Are We There Yet?

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message for all good little citizens:

Writers of TV shows, films, books, stories, ads, etc. take advantage of people’s emotional “baggage” by assembling the cues and prompts that stir up those emotions into a manipulative system of psychological control. When you participate in these pseudo-social events, you allow yourself to be jerked around by your emotions. This is not what these for the most part archaic mechanisms were evolved to do; they are survival mechanisms better replaced with more highly evolved rational thought, except that most of us (maybe all of us, at least at times) are not very capable in this realm of existence yet. I blame that persistent condition on the conservatives who thwart the advance of civilization by restricting education and therapy to the smallest group possible, thereby better insuring their greater degree of wealth and power. If you are not properly educated, you are not enabled to compete as effectively in a token society, let alone avoid the manipulative agendas that control you and morph you into good little compliant unknown citizens or radically disenfranchised non-entities.

We Have Met the Zombies and They Are Us

Tolerance is the failure point of democracy? If you tolerate intolerance, you permit and enable forces that will eventually cause your position’s tolerant demise, because intolerance will kill off tolerance if it is given its lead unless tolerance takes an intolerant stand against it, which defeats it anyway when the tolerant become intolerant, transformed into its opposite like a person becomes a zombie in The Walking Dead—which is a perfect parable for the nature of intolerance: You cannot tolerate intolerance, which means you cannot be a tolerant person unless you exclude yourself completely from intolerant people, which the zombies are a metaphor for. In the Walking Dead, when intolerant Merle, who has relied on intolerance to survive, realizes he’s been an asshole and does a u-turn to help out the “family,” he is killed and turns into a walker, which brooks no alternative but to eat people. In other words, the walkers are the epitome of intolerance. They are mindless intolerance. The only defense against them is to kill their (mindless) brains. Humans, even the mindful ones, conclude that you cannot tolerate a blind force that will ultimately kill you given half a chance. This is a fundamental flaw in human nature, which is, still, in the process of evolving toward “a more perfect union,” which only tolerance can promote. People of advancing evolution see the advantages of democracy as an institution that enables the maximization of both individuality and cooperative social interaction. But democracy requires tolerance. If intolerant people are excluded, individuality, to whatever degree necessary, is disallowed. In practice, it becomes a matter of a workable mean; extremes (like Charlottesville) must be avoided. But how do we do that without becoming intolerant? Proper policing might help a great deal; but we have seen that police forces often harbor and may readily exercise intolerance, especially when it comes to defending intolerant people who tend to align with policing mentality. Separation of “sides” can also help; but that’s just another way of separating us out instead of joining us into a more perfect union. And, anyway, one of the sides that we are separating doesn’t seem to be any more or less tolerant than the one they are being separated from; and the truly tolerant people are many miles away, staying out of it altogether, which is not a solution, but an escape from the problem inherent in the practice of tolerance; or, iow, we “sane” people do not tolerate the intolerance of either side. We will not let the zombies eat us if we can help it, and we will not kill them off; but we will exclude them from our social interaction, which itself is an intolerant practice. I can only conclude that we humans are hopelessly intolerant. Maybe, one of these millennia, we will have evolved into a better, more inclusive state of existence. But we are not there yet. Humans exist on a tolerant/intolerant spectrum. We each have our degrees of each, which becomes prompted by circumstance. When we are tolerant, we are nice people, pleasant to be around; when we are intolerant, we are assholes who seek others like unto ourselves that we may engage in hate together in a less perfect union. Existing pleasantly together, we epitomize the vision of our democratic principles; existing hatefully together, we yet pretend to practice these principles. But we do not. We cannot be both intolerant and democratic at the same time; and yet that is exactly what we would have happen. And since America is in principle a democracy, and since to be patriots means that we aspire to and adhere to those principles, when we are intolerant of others, we are not by definition patriots. The intolerant extremists who claim to be patriots are not; and on that perception, they may be excluded—except that our laws include them a priori. They were born here. So let them die here. In one way or another. Death always wins, in any case.

