The Earn and Learn Theory Of Life After High School

We are doing research on the Earn and Learn Theory that addresses how a student can begin making early decisions on how he or she will approach their life and education after high school.  We urge parents to think about the options that may be available and attractive to their child for earning a good living while pursuing alternative educational goals and have discussions with them about their future.  It’s important to not wait until their senior year to begin looking at options other than straight-to-college, because if they have a game plan to earn and learn after high school, they can plot their last couple of years of high school in terms of preparing for a different and perhaps more satisfying approach to starting out in life.  For example, if it turns out they may want to learn a skilled trade or intern for a certain kind of business they’re interested in, all this can begin during their last few years of high school if they decide not to take the conventional formal higher education or full-time college route.

TELLING KIDS THAT THE MUST GO TO COLLEGE TO KEEP UP WITH THE FUTURE IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

We think that it would be of great benefit to students by the end of their sophomore year to participate in a program where they spend a week on Earn or Learn which is college education versus working after graduation.  We’re going to be writing more about it in our World Debating Forum where we plan to debate the issue quite a bit.  If you haven’t visited it yet, please go to WorldDebatingForum.com and take a look at what we’re doing to raise awareness of issues like this.

Here are some ideas we hope parents will share with their kids. When deciding on a career path, be sure you are not pursuing it because it seems like a fun and/or easy thing to do, or peer and teacher pressure.  For example, yes, becoming a social worker is rewarding in many ways, but it’s not high in monetary rewards. A High School student may be idealistic and reject the idea of needing to earn a living, so a loving parent might point out that they can go save the world anywhere on earth if they also have plumbing or nursing skills to earn a living with while they’re there saving the planet.

As a long-time employer I saw many employees that left our company when they got their degrees in social work or psychology or some of those areas, only to have them come back a year later and say, “I can’t work for that little money.  I make so much working here.”  In my case, “here” was the restaurant and hotel industry, and many, many of my employees made six-figure incomes starting from really good salaries and tips then later as manager/owners.  Yes, ideally you should love what you do in life, then it’s not work, but compensation for work is definitely something to be considered, including how to pay for full-time college if it turns out that’s what you really want.

IS COLLEGE NEEDED FOR EVERYONE?

WE DON’T THINK SO.

If a child chooses a career path requiring college, but college is a stretch, one option may be to go to work for a company right out of high school.  By getting good grades and showing responsibility, maybe even starting out as a new employee who does night school or online classes, they could wind up working for a company that pays for their college while they, get promoted, and are already earning a good living by the time they graduate with a degree.  What a great way to go to college for free, while advancing your career.

Another option to offset the cost of education is to join the military.  The military will pay for your schooling while you are learning valuable life lessons in responsibility and discipline, character traits that prepare you for life and pay to go to school after your service. It’s important for parents to research the available military options with a child who is interested – only a small % of the military is evert exposed to combat or danger. Many people overlook the Coast Guard, which has a lot of pretty interesting jobs and has full military benefits.

You can earn online degrees from some of the best Universities in the country by going to college online for much less money than attending classes in the traditional way, while you are earning and advancing your career. If you are taking online classes, you can work while you learn and still maintain a lifestyle that allows for travel and other things you enjoy in life.  You will have extra money to do those things if you work part-time and go to school online.  The best part of all this is you would incur less debt, positioning yourself with a head start in life, ahead of those who have run up huge student loans.

Another benefit of taking online college classes is you won’t have to listen to somebody telling you how to think, which is what happens in too many classes.  I could honestly make the case that we have too many colleges.  Unfortunately, universities are really more committed to telling you how to think rather than teaching you how to think for yourself.  This has been propagated by tenure, allowing people to teach who shouldn’t be teaching.

I have relatives whose kids go to math classes in college and they talk about politics half the time.  Really?  That’s what we’re paying for?  I don’t think kids should talk about politics very much until after they’re out of high school, because it’s so emotionally charged, and it’s difficult for them to have a neutral attitude, and not using facts, because facts rarely fit political agendas.  Talking or debating without facts is a bad habit to get into.  But I suppose they’re just imitating a lot of adults they see.

