Reviews by Hubie Goode: Candida and Alkaline Blood

Candida and Alkaline Blood

Today I’ll continue with the posts on Alkaline blood and its importance. Something called Candida is a by product of having too much acid waste in the blood. In Latin the word is Candida, but you and I would know this organism as yeast, but in reality it is really a fungus. Most problems in the body are caused by fungus, and few people are aware of this. Yeast and Fungus are single celled forms of plant life that live in the air, the ground and the water. What we are discussing here is the presence of Candida in the gastro intestinal tract. We actually need it for sustaining life. It goes bad when it becomes drastically overgrown and can be annoying and or fatal. Yes, fatal. Women know all about this stuff when they get yeast infections, and their kids can get something called “Thrush” which is just the yeast growing in the throat.

Mainstream medicine knows about all of this stuff, and they also know about the problems stemming from too much yeast and fungus, but they do little about it. Giving your kids antibiotics when they are young sets up the whole chain reaction for later adult life. The truth is that with our typical American diets most people develop these out of control growths within their bodies. Excess Candida is really just ONE of the villains. We are deluged by an attack of microforms, including yeast, fungus and mold, viruses and bacteria. All these little creatures deposit poison in our system. This is called a mycotoxin or exotoxin, basically meaning “fungus or bacterial poison”. These are the acid wastes that swim in your blood and are deposited there when they eat up all your glucose, proteins and fats, the stuff your body needs for energy. Therefore, the Candida and such eat what you need to survive and then take a dump in your blood stream.

These poisons take advantage of the weaker parts of your body, polluting them and making them over tired. In acidic blood they have free reign to cause all sorts of havoc by breaking down bodily tissues and processes. Their poison doesn’t just get into our blood but also into the cells of bodily tissues. What this means is that as they poison you, they break down something like your liver, and make it work less efficiently. If your liver is the bodies filter, and it can’t eliminate your own waste, then you are now doubly poisoned.

Over the entire history of our planet fungus, yeast and mold have developed into over five hundred thousand different forms. They go from periods of explosive growth to thousands of years of dormancy. Egyptian tombs have held onto living spores since they were first sealed and until they were opened in our time. These little guys produce as many toxins as they have family members, too. They just love to provide a deadly cocktail for their hosts.

It’s this cocktail that does all the damage, not the little critters themselves. Understand though, they only appear because of a bad environment, like acidic blood for instance. The wastes cause a huge list of symptoms, from diseases to chronic and degenerative problems. If you have athlete’s foot, you have a mild fungus, if you have AIDS, you have a monster problem. Underlying symptoms can be things like diabetes, cancer, atherosclerosis, osteoporoses, fatigue and also infections that can be transmitted from person to person.

Signs of an overgrowth can be, pain, infection, depression, hyperactivity, antisocial behavior, asthma, hemorrhoids, colds, endometriosis, dry skin and itching, toenail fungus, joint pain, dizziness, heartburn, gas, chronic overweight problems and on and on. In fact if you just feel bad overall, you might consider trying to change the PH of your blood from acidic and see how that makes a difference!

Microforms love to swim in their own crap. They also love the low oxygen levels that come with doing so. One of the problems for people with high blood pressure is a low amount of oxygenation in the blood cells. Natural breathing methods have proven to alleviate the problem to some degree, and although not an end all cure, they do point to a connection between the inner state of blood cells and the overgrowth of microforms. It’s those poisons they create and dump in your blood that also add to the acidic environment, so if you can just get a picture of the swamp that is your blood stream because of all these out of control critters in your belly, perhaps it will motivate someone to take a look at this problem instead of just getting a pill from the doctor.

So how is it done? How do we battle these little monsters? Surprisingly it can all be done with what you and I place in our bodies to turn the blood alkaline. They don’t like alkaline blood and will actually turn off as the blood moves away from the acidic environment.

We all need to be concerned for ourselves and our loved ones in discussing the interior of our guts and the condition of our blood. What happens is a two fold process inside out systems. The first step for microforms is the small colonies they collect in inside of our bodies. In this phase we don’t realize any symptoms from the poison they deposit within us. However, in the next phase we are presented with sudden chronic problems that become obvious. Your body is now screaming for help and the problem may have taken a few decades to develop right under your nose, ever since you first got that shot at the doctors office when you were a kid. But that’s just one of the ways it can happen. Bad diet can trigger a problem, too.

When your body goes from acid back to base, or alkaline, yeast, fungus and mold stop growing and revert back to being friendly, at this point the body can now eliminate all the poisons they have dumped inside you and things can return to normal. No more Pepcid AC.

Let’s say you had a tropical fish tank. If you polluted the water and filled it with lots of decaying food, and then deoxygenized the water, you’d have a tank full of dead fish in no time. When you are young, you don’t realize what you are doing to your body many times, with all the abuse it can take. But when you are about 40 years of age all that comes home to roost, and it’s not just that you are getting older. Literally, you are now dying of poison and will probably not live to see the last half of your sixties because of what you fail to do today. And that should never be the case. I can’t imagine thinking I had only 18 years left to live, when I am only 40 something and NOT doing something about my internal condition. Do you have someone whom you love who has chronic problems? Get them to change that fish tank water for good! Don’t let them die too soon, when they could have gone deep into their nineties.

My Grandparents lived to be in their nineties, they grew up in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s and they didn’t have to contend with all the medicine and fake food and closed in environments we all take as normal. My parents DID have a different way of living, including too much cigarette smoke, too much sugary foods and the introduction of antibiotics in the 1950’s. They only lived into their early 60’s and 70’s. Let’s get together folks and stop this madness.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, Kevin Trudeau, Your Wish Is Your Command, Sorcery, Success Motivation

The Sorcerer’s Accomplice
Part 2

Many of today’s masters of business success and positive mental imaging have been seduced by the call of sorcery and are spreading it like wildfire throughout society. Much of what we know about these sorts of success motivation techniques can be traced back to a man named Napoleon Hill. A commentary from the Success Motivation Institute has this to say about Mr. Hill:

“Without question, Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill’s most famous book), has had a greater influence on the lives, accomplishments and fortunes of individuals than any other work of its kind. All over the world there are literally thousands of successful men in all lines of work who are where they are today because they once bought a copy of Mr. Hill’s book, and they will be quick to tell you so.

I’ve sat in richly paneled, carpeted executive offices and listened to world-famous business leaders, some of them old enough to be my father, tell me that everything worked out just fine once they read Think and Grow Rich.

Why has this one book out of all the thousands of self-help books remained the one towering giant? When the last page of this book is read, the hand which put the book down on the table was a different hand. The man who then stood up and walked out into the world was a different, changed man. The man was now the possessor of the unique, unseen talent for turning dreams into reality, thoughts into things, he who had been the passenger was now suddenly the captain.”

