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Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff and this is Freedomblog. The theme for today is Thinking—The Engine of Freedom. For Freedom-Lovers and Freedom-Builders, this means we are free who believe we’re free and have the thinking skills to become free.

It is no random occurrence that the first use of the adjective “human” happened in America: human relating, human potential, human resource development, human capital development, human processing, human possibilities, human technology, human freedom. No other people of any other culture or nation in the history of the world has focused such a concentrated effort upon understanding the effects of human beings upon each other and their worlds.

R&D began in earnest with human relating. In the “ideal”, America conceived of itself as a “melting pot.” In “reality,” America was a “boiling cauldron” which required human relating if it was to work.

Extensive studies of hundreds of thousands of people discovered the basic principle of human relating: the core of dimensions accounting for most of the effectiveness in all human relating is interpersonal. When participants respond empathically and initiate operationally, they stand a 95 percent chance of being effective in any human endeavor.

When we respond empathically and initiate operationally, we facilitate thinking or reasoning:

Responding Exploring
Personalizing Understanding
Initiating Acting

In a very real sense, human relating was the parent of human reasoning. The power, however, is in the generative reasoning. People who reason generatively make “breakthroughs” in all areas of endeavor. For example, individuals who think generatively make “breakthroughs” in their career endeavors; nations that process generatively are “positioned” to influence the commercial marketplace.

Let us get a quick overview of the phases of generative human reasoning or thinking:

• Exploring where we are in our experience;
• Understanding where we want to be;
• Acting to get to where we want to be.

In short, when we explore, understand, and act for our own values, we are reasoning.

There are specific sets of skills involved in each of these phases of reasoning. Generativity means we create new and different ways of doing things. Basically, we expand our possibilities in order to narrow to probabilities which we then act upon.

Once again, the sad thing is that we have abandoned these principles of thinking. For example, by electing and appointing people who have been “fast-tracked” through a “Chain-of-Command System,” we have gone in the direction of the conditioned responding now popular in our corporations and our government, as well as our military.

Indeed, we prepare our children for the very jobs which the Multi-Nationals are out-sourcing to the Third World.

Alas, even our schools are retrogressing. Labeled “No Child Left Behind”, this legislation has ensured that every child in need will be left behind indeed.

There is no retreating from standards of processing for our leaders as well as ourselves. Toward this end, we are going to attach Freedom Scores to candidates over the next election. Hopefully, some will drop out and make our job easier.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People… are as free as we think!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

(Listen to the audio of this blog.)

Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com.

The theme for today is Defining Freedom. For Freedom-Lovers and Freedom-Builders, this means Freedom is thinking.

Defingin Freedom.

Thomas Jefferson said: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Freedom is the most precious of all human experiences. Religions require it. Politicians espouse it. The media represents it. Protestors “assemble” for it. And advocates “petition” for it. Yet no one has defined “it” in today’s terms. What is the 21st Century definition of freedom? And why is it so important today?

Our Founding Fathers who blessed us with our First Amendment Freedoms failed to empower us with behavioral definitions. Defining freedom only as “the absence of prohibitions,” they never defined the presence of positive behaviors. Even Thomas Jefferson, who defined the price of protection, could not define the values of expression.

No one in history has given us an affirmative definition of freedom: how is it that we are to behave in the absence of restraint?

Webster defines freedom in the negative: “The exemption from slavery, servitude, confinement, or constraint.” Modern Americans, in particular, think of “The Underground Railway” of Pre-Civil War as the defining moment of freedom: runaway slaves following “The Freedom Road” north.

But what if the blacks came to a crossroads on a cloudy night when they had no stars or instructions to guide them? Were they free to choose? Moreover, were they free to make enlightened and freeing choices? These are the essential questions of freedom. No choices are as profound as thos e made by the runaway slaves! Yet we must ask: Were they truly free choices?

Throughout history, thinking and freedom have been inextricably bound together: the more we think, the more free we are; the less we think, the more unfree we are.

First, we expand our possibilities by thinking. Then, we narrow to the preferred possibility.

Put another way, thinking generates possibilities. Freeing narrows the possibilities to the preferred way of meeting our personal values and the requirements being imposed upon us.

It is the mission of freedomblog.com to provide a voice for thinking people, and to define freedom operationally in terms of its “infinite brainpower” and its “infinite transfers” to real-life circumstances.

In short-hand terms, freedom is “unfettered thinking!” Thinking occupies and expands the space created by the absence of prohibitions. It is the quality of thinking that affirmatively defines freedoms.

With due respect to Jefferson, we would like to propose a modification of his admonition: “The price of freedom is continuous thinking.”

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People… our Freedom is defined by thinking.

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

(Listen to the audio of this blog.)

Thanks for signing on.I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com.

The theme for today is We the People.

For Freedom-Lovers and Freedom-Builders, this means We the People have been eliminated from our roles as policy-makers in governance.

We the People.

“We the People” are the three most precious words ever inscribed in any document. When the U.S. Constitution was framed in 1789, “We the People” were not only the beneficiaries but also the policy-makers for its freedoms.

As beneficiaries, we were entitled to maximize our freedoms. As policy-makers, we were “empowered” to maximize our future freedoms. Like captains of our own ships, policy-making empowered us to determine the degrees of latitude and longitude of ports of destination in our “voyage of discovery.”

Freedom is synonymous with policy-making. Policy-making is the power to “position” ourselves—as individuals, families, organizations, communities, and cultures. “Positioning” defines our mission and strategies in our environment or marketplace. Most often, we attempt to “position” ourselves for some “comparative advantage” in our marketplace. It is the policy-making function that makes us most free. And we have lost it!

Throughout the more than 200 years of our “Great Experiment,” We the People have shaped our country’s policies to reflect our values in relation to the various marketplaces of our world-cultural, economic, governmental. As a nation, we have thrived with this great policy-making power of We the People. Sadly, it is no longer so!

Our leaders no longer represent us because they are already serving their constituencies—Global Multinational Corporations that have no commitments to the freedoms to which we are dedicated.

Our representatives manage only the self-serving special interests of the lobbying and other pressure groups that contribute to their Political Action Committees and Individual Retirement Accounts.

Our media have abandoned their commitments to freedom as they “spin” their messages to generate “buzz” rather than truth.

Our educational systems educate us to the limited “truths of our time”—the artificial “Go – No Go” decisions dictated by the binary functions of our information technologies.

We are confused by the assaults upon the integrity of our brainpower. We are no longer policy-makers in “The Land of the Free.”We feel like dependent minions in “The Land of the Unfree.”

Our fall has been so precipitous that We the People are in denial: We have surrendered the very policy-making power that made us free.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People… must take back the reigns of leadership.

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”