Truth

Truth is relative; it is dependent on the individual and their perspective. Truth is like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (being the spectrum of light off of water droplets in the air as you move closer it will change position or disappear) those seeking an ultimate truth are either leprechauns or the poor fools looking for pots of gold. It is far better to understand the relativeness of truth and respect it in other people; each person has a truth for themselves and is a possession that should not be robbed from them.

On Publishing

There are many tens of thousands of writers, many of them have books. I’m one of them, I thought I had a great book until I tried to get someone to take notice. Then I discovered that I was one among a vast ocean of writers trying to get someone to notice their work. 
After failing to get a publisher to respond to my requests (probably far few attempts) I researched the publishing business. 

The numbers of books writers are trying to get published far out numbers the capacity of the publishing companies to get them into print. This is not the fault of the publishers but a fact of life. Publishers all have a finite capacity; some publish hundreds of titles and have many divisions. Most publish much fewer, all publishers have to balance what they publish, say 10 novels 3 cook books, 5 nonfiction, 5 photo collections…you get the idea, they have a menu or shopping list that they work from. 

The publishers have a limited printing and marketing budget and have to choose carefully which titles to accept. Choosing which titles to accept may be influenced by what titles they already have accepted, for example the publisher would want to compete against themselves by publishing three or four novels around the same theme. And a publisher may have agreements with already published authors that they must honor. This results in many excellent books being turned away, not because the book is bad but because they just don’t have room on the menu or selection being offered by the publisher that year. 

Another consideration deals with gambling on the market. The publisher needs to predict what will be popular and guess how many books to print and when and how much to spend on marketing. It is a very risky business for the publisher and that risk gets put off onto the author, by way of how much the author gets in royalties. Using very rough numbers that vary year to year and publisher to publisher only 10% of the books that a publisher publishes makes any money. It is the money from the successful books that must pay for the money lost on the 90% of the books that lose money. When you consider that maybe only 1 percent or less of the books some publishers are offered by writers get sent to the printing presses to begin with it really begins to look dismal for the thousands of authors out there in the world. 

What are the writer’s options, there are vanity publishers or publishers that take really no risk and charge the author the cost of editing, typeset, printing and marketing. There are subsidiary publishers or publishers that share the above costs with the author and there are others that vary in the ways that they get around these obstacles.  

Then there are literary agents, which act as an intermediary between the publisher and the author. They help with editing, marketing keep track of publishers and what they need and when, literary agents can be a god send. They can help the author turn a lemon into a cherry, but agents are yet another limited resource and sometimes difficult to catch the notice and of course will want a portion of the earnings. 

Self publishing is a huge amount of work I’ve probably spent at least as much time publishing my own books as I have spent in writing them. There is so much to learn, typeset, fonts, layout, cover design, printing, pricing, all these things can impact each other and have to be worked out then sent to a printer. If you thought it ended when you have printed books, you’re wrong. Then comes distribution and marketing, publishers can spend more on distribution and marketing than on editing, typeset, layout and all the rest. It’s no wonder that often times the author only gets 10% royalties (sometimes on the net price and not the gross), a beginning author may only get much less than a dollar for a ten dollar retail book. And unless it’s a best seller the book might only sell few thousand copies. 

Now that I’ve got everyone depressed and I’m on the verge of being banned from the writing groups I’m member of, there is hope. Of course everyone thinks that their book is that 1 in 100 (or 1000) that will make it big and I hope you’re right. But for the rest of us first let me say this, I feel a true writer must write because they love it and would write even if their work never gets published. These are the writers I feel a special bond with. Next the good news, technology has now made it extremely easy to get into print and into a distribution system (some more limited than others). There are now companies that work with writers who want to self publish. These new companies exploit an on demand print system where no inventory is kept and each book is printed as it is ordered. This is relatively new to publishing and how I published my books. To find one do an internet search on “on demand book publishing” and you’ll find a dozen or more companies out there. They will vary but most will rely on the author doing most of the work, some will help but not for free. The company I chose to work with allowed me to have my own imprint, so my publishing company is the “publisher” I had to do my own editing, copy right, ISBN, cover design, layout, font selection, type set, and submit a high resolution pdf file that would get printed exactly how I created it. For me it was almost a dream come true, I had total control of everything and it cost me very little out of pocket. That said, my books have more type-oh’s and grammar problems than I care to admit. When I wrote them I didn’t have the editorial help or advice that I should have had, now I’m working on revisions where I plan on doubling the content of each and on the second try really turning out a fine product. It is part of learning the business. 

