Some of you, dear readers, grasp the heart-led awareness. If you do, then you are acutely aware that most of the world does not, will not, and perhaps cannot get it. The nature of heart-led compassion for the world that held Our Savior on the Cross keeps us from treating these others with contempt. Whatever it is we might do to help them cross over, it won’t be a dismissive arrogance. If you aren’t grateful and humble, then you don’t have it.
What good does it do us to focus our awareness in the heart-mind if we don’t use it to guide our expectations and decisions? The only reason you don’t know what your heart of conviction demands is because you don’t submit to it. The brain is taught by the heart; the heart is the only part of us that can read the moral fabric of God’s character woven into Creation. The heart alone knows what God intended and how reality actually works. And it knows before your brain dares to ask. The tough part is teaching your intellect to submit by reflex. Let’s use it.
Can you imagine the Internet without ad-supported content?
This is more complex than it seems on the surface. The vast majority of content is offered freely. It may be ad-supported only because the service itself requires it, not the content. But if there was some way to get hosting for content without ads, plenty of folks would be willing to keep putting their stuff out there. It’s something in human nature itself. Right now the bulk of Net surfer attention goes to ad-supported content, so there’s an awful lot of content seen by very few eyes. And our culture has become spoiled, seeking the entertainment factor first and foremost.
That is not heart-led surfing. Entertainment can be neutral and harmless, but good luck finding that. It requires some experience at discerning the difference between the harmless versus stuff backed by ulterior motives, all the more so with heart-mind awareness. With that experience you discern that most of the entertainment is leverage for pushing one lie or another. Do you imagine the major news outlets are actually just trying to inform you of the facts? All of it follows a particular manipulative agenda. About the only good reason for giving them any attention is simply to see what they are lying about today. They offer nothing for heart-led folks, and deny that we exist.
The advertising industry as we know it is dying. Much of the current ad-supported garbage will go away. By no means will it all simply cease, but the virtual landscape will change. You can bet that the tracking will not slow down; it will only get worse.
A point in passing: Two technology giants get almost all their money from advertising and tracking, selling folks like you and me to third parties — Google at around 85% and Facebook at 95%. Apple and Microsoft tracking is currently not sold, but kept in-house; the bulk of their income arises from actual sales of product. For example, if you have a Windows phone or iPhone, you need worry only about what Microsoft or Apple does with that snooping internally. Sometimes you can actually turn stuff off that you don’t like. With Android, you can’t imagine how profligate is the snooping and disclosure to third parties. And every time someone offers a tool to tone it down, Google comes up with a new and nastier trick that you cannot control at all. Facebook is even worse.
I’m curious to see how this plays out. Some very popular sites will disappear very soon. The institutional resistance to change will see a lot of stuff hanging on to the bitter end, then closing with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. A few visionaries will be more nimble, and a precious few will actually understand what’s going on. Look for some truly new stuff being born.
You can have economic growth without debt; it’s just that it would be slower. A business can grow without investors. There are other ways to run a business on the Internet and make a profit. By the same token, artists can make a living from their art if they learn the new way of Internet marketing. Some of the lavish waste in the entertainment industry will go away, but those who truly love their art can find a way by catching on to the new Indie style and ditching the middleman. People still love live performances, but the pool of those with money for high ticket prices is shrinking radically. Meanwhile, the pool of smaller venues is growing, as is the word-of-mouth booking system.
Is anyone really surprised that religion will take the same hits from economic freezing? Some religious institutions are almost blatant in offering religion as entertainment. It’s all about butts in the seats and dollars in the offering plate. Do you know that there are “houses of worship” that charge a minimum cover to get in the door? Look for monster church houses in your area to close down, because the institutional resistance to change is powerful in mainstream religion.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Yes, I have a vision, but whatever you want to call “success” is not measured in terms of dollars and membership. The biggest payback I get is the words of thanks, and even somewhat in the words of criticism. The most valuable thing in heart-led religion is your heart-led response. You are my treasure. For the Father’s glory, I’ll take some risks.
The FTP server is up and running. So far, one person far away from me has tested access and there was no trouble. I’ve got a small collection of books, articles and booklets and some music, stuff I’ve collected over the past few years. I’m putting that stuff in this open library. The powers that be might not like everything about this arrangement, but I’m not making it public and certainly not charging anything for it.
Some of it might be familiar to a few of you, but some of it you’ve never seen or heard. All of it is freely accessible on the Net, but you might not know where to look. I’m trying learn about finding that stuff. Most of you have no time for that, so I’m offering the fruits of my labor free to you in a virtual library. If you want something I don’t have, just ask. In order for this to work, we need to keep it private. That means you need to ask for the address and then you’ll need a login and password. If you have something you want to share, that’s a separate procedure. Most of you won’t have permission to upload unless I’ve had a chance to get to know you. Let’s see if we can make this work without getting the wrong kind of attention. Eventually such measures won’t be necessary, but we have to live with it for now.
Let me know if you are interested: jhurst18 at cox dot net.
