I have the cure.

The cure is independence. You would think independence would be an American value. It’s in our founding declaration as a country. But we don’t live it.

The opposite of independence is dependence. We are dependent on others to lead. We are dependent on media to teach us how to respond. We are dependent on two political parties to generate our leaders. We are incapable of escaping from that system. It’s dependence.

We are dependent on overspending, on the Federal Reserve System. We are dependent on hatred – without it the American people are not stirred to action. Both dominant political parties count on it to stir us to action to get us to the polls on voting day.

I’d tell you more about this but I have to go to my day job now. I work for a loan company. My job is to get more people into debt. I told you how much I hated this job already. The fact that people are dependent on debt isn’t just a national problem. It is an individual and family problem and every client I talk to, I have to come to terms with this fact – they vote. We’ve accepted debt but we don’t have to. We can free ourselves from it. But they are hopelessly addicted. Our managers know that. They built their business around it and they are prospering.

Independence. Lets start by declaring ourselves independent - Independent of the two party system, of hate, of financial powers. I will show you how.
Independence. Lets start by declaring ourselves independent – Independent of the two party system, of hate, of financial powers. I will show you how.

Why not consider supporting me so I can publish the Manifesto? Together we could restore America to the independence it once sought.

In the next chapter of My Story I will be explaining my own journey to independence. It’s been a fight like a salmon swimming upstream because independence has little support in a world headed the opposite way. Understand that I know I am still trapped in that stream but I won’t resign myself to be defeated by it. Like the salmon, I know where I have to go. And I’m going to take you there. We have to start with that vision. So as I take one more step back in my life, in the next pages I’m going to explain my vision. Subscribe to this blog and then you’ll hear it.

 

The Damage that Persuades

Restoration Song 1 – The Damage that Persuades

You say you love your freedom. You love the USA
You say you love democracy. It’s worth the price we paid.
You see the people struggle with corporate stronghold scams.
You say that that’s the system. The rat race and the man.
Why don’t you use your liberty to change the things you can?
Why don’t you join my party, the Restoration plan?

I warned you of your pending doom. The debts accelerate.
I warned you of the anarchy. The pending frightful state.
I made a plan to rise again. I knew you wouldn’t listen.
The plan I made was radical. It changed the whole damn system.

 

You wanna know what’s sick to me?
It’s when you’re hooked on crack and then you say you’re free.
I’ve seen it kill. I’ve seen the pills. I’ve seen it break your back.
Translucent rocks, those lying crocks. They’ll be your destiny.

 

Ignore me at your peril. I’ve written chapter two.
I warned you of corruption. The things you won’t undo.
The steps I showed were simple. To plug the loophole stew.
You let the rulers rule you. You stick to them like glue.
So tell me what’s your freedom? What’s the big hope lie?
You slave of all deception. You blue and red pill fried.

 

The Manifesto chapters. The eight I wrote for you.
I saw it in your future. It’s all that I could do.
Sometimes when things are written the songs will get you through.
The darkened night the lyrics. The volunteers will do.

 

Remember me the ghost I am. I cried so many tears.
I saw the way they stole from you the best of all your years.
I had your path to awesomeness. It had to be delayed.
It had to wait for brokenness – the damage that persuades.

 

The damage that persuades … the damage,
that persuades … persuades

James Carvin at 21, tickles the ivories.
James Carvin at 21, tickles the ivories.

P.3: Capitalist Values

Donald Trump may be scary but Hillary Clinton is scarier.

Mafia Style Justice
Mafia Style Justice. Hillary gets off and there is no other explanation than career or death threats

Her escape from her indictment by the FBI was long expected, not because anyone thought she was innocent, beyond her absolute loyalists, but because we knew she would threaten those in power and get away with it. We knew this because we remembered that the very first act of Bill Clinton was to fire the head of the CIA and replace justice with his cronies. If it’s not about outright murder in a sinister cabal, it’s certainly about dirty politics.