Back to publishing, now I’ve got books and they’re available on amazon.com ((shameless plug), feel free to buy them, please) but how do you get people to buy them? Marketing…marketing is becoming complicated, expensive, unpredictable and difficult. There are many books written on internet marketing and I won’t attempt to cover it all here, (I’m not an expert, yet). But a big part of it is getting acquainted with your peers, networking, learning and putting much work into it. I’ve added all this part of the business to my overall plan, I’ve learned to enjoy all the parts of this process so far and am beginning to think about publishing other people’s books. It might turn out to be a quicker way to generate income than from the books I’ve already written and published. Then with income coming in from helping other people that I can identify with, I’ll be able to get back to writing. Self publishing is a sure way of keeping you from writing, it is making a deal with the men in grey from Michael Ende's Momo. 

How did my mind get so philosophy?

Some of answers to this question are covered in my book “Relativity Theory of Beings” available at amazon.com you might be interested in checking it out. What I think relates to this question that is in my book are “levels of beings”. Like the development of the mind I think beings (people) exist at different levels and can develop or move from one level to another. The lowest levels of beings are plants and animals and people are a higher level of being. (This might not make much sense since I have my own definition of being defined in my book). Among people lower level beings are focused on animal needs and higher level people are concerned with intellectual things, such as reason, logic, knowledge …and philosophy. Some people get to different levels of being at different times in their lives and for different reasons and other people never get past the level of animals or some other intermediate level. 

I have met with success in what most animal type people would be concerned with. I have a good income, nice home, loving wife and grown children I’m proud of.  

Climbing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’ve satisfied my social and esteem needs, I’ve climbed solo 14,000 foot mountains, completed many marathons and ultra marathons, traveled extensively, I have an advanced degree, received more than enough awards throughout my career to cover a whole wall of my office. 

I’ve achieved self actualization by overcoming many obstacles and accomplishing just about everything I’ve set my mind to. 

For many people all the things I’ve described might be enough to lead to or develop into an interest in philosophy just by following all that with what’s next? 

I’ve also had experiences that have pushed me toward philosophy and make me ask questions about why? And what’s next? These experiences have been with life (the birth of my kids) and death (I was raised on a farm and have seen the death and killing of livestock, I’ve hunted wild animals and killed more than a few) and more poignantly dealing with the death of friends and loved ones. I also experienced a medical emergency which I survived but could have died. Any one of these experiences could turn a person down the path of philosophy. 

For me the turning point getting me thinking about “why, and what’s next?” was the completion of my first book about Unified Field Theory. Unified Field Theory deals with science and a method of unifying the forces of nature into a cohesive whole. This I thought (and still do) I achieved, but couldn’t generate any interest by other people in it. The failure to get others interested in my theory lead to research into how ideas spread, how scientific theory’s come into being, how they overcome opposition and gain a life of their own (a good book about this is “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn.  

From this backdrop I developed my own philosophy. I didn’t study philosophy but put together the essence of the “Relativity Theory of Beings” but never published it. It satisfied my hunger for an answer to “Why and what’s next?” so I was content. “Relativity Theory of Beings” became something I’d describe to people just about whenever the subject of conversation went philosophical; it was almost always well received. Much later I documented it while in a college course and related it to leadership, the documentation process got me researching ”Relativity Theory of Beings” as a philosophical concept and I discovered how unique it was. It was then I decided to publish it and since then I’ve been an explorer of philosophy, except I look at the body of philosophical knowledge that covers the last thousands of years not as something to build upon, but to use it to build upon and support my own philosophy.  

