Living in an Empire of Illusion

The following points are great topics for TOV Center “Must Have Conversations.” Their source is the book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges.

● A culture dominated by images and slogans seduces those who are functionally illiterate but who make the choice not to read.

● Propaganda has become a substitute for ideas and ideology.

● Knowledge is confused with how we are made to feel.

● Commercial brands are mistaken for expressions of individuality.

● And in this precipitous decline of values and literacy, among those who cannot read and those who have given up reading, fertile ground for a new totalitarianism is being seeded.

● The culture of illusion thrives by robbing us of the intellectual and linguistic tools to separate illusion from truth. It reduces us to the level and dependency of children. It impoverishes language.

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Fundamental Truths about Human Beings

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity contains valuable insights about human actions, like the one below:

Fundamental truths about human beings:

(1) People make choices about how to act, even if they do not choose the context in which they make them.

(2) People make these choices according to their understanding of the social world and their views of what is right and wrong, good and evil, and of their own understanding of how the world is to be shaped and governed, even if different contexts make some choices more or less plausible, or easier or more difficult to choose.

(3) People ultimately are the authors of their own actions because humans are fundamentally beings with a moral dimension [which does not mean we endorse their moral views], and they are so because the human condition is one of agency, namely the capacity and burden of being able to choose to say yes, which means also being able to say no.

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Choose Life by Doing TOV!

The Truth About Trust

A great book to add to your reading list is The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More by David DeSteno, PhD © 2014; Hudson Street Press, New York, NY. We highly recommend this book. Here are some very insightful quotes (highlights added):

● Can I trust you? This question — this set of four simple words — often occupies our minds to a degree few other concerns can. It’s a question on which we exert a lot of mental effort — often without our even knowing it — as its answers have the potential to influence almost everything we do. Unlike many other puzzles we confront, questions of trust don’t just involve attempting to grasp and analyze a perplexing concept. They all share another characteristic: risk.

● At the base of trust is a delicate problem centered on the balance between two dynamic and often opposing desires – a desire for someone else to meet your needs and his desire to meet his own. Trust is about trying to predict what someone will do based on competing interest and capabilities.

● The more we examine vacillations in emotions and moral behavior, the more we realize that trust often played a central role.

● Trust influences more than most of us would have imagined. It affects how we learn, how we love, how we spend, how we take care of our health, and how we maximize our well-being.

● At the most basic level, the need to trust implies one fundamental fact: you are vulnerable. The ability to satisfy your needs or obtain the outcomes you desire is not entirely under your control.

● Trust isn’t about finding the perfect strategy – there isn’t one. It’s about realizing that selfishness and cooperation, disloyalty and trustworthiness, exist in an ever-changing equilibrium. It’s always been that way; it always will.

● If you truly wanted to avoid the risks inherent in trusting other people while still benefiting from cooperation, there is really only one route: transparency.

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Choose Life by Doing TOV!

The Mystery of the Seventh Day

The First Creation Account in the book of Genesis opens and closes with mystery.  It opens with the mystery of what existed before the beginning and closes with the mystery of the Seventh Day. Mystery is a challenge for members of religions that have all of the answers and raising questions about things that do not line up with the official doctrines as avoided. The way we study the biblical text is to let it tell its own story, even if those stories disagree with what believe. Read our conversation about this very interesting mystery at – http://www.tovcenter.org/seventh-day.html

Switching From Mutually Exclusive Theologies to Mutually Inclusive Values

I wanted to share something from an email conversation with you, because I think it reflects some very important things that I believe are on the minds of a lot of people these days. Below are quotes from an email I received:

“I have so much to learn it is overwhelming........and even more overwhelming is how much I need to unlearn . . . One day at a time is hard for me because in 10 years I will be 85 and then another ten I'll be 95 . . . Anyway, I am willing to put in the time to learn because I know I am stuck in a place teeming with wrong theology and I want to be rid of all the delusions, lies, and half-lies . . .”

This is my reply:

“I know where you are coming from on the reality that most of my life is behind me. But I also live with the fact that I can only live in the present moment, i.e., one day at a time. As I get older, the law of supply and demand kicks in -- with fewer days ahead each one becomes more valuable. The question for me is how can I best invest each day in something that reflects that value?

In order to answer it requires an understanding of my values -- what are my highest values. At the point in life when my awareness of the value of my time is the highest, the desire to invest it in what I value the most is the greatest. To do that I have to know what my highest values are. 

Ultimately for me I had to work my way through the process of identifying the key memes of my reality, two of which were cornerstones of my theology -- "God" and "Jesus". The TOV Center process switched my focus from "proving who or what they are (theology)" to "what did they value the most." My conclusion, based on the Hebrew and Greek texts available to me (and my team), is their highest values are identical: TOV, MISHPAT & TZEDAQAH. All three place human life as the highest value and top priority. However, understanding what those words mean requires more than a simple dictionary definition . . . For me the bottom line is switching for living in a reality based on mutually exclusive theologies to one based on mutually beneficial values.”

We created the TOV Center to help people learn about this process so they will be able to apply it to their realities and make their lives safer, happier, healthier and more inclusive by creating and maintaining values-based relationships. For more information about it visit our website at – http://tovcenter.org . Please feel free to share this with others who may benefit from it.

Shalom,

Jim Myers

TOV Center News & Updates January 30, 2017

Welcome to the TOV Center

We are a Values-Based non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of TOV Values above other Values Option -- including profits first or non-transparent unexamined Religious, Political & Economic Belief Systems. The highest TOV Value is Human Life.

We have been actively engaged in building our website over the past few months, as you may have noticed. If you haven't dropped by the last few days or so, go to the TOV Center Website and take the tour by following the graphics.

TOV Gatherings & Conversations
Humans have Two Power Options and one of our primary goals is to help people empower themselves by engaging in various types of conversations as observers and participants. You will be receiving new information about this in future TOV Center News & Updates. Be sure to check out the TOV Center Conversations that are now online. They will introduce you to the basic information and vocabulary terms needed to interact in TOV Gatherings & Conversations.

We hope you will join our journey of making lives safer, better, happier, healthier and more fulfilled.

Jeffrey Leynor & Jim Myers
Co-Founders 

A Home is a Primary TOV Value

Without a secure home, normal social relations fall apart, and happiness becomes impossible. Homelessness brings with it fear, depression, and a loss of grounding. Read more about this primary TOV value at -- http://bit.ly/2hMzz1m

http://tovcenter.org