Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

    If you have ever studied Buddhism to a significant degree, you would have most likely encountered the term "middle way" before. It is one of the descriptions of the Noble Eightfold Path, the path to enlightenment and the liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth and entering into Nirvana.  The concept of a middle way has been around for ages. It is the attempt to cut between the extremities of life.  The happy medium between over-indulgence and over-deprivation. The middle ground between the great opposites of existence. The "grey area" so to speak.          "Everything in moderation," as the words of wisdom go. It's true. Life's a hell of a lot easier, and a hell of a lot more enjoyable, and a hell of a lot safer, if you can moderate you lifestyle in almost all ways possible. You don't make as much of a mess (or as much of a scene) when you go and indulge in much of life's pleasures and privileges while regulating yourself to a he

One of the things I like to think about often, aside from infinity and the infiniteness of God and existence (I know, I try to take on the big ideas a lot), is politics. However, it's not pop-culture politics, like The dumb stuff Trump said at some amped up rally or whether or not Joe Biden is going senile.  What I like to meditate on in politics is more complex. Big picture stuff. Political theory. How governments and societies work and how complex systems operate in general.      I have become fascinated with the concept of political engineering.  Applying engineering principles and approaches to political systems.  Revolutionizing or altering systems to fit a particular objective for that system.         The most important part of engineering and designing a political system is what your objective is. What your goal for the system is and what it's priority is supposed to be.          Engineering any system, whether human or government or otherwise, always needs a goal to ach

Eternity is a long time to have your dreams fulfilled. Even more so, it is a long time to share in the glory of God. Eternity is a long time to fulfill and serve justice. Justice is often equated with rightness. In terms of law, it is fairness, balance, and fittingness of punishments and rulings dealing with criminality and violations. It is a standard that's often quite difficult to weigh, measure, and perceive in many cases dealing with violations and crimes.  It's often hard to measure the fittingness of a punishment when your frame of reference in the law is ambiguous and the circumstances are complex and multifaceted. This is quite often the case, which is where precedents are important and often necessary in determining fittingness and serving justice.         This is very true in regards to worldly justice. We need precedents and standards to operate and work with in order to at least attempt to achieve a more perfect and a more fitting/fair justice.      As for the just

       In my relationship with the Creator, I am partial to focusing on what I view to be the magnitude of His creation, which I believe to be infinite in its own right, even given the finite (albeit still massive) state of our own universe.          I often neglect to focus on the infiniteness of the Creator himself when I focus only on the creation. The Creator's infiniteness is of a degree and intensity that far exceeds even the infiniteness of what He created. This is hard for me to imagine. It's hard for anyone to imagine very well, to be honest. It goes over the heads of humanity as a collective by, well,...an infinite number.           No one can understand the mind of an infinite God, nor can they understand the connections and intricacies of the complexities within such a mind, or the intensities and richness of its thoughts and constructs.   For me, and my relationship with God, no matter how awesome His creation is or any other component of his infiniteness, it is th

    I've always wanted to be some sort of warrior. There has been a part of me that has wanted to learn how to fight and learn how to strategize and defeat an enemy.       I sponged up many books and articles on great battles and wars of human history, in particular the Second World War. I admired generals like Eisenhower or MacArthur and have been fascinated by what type of mind it takes to command and lead millions of soldiers, sailors, and marines through a massive global conflict.         The type of thinking and the type of mentality required to be that kind of leader strikes an interest in me from a psychological perspective. It's all those psychology classes being applied to my academic fascination with war and leadership. I'd love to study the psychology of a leader. The mind of a leader.  I still want to be a warrior. A leader of sorts. The desire never really goes away, no matter how out of reach it becomes the older I get. Unfortunately, and tragically, being a l