Super salesmen and top motivational speakers list Think and Grow Rich as one of the twelve greatest books of all time. Many of Mr. Hill’s books are offered all around the world in Christian Book stores and also recommended by Christian leaders. Another book titled, Making the Most of Your Mind, had this to say:

“In recent years a number of secular books have related success to the power of the mind. The authors of these books have begun to plumb the depths of the reservoir of potential God has placed in the human mind. Napoleon Hill was one such secular writer, after twenty years of research he wrote an eight volume omnibus called The Law of Success, parts of which are condensed in his best selling book, Think and Grow Rich, he probably did the most useful research in history.”

Napoleon Hill’s large following of both businessmen and Christian leaders is hard to understand when you admit to his open advocacy of sorcery. His books are chock full of the most blatant occult teachings anywhere. Yet the Christians who recommend his writings only caution others as to Hill’s emphasis upon wealth. In fact, in the book aforementioned, Making the Most of Your Mind, the author’s quote time and again from Hill’s book, and then in the end, run a disclaimer that they are only quoting from the book because of the focus on the attitudes of the mind, not the development of wealth.

Not coincidentally, it is Hill’s teachings on the mind that are the real problem, not the smokescreen of emphasis upon wealth. Hill explains OPENLY in his book, that he learned the mind-power techniques he writes about from disembodied spirit entities. Demons masquerading as Ascended Masters used Hill to deceive the millions who have adopted the “success” they gave him. Hill himself declares:

“Now and again I have had evidence that unseen friends hover about me, unknowable to the ordinary senses. In my studies I have discovered there is a group of strange beings who maintain a school of wisdom. The School had Masters who can disembody themselves and travel instantly to any place they choose, to give knowledge directly by voice. Now I knew that one of these masters had come across thousands of miles, through the night, into my study. I shall not set down every word he said, much of what he said has already been presented to you in the chapters of this book, and will follow in other chapters. (They said:) “You have earned the right to reveal a Supreme Secret to others.”, said the vibrant voice. “You have been under guidance of the Great School... Now you must give the world a blueprint...”*

* Napoleon Hill: Grow Rich with Peace of Mind, pp. 158-160

The mantra of this Supreme Secret is of course: Anything the Human mind can believe, the human mind can achieve. This seductive idea is the basis behind the human potential movement, better known to us as the New Age movement. If what they say is true, that we can do anything we can imagine, then indeed we must be gods. This secret of the ages is also known from Hill as the Magic Power of Belief. The idea here is that the human mind has secret powers that are capable of creating one’s own reality, i.e.: Truly, deeply believe that you can have great wealth and you can have it. This is the sorcerer’s counterfeit faith and the basis of “Positive Mental Attitude”. Hill and others believe they have written guides for tapping into the great “universal storehouse” that is just waiting for you to claim its riches.
Hill explains Positive Mental Attitude:

“PMA is the catalyst which makes any combination of success principles work. PMA attracts good luck. Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep on trying with Positive Mental Attitude."

This is a universal law, that we translate into physical reality, the thoughts and attitudes we hold in our minds, no matter what we are.”

Far from having the gracious and loving but sovereign God as its object of trust, this power of belief enables one to command forces to obey their thoughts. If anyone can make a miracle happen, then it isn’t a genuine miracle from God, but sorcery, the man is now playing God. It is not only the liberal media and the left wing that has followed this lemming over the cliff, but one need only look to many a Christian station and program or in many evangelical churches to get an ear full of success gospels. One pastor, Robert Tilton of Texas, used to have a program on the PTL network called “Success in Life”, and he preached an automatic “trigger” that could be thrown in order to receive blessings from God. All one had to do was send in a pledge that made you sweat a little and you would receive many times over the amount you sent in to God’s work. That was in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, and if Mr. Tilton had perhaps used more of his own advice, perhaps he would still be around on TV to the extent that he was back then. Anyone heard from him lately? (Talk about the “Great Falling Away” of the last days!)

Anyone who believes that just because you think a thought long enough and hard enough, or say something a number of times and you’ll change reality; has slipped into sorcery and also a covert type of atheism. To believe that an all encompassing God can be “plucked” from merely because of some action we humans take, is to deny the God of the Bible or else to turn him into a cosmic Coke machine, which only needs a certain amount of quarters to be motivated... if you get my meaning.

And this motivation comes despite perhaps the superior wisdom of God, the superior love of the creator to know what is good and what is bad for us before we are even born. None of that counts for these success people, we’re smarter than any blind universe or loving God, we know what’s best for us and what we should always have. You need only look at the lives of famous people in the news, or at the financial markets of our day to see that this is the truth. (SIC)

Much of what Hill has to say can indeed be inspiring, but the fact that so much of the sorcery practice that is mixed into the good he has produced has captured the hearts and minds of not only the secular but also the Christian church, is a big red alarm bell if you are paying attention. It’s important that Christian’s not be overcome with the “feel good” messages of the world and begin to substitute the truth of the Gospel, sometimes this can happen over time without even being aware of it.

While writing this, I was inspired to flip through some cable channels on a business TV and “just happened” to come across an informercial I couldn’t believe. If you are anyone who has been around this sort of success motivation type stuff, and also has read my other post on “The Nouveau Tech Deception”, you’ve come across a man named Kevin Trudeau. He is the author of a book called Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About, as well as other volumes, and as I have said before, he is indeed affiliated with Nouveau Tech/Neo-Tech, a known atheist organization.

He now has a new informercial called: “Your Wish Is Your Command” , a CD package of mentoring success. Ask anyone who has read Trudeau’s books and you’ll find that the information he promotes isn’t anything that isn’t already out there for those who are not so lazy as to find it for themselves. What Trudeau outlines in his informercial is pretty much the same things that Nouveau Tech promotes , and in fact he even uses much of the same terminology right down to the “five minute miracle” approach. In his program he talks about Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and how it doesn’t work for most people, and the reason for this is that there is a “missing ingredient” and if only you had this missing ingredient, then you could succeed and call anything you want and desire, “all the riches, happiness, love and peace....” or whatever you want for yourself, in much the same way as you would a “genie in a bottle”.

Trudeau places himself in the position of being the good guy who is going to snitch on a secret society he is a part of and let the public in on the secrets to wealth and power only a few in this secret society are privy to. When I heard him say this, I became worried, for if indeed powerful people were out there sitting on top of the world, with all the power and influence any ordinary man could dream of, then Trudeau is a dead man. But, of course, he hasn’t been assassinated for his knowledge or even roughed up to keep him quiet. Why do you think this is the case? Because he really has nothing new to say. He is simply assembling and marketing the same old information that even his buddies at Nouveau Tech have charged high prices for in huge volumes of esoteric prose.

I can’t say if he will invite folks to join Nouveau Tech once you buy his CD’s or if he really does have an organization called the Global Information Network, which is apart from them, to which he will invite a purchaser. I will say however, that the odds are good that you’ll be exposed to more atheism propaganda. Trudeau is no true writer, he is merely a re-packager, and if the information is out there, you can find it and not pay him $300.00 dollars for his assembly of this information.