The ironic thing is that’s what makes Hillary Clinton a better candidate than Donald Trump – at least in the eyes of those who see political ability as getting what you want. There’s something to be said for that. Getting away with corruption is a new American value that is admired by many.

It’s a capitalist value. The essence of capitalist morality is that every time someone buys something two people are satisfied. They get what they want. That’s a good thing, right? The seller gets money, usually. The buyer gets a product or service. The seller gets the amount of money they feel is a worthwhile exchange and the buyer lets go of the amount of money they believe is worth the price for what they receive. This is the core value of capitalism. No?

Scam Alert - you think you're getting women's rights. What you're getting is increased corruption.
Scam Alert – you think you’re getting women’s rights. What you’re really getting is increased corruption.

It’s a great theory but when what you’re selling isn’t what you said you were selling it just doesn’t work. Sales is about expectations, not actual exchange. The buyer imagines a product that isn’t delivered. The seller is very often a scammer. To a sad extent, capitalist values are actually all about the scam. The new values are anyway. That’s why both Hillary and Donald fit in so well. Neither one will deliver what they promise, and they both know it, but the one whose proven their ruthlessness behind the beltway – that’s the very reason many deem her worthy. She embodies the level of necessary evil for that job that the new American thinks is needed to get an often very ruthless job done.

They think that’s a good thing.

I started this story by telling you how much I hated working for a scammer. What they do is legal. It’s just not honest. People are buying hope. The company is selling something that rarely delivers. A capitalist value, as it is sold, is one where both parties receive what they want. When I look at the truth, the reality is that I’m in the business of selling people something that is very different than what they want or called for. It very often hurts them rather than helps them.

I used to hate that Uber would exaggerate what it paid to its drivers, which it calls its “partners.” I will gladly go back to doing it full time as soon as I can because the lack of ethics Uber has is a drop in the bucket compared to the lending organization I’m working for to fill in the gap in my pay this summer. Successful business and successful politics are a lot alike these days. Empty promises are what drive people to call the scam company I work for. It’s their advertising. It’s entirely misleading. The company wins because it has a ton of advertising out there. A huge array of platforms of communication in a huge market of people who want to borrow money but have shitty credit. They sell hope. They deliver catastrophe.

Damn – that’s exactly what it looks like when I look at these politicians. Is America oblivious to this? I talk to deluded people all day long. They call up expecting free money. They expect me to find them loans at low rates and get angry at me when I ask questions to see if they might be capable of paying it back. Two minutes of your time for the $30,000 you want me to instantly send, sir? … the money you know you have no hope of paying back with your $20,000/year income? Maybe you deserve that credit repair for $99/month that won’t fix your problem. They fix credit scores. They don’t fix delusion.

The delusion is everywhere. Politicians and scam businesses both count on it. Their popularity and success requires it. Scamming the deluded is big business. It’s the new capitalist value. The buyer gets it. Therefore, the buyer must have wanted it and it must be ethical. It’s an axiom.

Drivers fail to account for their expenses when they count their income.
Drivers fail to account for their expenses when they count their income.

Uber has two types of buyers – passengers and drivers. The passenger gets a sweet deal, a cheap ride. No scam there. The driver, on the other hand, sells their time and the wear and tear on their car in exchange for the hope they are receiving an income that will outpace it.

Uber takes advantage of delusion like that. Some ads even claim drivers earn $26/hour. That’s their pitch. In very rare hours do drivers ever earn that much. Even football games and New Years doesn’t do that because there are too many drivers now that everyone knows about Uber. In minute locations it has sometimes worked. Many take net losses while supposing they are earning profits. It’s easy to do that when you aren’t counting your expenses. It’s delusion and Uber takes advantage of it.

Defenders of Uber resort to the capitalist exchange principal. If you don’t like what Uber pays you, why do you do it? You do it so therefore what you get paid must be a fair value.

Not! … they do it because they were told they would earn $26/hour. That’s why. It was about expectations. They were scammed. You are defending a scammer when you use the classic capitalist values argument. It doesn’t work with scams.

