faith and nuclear power....

...can only amount to one thing. faith is, by definition, not fact. It is "things hoped for...yet not beheld". It is, basically, believing something because you hope it's true. rather than follow the labor-intensive process of hypothesising, researching, testing, observing, re-evaluating, and finally, concluding something to be true, you start with the idea that it's true, and, if it "feel's right" to you, you accept it as true. the problem with this is that we live in an age of nuclear power. let's explore this idea:

nuclear power is very dangerous, and potentially dangerous enough to wipe out all life on planet earth, or the human race, or, at the very least, civilization as we know it.

the people who control these weapons are self-proclaimed "christians", who believe, to variable extents, that there is a God, that he has a son, jesus (or god himself IS jesus), and that, at some point in the future, armegeddon will come, destroying the earth.

if that is the case, what moral obligations do these people have to those of us who do not share their faith? if thier faith is correct, which, of course, is what they believe, their obligations are to have faith and uphold god's law. this adds a further level of subjectivity to the situation. what is god's law? if there are so many that are obviously doomed to die, and perhaps go to hell, in this slaughter at armegeddon, what, exactly, does this say about god's law pertaining to those that don't have faith?

and now the most important question:

how does a human being fit in, where he sees this law, and has faith, and has the power to enact it? whose authority is a man of faith really under? what would a good person vs a bad person do under this law, in different circumstances?

at what point does morality become dangerous?

responsibility...

...is an interesting notion. it is synonomous with power and independance. if you are responsible, you have the power to make decisions. if, on the other hand, you have the power, you are usually the one held responsable. it's funny how there are so many who want power, yet so few who want responsibility.

maybe it's not responsibiliy we're talking about maybe it's accountability. accountability is the power that others have over you. nobody wants to have to answer to anyone. so, besides power and independance, what, exactly, is responsibility?

responsibility is also a word. it is a word that is used to justify a system. in a system that favors one set of people over another, the ones that are in favor must justify why. they use the word "responsibility" for two reasons: 1), to make themsleves feal deserving of their position, and 2) as an excuse for not helping the others.

Then there are poeple who say that the human animal is nothing but a social construct, the so-called "post-modernists". to them, people are simple creations of society, so they are not responsible for what they do. this is the opposite of those that use responsibility to justify inequality. they use the fallacy of that justification to justify irresponisibility.

Obviously, all of us are responsible, not just for our own actions, and our own lives, but for the society we make up. WE are society, so we can't blame "society" on our irresponsibility. however, are we acting irresponisbly when it comes to our role in society, including the inequalities of our society, including the inequalities that add to the level of irresponsibility of others? thier irresponsibility is, to an extent, our irresponsibility.

what is intelligence...

...i hope it's not the ability to spell. i can't spell and i think of myself as relatviely intelligent. i guess i just don't care about spelling. or grammar. i believe that words are abstracts of ideas and that those ideas are what is most important. i understand the need for some rules. breaking the rules can hurt communication. make people think about your error rather than your idea. some people, anyway. it doesn't make me dumb. however, that being said, what does? what makes any one person able to say that he or she is "smarter" than anyone else. we know that there is this thing called intelligence, however it's spelled, and that it's relative, and that it comes in degrees, something that can be measured, albiet arbitrarily, enough to distinguish one persons level of intelligence against anothers. but what is it? a score on an IQ test? a degree? the ability to solve a crossword puzzle or a jumble faster than someone else? the ability to make good decisions? the ability to "smell" a phony a mile a way?

whatever it is, i used to care a lot about it, and how i compared to others. i've always felt that i never really fit in with other people, and felt the need to rationalize why. i believed, perhaps because i wanted to believe, that it was simply because i was smarty than most people. so, last night, i took a test for mensa. i'm pretty sure i failed. now i'm bitter and resentful. just kidding. however, i think that failing the test has given me a new perspective. more acurately, it has forced me to re-rationalize my rationalization as to why i'm socially inept. i could always take the coward's way out: i'm so smart, the tests are too stupid to understand my level of intelligence. but i'm not a coward. i'm brutally honest with myself, or at least, i like to think i am. in fact, it's my brutal honesty, combined with a above-average, sub-genius, level of intelligence, that makes me unable to cope in noraml society. anyway, that's my story, and, until i get some information that conflicts with it, i'm sticking to.

unpopular truth....

...isn't truth at all. truth is defined as what is accepted as being, not what is. it was true that the sun revoled around the earth, that the earth was flat, that milk and red meat was good for you (some people still believe cows milk is good for you, even nutritionists who don't understand that their manuals were funded,in part, by the dairy council, but I digress), that you could go blind from masturbation. Since nobody can agree on what, exactly, is the truth, then truth is subjective. since truth is subjective, beleif is truth to the one that believes it. when this believe is accepted by more than one person, the argument that it is "true" increases in credibility, at least to the one who believes it, making it more true. if enough people believe it, it becomes undeniably true. even though, to a more informed population, it might be obviously untrue.

this begs the question: what is "undeniably true" to us, but is "obviously untrue" to a more informed population? it would be more than a little arrogant to think that there are no such things. the only way out of this is to be completely agnostic in every thought that comes your way. that's not much fun. so what do we do?

we might not be able to understand truth. but what about freedom? freedom is pretty abstract as well, but, i think, more spiritually tangible than truth. well, maybe we should care more about freedom than truth? Jesus once said "know the truth, and the truth will set you free". I disagree. I think that you should be free first. free from ideology, from dogmatism, from external pressures, from the "tyronny of abstractions". only then can you fully pursue the ideal of absolute truth.

the problem with information consumption...