I’m different from most philosophers in that I already had a well developed philosophy before I came to study the philosophy that exists in academia today. This filters through in my writing so much so that I generally get more positive feedback from people that have read my book that don’t have any formal instruction in philosophy than from those people that have studied philosophy in an academic environment. 

There you have it.

On Time

Time as a dimension doesn’t exist, Einstein was able to treat time as a dimension to solve mathematical problems but that doesn’t prove the existence of time as a dimension or make it a dimension. There is only the present. A good definition of time is the method by which people can keep track of the movement of things in the present. The Greeks understood this; it is only since Einstein’s “time” that people have gotten confused with time travel. Sure time travel is interesting and makes for great movies but time travel is only one way…forward.

MMORPG's and Philosophy Blogs

I’ve noticed attempts to kill other people’s version of reality in many postings on philosophy blogs and it is disturbing. I see disturbing similarities with MMORPG’s (massive multiplayer online role playing games), philosophers/players going online and challenging other people and probably thinking that they are helping correct delusions or ignorance, confronting their opponents in intellectual combat much like individual combat in MMORPG’s, the winner gets personal gratification and stature within the group. Looking back, some of my very own postings could probably be construed as doing so and it makes me very uneasy, I apologize. As a result I will think twice from now on before posting to blogs and will seek other ways of stating my truths in a non-confrontational manner. I believe in living a life holy of merit and to be at peace with all people, I respect all people’s beliefs. They can believe what they will about what I’ve just written. 

One of the biggest causes of conflict is not looking for the meaning of another’s words but stealing someone else’s words, assigning your own meaning to them and throwing back in their face. I’ve seen this many times on philosophy group walls, and it sickens me. A wise man and a good philosopher seeks understanding of others first then builds on that understanding by offering or adding another viewpoint, not correcting or challenging the first meaning. 