Stupid is as Stupid Does: The Making of an Unpresident

The truly stupid people are those who (feel they must) believe that Trump is more stupid than they are—while he redirects their agendas with his apparently stupid antics (like ‘unpresidented’—which I happened to think was an ironically brilliant remark). He will become our unpresident, and he knows it. He absolutely fucking intends to be just that. And, in choosing to make a word-choice error, he sends the message out to “his” people (and, especially, to people who might be on the fence about joining “his” people) that, despite his wealth, he is, after all, just an ordinary ignorant person like they are; and he gives them hope that they too could one day become as rich and famous as he is. It’s a stupid message for stupid people, but it is not stupidly constructed and delivered. It’s pure genius. And, finally, it’s also a vague reference to the lefties who are so hell-bent upon unseating him before he even gets seated. Trump is taunting them, poking fun at their determination to “unpresident” him, snickering behind their backs as they make fools of themselves and continue to alienate those level-headed, mature progressives who would rather be working as responsible adults than chasing their tails trying to derail a president via character assassination before he even gets started. There is no sense in pursuing this course. If his character has not been assassinated by now, it never will be. His detractors are feeding him energy with their  diatribe. He thrives on this stuff; he always has. He’s rope-a-doping the Democrats (and out-of-line Republicans) left and right. They fall for his silly little tricks time after time. Leave him alone. He’s sucking all the energy out of the country with his attention-grabbing antics as he changes subjects by distracting people away from what they should be paying attention to. If you want to do some good, if you feel you must protest “in the streets,” go to Standing Rock instead. That’s the front line of the war, where the real social and cultural damage is being done. You’re not going to stop Trump before he starts, and you’re not going to slow him down much once he does. He’s got you all by the nose and leading you where he wants you to go. Wake up. There are important things to be done, and trying to out-trump Trump is not one of them. Is your intent to prove that you are every bit as uncaring, crass, rude, and boorish as he is? Because, if it is, you’re succeeding. He’s managed to lower you to his level and you can expect him, with his best denial and projection tactic, to turn around on you and point out how badly you are acting. He’s sucking you into his game and he’ll continue to do it for the next eight years if you don’t wake up to what he’s all about. Don’t be so stupid as to believe that he’s the stupid one. He didn’t win the election because he’s stupid; he won it because you are.

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final solution: to be or not to be is not a question

There’s no question that climate change (global warming) is happening.

But I see no evidence, let alone scientific proof, of the eotw scenarios.

All the computer simulations depend on too many assumed variables.

And they tend to ignore possible human intervention and remediation.

Not to mention unforeseen circumstances and disregarded science.

Will people die? Undoubtedly. By the millions probably. Oh well.

Will the planet die? I very much doubt it. Life is highly adaptable.

Will the human race go extinct? One can only hope. But I doubt it.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll even wake up to necessities we now ignore:

Population control. Efficient food and meds production/distribution.

Universal healthcare. Universal affluence. The end of armed conflict.

Demilitarization. The end of weapons manufacture. The end of borders.

World government. Yeah, I know. Those ideas offend fascists globally.

That’s the big one, then: the end of fascism, xenophobia, and racism.

Think it will never happen? Think it is all pie-in-the-sky impossibility?

Then why take the negative side and think we will all die out so soon?

Your doomsday scenarios are just as likely or unlikely as my utopia.

It’s all a matter of conjecture and expectation. Expect the worst; get it.

Mass hysteria and hallucination create reality: we are now nuclear.

Extinction is just the next stage in humanity’s self-fulfilling prophecy.

But we have a choice: we can go on as we are or we can face the truth:

We are making this all happen. Life takes care of itself, absent humans.

But a thought just occurred to me; maybe our extinction is the solution.

Maybe life’s wisdom convinces us to kill ourselves off to save all else.

I could get behind that idea. Problem is, how much do we take with us?

If we’re intent on offing ourselves, why not leave other species behind?

Or is that the true nature of humans, to destroy everything as we go?

Maybe it is, after all. Whichever, it’s not up to you or me, but all of us.

 

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emotional pathology

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. [REM]

