User:RGP

WORK IN PROGRESS
/Sandbox

/Sandbox: ICC

Interests/Affiliations/Potential Conflict of Interests
Unlike many other encyclopedic readers perhaps, I have few outside interests. Already as a young man I began the search for Truth and the way to reconnect with what has been called "The One" through the wide fields of literature, poetry, philosophy, and religious tracts and finally came upon it at its source, in experience. All my interests are inside interests, and they have led to and determined my affiliations:


 * Andean Explorers Foundation & Ocean Sailing Club
 * Advocates for Religious Rights and Freedoms
 * Nevada Clergy Association
 * Project "X": The Search for the Secrets of Immortality
 * Association of Friends of the Foundation Saint-John Perse

and my profession:


 * Minister of the International Community of Christ
 * Administrator of the Jamilian University of the Ordained

Because I expect that nearly all my contributions to Wikipedia will be on subjects related to my life interests, and thus related to my profession and my affiliations, I have chosen to declare my interests and affiliations here on my User Page so that there can be no question of my trying to violate Wikipedia's code of ethics by hiding my special interests or of my trying to enforce or defend my special perspectives illegitimately. I do this despite the fact that I see whatever special knowledge I may possess to be potentially valuable rather than a potential conflict of interest.

The policies of Verifiability state: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth . . . ." This is a wise policy, one that does not limit perceptions of truth and does not impose judgment by one person and point of view upon another. The policies of Wikipedia also call for references from "reliable sources", meaning "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." This also is a wise policy, one that serves to protect and encourage truth and one that must be observed for the sake of order. Unfortunately, this policy protects and promotes mainstream consensus truth alone and leaves little opening for new thought despite what could be done with the wonderful immediacy provided by the Wikipedia project. (Of course, you can't have everything.") Nevertheless, I hope to approach truth within the structure of Wikipedia policy and guidelines in the articles which I work on, guided by my experience of it and insofar as truth can be derived from and verified by the products of popular culture.