Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

America's military might is almost insurmountable. We have the most technologically advanced military on the planet. Our armed forces are better trained than almost any other military force. We have installations and bases in almost every major strategic point on the globe that serve our interests by protecting trade routes and being a stabilizing force in volatile regions that have a history of instability; instability that threatens our economic and political interests. Our country's fostering of innovation and laws that protect private and intellectual property as well as allowing the free flow of capital to research initiatives that further the development of new technology and new social initiatives that have the potential to act as stabilizing developments has allowed our country to surpass our rivals in our innovative capacities and technological superiority. This is not a strategic problem for our supremacy as the leading power in the World. The United States also is th...

Words are incredibly powerful. They can lift up spirits and encourage, and they can tear down and humiliate. Words are how we describe what exists and also they can describe what doesn't exist. When we describe something and are able to describe it with words in great detail, the path to manipulating, altering, and making utility out of the thing we are describing widens dramatically. Also, when you can assign a label that has meaning behind it that can be described with more words, like a word that has a set of words assigned to it that give the word meaning, you have made the first step in altering a problematic situation, condition, idea or thing in general, or benefiting from said thing once we have labeled it and described its properties. In a sense, you have to know what something is before you can address it. Words are how we label concepts, theories, and ideas and when we define these things, we give them substance and purpose within our reality. All of this is done with ve...

I had a friend bring up this concept in regards to me and my interest in conflict. I don't remember the exact context of the conversation. My memory may be good but not perfect. What I do remember is I was talking about some of my ideas about warfare and games and conflict in nature, and he implied, or at least I think he did, that my interest in these things were predetermined. What I fail to understand from his implication is that if I was predetermined to have a rabid interest and fascination with everything to do with war and conflict games in general, why on earth did the force that predetermined this interest limit my ability to actually utilize the knowledge I have accrued in the respective fields of these subjects. I can't join the military. I dare not try, because I do NOT want to open up my history and health issues knowing full well the imminent rejection that would follow doing so. I have had my heart broken enough in my life and I am trying to avoid more heartache...

Faith is an often overlooked aspect of the human experience in modern clinical mental health settings. Clinicians many times don't acknowledge the healing and stabilizing power a belief in God has for an individual. As someone who has first hand experience in the mental health system as a patient, I can tell you many professionals often overlook spirituality and faith. Some professionals even believe that these components can be counterproductive to the recovery of someone with mental illness. I have heard it first hand from some professionals and many outsiders that they consider the idea of God as a delusion in itself. Now don't get me wrong, these people are a small minority, but the influence of the secular position on these matters in the mental health system is substantial. The secular view that there is only the physical explanation for someone's behavior, i.e. brain chemistry, often seriously miscalculates the quite potent reality that there may be other forces at w...