WE THINK THE IDEA THAT “YOU MUST GO TO COLLEGE TO SUCCEED IN LIFE” IS A MYTH

We think that too much emphasis and pressure is put on people about going to college.  I went to college, got several degrees, and I can honestly say none of them helped all that much.  As an employer, I would rather hire a well-rounded kid, a good “B” student (not necessarily straight A student) out of high school and teach them to work for me while they went to school.  Many large companies do just that, offering to pay for college while you work for them.

Imagine – Amazon hires a lot of people right out of high school, and some even spend their last two years of high school working five to ten hours a week working at Amazon in a warehouse, learning about the company, preparing them so that when they graduate from high school, they are literally ready to go to work and make a decent living while finishing their online or night school education at their company’s expense.

Let’s show our kids how to earn and learn.  They need to be educated on how much various careers pay, what’s required degree-wise and how much those degrees will cost in the long run.  Some of the trades pay more than lawyers make.  You don’t have to go to college for most trades, but those trades are sometimes hard to get into because of limitations imposed on the supply side through their unions.

For example, let’s say you went to work for Amazon right after high school, starting at $12 an hour.  Within five years you would easily be making $25 to $40 an hour if you work hard and get promotions.  On the other hand, if you go to college and graduate in any of the social sciences and look at the lifetime income there, it is going to be far less than your lifetime income-earning potential in the business sector.  We all know $30/hour is about $60k/year – right at the US average. Know many good plumbers or electricians or nurses who only make $30/hour? Know any college grads working for less than $30/hour – 10 years after graduation? You would have benefits, including retirement in either job, but another consideration in favor of working for a company like Amazon is the ability to have stock options.

So, we could make the case that if you compared the two years of college, and you didn’t’ care about just going and partying for four years (which is what the social science majors sometimes do), you’ll probably make more by not going to college in the long run.  One must also consider that careers in the social services have income limitations as government employees.  If you work at Amazon, you could leave them in ten years and probably pick up a great job somewhere else or stay with them.  Just do the math.

WE THINK EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE THAT WILL BENEFIT FROM IT, LIKE ANY PROFESSION THAT REQUIRES IT, OR YOU FEEL A REAL DESIRE, NOT SOCIATAL, POLITICAL, OR PEER PRESSURE.  

In summary, I think college education is extremely important for anybody going into certain careers – some business categories, lawyers, doctors, and other specialized fields.  But let’s offer other options to folks who don’t want to go that route.  It’s time to dispel the notion that going into trades is somehow less important or respectable than gaining a college degree.  There are many paths to being successful in life.  We just need to highlight all possible paths for our kids and then let them choose which one to follow knowing we’ve done our best.

 

We at No Hate No Violence see the “Community Loaves” project as a great example of how one community-spirited contribution by a single individual can make a real impact. Started by a Seattle college administrator and amateur baker, the simple act described in this news story and video is helping thousands of people. (The video is embedded halfway through the news story)

This inspires us to do likewise, as we hope it will similarly inspire our readers, with each of us finding our individual ways to help those who are less fortunate and in need in our communities. The generous person in this video is very good news for Seattle and shows how the actions of one person can change our perception of an entire community by their act of caring and contributing.

If all of us and especially our leaders encourage such simple good deeds by individuals, and by people acting together on behalf of others, that will make the kind of difference that can change the world.

As “Community Loaves” project founder Katherine Kehrli says “This has restored my faith in the collective good that we can actually do.”

As we at NoHateNoViolence say:

“Stop talking do something”

And send us your uplifting stories of people who have!

We at NoHateNoViolence totally condemn what happened last week at the U.S. Capitol. We’re urging each of our readers to do the same, and to do everything we can to prevent further hatred and violence during the Biden/Harris inauguration. Sadly, because a few people got so caught up in emotions that they committed violence, it gives those who oppose Conservative values the opportunity to condemn everyone involved, including those who peacefully protested – the vast majority of those at the Capitol on January 6th.

One thing about true political Conservatives – they don’t believe that violence is the way to accomplish anything worthwhile. But in our opinion, whether or not there was disagreement, and there always is some, the issue must be dealt with in a peaceful and debatable manner and resolved so that NO PARTY can benefit from violence.