Good and Evil

Very Simplified - Good is more of what is desired, bad is a loss. This applies equally to the animal part of people as well as the intellect. Evil is the intentional taking from one person or being by another and has two forms. The first evil is the taking from another for personal gain, the evil doer winds up with more and the evil doer has a good experience. There is much evil done by those that don’t understand the meaning of evil. The second evil is the taking from another and destroying it, not for personal gain but to deny the possession from the other. A possession can be physical objects, knowledge, beliefs even freedom to act.
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Bad is loss, evil is something taken, it has to have a perpetrator and intent. Then even if the looser doesn’t miss that which was taken the evil doer knows, so it is still evil
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The taking from another without permission is evil regardless of the excuse. Since you opened the “what if box”, what if taking the food from the one man now means that his family starves? 
I will allow you that there are different levels of evil, the thief that steals to feed his family is not as evil as the one that steals so he (or she) can buy a new iPod. Both are evil, one more than the other. The thief is less evil than the rapist, the rapist less evil than the murderer (or perhaps not, the rape victim may suffer for the rest of their life, but the murder victim’s suffering is over, it is the family and friends the dead that suffer). 
But to go to your earlier assertion that if no one notices is it still evil, is the rapist that drugs his victims so they have no recollection of it evil, I maintain that he is. Is the murderer that kills the unknown homeless person less evil than the murderer that kills a pregnant mother of 2 with a loving husband? 
I don’t like evil and prefer goodness and Holiness; can you guess what my view is? Knowing my view on evil?
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Bad is loss, good is gain. These are through natural occurrences (nature) or consequences of your own actions and do not involve others (the exception being if someone accidentally causes a loss, then it is just bad and not evil). 
Evil is intentional taking from one “being” by another “being,” nature doesn’t qualify as a being or evil, (let us please not get into a debate about whether nature is a being or not, the nature (no pun intended) of beings is another part of my philosophy that we could spend a lot of time on but we should focus on the topic of this post). 
One type of evil (selfish evil) provides a gain for the evil doer (the taking from another, whether it be material - stealing, freedom - kidnapping, assault – control and or function (thru damage or force) of another’s body, I hope you get the idea). This gain is the insidious part of evil because by my earlier definition gain is good. Evil provides the evil doer gain and feels good, many people and nations have taken from others and fought wars against others in order to gain things for themselves, families and their countries…all are evil. We can split hairs about motivation, justification, rationalization etc. but that is a huge complicated topic not suited for a volley ball like posting on a web site. 
Another type of evil is evil for deprivation or evil for destruction, some people I’ve described it too think it is a purer evil because no good comes from it to the evil doer (except perhaps a feeling of power, yet another interesting subject). This gets into your desire to look into different kinds of evil which I’m reluctant to get in to because it gets into the expanded revision of my book (Relativity Theory of Beings) that I’m in the process of writing. 
Regarding good; good is gain, better than good is giving to or sharing with others. I like to call it holy by merit; it is the opposite of evil in our discussion above. Those holy by merit are the generous that give and share with others; they can give material things, actions, or knowledge, like teachers. When couples get together to share their lives they both gain and this too is a cooperative kind of mutual gain and is holy.
There is also sanctified Holiness which is Holiness based on religious doctrine. 
Forgiveness is the making a gift to the evil doer of that which was taken. 
Forgiveness can also be sacrificing to God (for those that believe in God) that which was taken by the evil doer. 
As for the man wanting to be killed and eaten, (without getting into a lot of explanation) as long as he killed himself and made it known that being eaten was what he wanted to happen to his body, it’s okay. Of course I don’t know the laws of Germany, or safe food preparation practices but from a short and sweet philosophical point of view I’m okay with it. 
I like the sounds of Diogenes (and many others, like some monks) that disavow material possessions, this is one path towards holiness (there are at least 4 or 5 paths to holiness). But I’m quite convinced that if someone took Diogenes' life he would notice (at least until his last breath left him). I haven’t studied Diogenes but I know of a way (not Christian) that he could live beyond his physical body, I wonder if he knew? What did Diogenes have to say about death?
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I don’t speak only materialistically; emotions, ideas, knowledge (even emotions, ideas and knowledge that can be proven to be false, misunderstandings, delusions or ignorant). These are possessions of a person that can be augured to be more real than material things. For a being to go around without permission and kill tooth fairies, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, God, Jesus, Mohamed, Allah, Buddha…the list could go on and on, would be evil. That person would be conducting a campaign of destructive evil, destroying things in people’s lives that make them happy, give them peace, and many other intangible benefits, the evil doers perhaps replacing (or attempting to), that which was destroyed with their own version of reality. 

About Theodore (Ted) Noonchester

     Theodore (Ted) Noonchester is a Natural Philosopher following in the shadow Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Pascal. He’s written two books, the first, “Ether Plus Two” is a unified field theory that unites electromagnetism, the nuclear forces and gravity. Ether Plus Two has been met with severe skepticism and has been dismissed as speculative by mainstream physicists, to which Ted’s response is that Ether Plus Two is no more speculative than the (religious like) belief in string theory and “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Ted has alternative explanations for the cosmological problems which gave birth to string theory, dark matter and dark energy which do not involve dozens of dimensions for which there is no evidence (not even a shadow) or the quadrupling the amount of matter in the universe, or creating a new form of energy that exists everywhere in the universe except here. 

     Ted’s second book “Relativity Theory of Beings” introduces his philosophy, which defines being as control, influence, knowledge, awareness and the unknown on the level of reason, theory or intellect (harkening to Plato’s ultimate regard for reason) existing in parallel with the same control, influence, knowledge, awareness and unknown regarding the human or bodily element that every human possesses. Relativity Theory of Beings then breaks the connection between reason and body and asserts that beings can exist in vitro (without a body), sustained by groups of people and supporting elements that keep the now bodiless beings control, influence, knowledge and awareness alive. This revolutionary concept allows Ted to outline a new understanding of ethics, epistemology, theology and the meaning of life.