Just look around your world and see what “works”. Go to any mall in America and you’ll see that franchises work. They are all around, and it’s the same ones everywhere you go. Ever see a poor doctor? A poor lawyer? (Well a public defender, not a prosecutor) Architects aren’t poor either, and I could go on and on. But my point is that what works is obvious. Any new secret that suddenly improves an entire large group of the public will quickly no longer be a secret. Business works, college degrees that result in high paying positions work. Sports careers, too. How many Amway salesman do you know? Any famous ones? Got someone down the block with a mansion and a pool who has made his success with a MLM property? Yes, they are needles in a haystack. In much the same way, miracles with mind power or some secret trick are old, centuries old, black magic strategies for manipulating reality, and you should thank God that most of them are hard to make work.

Keep in mind that most people who win the lottery lose their winnings within the first year. They have no clue how to handle such big amounts of money, and it is lost or taken away from them. Do you have that sort of discipline? Can you receive 10 millions dollars and simply put it away and keep on living as you do? That’s not reality. Just look at famous people like Tiger Woods. Do you think you would be any different in his position? Would you be able to say no to the “dessert trey” that he is presented with on a daily basis?

If you have never been in a burning building, no matter how much fire training you might have had, you really have no idea how you will react. It’s the same with getting everything you want in life, not all of it is necessarily a good thing, but according to “Name it and claim it” Trudeau and Hill and the Christian leaders who have joined this chant, YOU’RE the best judge of what is good for you.

We certainly see this in the public sector now, with all the marital infidelity, financial cheating, public political disgrace and the faltering American economy. Ask yourself, if everyone could just flip a switch and get anything they wanted, would that be a good thing? Where would it stop? Would it stop at all? What would the world look like if Jihadists in the middle east could mentally call up America’s destruction and we could mentally bomb them out of existence? If there is no superior control on the wants and desires of mankind, and the universe is an automatic bell hop that just needs to be called on by anyone and everyone, what would the world look like today? There is only so much gold to go around. If we create all the gold anyone anywhere wants, then gold is worthless.

Face it folks, mankind is no chorus of angels, and God will tell you this. It’s not possible to always be positive and yet contend for the truth. A lot of God’s truth that is taught in the Bible is negative truth, and it has influenced millions down through the ages both big and small in such a way that precludes the false gospel of universal bell hop that is being promoted to you. This destiny of the mind is an elusive thing, for it leads you to believe, for the price of a book or tape, that you can gain God-like control. But how much is enough? How can one measure the amount of effort that it takes to make these things they promise truly happen? How much is NOT enough? Those answers are never a part of the success book of the month club.

God’s primary purpose is your eternal spiritual position with him. Here on this Earth, in our fallen state, we each have an allotted period of time in which we are to choose whom we are to believe. Chasing after riches and trying to drive our own lives with “mind speak to the universe” is a huge distraction to the voice of God that is trying to reach you. God does want you to be happy and fruitful in this life, but not at the price of having no relationship with him. That sort of thing is simply not the reality of existence laid down in scripture. You and I are the creation, and we are caught in the unfortunate circumstance of other’s actions laid down long ago, both mankind’s and also in the spiritual world of God that surrounds us daily. But that is the temporary proving ground that we are faced with, whether we like it or not. There will come a day, when NO ONE will have a chance to change their mind. NO ONE will be able to say they were wrong and turn to God. NO ONE.

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Remember that scripture when Kevin Trudeau refers to people who are not like him as “losers”, ........the same people he wants to purchase his program.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Christianity, Occult, Success, Faith, Mind Power

The Sorcerer’s Accomplice

Progress. When we mention the word “progress” we are lead to believe in an idea that moves people forward. The word “progressive” is also like this. Many of our ideas in society these days are considered progressive despite their inherent history of immorality. It is today as it has been for a long time, since history was first written, and this problem of mankind’s inability to see his own faulty ego as the center of this problem only makes it worse. We watch a movie like “Avatar” and we feel sorry for the natives, but happy as to their ability to thwart the attempts of others more progressive than they are. We place concepts in our TV shows that only a few generations ago were considered the worst kind of immoral perversion and embrace them as “progress”; never considering for a moment the historical evidence of societal disaster that this so called progress brings. We are always smarter than the people who came before us, we know better than they did. After all, they had knowledge rooted in ignorance and we are educated. Let’s not think about the cyclical nature of history and the thinking of those who came before our ancestors, and how some concepts were rooted in reversing the adverse effects of so called “progressive” thought which we now reverse back to the original progressive thought with little care as to the problems this progress has ALWAYS rendered upon society. We say: “That can NEVER happen to us!”

What’s so amazing about all this is how truly slick and deceptive progressive ideas can be. In our society today, the Christian church faces some of the oldest challenges to its faith. There are subtle changes today in Biblical interpretations that are a cancer to the underpinnings of the true Christian way of life. Most Christians are scarcely aware of what is happening and have little or no understanding of the issues involved.

The “snake in the grass”, as it were, is almost ethereal and surprisingly doesn’t even come from rival faiths and religions. It is instead a practice of “faith producing” techniques for gaining spiritual power and “getting your miracle”. They also come to the church as self-improvement psychologies for realizing one’s true potential. This is no frontal assault as you might think, but a bonified sneak attack.

Many of you have battled trojan horses in your computer and you understand the concept of a gift that comes wrapped in a package of peace but opens up later, once inside the camp, to reveal a destructive enemy. Even those who fancy themselves as cult watchers have failed to recognize the threat that is already among us.

As I have spoken of before in my blogs on the AntiChrist, one of the signs of the end times will be a revival of sorcery. This sorcery will be an integral part of his overall ability to lead mankind to ruin as he actually is given the power to make those things long hoped for by those of the occult and other sorcerer’s practices to actually take place right before the eyes of the world. In Revelation it even says he will be able to call down fire from Heaven in the sight of men. This is much more of a concrete and immediate moment ability than any Freemason lodge, Druid witches or wizards from all over the world, have ever been able to do.

Truth be told, right under the noses of the secular world and that of the church also, we people of Earth have been under the influence of a world wide revival of sorcery that has been going on for some time now. How has this happened you might ask? Mostly it is because of the commercial representation of “sorcery” that we have come to believe is the real thing. This includes all representations from “I Dream of Jeannie” to “Harry Potter”, to the lack of a “Stonehenge” which is held in any real seriousness by society today.

The real facts about occultism are mostly lost on the general public today, and they are even missed by the majority of the church. Due to wide spread ignorance of true occultic practices, sorcery has made its way into our everyday lives. Some secular folks don’t care, others feel it’s all just a level of entertainment and many, many Christians who have been forbidden by scripture to involve themselves in occultic practices have little idea when they are blindly performing them.

Understand, that according to the Christian way of life, reality is full of God’s presence. There is no moment of any day or night when God isn’t fully aware of and surrounding the whole of creation, even far out into space. To involve one’s self in some sort of practice that is even remotely occult or sorcerous is to deny this reality, due to the fact that much of these practices claim a person can pull some sort of power or influence from a corner of the universe, so to speak, if they just use the proper principles.

Interestingly, as further evidence of the cyclical nature of history, the call from sorcery and occultism is the seductive idea of achieving some sort of “God-hood”, or as in the case of the Freemasons I recently wrote about, the promise is for contacting the “universal light” within us all. Whether you believe in the infallibility of the Bible or not, it is indeed quite interesting how the story of mankind always comes back around to this.