Death doesn't scare me. There are plenty of things that are far worse than death in life to worry about. Encagement. Enslavement. A crippling injury. A debilitating disease. Death, to me, would be a liberation of sorts. A chainbreaking. I just go home.                 For me, entering into eternity would be the most eye-opening  and most liberating experience possible. For me, eternity would be spent absolutely consumed with the glory of God and allowed to dwell in His presence unceasingly. I would get to experience the infiniteness and overwhelming power and majesty of the Creator's nature. I would get to be immersed into His infinite love for all time.           I would like to spend my eternity exploring. I would like to go from world upon world, culture upon culture, civilization upon civilization, galaxy upon galaxy, and universe upon universe. Never ceasing in exploration of God's infinite creation. I wouldn't do this alone. I would like Jesus to be my companion,

We ingest abstract information all the time. When we read a book, look at a painting, watch a fantasy/science fiction movie. Abstract information is everywhere. Without abstract information, life would lose any semblance of meaning, wonder and mystery.       Basing my thought's off of Plato's philosophy of Forms and Ideas, I'd like to view abstract information as coming from two primary sources: imagery and words.   Imagery usually deals with physical forms. Structures and shapes that may be impractical in real life or images of technology not yet made real in a truly physical sense yet. Shapes and structures are usually dealt with in abstract imagery like art or pictures.      Words, on the other hand, deal with abstract ideas, although they also label forms. Ideas are generally not very physical, and as a result can only be conveyed to the human mind through words and language. Things like love, liberty, infinity, God, democracy. These things can only be comprehended thro

     I will always have a thorn in my side. A mark that will follow me until the day I am liberated from this prison of a world. That mark could be my various detrimental mistakes. It could be mental illness. It could be sexuality. Anything that marks you in the eyes of society and people in your life will always be attached to the concept others have of who you are.       No one likes being judged, especially for things they can't control or mistakes that they've repented and apologized for. I sure don't. Whether by friends or family or government or society, it's never fun to be tried and judged by other human beings, whether it be criminal or a condemning mistake or character flaw that condemns you in the eyes of your peers.      No one should be condemned by friends and family for weaknesses and shortcomings they can't control. Unfortunately that's how many humans are. They retain a level of primitivity and predatory behavior fed by superiority complexes tha

The Information you put out into the world (what you say, what you write, what you do, and what you build), has a touch of your spirit attached to it. It came from within your mind. Every word you say or conversation you have or post you write contains a part of who you are. Information informs consciousness in all its forms of the existence of an object, person, or idea.     It is information that is processed and remembered by conscious beings. If you want to leave a part of you to be remembered by people in the world or your friends and family, leave a legacy. Create information. Any information.       Whether that be music, paintings, art, achievements, research, writings, poems, anything that you are attached to that other conscious organisms can process and remember. An essence and sample of your mind, your spirit essentially, is wired into the information you create and develop or play a part in the creation of.        You live on through what you leave behind. I think words and

The biggest thing addiction does to a person is turn them into a liar. It puts you in such a compromised position that getting your fix becomes the entire focus of your life, often by any means necessary, including dishonesty with friends, family, and authority figures.  Its a lie pit that sucks you into a state of deception and a deluded mind. Often times you have to hit rock bottom before you can rise out of addiction, but sometimes rock bottom is a long way down. The most important path out of a compromised life, whether addiction or other corruptions of the body and mind is radical, uncompromising honesty. Telling the truth to the best of your ability all the time. Yes, telling the truth can get you in trouble. It can get you fired. You can lose friends. You can lose your marriage. You can go to jail. You can lose a lot. But its the only way to break addiction. Its the only way to get into a position where you can get help. Even if honesty comes at a brutal price in the short term,

    There is a reason certain founding fathers like George Washington and James Madison warned us against factions within government and criticized a two party system. Factions predispose political leaders and actors toward  loyalty to faction over nation. They are, by nature, inherently divisive.         Many of our founders had the sense that faction based government was bad for the long term health of our nation. For all intents and purposes, they were right. Unfortunately, factions are naturally occuring in any government or body of people, in the same way that cliques are formed in schools often at early ages of children. Factions form naturally because of shared interests, shared beliefs, and shared commonalities between human beings.       I would argue that they are inevitable. It's more about how you manage them and how you contain the often dangerous division and combativeness between them.        As far as the two party system goes? Well, two party systems are the simple