I escaped the possible net losses drivers typically actually have by buying a used car that had already depreciated but had a reputation for low repair costs – a 2011 Elantra. It got great mileage. 75,000 miles later and it still runs beautifully. I took a standard mileage deduction that was far less than my real costs.

Others aren’t so lucky. They don’t even track their mileage.

My 2007 Kia has had over $2,000 in repairs since I bought it two months ago.
My 2007 Kia has had over $2,000 in repairs since I bought it two months ago. Do you think the dealer should cover the cost?

I bought another car, thinking I could do the same. It’s had three major repairs in less than two months and I haven’t even started Ubering in it. I buy with the expectation that the dealer will stand behind their reputation, since that’s what the first words coming out of the dealer’s mouth are. I say “are” and not “were.” They give me the same pitch every time I go there.

“We don’t sell cars that have problems. We inspect them. If they don’t pass our inspection, they go to auction” the salesman said. It wasn’t the first time I had heard this.

This car had supposedly been inspected. Even that wasn’t good enough for me though. I needed a reliable car to do business in. I was thinking about long term miles so I purchased an extended warranty. I couldn’t risk major repairs. I told the business agent, Sal, that I needed bumper to bumper coverage for that reason.

So Sal sold me a warranty, and the options he gave me were A, B and C and B had one price because of the deduction, which was $100. On that basis and with that expectation I bought it. “It covers everything but wear and tear,” stated Sal, with words I can still hear in my mind in his own voice.

Sal may have thought that but the warranty company didn’t see it that way. He printed out the back pages of a contract I never saw that said only listed parts were covered. Then when the fuel reserve tank had a leak in it and I had to replace the fuel pump assembly, the warranty company wouldn’t pay the claim. They said only the fuel pump itself was covered by the warranty – not the reserve tank. Sal was baffled. So was I. Sal may have been feigning his surprise. He makes money when he sells warranties. And that’s just … capitalist values.

Of course, the new shocks I had to buy six days after purchasing the car from this reputable dealer counted as “wear and tear.” I wouldn’t expect the warranty company to cover that. The dealer, on the other hand …

And that’s what capitalist values are really about – expectations. You buy expecting one thing and you get something other than what you thought you were buying. The letter of the law then steps in, whether you’ve actually seen it or not, and let’s you know that as a buyer you are screwed. In Florida, dealers get the upper hand in legal battles. Lemon laws don’t even apply for used cars.

It’s the new way capitalist values are set up here. Florida is the scam capital of the world, next to, maybe Nigeria or something.

Old fashioned values included deals done on a hand shake - because words mattered.
Old fashioned values included deals done on a hand shake – because words mattered.

Is that really capitalist values? No. There was a day when a deal was made on a hand shake. There was a time when people had integrity. Maybe people don’t know about that any more. Maybe the world lacks enough people who live according to worthy values. Enter the Restoration Party values. We are about the restoration of integrity because who wants an America that isn’t about that? Let me ask you something. Is integrity something worth fighting for? Do you really prefer an America that is run by thieves and scammers?

So here we are in a presidential election cycle. We have Donald Trump, on the one hand, who says he’ll get the Mexicans to pay for his wall but hasn’t spelled out how. Here’s a man who charged thousands of dollars for his University about learning capitalist values and now he’s being sued because it was a scam. But he’ll get away with it – just like Hillary got away with her email scandal and every other Clinton scandal. Trump had each student sign a testimony before they left. He’s got it covered with the paperwork and a team of lawyers. Doing that was part of what he teaches. It’s the art of the deal. It’s all in the contract.

Then on the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton. How many people in the Clinton inner circle have been murdered or mysteriously just decided to commit suicide days before giving testimony against the Clintons now? I’ve lost count. But hey, one thing can be said for sure. She’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants. And that’s a good thing. Right?