Understanding how eotw scenarios might play out, especially when they are based in very real interpretations (not paranoid, but grounded in solid scientific and rational studies) of situations and events, is important. We should avoid at all costs the temptation to bury our heads in the sand and feel content to let the future fall where it may. But these considerations must be balanced against the fundamental idea that, no matter how much we may want to believe otherwise, we cannot know for certain what will happen in the future. The dour Chicken-Littles of the world who run around bemoaning the fate of humanity and the planet, though they may turn out to be absolutely correct, do no favors to anyone, least of all themselves. I say that we must understand the truth about what’s going on and what seems likely or even merely possible to happen, but to bring such emotion, and certainly much neurosis, to the planning table is ridiculous. That “strategy” only serves to trade any present peace and goodwill for future (and perhaps vain) assurances. Leave the emotion at home, people; wallow in it at night when you awaken out of your horrific dreams. And, in the brightening morning, in light of day, consider this: You may believe this is all going to happen to us tomorrow or next week, but it’s not; not even next month or next year. And the bits of it that are happening right now, the real-time ongoing situations and events, are concerns enough; by dealing with them, properly and adequately, rationally and objectively, in the present, we effectively deal with them in the future as well. My big point here is this: these catastrophes you worry about, these imagined nightmare scenarios, will in no way be avoided because you have gotten all bent out of shape, emotionally charged, and driven to despair (even to the point, as more than one person has testified to me, of imagining how you might, as painlessly as possible, kill yourself so as to avoid the time when food and energy shortages have created a world where you must live cold, hungry, and without your internet or TV). Yes, we need rational, scientific solutions to present day problems so that they do not escalate further; but your anxiety is misplaced when it’s projected onto a failing planet. It’s you you’re worrying about, not the future of humanity. Get a grip. More than likely, certainly if you are over 40 or 50 years of age, you will be gone before conditions deteriorate to a point of what you might consider severity. (The scaremongers who say the end is just around the corner are wrong; their message is an outshoot of their pathology.) And, likely, if are younger than 40 or 50, you’re not one of the end-of-the-worlders; those kids are dealing. [I make a minor exception to my angst-dismissal for mothers (and wussy-tending fathers) of younger kids, with one caveat to this caveat: consider how your biological attachment may be affecting your rational judgment.] So, in short, potential eotw scenarios may or may not have a very real basis in science, but the near-hysteria phenomenon attached to them is an emotional disorder. Deal with that (pathological) issue, and you’ll be fine. 

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I Want to Believe

I believe—“believe,” unscientifically, more as a matter of faith, like maybe as an aspect of my personal religion, which worships fantasy (like, actually, all religions do)—that the human brain can only hold so much information, and when it nears its maximum capacity, it starts to dump content, transferring it, first, to a less accessible holding area and then, later, when that area fills up, dumping it permanently. This is my explanation for Alzheimer’s. People thus afflicted have input too much information throughout their lives and have reached their capacity; or, perhaps, they didn’t have all that much capacity to begin with. This “explanation” (I hesitate, even, to raise it to the level of hypothesis) is, of course, entirely flippant. I want to believe, like others who, often pretending it to be scientific fact, purport that the human brain uses only one-tenth of its capacity; but I find that claim no more rational than my own “religious” tenet. We just don’t know. And we probably never will; because AI will probably far outdistance us and replace us before we could ever rise to a technological level sufficient enough to find out; or else it will make us irrelevant. I mean, do we, even as scientists, care how much capacity the brain of a monkey has? We, humans, are the next monkeys. Well, actually, that’s what we’ve always been.  

And speaking of marginal hypotheses [is that what I was doing?] I believe in—nay, let me qualify the qualification: I more than believe; I accept as scientific fact—the theory of evolution. And, if my scientific education were not enough, I have personal anecdotal experience that confirms the theory. When I was working at my last job, I was looking through a National Geographic magazine one day while in the office eating my lunch, and I saw a picture of a chimpanzee and, honest to Darwin, it looked exactly like a guy who worked for me: same eyes, same nose, same chin and ears. Except for its smaller stature, it could have been his twin. Next time you’re at the zoo, examine the great apes closely. These are people! How can anyone except a totally self-deluded person not intuitively understand whence we humans came?


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a culture of expediency

See, we plan ahead, that way we don't do anything right now.

Kevin Bacon, Tremors

Every time I alter my schedule method to try to accommodate the lady, or anybody or anything, the “requests” [usually accompanied by one or another form of disguised threats (in her case, to hire someone to do the work; in other cases, oh, it could be pretty much anything, like do this when we tell you to or else: your car will not be road legal and we’ll stop you and fine you and you’ll have to do it anyway; you will be in arrears on your taxes and all kinds of further intimidation will take place; we’ll arrest you and put you in jail because all citizens must serve on jury duty otherwise the Amerikan justice system will not work—yeah, as if it works now as it is)] for more immediate task results usually end up scuttling my method, because my method works, when I do it my way: I wait; everything is done in its own time, when its time has come. But when I must do something right now or very soon because it is so damn important to whatever Nazi says it is, I can’t handle it, because, if it were truly so important as people will make it out to be, if it were truly such an emergency that it be done now, there would be no choice in the matter, not even a consideration for when it should be done. True emergencies get taken care of immediately because there is no choice; all other tasks get scheduled. So, the real issue becomes: whose schedule are we going to use, mine or someone else’s? I say mine makes far more sense. But ours is a culture of expediency. Get it done now, get it done fast, and move on. Productivity reigns. What a bunch of bullshit.

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