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...

As a Christian, I have heard many views of heaven from many different believers. I have heard that it is all-consumed with the glory of God. I have heard we reside in his presence forever. I have heard it overflows with the love of Jesus. I have heard we get to do things there that bring him glory. I have heard we get to experience the most perfect of happiness, holiness, and purity. I have heard that heaven is everything you could ever want that is not sinful. I have my own desire of God when I face him after this life. I would request that I get to spend eternity exploring his creation. I view that God created an infinite existence, just as He himself is infinite. I want to go from world upon world and experience culture upon culture, with countless places to see, people to meet, and games to play. I want to be able to explore the depth of knowledge and history that each world and culture holds. I want to study the different life of these countless worlds, see the different terrain s...

The universe is made up of many forms of information, and the conscious beings within it are the receivers of this information. The information human beings in particular receive helps program our brains to understand reality in a particular way. Ideas are a form of information, as are the keys I am typing with and the table I am sitting at. The table is substantial information, i.e. information that has concrete substance that you can touch, see, hear, taste, and smell. Pretty much anything you can encounter with your senses is substantial information. Now ideas are information that is not substantial. You can't detect them with your senses, yet they still exist. They are abstract. They only exist verbally and in systems that they are utilized in. They can have substantial images or things represent them, but you can't measure concepts like freedom as concrete substance. Now information is how a brain is programmed and educated to understand the world from a particular worldvi...

If someone believes a lie that is beneficial to your agenda, why tell them the truth? Sometimes delusions are advantageous to the people who foster them and stand to lose something if the deception is discovered. From my experience, every human being has had delusions or lived under false pretenses at some points in their lives and many still live highly functional lives while believing in total nonsense. Im not talking about religion either. Religion is different. There is a nature about faith that destinguishes it from delusion, and that is the complete inability of people to invalidate it entirely, as well as its socially, culturally, and psychologically beneficial nature to the people who have it. The truth is not always in the eye of the beholder, but your perspective on the truth is. Truth is what actually exists, a lie may exist as a lie, but it is based on something that does not. There are many truths that we cannot see or have not encountered that are waiting to be discovered...