Even though it’s going to be difficult to convey in this politically charged environment, we need to make sure that everybody gets the message that violence gets you nothing. We’ve proven that.  We reject war with other countries – why tolerate it in our own country?  What happened at the Capitol and around the country is perhaps rightfully being called domestic terrorism, but liberals would not label any of the violence that occurred in major cities across the country last summer as “domestic terrorism”.  I’m not talking here about the peaceful protesters of police violence. I’m talking about the rioters, looters and arsonists – not the protestors on the streets or at the Capitol. I find this disconnect in perspectives hypocritical at best.

We must learn to talk to each other.  I have high hopes as a long-time conservative Democrat that this new administration is trying to help bring us together. I had those same hopes in the Obama administration, to no avail, but maybe this administration can work harder on it.  Additionally, both Conservatives and Liberals definitely need to be calmer and learn to talk more calmly using supporting facts and incorporating debating skills.  They could learn a lot from the kids we work with in school debate leagues.

You don’t have to love your neighbor’s yard sign but you definitely don’t need to hate them if they think differently than you do.  If you find yourself ‘hating that SOB’ then maybe you need to ask yourself why you have that hatred.  You need to review why you hate somebody because they’re of a different political party.  It’s crazy when you outright say it.  Yet, we all do it.  It’s just not an innate human condition.  Hatred is something we had to learn and accept for ourselves because we weren’t born with it. And with hate, if it gets to a high level, it can definitely erupt into violence.  Just look around the world.  Do we want to be like Syria, China or other countries where the government is totally at war with anyone in its population who thinks outside the government-approved lines? I certainly don’t want to see that and I’m quite sure you don’t either. So let’s find a way to figure this out and get past it so that we can all think of ourselves as Americans, whatever our other differences may be.

STOP TALKING AND DO SOMETHING POSITIVE

One thing we believe strongly at No Hate No Violence is that we need to lower the rhetoric, increase the tolerance, and become way better listeners.  Simply by becoming good listeners we can automatically lower our rhetoric because then we can answer the questions and points being raised with some facts.  We are a big believer in facts.  Just ranting and raving and insisting your ideas matter more than others without any real cognitive thinking, simply emotional thinking, is difficult for anyone to deal with.

That is why we just finished four years of developing World Debating Forum which we are about to launch.  We are going to distribute it to as many teachers in the world as we can, starting in the United States.  It will show you ways to do in-class debating as well as debating at the kitchen table where you listen and you each take turns.  At the (virtual or physical) kitchen table over the holidays our recommendation is – if somebody gets into a controversial subject, say, “Here’s the deal guys.  You can all talk, but you get two minutes each and it’s over.  It’s over at the end of two minutes.  There are no winners or losers.  You each get to say what you want for two minutes.”  Have somebody time it.

If you start communicating in that way, you will be amazed at how easily you lower the rhetoric and increase the dialogue.  If somebody simply whines and complains for two minutes, they finally realize they have accomplished absolutely nothing.  Yet, if they talk calmly and logically and back it up with some facts, they find they can get a lot conveyed in two minutes.

We teach everyone from students to business managers how to get a whole lot of great communication into a short period of time.  Why?  We come prepared.  We come prepared for argument.  If you believe in a certain thing, even politics, just always be prepared and have the facts to back it up.  Don’t just say, “I don’t like this guy,” or, “I hate this guy just because of the way he talks.”  I don’t think that works.

What works a whole lot better is, “I don’t like this guy because of this fact and that fact,” and let it go at that.

For example, take the Police Departments or the teachers in this country.  Why do they become burned out so quickly?  It is because of the way they are treated.  If they were treated with respect, they would be a lot more effective for a long longer.  How would you like to be a teacher or cop in Chicago and be called every name in the book, every hour of every day and then be expected to have a good attitude while you are teaching or patrolling the community?  It’s impossible.  To blame the teachers is not right, but at the same time, you know, having young, fresh teachers sometimes is what it takes.

Our debating forum is really going to show you how in-class learning can be done in either physical or virtual classrooms.  It doesn’t make any difference if you only debate in your class or whatever once a month.  What is important is that you do it!

We believe in the unrecognized connection between debate and athletics in building better lives.  Click this image for a great 8 minute video on this hidden connection!

You know how it’s always been said that athletics makes better people who ultimately do better in life and in school?  The truth is:  That only applies to those who are top athletes.  The 96% or 97% of the people who are not in the tier of top athletes actually do much worse in life because they are so disappointed they didn’t make it, feeling that they wasted and spent all their time on that goal.  They struggle with reading, writing and arithmetic.