: If you can't understand your own thinking processes and know the why's and how's of how you came to believe what you believe, then you are vulnerable to manipulation and can be put into a sort of mental bondage by the ideas and beliefs you hold.      Metacognition and self awareness are essential to both avoiding and overcoming mental slavery and vulnerability to psychological manipulation.       Metacognition is defined as the "awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes." In a sense, it is thinking about how you think and why you believe what you believe. Having a high level of effective metacognition is absolutely essential in the gaining and maintaining of free thought. Without metacognition, free thought would be impossible.         Inducing and nurturing metacognition in human beings helps to liberate the human mind from the clutches of ideologies and belief systems that often dominate the behavior and choices of those people whose minds

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 1 Corinthians 1:18      I've often thought about the difference between the culture of the world and the culture of the people of God. I know that worldly culture is absent of God, a culture of vain indulgences and selfish decadence that disregards many spiritual concepts as illegitimate or even non-existent.        The worldly culture focuses on immediate fixes and gratifications, taking the predisposition that there is only one life you live and than cessation of your existence after death.     The worldly culture worships pleasure and it worships wealth. It sees no higher meaning or purpose in life and even denies the existence of concepts like purpose. It denies the existence of a lot of things that make worldly people uncomfortable and fearful. The worldly culture has imagination to an extent, but is limited in its grasp of the depth and nat

    Ideas are the driving force of terrorism. They form the mental/cognitive foundation of all terrorist organizations. Without ideas, terrorism would have no justification, and as a result would not take place.      Every political movement starts with the development and defining of the core beliefs and ideas of the ideology that provides the information foundation of the political movement. This includes terrorist ideologies.        Terrorism is distinct from other forms of achieving a political agenda because of its willingness to commit atrocities and acts of violence to terrorize their opposition. Naturally, this is the defining trait of terrorism.        The thing to understand about terrorism and fundamentalism is that even though the ideologies induce violence in their hosts, many of them aren't super complex. However, even relatively simple ideas can latch on to the minds of their hosts even stronger than complex ones.   Probably even more so, as complex constructs of ide

      Ever since I was a little boy, warfare fascinated me. I spent hours out in my backyard or roaming around my hometown on my bike fighting aliens in my mind and coming up with cool new weapons based on things I saw in movies or video games.          It is a common thing for boys to be interested in action and violence. Something wired into human nature I believe, as being interested in combat and war has a survival advantage in a species notorious for waging it quite often.         America seems to enter one once a generation or two, and having youth and children have some exposure to warfare to relative degrees of intensity in media and entertainment depending on the age is quite useful to a nation that is as engrossed in world affairs and police actions as the United States is.      When it comes to war, creativity and igenuity are what gives the advantage and the cutting edge to competitors in the conflict.       Your chances of winning a battle or war is significantly higher th

Like the big Star Wars nerd that I was, as a kid I was engrossed in science fiction and the cosmos. Stars fascinated me. Galaxies too. I sponged up book after book, movie after movie, video game after video game, story after story on science fiction, war, and fantasy.     I would incorporate the tropes and premises into my own fantasy world that I would go and escape into to detach myself from a world I didn't want to be a part of and felt very little freedom in.       In my own universe, I would fight war after war and battle after battle, destroying evil and laying waste to my enemies all the while creating an elaborate escape from the real world and the traumas that came with it. This world never satisfied me, and as a child the fantasies gave me a sense of purpose, adventure, and pleasure that nothing in this reality could ever match or supercede.     In the universe I developed, there were seven primary races that had colonized most of the galaxies in the known universe and pa

     "There is nothing new under the sun." This Ecclesiastical quote I believe reigns true. It means that originality doesn't exist and what has existed has always existed in some way or some method, whether in God's mind or in existence in general.      However, there is a lot more "under the sun" than I think people realize. Infinitely more to be precise. In my belief system, the mind of God is infinite. The specifics of infinity can be a little ambiguous. Obviously, because infinity is a hard concept for humans to grasp in its entirety. One way I describe the mind of God is it being a "database" of sorts of an infinite amount of ideas.         I have had this inclination to believe that humans have a sample of that infinite mind within us, being conceptions of that infinite mind ourselves. In a way we are connected to the mind of God, and our own minds came from that infinite mind in their own right and still maintains a connection to it even if