Let’s say that Genesis is just a fairy tale written long ago by those less educated than us, the “ignorant poor” for which we progressives and scientifically educated and advanced people of today would have little use for in our society. Isn’t it amazing that the promise of Satan to Eve in the Garden of Eden is essentially the same as the promise of the occult and sorcerers? Eat of the forbidden fruit and you will be like God. And also, God is afraid of this happening. Hey! We’ve got power, huh? But we’re smarter than they were - aren’t we? We’re smarter than all of them, the ignorant poor who wrote a fairy tale to warn of this sort of thing and the disaster it can bring to the descendants they cared about, or we’re smarter than the first man and woman who had everything in the Garden of Eden.

One word that is always used to refer to pagan practices is “sorcery”. I am using it here in the context of any attempt to manipulate reality: internal, external, past, present or future. This is done with “mind over matter” techniques, that run the gamut from alchemy, like the Freemasons have, to the daily newspaper astrological reading (only for entertainment purposes of course) to the power of positive thinking.

Ancient sorcery actually seems to work though, and undeniably it has changed many facets of our society, from science and medicine to psychology and education. These changes may not manifest themselves in the primary results that are looked for, but the evidence of the “hope” of their acquisition is often enough to trigger long term social revolution, even on a peaceful scale. The pendulum has definitely swung back from the 19th century focus on materialism and behaviorist doctrine that was the ground floor of neuroscience for decades.

Science is now turning back into mysticism with concepts like “Superlearning”. Putting together concepts from yoga, music, hypnosis, autogenics, parapsychology, and drama; we now have something called “suggestology”. This applies altered states of consciousness to learning, healing and development.

Mind power and faith have now become twin brothers, if not outright symbiotic entities. Likewise, the impersonal “force”, as in “Feel the force, Luke...”, which the occultists refer to often as nature itself, much like the blue aliens in the movie “Avatar”, has become a Christian and secular way to “politically correctly” refer to God. This is, in fact a substitution, one that makes everyone feel nice and cozy and unoffended i.e. “Can’t we all just get along?” As a result, the “power of the Spirit” in the Christian church can scarcely be recognized at times to be any different than the mind power of psychics.

Parapsychologists have been studying “psychic” power for years and it is gaining credibility. While studying the Freemasons and their effects on history I ran across a lot of interesting facts about psychic spies that were used in World War II to “peer” into enemy headquarters and perceive what top brass officers were doing and planning. Surprisingly, some of this stuff really worked. The enemy, as it were, was also involved in the occult practices and amazingly there were even armies of psychics on both sides working to mentally influence the outcomes of military conflict. It’s no surprise that Alister Crowley, a known Satanist, was involved with the British MI6 at the time and was in his way the “James Bond” of his day. Ian Flemming, a commander at the time, knew Crowley, and it’s a good bet that a lot of the success of James Bond can be attributed to that relationship. But I digress. (Keep in mind that the AntiChrist will freely use much of this sort of power to ensure victory in the last days, in fact, he doesn’t lose until the second coming.)

Mind power is being taught without let or hindrance throughout society today. Organizations such as Scientology, Lifespring, Silva Mind Control and others are standard fare at motivational and success seminars. The ability to be able to exert your will over matter, or mind over matter if you will, is no longer something for the esoteric and marijuana crowd. It is now accepted as something quite natural, something that is a core of human potential, something that can be achieved - if you just use the right principles, the right “laws of success”.

There is nothing at all new about this New Age technique. This is the same old stuff from the beginning of creation dressed up and re-packaged for a progressive society. Practitioners, both secular and Christian, seem blindly aware of the true mind game they are involved in. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” wrote William Shakespeare, and sorcery by any other name is still sorcery. It hides everywhere one looks, behind scientific or psychological terminology and success motivation and development labels.

One occultic historian, Manly P. Hall, once wrote in an article: “... there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought - especially the so-called “prosperity” psychology, “will power” building metaphysics and systems of “high pressure” salesmanship - black magic has merely passed through a type of metamorphosis, and although its name may have changed, its nature remains the same.”

Success is the name of the game today. Humility is for wimps and self esteem is the lynch pin of existence. Time and again we have seen how the besetting sin of mankind is pride. We see it in the reality of white collar criminals who have economically crippled the United States as well as the fantasy of cackling Batman villains. Society now believes that its problems come from low self esteem, we just don’t think highly enough of ourselves. Once again, history cycles around. All through the Bible, we see Bible good guys falling down on their face before God, humble in the dust. Such a thing is counter programming for us today, and yet our current programming has an unusual parity to the statements of Satan: “I will raise myself up to be like the most high.” Again perhaps you believe that this is just a story and not truth. Think about who Satan is in the story. Even if you see him as an allegory, the lesson is the same.

But we know better. We’re smarter.

We’re smarter than those who wrote the story or we’re smarter than a fallen Angel who has existed for millennia and even had the smarts to convince a third of the Angels to forsake their place in heaven and follow him. We’re smarter. We have self esteem.

We are time and again told to visualize our success. An actual popular preacher has been quoted as saying: “Jesus knew his worth, his success fed his self esteem. He suffered the cross to sanctify his self esteem. And he bore the cross to sanctify your self esteem. And the cross will sanctify the ego trip.”

Holy Crap!

Success and self esteem preaching have become ubiquitous in the church today. The Gospel of Success has reached millions over the last forty years and has become like the mole on your forehead that you didn’t want there at first, but now is hardly noticeable until someone points it out. Scripture is pretty hard nosed about this, it claims straight up that Christ came to save sinners, to call them to repentance. From God’s perspective there is something to repent from, and since he never changes, he still sees it that way for us today. “Lifting yourself up” is a promise that God does not make, “waiting upon the Lord” is a promise he does make. How many of us read that and quietly scoff at the concept. It’s counter programming we reject at a deep level, and yet Bible people understood that to serve God was to suffer and be humbled. Has your church pointed out God’s perspective on reality to you lately? Have you been told that we are a fallen race in need of salvation?

I feel pretty sure in saying that this is definitely not the case, in fact, just the opposite is probably true. You have been told that it’s an abomination to mankind to tell people that they are sinners, its destructive to their personalities, its counter productive to evangelism.

Christian colleges, seminaries, missions, and relief organizations are also now in the success game, and most look to the techniques of big business for running their own organizations. If it works for the University of California then why not for a Christian college? If it worked for Ford in the 30’s, why not for a Christian relief organization? I’ve written about this sort of thing before, in my articles on the Nouveau Tech deception. Accounting, management and production have proven methods of operation which will work for anyone who uses the proper principles. But sorcery is rampant in the business world, and enters the church through success motivation and the latest psychotherapies “dressed anew” with Christian terminology.

more on this next time

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Health Fallacies

Checking Health Fallacies

All in one vitamin supplements can be misleading as to the amount of nutrients they provide. They can supply about 100% of some nutrients, trace amounts of others, and leave out some vital ones all together. Consumers often think vitamins can be a replacement for a balanced diet and can miss some important stuff as a result. The thing about vitamins that you don’t hear is that tablets often go right through you. Go to any public gathering and see if the port-a-jons aren’t full of vitamin tablets at the bottom when they dump into sewage. You’d be amazed! And that’s all money those people will never see again while getting only about 3% of the benefit from a tablet.