Look at the colleges.  We worry about getting our kids into college.  I would much rather graduate 98% of our high school kids than even have colleges because our country would be a much better place to live because a lot less people would be in gangs, and a lot less people would be living below their potential for happiness and productivity.  On the other hand, if they grow up in a debating environment during school, learning to think cognitively rather than emotionally, they may be able to land an internship with a future employer while still in school.

If you want to go to college for free, become a debater and then shop around for some companies in your junior and senior year of high school and ask them to hire you when you graduate from college.  Many will put you through college for free, and I am talking about major companies like Intel, Amazon and others.  Many companies have programs like that.  We should be teaching our kids how to fit into society.  It doesn’t mean you have to make a decision for the rest of your life.  You might decide for the first five or ten years of your life.  “Okay.  I’m going to go to college on Amazon, and I’m going to work there three or four years.”  Trust me.  People will try and hire you away from Amazon if you are any good.

Whether you are debating formally, informally, in-class debating, socially or in the running of your business, debating is going to become one of the biggest things to ever happen because it can be done virtually so well.  In the future it will be a major way of running businesses and negotiating deals.  I predict a new “Art of the Deal” that incorporates applied debating techniques across the business spectrum from weekly staff meetings to negotiating mergers. The reason I can so confidently predict the coming of  “The Art Of The Debate” is that I’m writing it.

STOP TALKING AND DO SOMETHING!

It has been enjoyable to see a turndown of some of the hate that’s been on the media for the last three or four years, especially the Trump Haters. Now, for sure they haven’t gone away. They just don’t seem to be jumping up and down as much as they were, other than complaining about him wanting a revote count (which is probably not going to help him anyway). Still, it’s nice to see. It’s going to be interesting to see what the media is going to do over the next four years without that bone to chew!

I’m proud of the conservative Democrats that didn’t try and do the wrong things, like petitioning, rioting or whatnot. Even with the election being up in the air, they have thus far exercised restraint. Some of those things are still going on in a couple of cities, but that’s being paid for by ANTIFA, and other violent hate groups  –  I mean, the billionaires that are behind them. At No Hate No Violence, we really want to point out people that do not support hate, but what I am most proud of is all the people that are not letting themselves be manipulated.

We have a lot of great things to look forward to. I’m hoping the new administration will do the right thing, because it is for the people, and that’s who they work for! The money they’re spending is the taxpayers’ money. If you have any ideas that you would like to share about what you think has to be done in the future relative to this, please share your thoughts.

“What I am most proud of is all the people that are not letting themselves be manipulated.”

We’re excited about the future of our organization. We’re about to launch our World Debating Forum. It’s going to help all the schools, at a very minimal cost. We hope it gets adopted and tried by more and more schools. It’s been hugely successful everywhere that it has been adopted. We’re not familiar with anywhere in the world where this system has been tried that it has not been successful when given an effort.  It’s less work for the teachers, and it’s more fun for the kids. They help teach themselves. Though, we still need more teachers. This requires more teachers, time for teachers. A really well-run system has an intern that comes in and helps support it for a while, and that’s going to be paid for by the private sector, not by the taxpayer. We believe that we can help adjust the education system through our World Debating system, to actually keep the teachers employed at a good rate. We hope to expand their capabilities, and get much higher ratings individually, especially in the less fortunate communities. For any state that’s interested in increasing their rankings among other states, this is a great system. We must increase our ranking in the world. We’re dropping like a rock compared to other countries.

 

It’s time for change. We need to do something different! We’ve all heard Albert Einstein’s famous line: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We need to try something a little different. This is not a curriculum. It’s a different way of teaching…it’s an adjustment. The teachers that implement our system love it. They have to do less work, while at the same time receiving more awards, which in turn, results in more raises and ultimately better jobs.

Is there such thing as good hate or tolerable hate?

I think there is, I think there are times when hate is or can be interesting and fun. For example, I hate my opposing football, baseball, basketball, or soccer team, and sometimes I even hate their fans. Now, when I use the word “hate” I do not really mean I hate them I just use that word to express my strong feelings.

But – hate them and their leaders because they belong to a different political party? That is not good, that is bad because it causes division within the nation.