I used to get really insecure about my flaws and imperfections. I think everyone does to an extent. Whether it was mental illness or not being good at something I wanted to be good at, my flaws often reinforced my feelings of inadequacy and "lesserness" to an often unrealistic degree.      The fact remains that everyone has flaws and imperfections. All of us fall short of perfection by often dramatic measurements. In a physical realm governed by entropy, time,  and degradation, anything that breaks down or dies over time cannot be perfect. It's impossible.        The physical world wasn't designed to be perfect. It was designed to die. If it were perfect, time would be unnecessary, and so would growth, learning, and development.  That's the beauty of the system. Change, adaptation, growth, and evolution. Beauty, as we all know, doesn't have to be perfect, nor should it be.       As far as human imperfection goes, we consider imperfections such as moral and eth

     Of all the distinctions that separate us from other animals (opposable thumbs, tool-making, weapons, societies, etc.) I feel one of the most important leap forwards in our species was when we started being able to process and bear host to complex ideas and information.          Information processing, development, and comprehension are core components of any intelligent conscious entity, biological or otherwise.  Humans are no different. What distinguishes us from other animals is our intelligence. This is not a novel statement or truth, but I wanted to focus on the part of human intelligence that deals with ideas and information.       To start, I view the human mind as "bearing host" to complex information and ideas. Our minds absorb the information of the world around us and it constructs our conscious understanding of the physical world. Not just the physical, but abstract information as well.      In fact, probably the most distinguishing characteristic of the human

       As many of you probably know, I have an affinity for the concepts of liberty and infinity. I like to play around with different concepts and discuss their relationships with each other. Earlier this year, I talked about "concept compounds" or combining abstract concepts into new constructs.          It's mostly a linguistic, word-based, mental formulation, but all abstract constructs and concepts are mental. You honestly can't have it any other way. The mind and the imagination is where the abstract realm operates.           Tonight, I would like to discuss the "concept compound" known as 'infinite liberty." If you know what those two concepts are, than the combination of the concepts' meaning isn't too elusive. It is liberty without restriction. Liberty whose potency is unlimited, and whose opportunities know no restrictions or boundaries.    It is the liberty of a truly infinite system, one where conscious entities can enter into wo

    Historically, nations and cultures that forgo war and the preparation for it don't last very long in this world. If you pacify yourself in a world full of predators, it's the equivalent of feeding yourself to the wolves.               Humans are a predatory species, both biologically speaking (we hunt and eat other animals) and in regards to our own kind. We are a self-preying species. Whether through war, slavery, or oppression, a good portion of our species preys upon its own kind, not for food of course, but for dominance and the fruition of hate.        Nations that are predatory have often had a better chance of survival and have been more successful at acquiring resources and territory. In modern times however, predatory nations are running the risk of leeching humanity to the point of sabotaging the entirety of our species. Predatory practices such as slavery and oppression are practices which pose great risk to the stability of many parts of the world. Economically

I've noticed from my study of scripture and from my own relationship with God that God does almost everything He does for two primary things; love and glory. Love is often the aspect of God's nature that believers focus on the most, and it is demonstrated to the greatest extent by the sacrifice of Jesus to pay for the sins of humanity.     Glory is not disregarded by any means in an evaluation of God's nature. Not by a long shot. A prime example of glory is the Resurrection of Christ and His conquest of death, one of the most important demonstration of God's glory in the history of his creation.     Now I believe God created an existence that is truly infinite. A reality more complex and wondrous then anything most human beings can imagine. Of course, in order to do such a thing, He Himself has to be infinite in every respect.        In his infiniteness, I believe he created existence as a platform for his glory to be demonstrated and actualized to the fullest extent. I