Breast infections from breast feeding is not necessarily a sign that breast feeding should be stopped. Nursing with the infected breast will help to cure the infection, which is called “Mastitis”. Milk is not infected by the breast infection... but I gotta tell ya, I would think twice about putting my baby’s mouth on it. As a man I can only write about this, not recommend it. Although, I have heard it said that breasts “know” when something is missing from a baby’s system and therefore produce more of that chemical need, I don’t know how true that is, but if it IS true, that’s not evolution people! Praise God!

B15 may be in trouble these days as the medical community is having second thoughts as to it’s effectiveness and safety. The FDA, the masters of Big Pharm, say it has no therapeutic value and there have also been some high profile doctors who have said it could be harmful. There also is no standard profile for the drug, so it could be made of anything. It’s known as Pangamate.

Getting a rash after an injection of Penicillin is not always an allergic reaction. The rash is often a result of the illness. True allergic reactions are things like, hives, swelling in throat, joint pain, and chest constriction.

Milk and dairy products may not help ulcers. Calcium in the milk helps to create the need for acid secretion that will aggravate and ulcer. Antacids with high buffering capacity are better, and of course food also acts as a buffer. It will help to begin a grazing diet if you have ulcers. This way you always have something in the tummy and your sugar levels won’t swing wildly either, but of course that food you graze on should be raw veggies and fruits. I have found myself that some meat just before bed time keeps the acid stomach away and I can sleep, probably because it takes the system 8 hours or so to dissolve meat. But don’t miss the idea of blood alkalinization. Most of the food in the grocery store is NOT food, and it causes an acidic blood stream. Natural foods will make the blood more alkaline and get you off of any ulcer medicines. But the effect is very fragile and can be ruined by ONE donut.

Get some “Prime PH” from this website:
www.balance-ph-diet.com/alkaline_nutritional_supplement.html
I highly recommend.

Corrective shoes for kids with foot problems rarely do any good. Children regularly outgrow any lower limb problems without any help. Severe cases may require casts, and splints and such, but wedges for pigeon toes and bowlegs or knock knees do not correct the basic deformity.

Make sure that your aspirin has entertic coating or it could lead to stomach stress in the future. Buffered aspirin really doesn’t work, and it’s just a marketing name anyhow. Tests have shown that aspirin taken with the coating works the way you would expect it to, preventing tummy stress.

Not all cholesterol is bad for you. The good kind, HDL: High Density Lipoprotein, is associated with reduced risk of heart disease. It blocks the production of the low density cholesterol, which clogs the arteries. Long distance runners, joggers, moderate drinkers, and the college educated are more likely to have the better cholesterol. Overweight persons and heavy smokers, plus the less educated, have more levels of the bad stuff and are at greater risk.

Dark circles beneath the eyes are probably hereditary. There is no medical evidence that fatigue or lack of sleep cause bags and dark circles. That’s more old information that was wrong that we today still take as truth. Time to upgrade our everyday knowledge people.

Well, that’s all I have for today. I hope my blog is bringing you some info you can use, and I hope to see you again soon. Have a great day, and remember... you be good. :-)

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Social Insanity

Social Insanity

Last fall, after 20 years of strident inaction, Congress finally passed a bill to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. There was a lot self-congratulation on Capitol Hill. The law seemed to mandate roughly a one-third increase in new-vehicle MPG by 2020 - enough to eliminate the oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf. Sounds great! But I am hugely suspicious … [there is] a waiver provision that says that if the new standards prove too onerous, automakers can ask they be waived. That is a formula for what Washington specializes in: the appearance of dramatic action while nothing actually happens.” So what’s going on in Washington right now? Pleading poormouth, the big three automakers are already asking for a waiver from the 2015 interim standard, which requires roughly a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. That standard does not take effect for seven years, and already Detroit automakers are saying they can’t meet it.

Or perhaps, they don’t want to try. Lee Hyun-Soon, president of Hyundai, told the Wall Street Journal last week his company will meet the entire 2020 standard by 2015, and will do so entirely with conventional vehicles -- no complex plug-in hybrids, just sensible engineering using existing technology. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Subaru put their engineers to work -- then build, at American factories staffed by American workers, vehicles that comply with MPG rules. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors put their lobbyists at work to dilute or evade the standards. There are only 535 people in the United States so gullible they would believe Korean engineers can meet a technical standard, yet American engineers cannot. Unfortunately, those 535 people are the members of the United States Congress.

Has anyone from the mainstream media followed up on how last year’s seemingly strict MPG bill is being watered down? As Eric Patashnik of the University of Virginia details in his powerful and timely new book “Reforms at Risk,” reporters are often present when “dramatic” legislation passes, then treat the enactment as the end of the story -- paying no attention as lobbyists later water down a bill. As Thomas Friedman points out in his important new book “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” the refusal of Congress and the White House to take any real action against oil waste has had the effect of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to Moscow, and to the oil sheiks who support anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism. If MPG standards were higher, oil demand would fall. Instead, high demand holds up barrel prices, enriching Persian Gulf dictatorships and Vladimir Putin. Why, Friedman asks, is Russia suddenly confrontational? Because in the past two years, Russian elites have gotten super-rich, owing to rising oil prices brought on at least in part by U.S. stupidity regarding petroleum waste. If Congress grants Detroit the MPG waivers it seeks, the stupidity will march on.

Meanwhile, back at the federal budget: In 1976, the entire U.S. national debt was about $800 billion, converted to today’s dollars. Last summer, Congress without debate and with barely any notice added $800 billion to the national debt ceiling -- raising that ceiling by an amount equal to the entire debt a generation ago. With no debate! The U.S. national debt was $5 trillion in 1997, and has doubled to almost $10 trillion since. Why aren’t the young outraged? The old are acting irresponsibly -- spending like crazy but unwilling to tax themselves, then handing the bill to the young. If the young were spending borrowed money like crazy, the old would be lecturing them. How come in Washington, the old can get away with behavior that would be called reckless for the young?

At any rate, the moment another $800 billion worth of borrowing was authorized, supposedly for “emergency” purposes, lobbyists got to work trying to seize every penny now. The big three automakers are now asking Congress for $50 billion of that $800 billion, supposedly to retool to build the fuel-efficient vehicles they had no way -- just no way on Earth -- of knowing they would ever be required to build. As Paul Ingrassia pointed out in last week’s Wall Street Journal, when Congress bailed out Chrysler in 1980, the deal was structured so that if the company recovered, taxpayers got most of their money back. But what’s being asked for now is pure subsidy -- money taxpayers will never see again, and that will be used in part to fund the bonuses of overpaid auto executives who got their companies into trouble in the first place. (The Journal opposes the bailout, though the $50 billion would go to Corporate America.) Ingrassia further notes that when Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca tried to weasel out of the deal and keep the money that was promised back to taxpayers, Ronald Reagan stood firm and would not budge. Contrast Reagan’s sense of civic responsibility to the current Congress, both of which just cannot wait to give away other people’s money.