Our new belief here at No Hate No Violence is that any hate that harms people, their feelings, or leads to any kind of minor or major violence, is bad hate or hate that we need to resolve.

You can disagree with them; you can tell them your opinions but to hate a person for their political beliefs or their religious beliefs is unconscionable and morally wrong. If we all hated each other because of our difference in beliefs, there would be enough hate to cause endless wars.

I can tell you that there are a lot of people that would hate me because I am a Catholic but what those people don’t know is that I don’t believe in everything that the Catholic Church believes in; I don’t think that a lot of Muslims believe in everything that the Holy Mosque believes in and I don’t think the Jewish religion has followers that believe in everything the Great Synagogue believes in.

That is the problem We all try to interpret each other through labels; that is like me judging a Democrat by the Democratic leaders, or Republicans by Republican leaders. The people and the leaders are so far from each other that the Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington DC no-way represent the constituents and voters of this country. But there are some radicals that think that political leaders do represent the people, and those radicals are rioting in violence and killing policemen and pretending that this is representative of political ideals. I am pretty confident it is not, and the Democratic Party really needs to reject those radicals. I know they are rejected within the people I talk to however, they’re just not rejected in the political leadership because Democratic leaders, like the idiot leaders in Portland, Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco actually think that by not saying anything and continuing to reinforce the violence they will get more votes.

Those political leaders are so wrong in thinking that; they will not get more votes. Their “strategy” is going to backfire because the general consensus is against them. We spend our time gathering these comments and the facts as we see them disagree with this “strategy” entirely. They are driving votes directly to the Trump Campaign.

If they want to get Biden elected, the leadership needs to come out for Law Enforcement and not be seen as working against them. There are some bad policemen, no question about it. Most of them are known to their commanders and should be fired but Police Chiefs are not allowed to by the unions. The bad cops are being protected by the unions and as long as you try to deal with this issue by defunding the police nothing will change because the bad guys and their protectors in the unions are still going to be there. Do not think for one minute that the police chief does not know who the bigots, racists, drug addicts, and unstable officers are, he does, he just cannot fire them. That is the kind of hidden issue behind police violence that we need to think about long and hard instead of just repeating slogans, no matter how emotionally satisfying it may be to yell “Defund The Cops!”.

I think we could do a lot more in supporting our Police Chiefs being able to clean up their bad actors rather than simplistically trying to defund them. If you defund them, do you think they are going to let go of the bad cops first? No, we are just going to discourage good new people because under present conditions many of the best will not even consider being cops in the first place.

It’s interesting but one thing I do know is, I’m a University of Oregon Ducks fan and I love the Oregon State Beaver fans – unless they’re playing the Ducks and then I hate them – for that game only. Then of course we all go out and have a drink together – like politicians used to do after a hot round of rhetorically “hating each other” over some controversial piece of legislation.

That is what we need to get back to, loving the people we also “hate” – but for all the right reasons – not hating other people because of their political beliefs, or their place in life, or their race, or their appearance, or any of the other morally feeble excuses so many people use to try to excuse their twisted love of hatred and violence.

It is amazing to me how many people get away with writing such hateful things on Facebook and Twitter and the other social media platforms. They appear to view hate as an effective way to make a statement and get their point across, although sometimes they are clearly just venting to feel better. And why do they do that? Generally because they have an extremely small audience and they haven’t realized that and think that the world is listening to their rant. Why don’t they rethink why they hate this person or that group and then put their new insight to good use. Why not try to put more of their feelings and thoughts into articulating exactly how and why they disagree with this person or that group, saying here is what I want them to change, and here is what I will do to help make it happen. We hear way too much about people’s analysis of the problems while we all know pretty much what the problems are, but we actually need are solutions, or at least constructive thoughts on how we can reach a workable solution.

Take someone that you really hate – whether it’s the President or whoever – and say what you don’t like about what he does in a respectful way, and how do you think he could change; does anybody try to change him? Anybody tried asking him for something before trying to force him to do something or pushing him to do something?

I’m not a Trump person by any means, but I do know that a better dialogue will get more done, not just the politics, all of the other organizations that are based on hate which can not be a good thing. If your organization is based on hate, you need to rethink it and think about how can we convert this hate into a productive dialogue where we can tell what our problems are and do something about it. Has “Black Lives Matter” gone to any police chief in this country and asked them what they would like them to do to change? That would be working on the problem by proposing a solution and that’s what we believe in No Hate No Violence.

