Written on a piece of paper: November 17 2003

January 2, 2009: The following was written on a piece of paper I recently found (again), dated Nov 17th 2003. Might as well type them up and trash the paper ...

'U.S.' versus 'Them'

While most people believe that the popular saying "us versus them" means, or says, that it's you with anyone else versus those contrary to you in some regard - the 'thems.' However, it is not so much that is you and your group versus 'them' as it is the United States versus 'them' - namely those that are not the allies of the United States, but sometimes even the allies of the United States.


Let us assume that when we see a cup before us there is, in fact, no cup. That is, when we see something, let us assume that it does not exist. If we move from this assumption into the real world, we see that while we have assumed that there is no cup - that there is no object - others have not assumed this, and continue to act as if there is a cup/object there. In addition, even those we assume that there is no cup, we can see our hand move out, grasp the cup, and lift it to our mouths. Further, we can even enter into a discussion with other people about these cups/objects.