Now connect the dots! The automakers are asking for $50 billion in handouts to meet new fuel economy requirements -- at the very time they are also asking for waivers from those requirements. If the past is any guide, they will get both the subsidies and the waivers. The net will be zero progress, more billions of dollars for oil shipped to anti-American forces in the Persian Gulf, and more debt handed to everyone under the age of 30.

I want taxpayers to stop being taxed to subsidize wealthy people’s hobbies. But as long as you give the powers that be the ability to answer one constituency, they will answer any and all constituencies, starting first with those that finance their campaigns.

Throw the bums out. Start from scratch. Better yet, throw them out and then just do nothing. We’d all be better off. The consumer would shop for the most efficient car if he or she cares about fuel mileage. When you subsidize, the price goes up. Just like the price of a college education, the price of food (ag subsidies abound), and anything else the government “gives” us.

I also put the blame where it really lies... middle class greed. The cool thing to do these days is blame the government for not monitoring the lending industry when they were handing out outrageous loans to people who couldn’t afford them... yet no one blames the poor soul making $60,000 who signed off on the balloon mortgage for the $650,000 house because he felt like he “deserved it”?

I say that the government doesn’t need to create more regulatory departments and more divisions within it’s already insanely bloated structure which are responsible for protecting silly people from making silly decisions. What’s next, the government is going to stand in the produce section of every supermarket in America and tell consumers if the meat they’re buying is spoiled by the rotten smell? Let’s get real.

The problem isn’t just the rich exploiting the middle class, it’s the middle class having no restraint or personal accountability. People say that we’re teetering on the brink of a depression, but companies like Best Buy, which don’t sell one essential item that a person needs to live, are turning record profits.

Put the blame where it really lies... unabashed American greed. From the single mom using her child support money for new shoes instead of her kids education and essential items to the CEO of the gigantic corporation, greed is what is spinning the wheels that this country runs on, and that is the REAL problem.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Date Night

Date Night


Phil Foster Steve Carell
Claire Foster Tina Fey
Taste James Franco
Holbrook Mark Wahlberg
Whippit Mila Kunis
Mob boss Ray Liotta

20th Century Fox presents a film directed by Shawn Levy. Screenplay by Josh Klausner. Running time: 88 minutes. MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference.

Steve Carell of “The Office” and Tina Fey of “30 Rock”, two current big time sitcoms producing under the mantel of NBC Universal, play Mr. and Mrs. “ordinary joe” in a movie from yesterday called Date Night. In this movie they are Phil Foster and Claire Foster respectively, who find reafirmation of their married love while being mistakenly placed in the gun sights of bad guys who mean to do them harm. In the meantime they run, they scramble, they survive by their wits and enviable luck in order to survive, oh and, they also visit a strip club.

They start out as many do, after the bloom has worn off the “romance rose”. They have kids and jobs and the myriad of daily tasks that involve the married life which are never alluded to in classical romantic literature about love. As a response they find a way to have a date night just for themselves, some time together, the impetus for their marriage in the first place which has become muddied amongst the inevitabilities of what comes after the honeymoon. Carell and Fey play the regular guys in a very “by the numbers way”, and that’s a good thing.

They do show a few signs of their sitcom personas here and there but for the most part we do find them to be other people than those we see on TV. This is nice since it lends more of an air of the believable and relatable for the audience to enjoy. So much so, in fact, that when they finally do get to go out, we are behind them all the way.

They attempt to “coup” a reservation in a hard to get into restaurant for the evening, an attempt to break the bonds of the mundane, and in so doing are mistaken for people better left in hiding by some knarly hit men. Phil and Claire are suddenly thrown into dire moments of distress and living on the edge that they had never bargained for, and the tension goes a long way to make the mostly tepid comedy work.

Comedians know how this works, the character can never know that the situation is comedic, they must be all frustration and panic while we laugh at the ridiculous situation. Just look up Chris Farley’s Japanese Game Show skit on YouTube for a prime example of this.

No need to worry about over the top silliness here, say as “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” might have done. There isn’t a lot of korn and two dimensionality in character or plot. The movie stays true to itself and doesn’t wink in your direction or make light of itself. The screen play takes itself as realistically and straightforwardly as it possibly can without losing the title of “comedy movie”. And for the audience this works just fine. We are, after all, all adults here. (I hope!)

Surprisingly, the movie is indeed involving, and this is due a lot to the performances of its stars as the couple next door. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances rarely get a chance to survive these sorts of mad cap type adventures. If you are with a wife or girlfriend who has been around for a while, the vicarious dive into “James Bond” style territory will be a nice visit for you both.

After the movie, when no one was looking, I poked my head into the theater next door at the multiplex and stayed around for the movie “The Bounty Hunter”. In this movie Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston are a divorced couple who find reafirmation of their love while being placed in the gun sights of bad guys who mean to do them harm. In the meantime they run, they scramble, they survive by their wits and enviable luck in order to survive, oh and, they also visit a strip club.

But you already know that story now.

If you have any doubts as to whether or not spending money in a strip club invests in the criminal element of our society, just ask Hollywood, they seem quite convinced of the answer.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Beyond Your Child's Classroom

Beyond Your
Child's Classroom


America’s students today suffer from a prevalent backward predisposition towards their own future success. Lulled into a false sense of security by their surrounding society and influences, plus a slackening of school requirements for excellence, students would rather stage a protest against additional time in school than for the possibility of adding to their own learning prowess. The overriding attitude toward time spent in school as that of “getting through it” instead of active strengthening of a students learning ability has led to an increasingly poor showing in academic performance. This drop in performance is a harbinger for the future of American business and its societal place among the rest of the global community.

Multifaceted in its make-up, the problem stems from several incorrect perspectives and conceptions of the reality of the student condition. The students’ lack of engagement is partially a response to the values and goals held by adult society as a whole. One example of this multi-tiered problem is that a clear message has been sent to America’s children that success in later life is not contingent on the tangible everyday work of the school day. Students have been led to believe, perhaps subconsciously, that luck, connections, and the like have as much to do, or more to do with success as any striving for academic superiority. All of society, even the students themselves, contributes to this and other problems surrounding today’s educational system, and it is an invisible cancer eating away at the nation’s future.

Since the mid-1960’s SAT test scores have dropped significantly. At first this was considered the result of an influx of lower performing students from diversely ethnic backgrounds; however, there was also an identical drop among the white majority in overall testing. Surprisingly, the deepest drop happened during periods of stagnant growth and is not limited to test taking. In measures of skills and talents of how students read, write and add and measures of what can be done with these talents, there has been significant decline since the early 1970’s. Poor academic performance is even apparent among top students. There has been no improvement whatsoever among all classes and strata of students and this leveling off of academic improvement is cause for alarming concern. America’s best and brightest do not fare well against other countries’ students who are considered average in their own country. America’s “A’s” do not equal other developed countries’ “C’s”.