Hate and violence don’t accomplish anything, and we believe that hate can be greatly minimized by everybody if you think before you express hate or think before you talk about hate and think before you put hate out there even if you are as hate-filled a group as ISIS.

If you think about your hateful language and try to put your ideas into words that offer something that’s a solution, you’ll get a lot more respect and a lot more of a following saying that we ought to follow those suggestions about that whatever situation is. I don’t know what you need to do about the radicals but I still think that over time, if we can take the low hanging fruit and minimize the hate; we can work our way up towards reducing the radicals not just possibly some of their thinking but more importantly minimize their impact.

I don’t believe in censorship and at the same time I don’t think you should show somebody how to build a bomb; free speech has got to take some social responsibility. In the No Hate No Violence movement we believe in trying to find solutions; I can guarantee you that no matter what your religious or political beliefs, you can live a much happier, more productive life by working on the solutions, Trust me please; I know from experience.

Commitment to the principles of “No Hate No Violence” doesn’t mean that violence is never necessary and justified to defend yourself, your family, your community or your country. It doesn’t exclude defending those who cannot defend themselves against violence, and it is certainly sometimes necessary to protect life, liberty and property, just as it is sometimes the only recourse in countries with authoritarian dictators who use violence against their own people.

We would prefer to see authoritarian governments change their attitude towards violence in general and treat their people’s lives and liberty with respect. We expect the same from organizations in this country and around the world who claim to speak for “the people”. If there’s hate involved in how they operate, they need to be encouraged and educated to change that attitude because the violence that they bring about will be their downfall in the long run.

Violence and hatred beget violence and hatred. That is the stark lesson of history, and every child learns it early in school and on the street. Hatred proceeds unrestrained to violence; and violence breeds more hatred. Every time.

Look at all the people going from hate to violence every day in our country. We want to see the people in the world get rid of hate. Is that naïve to say? We don’t think so. It is a simple statement. Sometimes simple is all that’s needed to say.

Hatred is learned; no baby is born with it. All hatred is all taught and learned, so if you want people not to hate, then they will have to learn again. Learning can be taught to a person or be experienced by a person, but either way it has to occur if hate and violence are ever to diminish. We believe that the learning must include tolerance and understanding of each other because we’re each different from every other person, and we all have different thoughts and different ideas.

Violence is never a solution, unless it’s to defend life or liberty or human rights, individual or collective. Human rights are given to individuals, not just groups. The human rights of the individual –  that was what our forefathers wanted to promote and defend. They believed, as we do, that human rights are God given, they are natural, and they are individual to each person. Every individual has their own individual human rights, and to the extent that people value their own human rights, they can learn to change their attitude toward the human rights of others and this may be how, in the long run, to get rid of hate and violence. It’s not going happen overnight, but if as individuals we can start with ourselves then hopefully we can turn any rhetoric we find ourselves using or thinking closer to expressions of tolerance and understanding.

One of the reasons that this won’t be an easy or quick task is that so many people make so much money promoting hate at the expense of the vulnerable, which includes almost everyone – think about that one. How really vulnerable we all are when someone is spewing hate and preaching violence even when we think their hatred and violence is directed at someone else and not us personally. Whether we see it or not, we are all involved.

So every time we see the media or anyone promoting hate and violence, let’s ask who benefits? Not you or me or anyone or anything we care about, that’s for sure. Promoting hate is an evil way to make money , but we allow it because the haters shelter under “Free Speech”. We think that promoting hatred comes under Justice Brandeis’ definition that “the right to free speech does not extend to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater”. If we put the promotion of hatred in the same category as yelling “Fire” in a theater much of it would diminish virtually overnight – after a few high profile prosecutions with maximum penalties.

And while we’re at it, let’s demand more of the good news we know is out there. There are so many amazing individuals doing incredible things with their lives – let’s hear about them! It will make us all happier.   There’s no place in this world for hate, there’s no excuse for any voice that promotes hate towards any religion or culture.

Making the world a better place by rejecting hate and violence, and trying to be a happier person who is more loving toward others – that’s truly a religion as far as I’m  concerned.