...is that all new information has to be incorporated into your existing perception of reality, regardless of the origin, content, context, or credibility of that information. fact or fiction, news or rumor, journalistic analysis or conspiricy theory, it all has to be factored in, conciously or uncounciously. this means that our perception of reality is rapidly being altered with the massive amounts of information.

our little brains don't like this, so we come up with ways to cope: dogmatism, polorization, and ideology. This helps primarily because it forces us to choose our information sources based on what those information sources are likely to say. We don't bother thinking about things, we let michael moore, or rush limbaugh, or sean hannity, or noam chomsky, or the writers of "star trek", or britteny spears, or some other voice to think for us. We don't think anymore, we choose which media identity to identify with, and leave it at that.

After all, who wants to think for themselves? With all the information out there, that's a full-time job, and we all have to go to work, pay bills, and entertain ourselves with tv, books, radio, and movies to get our mind off of our work and bills.

god damn spammers...

...must die.

what the hell is wrong with these people? I remember when I used to spam (yes, even I was young once). the fact is, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. there is spam that is effective and spam that is not effective. then, there is another catagory altogether: real-life, honest-to-goodness marketing, the most effective spam of all. really, people hate spam. if you spam, then people hate you, and whatever you're selling. once you have identified your product with spam, you will be forever shamed with a crown of shamefulness in the minds of people ashamed of you.

and you suck. seriously, stop spamming my blog or I'll go whoppix on your ass.

Does a fish need to be smart...

...to evolve into a frog? I really don't think it's a matter of intelligence.

In the natural state of random variations in multiple generations, enough of an experiment domain is created to create the "freak" that is the new successful breed. The important part is the experiment domain. With lots and lots of options, lots and lots of information, lots and lots of possibilities, the one that works the best, ( provides the most attractive options via the path of least resistance) wins.

What is happening right now? Massive amounts of information is going everywhere. People are chatting in real-time with people across the planet in a different language through online interpreting software. There is more information out there than any one person could possibly consume, and this domain of information is growing daily. Not only that, but the technology for accessing it and catagorizing it is improving exponentially year by year. Think about how far we've come in 20 years? Comepare that to the 20 years before that. Compare that with the 20 years before that. 20 years before that? How about the years 1800-1820? What's happening to society? There is more inovation in one day than there was in the entire 20 year period of 1800-1820. What is the natural consequence of this? Easy: It is harder and harder to control the information.

This will happen if people get smarter. It will also happen if they get stupider. It has more to do with the difficulty of controlling them than their intelligence. Once it becomes impossible to control the flow of information that is used to control the masses, a natural neo-tribalism will occur. People will flock together based on ideology, and a massive movement for de-centralization (and probably anti-centralization) of anything non-critical will ensue. Call it "neo-libertarianism". This phenominom should be world-wide. With massive information, there are no secrets. In a world with no secrets, it's hard to maintain domination.

Ok, what's the natural consequence of massive decentralization? A new form of interdependance.

What will that bring? I don't know, but I think it will happen, and I think it will be good. I have to have faith in the human race. You see, I'm a member.

Of course, it's just a theory.

spirituality is....

...debatable. We can argue all day about the divinity of the Bible, and, if we come to the conclusion that it is divine, we can then argue all day, and night, for years, about what, exactly, it means. The fact that there are so many religions that profess to believe in the same book, yet have radically different views about what it says exemplifies this.

So, whenever you are saying that you believe one thing, you are saying that all others are wrong, and that you, with your superior wisdom, or more righteous heart, or greater intellect, or whatever, are a better judge of spiritual matters than the rest of the world, who reads the same book, but comes away with it with different beliefs.

You are, in fact, saying "I'm smarter than 99.9% of the Bible-believing population", even though they may have studied the Bible more than you have, for a much longer period of time than you have, perhaps even in it's original languages, etc. And that's just the Bible, let alone the Koran or the Bagavad Gita, the Confusion Cannon, The Book of Mormon, or the Hindu Scriptures, not to mention the massive amounts of secular philosophical and scientific texts that none of the Bible-thumpers, obviously, have ever read (or at least, understood).

Isn't there a common factor that we can all agree on that, if God does exist, then he IS the author of? How about the Universe and the way it works? If God exists, then science is the only absolute "record" he undoutedly left us, and our "priests" and "prophets" should be scientist and science fiction writers.

How about our own bodies? Our own psyche? This is the most direct route to understanding our creator that we have. Words are a human invention, an obvious subjective translation of ideas. How dare we marginalize God by believing that he can be summed up in a book filled with a set of abstractions we call language?

How dare we say that our "hearts are treacherous". There is massive amounts of debate about the authenticity of the Bible, yet, if there really is a God, and he created us, then, ipso-facto, we are HIS creation. Anyone who tries to tell us not to listen to ourselves and our own hearts, then, is in fact telling us not to listen to God.

Do it yourself...

...propaganda. the invasion of Iraq is called, in the US media, "Opperation Iraqi Freedom", which is idiotic. it's a invasion. it's aggression. to most people, reguardless of weather or not they support the war, this is just common sense. only a retarded moron would believe that we invaded Iraq in order to free it's people. we went in for WMDs, didn't find them, so had to justify it and gave it a better name. it's just a clever manipulation of language, that's all.

so, how can you become an effective propagandist? easy. just state your "cause" in words that nobody can be against. it doesn't matter what it is. you want to kill little puppies? don't call it "killing puppies". call it "saving puppies from starvation". even "support our troops" (which really means "support our policy that gets troops killed for no reason"), although idiotically simplistic, is believed, almost universally, but the american people.