Imagine if you will, America striving to stay atop the economic world while employing citizens who cannot even read or write in a competent manner. The economic costs of such a tragic waste of time and money on schooling and re-schooling just to formulate a competent workforce for the basics is akin to “whistling past the graveyard.” Capitalism has brought America to the top of the economic world. Will the relentless pursuit of economic positioning among America’s people and businesses at the expense of our own future slowly kill us internally?

Amazingly, America’s response includes a lessening of the requirements for successful SAT test taking. Those who have allowed students to produce less than other students had to produce 25 years ago have deluded America’s youth. Performance that received barely a passing grade a quarter of a century ago is now given a “well done” with a passing grade. There are many reasons for lessening these requirements and some people will tell you that it was a needed move for equality to all students, but these people are misguided and be fret of the facts. They do not understand the toll it has taken on Americas’ academic health by giving students an easier time of their work and thus resulting in a student community that has become painfully average.

But what, you may ask, is the nation’s major servant, the government, doing for today’s student? The political arena has certainly given its best shot at curtailing these alarming problems of school performance disintegration. Unfortunately, their efforts have resulted in a zero return on investment. When the fine points of schools are studied, such as teacher evaluation and program organization, it is found that schools can make at least a marginal difference.

The liberal view point, as always, is that more money must be spent to create better environments and opportunities for learning. This has given schools a many facetted look of academic and non-academic parts that give the student a wider range of influences beyond books and lectures.

Naturally, the conservative view is that this spending has only caused an erosion of student’s performance resulting in over distraction and the whole process must be returned to the basics. The fact, however, is that student work quality dropped off long before any of this spending happened and was the causality for it in the first place. Today’s problems are not only the schools themselves, but the entire social environment that students are growing up in.

There is an attitude that over half of all students in America have that has dropped overall performance. When one takes into account that students without this attitude, those who can “swim against the stream” of indifference succeed in American schools; it proves that outside influences have taken their toll on the rest of the student nation. Therefore, any government measures to shore up the educational system cannot solely concentrate upon the schools themselves. The entirety of a child’s life must be studied and the influences thereof reformed, if possible.

The level of engagement or disengagement of students is the number one precursor of success in school. Outside influences that direct these measures can cause a downward spiraling effect that the student is barely even aware of. For instance, students who work are given less responsibility in their school work. The student becomes increasingly bored and therefore works more hours outside of school, and the cycle continues. Too many students’ engagement problems also are the result of social attitudes. Class time is the “commercial”, as it were, to be sandwiched in between their real lives which is composed of their extra school network. Among this network it is believed that striving to succeed well in school and being involved in class activities is a waste of time and “uncool”. The majority of students feel that all one has to do is get through school and graduate, it isn’t necessary to do well or learn anything in order to succeed once school time is completed.

The concept of the brain being a muscle which must be exercised much like their physical bodies is anathema, if realized at all. Too many of these students, their parents, and the surrounding working world know all too well that no one is going to look at a students’ grades from grammar school and high school when considering employment. Therefore, due to this invisible work record, the level of engagement in class can be at whatever level will get you passed to the next grade.

Any study based on student ethnicity differences may at first be met with a politically incorrect label, but much can be learned by studying the effects that the American school system has had on immigrants’ children who come to this country. Alarmingly, it is a statistical fact that the longer a family remains in America, the more school success erodes with each generation. This is true for some ethnics more than others and points out some glaring problems which continue to be largely American in scope. Ethnic differences in achievement persist across a wide spectrum even if we take into account economic differences.

Pervasively, it is found that Asian students do far better than other ethnic groups across all strata and the strongest indicator was their degree of engagement in studies. Asian children find no shame in being good students. A more accurate gage of student success can be found in what those students believe to be their chances for success later in life. Asian students do a better job in school due to the fear of not getting a good job after school if they fail. They are also emotionally involved in the pride of their parents and join their Asian peers in striving for success, often mixing their socializing with school studies.

Children of other races, however, suffer from an undue optimism about their chances for success later in life. This perspective has a direct connection to how poorly they do in school. The students of African-American heritage and those of Hispanic dissent tend to believe that it won’t matter how they do anyway and subconsciously forgive themselves from striving for excellence. Sadly, in many cases they may have seen concrete evidence for these attitudes in the failure of the idealized American dream within their own families. Many of those families also seem to communicate to the child that there will be a loss of culturalism if one gets a good education in America and then begins to act “white”. Unfortunately there are too few examples of African-American and Hispanic intellectual success for these children to emulate. In the social group, Asian students don’t have this problem as they are often allowed to be, if not expected to be, a part of the “brain” crowd.

The nations “white” children themselves appear to be ambivalent as to their own futures, sharing the problems of both successful and poorly performing ethnic students. They fall into the majority of “B” students in most groups, but suffer from the outside influences that have made those “B’s” of today equal to the barley passing grades of yesteryear. The surprising minority of all ethnic and white students who do not fall into these negative attitudes presents further evidence that success in school is a matter of perspective and approach and not one of skin color or national background.

As stated already, the longer a student’s family remains in America, the less productive the student. Partially to blame is the concept that “grades make you what you are”. If a student relaxes himself in his efforts and then does less productive work, he usually gets lower grades. But today’s majority of students who don’t perform well believe that their lack of success is due to other factors surrounding them, be it luck, family problems, economic woes, et cetera. Therefore, when these students get “D’s” and “C’s”, it is perceived as a reflection of their identity.

The successful student, and there are many in today’s’ American schools, believes his own hard work and effort or lack thereof is a cause for success or failure. These students prove it everyday to themselves that it is not the American school system that has failed them if they get poor grades. Socially, however; they may suffer the scorn of their peers who do not do so well. Due to a prevailing attitude among students of a cavalier “marking time” in school, which results in lower grades, the psychological defense has been the blind agreement of “coolness” or being “with it” if school is given a casual glance of attention. It’s a dangerous psychological trap that has America’s students wasting away on the vine. This trend is not seen in other similarly developed countries and mirrors the internal American problem seen in the generational decline of immigrant students.

Problematically, the struggle is also found in the American home due to a prevalence of the wrong types of parenting styles that result in ineffective stances toward school. Whatever position parents take of themselves as, firm, accepting and autonomous is absorbed internally by their children. Parenting is often a balancing act of love and discipline, mercy and justice where one without the other will not produce correct results.

Out of the three styles: Authoritarian, Authoritative and Permissive, it is found that children with at least one authoritative parent were able to do much better than those with none.

Correct parenting styles are now a statistical fact and cannot continue to be ignored by parents when planning the raising of children.Authoritative parenting often creates students with good school and social skills, teaching them responsibility for their actions. Naturally, since these students feel more responsible for their own actions, the idea of outside influences having too much control over their success is minor. Authoritarian parents tend to create poor social skills but acceptable school skills. Permissive parents create high levels of social skills but negative attitudes toward school and adults. Either one of these last two creates a poor fit for the overall experience of the student in school. Authoritative parenting across all social and economic strata, show a marked improvement in school performance, due to the correct psychological “fit” of the child for success in school.