Hillary Clinton defended a forty five year old rapist against a twelve year old girl by claiming the girl had fantasies about older men. It was a straight out lie and it was her job to tell it. She gets a pass on that from her constituents because she was just doing her job as a defender for that rapist. Meanwhile, Donald is mocked for how he womanizes. After all, we have clips of Donald saying stupid things about his beautiful daughter. Donald is the womanizer, not Bill. Make sure you’ve got that straight. Hillary is a champion of women’s rights and she’ll be the first woman president. Women of America are certain of that. After all, women’s rights are all about abortion rights. If Hillary doesn’t pay her female staff as much as her male staff, that can be overlooked too.

It’s all about the ruthlessness. What the new American wants is a person who will get the job done regardless of the cost. Whoever wins in politics plays the political game and wins. It’s all about the winning. Whoever is in the lead, that’s who you should vote for. Even Donald said so. He doesn’t play to lose. The question is whether his mafia team is better than her mafia team. Nothing better than a good old fashioned New York street fight. Now that’s entertainment.

Did I just accuse both presidential candidates of mafia ties? Oh my. But what I’m writing about here is capitalist values.

Debt by President 2012. By the end of Obama's second term it will be almost twenty trillion.
Debt by President 2012. By the end of Obama’s second term it will be almost twenty trillion.

I want to change them. I want to restore integrity to America. I want to do this by creating a new political party – one that give us a fresh start and recognizes the problem, offering more than lip service to solving it. I want to eliminate cronyism, limit terms for elected officials, reduce earnings for government employees across the board – tying them to the average American income. I want to pay off the debt rather than lying about it to pretend it doesn’t exist. I hate debt. I’m tired of people being deluded about it.

Did you know that President Obama claims he reduced the national debt? He doubled the debt. He didn’t reduce it. Yet in the world of political double-speak, people believe him. Snopes and Politico have found ways to say he’s mostly right and convince you they are not biased. It’s all about selling expectation. The actual exchange matters very little to the new American. That’s what capitalist values have become. Whoever scams the best wins. And winning is what really matters for Americans. Right?

The debt clock has a time machine on it at usdebtclock.org. Use it. This is today. July 6th, 2016.
The debt clock has a time machine on it at usdebtclock.org. Use it. This is today. July 6th, 2016.

Bullshit. Being right is what matters. And doing something about being right -righting wrongdoing – matters more. Much more. I hate to have to spell out to you the wrongdoing, the corruption, the lies all these political candidates are running with. I just need to point out why it is we have to restore America back to sanity and integrity. It is insane to allow yourself to constantly be scammed. Enough is enough! Do NOT resign yourself to continuous political corruption. You have the ability to vote these creeps out of office.

The Restoration Party Mascot is the Dolphin
The Restoration Party Mascot is the Dolphin

I am writing down a road map for America to restore itself to sane government, uncorrupt government, financial stability, prosperity and maximized awesomeness. I have a truly inspired vision and I am going to share it with you so we can escape from this mess and I will not disappoint. It will take time between Uber rides and working for the scammer I’m working for this summer. Your patronage would be a tremendous help here.

This is page three of My Story. I am going to take you backwards in time one step at a time through my life. That politics is corrupt is no surprise, though I wish it was. Today we touched on ethics in business. People say that free market economics is inherently moral. It amazes me how theory and practice can be so far apart.

 

 

 

Ready to Begin

This country needs a Department of Common Sense
The Restoration Party is the new Department of Common Sense

I think the new JamesCarvin.com site is sufficiently set up at this point to start inviting friends. Anyone is welcome to help. Start by subscribing. I’ll then send out a friend invite so I can create a core team to the Early Supporters Group. If you are a supporter in any way, please invite your friends to subscribe to this blog. Thanks!

Chapter One

Ch. 1: When Old Systems Don't Work
Ch. 1: When Old Systems Don’t Work

SUMMARY: In Chapter One of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I describe the problem of the two party system and the national disease that perpetuates it. In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published for a preview and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read chapter one.