Parents who also show up at school and make themselves visible tend to “spike” the child’s interest and belief in the overall efficacy of school for their later lives. This not only involves the student, but the teachers and administration take notice of such involvement. This can work on several levels and for diverse reasons, such as either showing school employees the parents’ belief in the system or, additionally, leaving little room for teachers and administrators to hide their problems and mistakes within the crowd of parents and students.

But how many parents today can find the time and energy to be so involved in their student’s school? Schools themselves may create their own problems by not making themselves available to parents caught up in the double income working world of today. For many schools themselves, there just isn’t enough time in a day for parents, too many students, and not enough pay.

The collapse of the parent/teacher system under such economic and population stress can be seen all across the board as one of the major factors in student failure. Someone has to make the first move, however; and who would be better than parents that support the schools, through private funding or public taxes, taking a responsible stance and shearing down the size of their lives to make room for responsible scholastic participation.

Between the tenth and sixth grades a parent’s influence drops off significantly as the peer group takes over as primary director. By the time a child reaches high school it has been found that peer pressure is more important than any parental influence. This pressure can often happen without the child realizing he is being taken in one direction or another. Labels, such as “brains” or “jocks”, are often used by the student to define the society around them for easier access. The disturbing statistic is that less than 5% of any student body labels themselves or others as being in school for the main purpose of academic achievement. Among American students there is wide spread pressure not to do TOO well. To do well is often communicated covertly as “showing off”. The prevailing norm in high schools across the country is to “fly in under the radar” and graduate, otherwise, the student may find himself left out of the social climate. This pressure is often hard to prevent and, paradoxically, short lived, as the students’ future will always be with him but current social conditions will be short lived.

When considering the influences outside of the home that will mold and shape the child’s future, parents need to consider that neighborhoods and schools will be a primary source of the child’s social contacts. As with any public climate, like minded neighborhoods will have schools that are filled with future friends who also reflect parenting and teaching attitudes that may be beneficial or may be of concern to parents. Let us consider that there is a student who usually is expected to do well in school simply because of their race and assumed scholastic prowess that is placed in a school populated with students from other ethnic households. These households may indeed share attitudes and feelings toward school work that are not synergistic, if so; there will be an overwhelming social pressure for that student to be less productive. Whereas in a school filled with like minded offspring, the student may encounter other pupils who are oriented towards school. As a result, they will create bonds that combine socializing and studies and find themselves successful simply due to association.

Whether financially well off or monetarily poor, the students’ parents must consider that it is the parenting styles and social climate of other children’s rearing that will do more than they themselves will ever do for the future of the child reaching the high school years.

The ultimate source of achievement problems begins with how students spend their time out of school. The number of students who hold part time jobs after school has risen to 80% since the 1950’s. It’s no coincidence that this figure runs parallel to the decline of student achievement. National companies who hire teenagers are more concerned about thriving on cheap labor, for which they need not provide any benefits, than they are about the nation’s scholastic future. Complaints about students who can’t even make change without a calculator or computer should give national companies pause for thought about their involvement in creating and maintaining the problem themselves. The antiquated idea of the struggling student who must work to help out the family is out of touch with current statistics. It has been found that the overwhelming majority of students who work, earn money for the trivial things in their lives, such as CD’s and other luxury items. These students may work more than 20 hours a week, severely damaging their own ability to succeed in school while at the same time learning job skills that will not transfer into the working world in any meaningful way beyond the level of the job they have.

Working students often cheat more, skip class or perhaps take too many easy classes. Other involvements, such as after school activities, sports and clubs are usually only dabbled in for anywhere from 10-15 hours a week, if that much. Further studies show that socializing outside of school, added on top of socializing already done in school, can be as high as 20 hours a week or more. If all of these influences are added up together, it is painfully obvious that today’s student spends as little as 15% of their overall time on scholastic pursuits. Not coincidentally, Asian students score lowest in all categories of outside school activities. Their success is evidence of the correct social climate, parenting styles and attitudes toward school work that create a smooth road toward achievement. This happens in American schools despite the clamor of the school reform movement.

The lesson here is that school success is as much a product of the ways a student lives their lives as it is the school they attend. Far too many poor parenting styles, greedy and careless employers and the quick thrill media come in contact with today’s students and school is just one of a long list of things a child does every day. America should never be surprised at the level of disengagement of its student body due to the fact that school engagement has become a triviality in the national psyche.

Before this writer becomes chided for dwelling on all the negative things that have happened to the American educational experience, let’s take a look at those things that can be done to right the sinking ship.

1) The nation must realize that the problem is symptomatic of a complex network of social and private problems that must be addressed en-masse. School reform and restructure are not enough to solve the problems of the educational system and past attempts at reform have failed.
2) Parents must realize that the priority of childhood is doing well in school. All other influences must be sacrificed to the extent that scholastic achievement is primary in the students mind. It must be driven home in clear and uncensored language on a national level that doing well in school has ultimate benefits for the child’s mental, emotional and physical well being. Parents, too, must step up to the plate and become more physically involved in the rearing of their children if they are going to have them. Adult’s lack of engagement in the lives and scholastic achievement of their own children has become a pervasive health problem in this country that may become one day a major factor in the down fall of America as a whole.
3) Colleges today are too willing to accept any student who has been given a high school diploma regardless of how well they have done in their studies. This has resulted in students taking the low road to their later lives and creating a work force of questionable merit. When one considers that this includes professions such as doctors and lawyers and political leaders, the resultant society, perhaps less than four generations away, may have “Orwellian” overtones. It’s a science fact that advanced societies are the easiest to destroy, for how many among us can build an automobile or create a vaccine? Once these abilities are lost a society must be concerned with re-building the wheel, as it were, and in today’s world climate America can hardly take a break from its global position to heal its own internal wounds. Toughening standards for student advancement is no longer a debatable convenience, but must be enacted for the future of mankind.
4) Remedial classes at higher learning institutions have to be eliminated. The practice of providing schooling for skills that should be plat formed and ready to go to the next level has weakened the overall effect of both a high school and a college diploma. Any students who do not possess the readiness for higher education should be disallowed and sent back to secondary colleges or some alternative until these skills are achieved and provable.
5) All after school activities must be examined. Extracurricular activities involved with the school institution can often be beneficial for the student in limited amounts. Parents need to judge the effects of sports and clubs and such and then limit the child’s involvement in order to get the maximum benefit of education for that child. National records and statistics do not, however; show any need at all for students to work upwards of twenty hours a week on part time jobs. Studies have shown that it is more of a waste of time and an interference with school work that results only in lower performance. If a child must work, the hours a week should be concentrated to the weekend and less than 15 hours per week. Work time numbers above the 15 hours show nationally to be disastrously detrimental to the school experience.

Solving the problems of academic dementia among American students must be studied from the point of view that takes in to account their entire lives and the effects on their production that parents, friends, employers and the schools have on the struggling student. Until these things are accomplished, America’s future lies in the hands of lost generations.